Speaker 1: Pushkin, Pushkin. Just a quick note here. You can listen
Speaker 1: to all of the music mentioned in this episode on
Speaker 1: our playlist, which you can find a link to in
Speaker 1: the show notes for licensing reasons. Each time a song
Speaker 1: is referenced in this episode, you'll hear this sound effect.
Speaker 1: All right, enjoyed the episode. I first met Rick Rubin
Speaker 1: years ago at someone's house in Los Angeles. He's impossible
Speaker 1: to miss long white beard low soft voice, one of
Speaker 1: the great music producers of our time. He was there
Speaker 1: at the birth of hip hop. He produced Jay Z's
Speaker 1: ninety nine Problems. He did five Chili Peppers albums, produced
Speaker 1: Adele's twenty one, Tom Petty's Flowers. He resurrected Johnny Cash.
Speaker 1: That could go on. Then I met him again about
Speaker 1: a year ago because I'd been talking about doing a
Speaker 1: music podcast with my old friend Bruce Headlam, and I
Speaker 1: heard that Rick had been talking about doing a music
Speaker 1: show too, which is a bit like saying that Bruce
Speaker 1: and I have been thinking about starting a pickup basketball game.
Speaker 1: And then we heard that Lebron James had been thinking
Speaker 1: the exact same thing. I mean, whose pickup game are
Speaker 1: you going to join? The two short Canadians or lebron
Speaker 1: So I started going up to Rick's recording studio in
Speaker 1: Malibu whenever I was in La just to chat and
Speaker 1: listen to music. His place is called Shango Law, an oasis,
Speaker 1: one of the most famous recording studios in the country,
Speaker 1: built by Robbie Robertson in the band years ago. Bob
Speaker 1: Dylan recorded there and after him everyone, I mean everyone.
Speaker 1: There's a main building, a cottage all in white. There's
Speaker 1: another building that looks like a chapel, and there's Bob
Speaker 1: Dylan's old tour bus which has been retrofitted as a
Speaker 1: small studio, which is my favorite place at Shango Law,
Speaker 1: all on a shimmering hiltop with the sound of the
Speaker 1: ocean surf in the background. We started taping our conversations
Speaker 1: and Rick started calling in the musicians he knew, and
Speaker 1: Bruce started sitting down with his favorite artists. And now
Speaker 1: we have this show, a podcast about musicians and their music.
Speaker 1: Our pickup game has come to life. My name is
Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell. Welcome to Broken Record, a production of Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: Rick and I began recording the episode You're about to
Speaker 1: hear at Shango Law, not long ago, and I was
Speaker 1: going to go back up and finish talking to him
Speaker 1: when the Woolsey Fire started, one of the worst fires
Speaker 1: in La County history. It engulfed Malibu. As I'm recording this,
Speaker 1: thousands of acres of burned, countless homes are gone, an
Speaker 1: entire community lost. So I met Rick in Santa Monica
Speaker 1: instead the afternoon after Rick and his family fled the fire.
Speaker 1: Maybe just tell me about you yesterday. Woke up yesterday morning,
Speaker 1: was told that Malibu was going to be evacuated soon.
Speaker 1: So packed up the baby and left. Didn't really take anything,
Speaker 1: just took sort of what we were wearing, what we
Speaker 1: had on, a couple of t shirts, no stuff, and
Speaker 1: just left. What time did you leave? Nine thirty? And
Speaker 1: you say it took how many hours to get to
Speaker 1: It took a little over four hours to get Santa Monica.
Speaker 1: It's normally a twenty minute drive. And it was bumper
Speaker 1: to bumper parking lot like traffic the whole way. And
Speaker 1: did you when you were leaving, could you see the fires?
Speaker 1: You saw the smoke. Let me show you this picture.
Speaker 1: Let's see kind of give you a sense of it.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, that has bananas it's insane. Look it
Speaker 1: looks fake, it looks photograph that looks like it looks
Speaker 1: like a nuclear bomb. So what do you know at
Speaker 1: this point? What do you know about your house and studio?
Speaker 1: I don't know much. I know there have been reports
Speaker 1: that the house is gone, but it's impossible to know
Speaker 1: because no one can get there. There's this map that
Speaker 1: the county put up of where things burned, but it's
Speaker 1: not so accurate. But that map shows that my house
Speaker 1: is gone, and that map shows that the studio is
Speaker 1: still surviving. There's a map on a website maintained by
Speaker 1: Ventura County. The purple colored parts are where the fire is,
Speaker 1: and if you zoom in right where Rick's house is,
Speaker 1: it's inside the purple area just and his studio is
Speaker 1: just outside the purple area. That's all he knew. I
Speaker 1: would have been a wreck. Rick isn't like that. This
Speaker 1: is I can't imagine being in your shoes. It's pretty strange.
