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We were ostensibly making an album for Sub Pop. I told Jonathan I’d love to work with them and they showed up about three or four months later at the door of, Smart Studios.
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They wanted to get much more ambitious with how they approached song structure and melody. There was a real sophistication in the writing and, as it turned out, that’s where Kurt Cobain and Nirvana were headed. The way the melody was juxtaposed over the chord progression sounded brilliant. A lot of the sounds were cool and the record had a great vibe, but I thought the songs were pretty one-dimensional - except for “About a Girl.” To me, that sounded like a Lennon/McCartney composition. He sent me their first album Bleach so I could check out Nirvana, and to be honest, I was sort of unimpressed. I thought that was a pretentious statement for him to make - but in a way, it turned out to be true. They could be as big as the Beatles,” he said. Then one day, Jonathan Poneman, the co-founder of Sub Pop, called me and asked me if I would produce a record for Nirvana. They’re amazing!” And I’d say, “Yeah, OK, maybe,” Not really expecting it to happen. While I worked with them, the guys in Tad were saying, “Oh, you’ve gotta work with Nirvana. One of them was Tad’s Eight Way Santa, which the label was quite happy with. My relationship with Sub Pop Records started when I produced a couple albums for them. Butch Vig (Photo by Hayley Madden/Redferns)