LIVE NIRVANA SESSIONS HISTORY:
December 24 & 29-31, 1988 and January 14 & 24, 1989 - Reciprocal Recording, Seattle, WA, US

Artist

• NIRVANA
• Channing, Chad (drums)
• Cobain, Kurt (vocals, guitar)
• Novoselic, Krist (bass)

Crew

• Endino, Jack (producer, engineer)

Set

• [?] Mr. Moustache
• [?] Scoff
• [?] Sifting
• [O] Scoff
• [O] Mr. Moustache
• [O] Sifting
• [X] Hairspray Queen
• [O] About A Girl
• [O] Blew
• [O] Swap Meet
• [O] Negative Creep
• [O] School
• [O] Big Long Now
• [O] Paper Cuts (backing vocal track)

Best available sources

Notes

The band returned to Reciprocal to record their first album. Sub Pop wanted them to do an EP, session producer, Jack Endino, explains, but the band wanted to do a full album. (55)

The album cost a total of $606.17 to record (8) and was financed by Jason Everman, an old high-school friend of Chad Channing (Everman would later join NIRVANA on the Bleach tour). Despite not actually playing on the record itself, Everman is credited as second guitarist on the liner, We just wanted to make him feel more at home in the band, explains Novoselic. (4)

There were six sessions in total: December 24 [five hours of basic tracks], December 29 [five hours], December 30 [five hours], December 31 [four and a half hours], January 14 [five hours] and January 24 [five and a half hours]. (1) Endino billed them for 30 hours this time. (4)

All songs were recorded on an Otari MX-5050 Mk III ½" eight-track at 15 ips, with no noise reduction. (8) Tracks one through four were devoted to drums (track one to the kick, track two to the snare, and tracks three & four to the stereo overheads with toms blended in and panned), track five to bass, track six to guitar, and track eight to vocals, with track seven reserved for an extra vocal or guitar overdub. Drums were miked with a Shure SM57, an AKG D112, Sennheiser MD 421s, and AKG 414s as X/Y overheads. The bass cab was miked with a Sennheiser MD 421, guitar cab with a SM58, and Cobain's vocal with another SM58 with a foam windscreen. (41)

In contrast to the Love Buzz sessions recorded earlier that year, Endino remembers these sessions as being easy and straight-forward, They just banged it out - they had it all figured out; they were rehearsed. They would do the songs in one or two takes; he'd get the vocals as one overdub, that would be it, and then on to the next song. So it was a pretty easy record to make. (55)

NIRVANA began the Bleach sessions tuning down to what they thought was the key of D, but was actually C, recording presumably ultra-heavy versions of Mr. Moustache, Scoff, and Sifting; These versions were later recorded over by the same songs in a slightly different order (Scoff, Mr. Moustache, and Sifting). After trying a new version of Hairspray Queen, the band went on to record About a Girl, Blew, Swap Meet, and Negative Creep. Using the tape from the Love Buzz session, the band then recorded School over the first take of Big Cheese, and Big Long Now over the first take of Mr. Moustache. (54) At the final session, Love Buzz and the Dale demo versions of Floyd The Barber and Paper Cuts were remixed for the album (and a harmony vocal added to Paper Cuts). (54)

Recording was a pretty straight-ahead process, Novoselic concurs. Just replicate the live sound, get it sounding good. Kurt always nailed his vocals. He didn't ever have to do any trickery. He just did it straight-ahead. He was also a very unconventional guitar player; dissonant, yet melodic too. Some guitar solos would just be crazy. But the vocal melodies were the clincher. It just seemed to work. (54)

Endino recalls Cobain's off-the-cuff writing style: I'd say, So OK, are we ready to cut vocals on this song? and he'd say, Wait a minute, let me finish the lyrics and he'd be furiously scribbling and he'd go, OK, I've got the lyrics. It was that easy for him. He could come up with lyrics pretty instantly. It was fun recording these guys. The lyrics gave me a good laugh more than once. They were very good natured about it. (9)

The lyrics were pretty cryptic and he wasn't particularly into explaining them at the time, Endino continues. I think in later years he obviously spent a lot more time working on his lyrics. I think In Utero definitely reflects that... But the Bleach lyrics were pretty casual and yeah he still had a lot of ways to go as far as singing and playing guitar at the same time in a live situation. I know he was definitely interested in keeping the lyrics as simple as possible so he could perform them. But again it was the delivery that made the difference. (9)

Channing recalls Cobain writing the lyrics to Swap Meet against the dashboard of the van, on the way to the studio. And Swap Meet was originally spelled Meat, adds Endino. Which would've been much funnier. (54)

Cobain himself admitted that very little thought had been put into the lyrics: It's pretty obvious. I didn't care about lyrics at all at that point. I didn't have any appreciation for them. I'd never thought of a song because of its lyrics at that point. (4)

Despite the apparent haste in which the songs were recorded, Endino says that the band were very particular about the sonics of the record; They told me exactly what they wanted. We were using some old rock records as a reference, in terms of not wanting to get a big, reverb-y sound - they wanted a dry, crunchy, Seventies rock sound for that record, a la Thin Lizzy or AC/DC. I happened to have a copy of AC/DC's For Those About to Rock on vinyl in the studio, and there was a turntable, and we would play that and go, OK, we've got some good guitar sounds here. Which is why that record, Bleach, is a crunchy, in-your-face, dry record. (55)

Later in his career, Cobain would become disgruntled with the record's grungy sound: Bleach seemed to be really one-dimensional. It just has the same format. All the songs are slow and grungy and they are tuned down to really low notes and I screamed a lot. But at the same time as we were recording, we had a lot more songs like About A Girl. In fact, Polly was written at that same time too. But it was just that we chose to put to put the more abrasive songs on the Bleach album. (5)

Cobain opted to omit Big Long Now and Hairspray Queen from Bleach because he felt the record had copious heavy songs already. (8)

The album was sequenced at Bruce Pavitt's demand. (1) The album's original, band-chosen, running order was substantially different: Floyd The Barber, Mr Moustache, School, Scoff, and Sifting on side one (Endino: We weren't thinking in terms of CDs then), Love Buzz, Swap Meet, Paper Cuts, Negative Creep, About A Girl, and Blew on side two (the UK release replaced Love Buzz with Big Cheese). (54)