Producer Steve Albini recalled working on Nirvana's final studio album, In Utero, and said he chose to keep his relationship with the late-Kurt Cobain strictly professional. In a new interview with Kerrang! he revealed, “I didn’t try to become a bosom buddy of his, because I knew that everyone around him was trying to weasel their way into his world parasitically, and I wanted him to know that he didn’t have to worry about that with me. So I never pressed him for any personal intimacy.”
He added, “But I got to see him at work, and I saw that he was extremely serious about his music, and his passion was genuine. I think that’s what people responded to, because he had a distinctive voice. I grew to respect him as an artist and as a person.”
Albini refused to remix the album after Nirvana's label DGC demanded changes be made, and brought R.E.M. producer Scott Litt to soften the sound and remix its singles. Albini admitted that going against the brass ended up hitting him where it hurt: “There was a backlash for sure after the publicity around that record. I was persona non grata with the big record labels, and I had a rough financial year after the release of that record, because my work with artists on those labels all dried up. But I reverted to working with underground bands.”
Nirvana biographer Charles R. Cross told us that Kurt Cobain had a complicated relationship with success: “When Kurt became popular and he started hanging out with people in alternative rock, he still felt the same kind of clique that he had felt earlier in life. Nirvana were very successful, Kurt definitely was a mainstream artist, he wanted that punk cred, but I think in some ways he felt like that the requirement that he be unsuccessful sort of doomed his capacity to truly be a punk.”
