Butch Vig

Born Bryan David Vig in Viroqua, WI, Butch Vig was one of three children by Dr. DeVerne Vig and his wife, Betty, a music teacher, whose love of pop music had a profound influence on her son's musical interests. He initially studied piano for several years before switching to drums after seeing the Who's Keith Moon detonate his kit as part of the band's notorious 1967 appearance on "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" (CBS, 1967-69). Vig was soon drumming in a local group while also playing in his school's band and orchestra. After high school, he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he studied communication arts and film. He also began experimenting with electronic music, which led to numerous soundtrack assignments for student films. While at the university, he met Steve Marker and Duke Erikson, with whom he formed the band Spooner in 1979. He and Marker soon branched out to found their own recording facility, Smart Studios, as well as a record label, Boat Records, which released their own music as well as albums and singles by a number of area acts. After Spooner folded in 1984, Vig formed a new group with Marker, First Person, while also playing in a side project group called Fire Town with Erikson. The latter group eventually landed a recording contract with Atlantic in 1988, which generated two albums but little interest from the listening public.Though the recording sessions for the Fire Town records were difficult, they also provided Vig with firsthand lessons in producing albums for a major label, which he soon applied to a wide variety of independent bands in the early 1990s. Vig had been honing his producing skills on recordings by Midwestern punk and hard rock acts like Die Kreuzen, Killdozer and the Laughing Hyenas since the early 1980s, which led to higher-profile assignments with Urge Overkill and The Fluid in the early 1990s. Those records in turn attracted the attention of the burgeoning alternative rock movement and in particular a young trio from Seattle, WA called Nirvana. The band traveled to Smart Studios to record demos for their next album release, which they used to land a recording contract with DGC Records. Vig was then tapped to produce their major label debut, Nevermind (1991), which bested Michael Jackson for the top of the albums chart in early 1992. Nevermind became the flagship for the "grunge" movement of the early 1990s, which meshed the volume and density of heavy metal with the lyrical ferocity of punk, and served as the springboard for the rise of alternative music, which quickly supplanted R&B vocal groups and pop-metal as the sound of choice for young listeners. Vig was soon enlisted to lend his talents to a slew of seminal albums from the period, including the Smashing Pumpkins' debut album, Gish (1991) and their breakout release, Siamese Dream (1993); Sonic Youth's Dirty (1992) and Experimental Trash Jet Set, Trash and No Star (1995); as well as L7's Bricks are Heavy (1992); Helmet's Betty (1994) and releases by cult acts like Gumball, Chainsaw Kittens and Freedy Johnston. He also produced remixes of tracks by U2 ("Dirty Day," 1997), Nine Inch Nails ("Throw This Away," 1992), House of Pain ("Shamrocks and Shenanigans," 1992), Beck ("Jack-Ass," 1993) and Alanis Morrisette ("So Pure," 1999). By the mid-1990s, Vig he had entered a creative slump. Though in demand as a producer, he felt that he was essentially repeating himself with each subsequent hard rock and alternative project. His need to refresh his energies led to the formation of Garbage, a four-piece rock act he launched in 1993 with old bandmates Marker and Erikson. It would be another two years before they chose Scottish singer Shirley Manson to front their group, which led to the releases of their self-titled debut record in 1995. The album was an unqualified success, achieving double platinum sales status on the strength of such spiky, forthright singles as "Stupid Girl," "Vow" and "Only Happy When It Rains." Vig would subsequently pare down his producing responsibilities to focus his attention on the band's next album, Version 2.0 (1998), which reached No. 13 on the Billboard 200 while also earning two Grammy Award nominations. But after recording the title track to the James Bond film "The World is Not Enough" (1999), the band experienced a downward turn with their third album, Beautiful Garbage (2001), which failed to surpass the success of its predecessor. After a lengthy tour in 2002 and 2003, during which Vig was forced to miss a number of dates due to a bout of Bell's palsy, Garbage quietly disbanded for the next two years.They reconvened in 2005 to complete their fourth album, Bleed Like Me, which became the highest-charting album of their career, reaching No. 4 on the Billboard albums chart. Having resumed their status as one of the leading alternative acts in the industry, Vig and the other members of the group announced an indefinite hiatus in order to pursue their personal interests. Vig soon resumed his career as a producer, overseeing Green Day's Grammy-winning 21st Century Breakdown (2009), as well as Foo Fighters' Wasting Light - which reunited the surviving members of Nirvana, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, for the first time on record since Kurt Cobain's 1994 suicide - and releases by Muse, Jimmy Eat World, the Goo Good Dolls and AFI. In the fall of 2011, Vig, Grohl and Novoselic became ubiquitous presences on radio, TV and the Internet when all three celebrated the 20th anniversary of Nevermind, the LP that changed not only the music business, but all of their lives as well. He also composed and produced the soundtrack for the independent science fiction drama "The Other Side" (2011). That same year, Vig reunited with his Garbage bandmates to record Not Your Kind of People (2012), which they released through their own label, STUNVOLUME. The album peaked at No. 13 on the Billboard charts, and led to a lengthy world tour that lasted through 2013. Earlier that year, frequent collaborator and close friend Grohl included Vig in his documentary "Sound City," to discuss the recording of Nevermind at the legendary L.A. recording studio.By Paul Gaita