Speaker 1: Pushkin. Just a quick note here. You can listen to
Speaker 1: all of the music mentioned in this episode on our playlist,
Speaker 1: which you can find a link to in the show
Speaker 1: notes for licensing reasons. Each time a song is referenced
Speaker 1: in this episode, you'll hear this sound effect. All right.
Speaker 1: Enjoyed the episode, I thought, this is it man Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: Quincy says, you know, I'd rather live in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: than Heaven. That's t Bone Burnette in conversation with my
Speaker 1: Broken Record partner Rick Rubin. We took a hilarious picture
Speaker 1: of Rick and t Bone after they taped this interview.
Speaker 1: Rick is in a T shirt and shorts. Naturally, t
Speaker 1: Bone towers over him, dressed impeccably in a white shirt
Speaker 1: and a black suit like some old school blues player.
Speaker 1: I think of t Bone as Rick's spiritual father. He's
Speaker 1: a generation older, in his early seventies, but he's had
Speaker 1: the same kind of extraordinary, behind the scenes influence on
Speaker 1: the music we all listen to. T Bone is probably
Speaker 1: most famous for helping launch the careers of artists like
Speaker 1: Los Lobos, Counting Crows, and Gillian Welch. Also for producing
Speaker 1: albums by Brandy Carlyle Elton John and the masterfully executed
Speaker 1: Raising Sand collaboration between Alison Kraus and Robert plant Oh.
Speaker 1: He also produced and performed on My favorite Elvis Costello
Speaker 1: record of all time, King of America. Then there's this
Speaker 1: film and TV credits which are insane. He partnered with
Speaker 1: the Coen Brothers' music supervisor on The Big Lebowski. He
Speaker 1: worked on Oh Brother, Where art thou walk? The line?
Speaker 1: Crazy Heart, jew Detective. The list goes on. He's a
Speaker 1: new record out called The Invisible Light Acoustic Space available
Speaker 1: wherever you get your music. It's the first in a
Speaker 1: series of records T Bone will be putting out this year,
Speaker 1: an incredible outpouring of songs coming out of a play
Speaker 1: he's providing the music for. I only met him onths
Speaker 1: years and years ago. What was the most stars studied
Speaker 1: dinner party I've ever attended? It was in La I
Speaker 1: got invited by accident. It was wall to wall movie
Speaker 1: stars and t Bone Burnett, and the only person I
Speaker 1: wanted to listen to was t Bone Burnett. You're about
Speaker 1: to understand how I felt. I'm Malcolm Godwell, this is
Speaker 1: broken record and I'm heartbroken. I didn't get to join
Speaker 1: in on this conversation here in conversation at Shango Law
Speaker 1: Studios in Malibu, Rick Rubin and t Bone Burnett. Are
Speaker 1: you always writing songs? No, you know, I took a
Speaker 1: job about three years ago Marshall Brickman. Do you know
Speaker 1: Marshall Brickman an incredible character. He was one of the
Speaker 1: original folkies in New York City and I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: I only know him as a as a writer. Well,
Speaker 1: in the fifties he was one of the cats in
Speaker 1: Washington Square Park and he played on Judy Collins records.
Speaker 1: He played, he was a session musician. He played all that.
Speaker 1: He played banjo and fiddle and guitar and mandolin. He
Speaker 1: was the guitar player on Dueling Banjos for Deliverance. And
Speaker 1: by the time he was twenty three, he was the
Speaker 1: head writer on the Johnny Carson to Night Show. And
Speaker 1: then he invented The Dick Cavett Show. And then he
Speaker 1: wrote those movies with Woody Allen that you would know,
Speaker 1: The Annie Hall in Manhattan, and then he wrote Jersey Boys,
Speaker 1: which is amazing, you know. So he's transitioned into theater.
Speaker 1: And he called me up and he said, do you
Speaker 1: want to write a musical about the people who played
Speaker 1: Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, and do you remember them
Speaker 1: at all? So Roy Rogers was from my generation, the
Speaker 1: biggest star in the world, you know, all through the fifties.
Speaker 1: He had a television show and it was an interesting idea.
Speaker 1: He's in the Country Music Hall of Fame because he's
Speaker 1: a great He was a fantastic singer. But I always
Speaker 1: thought he was Roy Rogers, and I always thought Dale
Speaker 1: Evans was Dale Evans. But they were two actors. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that. Yeah, nobody knows that. So this is
Speaker 1: a story about the people who played them. And so
Speaker 1: they were like the monkeys, yeah, a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: except she wrote happy Trails. She was a great songwriter
Speaker 1: and he was a great singer. But they were cast, yeah,
Speaker 1: into those parts. Yeah, and the whole character was made up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the whole character was unbelievable. I brought a song to
Speaker 1: play for you. Do you want to play me the song? Yeah?
Speaker 1: That's a nice nice yeah. Yeah. Where will that fall
Speaker 1: into the story, I don't know. I think it's early
Speaker 1: when he's I think he's maybe auditioning for a radio
Speaker 1: show or something. He sings that song but yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's in the first act. Great, yeah, really good.
Speaker 1: Do you have to write? Are you to point now
Speaker 1: where you know sort of where the songs fit? And
Speaker 1: is there ever a calling to like say, okay, in
Speaker 1: the end of the second act, we need to add
Speaker 1: a song in this spot and this is what it
Speaker 1: needs to accomplish in the story. Yeah. In fact, I
Speaker 1: just wrote. We did a twenty they called it a
Speaker 1: twenty nine hour reading, which is you get all the
Speaker 1: actors up on their feet and they read the parts
Speaker 1: and you sort it. You do it without costumes or
Speaker 1: without sets, but you get the you get the gist
Speaker 1: of it, the tempo of the thing. And I realized
Speaker 1: after the last one that there I didn't have a
Speaker 1: beginning song for Roy, and I didn't have an ending
Speaker 1: song for Dale. So I went back and I did that.
