Died On This Date (April 8, 2011) Roger Nichols / Producer & Engineer
themusicsover Roger Nichols
September 22, 1944 – April 8, 2011
Roger Nichols was a respected producer and recording engineer who over the course of his career, accumulated seven Grammys. Most closely associated with Steely Dan, Nichols also worked with the likes of John Denver, the Beach Boys, James Taylor, Stevie Wonder, Frank Zappa, and Diana Ross, to name just a few. Raised in Southern California, Nichols went to high school with Zappa with whom he made his earliest tapes. After graduating from college where he studied nuclear physics, Nichols first found work has a nuclear operator at the San Onofre nuclear power plant north of San Diego. But in the mid ’60s he moved back over to music and opened his own recording studio. In 1970, he went to work for ABC Dunhill Records where he met Walter Becker and Donald Fagen who were hired writers for the label. Within a year, Nichols was behind the board for the birth of Becker’s and Fagen’s group, Steely Dan. He would go on to engineer such landmark albums as their Pretzel Logic, Aja, Countdown To Ecstasy, and Gaucho. He earned Grammys for his work on Aja, Gaucho, Two Against Nature, FM, and John Denver’s All Aboard!. Roger Nichols was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in May of 2010, and died from it on April 8, 2011. He was 66.