Brendan O'Brien (record producer)

Brendan O'Brien (born June 23, 1960) is a record producer, mixer, engineer, and musician. He has worked with such artists as Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Bruce Springsteen, Mastodon, AC/DC, Incubus, Rage Against the Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Train, Audioslave, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Kansas, The Black Crowes, Aerosmith, Soundgarden, The Offspring, Korn, The Fray, Gaslight Anthem, The Killers, and My Chemical Romance.

His career blossomed as a young guitarist with a local Atlanta band by the name of "Pranks" signed by then Century Artists Management. The management company had the best of Atlanta and the region in those days including the likes of "Mother's Finest" "Ezra Pound" and a dozen other "super-regional" acts. His studio career was propelled by the success of the first Black Crowes album, Shake Your Money Maker, on which he played guitar and bass and engineered.. He started working in collaboration with newcomer to the LA music scene, Jimmy Boyle, who would go on to record and produce bands including the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Andrew Dice Clay.

In the mid 1990s, O'Brien became vice president of Epic Records and the Epic imprint 57 Records. He also played a Hammond organ for Bob Dylan's appearance on MTV Unplugged. In 1995 he joined Pearl Jam and Neil Young on keyboard for the Mirror Ball tour across Europe.

In 2002, he won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Album for his work on Bruce Springsteen's The Rising. In 2009, he was awarded the Grammy Award for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical. To date, fourteen of the albums O'Brien has produced have reached No. 1 in the U.S. on the Billboard 200 chart.