Speaker 1: I wrote, I wrote a good song called out of
Speaker 1: Nowhere for Roy to start off with, so you meet
Speaker 1: him in strength, and then Dale needed a song at
Speaker 1: the end of a heavy duty number at the end.
Speaker 1: So yeah, And I'm sure we're gonna open it in
Speaker 1: Atlanta and twenty twenty in the fall of twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure once we get into the process of
Speaker 1: really getting it up and getting in front of audiences.
Speaker 1: There'll be a lot more changes to come. Yeah beautiful.
Speaker 1: I love the piece and surrender line really good, Yeah,
Speaker 1: really good. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, and I love the tagline.
Speaker 1: The hook line is great. Yeah, everybody wants to live
Speaker 1: for but nobody wants to get over. So good. But
Speaker 1: when I accepted this commission to write these songs for
Speaker 1: a musical, and I've done a lot of work with
Speaker 1: Sam Shepherd. He and I'd done a lot of things
Speaker 1: for plays, but a musicals different because every line has
Speaker 1: to be intentional. You know, you can't write just a
Speaker 1: cool Yeah, it's narrative. Yeah, it is narrative. And it
Speaker 1: became it was It sobered me up quite a bit,
Speaker 1: and I started reading. I read Sondheim's books, and I
Speaker 1: started studying Frank Lesser, who I think was the greatest
Speaker 1: of all the Broadway composers, and Learner and Low and
Speaker 1: all these cats. And it became clear that I was
Speaker 1: going to have to dance or get off the floor.
Speaker 1: So I started waking up every morning at four in
Speaker 1: the morning for about a year solid and writing when
Speaker 1: it was quiet. And then when I got through writing
Speaker 1: the twenty songs for the musical, I couldn't stop writing.
Speaker 1: So I've written now I don't know how. We've recorded
Speaker 1: about two hours of music that we're going to start
Speaker 1: putting out at April twelfth. Is the process of writing
Speaker 1: a song for a musical different than writing a song otherwise, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is, yeah, because it does have to move the
Speaker 1: story along. But do you start with the music first
Speaker 1: or do you start with the lyrics. I started with
Speaker 1: the lyrics because it's, as you say, it's part of
Speaker 1: the book. It's part of the narrative, so you'd write
Speaker 1: it like a poem basically. Yeah. Would you have a
Speaker 1: melody in your head? Yeah? Yeah, you know, melody is
Speaker 1: really just codified inflection. So it's your storytelling no matter what,
Speaker 1: so that every sentence has a certain melody to it.
Speaker 1: And so I was doing that. I was writing, but
Speaker 1: I would have a sense of melody as it was
Speaker 1: going down, and then you know, I wrote, we're putting
Speaker 1: out We're starting to put out records. I'm putting out
Speaker 1: three double records in the next year. This year, I'm
Speaker 1: going to kind of work hip hop because I see
Speaker 1: these cats they just put stuff out constantly, so we've
Speaker 1: recorded a lot of these tunes that have come afterward. Yes,
Speaker 1: I stopped. I really stopped producing other people for the
Speaker 1: most part. Although interesting, I've just made a record with
Speaker 1: Sarah Burrellis that's really beautiful. She's a beautiful singer, unbelievable.
Speaker 1: And she's also gone through the experience of writing a play.
Speaker 1: She wrote a musical of Waitress and it raised the
Speaker 1: stakes for her too. Her writing has become much more resonant, deeper,
Speaker 1: and higher. It's interesting to hear her growth through the process.
Speaker 1: How is the collaboration with her different than her other records?
Speaker 1: Would you say we did it more live? Which is
Speaker 1: what I mostly do. That's the thing I like most.
Speaker 1: The thing I love about making records is when people
Speaker 1: are playing and singing all at one time and you
Speaker 1: get they get finished, and you say, yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1: You know, it's such a great feeling. It's such a
Speaker 1: There's something about people playing together that no amount of
Speaker 1: getting it right, yeah, counters the energy of the interaction. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Perfection is a second rate idea, and the computer is
Speaker 1: a to put out perfect music all day long, but
Speaker 1: it's not nearly as interesting. It's like those Johnny Cash
Speaker 1: records you made with him, just sitting in a room
Speaker 1: with some people, turning them onto a song, you know,
Speaker 1: and turning the whole then turning the whole world onto
Speaker 1: the song the same way. So that's that's the process
Speaker 1: I like the most. And I think the band was great.
Speaker 1: She you know, it was the same, essentially the same
Speaker 1: band that was un Raising Sand. Jay Belrose played drums
Speaker 1: and Dennis Crouch played string bass and Rebo played guitar.
Speaker 1: I love that album so much, Raising Sand. I love it.
