If you’re a musician and people compare you to a Beatle, you’ve done something right. If you’re a music producer and people – what’s more British ones – compare you to George Martin, it’s equally true. You’ve done something right. Today we remember a producer who did many things right, Bruce Fairbairn. He passed away at a young age of 49 on this day in 1999.
Fairbairn helped put Vancouver on the musical map, never traveling far afield from his Canadian home city for work. Like many other musical legends, he took to music early, learning to play by age five. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Bruce’s instrument of choice wasn’t the piano (which he could play tolerably well), nor guitar (which Jon Bon Jovi joked you couldn’t bribe him to pick up) but the trumpet! As a kid he played in various community brass bands, but by his high school years he’d developed a love of rock…but still loved playing his trumpet. He joined his first band in high school, one called Sunshyne, which from most accounts was probably inspired by the likes of Chicago and Lighthouse. With them was Jim Vallance, who later became famous as a songwriter, most notably working with fellow Vancouverite Bryan Adams, having credits on many of his hits like “Heaven” and “Summer of ’69”. By 1977, Sunshyne had changed their sound a little to a more typical pop-rock one, scored a record deal and changed their name to Prism. While Fairbairn never was an official member (partly because he didn’t want to tour apparently), he added horns as needed and more importantly produced the band’s records and worked as a defacto manager for them. They did respectably well in the late-’70s and early-’80s at home with songs like “Spaceship Superstar” and “Armageddon”, and even managed to have one single do better in the U.S. than Canada – 1981’s “Don’t Let Him Know” which made the American top 40 and was even a #1 hit on Billboard‘s rock chart.
As his work with Prism diminished in the ’80s, his workload on everything else increased. He became the in-house producer at the city’s Little Mountain Sound. One of the first acts he produced there was Rock & Hyde, a local band who’d done well domestically under the name Payola$. They didn’t manage to duplicate the success under the new name, but the pairing was beneficial nonetheless. Fairbairn hired Bob Rock of that band as an assistant. Rock himself would soon go on to major success in the studio. Before long international acts were making the pilgrimage to Canada’s West Coast to have Bruce produce for them. Among the first, Bon Jovi. Fairbairn produced their Slippery When Wet, and he and Jon hit it off immediately. Bon Jovi says “for the first time, we were allowed to be us in the studio.” Probably typical of many band’s reactions there; Fairbairn said “the producer is just there to enhance what the band has done. It’s like baking a cake with lots of icing.” He also offered that “I’ve been lucky enough to work with so many different talents, but Bon Jovi may be the finest… they were a joy.” Slippery when Wet elevated the New Jersey band to superstar status, eventually selling over 25 million copies. They returned to record the next one, New Jersey, Together the two albums sold close to 50 million and saw the band end the decade with a string of eight-straight U.S. top 10 singles, half of them #1s.
That kind of success of course generated interest in Bruce and the Vancouver studio. Aerosmith’s label, Geffen, instructed them to go there for the 1987 album Permanent Vacation after a string of albums which had only lukewarm success. It became their biggest seller since ’75’s Toys in the Attic, and according to Steven Tyler, “saved our career.” They returned twice more to create a trio of albums he considers their best. Through the late-’80s and ’90s, Fairbairn worked with a host of international stars including AC/DC, the Cranberries and even Chicago, as well as lesser known acts from his homeland like Strange Advance. By the end of the ’90s, he’d produced six albums that sold in excess of five million copies and had won the Juno Award for Producer of the Year three times.
In spring ’99, he had made plans to do another album with Bon Jovi, but was working with Yes when he died suddenly – Jon Anderson of that band had the unfortunate occasion to find his body. It’s believed Fairbairn had a heart attack. Yes performed at a memorial service for him. Noting his passing, Britain’s The Guardian compared him to George Martin and called him “the King of Heavy Metal Producers.” Something we bet a little five year old with a horn would have never guessed he’d ascend to.