Nevermind at Sound City Studios: Where and How Nirvana Recorded It
Updated: Jul 7
Nirvana recorded Nevermind at Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, Los Angeles, from May 2 to May 28, 1991, with Butch Vig producing and engineering. The basic tracks ran through Sound City's custom Neve 8028 console onto a 24-track Studer tape machine, Andy Wallace mixed the album in June 1991, and DGC released it on September 24, 1991.
Nevermind at a glance
Studio: Sound City Studios, Van Nuys, Los Angeles. Basic tracks in the big Studio A, overdubs and most lead vocals in the smaller Studio B.
Recording dates: May 2 to 28, 1991. The band used up the 16 days booked at Sound City and finished at Devonshire Studios.
Producer and engineer: Butch Vig.
Mixer: Andy Wallace, at Scream Studios in Studio City, in June 1991.
Console: Sound City's custom Neve 8028, with 28 inputs, 1084 EQs and no automation.
Tape machine: a 24-track analogue Studer running 2-inch tape.
The exception: "Polly" is the April 1990 recording from Vig's Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin, with Chad Channing's cymbal crashes still on it.
Budget: $65,000 at the start, about $120,000 by the end.
Mastering: Howie Weinberg, at the Mastering Lab in Hollywood, on August 2, 1991.
Release: September 24, 1991, on DGC. No. 1 on the Billboard 200 on January 11, 1992.
When Nirvana walked into Sound City in May 1991, they were still an underground band from the Pacific Northwest, with the strange mix of melody and damage that made Kurt Cobain's writing so powerful. Eight months later, Nevermind replaced Michael Jackson's Dangerous at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. It still feels unlikely.
The sound came from several things working together: strong songs, Dave Grohl's physical drumming, Sound City's live room and Neve desk, Cobain's doubled vocals and Andy Wallace's mix. For anyone who records bands, the album is still one of the best lessons in how far you can push a band toward the radio before you lose it.
Why Sound City mattered
Sound City was never a pretty studio, and that was part of its power. Vig had never worked in Los Angeles and booked it sight unseen, because the band wanted to record there and it had a large recording room and a vintage Neve console. He later described it to Sound On Sound as a no-frills place: big live room, old Neve, 24-track Studer, tube mics, LA-2A compressors and not much outboard gear. The story of the building is in About a Studio: Sound City.
The band played together in Studio A. Grohl sat in the middle of the room, Krist Novoselic played beside the drums with his Ampeg SVT rig off to the side, and Cobain's amps went into a small isolation area while he stayed in the room. Most songs went down in two or three takes, and the basic tracks were done in five or six days. We describe that kind of day from the inside in Recording a Band Live in a Room.
Grohl's kit sounds like a person hitting drums in a room, with enough control that every hit lands. A lot of modern productions try to build that size afterwards with samples and plugins. On Nevermind much of the energy comes from the original event, a band that knew its songs playing together in a big room, although the mix added size too (see the drum section below). We make the longer argument in Why Sound City's Ugly Room Made Better Records.
The Neve 8028 console: the sound of commitment
If Sound City had a centre of gravity, it was the console. In 1973 the studio paid $75,175 for a custom Neve 8028 from Rupert Neve, one of four in the world: 28 inputs, 16 buses, 1084 EQs and no automation. When Sound City closed to the public in 2011, Dave Grohl bought it for his Studio 606 in Northridge and built his 2013 documentary Sound City around it. We set it next to the other famous desks in Vintage Mixing Consoles That Shaped Recording Studios.
On Nevermind the desk was part of the instrument. For the scratchy guitar at the start of "Breed", Cobain plugged straight into the console. On "Territorial Pissings" Vig felt the direct sound had no weight, so they split the signal between an amp and Cobain's Pro Co Rat pedal running straight into the Neve, and blended both. Everything went to 2-inch tape on the Studer, the kind of machine we cover in Rare Vintage Tape Machines.
The bigger point is what a desk like that does to the way people work. With no automation you cannot build a track out of endless invisible options. You push sound through a physical desk and commit to tones and balances while the band takes shape in front of you. That limit forces the question that still matters in every studio: does this feel like the record or not?
