Speaker 1: Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Adamized Studios.
Speaker 2: When I told my friends that I would be recording
Speaker 2: a podcast with Rick Rubin this weekend, the responses were rapturous,
Speaker 2: what wow, incredible? And can I come? It was the
Speaker 2: same in the River Cafe the other day when Rick
Speaker 2: was there. Grown men trembled, women found excuses to hover
Speaker 2: near his table. Chefs could barely grill the sea bass.
Speaker 2: Rick Rubin is a decades long creative force with a
Speaker 2: voice and influence that carries immeasurable weight. Co founder of
Speaker 2: def Jam, winner of seven Grammys. As a friend in
Speaker 2: music told me, Rick is unique together with discovering, mentoring,
Speaker 2: creating beautiful music with artists such as Adele Eminin, Beastie Boys,
Speaker 2: Public Enemy, Run DMC and for me most movingly Johnny Cash.
Speaker 2: His values, princess and kindness guide everyone he comes close to.
Speaker 2: Rick is in London with his family for his brilliant
Speaker 2: radical book, The Creative Act. We are at home sitting
Speaker 2: around a table. A cook with a passion for music
Speaker 2: and a music producer, writer and philosopher with a passion
Speaker 2: for food. Though in his achievements he is up there
Speaker 2: in the clouds, and I am firmly on earthed. We
Speaker 2: look at our work in a similar way. Keep it simple,
Speaker 2: keep it honest, admire, respect, and love the people you
Speaker 2: work with. That is exactly what I feel about Rick.
Speaker 3: It's so beautiful.
Speaker 2: Well, it's true. We just recently became friends, and it's
Speaker 2: so nice to be here together to talk about what
Speaker 2: we love. And so I think what we usually do
Speaker 2: is to ask you the gas to read a recipe
Speaker 2: from any one of our cookbooks, and there are quite
Speaker 2: a lot of them, and quite a lot of recipes
Speaker 2: span in the years. And you chose a dish that
Speaker 2: I love, which is also very easy, called chicken with nutmeg.
Speaker 2: Would you like to read the recipe.
Speaker 3: Chicken with nutmeg? Preheat the oven to one hundred and
Speaker 3: ninety degrees. Wipe the chicken clean, Trim off all excess fat,
Speaker 3: cut lemon in half, grate the nutmeg. Rub the chicken
Speaker 3: with the lemon, squeezing the juice into the skin. Season
Speaker 3: the skin and inside the cavity with salt, pepper and nutmeg.
Speaker 3: Cut the prescudo slices into the cavity. Put the chicken
Speaker 3: on an oven tray, breastside down, Drizzle with olive oil,
Speaker 3: and roast for one and a half hours, basting from
Speaker 3: time to time. Add wine after half an hour, turn
Speaker 3: the bird breastside up for the last twenty minutes. Serve
Speaker 3: the juices from the pan.
Speaker 2: So why, of all the recipes did you choose this?
Speaker 2: Is there something that you particularly liked? Do you eat
Speaker 2: a lot of chicken?
Speaker 3: The reason I picked the chicken dishes. It's particularly simple dish,
Speaker 3: and in general, the foods that I like tend to
Speaker 3: be the best version of a very simple thing. If
Speaker 3: the sauce is too complicated, if the chef is trying
Speaker 3: to impress me, I tend not to like it. What
Speaker 3: gets me is the quality of the produce, the quality
Speaker 3: of the food, the quality of the meat, and the
Speaker 3: perfection of the preparation. Not necessarily the innovation involved. It's
Speaker 3: more the craft of the best version of the regular thing.
Speaker 3: It's my favorite.
Speaker 2: I always worry when somebody says I have an idea
Speaker 2: for you know, cooking chicken or fish or meat or vegetable,
Speaker 2: because for me, it's not suddenly you have an idea
Speaker 2: to do something. It's the last time you made chicken.
Speaker 2: It might have been with tucking the pishutto under the skin,
Speaker 2: and then the next time we had make Do you
Speaker 2: feel that way?
Speaker 3: Yes, it's an iterative process. We try different things and
Speaker 3: then something like hmm, that was good last time. Maybe
Speaker 3: we'll try it that way again, and then add something
Speaker 3: else and eventually get to a point where this is
Speaker 3: the way I'm going to do it now and it
Speaker 3: feels good.
Speaker 2: Are you talking about music, cooking, everything?
Speaker 3: No, I'm talking about everything everything. Yes, that's what the
Speaker 3: book's about. Really is how we do anything, is how
Speaker 3: we do everything, and it all is of a piece.
Speaker 3: All the choices we make are essentially are the way
Speaker 3: we live. Our life is an artistic choice.
Speaker 2: The cooking and the ingredient and the music, I suppose,
Speaker 2: is also knowing that if you're going to cook things,
Speaker 2: simply the ingredient has to be superb.
Speaker 3: Same. It's true in music that the individual if you're
Speaker 3: doing work that has many, many instruments, in a way,
Speaker 3: they almost the sound of them cancel each other out. Yes,
Speaker 3: they do make something new when they add up. That said,
Speaker 3: I like the personality of each of the individual ingredients music.
