David Jerden (July 25, 1949 – February 5, 2025) was an American record producer, audio engineer and mixer. He is best-known for producing, engineering and mixing albums recorded by a variety of bands from the mid-to-late 1980s and 1990s, including the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane's Addiction, Alice in Chains, Social Distortion, the Offspring, Anthrax, Fishbone, Meat Puppets and Spinal Tap.
Career in production
Jerden developed his engineering and mixing skills at Eldorado Recording Studios in Hollywood, California, beginning in the late 1970s.
As a producer and mixer, Jerden also worked with artists such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers Fishbone, Anthrax, the Offspring, Meat Puppets, Social Distortion, Biohazard and Sacred Reich.
In 1986, Jerden met with the Replacements about producing the album that would eventually become Pleased to Meet Me. Jerden's sobriety, however, was a disqualifying factor for the notoriously hard-partying Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson, who were both drunk for the meeting and expected any prospective producer to at least attempt to keep up with them, despite the band's then-recent firing of Stinson's brother Bob for his mounting drug and alcohol abuse. Jerden was also initially offered to produce Megadeth's 1990 album Rust in Peace, but, according to engineer Micajah Ryan, "after a few days, Dave Mustaine, the quote was, 'I think there's too many guys named Dave around here, we're gonna get rid of one of them.' And Dave Jerden got fired."
By the mid-1990s, Jerden felt overwhelmed by the trappings of his success and decided to "lay low": working on occasional projects, but primarily experimenting with recording equipment involved in the transition from digital to analogue domains.
Jerden died on February 5, 2025, at the age of 75.
- 1999: Suicide - Sweet Water
- 1999: Rev - Perry Farrell (mixing, engineer, producer)
- 1999: F=0 - Dis.Inc.
- 2000: Deviant - Pitchshifter
- 2001: The Pleasure and the Greed - Big Wreck
- 2001: Cringe - Cringe
- 2002: A Passage in Time - Authority Zero
- 2003: Before Everything & After - MxPx
- 2004: Dropbox - Dropbox
- 2013: Entitled - Richie Ramone
- 2015: Rare Breed - The Shrine