Grammy winner, collaborated with Michael Jackon on ‘Thriller’
Bruce Swedien, a Grammy Award-winning recording engineer best known for his collaboration with Michael Jackson and producer Quincy Jones on hit albums “Thriller” and “Off the Wall,” died Nov. 16 in Gainesville. He was 86.
His daughter Roberta Swedien said the cause of death was complications of surgery for a broken hip. He had also tested positive for COVID-19 but was asymptomatic.
Raised by parents who were professional musicians and encouraged his love of music, Swedien was a masterly studio technician who, in a 60-year career captured the sound of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Barbra Streisand, Dinah Washington, Jackie Wilson, Sarah Vaughan and Jennifer Lopez.
His most fruitful partnerships were with Jackson and Jones. Swedien met Jones in Chicago in the 1950s and worked with him on several projects, including records by Billy Eckstine and Dinah Washington, and then on “The Wiz,” the
1978 film adaptation of the Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” Jackson played the Scarecrow; Swedien was the music recording engineer.
By 1979 they were working on “Off the Wall,” the first of their many ventures with Jackson. Swedien would win three of his Grammys for engineering Jackson’s next three albums, “Thriller,” “Bad” and “Dangerous”; his other two were for his work on Jones’ “Q’s Jook Joint” and “Back on the Block.”
In Jackson, Swedien found a willing participant in studio experimentation.
While recording Jackson’s background vocals, Swedien had him take two steps back from the microphone after each of the multiple takes and then layered them all into a Jackson “choir.” For the sound of Jackson’s “Don’t think twice!” exclamation on “Billie Jean,” he had him sing through a 5-foot-long cardboard tube.
For “Thriller,” he rejected digital technology despite its clarity and recorded all of Jackson’s songs in analog, synchronizing multiple 24-track machines. “The sound of pure analog – 24track, two-track or even mono — is very warm and musical,” he told Reverb, an online music marketplace that includes news and interviews, in 2018. “It captures music with great realism.”
Bruce Frederick Swedien was born April 19, 1934, in Minneapolis. His mother, Louise, was a singer, pianist and composer. His father, Ellsworth, was a classical pianist, composer and choir director.
He earned his first Grammy nomination for engineering the Four Seasons’ single “Big Girls Don’t
Cry,” which hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1962.