Speaker 3: If you have three ingredients, it's easier to understand them.
Speaker 3: It's also harder to get them right because there's only three.
Speaker 3: They're not being it's not being masked, it's not being hidden.
Speaker 3: I remember a producer friend saying to me, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know how you have the patience to make
Speaker 3: the records you make with so few things going on,
Speaker 3: because he'll put down one thing and then put something
Speaker 3: on top, and put something on top, put something on top,
Speaker 3: and he makes a great sounding, you know, very successful producer.
Speaker 3: But it's a different process, and mine is, Okay, let's
Speaker 3: take everything away and what's left. Are each of these
Speaker 3: elements the most interesting version of themselves they can be,
Speaker 3: and are we presenting them in the best light that
Speaker 3: we that we can. That's that's how I like to
Speaker 3: do it.
Speaker 2: For me, it was a revelation to go to Italy
Speaker 2: because I grew up in upstate New York, where everything
Speaker 2: considered Italian food was very rich. You had mozzarella, you
Speaker 2: had parmesan, you had breadcrumbs, You bake it, you boiled it,
Speaker 2: you did a whole process. But then if you go
Speaker 2: to Italy and they put a piece of fish on
Speaker 2: the grill with a few fresh herbs and a drizzle
Speaker 2: of olive oil, and you know that the fish has
Speaker 2: to be really fresh, the olive oil has to be
Speaker 2: really recently pressed and very strong, and the herbs have
Speaker 2: to be of the season because you can't basket, as
Speaker 2: you say, So maybe there are real parallels, do you think?
Speaker 3: I think so. I think it's all related. And I
Speaker 3: remember the first time I went to Florence and I
Speaker 3: remember asking and what's the best fish restaurant? And they're like,
Speaker 3: we don't have fish. It's like, what do you mean.
Speaker 2: It's a city and by the way, like an hour
Speaker 2: and a half from the sea.
Speaker 3: Well that's what they said. They said, if you want fish,
Speaker 3: the fissure is an hour and a half away. So
Speaker 3: that's how fresh it is. An hour and a half
Speaker 3: is too far to travel with the ingredient for it
Speaker 3: to be fresh in Italy. So Italy is my favorite
Speaker 3: place to eat, and I spend as much time there
Speaker 3: possible and eat quite a lot delicious.
Speaker 2: I agree. So how was it actually growing up when
Speaker 2: you grew up in Long Island? I grew up in
Speaker 2: Long Island.
Speaker 3: Yes, Long Beach was about an hour outside of Manhattan,
Speaker 3: small beach community, not so unlike Malibu, where I've lived
Speaker 3: for a long time.
Speaker 2: Was it a multicultural undo? Yeah, it was.
Speaker 3: The different parts of town were mixed in different ways.
Speaker 3: And it was tiny, little town, but there were these
Speaker 3: little subcultures. And we lived on the bay and we
Speaker 3: had a boat, and you could walk six blocks and
Speaker 3: be on the ocean side and you know, swim in
Speaker 3: the waves. It was a mixed community. In My high
Speaker 3: school was a multiracial high school.
Speaker 2: And what was it like growing up there? What was it?
Speaker 3: The food was not great and my mom was not
Speaker 3: a good cook. We ate out pretty much for every meal.
Speaker 3: We almost never ate home, almost never.
Speaker 2: What year would that be, Brick.
Speaker 3: I left home maybe in nineteen eighty one to go
Speaker 3: to college.
Speaker 2: About the center of these yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Ate the worst food, you know, I ate fast food
Speaker 3: on a regular basis. I would say it's pretty limited.
Speaker 3: There were a couple of Chinese restaurants. There was a
Speaker 3: couple of Italian restaurants, delicatessen, pastrami, sandwich type places, but
Speaker 3: all of the restaurants were more like mom and pop restaurants,
Speaker 3: tending to be heavier in the way they prepared the food,
Speaker 3: you know, like the Italian food would all be covered
Speaker 3: in bread crumbs and deep fried and lots of mozzarella
Speaker 3: and lots of sauces.
Speaker 2: Do you think you had a healthy relationship with food
Speaker 2: or you know, you say your mother was overweight.
Speaker 3: Yes, we ate lots of food and good tasting, low quality,
Speaker 3: high carbohydrate, high calorie food. Also lots of you know,
Speaker 3: seed oils and just terrible stuff. It was always an
Speaker 3: argument because I didn't like to sit for a long
Speaker 3: time in a restaurant. I still don't like to sit
Speaker 3: for a long time in a restaurant. I like to
Speaker 3: eat and go, and my parents would like to eat, sit, smoke,
Speaker 3: and drink. And as a little kid, and I'm an
Speaker 3: only child, so I had no one else to play with,
Speaker 3: I did not want to be there. I didn't want
Speaker 3: to be.
