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Daniel Roland Lanois was born on September 19, 1951, and grew up to be a Canadian record producer, guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter who became internationally acclaimed and changed recorded music in the 1990s.
Lanois has released several albums of his own work. However, he is best known for producing albums for a wide variety of artists, including Spoons, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Peter Gabriel, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, and Brandon Flowers. Lanois also collaborated with Brian Eno: most famously on producing several albums for U2, including the multi-platinum The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby. Three albums produced or co-produced by Lanois have won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Four other albums received Grammy nominations.
Before working on DBNS, Lanois wrote and performed the music for Billy Bob Thornton's film Sling Blade (1996). In DBNS he even appears in the film, as a guitarist in Claudia Schiffer's band.
Lanois worked collaboratively with Brian Eno on some of Eno's own projects, one of which was the theme song for David Lynch's film adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune. Eno invited him to co-produce U2's album The Unforgettable Fire. Along with Eno, he went on to produce U2's The Joshua Tree, the 1987 Grammy Award for Album of the Year winner, and some of the band's other works including Achtung Baby and All That You Can't Leave Behind, both of which were nominated for the same award but did not win. Lanois once again collaborated with U2 and Brian Eno on the band's 2009 album, No Line on the Horizon. He was involved in the songwriting process as well as mixing and production.
Lanois' early work with U2 led to him being hired to produce albums for other top-selling artists. He collaborated with Peter Gabriel on his album Birdy (1985), the soundtrack to Alan Parker's film of the same name, and subsequently spent most of 1985 co-producing Gabriel's album So, which was released in 1986 and became his best-selling release, earning multi-platinum sales and a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year. Lanois later co-produced Gabriel's follow-up, Us, which was released in 1992 and also went platinum.
Bono recommended Lanois to Bob Dylan in the late 1980s; in 1989 Lanois produced Dylan's Oh Mercy. Eight years later, Dylan and Lanois worked together on Time Out of Mind, which won another Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1997. In his autobiographical Chronicles, Vol. 1, Dylan describes in depth the contentious but rewarding working relationship he developed with Lanois.
Wrecking Ball, his 1995 collaboration with Emmylou Harris, won a 1996 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album. In 1998, he produced and appeared on Willie Nelson's album Teatro.
As well as being a producer, Lanois is also a songwriter, musician and recording artist. He has released several solo albums and film scores; his first album, Acadie, was released in 1989. A number of Lanois' songs have been covered by other artists, including Dave Matthews, Jerry Garcia Band, Willie Nelson, Tea Party, Anna Beljin, Isabelle Boulay and Emmylou Harris, and his albums have had some success, particularly in Canada. Lanois plays the guitar, pedal steel and drums. Belladonna, an instrumental album released in 2005, was nominated for a Grammy. Lanois also provided an instrumental score for LOUDquietLOUD, a documentary about the Pixies.
Filmography
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