George Martin: The most important producer in history according to Butch Vig
You can boil grunge’s two most vital producers down to Jack Endino and Butch Vig. The former could be considered Sub Pop Records’ in-house studio pro, the Skin Yard guitarist’s embrace of lo-fi recording and raw capture of Seattle’s litany of underground names passing through Leary Way’s Reciprocal Recording became a cornerstone of the movement. Overseeing early cuts from Green River, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, and Screaming Trees, Endino’s lack of sonic polish helped establish what for many was the city’s defining sound across the late 1980s.
Another of Endino’s ‘clients’ was Nirvana. Then a minor player in the developing grunge movement, 1989’s Bleach debut took 30 hours of Endino’s time for a mere $606.17. A lot would change in two short years. Following the success of 1990’s stand-alone ‘Sliver’ single, Nirvana’s major label signed to DGC Records—encouraged by their recent success with Sonic Youth’s Goo—brought bigger budgets and state-of-the-art studios. With a $287,000 advance, Nirvana initially recorded with Vig at Sound City before cutting the majority of Nevermind at Vig’s own Smart Studios in Wisconsin.
Nirvana’s 1991 sophomore LP would trigger grunge’s second wave, reaching dizzying commercial heights and killing hair metal for good overnight. Countering Endino’s masterful primitivity, Vig beefed up their sound and added hefty pop dimensions that unashamedly looked toward Boston’s ‘More Than a Feeling’ as much as Pixies. Nevermind‘s propelling Nirvana toward unexpected fame was also the making of its producer.
While operating in music’s underground since the early 1980s, Vig suddenly found himself overseeing a plethora of grunge-adjacent bands on their path to commercial heights—Tad, L7, and Smashing Pumpkins all seeking Vig’s production chops following Nevermind‘s mammoth success.
The role of a producer can be many things. Some can be sonic stampers whose names are bigger than the artists they’re working with à la Phil Spector or Timbaland in his 2000s peak, others are expert gearheads who can just as easily double-up as an engineer as Steve Albini built a reputation for, and others can waltz in to a band’s creative inner-sanctum and encourage leftfield exercises or novel methods of working to induce artistic juices such as Brian Eno or Rick Rubin.
For Vig, all these modern variations of the producer’s role can be traced back to one towering figure in pop and rock. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s the most important producer in the history of rock ’n’ roll,” Vig declared to The Guardian in 2016. “Early on, a lot of a producer’s job was simply to capture a recording. But George Martin totally changed that. He encouraged the Beatles to start writing these complex vocal harmonies—they’re what grab you, beyond the band’s energy”.
With a chequered background in beat rock A&R, classical arrangements, and electronic compositions, EMI’s in-house producer Martin was the perfect establishment bigwig to realise The Beatles’ innovative compositions and songcraft.
Essential to pop’s growing embrace of the studio as an instrument as much a recording facility, the LSD-soaked breaking of rock’s former barriers as heralded by 1967’s Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band wasn’t just conjured by The Beatles’ maverick creative ambitions but with the instrumental suit-and-tie professionalism Martin brought to the EMI Studio, meeting ideas like ‘Tomorrow Never Knows‘ or ‘Eleanor Rigby’ with a pragmatism unbothered by stuffy conventions or musical formalities.
“So many of his ideas we hear on the radio now and have influenced me: effects on the vocals, flipping the tape around and recording backwards guitar,” Vig further extoled. “He started speeding up tapes and slowing down tapes, changing the pitch on things …”
Martin’s seminal work with The Beatles wound up assisting Vig’s defining record with Nirvana. Resisting Vig’s push to double-take his vocals due to its perceived inauthenticity, Kurt Cobain’s inner-Beatles fanatic was prodded by Vig to commit to the vocal booth: “… I said: ‘Well, John Lennon double-tracked his vocals.’ And as soon as I said that, Kurt said: ‘OK.’ He pretty much double-tracked all the vocals after that”.
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