Peo­ple fig­ured out that I’d tapped into some­thing in mak­ing that record; a lot of labels came call­ing because they want­ed to see if I could bring that mag­ic to what­ev­er artists they had. But I found it sor­ta annoy­ing in some ways, because peo­ple thought I had a for­mu­la, that I could take a folk artist or a blues gui­tarist and make them sound like Nir­vana.

The pop cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non of Nirvana’s Nev­er­mind caught every­one involved by sur­prise — from the band, to the label, to Butch Vig, just then mak­ing a name for him­self as a 90s alt-rock super­pro­duc­er by releas­ing Nev­er­mind and Smash­ing Pumpkin’s Gish the same year and help­ing define the sound of gui­tar rock for the 90s. “It was per­fect tim­ing com­ing out when there was a shift in music and it felt like a rev­o­lu­tion,” Vig tells Spin. “Despite being a great record, it would not have the same cul­tur­al impact” if it were released today.

Vig offers a few rea­sons why it’s dif­fi­cult for an album to have the same influ­ence. “Every­thing is so instant that it’s hard to build up some mys­tique. When you real­ly want some­thing but can’t quite get your hands on it, that makes it all the more pow­er­ful.”

Fans could even­tu­al­ly get their hands on the album with­out much trou­ble in 1991. (Gef­fen orig­i­nal­ly shipped only 46,521 copies in the U.S. in antic­i­pa­tion of low sales); but they couldn’t get enough of Kurt Cobain, who became a com­mod­i­ty before social media turned every­one into an aspir­ing com­mod­i­ty, a role con­tem­po­rary stars like Bil­lie Eil­ish now talk about open­ly in terms of the toll it takes on men­tal health.

Revis­it­ing Nev­er­mind on its 30th anniver­sary offers an occa­sion to dis­cuss what made the album, the band, and Cobain so major­ly appeal­ing at the time. It also gives us a chance to talk about what hap­pens when media com­pa­nies and record labels seize on a unique event and dri­ve it right into the ground. These are worth­while dis­cus­sions, but if we’re talk­ing to Butch Vig — super­pro­duc­er and founder and drum­mer of 90s jug­ger­naut Garbage — our time is bet­ter spent ask­ing the ques­tion he’s best poised to answer: what, exact­ly, made Nev­er­mind such a great album? What did Vig hear behind the mix­ing desk that has so cap­ti­vat­ed lis­ten­ers for 30 years?

In the videos here, you can see Vig — with com­men­tary from sur­viv­ing Nir­vana mem­bers Krist Novosel­ic and Dave Grohl — demon­strate how sev­er­al tracks came togeth­er, and how he enhanced and expand­ed the sound of the trio with­out need­ing to do much to make them sound absolute­ly huge. As he tells Ker­rang in a recent inter­view, when the band first hired him:

A cou­ple days lat­er, a cas­sette showed up in the mail, with a hand­writ­ten let­ter, and I put it on and heard Kurt going, ​‘Hey Butch, it’s Kurt, we’re excit­ed to come and rock out with you. We’re going to play a cou­ple of new songs, and we’ve got Dave Grohl, and he’s the great­est drum­mer in the world.’ And then I hear the gui­tar intro to …Teen Spir­it, and when Dave hit the drums, it just com­plete­ly destroyed every­thing.… I thought, “Wow these songs are great,” even though the record­ing qual­i­ty on that cas­sette was hor­ri­ble.

