Nardwuar recently interviewed Nirvana’s In Utero producer Steve Albini, and he discussed Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic lighting fire on Dave Grohl’s ass.
Nardwuar asked, “Was it fun recording Nirvana? Did you really light farts on fire?”
Albini responded, “There was some fart lighting, the band also got into this thing where they’d spill alcohol on things and set it on fire. One of the things they spilled alcohol on was Dave Grohl, so there’s polaroids of Dave Grohl with his ass on fire, and things like that.”
Albini told Alternative Nation in an interview a few years ago, “Well, I wasn’t particularly familiar with Nevermind, I mean I’ve heard it, it was kind of inescapable and so I heard it more in the background than I heard by paying attention to it. I had some friends who were into that band. That was my initial relationship with the record, creating an ether around me.
I didn’t have that much of a particular problem with the record, I wasn’t crazy about the sort of fawning appreciation for it because it seemed kind of insane, it was kind of Beatlemania. It wasn’t suited to my personality. I tend to react against things like that rather than get on board with them, and so that was sort of a knee-jerk reaction. The idea behind In Utero was just to let the band make the kind of record they wanted to make. They had a pretty strong perspective on how they wanted to proceed. They had all the songs for it, and Kurt had a very particular aesthetic in mind.
At the time he was kind of overwhelmed with biological processes and disease and those were on his mind a lot. I think that imagery showed up a lot in that album. I think I guess more than anything else was to let them have a shot at making the record they wanted to make.”
