Mike Shipley

Mike Shipley
Shipley in 2013
Background information
Birth name	Michael Shipley
Born	(1956-10-07)7 October 1956 Sydney, Australia
Origin	London, England
Died	25 July 2013(2013-07-25) (aged 56) Studio City, Los Angeles, United States
Occupations	Mixing engineer audio engineer record producer
Instruments	Drums guitar
Years active	1976–2013

Michael Shipley (7 October 1956 – 25 July 2013) was an Australian mixing engineer, audio engineer, and record producer. Shipley's music career spanned more than 30 years – mostly working in Los Angeles. At the Grammy Awards of 2012 he won the Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical category for his joint work on Paper Airplane (April 2011), by Alison Krauss and Union Station. Shipley died in July 2013, aged 56, of an apparent suicide.

Michael Shipley was born on 7 October 1956, in Sydney, Australia; as a teenager he moved with his family to London. He became interested in a recording career while at school in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s.^[1] He later recalled, "One of my teachers at grammar school there was a musician who asked me to come down and sing on a record he was making. I walked into this thing called the recording studio, and it just blew my mind. It was, 'This is home,' and I knew instantly and from that point on that all I wanted to do was to work there."^[2] Shipley returned to Australia and completed secondary education at Camberwell Grammar School (class of '74) in Melbourne. He then returned to London, where he started as an assistant at Wessex Sound Studios and worked with Sex Pistols and Queen.^[2][3]

His first engineering sessions were during the punk rock explosion of the late 1970s and early 1980s and included recordings with the Damned.^[2][4] He worked alongside Robert John "Mutt" Lange for decades.^[3] His contemporaries at Wessex include producers Roy Thomas Baker and Chris Thomas, and engineers Tim Friese-Greene and Bill Price. Shipley also worked with Def Leppard on their albums, High 'n' Dry (July 1981), Pyromania (January 1983), Hysteria (August 1987) and Adrenalize (March 1992).^[4]

Asked to work with the Cars, Shipley relocated to Los Angeles in 1984. Shipley later relocated to Hawaii for a sabbatical, but returned to Los Angeles to work for Def Leppard, Shania Twain, The Corrs, Anberlin, Aerosmith, Maroon 5, Faith Hill, India.Arie, Kelly Clarkson, Green Day, Nickelback and Alison Krauss.^[3]

Shipley died on 25 July 2013.^[5] Cause of death, as stated on 9 August 2013 at the memorial service, was an apparent suicide.^[6]

Recorded work credited to Shipley:^[1]

• Mike Shipley discography at Discogs
• Mike Shipley at AllMusic
• Mike Shipley at IMDb
• An Evening with Mike Shipley
• LA Grapevine November 2006