Rick Rubin: the legendary music producer on working with Run DMC, Slayer and Johnny Cash

hello and welcome to ways to change the world I'm Christian Gary Murphy and this is the podcast in which we talk to extraordinary people about the Big Ideas in their lives and the events that have helped shape them my guest this week is an extraordinary music producer Rick Rubin is associated with the birth of hip-hop because he was one of the co-founders of Def Jam but he's worked with rock artists he went on to run Columbia Records he's worked with so many of the greats it's pretty impossible to list them but also pop musicians Ed Sheeran you know you name it and and he's he's written a remarkable book about creativity which is why we are here to talk to him today in a studio in West London Rick thank you very much indeed for joining us thank you um your your book starts really with the idea I suppose that anyone can be a Creator an artist it starts with the idea that we all are creators whether we recognize it or not and um we live in the world making creative decisions every day and the artist is the one who I want to say takes ownership of these choices and curates them in a in a more um let's say in a more serious way because I'm I'm reading this thinking that this is a man who has worked with geniuses with Master Craftsman yes and women um how can you say that this is in all of us yeah it is 100 it's in all of us um and there there are people who are just as talented as the people that I get to work with we all have a capacity it doesn't mean everyone who engages in art is going to do um World level stuff that's not the point and the people who make it who do uh work at the highest levels they don't always know that they're working at the highest level some it's interesting to know many artists great singers are ashamed to listen to their own voice it's a normal human thing it helps if we remove these pedestals of these people are great yes they're people who are great and they uh deserve our love um and everyone has this potential again maybe not to be the best in the world but to be the best that they can be and that's that's all we're here to do is we each we each strive to be our best one of the things we talk about in the book is um like being better than someone else is not to me it's not very interesting but being better than I was yesterday that's something I can do forever I mean you mentioned Talent what's your definition of talent they're different versions one version of talent is someone who practices something to the point where they achieve an ability that um is is beyond it doesn't I don't know that that one happens as frequently as another Talent where someone is someone's point of view is so unique the way they see the world is so unique and they're so effective at sharing how they see the world that it allows us to see what they see and maybe not exactly what they see because that's maybe impossible but a glimpse of something that we might not otherwise see and I mean you also talk about um art or creativity are something that is is around us and that we've got to grab yes just just explain that to me yes as creators we're vehicles to allow creation to happen rarely maybe never does something come from inside of us it may get reformed within us but it doesn't start within us we are the sum total of our life's experiences what we've learned what we've seen uh the emotions that we felt the dreams that we've had and that's the material from which everything we make comes and sometimes we know it and sometimes we don't because it's not a it's not always conscious um you may tell me you may see something and have a reaction to it and then tell me about it and that reaction the reason you have that reaction is based on something from childhood that you don't remember that that happened it happens all the time to all of us if you've ever done therapy you know that things come up in therapy and the therapist says you know a year ago you said this I wonder if this is related to that and what of course why didn't it's it's we're too close to see to see what's going on so there's information that the the planet is a productive Planet if you look outside you see green nature is constantly growing and man as part of nature is participating in this growth the building we're sitting in was made by people who ate vegetables that grew outside now they have a design for a building they build the building that's all part of the same thing it's all part of this um the the productive nature of the planet and um we're playing our parts so whether it's whether you're a musician or whether you're an architect or whether you make television programs you're participating in this uh constant flow of information that's coming out and if you don't do it someone else will it may not be exactly the same and that's why it's important for all of us to play our role if we don't play our role no one's going to play our role for us no one can do your job for you they can do their job they could sit in your seat and do their job but they can't do your job because you're you you know it's your point of view and we are all different we are our own um we all see it a different way well when we when you were starting out yes did you what did you see as your role you know did you see yourself as a creative as a Creator or did you see yourself as somebody who was going to work with creators and talents I just loved music I I didn't know I didn't know that I would have a job doing this I did it because it was something I loved and it turned into a job which is I'm still shocked I didn't know there was such a thing can you tell me about the beginning how did it begin yeah um I was always loved music from the time I was a child was always the most important thing in my life and um played in punk rock bands uh was lucky to be in New York when the hip-hop Revolution