At first, Nirvana were influenced by Sonic Youth. Then it sort of flipped…
By the time Sonic Youth released their classic seventh album Dirty in 1992, they were mature and wise operators.
Ove a decade into their career, the band had experimented with all manner of approaches to making records and been subjected to various pressures and expectations that come with the machinations of the music industry.
"All records are kind of difficult to make," the band's Thurston Moore told triple j's Francis Leach.
"[Dirty] was actually fairly simple, because we worked with Butch Vig and he was a really good kind of master of ceremonies."
"We were really well prepared this this time, also," drummer Steve Shelley added.
The relative ease with which Dirty was made is particularly significant when you learn the band hadn't found the making of its predecessor – 1990's arguably just-as-classic sixth album Goo – quite as straightforward.
"We tried something different with Goo," Thurston explains.
"We worked in a very high tech situation that kind of got in the way of us just going in there and working in the way we're used to, which is fast."
"The high tech situation slowed down the recording process," Shelley agreed. "So, we sort of lost this element of spontaneity that we like to have around while we're recording.
"With Dirty, we got back to a simpler recording technique, and thus we were able to be more spontaneous and have more fun. In general, I think we're more pleased with the actual recording and sound of Dirty."
The album has some of Sonic Youth's most immediate and potent rock songs. The snappy and catchy '100%' opens the record with a squall and a bang, there's a ruthless grind behind 'Swimsuit Issue', while 'Drunken Butterfly' is as relentless as it is lustful.
"It's very hard rockin', I don't know why," Thurston said of the record. "I think we reached an apex of actually writing very heavy rock stuff.
"The whole record is not like that, but there is a lot of very Butch Vig-sounding rock'n'roll on there. Which I love! But it's funny that we've sort of taken it so far."
"It's from touring with bands like Nirvana and Mudhoney and watching them rock out," Shelley said.
"If we're inspired by anybody, we're inspired by the bands we like and the ones we're friends with and we're close with and we're excited by," Thurston said.
"That happens to be Mudhoney, Nirvana, Screaming Trees, and what have you. As well as bands that are maybe more fragile and falling apart, like Royal Trux, or Sebadoh, or Pavement or bands like this.
"I think it is a real kind of schizophrenic record where you have this pretty hardcore, rockin' thing mixed with the other thing, which is more sort of mysterious."
Butch Vig had just made Nirvana's Nevermind and The Smishing Pumpkins' Gish when he jumped behind the desk for Dirty, though the band didn't feel as though he dragged them too far in any direction.
"I think he just sort of honed in on the hardcore aspect of it and really made that sound good," Thurston said.
"Yeah, his job was mainly just to make us feel comfortable," Shelley said. "To get us to play in a room together and then his job at that point was to capture it on tape. And he did a really good job."
The influence of bands from the Washington DC early hardcore scene was also clear in parts of the record, most notably second single 'Youth Against Fascism'.
The song continued Sonic Youth's dalliance with politics in their music, though Thurston says he was intentionally sweeping in his approach to politics in the song.
"Making blanket statements like, 'I believe Anita Hill', or 'the president sucks', that's really all I wanted to do," he said. "Not really get too involved with it.
"A lot of those bands that were around DC at the time, especially in the early 80s, they were like 17 year old kids and all the songs were anti-Reagan, anti-police songs, and that's how they would sing.
"It was like, 'Cops suck!', 'High school sucks!', 'My parents suck!', or whatever."
A lot of Sonic Youth's friends became found fame in the grunge explosion of the early-90s, though one band's popularity dwarfed them all.
"We were really into it that Nirvana became so huge, because we got a lot of attention out of it," Thurston said.
"Just because we had done stuff with Nirvana. They'd supported us and they said that they were influenced by us to some degree."
"It sort of gave us some clout at the label," Shelley laughed.
"I think everybody who was from the same scene as Nirvana – which was very a specific American underground, alternative scene – all of a sudden became that year's choice as the hip kind of thing," Thurston continued.
"We didn't really care. It was nobody's ambition to become famous in that way. But you know, we'll take it. We all think we're much better than Skid Row and Guns 'N Roses."
Sonic Youth's combination of brilliance and experience helped position them as tastemakers to those working in the music business at the time, though Thurston says they just continued with what they were always doing.
"That's always been the case," he said. "All through the 80s, that was what the whole underground scene was built on anyway, spreading the word on good music and good bands and good anything. Putting records out by other bands, doing it yourself, blah, blah, blah."
The big difference was the platform these bands could now assume.
"Now that it can exist in the mainstream because of Nirvana and the good sales of us, or Screaming Trees, or what have you, we can still do the same kind of thing, but at a bigger level," Thurston said.
Sonic Youth used their experience with the music industry to counsel their peers on what to expect when dealing with the big players.
"We can be that much more careful with it," Thurston said. "Making sure people know that, if they're going to work with a major label and you're gonna deal with a corporation, a lot of people don't know or care who you are. They just want to make money off of you.
"You have to really know that and just be careful and understand the structure of it."
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