By Ben Brasch
Steve Albini, a Chicago-based rock producer who allied himself with Nirvana and against the corporatised music industry, has died.
Albini died of a heart attack, according to Taylor Hales, the manager at Albini’s studio Electrical Audio Recording. He was 61.
Steve Albini
As a producer, Albini got the best from many notable alternative rock acts of the 1980s and ’90s, including the Pixies and the Breeders. He also played in the bands Shellac and Big Black.
In February 1995, The Washington Post described Albini as a “post-punk barbarian.” By September 2023, the Post called him an “era-defining alt-rock producer.”
He was prolific, telling the Free Press Houston in 2018 that he had worked on a “couple thousand” records.
One of those was in the late 1990s with Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, to create their first release of new material since Led Zeppelin broke up in 1980.
Steve Albini performs with Shellac at Primavera Sound Madrid 2023 in Madrid, last June.Credit: Mariano Regidor/Redferns
He engineered rock classics – from Nirvana’s In Utero to Mclusky’s Mclusky Do Dallas – but he also hated that the music industry took advantage of artists.
Albini laid it out in a December 1993 essay The Problem With Music – a piece in which he shirked the title of “producer” and mocked music producers – writing that bands are held “hostage” by labels.
He began the article with an image: “I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying [excrement]. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end, holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed.”
In an October 2023 interview on Conan O’Brien’s podcast to mark three decades since In Utero, Albini said he refused to take a percentage of the proceeds from the album by one of the era’s most popular bands.
“The way that record producers and recording people are compensated at that time in particular was a trick of accounting that shifted the costs away from the label and toward the band, made the band ultimately responsible for whatever the producer got paid. And it didn’t come out of the general proceeds of the record the way it would in an independent labels contract, for example. It came specifically out of the money that would otherwise have gone to the band,” he told O’Brien. “I think that’s ethically untenable.”
He added: “I think less of people who opt to do things that way.”
Tributes came in immediately online, especially from his beloved Chicago.
Damon Locks, head of the Chicago-based Black Monument Ensemble – a multigenerational, multimedia music collective aimed at honouring the city’s Black music – wrote of Albini on Instagram: “He was a human (and a punk icon) who did the work, evolved, and was in service to a larger idea … I admire that he continued to evaluate and change over time. He had an ethos. He stood for something. He was a good guy. This is so shocking.”
The city’s indie music venue Metro posted that it had changed its sign out front to honour Albini. “We’re deeply saddened to hear of Steve Albini’s passing and keep his family in our hearts. Thank you for all that you contributed to punk rock in our town and the reverberations of creativity you brought forth, felt the world over.”
Albini had another passion that led to success outside of music. He was a serious poker player, winning two bracelets in World Series of Poker competitions. He started playing poker in 1969 when he was taught how to play by his great-grandmother, according to his WSOP online profile.
The Washington Post
Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.