Roger S. Nichols a seven-time Grammy Award winning recording engineer and producer best known for his work with Steely Dan and John Denver, died at home April 9 after a long illness. He was 66.
Nichols worked with a long roster of artists, including The Beach Boys, Stevie Wonder, Frank Zappa, Crosby Stills & Nash, Al Di Meola, Roy Orbison, Cass Elliot, Plácido Domingo, Gloria Estefan, Diana Ross, Bela Fleck & the Flecktones, Rickie Lee Jones, Kenny Loggins, Mark Knopfler, Eddie Murphy, Michael McDonald, James Taylor, and Toots Thielemans.
A high school classmate of Frank Zappa, Nichols would tinker with a reel-to-reel tape deck to record Zappa's first songs. He studied nuclear physics in college and worked for several years at a nuclear power plant, moonlighting with a garage-based recording studio at his home in Torrance, CA.
Nichols began work with then-unknown Steely Dan duo, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, in 1971 and, sharing their reputation as audio perfectionists, played a key role on each of the band's albums. A pilot, he also befriended John Denver and worked with him for close to 20 years. In 2005, Nichols launched Roger Nichols Digital, which started handled the licensing and distribution of Elemental Audio plugins in 2006.
"It takes a visionary like Roger to steer change and break new grounds in technology," said John Meyer, CEO and cofounder of Meyer Sound, noting how, in the late 1980s, Nichols had inspired the company to develop the HD-1 reference loudspeaker into a near-field monitoring system for recording studios and live mixing environments. "He raised the important question about whether loudspeakers should play a neutral role in the audio chain, and this opened up the path for reinforcement systems to be built for transparency and linearity. He was a talented individual who took a relentless scientific approach to improving sound."
Nichols, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last May, was married to writer/musician Conrad (Connie) Reeder, and is also survived by two daughters, Cimcie and Ashlee. A fund established to help the family with medical expenses is still accepting donations at www.rogernichols.com.