Speaker 1: Isn't that a beautiful record? So beautiful? Yeah, it really
Speaker 1: took me by surprise. I don't know, I wasn't expecting
Speaker 1: it to be so beautiful and just blew my mind. Well,
Speaker 1: you know both that both of them have mystical, beautiful voices. Yes,
Speaker 1: and and it was interesting to hear him soften up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but on paper it wasn't necessarily a mustlessen thing, and
Speaker 1: then hearing it it was mind blowing. I also didn't
Speaker 1: I didn't know most of those songs, so I didn't
Speaker 1: know that they weren't original songs. Yeah, so they were
Speaker 1: original for most people, yes, Yeah, but uh, it's got
Speaker 1: some of that same Sarah's record has some of that
Speaker 1: same that one come together Robert Allison really, I think
Speaker 1: Bill Flannagan. You know Flannigan, don't you. Flannagan was doing
Speaker 1: that show Crossroads, and I think he wanted to do
Speaker 1: a Crossroads with Robert and Allison and it ended up
Speaker 1: being a record, and then we did a Crossroads later.
Speaker 1: But I think they met from that idea of Flannagan
Speaker 1: pitching them on doing it. They met and they did
Speaker 1: a They did a tribute to Leadbelly or something or
Speaker 1: somebody up up in Cleveland, I think, and they enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: And then they called me up and said, you want
Speaker 1: to you want to make a record, And I sent
Speaker 1: him those two Gene Clark songs. Those are the first
Speaker 1: two things I sent them Through the Morning Through the
Speaker 1: Not and Polly, which I thought had those that Jane
Speaker 1: had that dark mystical vibe that they both have. You know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting now to hear Robert sing low and soft
Speaker 1: like that and go back and listen to led Zeppelin.
Speaker 1: It's so beautiful. He really showed another side and it
Speaker 1: felt like a side that just the timing of it
Speaker 1: was right for him, you know, like to hear him
Speaker 1: sound like that was a revelation. Yeah, well he sounded
Speaker 1: like a grown man. Yeah, made sense when before. I mean,
Speaker 1: he says himself that the early led Zebelin records he
Speaker 1: sounded like a castrato or something. You know, he was
Speaker 1: singing so high. Yeah, and I imagine that when he
Speaker 1: sings like that now, it's more like he's imitating the
Speaker 1: old hymn, whereas raising Sand sounds like more believable now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think. I really don't think he could sing
Speaker 1: those songs. He couldn't sing him in the range he
Speaker 1: used to sing him in. You know, same with Elton.
Speaker 1: You know, Elton's voice is dropped good octave or something
Speaker 1: like that, and he's got this beautiful, deep resonant baritone now,
Speaker 1: and you listen to some of the old records, he
Speaker 1: sounds like he's on helium or something. After after getting
Speaker 1: used to his voice now and loving it and going
Speaker 1: back in hearing them, not that they aren't absolutely classic
Speaker 1: and great for the same. Was there any reason you
Speaker 1: didn't do a second one with a follow up to Raisins.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think we may. I think we
Speaker 1: may do one days. I love that maybe we should
Speaker 1: do Maybe we should do it together. Let's do it.
Speaker 1: It's such a beautiful album. Yeah, I would love to
Speaker 1: do one again. We went in and recorded some songs,
Speaker 1: and having been through all the success, so to speak,
Speaker 1: the steaks seemed different when we went on the in
Speaker 1: the second time, and it didn't feel I don't think
Speaker 1: any of us felt the same kind of freedom that
Speaker 1: we'd feel. So interesting, isn't it interesting how how the
Speaker 1: stakes changed the whole process. Yeah? Yeah, but but I
Speaker 1: think now it's been long enough so we probably could
Speaker 1: go in and just just play. You know, that'd be great.
Speaker 1: Do you have ideas of songs? I hadn't thought about
Speaker 1: it that much. I mean, I've just there have just
Speaker 1: been rumblings about about it. So we'll see. We'll see
Speaker 1: where it goes. Have you done any other collaborations like
Speaker 1: that where it's been two artists who don't normally work together.
Speaker 1: I don't think I have Have you done that? Hm?
Speaker 1: When I see it, remember I've done I've done quite
Speaker 1: a few, you know. The Rolling Thunder review, which was
Speaker 1: this studio was part of that whole time. Yes, that
Speaker 1: was a beautiful experiment and it was a master class
Speaker 1: in art and show business. I mean, there was every
Speaker 1: Alan Ginsburg and Anne Wallman were there. Sam Shephard was there.
Speaker 1: There are incredible musicians. Joni Mitchell was there, and Joe
Speaker 1: Bias and Howie Wyeth and David Mansfield one great musician
Speaker 1: after the Mick Ronson and people from it. Yeah, people
Speaker 1: from all different parts of the world and different disciplines
Speaker 1: in different places, but everybody came together and collaborated and
Speaker 1: it was a it was a tremendous learning experience that
Speaker 1: I've replicated or tried to replicate several times with like
Speaker 1: the Roy Orbison Black and White Night Show, and that
Speaker 1: was incredible too. That was a beautiful, incredible and uh
Speaker 1: I saw it the other day. I was watching it.
Speaker 1: Leonard Cohen was in the audience. I'd forgotten that. I
Speaker 1: think that idea of like Aerosmith and run DMC. Did
Speaker 1: you have anything to do with that? I suppose, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: I forgot. Yeah, it's hard to think, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, it's hard to think about projects. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: know exactly. It's hard to even look back at all,
Speaker 1: and I rarely do. Yeah, me too, but but that
Speaker 1: was certainly one of those that changed everything. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the boys, you know them, doing I'm Down. Yeah, did
Speaker 1: you ever hear that? Oh? Yeah, it never came out.
Speaker 1: It never came out. It never did no, no, no.
