Butch Vig discussed Neil Young almost recording with surviving Nirvana members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic in a new interview with The Daily Beast.
“I turned down a lot of stuff. I turned down working with The Rolling Stones, and whatever. Projects I just didn’t feel there was a reason I should be doing them. The only project I’m bummed didn’t happen was when we were doing Sound City, Dave Grohl was inviting people in to jam in the studio and we had set up a session for Krist and Dave from Nirvana to play with Neil Young. It would have been fucking awesome. And I know if Neil Young played with them he’d go, oh, let’s go on tour and play some shows together! It would be like Crazy Horse on steroids. But then it didn’t happen. Neil Young had a book coming out so he was on a book tour, and Dave had to go interview him somewhere else. It’s a bummer, man.”
He also said that Kurt Cobain wanted him to produce Hole’s album Live Through This, “I kind of had to turn it down because I was doing Siamese Dream [by Smashing Pumpkins], and that was a long record. It took five months and I was in Atlanta when they went up to Minneapolis to start recording In Utero. Kurt kept calling me on In Utero and saying, ‘Butch, you’ve gotta do Courtney Love’s record [Live Through This]! You’ve gotta do it!’ And I said, well, I’m not done with the Pumpkins’ record until April or May, whenever it was. And Billy Corgan was like, ‘Do you really want to work with Courtney on this?’ I mean, I know Courtney, and god bless her, but I was pretty burned out after working on Siamese Dream.”
