Arts & Entertainment
More From WTTW’s Rediscovered Interview With Steve Albini: The Music Maker on Cheap Trick, Punk Rock and ‘Art That Offends’ — Part 2
Video: Steve Albini talks about the importance of punk rock in his life.
Music maker Steve Albini died unexpectedly of a heart attack on May 7, 2024, at age 61.
WTTW News interviewed Albini on Aug. 30, 2001, for the “Artbeat Chicago” series. Albini was 39 years old and already a legend. As a recording engineer, he had recorded Nirvana, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, the Breeders, the Pixies and PJ Harvey. As a musician, he made his mark with the bands Big Black and Shellac.
As the producer that day, I thought the tapes were missing, but they were recently rediscovered by the WTTW Tape Library.
What follows is Part 2 of the interview. Read Part 1 here.
WTTW News: Growing up, how important was punk music to you?
Steve Albini: Punk rock was easily the most important thing that ever happened to me. I know for certain that I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing if not for punk rock. I’d be in some other completely different pursuit.
I also think that my world view was shaped by ideas that ran through my head while listening to punk records. And my social circle and my take on humanity as a whole was formed through the effect of being excited about punk rock.
And when I say ‘punk rock’ I don’t mean any one specific style of music. I mean the genesis moment of the punk rock mentality which was embodied in a few records over a short period of time. Since then the term has been batted back and forth by different people with axes to grind, and I don’t think I can participate in that discussion because when someone else says ‘punk rock’ referring to a style of music or a haircut or something, it has no meaning to me.
Has the term lost its meaning?
Albini: It’s not so much that it loses its meaning. It’s that people are so quick to reduce things to an epigram or a slogan, to a quick descriptive term which they can then use to mean whatever they want it to mean in context. Like someone can something like, ‘Yeah, that guy took his company for a ride. He embezzled millions of dollars — that’s punk!’ [winces] And the person saying that might very well mean that in some sense, but it doesn’t have any literal meaning to me. I don’t understand what they’re saying or what they’re trying to get across, if anything.
When I think of punk rock, I think of the records that came out from the disenfranchised underground music scene in the U.S. and England primarily but in other places, too, during the late ‘70s and creeping into the early ‘80s. During that period there was an enormous variety of music that had never been made before, music made by completely untutored people, most of whom were bad-tempered [laughs] and as an adolescent I gravitated toward it.
It was inspirational. When you’re listening to punk rock music during a period of social change it emboldens you to take seriously your own self-derived notions of how the world should work or does work, and then you carry a few misconceptions around with you for a while and you test things out and eventually you filter it down to a fairly consistent view of the world. And I think that’s how everybody grows up, but for me punk rock was the beginning of me growing up.
You’ve recorded Cheap Trick, and I know you’re a fan. Tell us why Cheap Trick matters.
Albini: I’ve done quite a bit of recording with Cheap Trick, and not a lot of it has seen the light of day. Their work ethic is astounding. For people who’ve been in the trenches for 30 years to still be able to deliver the goods on a regular basis impresses me to no end. I mean, I can barely get through a two-week tour and still feel like a human being, and they’re working on their third decade of it.
They fell out of fashion during the ‘80s, and they had people nibbling at their ankles and telling them what they should do to maintain popularity. So they got beat up pretty bad in the ‘80s, and they put out a bunch of records that didn’t get a lot of respect, and they eventually found themselves playing to an audience that didn’t appreciate them.
Then all the people they inspired as musicians when they first became popular were suddenly adult enough that they were in a position where they could actually repay some of their debt to Cheap Trick. I say that in way that makes it sound corny, but I think that’s true. There’s an awful lot of music that exists now that couldn’t exist without Cheap Trick.
I don’t think punk rock would have made anywhere near the inroads in the U.S. as it did if not for Cheap Trick. Cheap Trick were not a punk rock band, but they were enthusiastic and they were vocal supporters of bands like the Sex Pistols and the Ramones during a period when all their contemporaries were crowing about Rush and REO Speedwagon and stuff like that. They could tell the difference between the bland contemporaries that they had to contend with and the people that were genuinely inspirational that were coming out around the same time.
Having better than 20 years in the saddle makes anybody a good rider. They’re astonishing musicians, and they can play anything that they dream up. Robin Zander’s got an amazing set of pipes, Bun E. Carlos is one of the most fluent, natural drummers I’ve ever seen. Tom Petersson plays an instrument that he invented, and he’s developed a vocabulary on it that I don’t think anybody could equal. Rick Nielsen has all of the elements of great guitar playing simultaneously. He’s a great songwriter with great facility on his instrument. He’s goofy and doesn’t take himself too seriously. He’s got an offhand quality about him that puts you at ease.
I think that’s the difference between Cheap Trick and a lot of other bands that they were contemporaries with — they never made the distinction between highbrow and lowbrow art. The defining characteristic was that it’s good.
Steve Albini performs. (Credit: Freekorpos / Wikimedia Commons)
Steve Albini performs. (Credit: Freekorpos / Wikimedia Commons)
We’re also working on a show with the theme ‘Art That Offends,’ so I’d like to ask: Does the artist have any responsibility, moral or otherwise, to what he or she creates?
Albini: In the crudest sense, everyone’s responsible for his actions. If my art was to stab you through the heart, that could very well be my artistic statement — but I’d also be stabbing you through the heart, and I’d be responsible for that.
I think where an artist doesn’t need to display restraint in that sense is where the only offense embodied in a piece of artwork is that someone else has chosen to be offended by it, and I think that is a pretty obvious line.
If you’re making an aggressive encroachment into someone else’s world, then you should expect to be taken to task for it because you’re intruding on other people. If you as an artist are making work which is then put in a place where people go to view art, and people choose to take offense with something you’ve done, ultimately I think that’s the viewer’s problem. I don’t see that as being the artist’s failing. The simple solution if something offends you is to not look at it, and that seems like an exercise that’s so obvious it doesn’t even need to be explained. But considering the measures that some people take rather than just averting their eyes, maybe that ought to be handed out on leaflets in galleries and museums.
Have you ever been accused of being offensive?
Albini: The lyrical subject matter of the band Big Black ranged all over the map, but some of it was kind of unpleasant. And I’ve had more than a few people suggest that that was irresponsible because people could misinterpret character studies as being, I guess, some kind of violence proselytism — is that a word? — like evangelizing for people to hate one another and perform violence on each other, which is an absurdity to me, so I never took it seriously.
I was in a band called Rapeman, and the very name of that band was offensive to some people, and I understand why it would be offensive to some, but I also think it's offensive partly for political reasons rather than for reasons of genuine insult. On anyone’s barometer, rape is bad. It’s not as bad as say, genocide, which is very bad. But if the band had been called Genocide Man, no one would have taken any offense whatsoever because politically it wasn’t pointed.
I also don’t think it’s anybody else’s business what we call our band. So I’ve been in the hot seat for criticism, but it’s rare that I feel like criticism coming from outside the band is worth considering. Once in a rare moment someone will bring something up that I hadn’t thought of or will convince me that I was misguided. But I’m stubborn and I’m thorough, so if I get to a point where I’ve done something that someone is offended by, I’ve gotten there through a fairly thorough process. Once there, I’m stubborn and don’t want to give up.
Note: This article has been updated to correct the names Robert Plant and Jimmy Page.
Marc Vitali is the JCS Fund of the DuPage Foundation Arts Correspondent.
