Brendan O'Brien (record producer)

Brendan O'Brien (born June 30, 1960) is a record producer, mixer, engineer, and musician.[1] He has worked with many groups and artists during his career, such as Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen.[2][3]

Brendan O'Brien
Born (1960-06-30) June 30, 1960
Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
Occupation(s)
  • Record producer
  • musician
Instruments
  • Guitar
  • keyboards
  • vocals
  • percussion
  • mandolin
  • bass
Years active1985–present

His career blossomed as a young guitarist with a local Atlanta band by the name of Pranks, signed by what was then Century Artists Management. The management company had what many considered the best of Atlanta and the surrounding region in those days, including the likes of Mother's Finest, Ezra Pound and a dozen other "super-regional" acts. In the late 1970s, he moved on to writing, performing, and recording with the band Samurai Catfish.

O'Brien became a successful local engineer, considered to be the go-to guy to "make a record in a few days for $1500." His studio career was propelled by the success of the first Black Crowes album, Shake Your Money Maker, which he engineered and for which he also performed guitar, bass, and "a potpourri of instruments". [4] The following year he produced and mixed Stone Temple Pilots' debut album Core and engineered and mixed Red Hot Chili Peppers breakthrough album Blood Sugar Sex Magik. These two records launched his career as an in-demand, multi-platinum producer, engineer and mixer. He would go on to produce and mix nearly the entire catalog of Stone Temple Pilots and Pearl Jam. Most of his productions were engineered by Nick DiDia, who he worked with throughout most of his career.

O'Brien would often engineer and record his own sessions with the help of various assistant engineers. A majority of the records that he produced and/or mixed were made at Southern Tracks Recording Studio near his home in Atlanta, from the late 1980s until its closure.

In the mid-1990s, O'Brien became vice president of Epic Records and the Epic imprint 57 Records.[1] He also played a Hammond organ for Bob Dylan's appearance on MTV Unplugged. In 1995, he joined Pearl Jam and Neil Young on keyboard for the Mirror Ball tour across Europe.[5]

In 2002, he won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Album for his work on Bruce Springsteen's The Rising.[6] In 2009, he was awarded the Grammy Award for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical.[7] To date, 14 of the albums O'Brien has produced have reached No. 1 in the U.S. on the Billboard 200 chart. In 2015 he produced Higher Truth, the final release by Chris Cornell.

More recently he produced the Italian bluesman Zucchero Fornaciari's 2016 album Black Cat and received production credits for track three of the 2017 EP Cold Dark Place by progressive metal band Mastodon.[8]

Selected discography

Below is a selection of albums Brendan O'Brien has worked on as a producer, engineer, or mixer.[9]

gollark: Um, you probably want to check by socket, I think several did.
gollark: There's an IPMI X470 motherboard (for ryzen) around, but I don't know if you can actually buy it.
gollark: Soooo... basically a modern Pentium or i3.
gollark: Well, I think it's effectively three cores (six sharing many components in pairs) with probably bad IPC.
gollark: You can do it on the 2, apparently, but you still need an SD card.

References
  1. Sandler, Adam, "O'Brien's Epic Deal," Variety.
  2. Austin L. Ray, "All Those Yesterdays: Brendan O'Brien Reminisces on the Evolution of Pearl Jam and the Making of Backspacer," Paste Magazine, September 18, 2009.
  3. "Grammy Winning Producer Brendan O'Brien Gives Advice To New Artists," Renman Music & Business, August 28, 2012.
  4. "Black Crowes - Shake Your Money Maker CD Album". CD Universe.
  5. Andy Greene, "Q&A: Pearl Jam Producer Brendan O'Brien on the Making of 'Lightning Bolt,'" Rolling Stone Magazine, July 31, 2013.
  6. "Past Winners Search"
  7. "Past Winners Search"
  8. http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/mastodons-bill-kelliher-explains-how-cold-dark-place-ep-came-to-be/
  9. "Brendan O'Brien - Credits". AllMusic. Retrieved March 10, 2020.
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