Behind The Scenes Of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’
- Photo: jonathancharles / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0
Kurt Cobain Got The Line ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ After A Night Of Antics With Bikini Kill Frontwoman Kathleen Hanna
About six months before "Teen Spirit"'s inception, Cobain spent an evening drinking with Bikini Kill singer Kathleen Hanna. After splitting a bottle of Canadian Club whisky, the two decided to take their frustrations with the world out on a recently built teen pregnancy center. According to Hanna, the business was "a right-wing con where they got teenage girls to go in there and then told them they were gonna go to hell if they had abortions," and Cobain agreed.
Hanna and Cobain spray-painted "Fake Abortion Clinic, Everyone" and "God is Gay" in giant letters on the side of the building, then retreated to Cobain's apartment to celebrate their accomplishment. Before passing out, Hanna used a Sharpie to write "Kurt smells like Teen Spirit" on his wall, referring to the perfumed deodorant worn by Cobain's girlfriend Tobi Vail. The next morning, Cobain awoke to the graffiti as well as the inspiration for a song title.
When Hanna Told Cobain He Smelled Like Teen Spirit, He Thought It Was A Metaphor, But She Meant The Deodorant
Hanna graffitied Cobain's wall to deliberately insult his relationship with his girlfriend Tobi Vail and her use of Teen Spirit deodorant, even if she wore it to be ironic. Hanna wanted to make fun of Cobain for smelling like the deodorant after spending time with Vail, using the idea of him smelling like his girlfriend to insult him for being needy and clingy. Cobain had never heard of Teen Spirit and thought Hanna was admiring him for being alternative.
I took that as a compliment. I thought that was a reaction to the conversation we were having but it really meant that I smelled like the deodorant. I didn't know that the deodorant spray existed until months after the single came out. I've never worn any cologne or underarm deodorant.
Krist Novoselic Thought The Song Was Ridiculous, So Cobain Made Them Play It For An Hour And A Half
Dave Grohl and Novoselic first heard the riff to "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in Nirvana's practice space: a converted barn that Grohl described as "weird" for featuring stage lights and brown shag carpeting. As Cobain played, he knew what he created was not necessarily original but had potential. "'Teen Spirit' was such a cliched riff. It was so close to a Boston riff or 'Louie, Louie,'" Cobain remembered. Grohl and Novoselic didn't applaud.
"When I came up with the guitar part, Krist looked at me and said, 'That is so ridiculous.'" Cobain recalled. "I made the band play it for an hour and a half."
Through endless repetition, Novoselic helped turn the riff into a real song. "We were just playing the chorus, 'When the light's out, and it's dangerous, here we are now,' over and over again," he said. "I said, 'Wait a minute. Why don't we just kind of slow this down a bit?' So I started playing the verse part. And Dave started playing a drum beat."
MTV Didn’t Really Know Nirvana When They World-Premiered The ‘Teen Spirit’ Video
Nirvana had MTV music programmer Amy Finnerty and the Smashing Pumpkins to thank for the "Teen Spirit" video making it onto the channel. Finnerty became a fan after hearing Bleach and knew the "Teen Spirit" video would be huge, but she also realized, "MTV, as far as I know, had never world-premiered a video for a band that they had no history with."
While taking Smashing Pumpkins around the MTV office to meet people, she decided to share the "Teen Spirit" video at the same time. Finnerty pushed hard to get Nirvana on the air, telling her boss, "I understand why we're playing Paula Abdul and Whitesnake. But if there isn't a place for this, I don't know what I'm doing here."
MTV agreed to premiere "Teen Spirit" on September 29, 1991, during 120 Minutes, a program dedicated to alternative music. "If MTV had known that Nirvana was going to be as huge as they [were], they would've world-premiered the video in prime time, not late-night Sunday," host Dave Kendall remembered. Like other people at MTV, he was also unprepared for Nirvana's sound and how big they'd become, saying:
I thought it was going to be another Seattle record, so I was a little suspicious and a little resistant to it because I thought it was going to be a lot of guitars, sort of a '70s feel. And then when I heard it, I knew I'd been wrong.
The Final Mosh Pit Includes Hundreds Of Extras Who Actually Wiped Out The Video Set
"All the kids in the bleachers were drunk," recalled producer Robin Sloane. That may have been an exaggeration, but the shoot for the "Teen Spirit" video was a long day, both for the extras and Nirvana. "The day of the video shoot was pure pain," director Samuel Bayer remembered. "Kurt hated being there."
For the recruited extras, sitting and watching take after take grew boring, so Cobain convinced Bayer to allow them to form a giant mosh pit during the last take. "Once the kids came out dancing they just said 'f*ck you,' because they were so tired of this sh*t throughout the day," Cobain recalled.
Unfortunately for the set, they did more than dance. "The last 30 seconds of that video is those kids [wiping out] the set and I just happened to have a roll of film in the camera," Bayer said. The kids demolishing the band's equipment and the gym at the end of the video was completely real.