happened and it was a completely Underground Music as underground as any tiny genre that most of the people you know don't know about that's what hip-hop was at one point in time I was lucky to be in the place where that was happening and um I would see these there was a club called McGrill on second I believe it was on Second Avenue in Manhattan downstairs it was a reggae club and one night a week they would have DJs From the Bronx and Harlem come and spin and and do what was happening at block parties in those places and um the most exciting music I'd heard that that and punk rock together they were both this like music from the street um you didn't have to be a a virtuoso it was more uh again this raw point of view it's like street art essentially yeah I mean there is a direct line isn't that between Punk and Hip-Hop it was for me I I don't know that there were like many punk rockers didn't like hip-hop and many hip-hoppers didn't like punk rock but for me it was the same it was this this birth of music from people who had things to say and who didn't fit into the category in the hierarchy of um the conservatory let's say so what why do you want to start a label I wanted to make music and I didn't know how it worked so when you make music and you want people to hear it you have to put it onto a disc at that point in time and I didn't know that you could go and ask someone else to do it you just do it so I come again coming from punk rock uh the do-it-yourself uh idea was a big part of punk rock you just made things so we just started making things and then remarkably it took on the life of its own but I always thought I would have a a real job and then I would get to continue working on music as my hobby and I was hoping that the real job would support my music habit and um again it's a miracle that uh music took on this life of its own so how did how did you start working with people like LL Cool J and the Beastie Boys did you approach them or what happened the Beastie Boys needed a DJ they were a punk rock band and decided they made a song before I met them called Cookie Puss which was a it was sort of a novelty it was a funny novelty song that was popular on college radio and it was their first foray into a hip-hop Style of music and they asked me to be their DJ and I DJ'd for them and then through that um we ended up making License to Ill [Music] foreign [Music] the first rap record I produced was by T LaRock and it's called it's yours it's 12 inch single that was popular in in its day I was living in the dorm room at NYU and again I didn't know anything about the music business at all and I went to this club Negril and would see these DJs play in these rap artists play and um and I and I always had a strong opinion of the the material I was there were certain things that I really liked and other things I didn't like as much and it seemed obvious it seemed obvious to me that this is better than this and I remember there was a group called The treacherous three who were my favorite rap group and they had these maybe three singles 12-inch singles on enjoy records that were the the best hip-hop records in my opinion of that time the best and then they assigned to a new label Sugar Hill and I didn't even know what that meant and they put out an album and their album wasn't as good as any of the three songs to me as their you know number one in my mind number one fan and they played it in a grill and I got to meet uh one of them and I said I'd like to let's have a meeting and I and he came to my dorm room for a meeting and his name is uh Kumo D great great rapper one of the great rappers of that era and um and again you have to understand this is the club Negril held maybe 200 people so just get a sense of and the 200 people were coming to go to Negril on Tuesday night they weren't coming to see the treacherous three because most of the people there didn't know who they were so it was a very underground world cool Modi comes to the dorm room and and I said I listened to these new songs and I feel like these other songs were better maybe we could work together in some way I get back to what was good about this and he said well we're signed Sugar Hill we can't do it we can't do that but talk to Special K who's another member of the group he said he's his I can't remember if it was his brother or his cousin he's got a brother or cousin who's a really good rapper and maybe that would be a way to start making these things and that's what happened I called Special K he came for a meeting at the dorm he wrote this song it's yours and gave it to T Lorac to perform um and we recorded it and it came out and it became again a a hit in the standards of the time and it took a long time took um it took probably a year for this song to kind of grow and that was the the first step and then based on artists liking that song I started getting demos at the at the dorm room and one of the demos was LL Cool J my brother [Music] did you know your way around a studio did you understand music production not really I still you're just kind of doing it I still really don't like I usually work with an engineer who knows how the equipment works and I just describe what I'm hearing I mean I can I can work with the drum machine a bit rudimentary to create the beats uh and I could DJ a bit to to do scratching which I did on on the early Death Jam records but I wouldn't say I'm that that's my strength at all so your strength was knowing what you wanted to hear yeah or or knowing when I heard it because that's another part of it a lot of it's trial and errors try things is this better is this better I like this one better okay now let's try these this is this better is this better and a lot of a b testing a lot all to this day that's that's the job and our artists on the whole prepare to do that I mean you know it's just sort of subscribe it try this try that some are