Release and Promotion
The album cover was photographed by Cobain's then-girlfriend Tracy Marander during a concert at the Reko Muse art gallery in Olympia, Washington. On February 25, 1989, Nirvana played at venues on the west coast, including the University of Washington. The group began its first European tour, a double headliner with the band Tad, at the Riverside venue in Newcastle upon Tyne on 23 October 1989. On December 3, they played a "triumphant" set at the London Astoria. Christopher Sandford related: "when the style pundits noted Cobain's 'patent lumberjack shirts and ugly fifties geometric-patterned jerseys', seeing an example of 'low-couture chic' they missed the point that flannel shirts and sweaters were everyday dress in the marine climate of the Northwest". Cobain took note and said that he never intended to start a fad or act as a role model.
The album's working title was Too Many Humans. It was renamed Bleach after Cobain found an AIDS prevention poster while Nirvana was driving through San Francisco. The poster advised heroin addicts to bleach their needles before use, featuring the slogan "Bleach Your Works". In Australia, Bleach was released on Waterfront Records and re-issued on various colored covers and colored vinyl prior to 1992.
Due to increasing dissatisfaction with Everman over the course of the tour to promote Bleach, Nirvana canceled the last few dates and drove back to Washington. No one told Everman he was fired at the time, while Everman later claimed that he actually quit the group. Although Sub Pop did not promote Bleach as much as other releases, it was a steady seller. However, Cobain was upset by the label's lack of promotion and distribution for the album.
In April 1992, following the success of Nirvana's second album Nevermind, Sub Pop released a remastered version of Bleach on LP, CD and cassette, adding two extra tracks. Geffen Records handled the international release. The CD version was packaged in a cardboard foldout case that included a bonus booklet filled with photos of the band from 1987–1990. For the 20th anniversary of the album, Sub Pop released on November 3, 2009 a deluxe reissue of Bleach featuring a March 2009 remastering from the original tapes by George Marino and a live recording of a 1990 show at Portland, Oregon's Pine Street Theatre.
Read more about this topic: Bleach (album)
Famous quotes containing the words release and/or promotion:
“The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise man sees in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“I am asked if I would not be gratified if my friends would procure me promotion to a brigadier-generalship. My feeling is that I would rather be one of the good colonels than one of the poor generals. The colonel of a regiment has one of the most agreeable positions in the service, and one of the most useful. “A good colonel makes a good regiment,” is an axiom.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)