Dave Jerden, a producer and engineer who worked with Jane’s Addiction, Alice in Chains and the Rolling Stones during his three-decade career, has died.
The news was confirmed by his family in a social media post that said Jerden “passed away [Feb. 5] peacefully in his sleep.”
The studio vet got his start in the late ’70s at Los Angeles’ Eldorado Recording Studios as a mixer and engineer, a role and title he preferred to producer. His earliest days were marked by work with Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Rolling Stones, Talking Heads and Frank Zappa.
As alternative music grew by the late ’80s, so did Jerden’s career, starting with his work with Jane’s Addiction on their first two albums. He stayed busy throughout the ’90s, producing and engineering albums by several punk, hard-rock and metal bands.
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In a 2022 interview with Gearspace.com, Jerden noted that “the best advice I can give anyone that wants to make it in this business is the same advice I was given when I started out. First and foremost: Always do your best. Never depend on anyone else. Never assume anything. … Never assume someone else is going to do your job or everything in the recording process is going along fine.”
Taking this advice led to work with some of the era’s biggest artists.
What Records Did Dave Jerden Work On?
Jerden’s first credit came in 1980 as an engineer on Talking Heads’ classic Remain in Light album. (He also worked on David Byrne and Brian Eno’s 1981 LP My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, beginning work on that project in 1979.) Over the next half-decade, he worked in a similar role on records by Zappa (The Red and the Black), Herbie Hancock (Future Shock), the Rolling Stones (Dirty Work) and the debut solo record from Mick Jagger, She’s the Boss.
In 1988, Jerden coproduced Jane’s Addiction’s debut album, Nothing’s Shocking, and returned for their 1990 follow-up, Ritual de lo Habitual. For the next decade, he worked with Alice in Chains, the Offspring, Public Image Ltd. and Spinal Tap, among others, before he lightened his work schedule.
“For years I drove an old pickup truck and lived in small places, but I was happy,” he told Musicradar in 2013. “When you have a boat and six horses and all this stuff, you have to keep generating income to pay for it. I’m not that kind of guy. So when I found myself making corporate-type records and feeding the radio machine, I realized that I lost my bearings. I wasn’t making records for the right reasons anymore.”
Jerden continued to work into the next 21st century when he produced albums by the punk band MxPx and Ramones drummer Richie Ramone. He cofounded Tranzformer Studio in Burbank, Calif., during this time, receiving his last production credit in 2015.
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