THE CONCRETE ROUNDABOUT (TCR)

Alt-rock uber producer Steve Albini has died at 61 of a heart attack while working in his Chicago studio.

As someone who’s entire life has consisted of winding people up, I can do nothing but admire a person who took that ethos to international levels. His breakthrough production on Pixies Surfer Rosa brought both them and him to the attention of the alt-rock scene, and the further music industry overall. Obviously he soon responded by calling Pixies ‘unremarkable’.

If there was anyone who lived his entire life with the punk ethos then it was him. He would only charge a flat fee for production work and flatly refused to take points. Points are like royalties, therefore the more the album sold, the more he would've earned. A friend of mine, the author John Niven, was saying last night that when he was in negotiations with Albini to produce Mogwai, he was amazed that the producer point blank refused to take points, and only charged a flat fee.

Apart from his production work on artists such as PJ Harvie, Nirvana, Manic Street Preachers, and most bizarrely of all, Page and Plant, among many others, he was also a musician. Fronting first of all Big Black, the unfortunately named Rapeman, and finally Shellac. What I’d forgotten until I read it this morning was that he funded his studio by playing poker, which he was extremely good at.

As someone who likes to think of himself as still living up to the punk ideals, his actual living it was something to be admired.

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Sad news. As you say, made some of the greatest albums of my life, but was also a byword for keeping principled in the industry. RIP

I would say though, that he’s not unique in the flat fee, no royalty stance. As I’m sure you know, it’s pretty much my day job negotiating producer deals and plenty have done it over the years. It’s “all about the Benjamin’s” for some, and it’s a sound practice when negotiating with indie labels that you may not trust to account properly, or even be around in a few years time, for others. Having the same mindset with major labels is a different matter, mind. His oft-quoted line was “if someone fixes your car, you don’t expect to have to keep paying them every mile it does”.

The other story about him I always loved was that he always wore overalls when on a job, not a nod the the white coated engineers of pre-Beatles Abbey Road, but because he always saw himself as a “mechanic” rather than “producer”.

I'm actually watching him on YouTube right now working with Foo Fighters. Overalls on, top pocket full of pens, and basically telling them that they're not good enough to record in his studio. I love him.

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