Fleetwood Mac

veteran producer Keith Olsen (Fleetwood Mac, Grateful Dead), RIP

Veteran rock producer Keith Olsen passed away on Monday (3/9), and according to The New York Times, his daughter Kelly Castady said the cause was cardiac arrest. He was 74.

Olsen worked on Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks’ Buckingham Nicks album, helped introduce them to Fleetwood Mac, and then produced the band’s 1975 self-titled album, the first one with Buckingham and Nicks. He also produced albums for the Grateful Dead, Santana, Pat Benatar, Rick Springfield, Heart, Ozzy Osbourne, and several others.

From the NY Times:

…Ms. Nicks told The Observer of London in 2011, “Mick Fleetwood had asked us to join Fleetwood Mac, sight unseen. Keith Olsen had played him ‘Buckingham Nicks,’ and told him Lindsey and I came as a pair.”
Mr. Olsen produced the first album with the new lineup (although the cover pictured only Mr. Fleetwood and John McVie, the group’s bassist). Called simply “Fleetwood Mac” (1975), it had a soft-rock sound that marked a departure from the group’s harder-edged blues roots.

The 1975 album “Fleetwood Mac,” which Mr. Olsen produced, reached No. 1 on the Billboard album chart and went platinum many times over.
In Dave Grohl’s documentary “Sound City” (2013), about the Los Angeles recording studio where that and many other seminal rock albums were recorded, Mr. Olsen said that Mr. McVie had been a bit reluctant to embrace their new sound.
“John McVie said to me, ‘You know we’re a blues band, this is really far away from the blues,’” Mr. Olsen recalled. “And I said, ‘I know, but it’s a lot closer to the bank.’”

You can read more here.

Rest in peace, Keith. Your contributions to music won’t be forgotten.