Steve Albini Dead: Nirvana Producer Was 61

Steve Albini, a singer and guitarist best known for producing some of the most groundbreaking and influential albums of the alt-rock genre, died of a heart attack at his Chicago recording studio Electrical Audio. He was 61.

Albini’s death and cause of death was confirmed by Taylor Hales of Electrical Audio.

Born July 22, 1962, in Pasadena, Albini moved to the Chicago area after high school to study journalism at Northwestern University. While there, he began writing for local punk rock ‘zines and beginning to record and engineer albums for local bands.

Stubbornly opposed to the larger music industry and its exploitation of artists, Albini formed the Chicago-based band Big Black in 1981, recording the first of several albums, an EP for the Chicago label Ruthless Records, a label he co-managed. That band last until 1987.

From 1987 to 1988, Albini sang and played guitar for Rapeman, named after a Japanese comic book. The short-lived band broke up after one album, two singles and an EP. Albini later expressed remorse over the band name, calling it “a flippant choice,” “unconscionable” and “indefensible.”

Albini formed Shellac in 1992, a band that continues to this day.

While a longstanding and active musician, Albani’s name is most closely associated with producing, or what he preferred to call engineering. In a 2018 interview, Albini estimated that he had engineered several thousand records, mostly by underground rock musicians. Albini’s more well-known collaborations were with Pixies, The Breeders, the Jesus Lizard, PJ Harvey, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant (as Page and Plant), Fred Schneider, The Stooges, Manic Street Preachers, Jarvis Cocker, the Fleshtones, The Membranes, Cheap Trick, Motorpsycho, Veruca Salt, and The Auteurs.

But in the history of rock, Albini’s name will forever be linked to Nirvana. In 1993, the band led by Kurt Cobain, who had been impressed with Albini’s production of the Pixie album Surfer Rosa and The Breeders’ Pod, hired Albini in 1993 for work on its third album In Utero.

The six-day recording went more smoothly than the perpetually-restless Cobain had anticipated, though the front man initially expressed dissatisfaction with the album and even considered re-recording it. Albini refused to re-record. The band brought in R.E.M. producer Scott Litt to remix some of the songs, with Albini later saying the finished album didn’t “sound all that much” like the record he had produced.

Accounts over the years vary about exactly how much difference can be heard in the two versions, but regardless of the inside-baseball controversy, In Utero would become a generational touchstone. Released on September 21, 1993, the album was a major commercial and critical success, featuring a roster of songs that would become among Nirvana’s best and most popular: “Serve the Servants,” “Scentless Apprentice,” “Dumb,” “Pennyroyal Tea,” and the massive hits “Heart-Shaped Box” and “All Apologies.”

Albini bought the Chicago studio Electrical Audio in 1995, and continued working there and operating until his death.

Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.

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