Ed Stasium


Ed Stasium is an American record producer and audio engineer, who has worked on albums by the Ramones, Talking Heads, Biohazard, the Smithereens and Living Colour.

Early life and education

At ten years old in 1959, Stasium began taking piano lessons and experienced a "defining moment" when a family friend showed him how to use a reel-to-reel tape recorder. He was further influenced by seeing The Beatles make their U.S. television debut in 1964, after which he began playing guitar and forming bands as a high schooler. Stasium was raised in Green Brook Township, New Jersey and graduated from Dunellen High School.

History

Stasium began his recording career in 1970 fronting the band Brandywine. He appeared on their sole LP, Aged. When he returned to the music industry three years later, it was as a recording engineer. By the end of 1975 he was hired as a staff engineer at Le Studio Morin Heights in Quebec, Canada. There he would assist with the recording of several albums by the French-Canadian band Garolou. In 1976 he was involved as a sound engineer in the production of the album Morin Heights by the Scottish band Pilot, which was recorded in Canada in the studios of the same name.
Stasium's long affiliation with the American punk and new wave, and the latter-day alternative rock, began in 1977, the year he engineered both the Ramones' Leave Home and Talking Heads' Talking Heads: 77. His production career began a year later with the Ramones' Road to Ruin, followed in 1979 by work on the group's It's Alive and the soundtrack to the film Rock 'n' Roll High School.
Stasium enjoyed perhaps his greatest success during the latter half of the 1980s. In addition to engineering Mick Jagger's Primitive Cool, he scored a major hit with Living Colour's Vivid, and also produced Soul Asylum, the Long Ryders and Julian Cope.
In 1990, he helmed the Smithereens' album, 11, reuniting with the group a year later for Blow Up; Marshall Crenshaw's Life's Too Short and Motörhead's 1916 appeared around the same time. Productions from acts including the Hoodoo Gurus and the Reverend Horton Heat followed as the decade progressed.
In 2014, he produced an album by The Empty Hearts on 429 Records. The band included Blondie drummer Clem Burke, The Chesterfield Kings bassist Andy Babiuk, The Cars guitarist Elliot Easton, The Romantics guitarist and vocalist Wally Palmar, and Small Faces and Faces pianist Ian McLagan. The album was released on August 5, 2014.
Previously living in Bayfield, Colorado, Stasium currently resides in Poway, California.

Selected discography

As engineer