Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page and Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl have added their voices to the growing chorus of bands and musicians paying tribute to the late Steve Albini, the legendary recording engineer and producer who died of a heart attack this week at the age of 61.
Albini recorded Walking Into Clarksdale, the 1998 album by Page and his Zeppelin bandmate Robert Plant. He worked with Grohl when he produced Nirvana's 1994 album In Utero, and they later reunited when Albini recorded the Foo Fighters song "Something From Nothing" for their 2014 album and series Sonic Highways.
"I was very sad to hear of Steve Albini’s passing this week. Robert and I worked with him in 1997 on our album Walking Into Clarksdale — a record I’m still really proud of," Page wrote on Instagram on Friday, May 10.
"I had a strong connection with Steve, we all did on that album, and he came with such pedigree and experience as one of the world’s leading mixers and audio engineers. He loved working with analogue tape, in fact his own band was called Shellac. He was so passionate and knowledgeable, really dedicated to the cause during our recording sessions at RAK and EMI Number Two Studio at Abbey Road."
"Steve had worked with Nirvana on their third album and also with the likes of Pixies and Bush," Page added. "He had an impressive CV and leaves a real legacy. RIP, Steve."
Albini recalled working on Walking Into Clarksdale with Page and Plant in a 2020 interview. “It [was] enormously intimidating to be around people with that kind of pedigree and experience,” he said. “And it was gratifying to be asked and to realize that I was satisfying them.”
“My admiration for them as musicians and as people grew during that session,” he continued. “Jimmy Page is known as a guitar player and as a producer and as the guy who put Led Zeppelin together. But what impressed me the most about him was his ability to listen with incredible detail."
"He could hear a playback of something and pick out little details that he liked or didn’t like with incredible acuity. You could hear two passages that, to you and me, would sound identical. To him, he could hear that there was a missed emphasis on the third note of the second tuplet of the triplet section or whatever. Him being able to listen to the music in precise detail … I described it as him being able to see every bird in the flock.”
Foo Fighters also honored Albini by dedicating a performance of their 1998 classic "My Hero" to him during their concert in Charlotte, North Carolina on Thursday night.
“Tonight, I’d like to dedicate this song to a friend we lost the other day, who I’ve known for a long, long time. And he left us much too soon,” Grohl told the audience.
"He's touched all of your lives, I’m sure. I'm talking about Steve Albini. For those of you who know, you know. For those of you who don’t know, just remember that name: Steve Albini. So let’s sing this one for him.”
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Collaborators, friends, and admirers like PJ Harvey, Pixies, Cloud Nothings, Elijah Wood, and Marc Maron also took to social media to pay their respects.
Santiago Durango, who played alongside Albini in the band Big Black, told Rolling Stone, “He was a loyal and lifelong friend because he was a decent man. He was a much better friend than I deserved. He had a long marriage to Heather because he was a decent man. My heart aches for Heather. He never screwed anyone over because he was a decent man. He was a caring and giving person because he was a decent man. His unexpected passing has left a huge hole in my life.”