Saluting Steve Albini, Humanist

His music endures, but it was his personal code of honor that I'm thinking about

I had very little direct connection with Steve Albini during the 35 years I lived in Chicago, so I’ve been struggling about whether I should write anything about his sudden passing yesterday, at age 61. It’s hard to fathom that he’s gone, and, in fact, it was his perennial accessibility and presence that now makes his sudden absence deafening. Albini seemed incredibly well-balanced and his disdain for hype led him to maintain a remarkably consistent presence in the city. Anyone could hire him to engineer a session at Electrical Audio, he often answered the phone at the studio, and he always made time for seemingly anyone with questions for him. Because of that mindset it was kind of easy to take him for granted. Now that he’s gone the hole he leaves is a gaping maw that so single person could possibly fill.

Steve Albini (photo courtesy of Electrical Audio)

He was part of a distinctly Chicago culture built on fairness, hard work, and healthy cynicism. Of course, there were others who put those ideas into action. Albini’s friend and colleague Corey Rusk operated Touch and Go Records according to those values, and they slowly seeped into the bloodstream of the city’s music underground, with labels like Drag City and Thrill Jockey embracing the same ideal; eventually they became a national blueprint for independent labels that preferred art and community over product and commerce. But no one articulated those principles better or sharper than Albini. Lots of folks have been rightly pointing to his remarkable Baffler essay the Problem With Music which laid out the financial fuckery of the music industry with exacting detail and clarity, but he lived those ethics day in and day out

Within a year of moving to Chicago in 1984 I had become a massive fan of Big Black, and Albini’s writing in Matter and Forced Exposure blew my mind. His lacerating wit and scrupulous code of conduct arrived like a worthy ideal. I tried to ape the way he and peers like Byron Coley and Gerard Cosloy wrote about music; being harsh seemed cool. Of course, it was stupid, misguided, and often cruel, and while Albini was a brilliant writer, even he could be gratuitously nasty. Of course, in recent years he evolved radically, apologizing and admonishing that early behavior without caveats. I regret plenty of shit I wrote in my old zine Butt Rag—ideas born of ignorance and insecurity—but for a certain period of time Alibini’s growth as a human was still tangled up in his uncompromising stance on honor, but he came out the other side with such grace, honesty, and ardor that I would consider him a hero on that basis alone. A story by Jeremy Gordon published last summer in the Guardian nailed this remarkable transformation.

I had no clue how to conduct an interview when I spoke to the members of Big Black for the Chicago zine Non-Stop Banter when the trio had just released Atomizer in 1985. I remember feeling both awe and abject nervousness during the encounter, and while I felt some understandable chill from Dave Riley and Santiago Durango—I mean, I was a stupid college student—Albini was friendly and straight, with a palpable sense of camaraderie for a fellow zine writer. A few years later he pulled the plug on Big Black because too many doofuses were becoming fans. I eagerly followed him through Rapeman—the name of which probably stands as the worst instance of Albini’s button-pushing instincts gone wrong—and then Shellac, but over time I became less interested in his music or even his production than his intelligence, humor, and generosity. I was bummed out to hear about long-term relationships battered or ended when some musicians rejected his advice and signed with major labels, as it seemed Albini was so rigid with his doctrines that he refused to even consider the experiences of others, but those differences ebbed over time, too.

My only negative run-in with Albini came through a misguided, thoughtless comment I made in my Chicago Reader column when the legendary club Lounge Ax was forced to close, in which I glibly remarked that it’s bookings had become less interesting. Tribune critic Greg Kot has called it an “incalculable” loss, but I just shrugged my shoulders, dumbly. Albini sent me an email, I believe, calling my remarks stupid. Of course, they were, and it remains one of my biggest regrets, disregarding years of hard work and community-building by Sue Miller and Julia Adams as an inevitable byproduct of not booking more stuff I was personally interested in. I interviewed Albini years later for a story on pop auteur Liam Hayes’ Plush and he was cordial, candid, and helpful. I was thinking of contacting Albini for a recent Wire feature I wrote about Cheer-Accident, but time was tight, although knowing how much mutual fondness and respect these parties had for each other, I’m betting he would have found the time to speak. Albini never pretended that colleague equaled friend. He was always gracious and friendly in my interactions, but the truth is we were merely acquaintances, not friends. It’s a sort of behavior that’s remained a model for me,. With my work the line between friendship and transaction is slippery indeed. Albini never expected anything in return for his time. He was insanely curious and intellectually rigorous, and he possessed a deep respect for craft. He originally came to Chicago to study at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism.

Over the years his increasing acts of kindness—particularly the annual Letters to Santa effort he led with his wife Heather Whinna starting in 2002, in which they organized a 24-hour marathon of music and comedy at Second City, raising money to alleviate the suffering of those less fortunate during a tough season—began to blot out his cynical side, although he never, ever suffered fools. There used to be no shortage of people that would excoriate Albini for his arrogance and lack of sentimentality, but I can’t remember the last time I heard a negative thing about him. He built an incredible community around him which radiated outward in a way that genuinely changed certain music communities all around the world. Over the last day I’ve read the phrase “he did the work” repeatedly (as well as countless examples of his generosity across the board). That’s because he did do the work—in fact, it was all about the work, whether making music in a respectful fashion or growing as a human being. His musical legacy has been long recognized, but it’s his legacy as a humanist, thinker, and community-member that have been occupying my thoughts since I heard yesterday’s sad news. In some ways, I think that second legacy might be more powerful. As an observer I witnessed those ideals ooze out of the punk rock community in Chicago to other sorts of musicians who embraced them. Some recognized their punk derivation, while others didn’t, but either way they changed things. Albini’s philosophical template wasn’t one-size-fits-all, but it remains endlessly adaptable and true, and at a time when our culture is more fucked than ever the fight he spent his entire lifetime engaged in has never been more valuable or honorable.