Through the years I've found that I prefer live playing to recording. I still do lots of recording - but I treasure the live shows.
Looking back on the production of 'Nevermind,' I'm embarrassed by it now. It's closer to a Motley Crue record than it is a punk rock record.
When you make a record, you listen to it literally hundreds of times. When it's done and you can't do anything else, I never listen to my records.
I've been lucky to be able to make the records I've wanted to make. The record company has never pressured me to cut certain songs.
I just do a random roulette wheel version of what I've recorded or sometimes tunes I haven't recorded. It's a collection of whatever happens, happens.
If someone tells you something is off the record, I don't print it. If they don't tell me something is off the record, then it's fair game.
The house is in turmoil with records on every space. In the kitchen and in the dining room is covered with records. I don't have a big enough house to accommodate everything.
I started recording because I was always complaining about the records that I was getting of my songs. At least if I did them and messed them up, I wouldn't have anyone else to blame.
I thought of a lot of people from the same era when I was making a lot of records that had continued making a lot of records. A lot of it didn't seem terribly inspired.
If you want to sell the most records, duet with me. If you need someone to come in and bless your record sales, I'm your man.
I get most of my inspiration from older records and older production styles, and that ends up rearing its head in the records that I make.
If it can affect me, if it has meaning to me, if I feel I can do it well, I will do it and record it and thats why I recorded these songs.
This is a very screwed-up business. Record labels don't sign a lot of bands these days. We just want to find a home and stay there and make records and do our thing and not have to look over our shoulder.
The difference between me and other people in my generation is instead of saying the Internet's killing the record business, I say, 'Who cares about the record business, the Internet is enhancing music.'
Actually, I have another record I made with them in 1976, but I've had such a bad experience with record companies, because I keep my head so much in music and not in business.
I know the history of the record business so well because I followed Billie Holiday into the record studios. It was so primitive compared to the sophisticated business today.
When I started working on my own music, I didn't have the chance to record in a big music studio, so I had to record everything myself.
I think that every new record is a chance to... I think what it is for me is my heart and soul at that moment in time... I've always felt that just being able to make a record is a privilege.
You know, we have a long history of covering different periods of this band's development with a live record... a sort of live thing that would be done for three or four records, and that was the intention with this particular package.
Those youngsters go out there and set a record and clinch the pole position. But what do you do if you wreck your car. That record doesn't spend too well.
We didn't rehearse or play the songs to death before we recorded them, and that let us catch a freshness and energy level we've never really felt while making records.