Speaker 1: It's definitely, it's more strange than anything else. It's just
Speaker 1: I don't know what to make of it. Are you
Speaker 1: someone who's attached to your belongings? Not particularly? I mean
Speaker 1: I like the things I like, but I feel like,
Speaker 1: ultimately it's just stuff. Yeah, and most stuff is replaceable.
Speaker 1: In a way, it feels like a potential for a
Speaker 1: clean start. Yeah. When I moved from in town, I
Speaker 1: lived in a big, old Spanish house filled with antiques.
Speaker 1: And when I moved to Malibu, I moved to this
Speaker 1: very empty, zen house and that felt good. And this
Speaker 1: seems like an even more radical version of that, to
Speaker 1: where there's no house or stuff. You've gone back to
Speaker 1: the Oh my lord, we're traveling very light. Yeah. Have
Speaker 1: you talked to other people? Many? There are lots and
Speaker 1: lots of musicians in Malibu, many musicians, many friends, and
Speaker 1: and people are reacting differently. Some people are really hysterical,
Speaker 1: hysterically upset. Some people are concerned with losing specific things.
Speaker 1: But there's the reality of the situation. There isn't much
Speaker 1: to think about. Whatever energy I put into thinking about
Speaker 1: it won't change the situation. And I was thinking about it.
Speaker 1: Of all the you ask about the stuff, And when
Speaker 1: I was thinking about it last night, I got a
Speaker 1: little sad. When I was kind of envisioning walking through
Speaker 1: the house. The thing that made me saddest were the trees.
Speaker 1: The trees are these big beautiful, old trees that have
Speaker 1: been there for at least one hundred years, and you
Speaker 1: can always build a house, but the trees will never
Speaker 1: be those trees, And so much of the personality of
Speaker 1: the place for me was the setting of the trees.
Speaker 1: So in that way, I started thinking, Oh, it really
Speaker 1: is a loss because those trees will likely not be there.
Speaker 1: Returned to Malibu, I don't know, we'll see. This was
Speaker 1: going to be broken record brought to you from Shangolaw
Speaker 1: in beautiful Malibu, but now it's something else. So keep
Speaker 1: that in mind as you listen to the earlier part
Speaker 1: of our conversation. The part that follows it was recorded
Speaker 1: in a Malibu that doesn't exist anymore, at a little
Speaker 1: oasis that is no longer an oasis. The grass was green,
Speaker 1: the sky was blue, the trees were beautiful. We sat
Speaker 1: in the main studio at Shanglaw, me all jumpy and
Speaker 1: ramped up as always, Rick barefoot sitting cross legged on
Speaker 1: one of the couches in the central studio, talking softly
Speaker 1: like the og that he is a happier time back then.
Speaker 1: I had to ask about one of the Rick Ruben
Speaker 1: urban legends about the time he played the famous New
Speaker 1: York punk club CBGB's in high school with his band
Speaker 1: The Pricks. Did he or did he not have his
Speaker 1: dad dress up in a policeman's uniform and shut down
Speaker 1: the show because the Pricks were too extreme even for CBGB's.
Speaker 1: Is this true that? Do you really menu? It's possible?
Speaker 1: I honestly don't remember, but it's possible. And I remember
Speaker 1: even with the early days of the Beastie Boys, we
Speaker 1: would sort of manufacture an incident. Yeah, just exciting situations. Yeah, this,
Speaker 1: this is consistent with your understanding of your dad's personality
Speaker 1: that he would play along. He would do that. Okay,
Speaker 1: any any opportunity to perform as a policeman, we love that.
Speaker 1: Do you ever go back and listen to the music
Speaker 1: you played at that age? I do not. I haven't
Speaker 1: heard it in a long time. Yeah, what do you
Speaker 1: think you would? How do you think you would? I
Speaker 1: don't honestly listen back to music I've worked on at
Speaker 1: any point, really not so much. Why is it just
Speaker 1: kind of moving forward? Yeah? I rarely read things that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also think when you put a lot of time
Speaker 1: into something, you've already spent that time with it. It's
Speaker 1: like if you've spent a thousand hours on a book,
Speaker 1: you don't want to spend more time you've already done that, yea.
Speaker 1: So same with music. So we work on it for
Speaker 1: a long time and by the time it's done, it's done.
Speaker 1: Was there a point where you decided you would rather
Speaker 1: produce and make music than perform it. I was on
Speaker 1: tour with the Beastie Boys, the first Beastie Boy tour
Speaker 1: was opening for Madonna, which was Madonna's first tour, the Virgin.
Speaker 1: The Beastie Boys opened for Madonna. Hilarious, It's hilarious. There
Speaker 1: was a whole aspect of the Beastie Boys that were
Speaker 1: really influenced by Monty Python and Steve Martin, and there
Speaker 1: was definitely a outrageous, surreal comedy aspect to it, and
Speaker 1: being on the Madonna tour was sort of like that
Speaker 1: because the Beasties were sort of rowdy and dirty, and
Speaker 1: Madonna's audience were fourteen year old girl those twelve year
Speaker 1: old girls, so it was a really dicey It's like
Speaker 1: when Jimmy Hendrix opened for the Monkeys, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like it's a weird doesn't really work, so you would
Speaker 1: literally look at in the audience, and would you see
Speaker 1: a mixture of these kind of yeah, little girls and
Speaker 1: their moms mixed in with some Beastie fans, not so
Speaker 1: many Beasti fans, And we didn't even have We had
Speaker 1: very little, We didn't even have an album out yet.