Speaker 1: We couldn't get permission. It was supposed to be on
Speaker 1: that first album, Licensed to Ill. It might have been
Speaker 1: the last thing we recorded for it. We couldn't get
Speaker 1: permission and it never came out. But I think it's
Speaker 1: on like YouTube or somewhere. I heard it. Steve Rabovski
Speaker 1: played yeah when it just then yes because guy, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was I'm really d you know fully, d
Speaker 1: fully fully remember that's so funny, so funny man, they
Speaker 1: were cutting up. Yeah, I did that. I did the
Speaker 1: guitar solo in the organ solo. Neither are instruments that
Speaker 1: I really play, and it really shows, you know. It's
Speaker 1: like when we come back. T Bone Premiere is another
Speaker 1: brand new song for us, but first we pay the bills.
Speaker 1: We're back and T Bone has another new song to
Speaker 1: play for us called Out of Nowhere, another number from
Speaker 1: the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans musical he's writing for.
Speaker 1: This is the song I realized I needed a song
Speaker 1: to introduce Roy. I didn't really have a powerful number
Speaker 1: to introduce him, and as I said. The guy who
Speaker 1: played named Leonard Sly was a It was a soulful,
Speaker 1: beautiful cat. He wasn't at all like the swashbuck buckling cowboy,
Speaker 1: you know he was. He was different, and so I
Speaker 1: wanted to write something from inside him. Not not about him, yes,
Speaker 1: but for something that he was feeling about his life
Speaker 1: and about where he came from. So this is a
Speaker 1: song called out of Nowhere. Back to that idea you
Speaker 1: were talking about about the way art happens. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: once you define a thing, you lose it. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: really hard. Yeah, it's really hard. That's right. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's I think in retrospect, after the moment
Speaker 1: of inspiration, where the thing that wants to be revealed
Speaker 1: is revealed and we know we like it, then we
Speaker 1: can maybe try to figure out why we like it
Speaker 1: and you know, and then it's okay. But I think
Speaker 1: the other way around is very difficult. Yeah. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it even happens. I don't know what I
Speaker 1: think artists do. I think all really artists do is
Speaker 1: we're going down a road and we we mark things,
Speaker 1: we say at this day, I was at this place
Speaker 1: and I saw this thing and it was beautiful. Yes,
Speaker 1: And so I'm gonna mark this so that maybe you
Speaker 1: don't miss it when you're going by. That's I think
Speaker 1: that's the real, the real journey of an artist. I
Speaker 1: can remember seeing French Impressionist paintings of trees in the
Speaker 1: French countryside. I'm thinking it's a very strange decision that
Speaker 1: the artist is making, you know, putting all these different
Speaker 1: blotches of color to make the tree. It's very poetic
Speaker 1: and beautiful, but it's, you know what, a wild imagination.
Speaker 1: And then it went to France. I saw the trees
Speaker 1: and it's like, oh, that's what they actually look like,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's like it seemed like
Speaker 1: the lyrics of songs hit us in this sort of poetic,
Speaker 1: magical way, when often if we hear the story of them,
Speaker 1: they turn out to be very ordinary descriptions of what
Speaker 1: really happened. It's I guess maybe it's the information that's
Speaker 1: left out that makes them seem so magical. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's right. I do think that's an interesting observation.
Speaker 1: I do think that's right. In this song that you
Speaker 1: just sang, the hook has a repetition of a phrase
Speaker 1: the first song you play did not have that. Isn't
Speaker 1: it interesting that when writing words that certain words can
Speaker 1: be repeated often and it feels really good, And other
Speaker 1: words you repeat them and it feels like you can
Speaker 1: never repeat them. Some thing's become a chant and they've
Speaker 1: fallen really naturally. Yeah, it's the melody of the thought.
Speaker 1: It's the melody of the of the of the expression. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Maybe the phrasing as well, the way the way they
Speaker 1: work rhythmically. Interesting. You're pretty good at this. That's very interesting.
Speaker 1: Never thought of it at all, neither. I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: it right now. Part of the conversation. That's what's coming
Speaker 1: out from listening to the song. It's like, excellent, how
Speaker 1: does that work? How do we do that? I've noticed
Speaker 1: the difficulty in it, but I've never thought about why.
Speaker 1: But that one, this one here, I don't know. That's
Speaker 1: just something that became very important to me, that idea,
Speaker 1: and it was important in context. It was important for
Speaker 1: Roy Rogers because he for him, everything just happened out
Speaker 1: of nowhere. Yes, right, so it was important and for
Speaker 1: him to embrace that idea. And but then it happened,
Speaker 1: I mean, the Raising Sand record happened out of nowhere. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: just I think the best the best things do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, they really do. They're not they're not they're
Speaker 1: not conceived or exactly, they're just they're helped and do existence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the intention behind them is a beautiful intention. But
Speaker 1: the intention didn't control it happening. It's more like maybe
Speaker 1: it allowed it allowed it to be revealed. Maybe just
Speaker 1: got to roll in in the first place. And also
Speaker 1: in the first song, if we were making a record
Speaker 1: together and if I was producing it, I would have
Speaker 1: suggested repeating the tag at the end of the first piece,
Speaker 1: I'll do that. Well. Well, it depends though, because in
Speaker 1: the context of it, and I was specific about if
Speaker 1: we were making a record together, it would be the
Speaker 1: purpose of the song would be different than the way
Speaker 1: it would be in a play. Like in a play,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm just thinking about it. It's like
Speaker 1: the structure and a play might be different than the
Speaker 1: normal song structure wants to accomplish a different purpose and
Speaker 1: we won't know until we get it up and we're Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the idea of making art, like you were
Speaker 1: saying earlier about on the Raising Sand album, mistakes got high,
Speaker 1: and then it changed because there was an expectation. I
Speaker 1: like to say, and I have said it before to
Speaker 1: artists that I've worked with, is when we're making these things,
Speaker 1: the audience comes last. That's what I think too. I agree,
Speaker 1: I agree. I don't believe you can do it for
Speaker 1: the audience, No, because I don't think we're I know
Speaker 1: that if we can make something that we like, there's
Speaker 1: a better chance that someone else is going to like
Speaker 1: it than if we make what we that we don't like,
Speaker 1: but we think someone else is going to like, that
Speaker 1: seems impossible. That's that's one of the problems with you know,
Speaker 1: working in television is there's a there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people that think they know what the audience wants,
Speaker 1: and they're always trying to get you to do the
Speaker 1: thing the audience wants. And television is a big collaborative medium,
Speaker 1: and you know, I love to collaborate, and I love
Speaker 1: to collaborate with large groups, but it is it's a
Speaker 1: process of it's not a process of starting with the
Speaker 1: audience and then working backward. If you want to make
Speaker 1: something good, right and and what audience is like is
Speaker 1: something good? Absolutely, so your real your real obligation or
Speaker 1: responsibility to the artist is to make a thing you
Speaker 1: really love that. If you do that, then there's a
Speaker 1: really good chance they'll really love it as well. Hopefully,
Speaker 1: so at least chance. Yeah, at least you've got a chance.