The mag­ic was always in the songs, whether cap­tured on a boom box or the stu­dio gear of Gef­fen records after the band left their indie label Sub Pop. (It’s worth lis­ten­ing to the Sub Pop founders tell their sto­ry on the How I Built This pod­cast.) Hear Vig talk about how he bot­tled it above, and see more of his Nev­er­mind mak­ing-of pro­duc­tion videos here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Nirvana’s Icon­ic “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Came to Be: An Ani­mat­ed Video Nar­rat­ed by T‑Bone Bur­nett Tells the True Sto­ry

Watch Nir­vana Go Through Rehearsals for Their Famous MTV Unplugged Ses­sions: “Pol­ly,” “The Man Who Sold the World” & More (1993)

Nir­vana Refus­es to Fake It on Top of the Pops, Gives a Big “Mid­dle Fin­ger” to the Tra­di­tion of Bands Mim­ing on TV (1991)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Poor Poly­phon­ic. He was just about to deliv­er anoth­er per­fect­ly mixed trea­tise on a clas­sic rock mag­num opus when the YouTube algo­rithm and the Jimi Hen­drix Estate stepped in to stop him before pub­lish­ing. So while you can watch this real-time expli­ca­tion of Hendrix’s more-than-just-a-jam “Voodoo Chile” with just the the graph­ics and the nar­ra­tion, you should cue up the 15 minute track how­ev­er you can (for exam­ple on Spo­ti­fy), and then press play when when the video gives the sig­nal. (This might be the first YouTube explain­er video to ask for copy­right-skirt­ing help.)

And any­way, you should have a copy of Elec­tric Lady­land, right? It’s the one where Hen­drix and the Expe­ri­ence real­ly push all the bound­aries, tak­ing rock, blues, jazz, psy­che­delia, sci-fi, everything…all out as far as pos­si­ble in the stu­dio. It’s the one that intro­duced future mem­bers of the Band of Gyp­sies. And it’s the one that hints of every­thing that might have been, if Hen­drix hadn’t passed away soon after.

Now, clas­sic rock radio usu­al­ly plays the much short­er and less laid back “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” that clos­es the album. But this essay is about the longest track on Elec­tric Lady­land, the one that ends side one. This is the track that Hen­drix want­ed to sound like a light night jam at New York club The Scene—and which he record­ed after one par­tic­u­lar night doing just that. He taped the audi­ence effects soon after. Steve Win­wood is on key­boards. Jack Casady from Jef­fer­son Air­plane plays bass. And Mitch Mitchell turns in one of his great­est per­for­mances and solos.

In the lyrics, Poly­phon­ic notes, Hen­drix con­nects the blues to his Chero­kee her­itage and to voodoo, to sex, and then beyond into sci­ence fic­tion land­scapes. The song is a self-por­trait, show­ing the past, the influ­ence, the train­ing, and then the poten­tial that music, mag­ic, and (let’s face it) LSD could bring. The band is vib­ing. Win­wood drops riffs that are more British folk than Chica­go blues. Hen­drix strays far beyond the orbit of blues, swings past it one more time on his own slight return, and then explodes into star­dust.

Polyphonic’s video also looks beau­ti­ful and per­fect­ly inter­spers­es his cri­tique with the song’s main sec­tions. It may have sound­ed like a jam, but Hen­drix care­ful­ly designed it to flow the way it does. And Poly­phon­ic fol­lows suit. It is a high­ly enjoy­able walk through a track (again find it on Spo­ti­fy here) many already know, reawak­en­ing a sense of won­der about all its inher­ent, strange genius.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Sci­ence Fic­tion Formed Jimi Hen­drix

Jimi Hendrix’s Home Audio Sys­tem & Record Col­lec­tion Gets Recre­at­ed in His Lon­don Flat

Behold Moe­bius’ Many Psy­che­del­ic Illus­tra­tions of Jimi Hen­drix

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

When Jamaican musi­cian Andrew Chin, bet­ter known as Brushy One String first told friends about his vision — “a dream in which he was told to play the one-string gui­tar” — they respond­ed with mock­ery — all but one, who “insist­ed it was fate,” writes Play­ing for Change, “and that he had to make that dream come true.” So Brushy set out to do just that, play­ing on street­corners and in the mar­ket, “in a big broad hat and sun­glass­es,” he says. The music came to him nat­u­ral­ly. He is no ordi­nary street musi­cian, how­ev­er, and his one-string gui­tar is not a gim­mick. Brushy is a tal­ent­ed singer-song­writer, with a pow­er­ful voice and a musi­cal sen­si­bil­i­ty that tran­scends his bare-bones min­i­mal­ism.