some aren't some some I've had very few situations where an artist gets frustrated there have been a few but um I've worked with hundreds and most of them like are excited that anybody cares enough to want it to be the best it could be and are willing to do whatever it takes and I'm willing to do whatever it takes whatever it takes however long it takes um I don't set a production schedule it's like okay we have these weeks to make this thing happen it's it's not possible art doesn't get made on schedule like that so if I'm involved in a project it's it's going to take as long as it's going to take and and it there may be other things going on at the same time or we may interrupt it for a reason like okay we did we did this and now maybe it's time to go write more songs and now we'll do it again and we'll keep doing that until we get to a point where there's enough material where it's um undeniable do you have preferred musical tastes or do you listen to Everything I listen to a lot when I say everything I I don't listen to music that I don't like but I like music in all kinds of if you mean like genres I listen to all kinds of music but I I don't uh I don't force myself to listen to things I don't like because I spent hearing you talk about the line from Punk to hip-hop I suppose it then does make sense that you you then go into to rock I didn't start as a hip-hop Only Lover who devoted myself to hip-hop that was not the case I grew up loving the Beatles And from the Beatles then uh I went through a phase of loving comedy albums and I loved comedy then I liked um at that point in time I was probably 13 years old and I saw or listened to kiss and Ted Nugent and Aerosmith and the the big rock acts of the day and that was the music I listened to then and then punk rock happened and then I listened to punk rock and um it's constantly changing it's constantly changed now I listen to more classical music than anything else and I didn't when I was a child so whose idea was Run DMC and Aerosmith was that you that that was my idea [Music] it was an interesting moment I'll tell you what's how it happened I went to a dinner at this point in time Def Jam existed it was getting very popular we and when I say very popular we were selling around a lot of selling a lot of albums which is an important key because when you sell a lot of albums people who don't care about you all of a sudden care about you and that's what was happening so uh there was a case where someone from a label in California were whining and dining me wanting me to make music for them based on all the success we were having with Def Jam and one of the questions this person who again liked me liked the fact that these things were successful wanted to work with me um said why do you think why do you think um people like this stuff after all it's not music I thought wow it's interesting that someone in the music business perceives it not only not as music they don't like that they don't even see it as music That's How outside it was thought I feel like people just don't understand and and I just had this puzzle I know there's a way for people to understand what this is it's just a con they just don't understand the context of it and um and I and we finished the Run DMC album raising hell without Walk This Way on it and I remember thinking it's not done it's not done it need and it was I loved it it was great but I felt like there's some other thing that we can do that's going to make this mean more and and then the idea was okay maybe there's a maybe there's a cover song maybe there's a song we can take that's familiar so people understand it's music because they already know the music and put it through the hip-hop filter without changing it very much that was another key piece if it reinterpreted to the point of where you didn't recognize the original that wouldn't have solved this um this lack of communication and this so went through my record collection and found uh walk the sway and the beauty of Walk This Way served two functions one the first thing I was looking for was vocals that can be done that essentially work as non-melodic vocals and that song Always from the Aerosmith version it's it's phrasing it's how the verse works it doesn't have any Melody so essentially that's how rap song works it's no Melody more about the phrasing so it already solved the vocal issue and then the other piece of it that's interesting is that the drum break from Walk This Way was already a familiar song in hip-hop circles no one had ever heard the words in hip-hop but they knew the drum beat so it's like okay it's already uh within the Canon of hip-hop musically and lyrically it can work as Run-DMC song so that was the and I remember asking remedy to do it and they're like there's like they called it Toys in the Attic because that was the name of the album that it was on in in in the hip-hop world that was the Toys in the Attic break no one knew who Aerosmith was no one knew there was a song called Walk This Way it's the Toys in the Attic break they're like yeah we'll use it twice in the Attic break and I said but I want you to say what they're saying and they're like what do you talk it's like that's crazy I'm not going to do that and I remember um Russell who's Ren's brother calling him and says do what Rick said so that happened and then we got to make that song and and um did you have a Eureka moment where you were doing it going this is this this is working not at all no no you know what happens is everything we make we think it's really good if you hear it if if it comes out that means we really like it and uh you never know you never know what what's others react to you were sort of building up to that right from the beginning weren't you because you put back in Back Back in Black yeah on the beach that's what I like that's what I like again it was the music I like it was in the same way