Speaker 1: And I feel like as a record producer, I often
Speaker 1: feel like a proxy for the audience, you too, Right's
Speaker 1: I'm not really a musician, So all I am is
Speaker 1: a glorified fan, you know, That's really what I am. Well,
Speaker 1: you're a listener, Yeah, that's it. Yeah, I listen and
Speaker 1: I try to understand. I can tune into what pulls
Speaker 1: me into something and what pushes me away, and I
Speaker 1: just really trust whatever that is. Yeah, right, I don't.
Speaker 1: I never know why. Yeah, but you've learned to trust
Speaker 1: your instincts. That's a valuable that's a valuable thing. Most
Speaker 1: people don't. That's one of the things. One of the
Speaker 1: things an artist tests to know how to do is
Speaker 1: trust his instinct. All the best art is second nature.
Speaker 1: It's made by second nature. It's not made consciously in
Speaker 1: that way. That's why I say artist. The artist role
Speaker 1: is the goal of artist to create conscience, not consciousness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's to create it's to create the thing where you feel,
Speaker 1: the thing, where you where you empathize, where you say yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's true, or that's beautiful. You don't do that.
Speaker 1: That's not a conscious decision. It's an internal, instinctive, instinctual decision. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was something that I noticed relatively early in the
Speaker 1: working with different artists. That was interesting was one of
Speaker 1: the bands I worked with was called Slayer, heavy metal band,
Speaker 1: very one of the inventors of black metal or you know,
Speaker 1: like very very aggressive metal, and the lyrics were really
Speaker 1: dark and heavy, and to some people, they would look
Speaker 1: at that as negative content. And then I would go
Speaker 1: to a concert and I would see an arena full
Speaker 1: of kids who were very much like the guys in Slayer,
Speaker 1: who were so filled with joy listening to this music.
Speaker 1: It was speaking directly to them. It completely was nourishing them. Right.
Speaker 1: Kumbaya would not have reached them, just made them angry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's like it's almost like beyond what the actual
Speaker 1: content is, it's more like how does whatever the art
Speaker 1: is resonate with other people? And you know, I personally
Speaker 1: don't like to see horror movies. I don't like to
Speaker 1: see images of violence at all, horror violence or any
Speaker 1: So I almost never go to the movies other than
Speaker 1: maybe documentaries. But for some people that experience of feeling
Speaker 1: the thrill, they really that really moves them. They like it.
Speaker 1: But again I don't I don't know that there's a
Speaker 1: there's not a right and a wrong, and there's not
Speaker 1: a positive and a negative in it. It's more like
Speaker 1: it really is what entertains people and whatever stuff happened
Speaker 1: in their life that led them to a place where
Speaker 1: this darker thing speaks to them. In their case, it's
Speaker 1: it's healing to hear it. They don't they feel less alone? Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's you know the I've called my new
Speaker 1: but the new stuff I'm working on with Kifis and Jay,
Speaker 1: I've called it the Invisible Light. And I feel that
Speaker 1: it's because of that very thing you're talking about, because
Speaker 1: the what it's say, the words are very dark. The
Speaker 1: world it's talking about is very dark. But if you
Speaker 1: listen into it, there's a great deal of light. Invisible light, yes, right, beautiful,
Speaker 1: but you have to find your way into it. If
Speaker 1: you just if you just take it all at face value,
Speaker 1: or if you try to approach it pedantically, You'll just say, well,
Speaker 1: this is this is a dark, dark world. Well, it
Speaker 1: is a dark world, but there's also you know, there's
Speaker 1: all of that. There's the ocean, in the trees, in
Speaker 1: the sky, and I think it's all it's all like
Speaker 1: like I said earlier, I think it's all just a
Speaker 1: reflection of what's going on. You know, It's like, that's right.
Speaker 1: There's tremendous beauty in the world, and there's really bad
Speaker 1: stuff going on, and all of that warrants being reflected back.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, you know. I was I've been going around
Speaker 1: recently and most of the music I'm hearing in supermarkets
Speaker 1: and department stores and those things, just going around life.