He does­n’t look par­tic­u­lar­ly flashy, perched on the street with his beat-up gui­tar in the video at the top for “Chick­en in the Corn.” Brushy came of age in a scene “where most per­form­ers long to be hip-hop MCs or dance­hall style DJs.”

Brushy’s one-string tech­nique reach­es back to the ori­gins of the blues in the Did­dley Bow (from which Bo Did­dley took his name), and even fur­ther back into musi­cal his­to­ry, recall­ing what musi­col­o­gists would call a “mono­chord zither.” One-string play­ers in his­to­ry have includ­ed Mis­sis­sip­pi blues­man Eddie “One String” Jones, Lon­nie Pitch­ford, and Willie Joe Dun­can, who invent­ed the Uni­tar, an elec­tri­fied one-string gui­tar and scored a hit in the 1950s.

Whether or not Brushy fits him­self into this tra­di­tion, he “came by his musi­cal abil­i­ties hon­est­ly,” play­ing a reg­gae infused soul-meets-Delta Blues inspired by his par­ents. His father was Jamaican soul singer Fred­dy McK­ay and his moth­er, Bev­er­ly Fos­ter, toured as a back­up singer with Tina Turn­er. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, he was orphaned at a young age and unable to fin­ish his edu­ca­tion. He did­n’t learn to read at all until he became an adult. Brushy tried to learn gui­tar, but “I did­n’t real­ly know how to play,” he says, “and I played so hard, all the strings broke. So the gui­tar went under the bed” until his one string epiphany. As he began to sing and play, his one, low‑E string and the wood­en body of his acoustic gui­tar became a rhythm sec­tion, his expan­sive voice ris­ing up between beats, “a voice so rich and full,” NPR writes, “all it wants is a bit of rhyth­mic and melod­ic under­pin­ning.”

Brushy names both soul leg­end Ted­dy Pen­der­grass and dance­hall leg­end Shab­ba Ranks as influ­ences, a key to the range of his song­writ­ing, which comes “from the sit­u­a­tions I’m in,” he says. “It’s like mag­ic: From the sit­u­a­tion, I don’t search for some­thing, not in my head or nowhere else. The song just comes.” He had some ear­ly mod­est suc­cess, did a tour of Japan, then returned to his home­town of Ochoa Rios to kick around and play local­ly. It was then that film­mak­er Luciano Blot­ta encoun­tered him while fin­ish­ing the 2007 Jamaican music doc­u­men­tary, Rise Up. “Chick­en in the Corn” made the sound­track, and it turned into Brushy’s big break.

He’s since played South by South­west, New Orleans House of Blues, and the New Orleans Jazz & Her­itage Fes­ti­val, had a doc­u­men­tary made about him — The King of One String (2014) — and released three stu­dio albums and a live album. It’s well deserved suc­cess for a musi­cian who was ready to quit music until he had a dream — and who then found the courage (and the good luck) to make it real.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kei­th Richards Shows Us How to Play the Blues, Inspired by Robert John­son, on the Acoustic Gui­tar

The His­to­ry of the Gui­tar: See the Evo­lu­tion of the Gui­tar in 7 Instru­ments

The Ency­clo­pe­dia Of Alter­nate Gui­tar Tun­ings

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

When I was a kid in New Jer­sey, if you were look­ing for work, there’d be ads for musi­cians. In the mid-60s and 70s, they would invari­ably say: “Want­ed: Char­lie Watts type drum­mer” — Max Wein­berg

Since Char­lie Watts passed away last month, trib­ute upon trib­ute has poured in to cel­e­brate his style, his aus­tere sim­plic­i­ty, his role as the calm, steady eye of the Rolling Stones’ roil­ing storm. “Drum­ming is often ugly,” Aman­da Petru­sich wrote at The New York­er, “but Watts looked so beau­ti­ful when he played … His pos­ture alone sug­gest­ed a preter­nat­ur­al ele­gance … there is always poet­ry in restraint.”

