Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / [HIGHLIGHT] What Steve Albini Was Really Like | Don Pyle - From EP 383

Transcript

[HIGHLIGHT] What Steve Albini Was Really Like | Don Pyle - From EP 383 · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Going behind the music once more with this highlight from
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: a recent episode of bookedn Rock. Now on to our
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: guest Don Pile. He's the author of Rough Description, love
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Letters and ghost Stories from a Life in Music. Another
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  Speaker 1: great talent that we lost too soon as Steve Albini,
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  Speaker 1: and you have a chapter devoted to him as well.
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  Speaker 1: He was the engineer on the nineteen ninety three album
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  Speaker 1: sport Fish and The Lure of the Bait The Luck
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  Speaker 1: of the Hook he seemed to capture and he's known
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  Speaker 1: mostly for that album he produced for Nirvana in Utero.
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  Speaker 1: He's known for being able to capture that sound of
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  Speaker 1: the drums like you feel like you're in the room
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  Speaker 1: and you write quote. Steve's not so secret ingredient was
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  Speaker 1: his superb skill. Talk about his approach what made him
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  Speaker 1: so unique and able to capture that sound on the drums.
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  Speaker 2: Steve was a sort of magical mix of scientist and
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  Speaker 2: artist where he really studied the properties of microphones, sound,
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  Speaker 2: you know technique, sound dynamics, the science of sound reflection,
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  Speaker 2: all of the you know, pre amplification like you know,
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  Speaker 2: he knew electronics really well. He could take equipment apart,
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  Speaker 2: repair it like I mentioned the book this one recording
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  Speaker 2: that when Phono Com recorded our album with him, the
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  Speaker 2: studio that we went into, all this equipment, which was
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  Speaker 2: part of the reason for choosing this studio, was broken
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  Speaker 2: and so we got there and Steve's like fuck, and
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  Speaker 2: then he spends the whole first day repairing everything in
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  Speaker 2: the studio, and so the guy who owned the studio
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  Speaker 2: afterwards said, like, my studio never worked this well ever. So,
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  Speaker 2: you know, as a sort of technician musician, he was
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  Speaker 2: super skilled, but he also had an extreme and I
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  Speaker 2: don't know what you call it, but a I guess
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  Speaker 2: extreme sense of humor, and you know, kind of like
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  Speaker 2: what I said about punk rock, Like he came from
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  Speaker 2: punk rock thing as well, so he could see the
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  Speaker 2: humor in certain aspects of like violence or really aggressive music,
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  Speaker 2: or music that made no sense that was kind of
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  Speaker 2: like exploratory or kind of like you know, the foundation
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  Speaker 2: of it is noise rather than than melody or scientific
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  Speaker 2: things that made you or or language play that made
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  Speaker 2: you play guitar, that made him play guitar, like language phrasing,
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  Speaker 2: so you know, conventional guitar playing where it was kind
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  Speaker 2: of like you know, making machine sounds or making animal
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  Speaker 2: sounds or sounds that had phrasing like conversation. That was
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  Speaker 2: something I saw him do that I thought was really cool.
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  Speaker 2: It was like playing guitar with like syllables, you know,
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  Speaker 2: like so not in one, two, three, four, five, six,
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  Speaker 2: you know, not that it was like, you know, kind
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  Speaker 2: of like that. So, you know, he had all of
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  Speaker 2: these kind of odd traits and was an estte to
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  Speaker 2: the max, like you know, like love beautiful microphones, would
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  Speaker 2: rather use like, Okay, this microphone is essentially the same
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  Speaker 2: as this one, but this one sure is beautiful. So
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  Speaker 2: he would buy like esoteric microphones from Russia or Poland
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  Speaker 2: because there were such beauty, beautiful things. And like his
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  Speaker 2: band Shlac, you know, their logo to begin with was
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  Speaker 2: the logo for this microphone company, Lomo. And he was
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  Speaker 2: such an intelligent guy too. He could be super caustic
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  Speaker 2: and he's very smart, very analytic, and would sometimes kind
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  Speaker 2: of be, you know, hurtful in his extremness. But he
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  Speaker 2: was someone who over time that I saw become a
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  Speaker 2: much more sensitive and better person, largely because of finding
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  Speaker 2: someone who was just completely accepting of him and being
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  Speaker 2: loved and having kind of like love you know, like
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  Speaker 2: love reflected to and from the person who became his wife,
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  Speaker 2: Heather win A. So you know, I saw him just
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  Speaker 2: become a much more thoughtful and caring person. So he was,
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  Speaker 2: you know, a really wonderful guy. I know there's a
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  Speaker 2: lot of you know, people like after he died that
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  Speaker 2: were like have no time for him or no patience
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  Speaker 2: because of you know, some things that he'd done or
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  Speaker 2: said in the past. But even though I knew some
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  Speaker 2: of those things that people had mentioned, I could sort
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  Speaker 2: of see through it because you know, I understood that
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  Speaker 2: sort of like black sense of humor to say like
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  Speaker 2: the most offensive thing, knowing that this is going to
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  Speaker 2: piss off a person that you want to piss off,
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  Speaker 2: you know, not because he like you know, necessarily felt
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  Speaker 2: some of those things or or you know, believed. I
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  Speaker 2: think even some of the things he was doing. He
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  Speaker 2: was total no bullshit about sort of the commercial aspects
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  Speaker 2: of music. And I think that that was a place
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  Speaker 2: that that really helped shadowy men catch his eye because
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  Speaker 2: I think, you know, I know, he saw the way
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  Speaker 2: we were doing things and it was kind of like,
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  Speaker 2: you know, very much outside of like the music business,
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  Speaker 2: and and you know, with a sense of humor but
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  Speaker 2: not being goofy that we took our playing seriously, but
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  Speaker 2: also you know, acknowledged things like, you know, our foundation
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  Speaker 2: of classical music comes from Bunk's bunny. You know, it's
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  Speaker 2: the same with him. So we had some sort of
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  Speaker 2: similar things, but he was definitely a little more caustic
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  Speaker 2: than we were and sometimes maybe not as sensitive as
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  Speaker 2: we might have been, but he was also a very
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  Speaker 2: sweet and sensitive guy.
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  Speaker 1: Listen to the full episode wherever you get your favorite podcasts.