Speaker 1: Most of it that I'm hearing is from the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: and I'm curious about that because the nineteen sixties were
Speaker 1: maybe the last time there was this sort of exuberance
Speaker 1: about art. I was at Whole Foods the other day
Speaker 1: and they were playing good Love and I Want to
Speaker 1: Hold Your Hand and those kinds of songs, and it
Speaker 1: was it lightened the feeling in the place. And there
Speaker 1: really hasn't been that particular aspect of music since the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties that I can think of, no, And it's
Speaker 1: also it's also a time beyond what the lyrical content was,
Speaker 1: when the industry was still small and the stakes were low,
Speaker 1: and the people making that music probably were making it
Speaker 1: for themselves or for their friends or for you know,
Speaker 1: the high school dance. They weren't making it to sell
Speaker 1: out arenas, because nobody had done that exactly everything. It
Speaker 1: seems that anything when it starts, it's small and has
Speaker 1: beautiful intention and integrity in it, and then when it
Speaker 1: gets big and a lot of people are involved, that
Speaker 1: just dissipates. Just in any organization. This is one of
Speaker 1: the reasons I love as a producer. I love making
Speaker 1: records with first records with artists because you're dealing with
Speaker 1: an artist who's been working under complete autonomy for a
Speaker 1: number of years and he doesn't have experts telling him
Speaker 1: what the audience wants, for instance. Yes, So I've had
Speaker 1: very several, very sick, successful first records with artists that
Speaker 1: were tremendous fun and I still love today because because
Speaker 1: of that, they're not they're unself conscious. Yes, no baggage, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've worked with both artists for the first time many
Speaker 1: artists and many successful artists, and it is you know,
Speaker 1: existing artists. And it's definitely true that with a new
Speaker 1: artist there's a freedom of how is this going to work?
Speaker 1: Whereas with the with the established artists, there's often a
Speaker 1: lot of bad habits to have to unlearned. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just playing in front of twenty or thirty thousand people
Speaker 1: will create something that does something to your brain. Well,
Speaker 1: it makes you, it make it can make you be
Speaker 1: too broad. Yeah. And in the studio this is you know,
Speaker 1: the studio is like a it's like a film, you know,
Speaker 1: like you get right in on a person, you're closer
Speaker 1: right by them, you're you know, they're singing in your ear.
Speaker 1: In a large concert, you know, it's like a theater,
Speaker 1: it's a you're projecting out into the last row. Yes,
Speaker 1: So it's a very different it's a very different discipline.
Speaker 1: And playing for large crowds and having to gm them
Speaker 1: up night after night could really give you some bad habits.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, working with seasoned artists can be
Speaker 1: absolutely the best because there because they're just good. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I was going to say when you mentioned the work
Speaker 1: that I did with Johnny and a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of especially in the beginning when we started working together,
Speaker 1: it was getting him to perform the songs less. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, sell the songs, just to tell it. Just
Speaker 1: tell me. I'm sitting right here next to you. And
Speaker 1: then we were sitting on a couch just seeing me this,
Speaker 1: just tell me the story of the song. You don't
Speaker 1: have to perform it. And his recordings because the tape
Speaker 1: was rolling all the time, and he would always say
Speaker 1: to himself, get off stage, cash, get off stage. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He was a character, wouldn't what a lost? Tremendous loss
Speaker 1: that was, Yeah, beautiful. He was amazing. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: he would have been. Anything he would have done would
Speaker 1: have been good because it was him. It wasn't. It
Speaker 1: wasn't that he was the best musician or the best singer.
Speaker 1: It was he showed through what he made. He chose that.
Speaker 1: But anything he would have chose would have been great.
Speaker 1: You know, Sam Shepard and I were doing a play
Speaker 1: up in New York Tooth of Crime, and he called
Speaker 1: me up to write music for it. And I was
Speaker 1: at the time in my life when I couldn't I
Speaker 1: didn't know what music was anymore. I couldn't tell why
Speaker 1: one note should be here, and another note should shouldn't
Speaker 1: be there. You know, every note was the same, and
Speaker 1: no notes were even notes. I was let I was
Speaker 1: letting go of the idea of pitch entirely and just
Speaker 1: working purely off tone. And I was at sea, and
Speaker 1: I said, and we were sitting in a theater somewhere,
Speaker 1: and I said to say, I mean, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't even know what music is anymore, man, And he said, well,
Speaker 1: when you do it, that's what it is. And that
Speaker 1: that was the most freeing thing anybody ever said to
Speaker 1: me in my life. And and and that's what I think.
Speaker 1: That's the thing we can help artists get to that point.
Speaker 1: I want to help other artists with that same that
Speaker 1: same vote of confidence or that same lack of questioning.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with more of Rick's conversation with t
Speaker 1: Bone after this. We're back with more Rick Rubin and
Speaker 1: t Bone Burnett. What was your entry into music? I
Speaker 1: don't know any of it. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've known you for so long, but that I know
Speaker 1: you as de Bone Burnett, I don't know how you
Speaker 1: became Well, my first entry into music was my parents
Speaker 1: had a great seventy eight collection, and I used to
Speaker 1: sit down and listen to all the Lewis Armstrong records
Speaker 1: in Ella Fitzgerald the song There were great American songbook
Speaker 1: records in Texas, in Texas and Fort Worth, and and
Speaker 1: and I was. I was moved by the way there
Speaker 1: was a song, there was a cold Porter song I
Speaker 1: think called begin the Beginning, you know that tune, and
Speaker 1: I would listen to it and I'd be immediately transported
Speaker 1: to some tropical island somewhere, And I was. I was
Speaker 1: amazed at the way music could create place, could create
Speaker 1: an atmosphere and an environment, and you could close your
Speaker 1: eyes and I would no longer be in Fort Worth, Texas,
Speaker 1: which was to me a great relief. Fort Worth at
Speaker 1: the time had a very low ceiling, and it felt
Speaker 1: like it felt like anything that was happening in the
Speaker 1: world was happening somewhere far away, and there was no
Speaker 1: way to get there. But music was a window or
Speaker 1: a door out into the into these other places, into
Speaker 1: the world. And that that wasn't the music of the
Speaker 1: day though, No, it was that you were listening to
Speaker 1: older even then it was old music. Yeah, yeah, it
Speaker 1: was old music. Then what was what was the music
Speaker 1: of the day when you were young. Well, it was
Speaker 1: like Elvis Presley and Ricky Nelson. I loved Ricky Nelson,
Speaker 1: I love personally. I loved Ricky more than Elvis because
Speaker 1: he was on television and he sang a great song
Speaker 1: every week. And I didn't I didn't really understand Elvis.