I said as artists we take in information and then recapitulate it out those are examples I didn't even know I was doing it then that was just what you did one of the things that I loved so much about hip-hop from the beginning and that was something that was missed prior to Def Jam one of the things I was excited in the records that I'm I made was that it's it's a it's an art form of montage if you listen to early hip-hop records you don't hear that yet because the people who were making the hip-hop records weren't hip-hop people they were people who had record companies and saw this new fad and then they made them the way that they made older r b records except they had someone rapping on it so the music was not yet hip-hop um but when you went out to a club it was much more there were many more rock beats there were many like Billy Squier big beat was an important one um it was music it was all types of music put through this DJ filter that made Hip Hop and I wanted the records to reflect that as much as the person rapping so so how how have you since then worked out who to work with either I hear something that I love and want to participate example would be James Blake I love James Blake's music I got to work with James Blake that's one way that happens another is an artist will come to me I see where they're where they're coming from and if I like where they're coming from that's a big piece and then I if I listen to music I look for it I think if there's a way in that I can help I'll give you an example recent example uh I produce a noun with The Strokes their last album is called the new abnormal and I like it very much I think it came out great and we we're in the middle of a new album now that we've we're recording in Costa Rica beautiful album and I don't know when it'll be done but we've got the basic track since beautiful with The Strokes they had asked me to produce them two times before the new abnormal and both times they had sent me demos and I listened to the demos and I just couldn't see a way in like I didn't know how to help I didn't know what to do so I ended up not working on those same with the chili peppers like the Chili Peppers asked me to produce an album before blood sugar Sex Magic maybe two albums before and I met with them and and I just didn't see how to participate I didn't know what to I didn't know how to be part of that um but then the stroke sent me demos for the new abnormal which were maybe the worst demos of all of them but they were seeds of things that I could imagine it's like oh I can see it was like a you know a 30 second phone recording whereas in the past they were like real demos these were the lowest quality and you know a guitar riff you know like like very tiny little uh fragments but those fragments I wanted to hear the songs that those fragments were part of and I would be happy to participate in helping flesh those out so that was what we did for that album you're often associated with sort of stripping back production I mean is that right sometimes I mean I I my taste tends to be there there is something about less is more I live as a minimalist you know I live in an empty house I like I like um the fewer things playing the more you can hear each of them the personality of each of them speak if you if you record one guitar you hear the sound of guitar If you record 10 guitars playing the same thing you hear you hear guitar but you don't hear a guitar player and I like hearing a guitar player I like hearing the personality um now if there's an artist whose trip is not hearing the personality and if it's creating a wall of sound I'm happy to participate in that it just is not my default it's not my default because what's really interesting I think is how you can do that on music I mean take Slayer yes which I would not normally associate with being able to listen um to individual things yeah and I haven't listened to a lot of it to be honest I listened to some of it before doing this and I thought and actually you can you can that was surprising to me that you can hear the snare drum or the guitar riff or whatever it is and what is otherwise to me sort of associated with just sort of this wall of noise yes that's an interesting thing about Slayer let's talk about them for a minute I again I have not realized this until you're asking this question but this is what is coming up from what you're saying based on what we talked about earlier the when you treat everything the same it it Waters down what it is speed metal was a new thing the people who are recording speed metal up until rain and bludge is the first uh Slayer album I made corded recorded speed metal more like other hard rock or heavy metal and it's different it's all different every everything we make is different and and it if you look at it in in hip-hop if you make it like it's an r b record it's an r b record with somebody rapping if you make it like going to the hip-hop club it's hip-hop with speed metal if you treat it like uh Black Sabbath it won't sound like it won't do what Slayer does and that has in in that case Slayer is they play very fast super fast and the nature of things that are fast is they come very close together like the kick drums are like you know like super fast when you record when you listen to Led Zeppelin records the drums the kick them goes so if you have someone playing and you treat it like Led Zeppelin it's just going to be a blur noise you won't hear any of it and that's what was happening up until rain and blood but and this is this is really in each case it comes from my lack of lack of experience lack of the right way to do it the right way to record Rock drums is the way Led Zeppelin did it but in my mind not if you're Slayer so in in some ways the because I don't know I wasn't experienced enough to know this is how you do it I'm listening to it for what it is and for what it is is this