Dave Grohl's drum sound was not an accident
Grohl joined Nirvana in September 1990, after his Washington, D.C. band Scream broke up, and Nevermind was his first album with them. Cobain told Vig he had found the best drummer in the world; Vig was skeptical until the first rehearsal in North Hollywood. Grohl played a Tama Granstar kit with snares and cymbals rented from Drum Doctors, and his parts are simple and heavy. He did not fill every space just because he could.
The best-known engineering detail is Vig's drum tunnel. He told Sound On Sound in 1997 that they attached old drum shells to the front of the bass drum, extending it about six feet, so the kick mic could sit three or four feet back while the tunnel kept out most of the cymbal bleed. The kick had an AKG D12 and a Neumann FET 47. The rest was standard for the time: a Shure SM57 and an AKG 451 on the snare, Sennheiser 421s on the toms, AKG 414s and Neumann KM84s on the cymbals, and Neumann U87s as distant room mics. Our posts on AKG microphones and Neumann microphones cover most of that list.
The part people forget is the mix. According to Michael Azerrad's Nirvana biography, the room miking of the drums did not work out well, so Andy Wallace added digital reverb, EQ and samples blended in behind the kick and snare, using the samples to drive the reverb while Grohl's real drums stayed underneath. Grohl later complained that the drums ended up sounding more digital. More on room sound versus mix-built size in Mixing Indie Rock Drums and Room Mics as Evidence of the Performance.
Butch Vig's job was to sharpen the band without killing it
Nirvana had no interest in becoming a normal radio rock band, and the songs still needed shape, from vocal presence to drums that would translate outside the room. So Vig pushed. He tightened performances and asked Cobain to double his guitars and vocals, especially on the choruses. Cobain resisted, and Vig won him over with one line: John Lennon double-tracked his vocals. Vig told Sound On Sound he doubled a lot of choruses on the record; the best documented case is "Smells Like Teen Spirit".
Cobain hated repeat takes, so Vig recorded everything, often rolling on what Cobain thought was a warm-up, and built a master from the best parts of up to four takes. Most lead vocals were cut in the smaller Studio B on a Neumann U67 through an LA-2A, straight to tape, with Cobain singing to speakers because he did not like headphones.
The result still sounds like him, only bigger, which is what good production should do to a singer. Vig's own first mixes pulled the other way: Cobain wanted the high end off the guitars and the vocals further down, which sounded more punk and, to Vig, less focused. We wrote about that exact argument in whether indie rock vocals belong up front or buried.
The true story of "Something in the Way"
The band first tried to record "Something in the Way" as a full band, and it was not working. Cobain picked up the cheap Stella acoustic he had also used on "Polly", strung with only five strings that he never tuned, sat on the couch in the Studio A control room and played the song quietly to show Vig how it should go.
Vig heard that the feeling was suddenly there. He turned off the air conditioning, had the phones shut off, put up microphones and recorded Cobain where he was, guitar and vocal together. The first vocal take became the verses.
Grohl and Novoselic added their parts afterwards in Studio B. Grohl had to play far more quietly than he was used to, and both had trouble staying in time and in tune with Cobain's guitar. Kirk Canning, a friend of the band, added the cello on the last day of the sessions.
The timing is loose and the tuning is odd, and that is the song. Sometimes the "wrong" take has the truth in it, and the producer's job is to stop chasing perfection and protect the feeling.
Session notes, song by song
"Smells Like Teen Spirit": Vig moved Cobain's guitar ad lib from the end of the song into each chorus and shortened the choruses. The band cut the basic track in three takes and used the second.
"Lithium": the only song that started with a click track, because the band kept speeding up. Grohl had never played to a click and had it within three or four takes.
"Endless, Nameless": came out of a frustrating "Lithium" day, when Cobain launched into a furious jam and smashed his guitar. The hidden track was accidentally left off the first 20,000 or so copies.
"Territorial Pissings": basically a first take.
"Polly": the 1990 Smart Studios recording. Vig and the band thought about redoing it and kept the original. Andy Wallace later put a short, slowly shifting delay on Channing's cymbals.
Andy Wallace and the final shape of the album
Vig was hired to produce and mix, but his first mixes at Devonshire Studios pleased nobody; to him they sounded too rough. Geffen's Gary Gersh sent a list of mix engineers. Cobain turned down Scott Litt (he did not want to sound like R.E.M.) and Ed Stasium (the Smithereens), then picked Andy Wallace from the bottom of the list because "Slayer" was written next to his name. If you are choosing a mixer yourself, read How to Choose a Mixing Engineer for Alternative Music.
