Australian producer Tony Cohen dies, aged 60

Award-winning Australian producer and sound engineer Tony Cohen – best known internationally for his work on albums by Nick Cave, The Go-Betweens, The Models and Hunters & Collectors – has passed away aged 60.

The news was confirmed by his brother Martin, who said he died in Dandenong Hospital on August 1

He said, “Tony lived a hard life with drugs and alcohol playing a big part of his professional career.

“He did give them up many years ago but always knew that he would eventually pay for his ’sins’.”

Born in Melbourne, Cohen emerged in the mid-1970s, as a sound engineer. Working at Armstrong studios, he was initially given his break by Ian “Molly” Meldrum, working on hits by Supernaut and The Ferrets.

In 1978, he started a lengthy collaboration with Nick Cave, first with The Boys Next Door and then with The Bad Seeds, on albums from From Her to Eternity (1984) to No More Shall We Part (2001).

With early small budgets, the Cave sessions were down during studio “down times”. Such was Cohen’s dedication to his work that he’d work through the night, catching up on sleep in the air conditioning vent.

He told this writer during an interview, “They were crazy times because we were making things up as we went along. It was very subversive, I have to say.

“They didn’t work al the time, but we were open to any ideas, whether it was recording in strange places like stairwells or abusing the shit out of the equipment.”

Cohen won the ARIA producer of the year trophy in 1993 for The Cruel Sea’s The Honeymoon Is Over, the first of such wins.

His lengthy credits as producer and/or engineer include The Models’ Cut Lunch, Dave Graney ’n’ the Coral Snakes’ You Wanna Be There But You Don’t Wanna Travel and Night of the Wolverine, Powderfinger’s Parables for Wooden Ears, The Blackeyed Susans’ Mouth To Mouth, Hunters & Collectors:’ World of Stone, The Go-Betweens:’ Send Me a Lullaby and The Reels’ Pitt Street Farmers.