It’s been about 36 years since Nirvana released their debut album, Bleach. The band actually began recording it on this day, December 24, in 1988. The record has some bizarre origin elements. The title, for instance, came from a poster about h***** and the AIDS crisis that frontman Kurt Cobain saw in San Francisco.
According to grunge legend, the album’s working title was Too Many Humans. While Cobain was driving through the Golden Gate city, however, everything changed. He spotted something that caught his attention and changed the course of history. The poster was for an AIDS prevention campaign. It encouraged h***** addicts to bleach needles before using them to shoot up.
The poster featured a slogan that urged: “Bleach Your Works”
In Michael Azerrad’s book Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana, the author notes that Bleach was recorded with local Seattle music producer Jack Endino. Sessions took place between December 1988 and January 1989 at Reciprocal Recording Studios. It’s said that Endino only billed the band roughly $600 to produce the album.
Interestingly, the album features drum tracking by Melvins drummer, Dale Crover. The Melvins are widely considered to be one of the biggest influencers of the ’90s grunge movement.
In 2022, Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic opened up about the beginnings of Bleach. “Kurt paid for that demo, and he had a job, like a janitor,” he said during a conversation with Rick Beato. “He would go clean dentist offices in the evenings, he cleaned toilets to earn the money to make that record.” The interview also featured Endino and Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil.
The iconic bass player also revealed that Cobain wrote the majority of the music, but they still often worked out songs together.
“We would just play every day for hours,” Novoselic recalled. “He’d [Kurt Cobain] have these riffs and start playing them, and we would just say ‘Okay, that’s a cool riff,’ and I’d listen, and then I’d have an idea like, ‘This is what the song needs.’ Playing bass, this is what I want to do for the song, this is what the song is asking or demanding of me.”
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