Dave Grohl says listening to Nirvana's 'In Utero' makes his "skin crawl"

Publish Date
Saturday, 28 August 2021, 8:46AM

'In Utero' is no doubt a dark album, so much so that Dave Grohl has a hard time listening to it from front to back. In an excerpt from the updated version of his 2011 biography,'This Is A Call: The Life And Times Of Dave Grohl,', the former Nirvana drummer explained why the band's third and finally album makes his "skin crawl."

“[In Utero] captured a moment in time for the band, and it’s definitely an accurate representation of the time, which was dark. It’s a f***ing dark album. I don’t like listening to that record. It’s a weird one for me,” Grohl confessed. “I hear the songs on the radio every once in a while, and I like the sonic difference of hearing ‘All Apologies’ or ‘Heart-Shaped Box’ come on in the middle of a bunch of compressed, Pro Tool-ed modern rock radio music because it stands out. But lyrically and conceptually, it’s not something that I like to revisit too often. What I love the most about [it] is the sound of urgency, and the sound of the three of us in a room.”

He went on to explain how 'In Utero' and its hugely (and surprisingly) successful predecessor Nevermind “are two totally different albums.”

“Nevermind was intentional, as much as any revisionists might say it was a contrived version of Nirvana, it wasn’t — we went down there to make that record, we rehearsed hours and hours and hours, day after day, to get to Nevermind,” he said. “But In Utero was so different. There was no labored process … [it] just came out, like a purge, and it was so pure.”

In fact, the album was a response “to the success and sound of ‘Nevermind’.”

“We just pushed ourselves in the other direction, like, ‘Oh really, that’s what you like? Well, here’s what we’re going to f***ing do now!’" Grohl divulged. “But it is a hard album for me to listen to from front to back. … It’s so real, and because it’s such an accurate representation of the band at the time, it brings back other memories; it kinda makes my skin crawl.”

The updated version of 'This Is A Call' is slated to be published on September 2.

This article was first published on iheart.com and is republished here with permission

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