Speaker 2: There, especially when you see them lifting up the coffee
Speaker 2: cup and then they don't put it to their mouth
Speaker 2: and they put it down in the saucer. That's what
Speaker 2: used to kill me as a kid, Yeah, is that
Speaker 2: I'd sort of think we're just about to go, and
Speaker 2: then they'd sort of get it up and put it down,
Speaker 2: and they said, no, drink that coffee. I want to
Speaker 2: go home. So I feel really interested in women who
Speaker 2: don't cook, mothers who didn't cook, you know, and I
Speaker 2: feel so respectful towards them as well. Was your mother
Speaker 2: did she work?
Speaker 3: She did not. She raised me. That was her full
Speaker 3: time job, and food was not an important part of that.
Speaker 3: Although everybody in the house loved to eat and she
Speaker 3: loved to eat, and she was overweight. She was the
Speaker 3: youngest of four sisters, and I think she was always
Speaker 3: like the child in her family, so the idea that
Speaker 3: the child would be the cook didn't make sense in
Speaker 3: her family. But the one thing that my mom cooked
Speaker 3: well is turkey, and only made it maybe twice a year,
Speaker 3: but it is to this day maybe my favorite meal.
Speaker 3: It had onions, it had lemon, salt and pepper. It
Speaker 3: was it was simple, but it was seasoned and it
Speaker 3: was cooked to where the skin was crispy and the
Speaker 3: meat was dry, but there was lots of ozu. So
Speaker 3: the combination of the dryer meat, which I prefer, with
Speaker 3: the wet aujou was the perfect combination. You could moisten
Speaker 3: it to taste. And I wonder if that there's.
Speaker 2: So psychological home.
Speaker 3: A simple roasted turkey that was incredible, incredible, and now
Speaker 3: we made it a habit at home to do Thanksgiving
Speaker 3: dinner once a month. Oh really, And we do Thanksgiving
Speaker 3: once a month and invite friends and it's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great. It is the best American meal, isn't it?
Speaker 2: Once a year?
Speaker 3: Absolutely? And why?
Speaker 2: And so this is how you grew up and did
Speaker 2: the music start in high school?
Speaker 3: My love of music started before that, from the time
Speaker 3: I was probably three years old, you know, listening to
Speaker 3: the Beatles as a kid. My parents played music in
Speaker 3: the house and somehow there was a lot of music
Speaker 3: around and I can't can't put my finger on it.
Speaker 3: Usually friends had older brothers or sisters who had record
Speaker 3: collections or extended family, and they were all really different.
Speaker 3: And one cousin, Mitchell, who liked Bruce Springsteen in more
Speaker 3: rock music, and I had another cousin, Marris, who liked
Speaker 3: things like Kraftwork and more experimental music. And I would
Speaker 3: spend every weekend with my aunt Carol, who was like
Speaker 3: my second mom, and she would take me to the
Speaker 3: theater and take me to museums and play classical music
Speaker 3: for me. And it was a whole other world. Whereas
Speaker 3: my parents were it was different than that. My dad
Speaker 3: liked Latin jazz and Frank Sinatra, and my mom liked
Speaker 3: the pop music of the day, and maybe Barber Streisan,
Speaker 3: certain singers.
Speaker 2: And do you think when we were just talking about
Speaker 2: music and food and about the simplicity and the layering
Speaker 2: and the ingredient, did you feel that growing up or
Speaker 2: did that come later?
Speaker 3: I would say I probably liked simple food, and I
Speaker 3: probably never had great simple food when I was young,
Speaker 3: but I tended to like simpler food. So I think
Speaker 3: always a music I always had a clectic taste in music.
Speaker 3: I would hang out in record stores forever to learn,
Speaker 3: you know. I would befriend the people who work there,
Speaker 3: and I like the Stooges. What else would I like?
Speaker 3: And they're like, oh, you might like the MC five,
Speaker 3: and they would play it for me in the store.
Speaker 3: And just had an education in the things I was
Speaker 3: interested in. And so I would get home from school
Speaker 3: and she and my mom would say, Okay, where are
Speaker 3: we going today? And she would be my driver, and well,
Speaker 3: let's go to the Magic Store. So she would drive
Speaker 3: me to the Magic Store and she would sit in
Speaker 3: the car and wait, and then I would come out
Speaker 3: and she'd be reading, you know, she would just read
Speaker 3: in the car, and I would be in the magic
Speaker 3: store for probably three hours, because from nine years old
Speaker 3: until probably sixteen, I was really into magic. And I
Speaker 3: would spend a tremendous amount of time in bookstores as well.
Speaker 3: I love bookstores. I would just hang out out and read,
Speaker 3: and I spend a lot of time in the library also,
Speaker 3: I love the library.
Speaker 2: You talk about going to the magic shop very endearingly,
Speaker 2: describing your mother sitting in the car for three hours,
Speaker 2: three hours in a magic shop. Do you think there
Speaker 2: is a link between the transformational process of magic, of music,
Speaker 2: and of food.