very precise type thing and you want to hear the precise tightness of it and up until that point no one had recorded it that way because that's just not the way you record things do you know what I'm saying and how do you do that I mean do you just when you you tell the engineer yeah we talk about I just want to hear it yeah we talk about it you understand what it is that what is the process no that delivers no I and I don't care I don't care what the process is we talk about it's like I'm not hearing this why am I not hearing this oh because we do it this way it's like are we doing it that way because we have to do it that way or because that's what you usually do if it's because what you usually do it doesn't matter we need to hear this we need to hear what makes this this and that's the case for everything so it's it's coming things with this beginner's mind we should talk about in the book of starting from scratch we have this beautiful thing before us in the case of Slayer for me this beautiful thing um how can we best get the energy that's being created here conveyed so that other people can hear what we're hearing and if you do it the way you do everything else it won't be as specific to this case and could completely undermine the beauty of what it is there was there was a movement in Washington DC called GoGo which I thought was going to be the next hip-hop and um there's a group called Trouble Funk was my favorite of those groups there was also Chuck Brown the Soul Searchers many great groups and they put out these uh independent self-recorded recordings that were great and Island Records signed all of these groups because they were going to have a they were going to Corner the market on the new hip it wasn't hip-hop but it was like the next thing after hip-hop and they produced these uh these albums that didn't at all reflect what was great about GoGo and you may have never heard of Gogo and if you haven't it's because of this it's because the people who helped lift it treated it like everything else instead of making the best version of Gogo they could they tried to make it putting go go through the filter of commercial R B music and it's it didn't it wasn't good as a go go fan it wasn't good and especially what you've done with the book is to take applying all these lessons to life in general yes and the book doesn't have any of the stories that I'm telling you uh it's it's only what I've learned from doing this for ever for as long as I can remember the principles and I didn't know them when I started working on the book I didn't know what these principles were I reverse engineered decisions that were made over the years why did we do it this way and I tried to understand it and then based on why is there a principle that could help somebody else and that that was the mission of the book I mean are you very spiritual I am and and what I mean I saw you at the beginning of the interview just when I was doing the the intro sort of close your eyes and take a moment yeah um so I mean are you do you do meditation do you know I learned to meditate when I was 14 years old it played a big role in who I am I know that because um from the time I was 14 until I went to NYU probably 17 so three years I meditated twice a day then I stopped when I went to NYU then I moved to California and I started again and from the first time my first meditation after not doing it for four or five maybe five years from the first time I realized oh this I know I know what this is because of the time I had done like I know what this is and this is a big part of who I am it's been a big part of who I am even in the five years that I wasn't doing it because I had done it for the three and um and since then it's been a lifelong combination of TM was the first one but since I've done vipassana I've done I I've done many different practices and now I'm doing a Tai Chi ruler practice which is beautiful sometimes they're physical sometimes they're sitting but I I love I'm looking for answers and any way that I can find I'm completely open-minded I don't um I don't hold any beliefs very strongly I'm very open to changing I mean you talk about the importance of having an open mind to the book I mean is meditation and that spirituality is that what helps you I believe so I Believe by uh going back to this state of clearing everything and you know we talk to ourselves all day and we tell ourselves Stories We explain things to ourselves we see something happen that doesn't make sense every day you'll see something that doesn't make sense and then we'll make up a story that explains what could have happened and as soon as we have that first story in our mind at the moment it's oh maybe it's that and then we don't think about it again we're okay we don't have to puzzle it forever and then later in the day if we were to think back about what happened we don't think about what actually happened we remember our story this is what happened we don't we never know that that's what actually happened that's our story of what happened so I'm aware of that and I and I never assume that also I was a magician when I was young so in Magic you you create an illusion where the audience sees it and they think something is happening yet you know something different is happening and that happens in our life all the time we see things we misunderstand them we over we um we misread things all the time and uh to knowing that we have the capability to misread things I I hold everything very softly because maybe you know maybe that's the case I don't I don't know maybe but with everything that also gives you great a great flexibility in thinking the kind of flexibility you would have needed is come back to your career in um creating this amazing moment of Johnny Cash singing hurt yeah so how did that happen how you know here's a man who was kind of ignored at that time he was past it yes