Speaker 1: He seemed he seemed broad to me, whereas Ricky was
Speaker 1: cool and understated. You know, so my aesthetics sort of
Speaker 1: went that direction. I learned to appreciate Elvis, of course,
Speaker 1: much more later when I when I got when I
Speaker 1: got way into the especially that stuff he did with
Speaker 1: Sam Phillips, who was also It wasn't Sam Phillips a
Speaker 1: great inspiration to you. I mean I feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: he was a guy who, like you, didn't recognize race boundaries.
Speaker 1: He was he was. Sam Phillips was a great civil
Speaker 1: rights leader. Actually, you know, he had the first all
Speaker 1: women radio station, w h e R in Memphis, and
Speaker 1: he brought he brought Helen Wolf into the studio when
Speaker 1: Helen Wolf might have scared the pants off of most
Speaker 1: white people at the time. I mean it was a big, tough,
Speaker 1: strong black man in the South. But he but Sam
Speaker 1: embraced him, and embraced Ike Turner and brought all these
Speaker 1: incredible musicians into the studio and opened up the world
Speaker 1: to them and them to the world. You know, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and I admire that you've done very much the same thing.
Speaker 1: You you just you've crossed those boundaries just naturally, like
Speaker 1: I have eclectic taste and I follow my taste. And
Speaker 1: it's not there's no political underpinnings, no, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just we also had Sam yeah, you know, to start
Speaker 1: at start it that way, and John Hammond before him, Yeah,
Speaker 1: John Hammond incredible. John Hammond was a uptown New York
Speaker 1: establishment guy who went down to the village and found
Speaker 1: Billie Holiday. And you know, music's always done that though.
Speaker 1: Music the thing. Tony Bennett, you know, has an art
Speaker 1: school and he says the great thing about art and
Speaker 1: he's a good painter, He's a very good painter. He says,
Speaker 1: a great thing about art is you're either good or
Speaker 1: you're not good. And it doesn't matter where you're from,
Speaker 1: or what what your ethnicity is or any of that.
Speaker 1: It's just good or not good. And it feels like
Speaker 1: the the relationships that I have with artists have have
Speaker 1: nothing to do with anything other than our love of music.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't you know, it doesn't matter where they're
Speaker 1: from or what the back ground is, or it doesn't matter. Right,
Speaker 1: we're not talking about that, you know, We're talking about music.
Speaker 1: That's right, and we're either on the same page or not,
Speaker 1: and that's all and that's good too, Like whether we
Speaker 1: are or not, it's all fun, you know exactly. I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to convince anybody of anything. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: Willie Dixon. I got to work with Willie Dixon at
Speaker 1: and one of the things he would say is if
Speaker 1: that's the way you like it, I like it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I love that. Yeah, that's that's generous. That's a
Speaker 1: deep generous yeah, you know, yeah, so beautiful. Okay, So
Speaker 1: Elvis is on the radio and Ricky Nelson's on the radio.
Speaker 1: You're listening to seventy Big Band seventy eight's, yeah, stuff
Speaker 1: like that. What was your first music related gig and
Speaker 1: your first instrument? Oh, well, you know, I was one day.
Speaker 1: I was at a friend's house and there was a
Speaker 1: Gibson guitar much like this one leaning against a wall
Speaker 1: and I hit the east like that, and oh it
Speaker 1: just just something about hitting that one note was like
Speaker 1: a key that unlocked a door that led me through
Speaker 1: my whole life. And once I started playing guitar, when
Speaker 1: I was about twelve, I started listening to guitar players,
Speaker 1: and that's when I, you know, I learned how to
Speaker 1: play wildwood Flower by the Carter family, which Maybell Carter
Speaker 1: is essentially the mother of rock and roll guitar. You know,
Speaker 1: every rock and roll guitar player I know learned to
Speaker 1: play wildwood Flower first or very soon thereafter. And so
Speaker 1: I started listening to the Carter family, and I started
Speaker 1: listening to Hank Williams and that stuff because it was
Speaker 1: on the radio and there was a lot of interesting
Speaker 1: pop music. There was. Peggy Lee was interesting at the
Speaker 1: time of the fifties. She was really killer great. And
Speaker 1: then the Beatles happened, you know, and that changed everything.
Speaker 1: That that really did, that changed the world. I look
Speaker 1: at those I look at those clips now, the Beatles
Speaker 1: playing for audiences of young girls, and the girls are screaming,
Speaker 1: and some of them look like they're screaming at a
Speaker 1: horror movie. And I and I feel like there was
Speaker 1: that moment, there was that confluence of events of the
Speaker 1: Kennedy assess the first Kennedy assassination, and the Beatles coming
Speaker 1: out in the wake of that. That was was once
Speaker 1: again them Metalloys. Yeah, it was it was them. It
Speaker 1: was a Catharsis in them mythologizing this horror for us
Speaker 1: in a in a beautiful way and and singing these
Speaker 1: joyful songs in the wake of this, of this great tragedy.