Speaker 3: The thing with magic is you learn to be skeptical
Speaker 3: of everything. Once you understand how tricks work, you see
Speaker 3: that the same methods used by magicians are used by
Speaker 3: advertisers and by newscasters, and you start to be able
Speaker 3: to see the layer of what's really going on behind
Speaker 3: this facade. So I would say it affects everything going on,
Speaker 3: and you look at things in a deep way, and
Speaker 3: not necessarily in just a skeptical way, in a more
Speaker 3: based in reality versus an narrative way. When I go
Speaker 3: to a show of any kind, I'm always paying attention
Speaker 3: to the mechanisms at play as much as the content.
Speaker 3: You know, My favorite trick was called metamorphosis. It was
Speaker 3: a trick made famous originally, I believe by Houdini. I
Speaker 3: never did it, but I liked seeing it, and I
Speaker 3: like the idea of it. The magician gets bound, put
Speaker 3: in a sack and put in a steamer trunk, sealed
Speaker 3: in a trunk, and then the assistant would stand on
Speaker 3: top of the trunk and raise a curtain and drop
Speaker 3: the curtain, and it happens instantaneously. The curtain comes up,
Speaker 3: the curtain comes down, and when the assistant raises the curtain,
Speaker 3: the magician lowers the curtain, and the magician's now standing
Speaker 3: on top of the box, opens up the box and
Speaker 3: the assistant is inside. And love that. I love that.
Speaker 3: I love this feeling of this instant transposition. The same
Speaker 3: is true in me in that a certain person plays
Speaker 3: a guitar piece and it's beautiful, and another person plays
Speaker 3: the same guitar piece and there's this other magical dimension
Speaker 3: to it that you can't put a finger on. You
Speaker 3: don't know why it's I don't even know if it
Speaker 3: better's the right words. You don't know why it's different
Speaker 3: because technically it looks the same, but one of them
Speaker 3: you want to hear over and over and over again
Speaker 3: forever and you're filled with wonder, and the other one
Speaker 3: it's the same notes in the same order. It's the
Speaker 3: same speed, played with great dexterity, but it doesn't have
Speaker 3: this other life to it. And I would say the
Speaker 3: same with food.
Speaker 2: It's the same with a recipe that you can say.
Speaker 2: I always say that a recipe is part poetry and
Speaker 2: part science, Yes, and that the science is the cord
Speaker 2: of a teaspoon of baking powder or three tablespoons of sugar.
Speaker 2: And yet, as you say, the way it stirred, in
Speaker 2: the way it sifted, the way it's put in the
Speaker 2: p So.
Speaker 3: I have a question for you, how difficult is it
Speaker 3: to keep the consistency of the quality of the food
Speaker 3: with different people involved over time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good question. I think that we have
Speaker 2: very few chefs, so it's not a big kitchen, and
Speaker 2: we don't have what you're doing in Los Angeles when
Speaker 2: I was in kitchens that you have one head chef
Speaker 2: and a lot of chefs on the line. So there
Speaker 2: is a kind of communication really of how you do it.
Speaker 3: But that.
Speaker 2: Is what I look for every time if you come
Speaker 2: to eat, my fears is that you know, I'm grilled
Speaker 2: sea bass coming to the table going to be the
Speaker 2: way it was the night before, and you know, and
Speaker 2: very often when you're on the past, the head chef,
Speaker 2: I don't know how it is in music, but the
Speaker 2: head chef is the last person to see the plate
Speaker 2: that goes out. And it's tricky because sometimes you just
Speaker 2: keep sending it back to the chef who didn't quite
Speaker 2: get it right, and you're taking away their confidence, you're
Speaker 2: diminishing them, and you're destroying them. But on the other hand,
Speaker 2: you know that you don't want to sense something out,
Speaker 2: so it's constant, you know, judgment. How can you tell
Speaker 2: a musician who's just the one that didn't play the
Speaker 2: guitar the way? What do you do with someone who's
Speaker 2: played something that isn't It's how do you give that.
Speaker 3: I'd do my best to cast the people that I
Speaker 3: that that can do the work, and if not, I'll
Speaker 3: do it again with someone else.
Speaker 2: Tell me what happens when you go into the studio.
Speaker 2: You've eaten definitely, I've eaten before and now the way
Speaker 2: it used to work for the majority of my life.
Speaker 3: I would wake up, do whatever I would do before
Speaker 3: going into the studio, but once I would go to
Speaker 3: the studio, that would be it for until I was
Speaker 3: time to go to bed. So I would spend the
Speaker 3: majority of my time, and which also means in those
Speaker 3: days working in New York, it'd be a small room
Speaker 3: with no windows, and I would be there for as
Speaker 3: long as you know, until the sun came up, and
Speaker 3: then I would walk or take a taxi home. So
Speaker 3: the majority of my life, I would say, for at
Speaker 3: least twenty five years, was being in a small dark room.
Speaker 3: So I had very little life outside of a recording
Speaker 3: studio because I worked so much so long. Now I've
Speaker 3: found a way and just through doing it enough understanding
Speaker 3: what's important for me to be there for, what's not
Speaker 3: important for me to be there for. And now I
Speaker 3: tend to have lunch, go to the studio, work from
Speaker 3: maybe one till six.
Speaker 2: And what do you do when you say you were.
