Brendan O'Brien (born June 30, 1960) is an American record producer, mixer, engineer, and musician. He has worked with many groups and artists during his career, such as AC/DC, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Bob Dylan, Rage Against the Machine, and Bruce Springsteen.
His career blossomed as a young guitarist with a local Atlanta band by the name of Pranks, signed by what was then Century Artists Management. The management company had what many considered the best of Atlanta and the surrounding region in those days, including the likes of Mother's Finest, Ezra Pound and a dozen other "super-regional" acts. In the late 1970s, he moved on to writing, performing, and recording with the band Samurai Catfish.
O'Brien became a successful local engineer, considered to be the go-to guy to "make a record in a few days for $1500". His studio career was propelled by the success of the first Black Crowes album, Shake Your Money Maker, which he engineered and for which he also performed guitar, bass, and "a potpourri of instruments". The following year he produced and mixed Stone Temple Pilots' debut album Core and engineered and mixed Red Hot Chili Peppers breakthrough album Blood Sugar Sex Magik. These two records launched his career as an in-demand, multi-platinum producer, engineer and mixer. He produced and mixed nearly the entire catalog of Stone Temple Pilots and Pearl Jam. Most of his productions were engineered by Nick DiDia, whom he worked with throughout most of his career.
O'Brien often engineered and recorded his own sessions with the help of various assistant engineers. A majority of the records that he produced and/or mixed were made at Southern Tracks Recording Studio near his home, in Atlanta, from the late 1980s until its closure.
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 keyboards 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. In 2015 he produced Higher Truth, the final release by Chris Cornell.
He produced the Italian bluesman Zucchero Fornaciari's 2016 album Black Cat and received production credits for track three of the 2017 EP Cold Dark Place by the progressive metal band Mastodon. The most recent album he produced was AC/DC's Power Up.