Bryan David "Butch" Vig is an American musician and record producer, best known internationally
as the drummer of the Madison, Wisconsin-originating alternative rock band Garbage and the producer
of diamond-selling album Nevermind by Nirvana. A native of Wisconsin, Vig had been based
in Madison for much of his career, from studying at the University of Wisconsin, to performing
in local bands Spooner and Fire Town, and then to setting up his own recording studio,
Smart Studios, with bandmate Steve Marker in the town. After becoming well known as
a producer, he formed and played drums with Garbage, who sold 17 million records over
a ten-year period. Vig returned to producing full-time once Garbage was put on hiatus in
2005. The band reconvened in 2010 to record material for their fifth album.
Now a resident of the Silverlake district of Los Angeles, Vig is married to his second
wife, Beth Halper, a former DreamWorks A & R executive; they have a daughter, Bo Violet.
In 2012 Butch Vig ranked number nine in NME's Top 50 Greatest Producers Ever.
Life and career Early life
Butch Vig was born Bryan David Vig to Dr. DeVerne and Betty Vig, a music teacher, in
Viroqua, Wisconsin. Vig has two siblings, Chris and Lisa. Vig acquired the nickname
Butch as a child, due to the severe crew cut his father gave him. Vig studied piano for
six years. After seeing The Who perform on The Smothers Brothers, he swapped his piano
for a $60 drum kit. Moving to Madison, Vig enrolled at the University
of Wisconsin to study film direction, where he first met Steve Marker. Vig contributed
several electronic music soundtrack pieces to low-budget films, including one song on
Slumber Party Massacre, a Hollywood B-movie. This soundtrack work stirred Vig's interest
in the manipulation of sound. Vig joined a number of garage pop bands, including Eclipse,
and in 1978 formed Spooner with Duke Erikson, Dave Benton, Jeff Walker and Joel Tappero.
The following year, Vig helped fellow student Steve Marker to build a home studio in Marker's
basement. Marker and Vig also started a small label, Boat Records, to release records of
both Spooner – which included their 1979 debut EP, "Cruel School" – and other bands
they liked, which lead to around twenty local acts. The self-producing was later described
by Vig as "kind of a trial by fire". In 1984, Vig and Marker founded Smart Studios
in Madison, while still performing drums in Spooner at night and driving a taxi cab during
the day. When Spooner lost momentum, Vig formed a band called First Person with Marker and
Phil Davis and a side-project called Fire Town featuring Davis and Erikson. Fire Town
quickly became Vig's priority, and after their first album were signed to Atlantic Records.
Atlantic hired producer Michael Frondelli to work with Fire Town on their second album.
While the sessions did not do well, and the resulting record sank, Vig learned a lot of
production techniques from the process. Vig also briefly worked with metal band Marseille,
recording keyboards for their album Touch The Night. Fire Town split, and Vig reformed
Spooner for a final album before Vig's production work became a full-time career for him.
Production career Vig's first high-profile production work was
in 1991, when he produced The Smashing Pumpkins' Gish and Nirvana's Nevermind. Vig incorporated
overdubs and vocal doubletracking, whereas Nirvana's previous album, Bleach had a more
"lo-fi" sound. Kurt Cobain originally refused to double-track his vocals and guitars but
Vig reportedly got him to comply by saying "John Lennon double-tracked". Cobain would
later criticize Vig for the album's slickness, although this might be due to Andy Wallace's
mixing of the album. Cobain said that "Butch Vig...recorded the album perfectly," in a
1993 MTV interview. Billy Corgan welcomed Vig's elaborate production on The Smashing
Pumpkins' Siamese Dream. This album met with great commercial and critical reception, also
breaking another indie band into the mainstream. Vig also produced two critically lauded Sonic
Youth albums, 1992's Dirty and 1994's Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star.
In 2003, Vig worked with AFI to produce their first major label album with DreamWorks, Sing
the Sorrow. Vig worked with Jimmy Eat World on their sixth album, Chase This Light, released
in October 2007. He is also working on soundtracks for two new movies. His first production for
an English band was 2008's All or Nothing by The Subways. He also worked with Laura
Jane Grace of Against Me! on her solo EP, Heart Burns. Vig produced the eighth studio
album by Green Day, 2009's 21st Century Breakdown, which won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album.
Recently, Vig has been partnered in duties by his engineer and mixer Billy Bush who also
worked on Garbage's albums and live tours. Butch Vig composed and produced the soundtrack
for the film The Other Side. In 2009 Vig recorded two new tracks for the
long awaited greatest hits release by the Foo Fighters, most notably the single "Wheels"
and ultimately produced their April 2011 follow-up, Wasting Light.
In 2010 Vig produced Muse's single, "Neutron Star Collision," which was featured on the
Twilight Saga: Eclipse soundtrack. Garbage
Vig stated, "Part of the reason why I started Garbage was that by the time I'd done 'Nevermind,'
I'd recorded – I swear to God – 1,000 bands that were just guitar-bass-drums. I
was reading about all these other records that I was getting excited about – like
Public Enemy using a sampler in the studio – and I just decided I wanted to do a bit
of a U-turn." Afterwards, they hired Scottish singer Shirley Manson and began composing
together. Garbage released a string of increasingly
successful singles in 1995–1996, including "Stupid Girl" and "Only Happy When It Rains".
Their debut album, Garbage, was an unexpected smash, selling over 4 million copies and certified
double platinum in the UK, United States and Australia. Garbage won the Breakthrough Artist
award at the 1996 MTV Europe Music Awards. The band then spent two years working on follow-up
album, Version 2.0, which topped the charts in the UK upon its 1998 release and the following
year was nominated for two Grammy Awards, Album of the Year and Best Rock Album. Version
2.0 went on to match the sales of its predecessor. Garbage followed this up by performing and
co-producing the theme song to the nineteenth James Bond movie The World Is Not Enough.
Despite being named one of Rolling Stone's Top 10 Albums of The Year, Garbage's 2001
third album Beautiful Garbage failed to match the commercial success achieved by its predecessors.
Garbage quietly disbanded in late 2003, but regrouped to complete fourth album Bleed Like
Me in 2005, peaking at a career-high #4 in the U.S. The band cut short their concert
tour in support of Bleed Like Me announcing an "indefinite hiatus", emphasizing that they
had not broken up, but wished to pursue personal interests. In 2006, Vig returned to producing
while Manson worked on a solo album. Garbage ended their hiatus in 2007, and released greatest
hits retrospective Absolute Garbage. Worldwide, the band have sold over 17 million albums.
The band got back together in 2010 and began recording their new album, Not Your Kind of
People, which was released internationally on May 14, 2012.
Discography
Production career Remix work
Butch Vig has remixed songs for the following artists: Against Me!, Ash, Beck, The Cult,
Depeche Mode, EMF, Fun Lovin' Criminals, House of Pain, Korn, Limp Bizkit, Alanis Morissette,
Nine Inch Nails, Michael Penn, M.O.P and U2, as well as his own band Garbage.
References
External links Butch Vig at the Internet Movie Database
Official website Garbage Butch Vig Interview at drummagazine.com