Speaker 3: Listen to music and then talk about what we can
Speaker 3: try next. Sometimes we do it right then, and sometimes
Speaker 3: we're making a list of things to try after I
Speaker 3: leave in the evening. It depends. I always have anxiety
Speaker 3: when a project starts because I never know what's going
Speaker 3: to happen. We don't go in with any script. I
Speaker 3: prefer to go in when we have songs, but then
Speaker 3: there are a million ways to present a song. So
Speaker 3: there's always this sense of what's going to separate this
Speaker 3: body of work from the rest of the artist body
Speaker 3: of work and everyone else's work, And I don't know
Speaker 3: what that is going in. So it's a real experiment
Speaker 3: and we come in and I'm nervous until something good happens,
Speaker 3: like ah, And then if that thing that's good, even
Speaker 3: if it's a even if it doesn't end up this way,
Speaker 3: if it's a clue of what the whole vision of
Speaker 3: the project can be, even if it's not what it is,
Speaker 3: I feel better because at least there's a solution, even
Speaker 3: if it doesn't end up being the solution, there's a
Speaker 3: possible solution.
Speaker 2: And that feels good because I was reading about the
Speaker 2: way you work and you said that you start with
Speaker 2: an empty sheet. You know that you basically start with nothing, yes,
Speaker 2: and then you move from nothing to what you're going
Speaker 2: to record that day or work. In my own little way,
Speaker 2: in my own little restaurant, we come in with an
Speaker 2: empty sheet of paper. Can we write the menu? Of course,
Speaker 2: there are things that we always know we'll have mons area,
Speaker 2: and we always know that we'll have four pastas, and
Speaker 2: we always know that we'll have two dishes on the grill,
Speaker 2: two dishes in the wood oven, then two dishes to roast.
Speaker 2: But it does start with an empty sheet, and do
Speaker 2: have a parallel in that.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I come and we usually start by listening to
Speaker 3: any ideas that the artists have. Whatever they are, they
Speaker 3: could be. It could be a song. They may play
Speaker 3: a whole song and then talk about how to do it,
Speaker 3: or they may play a demo of a whole worked
Speaker 3: out arrangement of a song with musicians and everything. They
Speaker 3: may come in and with a riff, you know, just
Speaker 3: a little snippet of a song, or a melodic idea
Speaker 3: or a lyrical idea, and then we talk about ways
Speaker 3: of fleshing it out and what are the next stages
Speaker 3: and what can it be. Sometimes they'll come to me
Speaker 3: with a whole body of work, like an album's worth
Speaker 3: of things that are in various stages of completion, and
Speaker 3: then we listen and see is this something that we
Speaker 3: can Is this a starting point that we could build
Speaker 3: off of, or is this almost like a recipe that
Speaker 3: we could use to start from scratch. You never know
Speaker 3: it really is, and then the experiments begin. We try
Speaker 3: different things, and I like the idea of in the
Speaker 3: case of where someone brings in something, I like the
Speaker 3: idea of stripping back the elements and listening to what's there,
Speaker 3: and even if it wasn't done in an intentional way
Speaker 3: for the way that it's going to be used, sometimes
Speaker 3: you find very interesting things that if you were trying
Speaker 3: to do it you might not do. It could be
Speaker 3: very interesting to listen to.
Speaker 2: And that goes back to what we were saying before,
Speaker 2: is that neither you nor I've ever had an idea
Speaker 2: really that it is a progression of what you did before,
Speaker 2: always what you're doing now to what you do tomorrow.
Speaker 2: That is, you don't come in and say I have
Speaker 2: a great idea for this song.
Speaker 3: Rarely rarely, And the times that I do, I still
Speaker 3: hold them lightly because it's until an idea is fleshed
Speaker 3: out in when it goes from the idea stage to
Speaker 3: the in the world stage, it might not be what
Speaker 3: the idea was. You know, you don't know it until
Speaker 3: you try it, or in the studio we demonstrate everything
Speaker 3: because if if if I tell an artist an idea
Speaker 3: or they tell me an idea, what I envision and
Speaker 3: what they envision are completely different. Like the two chefs
Speaker 3: preparing the same, don't we don't language? Isn't we don't
Speaker 3: have a way of communicating to where we actually know
Speaker 3: what each other is saying or feeling.
Speaker 2: It's also trust, Isn't it that they trust what you're
Speaker 2: saying to them, or they trust what your thoughts.
Speaker 3: It's like if I gave you two dishes of food
Speaker 3: and I asked you to taste them and ask you
Speaker 3: which one you like better. The only right answer is
Speaker 3: the one that you like better. Do you know what
Speaker 3: I'm saying? There is no right answer. It's with taste.
Speaker 3: It's you taste this, You taste this, Tell me which
Speaker 3: one you like? There's no same tell me there's no
Speaker 3: there are no wrong answers in taste. It is I've
Speaker 3: been lucky that when I'm true to my taste, other
Speaker 3: people have liked it. It's not the case for everybody,
Speaker 3: but that's the best chance we have is to make
Speaker 3: the thing that we love and hope that someone else
Speaker 3: loves it. If you do something that you don't like
Speaker 3: with the idea that someone else might like it, what
Speaker 3: are the odds that's going to be good? Then no
Speaker 3: one might like it, at least at least I like it,
Speaker 3: you know, and I can go to sleep knowing it's
Speaker 3: the best I could do. I love it. If no
Speaker 3: one else likes it, it's okay.