Speaker 1: It was it was very early in the Beasti's career.
Speaker 1: We did the shows from the point of view of
Speaker 1: being the bad the bad guys. So in like pro
Speaker 1: wrestling world, you have good guys and bad guys, and
Speaker 1: the Beasties always sort of played the role of the
Speaker 1: bad guys, which wasn't completely understood by the audience. It
Speaker 1: was just, you know, there were a lot of booze,
Speaker 1: and it was all sort of an inside joke. Every
Speaker 1: everything to do with the Beastie Boys was essentially an
Speaker 1: inside joke, and we the lyrics to the songs were
Speaker 1: often things that just we either inside jokes or things
Speaker 1: that we found funny, but with no looking past a
Speaker 1: very small audience. How did you how did you meet them?
Speaker 1: Was this when you were in Nyu? I was at Nyu.
Speaker 1: I think Adam Yauk was going to barred. Adam Harvetz
Speaker 1: might have still been in high school I can't remember
Speaker 1: if Mike was still in school, but we met through
Speaker 1: punk rock circles. We were all into punk rock and
Speaker 1: there was a little teeny punk rock record store called
Speaker 1: Rat Cage Records, who actually put out the first Beastie Boys,
Speaker 1: maybe even the first two Beastie Boys singles, and I
Speaker 1: probably met them at the Rat Cage Store. Then there
Speaker 1: was a club called Nagrill on Second Avenue that was
Speaker 1: a reggae club and one night a week that had
Speaker 1: hip hop Night, and I remember meeting Mike d at
Speaker 1: that as well. What's fascinating to me about that era
Speaker 1: is the line between punk and hip hop is so porous.
Speaker 1: Is Yes and no. They were definitely two different scenes,
Speaker 1: but they were both bringing music back to a street level,
Speaker 1: so there was a crossover appreciation. But it was definitely
Speaker 1: two different worlds. Yeah, but you had a foot in both, absolutely,
Speaker 1: as did the Bcie Boys. That's what we really had
Speaker 1: in common was our punk rock roots and love of
Speaker 1: hip hop. When I was in high school in Long Island,
Speaker 1: there was a radio show called Mister Magic's Rap Attack
Speaker 1: on WHBI, but that was the only place that hip
Speaker 1: hop was on the radio. The kids who liked hip
Speaker 1: hop in my high school would record this show and
Speaker 1: listen to it on boombox all week, and I had
Speaker 1: friends in that circle, and I would listen to music
Speaker 1: with them, And then I was also listening to punk
Speaker 1: rock on my own, but there were no I was
Speaker 1: the only punk rocker in my high school. So in
Speaker 1: rap music I had some friends. In punk rock, I
Speaker 1: didn't really have friends. Yeah, again, because it was pre internet.
Speaker 1: If it was Internet time, i'd have friends all over
Speaker 1: the world who liked the things I like. But then
Speaker 1: it was really the people that you were around. So
Speaker 1: because of the community of hip hop, it took on
Speaker 1: a bigger role in my life. And it wasn't in
Speaker 1: those years unusual for white kids in New York to
Speaker 1: be going to hip hop shows or absolutely it was
Speaker 1: very unusual. So you would show up and I'd be
Speaker 1: the only white person and how did you did that?
Speaker 1: Did you like that? Did you do you notice? Did
Speaker 1: you really think about it? I went for the music,
Speaker 1: And while sometimes I went places where I felt like
Speaker 1: when I would walk in, I would feel like, hmm,
Speaker 1: I wonder if I belong here, But then as soon
Speaker 1: as the music would start, my relationship to the music
Speaker 1: and the rest of the audience relationship to the music
Speaker 1: was the same. So I felt camaraderie in terms of
Speaker 1: musical taste and fandom. But you what's interesting is that
Speaker 1: your career is defined by an indifference to boundaries, right.
Speaker 1: It's almost like you're completely uninterested in the kind of
Speaker 1: genres other people set up, And I'm just curious. Was
Speaker 1: that there from the very beginning? Yeah, music was always music,
Speaker 1: and I always liked a wide variety. I was like
Speaker 1: James Brown and the Talking Heads and Barry White, the Beatles.
