Originality is hard to come by these days. I think I may have said the same thing when Mojo Nixon passed, but it’s true. Steve Albini, who passed away at the excruciatingly young age of 61 years of age, undoubtedly was an original too. Some just know who they are and consistently present nothing less than the entirely of themselves without extra bullshit adornments.
Nirvana, PJ Harvey, Pixies, Fugazi, so many others…they recorded with him and did so because he made them sound like themselves. A rock and roll mirror, if you will.
He lived in Chicago and ran his studio in Chicago and could occasionally be spotted at a grocery store I once frequented on Lawrence Avenue called, Harvestime Foods. Danielle, my partner, and I, used to talk about how cool it would have been to have spotted him in the wild. “It’s the dude who produced In Utero! Don’t you other shoppers know who you’re in the checkout line next to!”
But alas, it never happened. Although one of the last times I was there I was walking home and I crossed paths with a guy in a Nora O’Connor shirt who did bear a resemblance to him. Was it him? Maybe. He had good tastes, so I’m going to say if he was wearing a Nora O’Connor shirt, it was probably him.
He was a noise rock pioneer and he worked with integrity. He famously said he wanted to be paid “like a plumber”—do the job and be paid accordingly, rather than making residuals off of In Utero. He saw it as unethical to take money from the band that he wasn’t rightfully earning. He saw his job as getting out of the way and letting the band shine. And if you listen to his records, that’s what he did. It’s not fancy. It’s not a lot of bells and whistles. But that’s punk rock—to the point, honest, raw, loud, no filters. And he did it with that workman’s ethic. Do the job. Do it well. Go home. Do it again. Sadly, we won’t get another from him. But his influence is stamped all over the well-known great alt-rock classics, and the underground lesser-known works that I’m sure he took as much, if not more pride in making.
In closing, I don’t want to ramble on too much more, but rather I want to share two documents that are brilliant glimpses into his work ethos and his life’s philosophy.
The first comes from an ad for the venerable Reckless Records published in 2009 by the equally venerable Chicago Reader. It’s about record stores, but so much more. I wonder if he actually talked like this. I’m going to say yes. He’s been described as “quirky” and that’s a gloriously apt label for this piece.
The link below that is to a Substack page that features the transcription of his four page proposal to Nirvana prior to him working on the aforementioned In Utero. Read, enjoy, pass it along. It’s worth your time.
Rest in Peace, Mr. Albini. Thanks for the tunes.