Speaker 2: And when you just talk about musicians, we were talking
Speaker 2: about Johnny Cash before you showed me that film, which
Speaker 2: actually shows an enormous amount of food on the table. Yes,
Speaker 2: you know, it shows a kind of vision of someone
Speaker 2: who loves to sing. And how would the various musicians
Speaker 2: that you worked with, how their attitudes food.
Speaker 3: Food is a big part of the process. And one
Speaker 3: of the something I learned early on is that if
Speaker 3: you're working in the studio and the music doesn't sound good,
Speaker 3: order pizza and.
Speaker 2: Then stop there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you order pizza. And then if you when you're
Speaker 3: eating pizza, the music sounds better.
Speaker 2: And is it because it is better or no, it's
Speaker 2: just a psychological thing.
Speaker 3: And so it's like the world is better when you're eating.
Speaker 2: Musicians eat before they start playing, or before.
Speaker 3: Most musicians eat before they play. With the exception of
Speaker 3: some singers who find it hard to sing or maybe
Speaker 3: their voice isn't as clear after they've eaten.
Speaker 2: Tell me about some of the musicians and their food.
Speaker 2: Is there a musician that you actually that.
Speaker 3: One of the things that because the nature of the
Speaker 3: recording studio is this place you go to and sometimes
Speaker 3: you spend a long time knowing what you're doing, and
Speaker 3: sometimes you spend a long time trying to figure out
Speaker 3: what you're doing or waiting for thing to come that
Speaker 3: you're there to do, but you don't know what it
Speaker 3: is yet. So eating in the studio is a standard.
Speaker 3: And one of the things about Shangri Laud, the studio
Speaker 3: that I have in Malibu is most studios have one runner,
Speaker 3: maybe two, and we have lots of runners. And when
Speaker 3: people come and order food, food comes very quickly, which
Speaker 3: historically in the studio you'll order lunch and it might
Speaker 3: not come for two hours. Whereas for whatever reason, at
Speaker 3: Changra Lad, it's very creature, comfort oriented and we get
Speaker 3: really good food really fast, and sometimes we even have
Speaker 3: a chef because there's a kitchen. If you ever saw
Speaker 3: the movie The Last Waltz, the band are in the kitchen.
Speaker 2: At changra la. That's the You came into my house
Speaker 2: today and the first thing you said was that's eat. Yes,
Speaker 2: you did quite quickly. Is the habit? A friend of
Speaker 2: mine once said that his family had to rule that
Speaker 2: there should be no longer than forty five seconds when
Speaker 2: someone walks into your house that they have a drink
Speaker 2: in their hand. And actually, what I think that does
Speaker 2: is actually very nice because it means you're what you're doing,
Speaker 2: and you're giving somebody something when they come in the house,
Speaker 2: you know. And I think that means something, and so
Speaker 2: are the artists that you do associate more with food
Speaker 2: than others. But that Johnny Cash did he eat?
Speaker 3: Johnny Cash loved a restaurant in Los Angeles called the Ivy,
Speaker 3: and wherever he would come to town, we would always
Speaker 3: go together to the Ivy. That was his favorite place.
Speaker 2: Because also the way someone eats, it tells you about
Speaker 2: the person, doesn't it. I think so. I think if
Speaker 2: you go to a restaurant, A lot of people say
Speaker 2: to me that they wouldn't never hire anybody unless they
Speaker 2: took them to a restaurant for interesting. Are they kind
Speaker 2: to the waiter? Are they impatient with the waiter? Do
Speaker 2: they share their food?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: Or Bloomberg told me that if he took somebody out
Speaker 2: to lunch for a job interview and they ordered a
Speaker 2: glass of wine, he wouldn't hire them. Interesting, friend sitting
Speaker 2: next to him said, if they didn't order a glass
Speaker 2: of wine, I wouldn't hire it.
Speaker 3: I heard a story about orstin Wells that he would
Speaker 3: finish his plate of food and as soon as his
Speaker 3: plate was empty, he'd hold it out next to him
Speaker 3: and count to five, and if no one took the plate,
Speaker 3: you would drop it on the floor.
Speaker 2: Really, I will say.
Speaker 3: A pet peeve is I do not like to see
Speaker 3: an empty plate in front of me for any length
Speaker 3: of time. As soon as I finish eating, I really
Speaker 3: hope someone takes it away.
Speaker 2: What if the person next to is still eating, that
Speaker 2: doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter, And I'll often move my plate in
Speaker 3: it and maybe you rude manner just away from me. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know why it is. It's been a lifelong
Speaker 3: I don't know what it is a good discussion with
Speaker 3: a therapist.
Speaker 2: Maybe yea.
Speaker 3: What is it about the empty plate that you don't
Speaker 3: want to sit behind? Maybe no, Maybe it's interesting.