"We did a couple of takes, and the audience just started [wrecking] the stage," Grohl remembered. "The director's on a bullhorn screaming, 'Stop! Cut!' And that's when it started to make sense to me: This is like a Nirvana show."
Cobain Had A Specific Vision For The Video And Was Disappointed The Director Cast Excessively Attractive Women
Although Cobain used his journal to record specific ideas he had about the video, as well as drew pictures to explain what he wanted to director Bayer, he was disappointed when he arrived on the set. Cobain recalled:
It looked like a Time-Life commercial to me, with that backdrop, it just looked like such a contemporary... you know those kind of commercials where people are sitting there trying to sell aspirin or something? Or an AT&T commercial? That's what it looked like to me; it looked too contemporary.
Nirvana also took offense to Bayer's casting of overly attractive females, a music video stereotype that went against their message. "When we showed up at the shoot, we were like, 'Wait a minute, those cheerleaders look like strippers,'" Grohl said. Turns out, they were. Bayer explained:
I scouted LA strip clubs for the cheerleaders. Kurt didn't like them. I couldn't understand why he wanted to put unattractive women in the video... In my eyes, the whole video was dirty. It's all yellows and browns. It was the opposite of everything I saw on MTV at the time.
- Photo: Charles Peterson / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0
Novoselic Didn't Understand The Lyrics At First
Although Cobain's singing was often difficult to understand, Novoselic didn't understand the lyrics of "Teen Spirit" for different reasons. He remembered:
I just didn't get them the first time I read them. And then I started listening to it in the song format, and then I had an idea of what he was talking about. He was talking about kids, commercials, Generation X, the youth bandwagon, and how he's really disappointed in it, and how he doesn't want anything to do with it.
In regards to the line, "Here we are now, entertain us," however, Cobain offered a definite explanation:
That came from something I used to say every time I used to walk into a party to break the ice. A lot of times, when you're standing around with people in a room, it's really boring and uncomfortable. So it was, "Well, here we are, entertain us. You invited us here."
- Photo: RecordMecca.com / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0
Cobain Got Sick Of The Song And Sometimes Couldn't Perform It Live
Only nine months after Nirvana first played "Teen Spirit" for a live audience, they found themselves performing it on Saturday Night Live. MTV kept the video in heavy rotation, insuring as many people as possible would see it. "'Smells Like Teen Spirit" was on MTV every five f*cking minutes," remembered Courtney Love.
Although he liked the attention, Cobain wondered why the song became as popular as it did. "I was just using pieces of poetry and... just stuff that just would spew out of me at the time," he said. "A lot of times when I write lyrics, it's just at the last second because I'm really lazy. And then I find myself having to come up with explanations for it."
The success of "Teen Spirit" bothered Cobain so much, he eventually grew tired of playing the song. He remembered:
Everyone has focused on that song so much. The reason it gets a big reaction is people have seen it on MTV a million times. It’s been pounded into their brains. But I think there are so many other songs that I’ve written that are as good, if not better, than that song...
I can barely... get through "Teen Spirit." I literally want to throw my guitar down and walk away. I can’t pretend to have a good time playing it.
Cobain Hated The 'Teen Spirit' Video So Much, He Re-Edited It Himself
"When I come up with an idea for a video, I want it to be translated exactly how I see it in my mind," Cobain said. "And it just wasn't that way." Although he reluctantly put up with the shoot for "Teen Spirit," the post-production disappointed him even more. "Even after Sam had edited it... I didn't like it," Cobain remembered.
Grohl realized many people had difficulty understanding Nirvana's vision and believed the experience of making the video proved this: "A lot of people we worked with didn't understand the underground scene or punk rock."
Cobain decided to take matters into his own hands and fix "Teen Spirit" himself. "I flew down at the last minute to LA and edited it myself," he recalled. "I threw in a few extra things which pretty much saved it." Cobain added the footage of the extras forming a mosh pit and trashing the set. "If a lot of that hadn't been used, it would have been a really bad video," Cobain said. "Most of the stuff that was used looked really contrived. There was no spontaneity in it. So I just threw all the spontaneous parts in."
- Photo: P.B. Rage from USA / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0
Cobain Said He Was Trying To Emulate The Pixies When He Wrote ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’
During long road trips, Nirvana listened to their favorite and most influential bands, including The Sugarcubes, Mudhoney, and the Pixies. "When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily I should have been in that band - or at least in a Pixies cover band," Cobain said.
Cobain loved the band's music so much, its influence filtered into "Smells Like Teen Spirit," and other Nirvana members noticed the similarity. "I really remember thinking, 'That is such a Pixies rip,'" Grohl recalled. "It was almost thrown away at one point because it just seemed too much like the Pixies."
