“If you persist in doing the things that you want to do to satisfy yourself, you can live your whole life that way”: watch a heartfelt message to a young musician from the late, great Steve Albini

Steve Albini in 2014 — (Image credit: Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

A video of late legendary producer and Big Black/Shellac guitarist Steve Albini encouraging a young drummer is being shared on Instagram. The clip, originally posted by Albini’s widow Heather Whinna last year just a few weeks after the trailblazer’s death from a heart attack, was reshared yesterday by producer John Congleton with the caption, “Sometimes when I need a little inspiration, I watch this video. I miss Steve every day.”

In the clip, Albini introduces himself to an 11-year-old musician named Oliver whose mother worked with Albini's wife. “I just wanted to make a video giving you some encouragement,” he says. “Heather showed me some footage of you playing drums and I was impressed because she says you’re only 11 years old which blows my mind, I wasn’t really listening to music until I was a teenager and you’re already playing, that’s an incredible head start.”

“I wanted to encourage you and tell you, you can make music your whole life, you can spend the rest of your life making music,” Albini states. “You don’t have to do it all day, every day, and it doesn’t have to be the only thing in your life but you can keep coming back to it and keep doing it and it can be continually rewarding. I make my living in music, I work in a studio, I’m in a band and I’m about to leave on a trip to go play some shows with my band on tour but it doesn’t have to be that big of a deal, it can just be something you do now and again and it’ll still give you some satisfaction.”

“The other thing is,” he continues, “is that Heather mentioned some of the people you like, Nirvana, PJ Harvey, The Breeders, those are people that I know and I know from talking to those people, when they were younger, they felt weird and out of place. I know when I was young… I felt weird and out of place as well. I want you to know that that feeling passes and you become comfortable in your own self and your identity and you stop worrying what other people have to say about me or what other people think about you.”

“For example, Kurt Cobain struggled with a lot of stuff when he was younger. He had questions about his gender identity, he had questions about his sexual orientation, questions about his place in the world and he felt kind of lost for a while and eventually he became comfortable with himself and that’s when he completely owned his identity and his persona.”

Moving on to PJ Harvey, who the producer worked with on her 1993 second record Rid Of Me, Albini says, “She was anorexic when she was a teenager, she had a lot of emotional problems and over time she became comfortable with herself and she began to realise that the way she was was fine and that she didn’t need to change in order to satisfy other people.”

Ex-Pixies bassist and Breeders singer and guitarist Kim Deal worked with Albini right across her career, from early Pixies releases to many of the songs that featured on her masterful 2024 solo debut Nobody Loves You More and Albini mentions how Kim and twin sister Kelley were regularly mocked and bullied when they were kids. “They were twins and that was seen as freakish and weird but over time they got comfortable with themselves and they realised what other people have to say about you doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re happy about the person that you are and if you persist in doing the things that you want to do to satisfy yourself, you can live your whole life that way.”

Albini signs off the heartfelt message by saying, “I just wanted to encourage you to pursue music because I think you’d be great at it. That’s all.”

In a caption alongside the original clip, Whinna wrote, “Steve did everything because he believed it was the right thing to do. He gave of himself without conditions or expectations. Watch this video to see the very best person I will ever know.”

Watch the full clip below:

A post shared by Heather Whinna (@heatherinamasfina)
A photo posted by on

Niall Doherty is a writer and editor whose work can be found in Classic Rock, The Guardian, Music Week, FourFourTwo, Champions Journal, on Apple Music and more. Formerly the Deputy Editor of Q magazine, he co-runs the music Substack letter The New Cue with fellow former Q colleague Ted Kessler. He is also Reviews Editor at Record Collector. Over the years, he's interviewed some of the world's biggest stars, including Elton John, Coldplay, Radiohead, Liam and Noel Gallagher, Florence + The Machine, Arctic Monkeys, Muse, Pearl Jam, Depeche Mode, Robert Plant and more.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.