Speaker 2: Now, what about the days of def Jam in the beginning,
Speaker 2: it is known that you created this incredible music recording
Speaker 2: company by nurturing artists, by being brave, by being radical,
Speaker 2: by seeking them out, by being kind to them. What
Speaker 2: was that like?
Speaker 3: Well, I would say the recording studio that we worked
Speaker 3: in most I dubbed it chun King House of Metal,
Speaker 3: which is still what it's called, although the studio moved
Speaker 3: to a different location and it was in Chinatown, and
Speaker 3: we would eat a lot of Chinese food because we're
Speaker 3: Chintown New York. Food's great?
Speaker 2: Was that when you became vegan?
Speaker 3: No, I became vegan right when I moved to California
Speaker 3: in college. The first thing I gave up was soad.
Speaker 3: I used to drink a sixty four ounce Pepsi with
Speaker 3: every meal, insane, And then I gave that up and
Speaker 3: I switched to a picture of iced coffee, and without knowing,
Speaker 3: I was trying to replace the caffeine with the caffeine.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that, but I drank a lot of
Speaker 3: iced coffee. And then I gave up caffeine at that
Speaker 3: point in time, and then I was only drinking water.
Speaker 3: Then I gave up red meat and I got to
Speaker 3: the point where I was basically eating chicken and vegetables.
Speaker 3: I never really liked fish, so I didn't eat fish.
Speaker 3: I never really liked eggs, so I didn't eat eggs.
Speaker 3: So it was chicken and vegetables. And I remember a
Speaker 3: friend of mine gave me a book called Diet for
Speaker 3: New America, which was an anti meat book, and they said,
Speaker 3: if you read this book, you're never going to want
Speaker 3: to eat chicken again. And I decided before I read
Speaker 3: the book, I'm an experiment with not eating chicken, just
Speaker 3: to see how long I can go. And then I
Speaker 3: ended up never eading chicken for twenty something years.
Speaker 2: So at that point, you were a vegan And what
Speaker 2: made you stop being vegan?
Speaker 3: I weighed one hundred pounds more than I do now.
Speaker 3: I was terribly depressed, bad skin, I was sick for
Speaker 3: a long time. Yeah. I worked with a performance expert
Speaker 3: who really wanted me to eat animals, and I wouldn't
Speaker 3: because I was a vegan and that was not an option.
Speaker 2: What is a performance expert.
Speaker 3: It's a person He worked with Olympic athletes or heads
Speaker 3: of companies, different people. He was a doctor and I
Speaker 3: heard about him. I read a book This is when
Speaker 3: I was really big, and you know, could barely walk
Speaker 3: to the end of the block without being out of breath.
Speaker 3: And I read a book by a guy who ran
Speaker 3: a thousand miles in eleven days, and I just thought,
Speaker 3: it's like, I can't walk down the block, yet there's
Speaker 3: a human who can run a thousand miles and eleven days.
Speaker 3: Some things I'm doing something wrong. I'm doing something wrong.
Speaker 3: And in his book he talked about meeting this guy
Speaker 3: named Phil maffatone who changed the way he trained. And
Speaker 3: I sent him a message saying I'd like to hire
Speaker 3: h miss my doctor. He was based in Florida at
Speaker 3: that time, and I was living in California, and he
Speaker 3: sent me back an email saying I've retired. I've stopped
Speaker 3: my medical practice and mentioned he didn't know who I
Speaker 3: was at all, and he said I gave up medicine
Speaker 3: to write songs. And I wrote back, well, if you're interested,
Speaker 3: I can mentor you on the songwriting, if you can
Speaker 3: mentor me on the health stuff. And then I saw
Speaker 3: him several times. Then he ended up living in my
Speaker 3: house for two years and I did everything he said.
Speaker 3: He got me to eat eggs and fish, neither of
Speaker 3: which I ever liked purely is medicine. He said, just
Speaker 3: think of this as this is the medicine you need.
Speaker 3: I know you don't like it. You're not eating it
Speaker 3: for pleasure. You're eating this because you need this animal protein.
Speaker 3: So I did that and I got much much healthier,
Speaker 3: but I didn't lose weight yet. And he said, I
Speaker 3: watch everything you eat. I'm with you every day. I
Speaker 3: see how you exercise. He said, ninety nine out of
Speaker 3: one hundred people, all the weight would fall off. For
Speaker 3: some reason, it's not falling off. And then I thought about, well,
Speaker 3: my mom was obese eventually in a wheelchair. Maybe it's
Speaker 3: just a genetic thing. It is what it is. And
Speaker 3: then I went out to lunch one day with Mo Austin.
Speaker 3: Do you know Boston Okay, I passed away at ninety
Speaker 3: six years old. He was one of my mentors in
Speaker 3: music and maybe the most beautiful person in the music industry,
Speaker 3: really beautiful person. And if you knew his wife, Evelyn,
Speaker 3: she was incredible, a light being, really beautiful, beautiful people.
Speaker 3: And we went out to lunch one day and he said,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm really getting worried about you. You're really big.