um how did you make him you know suddenly you know with this with this track which was a cover it wasn't even his you know his or your track how did that happen the the relationship with Johnny Cash started at that point in time I had worked with mostly new artists almost all of the artists that I worked with at that time it was their first first recording first or second you know the new artist and was having great success and I and I just had the thought I wonder if this way of looking at things would work for a grown-up artist and um so it started really as an experiment just to see what what was possible and I thought about okay what are the great grown-up artists maybe someone who hasn't been doing their best work for a period of time and the first person I thought it was Johnny Cash who had been he had two huge in the 1950s simultaneously with Elvis on Sun Records he had this huge success and then again in with the um with his prison album another huge success he was the most successful artist on the sold more records than anyone else in on Columbia Records and then now these years later he had been dropped by Colombia he had been dropped by two labels and was playing at dinner theaters and I went to see him played it in a theater and I and I thought I feel like he's great it's just he's not doing his best work he had done his best work but he's not doing his best work and would it be possible and we got together and talked about it and uh and he was he didn't understand why I wanted to work with him he had um I remember after his funeral I was on flight home um and there was a person a person came up to me on on plane who I didn't know and said um I just wanted to tell you Johnny it was a friend of Johnny so I didn't know he's like Johnny always loved you because he said you believed in him when he didn't believe in himself and he'll he'll oh he said he told this friend like he always would trust you because you trusted in him when he didn't trust in himself um it was beautiful it was just a beautiful moment the way that hurt came about in particular when I thought of Johnny Cash as a mythical figure I know he was a human being I got to hang out with the human being but the power of Johnny Cash was the man in Black this mythical figure and I looked for for songs but he could sing that suited the man in Black not necessarily my friend Johnny Cash and hurt was one of those songs where if you listen to the original Trent Reznor version of the song it's not something that you would think would be uh appropriate for Johnny and musically when Johnny heard it he's just like he just thought I lost my mind um so I created a demo I might even selling it myself I had a guitar player play Play the song and I might have I can't remember but I think I might have sung it I have a vague memory of singing it just kind of show just to showcase the lyrics because that's what it was about it was about when when looking for a cover song the lyrics are a big part of it because musically it may change it may change from what the original is so the song is really the words and the melody and and I thought about the lyrics and I thought about the difference between Trent singing a song of regret if you're you know if you're 20 I think he was 21 when he wrote it maybe 22. so when you're 21 and you sing about regret give your whole life to work it out it's only 70 and you sing about a life of regret it's really heavy but I remember everything what have I become my sweetest friend everyone I know goes away it's heavy in a different way and that was part of the thought was that this this is this terribly sad song of regret coming from someone who has lived long enough that you'd think they would have gotten over it you know learned past it um like Trent has um so Johnny doing that song really had this this power and it it seemed when you when he sang it he sang it with such feeling it sounded like he wrote it he owned the song I remember Trent saying it's like it's not my song Anymore and now when when when Trent plays it live he does the Johnny Cash version yeah and and did Johnny Cash perform it or did he was it his story did he make it his story did he feel it yeah uh let me see if I can even answer that I'm not sure I could answer that I think one of the one of Johnny's greatest strengths as an artist was that his ability to take material and sing it in a way where we believe this is what he's saying we believe him he he had the voice of authority and I think it's a skill set he had because he was able to deliver many songs with that conviction that's what that's really what he wasn't a great singer in terms of he didn't have much of a range or he his ability was to tell you a story and have you know he meant it that was his strength so I can't tell you whether it's a perform how he did that but he did it for that's why he was great I mean do you ever think about sort of how lucky you've been I mean I I said to myself I said to my dad last night I was interviewing you and he just watched the McCartney yeah thing and he said oh you know that's that's going to be good fun and then I said to my 15 year old this morning said where are you going I said I'm going to interview a music producer called Rick Rubin he said oh right what's he done and I said 99 problems he went all right okay I mean like my dad's 88 my son's 15. yeah he's spanning a lot of generations of Music yes yeah no it's uh I can't believe it I'm ultimately a fan of music that's it I'm really a fan I'm not qualified in any way to do anything other than love music and um the fact that this has happened is really uh feel blessed and thankful and my anything that I can do to uh share beautiful things that that's my interest the reason the reason for writing the book was I get to work with I get to work with a lot of artists and over the course of my life if I make let's say I've made eight albums