Instead of trying to play off the song's similarity to one of his favorite bands, Cobain outright admitted to copying them. "I was trying to write the ultimate pop song. I was basically trying to [copy] the Pixies. I have to admit it," he said. "We used their sense of dynamics, being soft and quiet and then loud and hard." After playing a recording of the song, Cobain once asked sound engineer Craig Montgomery, "Do you think it sounds too much like the Pixies?"
- Photo: Unknown / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
Nirvana Unveiled The First In-Progress Version Of 'Teen Spirit' To A Live Audience On April 17, 1991
While the band was still largely unknown outside of the Pacific Northwest, two weeks before they signed with a major record label, Nirvana took the stage at the OK Hotel in Seattle. "Hello. We're major label corporate rock sellouts," Cobain told the crowd. That night, they played "Teen Spirit" for the first time in front of a live audience.
Although it was a work in progress, fans immediately loved it. "They started playing the new song and people erupted," recalled Jennie Boddy. "My friend Susan started hyperventilating, she thought it was so good... It was just instantaneous; it was [wild]." Not everyone in the audience was in awe of the show, however, and in the seconds before Nirvana shared "Teen Spirit" with the crowd, an audience member reportedly yelled, "Freebird!"
- Photo: Nirvana / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
Cobain Handed Out Flyers To Teens For The ‘Teen Spirit’ Video
Part of Cobain's vision for the music video came from his memories from high school. "He wanted to tell the world how f*cked up high school was," remembered Courtney Love. In order to make the scene more realistic, Cobain decided to hire non-actors aged 18 to 25 who had a "high school persona, ie., preppy, punk, nerd, jock."
On August 15 and 16 of 1991, Nirvana handed out flyers after their shows at The Roxy in Los Angeles to recruit extras for the video. LA radio station KXLU also announced the band's search for people, leading to a major turnout. In fact, so many potential extras showed up to GMT Studios on the day of the shoot, Nirvana had to turn away hundreds of disappointed people.
- Video: YouTube
Novoselic Said The Video Montage Nirvana Played During Their Set At The Evergreen State College Is The Heart Of ‘Teen Spirit’
In 1990, Nirvana (then with drummer Chad Channing) took advantage of the empty campus during spring break at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. Along with a few assistants, they snuck into the campus television studio to make a video. "The original concept was to do stuff in the studio, then go to Aberdeen and shoot a bunch of other stuff and turn it into some hour-long thing they would sell to fans," remembered Jon Snyder who directed.
Cobain brought VHS tapes featuring things he recorded off television to play in the background, and the studio's equipment allowed them to combine the tapes with Nirvana's live performance. Although "Teen Spirit" wasn't on the set list, Novoselic believed this video and its background images of Christian bodybuilders and Shaun Cassidy played an important part in the development of the song.
To me, that video is the true heart of "Smells Like Teen Spirit." A lot of it has to do with teenagers and this fake world with Lee Press-On Nails. Kurt watched a lot of TV and he recorded all this weird stuff. Then he'd just sit back and rip the sh*t out of everything.
The ‘Teen Spirit’ Video Is Inspired By Jonathan Kaplan’s ‘Over The Edge’ And The Ramones’ ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll High School’
Cobain had an exact idea of how he wanted the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video to look. According to Geffen Records producer Robin Sloane, Cobain told director Bayer, "My idea for the video is a pep rally gone wrong." Inspiration came from the Ramones' Rock 'n' Roll High School, as well as Jonathan Kaplan's 1979 troubled teen movie, Over the Edge.
Grohl remembered:
The idea was, the kids take over and burn down the gymnasium, just as Matt Dillon did in Over the Edge, with the rec center. Kurt was a huge fan of that movie. We walked into that whole thing really cautiously, because we didn't want to misrepresent the band.
- Photo: Panos Sakalakis / Pexels / Public Domain
The ‘Teen Spirit’ Video Cost Between $30,000 And $50,000 But Was Worth Every Penny
Recreating a high school gym on a soundstage, hiring actors, and having the set and band equipment wiped out by extras wasn't cheap, and the "Teen Spirit" video reportedly cost between $30,000 and $50,000 to create. Considering how greatly it affected Nirvana's career, however, it was worth the cost. In addition to winning two MTV Video Music Awards, the video gave Nirvana a wider audience and more recognition.
For director Bayer, it was life-changing. "That video gave me a career. Everyone wanted to do a Nirvana-type video," he said. Others recognized the song for forging an entirely new direction in music, as Kip Winger of the progressive metal band Winger claimed, "I watched 'Smells Like Teen Spirit,' and I thought, 'All right, we're finished.'"
"Teen Spirit" made it clear music trends were about to change in a big way. "Nirvana became the mold for success, the way Poison had been four years before," said director Kevin Kerslake. "There are many ironies within the history of MTV, and that is one of them: The revolutionary fights the dictator, and ultimately becomes the dictator. It's just swapping chairs."
