Butch Vig, born on August 2, 1955 as Bryan David Vig, is one of
America’s top producers in the music industry today. Born in Viroqua,
Wisconsin, he first saw fame as the drummer of the alternative rock band
Garbage. The band has sold over 17 million units to date for their albums Garbage (1995), Version 2.0 (1998),
Beautiful Garbage (2001), Bleed Like Me (2005) and have just released their
latest album Not Your Kind of People
(2012). This success brought him the opportunity to produce the album Nevermind by the famous alternative rock
group known as Nirvana. This album recorded in 1991, is still considered his
highlight in his career as a Producer and has paved the way to countless chart
topping studio albums since then.
Butch started his musical career-playing
Piano for 6 years and later swapped it to be a drummer. He moved to Madison to
study film direction at the University of Wisconsin, which is where he met
Steve Marker who would eventually become the guitarist of his band Garbage.
During his time there, Butch contributed with several soundtracks to low budget
films. He played a role in garage pop bands such as Eclipse and Spooner, with
Spooner slowly propelling him to towards his production career. In 1984 he
started Smart Studios in Madison, which would become the production grounds for
Garbage and countless other bands as he quickly reached heights in his
production career.
In 1991 his work on The Smashing
Pumpkins’ album Gish would put him on the map, as a producer to be on the look
out for. This gave him the opportunity to work on Nirvana’s album Nevermind. It is mentioned that Kurt
didn’t like Butch’s approach to double tracking and multilayered rock style
production techniques. This is where Butch played his mind games as a producer
to trick Kurt into retaking his guitar parts on the song Drain You, which he
amped with a fender bassman, a super grunge pedal through the bassman and
another layer of a mesa boogie amp.
We can definitely say that his
flavor and his production techniques as an engineer is what made the album Nevermind sound the way that it does
when it is compared to the other records by Nirvana.
Butch was also the brains behind
the Smashing pumpkin’s album Siamese dream. Contrary to Kurt’s attitude towards
Butch’s ideas, Billy Corgan was open to Butch’s extensive production techniques
and experimentation. Butch also produced
Sonic Youth’s albums, Dirty (1992)
and Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No
Star (1994), both critically acclaimed albums of the Alternative Rock
genre. In 2007 Butch produced the Jimmy Eat World album Chase this Light, which would later give him the opportunity to
work on Green Day’s 21st
century Breakdown in 2009. With the untimely death of Nirvana front man
Kurt Cobain, drummer Dave Grohl’s
band the Foo Fighters would come back to him as clients and as old friends.
Some of the other noteworthy mention’s in Butch’ career are the Goo Goo Dolls
album Something for the Rest of Us and
the Muse single Neutron Star Collision. Butch
has also recently worked on the latest Foo Fighter’s album Wasting Light (2011) that the band won Four Grammy Awards,
including Best Rock Album of the year.
As you have noticed, Butch has been
responsible for propelling many indie bands into the mainstream over the years.
He has also remixed songs for artists such as Alanis Morissette, Beck, Depeche
Mode, Fun Lovin’ Criminals, House of Pain, Korn, Limp Bizkit, Nine Inch Nails,
Michael Penn, U2 and many others.
Butch and his production ideas on
bands have definitely influenced me, as all the bands he worked on played a big
role during my teen years in India. It has been a great experience to do this
in depth research for this podcast, and the information he give openly gives
out on his production techniques is an ear opening experience for upcoming
engineers like me.
References
Butch Vig -
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Retrieved June 4, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butch_Vig
Foo Fighters -
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Retrieved June 4, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo_Fighters
Garbage (band) -
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Retrieved June 4, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_%28band%29
Wasting Light - Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved June
4, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasting_Light
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