a year for 40 years it's you add that up it's a lot of artists for anyone who does my job it's still a small number of artists compared to people in the world and I thought any way that this uh whatever I've picked up can help anyone be good at what they do I would love to pass that on and that's why the book exists interviewing McCartney Just as I mentioned it I mean was that you I mean you know did you become the teenager or or was that you as me now as you now yeah yeah I'm I'm a lifelong Beatles fan I had the idea for the piece um because I don't know if you know this that more has been written there are more books about the Beatles than anyone other than Jesus Jesus the most has been written about Jesus Beatles are next they're not quite bigger than God not yet still not you well we have time as someone who's collected so many Beatles books Beatles albums Beatles bootlegs all things beetles I would go to Beatles conventions uh I'm I'm really a a true fan one of the things that I thought was missing in this story was about the musicianship is very little like most of the Beatles stories are about beatlemania or the incredible songwriting both of which pretty good to talk about uh the thing that was unsaid was if you make a list of the great bass players in the world you might not even put Paul on it because you think of him as Beetle Paul the guy who wrote yesterday you know you don't think of him as he's not just a bass player but if it were not for his bass playing we might not know Beetle Paul and that's that's true of that band they were so great um that that was just a missing piece of the story and I called Paul and he answered the phone which is incredible and I said have this idea let's make a documentary about you the musician you the bass player um it's just it's it's a story I haven't heard and he said uh okay let's do it and and it's like no again it's surreal the whole thing's surreal in fact he picked up the phone is surreal the fact that he said yes let's do it it's surreal the fact that it happened is surreal in the fact that people have seen it and liked it the whole thing it's like a dream I mean one of the things that occurred to me watching it was as well that for fans of any band what you would love to do is what you were able to do which is to go back to the tapes and isolate the tracks um if you do that do you think you you know is the magic when it all comes together or is there magic in those individual tracks that you know because you were picking that out yes yes both there's magic in both clearly the sum total is the reason we care that said for anything that you love to understand how it's put together is fascinating you know people who are car Fanatics like to take it take apart cards and put them back together again it's like that it's like we get to see under the hood of the Beatles which we we're never able to do before and um it's it's revelatory to hear the the things that you've heard your entire life my first memory of music when I was three years old was hearing the Beatles so it's the music that's been in my life the most I've probably listened to Beatles music more than anything else over the over the course of my life and whatever little bit I do know about music came from listening to The Beatles that's it that's my education so to be able to hear how they did it and you still don't really know how they did it but we're step close you know it's just I want to hear everything I want to hear everything I want to hear every outtake I want to hear everything just try to get closer to this thing that seems so beyond our comprehension they made 13 albums in seven years if you look at what artists do today a big band today might put out an album every every few years think of the breadth and depth and changes that the Beatles made creatively over the course of the 13 albums and think that that happened in a seven year cycle it's unbelievable it's not possible except they did it I'm imagining and I don't know whether this is right or wrong but you've influenced Jay-Z on that on music rock and guitar and even the Beatles is that is that true not that I'm aware of I mean it's possible I have but not that I'm aware of because he's he's on that sort of same track I suppose a line of bringing different things together isn't he I have no idea um okay I just imagine that but uh maybe not I was hoping you were going to tell me yeah that's the reason he did gospel no no all I know is how we made 99 problems but I don't know much I I'm hoping to learn more about Jay's process I'd love to I think he's he's uh he's a the way that he does what he does is so no one understands I mean people who love hip-hop love Jay-Z the the amount of people in the world who know who Jay-Z is and who understand why he's great and why he's Jay-Z it's the tiniest fraction of people who understand why he's great so that would be an interesting interesting thing to think about how to sh how to demonstrate why J yjz is Jay-Z that'll be good a good uh I mean could you could you have a stab at explaining it why is he so great it's it'll take uh it'll take something like McCartney three two one with Jay-Z for that to for us to experience that yeah but he is as special as that do you think absolutely absolutely on another planet he's on another planet and it's his lyrical ability is on another planet he's the only artist I've ever only rapper I've ever worked with who doesn't write anything down everything you've heard on all of his records is I want to say it's fun it's not completely spontaneous because it doesn't just happen but he just sits and listens to the beat and mumbles um doesn't write anything down [Music] and you he does it long enough maybe 20 minutes you don't even think you're not even paying you're having a conversation he's there over and over again you have no idea what he's doing and then it's like okay I got it and