He has produced albums for Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soundgarden, Hole, Korn, Kensington, and Marilyn Manson.
In 1977, Beinhorn met bassist Bill Laswell and together, with his friends Fred Maher and Cliff Cultreri, they formed the Zu Band (so-named by legendary European music impresario, producer/manager Giorgio Gomelsky- whose primary claims to notoriety were as manager/owner of London's infamous Crawdaddy Club, former manager and producer of The Yardbirds and manager of The Rolling Stones for a weekend).
About a year following their first release and their first shows in New York City (at such legendary nightclubs as CBGB, Mudd Club, Hurrah and Tier 3), they changed their band name to Material.
As a duo, Beinhorn and Laswell collaborated on various projects with a variety of musical artists, such as Nile Rodgers, David Byrne, Sonny Sharrock, Nona Hendryx, Bernie Worrell, Patti LaBelle, Tony Thompson, etc.
The following year, the duo recorded a young up-and-coming singer named Whitney Houston on a version of the Soft Machine song "Memories" which also featured the legendary free jazz tenor sax player, Archie Shepp.
That year (1981), they produced and composed "Change the Beat" by Fab Five Freddy which became the source of the infamous "Fresh Scratch"[2](which included the sound of a voice controlling the Oberheim OBXa synthesizer through the Roland SVC350 vocoder reciting "Ahhhh...this stuff is really frrreshh").
Beinhorn co-produced, co-wrote, and programmed the Oberheim DMX drum machine, synthesizers and Lexicon M.93 Prime Time sampler on the track.
Two years later, he found himself in a speeding van with struggling Los Angeles band Red Hot Chili Peppers who were late to a gig in Dallas, Texas.
[7] The unexpected success of Uplift gave Red Hot Chili Peppers a leg up with their label, EMI, and in 1989, Beinhorn produced the group's next recording, Mother's Milk.
After his success with Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beinhorn began a working streak which culminated in him producing Soul Asylum's 1992 breakthrough record, Grave Dancers Union.
[citation needed] In an appearance on The Pods & Sods Network, Beinhorn shared his reaction to first hearing "Black Hole Sun" during the Superunknown sessions: I think for the rest of my entire life, until I draw my last breath, I'll never ever forget how I felt when they started playing that song.
The system was dubbed "Ultra-Analog" by CN Fletcher of Mercenary Audio and had its maiden voyage on the 1995 Ozzy Osbourne record Ozzmosis.
[12]From 2003, Beinhorn went on to work with a diverse array of artists such as Fuel, Mew, The Bronx, Courtney Love, Pete Yorn, Natalie Maines, Leon Russell and Dave Grohl.
Being a staunch advocate of album pre-production, he also felt the need to address the changing music industry climate and the lack of reasonable budgets available to most musicians.