Speaker 1: When you toured with the Beasties and Madonna. Did you
Speaker 1: like Madonna's music? It was probably poppy for my taste
Speaker 1: at that time. Yeah, Yeah, I tended to like more edgy,
Speaker 1: more edgy things like hip hop, punk, rock, heavy metal. Parenthetically,
Speaker 1: did you guys all hang out together? We did? Man,
Speaker 1: I wish I had it a fly on a wall
Speaker 1: for that. So you're like, how long did the two
Speaker 1: go on? I remember it being a summer. But oh
Speaker 1: but what I didn't get to in the story was
Speaker 1: I got an ear infection and had to stop had
Speaker 1: to stop touring. And if it wasn't for that, I
Speaker 1: probably would have kept doing it. But in reality it
Speaker 1: was I think it was sort of the universe stepping
Speaker 1: in saying, you know, you belong in the recording studio,
Speaker 1: and it felt right, like it felt more right for me.
Speaker 1: I was never a good traveler. I was better being
Speaker 1: in one place. You weren't but you on that tooy,
Speaker 1: you weren't playing. I was the DJ. Oh you were
Speaker 1: the DJ. Yeah? Oh I see, yeah, I was the
Speaker 1: DJ in the group. Yeah yeah, oh that's oh. I know.
Speaker 1: I had forgotten that fact. And we got to play.
Speaker 1: I mean, we played at Madison Square Guarden, we played
Speaker 1: at Radio City Musical. It was unbelievable. I mean for
Speaker 1: a kid growing up in New York getting to play
Speaker 1: in the places that you maybe twenty one, yeah, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, you're just out of NYU, still in NYU. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so maybe even younger. Yeah, in nineteen living in NYU dorm.
Speaker 1: Are you going to class? Are you? I didn't take
Speaker 1: any classes before three in the afternoon because I knew
Speaker 1: I wouldn't wake up. Yeah, how do you have time
Speaker 1: to take classes when you're are you out every night?
Speaker 1: Out every night? And I would go to these clubs
Speaker 1: like Nagrill and the Roxy and see what was going
Speaker 1: on there, and the records that were coming out didn't
Speaker 1: reflect hip hop. Hip Hop was a whole interactive culture
Speaker 1: and the DJ. The reason in the Deaf Jam logo
Speaker 1: the DJ is big is because the DJ was a
Speaker 1: key piece of the hip hop world, but the records
Speaker 1: at the time didn't reflect that. The records at the
Speaker 1: time were a band playing and a guy rapping. But
Speaker 1: if you went to a hip hop club, you saw
Speaker 1: a guy DJing and cutting up records and scratching and
Speaker 1: guys rapping and sort of the interaction between that was
Speaker 1: the version of the hip hop band was the DJ
Speaker 1: and the MC. So really the goal of making records
Speaker 1: was more almost like a documentarian of like, I'd go
Speaker 1: to these clubs, I'd hear this incredible music. Then I
Speaker 1: would buy the records and they wouldn't be anything like it.
Speaker 1: And just from the fan point of view of wanting
Speaker 1: records that sounded like what I heard at the club,
Speaker 1: I started making them. What in your mind, is that
Speaker 1: is the first great true hip hop record or one
Speaker 1: of the first Yeah, I would say run DMC, Sucker MCS,
Speaker 1: that's probably the best hip hop record. They were rap
Speaker 1: records before that, but that was maybe the first hip
Speaker 1: hop record you know, in that era, I had a
Speaker 1: jade tree in my dorm room which I which I dubbed,
Speaker 1: which I named run DM Tree. Wow, that's just how
Speaker 1: that's how far from the mainstream we were in in
Speaker 1: Toronto in nineteen eighty the U and I had all
Speaker 1: I rewrote the lyrics of the song to be all
Speaker 1: about my jade tree. J trees are lucky. You're supposed
Speaker 1: to be lucky. Really. Yeah, we'll be back with more
Speaker 1: broken record after this. If we were to make a
Speaker 1: musical biography of Rick Rubin in which we list all
Speaker 1: of the transformative songs music you worked on over the
Speaker 1: course of your life, tell me the next one, what's
Speaker 1: the next song? That kind of opens up your sense
Speaker 1: of what's possible musically as a listener. As a listener
Speaker 1: and also as a producer, I can say another one
Speaker 1: that was meaningful was before there was a group called
Speaker 1: Public Enemy. Chuck d had a radio show and the
Speaker 1: theme song from his radio show was called Public Enemy
Speaker 1: Number one, and that's what ended up being what the
Speaker 1: band was based on. But when we first heard that
Speaker 1: little minute long promo for his radio show, something that
Speaker 1: didn't sound like anything else. I think another key piece
Speaker 1: in the story of the music that we were making
Speaker 1: at the time was walked this way. Was it really
Speaker 1: bridged a gap for people who didn't understand hip hop,
Speaker 1: and that was really the purpose of doing it. People
Speaker 1: at the time didn't think hip hop was even music,
Speaker 1: and the idea was if we could find a song
Speaker 1: that was familiar, that was very close to hip hop
Speaker 1: and could be given a hip hop treatment, that it
Speaker 1: would help people bridge the gap. But what was it
Speaker 1: about that particular song by Aerosmith that made you think
Speaker 1: it was appropriate for this kind of treatment. It's lyrically
Speaker 1: it's very close to a rap record already. You know,
Speaker 1: if you listen to the original Aerosmith version, the way
Speaker 1: Steven does the vocals, it's essentially a rap record. And
Speaker 1: that was the key. It was like, Okay, this is
Speaker 1: music that people are familiar with, that they grew up liking,
Speaker 1: and now here's this other music that's similar to it,
Speaker 1: but they don't get it at all. If we could
Speaker 1: just point to this connection, maybe the lights will go off.