he goes in the other room and he does this complicated complicated long thing I don't know how he even remembers it much less just created it and remembers it spontaneously and they said okay let's try it again and he does it again and the words will be the same but the phrasing will be different the caves will be different almost like a jazz solo if you know the melody each time you play it it might have different inflections he'll do that and all spontaneously in the moment from the top of his head I've never seen anything remotely like it I mean it sort of brings me back to where we started because towards the end of the book you get to that sort of you know creation and what you get from it um how how do you how do we as individuals avoid comparing ourselves to Greatness and and putting ourselves down and saying well this is rubbish yeah how do we get the Joy from the creativity yeah when it's just something we've done yeah creativity isn't it's not a um when you say it's rubbish it's rubbish compared to what that's the thing it's always if if you look at it in comparison to something else you're never going to be satisfied you know that the Grass Is Always Greener somewhere else we each have a singular voice we each have our own voice what I do is different than what you do what you do is different than what you do what you do is different than what you do we all do something different and they're not comfortable they have nothing to do with each other it's apples and oranges so if you make something today and you think it can be better tomorrow you tomorrow you can improve it you can you can continually make the thing you're making better you can learn and practice to do anything I um this interesting story I after being vegan I weighed a hundred pounds more than while I was vegan I weighed 100 pounds more than I do now and um and I met Laird Hamilton who's Big Wave Surfer and he said this is when I was when I had lost a bunch of weight after starting eat animals again um he said come why don't you come to the gym with us and I've never been to a gym in my life I'm I'm I have a sedentary life so I lay on a couch listening to music that's what I do that's my life and uh and he said come to the gym with us and he was such an interesting person and uh so good at what he did I wanted to be around him just to see what it was like to be good at what he's good at it's interesting to be around people who are good at anything so I got to hang around with him and he said okay let's uh today let's do push-ups I could not do one push-up couldn't do one push-up and he broke it up he's like okay let's let's break it into pieces and had me do a part of a push-up and a different part of a push-up and a different can you can you be in a plank position I could be in a plank position okay could you be and and he had me do all the pieces like okay Matthew combine this one step one with step two let's do step one and step two and I can do that it's like okay now do step three to step two and and he broke it up in a way where I was able to do one push-up and it was amazing and then through that I worked up to the point of being able to do a hundred consecutive push-ups which is insane insane and it's something that again I I didn't believe I could ever do it and through um really trusting someone who knew who knew about something showing me how to break it up and taking the voices in my head if I can't do it a way to something he said to me I said I can't do it he's like no you never say you can't do it you say I haven't done it yet I haven't done it yet is the answer to anything you haven't done yet there's nothing that you can't do until you you know we we know and and I think that's a big part of creativity is accepting that we can do anything that reason and rationality is not always our friend it's not there to support us it's reason and rationality tell us what we can't do the Arts teach us what we what we can do and what we can go beyond reason tells us what's normal we normal is not anything to Aspire to we want to go past normal and um so so we all have this potential again I'm not saying we can all be the best in the world but it's not about that we can all be better than we are now and that's the work is how do we what are we and are we willing to commit ourselves to do everything we can to be better than we are now so if you could change the world wave a magic wand how would you change it the first piece that I would think about is communication and and this magic wand it's difficult because I I believe language is insufficient like I'm telling you words you're hearing what I'm saying you're imagining what I'm thinking maybe 70 percent you know maybe you're getting 70 Maybe um we we don't we can't really hear each other we don't know what each other uh really are getting at so I I would I would say commute if we could communicate in a way if I could wave a magic wand and you and you could really know what I felt and I could really know what you felt if we all could really feel each other I think um I think it'd be peace on Earth Rick Rubin thank you very much indeed for sharing your ways to change the world and some of the ideas from a remarkable book thank you very much thank you well I hope you enjoyed that um if you did then please do give us a rating or a review you can watch all of these podcasts on the Channel 4 News YouTube channel our producer is Nina Hodgson until next time bye-bye

Channel: Channel 4 News

Views: 98,853

Keywords: Channel 4 News, rick rubin, rick rubin book, beastie boys, RunDMC, Aerosmith, Run DMS and Aerosmith, The Strokes, Jay Z, Music, music production, music producer, Slayer, Johnny Cash, Johnny Cash Hurt, Music podcast, Music interview, Rick Rubin interview, Music producer interview, Krishnan guru-murthy

Id: WudmmlYnx8c

Length: 58min 10sec (3490 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 13 2023