Speaker 3: I know you work, I know you walk, I know
Speaker 3: you care. You know you're diligent about what you eat.
Speaker 3: But you're really getting big, and I'm worried about your health.
Speaker 3: I'm going to get the name of a nutritionists. I
Speaker 3: want you to go to my guy, and I want
Speaker 3: you to do it. Every says, and I said, fine,
Speaker 3: I'll do it, knowing it wouldn't work because I've tried everything,
Speaker 3: but I'm I love mo, I'll do what ever he says.
Speaker 3: And he sent me to a weight loss specialist at
Speaker 3: UCLA and he put me on a diet of seven
Speaker 3: protein shakes a day and it was just water and
Speaker 3: egg protein, and then one meal a day at the
Speaker 3: end of the day, a meal which was fish, soup, salad,
Speaker 3: very low calorie, low carb, high protein meal. And I
Speaker 3: did that and in fourteen months, I lost one hundred
Speaker 3: and thirty five pounds.
Speaker 2: That's a lot.
Speaker 3: That's a lot. That's like a whole per like a
Speaker 3: whole person.
Speaker 2: Probably what Max.
Speaker 3: So at that point in time, yeh, I was eating
Speaker 3: drinking eggshakes, still eating eggs, still eating fish, but not
Speaker 3: eating any other meats. And then I read a book
Speaker 3: called The Paleo solution, but he explained how all the
Speaker 3: different foods work in our body, and I believed every
Speaker 3: word of it. And it talked about how aultimately red
Speaker 3: meat is the single best thing that you can eat.
Speaker 3: And I was torn because in my mind, I'm still
Speaker 3: a vegan. I'm eating fish and eggs as medicine. I'm
Speaker 3: drinking these eggshakes. Still his weight, Yeah, but I still
Speaker 3: don't eat flesh, you know, I don't eat animal flesh.
Speaker 3: And I believed in the book so much that I
Speaker 3: bought one hundred copies and I was giving people, but
Speaker 3: I wouldn't do it because I was a vegan, so
Speaker 3: I could, you know, I couldn't do it. And after
Speaker 3: about a year of giving this book away, it just
Speaker 3: felt like it's disingenuous to be sharing this information and
Speaker 3: not doing it myself. Doesn't seem right. And it was
Speaker 3: on my birthday. Moodiella and I. Moodiel was a very
Speaker 3: I was a vegan, she was a vegetarian. We went
Speaker 3: out to dinner one of our favorite restaurants in Los
Speaker 3: Angeles called Capo. If you've been a Capo in Santa Monica,
Speaker 3: spectacular restaurant, maybe the best in LA and they grilled
Speaker 3: meat on an oak wood fire. Really, I think it's oak,
Speaker 3: might be pecan, it's oak. Incredible meat place. Although I
Speaker 3: always went there and ate fish, and they had great fish.
Speaker 3: So we both ordered fish like normal, and we ordered
Speaker 3: a steak and we had it in the center of
Speaker 3: the table between us and we ate our fish, and
Speaker 3: then each of us had one bite of the meat.
Speaker 3: And it was a terrible experience because if you haven't
Speaker 3: eaten meat forero point twenty three years, it's like eating
Speaker 3: human flesh. It's an insane thing to get over the
Speaker 3: way our brains work. Even the smell of meat cooking
Speaker 3: was a hard thing to be around back then. But
Speaker 3: I believed it was what was healthiest, even though I
Speaker 3: had been weaned off of it through this process. And
Speaker 3: we did that maybe every week or two we would
Speaker 3: go to Capo and have a bite or two of meat,
Speaker 3: and then after about six weeks we were able to
Speaker 3: just order steak.
Speaker 2: We were just talking about your house in Italy. So
Speaker 2: you chose to live in Italy which has passes every
Speaker 2: two times a day. Do you eat carbs now?
Speaker 3: We eat in Italy? All the rules change certain things. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there are certain rules at certain times. I have one
Speaker 3: called travel day, which is on a travel day where
Speaker 3: you're flying. I don't really like to fly, so one
Speaker 3: of the rules of travel days you could eat anything
Speaker 3: you want. Most of these things have more to do
Speaker 3: with what you do all the time. So on an
Speaker 3: all the time basis, we eat red meat and some vegetables.
Speaker 3: That's our that's what we mean. And I'll say I'll
Speaker 3: eat meat, I'll eat chicken, but I think it seems
Speaker 3: like grass fed beef seems to be the best. Or
Speaker 3: wild game. Will eat a good amount of wild game, bison.
Speaker 3: That's pretty much.
Speaker 2: What we eat, you feel. My last question to you,
Speaker 2: Rick Rubin, is what would be your comfort food?
Speaker 3: Pizza? And I try to do it as infrequently as possible,
Speaker 3: but it is the one that's the default. Too much
Speaker 3: going on, tired, bad mood, nothing, you know, nothing feels
Speaker 3: like it's going to make it better.
Speaker 2: Maybe pizza, okay, And I hope you don't need that's
Speaker 2: right off. I want you to have Thank you so
Speaker 2: much for coming. Thank you.
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