Wallace mixed at Scream Studios in Studio City, a song or two a day for nine or ten days, with Vig and the band coming in to nitpick. The drums got huge and the guitars wide, and that scale helped the songs survive on radio and MTV without losing their emotional core.
Cobain later turned on the sound and told Michael Azerrad it was closer to a Motley Crue record than a punk rock record. Steve Albini, who engineered In Utero, said Vig's original mixes hit far harder. Vig's view is that the band loved the record when they finished it, and that the criticism was partly a reaction to its success.
The record lives in the dangerous middle between raw and polished, where a lot of great alternative music lives. Too clean, and the song gets boring; too messy, and the feeling never reaches the listener. The job is to make the emotion bigger without making the band smaller.
What modern bands can learn from Nevermind
Our opinion, and plenty of engineers will disagree with it: the thing to copy from Nevermind is the preparation. The basics were finished in five or six days, mostly in two or three takes, because the band walked in with the songs written and rehearsed, and nobody could have fixed the songs or the takes later. The famous drum sound is a weaker model, because even on Nevermind the room mics did not make it through untouched and Wallace rebuilt the ambience in the mix.
Vibe beats perfection: Cobain's untuned guitar on "Something in the Way" is the song. Don't edit the life out of a performance.
Commit to the sound: a desk with no automation forces decisions. Make bold choices while you track.
Finish the songs first: the arrangements were tightened in a few days of rehearsal, so the studio time went on performances.
What an earlier version got wrong
The drum tunnel. We wrote that it was built from old bass drum cases. Vig told Sound On Sound it was old drum shells attached to the front of the kick, extending about six feet.
"Something in the Way". We called a "laundry room" recording a common myth; we found no source for that story, so it is gone. We also said Grohl and Novoselic struggled to play quietly when the band tried the song together. In Vig's account that struggle came later, when they overdubbed onto Cobain's solo take.
Where the drum size came from. We credited it mostly to the room and the console. Azerrad's account is that the room mics did not work out well and Wallace rebuilt the ambience with digital reverb, EQ and samples behind the kick and snare.
Doubled vocals. We named "In Bloom", "Drain You" and "Come as You Are" as examples without a source. The documented example is the chorus of "Smells Like Teen Spirit", and Vig says Cobain doubled a lot of choruses across the record.
Nevermind FAQ
Where was Nirvana's Nevermind recorded?
At Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, Los Angeles, from May 2 to 28, 1991, with basic tracks in Studio A and overdubs in Studio B. The one exception is "Polly", which comes from an April 1990 session at Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin. Andy Wallace mixed the album at Scream Studios in Studio City in June 1991.
Who produced and mixed Nevermind?
Butch Vig produced and engineered Nevermind. Andy Wallace mixed it, and Howie Weinberg mastered it at the Mastering Lab in Hollywood on August 2, 1991.
What console was Nevermind recorded on?
Sound City's custom Neve 8028, a 28-input desk with 1084 EQs and no automation that the studio bought in 1973 for $75,175. Dave Grohl bought it when Sound City closed to the public in 2011 and installed it at his Studio 606.
How much did Nevermind cost to make?
The recording budget was $65,000, and the album ended up costing about $120,000 once extra studio time, lodging and the mix were paid for. Nirvana's first album, Bleach, had cost $606.17.
How did Butch Vig record the drums on Nevermind?
Vig built a tunnel of old drum shells about six feet out from Grohl's kick so he could mic it from a distance without cymbal bleed. In the mix, Andy Wallace added digital reverb and blended samples in behind the kick and snare.
Keep reading
About a Studio: Sound City. The studio, the room and the Neve 8028.
Why Sound City's Ugly Room Made Better Records. The case for an ugly room.
Vintage Mixing Consoles That Shaped Recording Studios. The 8028 among the other famous desks.
Sunset Sound: How a Former Disney Studio Became a Rock Legend. Another Los Angeles room with a history.
About a Studio: Electric Lady Studios, New York. The studio Jimi Hendrix built.
Send us the rough mix
If you are making indie rock, punk, noise rock, shoegaze or post-punk and want a mix that makes the feeling bigger without sanding the band down, send us the rough mix and a few lines on what it should feel like. You can read how we work on online mixing and indie rock mixing.