Speaker 1: What does it mean when you say that it's essentially
Speaker 1: a hip hop record in a way lyrically what does
Speaker 1: that mean? The way the song works is built on
Speaker 1: a rhyme scheme and phrasing more than melody. Most hip
Speaker 1: hop is based on a rhyme scheme more than melody.
Speaker 1: That's really the big change is like the difference between
Speaker 1: singing and rapping is rapping is words in a rhythm
Speaker 1: that are catchy because of the rhythm, whereas most music
Speaker 1: up until rapping, it's based on the melody. And that's
Speaker 1: really the difference. Yeah, and the Aerosmith song is rooted
Speaker 1: in the phrasing. Sometimes drawing those connections are the things
Speaker 1: that help an audience understand what's happening. Is your photo?
Speaker 1: Can you play it just a little bit of the original?
Speaker 1: I want to kind of hear that what you're talking about. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is the Aerosmith version. Yeah, that much. You'd
Speaker 1: hear in every hip hop club what I just played
Speaker 1: you that that was an accepted norm, norm in the
Speaker 1: vocabulary of hip hop. Yeah, nobody knew there was a
Speaker 1: song after that in hip hop. Yeah, all they knew
Speaker 1: was just that much. Just that much. So if you
Speaker 1: had two turntables, you would play that much on one
Speaker 1: turntable and you'd get the second one ready in the
Speaker 1: same spot, and you would continue just that much, and
Speaker 1: then a rapper would rap over the top, and they
Speaker 1: would make up freestyle raps of what they wanted, usually bragging.
Speaker 1: So that's what most rap was at that time. So
Speaker 1: the idea of asking run DMC to learn the words
Speaker 1: to an Aerosmith song was a very foreign concept at
Speaker 1: the time. There had been no cover songs done in
Speaker 1: the hip hop world, and they thought it was a
Speaker 1: terrible idea, and they thought it was like country lyrics.
Speaker 1: I remember them thinking, it's like, these are terrible lyrics.
Speaker 1: And how long did it take for them to come
Speaker 1: around after the Recker came out. I don't know that
Speaker 1: they ever came around until it was really successful. Like
Speaker 1: I can remember even when we recorded the vocals, they
Speaker 1: were sort of not into it. Can we hear a
Speaker 1: little bit of the vocals and then explain to me
Speaker 1: why you say there was a hip hop vocals? Yeah? So, now, okay,
Speaker 1: So we'll listen to the Aerosmith version first. Not very now,
Speaker 1: so that phrasing is very hip hop, very yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's as close to a hip hop record without being
Speaker 1: a hip hop record as can be. Wait, so we
Speaker 1: so we should we listen to the hip so we
Speaker 1: listen to Ren dmc version. Is it's not so different? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not very different. Do you have a fan? Do
Speaker 1: you prefer one to the other? Uh? I guess I
Speaker 1: probably have a preference for the original, just because growing
Speaker 1: up it was in my vocabulary. What did what did
Speaker 1: Aerosmith say about it? Do you know? They loved it?
Speaker 1: They loved it. Yeah, and they were always into street
Speaker 1: culture and they always wanted to be part of street culture,
Speaker 1: so for them it was really exciting. Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: you said you would have meetings with people who understood
Speaker 1: the popularity hip up but didn't understo didn't accept it
Speaker 1: as music? What does that mean? That was the words.
Speaker 1: Those were the words that I heard, and it was
Speaker 1: so unusual to me. I can remember a specific quote
Speaker 1: from a record company executive at the time, which is,
Speaker 1: what do you attribute the success of this? I mean,
Speaker 1: we know it's not music, and they were saying this
Speaker 1: as like fans, Yeah, and they just didn't they didn't
Speaker 1: see it, didn't. I mean, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people reacted that way. A lot of people didn't see
Speaker 1: it as music in the same way that a lot
Speaker 1: of people from the jazz eor It didn't see rock
Speaker 1: and rollers music. It's the same. It's those revolutions really
Speaker 1: changed things. What it helped do was open up hip
Speaker 1: hop music to the suburbs and being a suburban kid.
Speaker 1: That was in some ways the intention. It's also interesting
Speaker 1: because it wasn't done for the sake of popularity at all.
Speaker 1: It was done for the sake of explaining something. You know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't done. I didn't. I didn't think of it
Speaker 1: as a commercial idea at all. That wasn't not at all.