This is the way Watts’ play­ing looks to non-musi­cians, and most Rolling Stones fans are not musi­cians, and do not lis­ten to rock drum­ming alone. “It’s pos­si­ble to find Watts’s iso­lat­ed drum tracks online,” Petru­sich writes, “If you’re into that sort of thing. They’re not always per­fect in the tech­ni­cal sense, but they are deeply per­fect in oth­er, less quan­tifi­able ways.” Watts him­self described his drum­ming as non-tech­ni­cal and decried his lack of train­ing. It was all about the band, he said repeat­ed­ly.

But ask oth­er drum­mers to quan­ti­fy Watts’ per­fec­tion and they’ll do so hap­pi­ly. Watts taught him­self to play by lis­ten­ing to his favorite jazz drum­mers, writes Max Wein­berg, “among them the great Eng­lish jazz drum­mer Phil Sea­men, and Dave Tough, an Amer­i­can drum­mer who even looked like Char­lie: a fas­tid­i­ous dress­er, appar­ent­ly with the most incred­i­ble groove and sound.” Wein­berg, who incor­po­rat­ed Watts’ influ­ence on Spring­steen songs like “Born to Run,” elab­o­rates fur­ther.

One way Watts com­mand­ed a room, he says, was as a pro­po­nent “of a style of rock drum­ming pop­u­lar­ized by the late, great Al Jack­son, the famous Stax drum­mer, where you delib­er­ate­ly play behind the direct back­beat. The way you do that — which is a lit­tle tech­ni­cal — is not by focus­ing on the two and the four beat, but the one and the three. Anoth­er exam­ple is James Brown’s music, which is heav­i­ly focused on land­ing on the one. It takes a long time to be able to do that.” He devel­oped the skill as a blues and jazz drum­mer even before Mick and Kei­th seduced him to the Stones.

Anoth­er drum celebri­ty admir­er, Stew­art Copeland, writes about Watts’ unique dynam­ics. As a rock drum­mer trained on jazz, he “went for groove, and derived pow­er from relax­ation. Most rock drum­mers are try­ing to kill some­thing; they’re chop­ping wood. Jazz drum­mers instead tend to be very loose to get that jazz feel, and he had that qual­i­ty.” While Mick strut­ted and dripped across the stage, Char­lie “hard­ly broke a sweat.” From this, Copeland learned that “you can actu­al­ly get a bet­ter sound out of your drums, and a bet­ter groove, if you relax.”

In the clas­sic drum tracks here, lis­ten for some of Watts’ dis­tinc­tive, sub­tle moves, and read more about his tech­nique in Copeland and Weinberg’s rem­i­nisces here. It’s fair to say that every rock drum­mer who came after Char­lie Watts learned some­thing from Char­lie Watts, whether they knew it or not. But while “you can ana­lyze Char­lie Watts,” Copeland writes, “that still won’t get you to his feel and his dis­tinct per­son­al­i­ty. It’s an X‑factor, it’s a charis­ma, it’s an unde­fin­able gift of God.” Petru­sich con­cludes her trib­ute with a sim­i­lar expres­sion of non-tech­ni­cal awe: “Watch­ing Watts play is still one of the best ways I know to check in with the rid­dle and thrill of art — to wit­ness some­thing mirac­u­lous but not to under­stand it.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Say­ing Good­bye to Char­lie Watts (RIP), the Engine of the Rolling Stones for Half a Cen­tu­ry

A Char­lie Watts-Cen­tric View of the Rolling Stones: Watch Mar­tin Scorsese’s Footage of Char­lie & the Band Per­form­ing “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “All Down the Line”

Rolling Stones Drum­mer Char­lie Watts Writes a Children’s Book Cel­e­brat­ing Char­lie Park­er (1964)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness