Bruce Fairbairn | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Bruce Earl Fairbairn |
| Born | December 30, 1949 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
| Died | May 17, 1999 (aged 49) Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
| Occupation | Record producer |
| Years active | 1976–1999 |
Bruce Earl Fairbairn (December 30, 1949 – May 17, 1999)[1] was a Canadian musician and record producer.
In 1977 he joined the band rock band Prism as their trumpet player and remained with the band until 1980. His career as a record producer started while he produced Prism's albums.
He was an active music producer from 1976 until his death in 1999. He produced albums for artists such as Loverboy, Blue Öyster Cult, Bon Jovi, Poison, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Scorpions, Van Halen, Chicago, The Cranberries, INXS, Kiss and Yes. His style was notable for introducing dynamic horn arrangements into rock music productions.
Some of his productions include Slippery When Wet and New Jersey by Bon Jovi, Permanent Vacation, Pump, and Get a Grip by Aerosmith, The Razors Edge by AC/DC, and Balance by Van Halen, each of which sold at least three million copies.
Fairbairn was a three-time recipient of the Juno Award for Producer of the Year and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical in 1994. In 2000 he was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.
Career
editEarly life and Prism
editBorn in Vancouver, Fairbairn began playing the trumpet at the age of five and also studied piano.[2][3] Until the age of 16, he was a trumpetist in community groups. While in the 10th grade at Vancouver's Prince of Wales Secondary School, Fairbairn founded his first band The Spectres, managed by Bruce Allen, who would remain with Fairbairn through his career.[4] In the early 1970s Fairbairn joined the R&B-jazz band Sunshyne.[5] In 1973, bandmate Tom Keenlyside invited Jim Vallance to join the band as their drummer.[6] Vallance left for a trip to Amersterdam later that same year, and in the meantime the band hired a new drummer.[6]
Fairbairn recruited guitarist Lindsay Mitchell, from Vancouver band Seeds of Time, as singer-songwriter and frontman. Fairbairn worked through 1974 to land a recording contract for Sunshyne, using demos of two songs written by Mitchell. By mid-1975, when Fairbairn could not close a record deal for Sunshyne, he approached Vallance for assistance. Vallance reworked the arrangements on the Mitchell songs and supplied three of his own at Fairbairn's request. One of the Vallance songs, "Open Soul Surgery" impressed an executive at record label GRT, who signed Fairbairn's group to a recording contract in 1976.[4][7] Fairbairn's first production credit was the 1976 single "I Ain't Lookin' Anymore" by rock artist Stanley Screamer, which he co-produced with Vallance for GRT.
Over the next year, Fairbairn produced an album using musicians from both Sunshyne and Seeds of Time (including himself). The newly renamed band Prism released its debut album in 1977.[4] The album reached platinum status in Canada, with sales in excess of 100,000 albums by 1978.1[citation needed] Fairbairn himself, however, elected not to be a member of Prism, and is credited only as producer and as a session musician on the album, and he did not play with Prism in any live performances.
Fairbairn produced Prism's next three albums, all of which went platinum or double platinum in Canada. In 1980, Fairbairn won his first of three Canadian music industry Producer of the Year Juno Awards for Prism's third album, Armageddon.
Loverboy
editIn 1980, while still working with Prism, Fairbairn started production work on the debut album for Canadian rock band Loverboy. The self-titled album Loverboy would be the first Fairbairn production to break through in the lucrative US market and launch Fairbairn's international success.[8]
Fairbairn's productions attracted a growing list of international artists to Vancouver's Little Mountain Sound Studios to work with him and his protégé Bob Rock. Over the next 5 years, Fairbairn's work on Blue Öyster Cult's 1983 album The Revölution by Night, Krokus' 1984 album The Blitz, and Canadian band Honeymoon Suite's arena rock 1985 album The Big Prize continued Fairbairn's string of international hits.
Slippery When Wet
editFairbairn's biggest commercial success is Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet (1986), which made him a top-rate international producer. The album has sold over 28 million copies worldwide. "Bruce Fairbairn was a trumpet player," noted Jon Bon Jovi in 2007. "You couldn't get him on a guitar. And, for the first time, we were allowed to be us in the studio."[9]
"I've been lucky enough to work with so many different talents," Fairbairn noted, "but Bon Jovi may be the finest. There was record company pressure to deliver the hits, but they were a joy. People seem to concentrate so much on their success that they lose sight of how good these guys are."[10]
Permanent Vacation
editHis next major production, Aerosmith's 1987 album Permanent Vacation, was another international success and generated a series of hits including "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)", "Angel", and "Rag Doll". Steven Tyler said that Fairbairn was instrumental in the creation of the album and "helped relight the fire under Aerosmith".[4]
Continued international success
editIn 1988, Fairbairn produced the Bon Jovi album New Jersey, which holds the record for the hard rock/glam metal album to spawn the most Top 10 singles,[citation needed] with five singles charting in the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, selling over seven million copies in the United States. Fairbain also produced Aerosmith's follow-up, 1989's Pump, which had sales in excess of seven million and was widely acclaimed by critics, and won him another "Producer of the Year" Juno Award.
In the 1990s, Fairbairn worked with a string of internationally influential hard rock acts. In 1990 he produced AC/DC's The Razors Edge, and Poison's Flesh and Blood. In 1993, he produced another Aerosmith commercial hit, Get a Grip, which racked up sales of seven million and solidified the band's growing representation as international media stars. Next, Fairbairn produced Scorpions' Face the Heat and in 1995 Van Halen's Balance. Also in 1995, Fairbairn went to Vallance's Armoury Studios in Vancouver to work on Chicago's Night and Day: Big Band, and liked the studio so much he bought it from Vallance the following year.[4]
In late 1996, and through early 1997, Fairbairn produced INXS' comeback album Elegantly Wasted which, while garnering mixed reviews, obtained sales that were higher than the band's previous albums. Also, Fairbairn produced The Cranberries' To the Faithful Departed, and Kiss' reunion-album Psycho Circus.
His last fully completed project was the Atomic Fireballs' Torch This Place for Atlantic Records in 1998, which Fairbairn described as "a return to my brass roots".[11]
Death and legacy
editDuring the mixing sessions for Yes' The Ladder, on May 17, 1999, Fairbairn was found dead by Yes singer Jon Anderson and Armoury Studios manager Sheryl Preston in his Vancouver home.[11] He was survived by his wife, Julie, with whom he had three sons: Scott, Kevin, and Brent.[4] Bob Rock explained that, on the week Fairbairn died, the two were to travel to New York to meet Bon Jovi for another album together.[4]
A memorial, "A Celebration of the Life of Bruce Earl Fairbairn", held at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, was attended by more than 300 people. Highlighted by reminiscences from close friends, the event included musical performances from Jon Anderson and Steve Howe performing the song "Nine Voices" from Yes' The Ladder sessions, as well as Tom Keenlyside, guitarist David Sinclair and finally, "Taps" played on Bruce's trumpet by son Brent.[12]
In March 2000, Fairbairn was posthumously awarded the Canadian Music Hall of Fame Juno Award for his work.
His interviews concerning The Ladder represent some of his final moments on camera, included in short sections as part of the bonus material on Yes' Live at the House of Blues DVD.
"To me, Bruce is in the company of such great contemporary popular-music producers as George Martin, Phil Ramone, and Mutt Lange," says John Kalodner, senior VP of A&R at Columbia Records.
Awards and nominations
edit| Year | Award | Category | Nominated work | Result | Ref |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1980 | Juno Award | Producer of the Year | Armageddon by Prism | Won | |
| 1981 | Juno Award | Producer of the Year | "Young & Restless", "Satellite" by Prism | Nominated | |
| 1982 | Juno Award | Producer of the Year (with Paul Dean) | "Working for the Weekend", "When It's Over" by Loverboy | Won | |
| 1983 | Juno Award | Producer of the Year | "Worlds Away", "She Controls Me" by Strange Advance | Nominated | |
| 1987 | Juno Award | Producer of the Year | "You Give Love A Bad Name", "Livin' on a Prayer" by Bon Jovi | Nominated | |
| 1989 | Juno Award | Producer of the Year | "Stick To Your Guns" by Bon Jovi; "The Movie" by Aerosmith | Nominated | |
| 1990 | Juno Award | Producer of the Year | Pump by Aerosmith | Won | |
| 1991 | Juno Award | Producer of the Year | "Thunderstruck" by AC/DC; "Dorianna" by Paul Laine | Nominated | |
| 1994 | Grammy Award | Producer of the Year, Non-Classical | Nominated | ||
| 1997 | Juno Award | Producer of the Year | "Free to Decide", "When You're Gone" by The Cranberries | Nominated | |
| 1999 | Juno Award | Producer of the Year | "Within", "I Finally Found My Way" by Kiss | Nominated | |
| 2000 | CARAS | Canadian Music Hall of Fame | Honoured |
References
edit- ^ Harrison, Tom (May 19, 1999). "Producer Fairbairn dies at 49". The Province. p. C20. ProQuest 269215374. Retrieved May 17, 2025.
Born Dec. 30, 1949, Fairbairn got his start in the '60s as a trumpet player in local R 'n' B bands, graduating to his first serious recording band, Sunshyne. It was while playing with Sunshyne that he got his first opportunity to produce. The experience led to the formation of the hitmaking Prism in the 1970s with Fairbairn as trumpet-player and producer and emerging songwriter Jim Vallance providing the group's earliest material.
- ^ "A tribute to Bruce Fairbairn". Professional Sound. Vol. 10, no. 3. June 1999. p. 17. ProQuest 229595695. Retrieved May 17, 2025.
- ^ Verna, Paul (December 12, 1998). "Fairbairn Lends Golden Touch to Kiss' 'Psycho Circus'". Billboard. Vol. 110, no. 50. p. 48. ISSN 0006-2510. Retrieved May 17, 2025 – via Google Books.
- ^ a b c d e f g LeBlanc, Larry (May 29, 1999). "Veteran Producer Bruce Fairbairn Dead at 49". Billboard. Vol. 111, no. 22. p. 8, 15. ISSN 0006-2510. Retrieved October 30, 2024 – via Google Books.
- ^ Obituary, Pierre (May 31, 1999). "Obituary: Bruce Fairbairn". The Independent. p. 6. ProQuest 312937636. Retrieved May 17, 2025.
By 1975, Fairbairn was fronting a new group, Sunshyne, without much success and approached the songwriter Jim Vallance (now more famous as Bryan Adams's writing partner and sometime producer). The two joined forces in an outfit renamed Stanley Screamer and cut four tracks which eventually got them a deal with GRT Records in Canada.
- ^ a b "Prism". JimVallance.com. Retrieved June 17, 2025.
- ^ Montfichet, Stansted. "Seeds of Time | Biography". AllMusic. Retrieved August 12, 2014.
- ^ Ankeny, Jason. "Bruce Fairbairn | Biography". AllMusic. Retrieved August 12, 2014.
- ^ Blake, Mark (August 2007). "My brilliant career: Jon Bon Jovi". Q #253. p. 68.
- ^ Dome, Malcolm (July 2006). "We'll make it, I swear...". Classic Rock #94. p. 47.
- ^ a b "News Flash: Producer Bruce Fairbairn Dead At 49". MTV. May 18, 1999. Archived from the original on February 12, 2023. Retrieved 12 February 2023.
- ^ BRUCE FAIRBAIRN REMEMBERED Archived February 17, 2005, at the Wayback Machine