Speaker 1: It wasn't about that at all, because what do you
Speaker 1: think of I mean, just to use myself as an example,
Speaker 1: I am this kid in rural Ontario. I am listening
Speaker 1: to basically British New Way of music on a scratchy
Speaker 1: that's coming in from a station in Toronto, which doesn't
Speaker 1: really you know, the signal is really weak. I know
Speaker 1: nothing about hip hop, and that song like it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, wow, like just kind of you know, that's
Speaker 1: when the door. I mean, I imagined that, Mike, is
Speaker 1: that your first memory of hip hop? I think? So wow?
Speaker 1: So then, I mean I was aware of it, but
Speaker 1: I didn't The reason I'm so interesting point is I
Speaker 1: am exactly in the position of that whoever it was
Speaker 1: says it's not music. It just didn't register for me.
Speaker 1: I didn't understand it. I no place to put it.
Speaker 1: I was, you know, I was interested in Elvis Costello
Speaker 1: and the Clash or whatever. It wasn't That's what I thought.
Speaker 1: That's actually another interesting aspect of this, which is that
Speaker 1: ultimately there is a race issue involved. Also in the
Speaker 1: same way that Elvis was essentially making music that Chuck
Speaker 1: Berry and Little Richard had made before, but because he
Speaker 1: was white, it got mainstream popularity. And to some degree,
Speaker 1: what we did with the Basti Boys wasn't so different
Speaker 1: than what we were doing with Run DMC. With the
Speaker 1: b c's was not so different than what we did
Speaker 1: with Run DMC or El COOLJ or Public Enemy, but
Speaker 1: the fact that they were white allowed it to spread
Speaker 1: in a way that was harder to do otherwise. Again,
Speaker 1: this was not an intentional This wasn't premeditated at all,
Speaker 1: just sort of happened. But it was interesting to see that, like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're more the audience is more accepting of the Beastie
Speaker 1: Boys than Run DMC. Yeah, well, cap people permission to
Speaker 1: listen in a certain sense. And then interestingly it ended
Speaker 1: up having a good effect on hip hop in general,
Speaker 1: which was the Beastie sort of opened the door for
Speaker 1: people who made not have been interested in this niche
Speaker 1: black music. But then once they were in the door,
Speaker 1: then they wanted all the niche black music. So it did.
Speaker 1: It did help the revolution to happen. Yeah, yeah, Do
Speaker 1: you remember the reaction of run DMC themselves to this
Speaker 1: idea to work this way? Yeah? Yeah, they were not
Speaker 1: into it. They were not into it. Really, Yeah, did
Speaker 1: you did you talk them into it? I tried to
Speaker 1: talk them into it unsuccessfully. Russell really talked them into it.
Speaker 1: Russell said, just do what Rick says. We're going to
Speaker 1: take a little break and be right back. I'm back
Speaker 1: with Rick, and I asked him about the origins of
Speaker 1: one of his most famous collaborations, Rick Rubin, Jewish Kid
Speaker 1: from Long Island and the Man in Black. How did
Speaker 1: that happen? By the way, did Johnny Cash thing? It's
Speaker 1: also unusual. The way it happened was I had worked
Speaker 1: with almost all the artists I had produced up until
Speaker 1: that time were young artists for first time artists, and
Speaker 1: all the artists I signed were debut artists, and I
Speaker 1: thought it would be a fun challenge to make a
Speaker 1: really good album with a great artist who maybe hasn't
Speaker 1: done great work for a while. So it was more
Speaker 1: like a It was like a puzzle to solve. And
Speaker 1: when I thought about the different great artists who weren't
Speaker 1: doing great work, the first one that came up was
Speaker 1: Johnny Cash. Just thought he's I mean, he's Johnny Cash.
Speaker 1: You listen to much country, not really, so you think
Speaker 1: of him, and then you so what comes next? I ask,
Speaker 1: what's going on with him? Is he on a record label?
Speaker 1: He's playing At that time, he was playing in like
Speaker 1: small dinner theaters around and following that love Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he'd been dropped from his label. It was sort of
Speaker 1: like he had been discarded by the industry at that time.
Speaker 1: And I think part of the reason that he was
Speaker 1: open to working with me wasn't because he believed in
Speaker 1: me or believed in the idea. I think he was
Speaker 1: excited that somebody cared enough to want to do something
Speaker 1: because nobody else did. Had he heard of you? I
Speaker 1: don't know if he had, I don't think so. I
Speaker 1: don't know why he would have. Did he ever listen
Speaker 1: to hip hop? No? No, So you're just you're basically
Speaker 1: co calling him, I mean through his people, I'm guessing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And we met backstage at a dinner theater in Orange County,
Speaker 1: and I remember it being awkward because both of us
Speaker 1: are pretty quiet. But I remember sitting on the couch
Speaker 1: for a long time and not really talking but feeling
Speaker 1: even though it was awkward, I felt comfortable with him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And there was no idea of what it would be
Speaker 1: at the time. It was just sort of, let's go
Speaker 1: on this journey, let's do something and find what's great.
Speaker 1: Did he have? Did he who was a one who
Speaker 1: first sort of suggested the idea of doing these stripped
Speaker 1: down covers? Is that your idea? It wasn't. It wasn't.
Speaker 1: It started where we were looking for songs and we
Speaker 1: would get together, and so in terms of finding the
Speaker 1: material that best fit his voice, we would do these
Speaker 1: demos basically solo demos, But there was no thought that
Speaker 1: that's what the record would be like. It was more
Speaker 1: the first stage of this expedition was figuring out the
Speaker 1: material that was going to work. Give me an example
Speaker 1: of a song that doesn't fit his voice and tell
Speaker 1: me why it doesn't. There's a handful of things. One
Speaker 1: is he has to feel an affinity for it. If
Speaker 1: he doesn't feel it, it's much harder. Second is subject
Speaker 1: matter would have to make sense for In his case,
Speaker 1: it was different because there's Johnny Cash, the human being,
Speaker 1: and then there's Johnny Cash, the mythical man in black.
Speaker 1: And my goal was to make music that always fit
Speaker 1: the mythical man in black. Now, if it fit Johnny
Speaker 1: Cash the human being as well, that's fine, but it
Speaker 1: didn't have to. It was more important that it was
Speaker 1: this sort of looming cartoon figure of who he was. That.
Speaker 1: But that's sort of interesting. I thought you were going
Speaker 1: to say the exact opposite. I thought you were going
Speaker 1: to say, we have been joined by a dog by
Speaker 1: the way. I thought you were going to say, my
Speaker 1: goal was to make music to fit the human human. No,
Speaker 1: he had even done that along the way, not always
Speaker 1: so successfully. And I think it really went back to,
Speaker 1: like I think of the great Johnny Cash moments, I
Speaker 1: shot a man in Reno just to watch him die,
Speaker 1: this sort of outlaw figure. Now, Johnny Cash in real
Speaker 1: life never shot a man in Reno just to watch
Speaker 1: him die, but the mythical man in black did and
Speaker 1: we responded. So it was more that it was more
Speaker 1: like these sort of brooding, heavy, introspective or revelatory thoughts,
Speaker 1: because in real life Johnny also had a great sense
Speaker 1: of humor. I didn't want to do any funny songs.
Speaker 1: I didn't want that to be part of the I
Speaker 1: wanted to really focus. You don't want to do my
Speaker 1: Name is Sue No, even though that's a great one.
Speaker 1: Even though it's a great one, But I wanted to
Speaker 1: really focus the story on this mythical presence. And also
Speaker 1: because now that I think about it, if he's playing
Speaker 1: Dinner Theater in Orange County, the myth has fallen away.
Speaker 1: He's sort of hit rock bottom. There's no you're trying
Speaker 1: to build him back up. What do you consider to
Speaker 1: be the best of the songs you did with him?
Speaker 1: I mean, I have a favorite, but there's a lot
Speaker 1: of good ones. One of the ones we did that
Speaker 1: I really liked was the Mercy Seat in the Cave
Speaker 1: song in credit. Tell me what it is you heard
Speaker 1: in the original that made you think it would work
Speaker 1: for Johnny Cash. It's just the lyrics, just the lyrics,
Speaker 1: just the lyrics. We have this mythical man in black.
Speaker 1: What are stories he can tell that you'd believe coming
Speaker 1: from that guy? And this was one sort of like
Speaker 1: this biblical heavy heavy story. It's funny. It's the third
Speaker 1: time you've used the word heavy, and you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: There's there's a heaviness to all of those records. That's
Speaker 1: kind of it's so unusual. I don't associate that word
Speaker 1: heavy with popular music, no, and certainly not with country
Speaker 1: music or folk music, which is essentially the Johnny records
Speaker 1: are sort of folk records. Yeah, where some of the
Speaker 1: songs that were like the Mercy Seed or the Nine
Speaker 1: Inch Nails song. Yeah, it's great, it's really great. I
Speaker 1: just love the I love the way the song is
Speaker 1: just transformed. When the idea of an old man singing
Speaker 1: it the end of his life changed. Everything changes, every
Speaker 1: changes everything. Is that? What so with Hurt? Is that
Speaker 1: what you were thinking when you I'm assuming you brought
Speaker 1: that song to Johnny and you were like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: when a sixty something year old man sings this, it's
Speaker 1: a different It's a totally different song, a totally different
Speaker 1: song and much more hopeless like it's oh it's bleak. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't. Usually by the time you're that age, you
Speaker 1: found resolution. So to have sort of twenty year old
Speaker 1: angst in your sixties or seventies is not angst anymore.
Speaker 1: It's despair. It's flat out despair. It's brutal. Did it
Speaker 1: affect you emotionally to do You're sitting in the in
Speaker 1: close proximity to this mythical man singing these songs with
Speaker 1: an unbelievable emotional weight to them. Are you emerging at
Speaker 1: the end of the day like devastated? You go and
Speaker 1: like curl up in a ball, and you're pretty excited
Speaker 1: because when you hear something a really good version of
Speaker 1: what it is, it's I wouldn't go into the emotion
Speaker 1: of it so much as the excitement of seeing something
Speaker 1: come together that has this power. Yeah, did you ever
Speaker 1: talk to who's the Nunes? Oh? TRENTR I did. I
Speaker 1: actually sent it to him when we finished. I don't
Speaker 1: think he liked it so much when he first heard it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then Mark Romannick made the video for it, and then
Speaker 1: when he saw the video, Trent's like, oh, I see
Speaker 1: what this is. I think he was too close at first.
Speaker 1: And it was just odd hearing someone else. I can
Speaker 1: remember we covered a Beck song and I remember playing
Speaker 1: it for Beck and I remember him saying, this is
Speaker 1: the first time I've ever heard anybody sing my lyrics
Speaker 1: besides me, and it's Johnny Cash. He was like, so oh.
Speaker 1: It was just so mind blowing because he was probably
Speaker 1: twenty two at the time, twenty one at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would think it must be so thrilling to understand
Speaker 1: that you're what you think of as a very deeply
Speaker 1: personal song has a life outside of you that it
Speaker 1: you know, it can have an alternate meaning in a
Speaker 1: different universe when sung by someone from a different that's
Speaker 1: got to be like so interesting. What's really interesting? I
Speaker 1: want to go to this idea that we started talking
Speaker 1: about in the beginning, about your sort of indifference to boundaries,
Speaker 1: to musical boundaries, and that clearly allows you to kind
Speaker 1: of move. You don't get defined by your relationship with
Speaker 1: hip hop. You end up doing well. I do and
Speaker 1: I don't. So from a creative standpoint, I don't, But
Speaker 1: from an outside standpoint, anytime I tried to do something
Speaker 1: different than what I did before, there was always great
Speaker 1: resistance every step of the way, tell me a little
Speaker 1: bit about that. Whoever I was in business with major
Speaker 1: label wise or they just wanted more of the thing
Speaker 1: that happened before that was successful. And every step of
Speaker 1: the way, it was just a struggle, and I was
Speaker 1: told often that I couldn't do what I was doing,
Speaker 1: whether it was Slayer or Johnny Cash or whatever it was.
Speaker 1: It was just like the idea of working on different
Speaker 1: kinds of music was really frowned upon for some reason.
Speaker 1: I don't know what. What's so weird, of course, is
Speaker 1: that the very reason you were you were so good
Speaker 1: at working in the hip hop world was that you
Speaker 1: were already crossing a boundary. And I think most people
Speaker 1: who make the best music, I think that's the case,
Speaker 1: Like people who grow up listening to electronic dance music
Speaker 1: and then making electronic dance music tend to make more
Speaker 1: mediocre dance music, whereas people who come from some other
Speaker 1: form of music and crossing to dance music make much
Speaker 1: more interesting dance music. Yeah, it's just a perspective. It's
Speaker 1: just a wider perspective. Rick and I talked for a
Speaker 1: lot longer, and we'll talk again. We've only scratched the surface.
Speaker 1: Whether we'll meet again at Shango. Law is another matter,
Speaker 1: I hope so. Coming up on Broken Record, many many
Speaker 1: more new episodes, including now Rogers, Rufus Wainwright, country music
Speaker 1: songwriting greats Don Henry, Don Schlitz and Bobby bradickin Conversation,
Speaker 1: heavy metal demigod Dave Hill. This is the first new
Speaker 1: show from Pushkin Industries, the new audio studio I started
Speaker 1: with Jacob Weisberg and named in honor of the great
Speaker 1: Russian Biracial polymath and poet Alexander Pushkin, who is our
Speaker 1: patron saint and whose name we think sounds really cool.
Speaker 1: Coming up from Pushkin a whole new show from Michael
Speaker 1: Lewis called Against the Rules, not to mention, another season
Speaker 1: of revisionist history. Broken Record is produced by Me Label
Speaker 1: and Jason Gambrell, with help from Bruce Headlam, Jaquita Pascal,
Speaker 1: Jacob Smith, Julia Barton, Justin Richmond, Jacob Weisberg, and of
Speaker 1: course Rick Rubin. This show is brought to you by
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. I'm Malcolm Timer. You a really forgot to do?
Speaker 1: I forgot to I wrote a whole rap back then
Speaker 1: about the Jade Tree. I'm a sucker. Jade tree can't
Speaker 1: grow much higher. All you other jade tree is gonna
Speaker 1: call me sire, and I forgot I was gonna say it.
Speaker 1: I was like, no, this is too stupid. I can't
Speaker 1: break up Rick's flow with this guy. I'm an idiot anyway,