R.I.P.: Keith Olsen, Fleetwood Mac Record Producer

Keith Olsen, a record producer whose slew of hits included the first Fleetwood Mac album with Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, whom he helped bring into the band, died from cardiac arrest on Monday at his home in Genoa, Nev.

Keith Olsen

He was 74, according to The NYTimes.

Olsen worked with a roster of successful artists that ran rock’s gamut, including the Grateful Dead, Santana, Pat Benatar, Whitesnake and  Scorpions.

Early in his career he produced “Buckingham Nicks” (1973), a folk-rock album by the then little-known Nicks and Buckingham. The album flopped, but, as many accounts have it, Mr. Olsen played one of the songs for Mick Fleetwood, Fleetwood Mac’s drummer.

Soon after, Nicks told The Observer of London in 2011, Fleetwood had asked us to join Fleetwood Mac, sight unseen. Keith Olsen had played him ‘Buckingham Nicks,’ and told him Lindsey and I came as a pair.”

Olsen produced the 1975 Fleetwood Macalbum with the new lineup. Called simply “Fleetwood Mac” (1975), it had a soft-rock sound that marked a departure from the group’s harder-edged blues roots.

The album reached No. 1 on the Billboard album chart and went platinum many times over.