Speaker 1: And again, you know, none of these like again, looking back,
Speaker 1: we can see just happened, and this was we can
Speaker 1: call it a reaction, but I don't think it was
Speaker 1: a intellectual reaction, not at all. No, nobody was connecting
Speaker 1: the two at the time. But I think in retrospect
Speaker 1: it's hard not to connect with right, It's fascinating. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so those those things, I mean, sometimes we can see
Speaker 1: around corners, I know, you see around corners occasionally and
Speaker 1: you think, oh, I see where this fits and this works.
Speaker 1: I've had that happen a couple of times, but most
Speaker 1: of the time I certainly didn't. With raising Sand for instance,
Speaker 1: I didn't see around that corner. I just thought this
Speaker 1: is something to do. Yeah, yeah, these two sound good together,
Speaker 1: absolutely absolutely. But so did you join a band Yeah.
Speaker 1: Then at that point I was already I was already
Speaker 1: in a little band, and we were playing mostly surf
Speaker 1: music at the time. Because I got an electric guitar,
Speaker 1: I got a melody maker, playing flat, flat wound strings
Speaker 1: on a melody maker, and there were all those great
Speaker 1: surf to dunes that had they were all in the
Speaker 1: big string. Oh, I left out Jimmy Reid. Who Jimmy
Speaker 1: Reid for me was that's actually probably ground zero. That's
Speaker 1: after I learned may Bill Carter. I learned Jimmy Reid,
Speaker 1: and then that opened up a whole other world of
Speaker 1: R and B deep R and B and how old
Speaker 1: were you about this time, probably twelve or thirteen, you know,
Speaker 1: And the Beatles. Actually, one of the things I loved
Speaker 1: about the Beatles was they sounded like Jimmy Reid. They
Speaker 1: played the low strings on the guitar, they played flat
Speaker 1: wound strings on the bottom of the guitar like Jimmy Reid.
Speaker 1: And he also it was also just the groove, you know,
Speaker 1: the pocket. They played in a similar pocket to him.
Speaker 1: I feel like they must have listened to him. I certainly.
Speaker 1: Once I got into Jimmy Reid, I devoured everything, everything
Speaker 1: I learned every possible song and Chuck barring that was
Speaker 1: the other kid. The swing of the Beatles is undeniable.
Speaker 1: People don't really talk about it. Yeah, yeah, the songs
Speaker 1: are killer, but you know, and Ringo was you know
Speaker 1: he played with sister Rosetta Tharp when he was the
Speaker 1: house drummer. Yeah, when he was the house drummer at
Speaker 1: the Cavern Club. He played with all the R and
Speaker 1: b X that would come through, So he got a
Speaker 1: real he had it. He's probably just innate with him,
Speaker 1: but he swung so hard. And I was watching Ron
Speaker 1: Howard's documentary of Eight Days a Week about the Beatles,
Speaker 1: and I realized, Oh, the three geniuses up front were killing,
Speaker 1: but Ringo was supplant. Was all the electricity was coming
Speaker 1: out of Ringo. He was blowing everybody's mind without us
Speaker 1: even knowing it. Now, looking back on it, after all
Speaker 1: these years of listening to everything, I can see it.
Speaker 1: At the time, I couldn't. Well, I knew. I love
Speaker 1: the way he I loved the way he attacked his
Speaker 1: high hat friends, and he just had it kind of
Speaker 1: going solid. It wasn't it was, you know, So that
Speaker 1: supplied a lot of electricity and excitement, but also just
Speaker 1: his just his yeah, his thing. You know, he would
Speaker 1: hit the bass drum boom, you know, it's just like
Speaker 1: kill it. And the other cats were killing it too,
Speaker 1: but he was just he was the really electric part
Speaker 1: of it, I thought, and but so yeah, so when
Speaker 1: that happened, then then you know, Oh, the other guy
Speaker 1: before the Beatles was Buddy Holly, who they also wanted
Speaker 1: to be. You know, we were playing Buddies from Texas.
Speaker 1: So was there this feeling of definitely he was one
Speaker 1: of the cats that that made me feel like, oh,
Speaker 1: I can get out, I can get out from under
Speaker 1: this low ceiling. Yes, Buddy Holly could do it. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know it's it's possible. Yeah. That was T bom
Speaker 1: Bernett talking with my co host Rick Rubin at Shanger
Speaker 1: Law in Malibu. His new album, Invisible Light Acoustic Space
Speaker 1: is out now and available wherever you get your music.
Speaker 1: You can also visit our website to find a Spotify
Speaker 1: playlist for the album and also a playlist for some
Speaker 1: of our favorite T Bone productions. Broken Record is produced
Speaker 1: by Justin Richmond and Jason Gambrel, with help from MEA Label,
Speaker 1: Jacob Smith, Julia Barton, and Jacob Weisberg Special thanks to
Speaker 1: my co hosts, Rick Rubin and Bruce headlam Our Broken
Speaker 1: Record theme music is by the great Kenny Beats. Be
Speaker 1: sure to check out his new album with rapper Rico Nasty.
Speaker 1: Also be sure to check for next week's episode with
Speaker 1: Linda Perry. She talks with Bruce about being the first
Speaker 1: woman nominated for Producer of the Year at the Grammys
Speaker 1: in fifteen years. That's next week for Pushkin Industries. I'm
Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell.