Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey guys, I'm excited to share a little something
Speaker 1: different with you all. Rick Rubin doesn't sit for a
Speaker 1: lot of interviews outside a broken record, so when he
Speaker 1: got with Questlove to tape an episode of his podcast,
Speaker 1: Questlove Supreme, we thought we'd bring it to you here too.
Speaker 1: Of course, you know Questlove from his many ventures from
Speaker 1: the Roots to The Tonight Show and a thousand other things.
Speaker 1: But if you heard him on our season two opener,
Speaker 1: you know there are a few people who love talking
Speaker 1: music as much as Quest It makes his podcast a
Speaker 1: joy to listen to. So after checking out this episode
Speaker 1: with Rick Rubin, be sure to go and subscribe and
Speaker 1: check out other episodes of Questlove Supreme. Enjoy. Questlove Supreme
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeartRadio. Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to
Speaker 1: another episode of Love Supreme. My name's Questlove. We're here
Speaker 1: today with Layah Sugar, Steve Unpaid, Bill and Von Tigelow. Hello.
Speaker 1: I will say that our guest today is world Renown.
Speaker 1: He's a world renown reducer. Those are his words, not
Speaker 1: my words. World Renown reducerum from establishing one of the
Speaker 1: greatest hip hop labels in history, def Champ to working
Speaker 1: with all the greats from right out Chili Pepper, Tom Petty,
Speaker 1: There's Slayer, there's the Cult, there's Kanye West, There's Dixie Chicks,
Speaker 1: There's Mick Jagger, There's Neil Diamond, there's uh the Roots.
Speaker 1: I'm putting it out there anyway. Please welcome the Guru
Speaker 1: of music to Quest Love Supreme, the one in Oman,
Speaker 1: Rick Rubin, Thank you for doing us our show today. Finally,
Speaker 1: where are you? Where are you currently right now? Rick?
Speaker 1: I am right now in Kawaii on lockdown. Is that's
Speaker 1: a place to be on lockdown? Do you consider is
Speaker 1: that home for you? Or is it just like Okay,
Speaker 1: if I have to be on lockdown, I'd rather be
Speaker 1: in this particular environment. We mainly live in Malibu and
Speaker 1: spend some time here, usually in the winter, and this
Speaker 1: year the winter extended because of the lockdown, so it
Speaker 1: seemed like a better place to be on lockdown. Ah, Okay.
Speaker 1: Are you able to operate under your sort of your
Speaker 1: creative guys at least in Kawaii or are all your
Speaker 1: toys in La Toys or in La But we have
Speaker 1: a setup here that's working working well. You have you
Speaker 1: have an extensive history so I was debating with myself
Speaker 1: whether or not to do the normal chronological thing or
Speaker 1: should we just go kama kazi because there's so many
Speaker 1: stories I want to learn about your production, but I
Speaker 1: do want to know about your introduction to me. First
Speaker 1: of all, where were you born? Long Beach, Long Island?
Speaker 1: Long Beach, Long Island? Is that where you're born on?
Speaker 1: Pay Bill? No, I was just born on Long Island.
Speaker 1: Shout out to Long Island. Okay, all right, Birds of
Speaker 1: a Feather, that's cool. What was your the very first
Speaker 1: record that you purchased? I remember buying. I don't remember
Speaker 1: what was the first one, but I remember the experience
Speaker 1: of buying seven inches. I can remember shopping for forty
Speaker 1: fives in Times Square store in Oceanside, and Snoopy Versus
Speaker 1: the Red Baron may have been one of them, but
Speaker 1: I don't I don't remember exactly what the record was.
Speaker 1: What was what was the moment that you realized that, okay,
Speaker 1: I'd like a space in the music world, or that's
Speaker 1: what I want to do. I don't know that I
Speaker 1: ever had that feeling. I mean, I knew that I
Speaker 1: loved it, and I knew that it would be a
Speaker 1: huge part of my life. But I never thought it
Speaker 1: would be my job. Really, Okay, I didn't think that
Speaker 1: was a I didn't think that was a realistic possibility.
Speaker 1: I was going to have a real job and that
Speaker 1: would support my music, have it. What were you planning
Speaker 1: on becoming? I was on track. My parents had me
Speaker 1: on a track to be a lawyer. That would have
Speaker 1: been there. There wish, their wish would have either been
Speaker 1: a doctor or a lawyer. And I was always afraid
Speaker 1: of blood. I don't know. And then I thought, oh, well,
Speaker 1: there are lawyers involved in the music industry, so maybe
Speaker 1: I could be involved in that way because i'd have
Speaker 1: to have a job. But my real love is music.
Speaker 1: But I didn't know anyone who did music as a job.
Speaker 1: I didn't think that was a real thing. What were
Speaker 1: your parents? My dad was a businessman, store owner, my
Speaker 1: mom was a housewife. Is Rick Rubin your birth name?
Speaker 1: Frederick J. Rubin is the name I was born with,
Speaker 1: But I was called Rick from the time I was
Speaker 1: a kid. No one, no one ever called me anything else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you would have been a Ruben attorney at law. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why that's a the lawyers there. Okay, I get it.
Speaker 1: I know there's there's a story that I heard about
Speaker 1: once performing at CBGB's and it was less than desirable,
Speaker 1: and I believe the end result was your father coming
Speaker 1: down from Long Island, but he was dressed as a cop.
Speaker 1: Did I make up that story in my mind or something.
Speaker 1: I don't remember ever telling that story, but the story
Speaker 1: is around and it may be rooted in something that
Speaker 1: actually happened. I have a vague memory of it, but
Speaker 1: I don't remember. I can't. I can't remember telling the story,
Speaker 1: but I think it might have happened. I think. I
Speaker 1: think the story that I heard was that you were
Speaker 1: in a band called the Pricks. I believe, and either
Speaker 1: it's kind of like you know, a modern showed time
Speaker 1: at the Apollo story where the opening actor or another
Speaker 1: act brings all their fans down. They were heckling you guys.
Speaker 1: You guys only did like two songs, and then to
Speaker 1: give revenge on the other band, your dad came down
Speaker 1: dressed as a cop, trying to shut the show down
Speaker 1: or something like that. Nothing, nothing like that happened. That
Speaker 1: was Yeah, that's not a story. I didn't know where
Speaker 1: that was an urban legend or for real, that's that's
Speaker 1: an urban legend. But in the sort of theatrical punk
Speaker 1: rock pandemonium of making a show more exciting. It is
Speaker 1: possible that my dad dressed as a cop to stop
Speaker 1: the show, our show, not to affect anyone else, because
Speaker 1: it would have. It just created a something. I can
Speaker 1: remember the time we did a show where we worked
Speaker 1: it out for the sprinkler, the fire sprinklers to go
Speaker 1: off during the show and just create a general sense
Speaker 1: of pandemonium in the room. And what were you were you? Um,
Speaker 1: what instrument did you play in the band? Guitar? Are
Speaker 1: you guitarist? Okay, I did, I was not. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say I was a guitarist, but I played the guitar.
Speaker 1: You played the guitar. Being being is that we rarely
Speaker 1: get guested on the show that we're really really of
Speaker 1: the age, and I mean like in their in their
Speaker 1: early twenties, at least in New York City, much as
Speaker 1: much as made about the legend of what night nightlife
Speaker 1: culture was in New York City. And because you had
Speaker 1: like one foot plan in CBGB's I don't know about
Speaker 1: your history or dancy teria or those hip hop clubs
Speaker 1: at the time, but He just briefly described what the
Speaker 1: environment was like in the first half of the eighties
Speaker 1: as far as club life is concerned, Like, do you
Speaker 1: see it with fond memories now? Was it the best
Speaker 1: time ever? Are you one of those people that are
Speaker 1: like ah Man New York in the early eighties, there's
Speaker 1: nothing like it ever, like these romanticized feelings about it. Yes,
Speaker 1: it was an incredible time and we would go out
Speaker 1: every night and there was very little hip hop at
Speaker 1: that time. You couldn't really see hip hop. You could
Speaker 1: only see hip hop one night a week. But we
Speaker 1: went out every night and you would see um. There
Speaker 1: was a thriving dance music scene that would have had
Speaker 1: like groups like Liquid Liquid and ESG and conk. Oh Wow,
Speaker 1: you got to see them in person, all everybody. I
Speaker 1: saw every What were they like? I'd incredible? Like ESG?
Speaker 1: What were they like? It was just all around the base.
Speaker 1: It was sort of like a if you think about
Speaker 1: it looking back, it would be you'd say it was
Speaker 1: a pretty boring show. But the group was incredible. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't like a show. Wasn't a show like a
Speaker 1: putting on a show. It was like people in a
Speaker 1: band standing on stage and playing their songs, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't theatrical in any way, esg As I recall I
Speaker 1: think I saw them play at Danceteria. If I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: wow wow. But you we would go like, if a
Speaker 1: band was playing at Irving Plaza, we'd go to Irving Plaza.
Speaker 1: If the band was playing at the Mud Club, we'd
Speaker 1: go to the Mud Club. Maxis, Kansas City. I caught
Speaker 1: the tail end of Maxis Kansas City. I saw James
Speaker 1: White and the Blacks play there. I saw Devo play there.
Speaker 1: I saw Wayne County maybe Jane County at that time.
Speaker 1: I saw so many great shows. I saw The Bad
Speaker 1: Brains play at CBGB's. I saw the Bad Brains play
Speaker 1: at Irving Plaza. I saw a Minor Threat play at
Speaker 1: Irving Plaza. I saw the Cramps, which was my very
Speaker 1: first technically punk rock show at Irving Plaza. And then
Speaker 1: there'd be a gig at the garden. I remember seeing
Speaker 1: David Bowie at Madison Square Garden in the same night
Speaker 1: seeing the Bad Brains after at CBGB's. That would be
Speaker 1: a typical it was. It was an incredible time to
Speaker 1: be a fan of music, and there was both this
Speaker 1: live performance scene of music, and then there was also
Speaker 1: this incredible dance music scene with places like Dance Interia.
Speaker 1: Then Area the garage was still going on, so really
Speaker 1: you could you could get very different experiences, even on
Speaker 1: the same night, going from club to club. And then
Speaker 1: when hip hop started bubbling, the only place you could
Speaker 1: really see it downtown was at a grille, which was
Speaker 1: a reggae club on Avenue A. I believe I remember correctly.
Speaker 1: I think it was either sadly first restaurant. I was
Speaker 1: about to say that it was down a flight of stairs.
Speaker 1: Is it still there, Yeah, it's still there, but it's
Speaker 1: open shadow of what it shadow of what it used
Speaker 1: to be. But that's the place that I used to
Speaker 1: go to see Jazzy J and Uh Africa Islam and
Speaker 1: Busy B and Treacherous Three and everybody played there. And
Speaker 1: it was one night a week Tuesday, KLB Production School
Speaker 1: Lady Blue, and then when it got big, After it
Speaker 1: got big, then they moved it to the Roxy and
Speaker 1: that was one night a week at the Rocks. I
Speaker 1: went to the Roxy the first night every it was
Speaker 1: hip hop and it was this giant roller rink with
Speaker 1: maybe I don't know, there were maybe fifty of us
Speaker 1: there for the first night, and then it ended up
Speaker 1: just watching it grow every week and get bigger and
Speaker 1: bigger and bigger until it became what it became. You know,
Speaker 1: So I know about your dorm being def Jam's headquarters,
Speaker 1: But what was your major at NYU when you were attending.
Speaker 1: I started as a philosophy major, and after two years
Speaker 1: I switched to film and television because, as I said,
Speaker 1: I was planning on going to law school. You don't
Speaker 1: need a particular undergrad the degree you have undergraduate degree
Speaker 1: doesn't matter to get into law school. And most of
Speaker 1: my friends that I liked hanging out with were in
Speaker 1: film school and that just seemed more fun than the
Speaker 1: liberal arts side that I was that I started on,
Speaker 1: so I just switched over. Since it didn't matter what
Speaker 1: year was def Jam as a punk label started first. Wait,
Speaker 1: year eighty three eighty four or something like that. What
Speaker 1: were the who were the artist on the label? At
Speaker 1: the time, there only records that I made of my
Speaker 1: own band. All there was was hoes Hos and there
Speaker 1: was a twelve inch and a seven inch, a twelve
Speaker 1: inch EP and a seven inch That's all there was.
Speaker 1: And then I made my first hip hop record, which
Speaker 1: was It's Yours which and I'll tell you the story
Speaker 1: of how that came about because it's interesting. If you
Speaker 1: want to again, if you want to hear it, Ye, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: we're rabbit Hole Central. We're waiting. My favorite group at
Speaker 1: the time were The Treacherous Three. And I didn't know
Speaker 1: anything at all about the record business. I didn't know
Speaker 1: that there were I didn't know what a producer did.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that there were record companies. I didn't
Speaker 1: know that people had contracts. I literally knew nothing other
Speaker 1: than I love music more than anything. I read everything
Speaker 1: I could read about music. I read even Billboard, which
Speaker 1: was a weird thing for a kid to read when
Speaker 1: I was even in sixth grade seventh grade. I would
Speaker 1: read Billboard just because there might be a little story
Speaker 1: about an artist I liked. And it never made like
Speaker 1: I was never really interested in what it said, but
Speaker 1: I just wanted to learn anything there was to learn
Speaker 1: about anyone that I liked in music, So if I
Speaker 1: saw their name in an article, I had to read it.
Speaker 1: I reached out to after the show at the Grille,
Speaker 1: I reached out to Kumod. Kumodi was my favorite MC,
Speaker 1: and I gave him my number and I said, let's
Speaker 1: get together and chat. Now, Kumodi was going to school
Speaker 1: on Long Island, so they were all like college age
Speaker 1: at this time. And then Kumod came to visit me
Speaker 1: at the dorm. That was my first attempt at being
Speaker 1: involved in this thing that I loved. And I said.
Speaker 1: They had been making records on Enjoy Records, which I loved,
Speaker 1: and then they may their first the first thing that
Speaker 1: came out, if I remember correctly, I'm not sure the
Speaker 1: timing of this, but I heard a treacherous three song
Speaker 1: that I thought wasn't as good as all the ones
Speaker 1: that I liked. Was it? Yes, we Can Can on
Speaker 1: Sugar Hill might have been. I didn't like that, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I might have been. So as a fan, I said,
Speaker 1: let's get together. I just want to talk to you
Speaker 1: about this music. You know, I'm a fan. I want
Speaker 1: to talk to you. And then I said, and again
Speaker 1: I was I had great confidence in my taste just
Speaker 1: because I really, you know, I truly felt it with
Speaker 1: all of my heart. And this was at a time
Speaker 1: when not a lot of people were listening to this music.
Speaker 1: It was a tiny underground scene at the time. You
Speaker 1: have to keep in mind this is there were the
Speaker 1: first round of death Jam records. We might have pressed up,
Speaker 1: you know, three thousand copies. You know that might be
Speaker 1: the starting run of a record. So that's how big
Speaker 1: the world of hip hop was at that time. By
Speaker 1: this point, is this pre or post it's yours? Like,
Speaker 1: what was this about you that he's leading up? This
Speaker 1: is leading up to it. There's no I've done nothing.
Speaker 1: Oh so he just he just befriended you on trust,
Speaker 1: not knowing anything about your No, he didn't even befriend
Speaker 1: me on trust. He's just like somebody cares in a
Speaker 1: time when nobody cares. Understand, it was a tiny little
Speaker 1: world that nobody was interested in. I was interested. I
Speaker 1: could speak about it with passion because I had that passion.
Speaker 1: So there weren't that many heads at that moment in time.
Speaker 1: So I get together with Komodi and I say, Okay,
Speaker 1: the records you made on enjoy a great. Now there's
Speaker 1: this new thing. It's not as good as the rest.
Speaker 1: Let's figure out together. I'm your fan. I don't want
Speaker 1: it to go that way. I don't want it to
Speaker 1: get worse. Let's figure out how to make it get better,
Speaker 1: and let's figure out I swear it's true. Let's figure
Speaker 1: out how to do this. And he said, I would
Speaker 1: love to do this, but I can't do this. We're
Speaker 1: signed to sugar Hill. I didn't again, I had no idea.
Speaker 1: I didn't know anything. I didn't know what a producer was.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that there were contracts. But he said,
Speaker 1: we're signed to sugar Hill, but you should talk to
Speaker 1: Special K. He's in the group, and he writes he
Speaker 1: might have an idea. So he introduced me to Special K,
Speaker 1: got together a Special K, and Special K said, okay,
Speaker 1: I like the idea. And I was already programming beats,
Speaker 1: so I played him some beats on my eight o eight.
Speaker 1: Special K said, okay, I wrote, I just wrote this
Speaker 1: record called It's yours. I can't do it because I'm
Speaker 1: signed to sugar Hill. But Ti Lara can do it.
Speaker 1: He's we're related. And that's the way it really happened,
Speaker 1: by me wanting to work with Treacherous three, them saying
Speaker 1: me not knowing I me not knowing anything about the business,
Speaker 1: and then basically saying, this is the guy who can
Speaker 1: do this song. And Special K wrote the lyrics it was.
Speaker 1: It was essentially like a special K solo record lyrically
Speaker 1: what and even lyrically that was really ahead of his
Speaker 1: time even back then. It was incredible. Minute was the story?
Speaker 1: It's yours? Wait, Rick, are you even familiar about the
Speaker 1: Teela Rock situation right now? I've heard a little bit recently. Nah,
Speaker 1: what's going on? It's in Okay. I won't do anything.
Speaker 1: I won't do any justice to the story. I'll just
Speaker 1: say that if you google Tela Rock. GQ magazine. GQ magazine,
Speaker 1: damn near gave Tela Rock a seven page feature story,
Speaker 1: long story short. I meet this woman, this like uh,
Speaker 1: this high society, hoity toity, upscale woman from the West Side,
Speaker 1: and she comes to me and says, hey, I'm doing
Speaker 1: finger like the woman the woman in Wild Style, like
Speaker 1: totally a fish out of water, or a white woman
Speaker 1: comes to me and says, hey, I'm doing a biopic
Speaker 1: or rapper Tela Rock, And already I'm turned. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: he's trying to scam you, Like, okay, whatever, biopick. I'm like,
Speaker 1: what is it about Titla Rock that deserves a biopic?
Speaker 1: Three years later, there's a story in GQ magazine that
Speaker 1: I didn't know which Basically, he went into a coma
Speaker 1: and because he had no id or anything on him,
Speaker 1: think of like Michael Jackson's character on The Simpsons. He
Speaker 1: winds up in this old folks home in the Bronx.
Speaker 1: They don't know who he is, or he doesn't know
Speaker 1: who he is, knows nothing. I think it about in
Speaker 1: months or so, his family finally locates him, but he's
Speaker 1: comfortable with his life at this old folks home. And
Speaker 1: now they have to exp plaining to him who he was.
Speaker 1: You were once, you were the first rapper. That's a
Speaker 1: brutal attack. A mirror too that happen now. But the
Speaker 1: headline is the man who forgot he was a rap ledger, right,
Speaker 1: which is pretty great. Right. I don't know how he
Speaker 1: got into that coma, but I do know that he
Speaker 1: was in a coma and he didn't know who or
Speaker 1: what he was, and he slowly had to be taught
Speaker 1: everything about himself. But now he just has this new
Speaker 1: life in as the young guy, as the young stud
Speaker 1: and a nursing home. Wow. Yeah, and he likes his
Speaker 1: life there. But it's they say that other residents are
Speaker 1: mostly elderly Jewish and Yiddish speakers, so that must be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the word about like who's this black guy in
Speaker 1: are are missing? They're like, oh, he was once a
Speaker 1: rapper on Russell Simmons label, like that sort it's the
Speaker 1: craziest story you ever heard. But it's yeah, I was
Speaker 1: forward once I've seen it. Now now I wish I
Speaker 1: wouldn't dismissed that woman, like that movie has to be made.
Speaker 1: That's a movie, sounds great. Yeah, that's him now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a crazy movie. And that's it looks exactly the same,
Speaker 1: by the way, it's exactly what he looked like. Then
Speaker 1: how old were you when you did that record? Twenty shit,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe nineteen, I don't know. Yeah, and that was
Speaker 1: just you on the on the eight away and then
Speaker 1: what did y'all track it on? If you remember we
Speaker 1: tracked it this There was a studio that advertised in
Speaker 1: the Village Voice called power Play in Long Island City,
Speaker 1: which was the cheapest studio you could go into, and
Speaker 1: we recorded it. I recorded my punk rock band there
Speaker 1: before and then we recorded that it's yours there and
Speaker 1: m recorded it, you know, in a couple of hours,
Speaker 1: pretty reading quick another piece the reason jazz J. The
Speaker 1: reasons see lar Rock and Jazz J was again as
Speaker 1: a fan of hip hop, as someone going to the
Speaker 1: to the club. The whole idea always of the records
Speaker 1: that I made were that the energy in the club
Speaker 1: was a very specific thing, and the records that were
Speaker 1: coming out didn't sound like what the club sounded like.
Speaker 1: And I'm a fan now. Had had the record sounded
Speaker 1: the same, I don't know that I would have ever
Speaker 1: made a hip hop record at all, because it was
Speaker 1: more just I want to hear this. I want to
Speaker 1: hear what I'm hearing at the club, but nobody's making
Speaker 1: that record. So I made it to be able to
Speaker 1: hear it. But that's all it was. It wasn't There
Speaker 1: was no h I had no expectation that anybody else
Speaker 1: would like it or that it would have any success.
Speaker 1: It was never about, you know, you could never assume
Speaker 1: that in this little world that it was that we
Speaker 1: were coming from. It's like anyone who was making music
Speaker 1: at that time clearly did it out of the love
Speaker 1: of it because it was no upside. Yeah, there was
Speaker 1: no industry that was build nothing. There was nothing one
Speaker 1: new and what was a fundamental difference between the club
Speaker 1: and the and the record. What were you trying to
Speaker 1: capture it? Was it just the I'll tell you no, okay,
Speaker 1: because even on the acapella version of that record, in
Speaker 1: my mind, there's a million people in the room, do
Speaker 1: it like because you're the kyage of the he like
Speaker 1: that that that sort of thing, like the people in
Speaker 1: the background. Yes, how many people were in the room
Speaker 1: when that those party noises were made? Four or five?
Speaker 1: Five or six of us? Two times? Maybe three? Was
Speaker 1: a Rock one of those people? Absolutely? Okay? Okay, oh
Speaker 1: at yeah, me Ad Rock, probably Special K, Jazzy Jay
Speaker 1: who everybody who was in this hid, maybe even the
Speaker 1: engineer of the session, like any people we had on
Speaker 1: hand to get the party vibe. So okay, So let
Speaker 1: me explain how I heard what I heard different about
Speaker 1: the club versus the records and I and a lot
Speaker 1: of this has to do with me not knowing anything.
Speaker 1: The way that rap records had been made up until
Speaker 1: that point. Those records were made by people who had
Speaker 1: made other records. So at the time, if you were
Speaker 1: going to make a club record, it would be like Heartbeat,
Speaker 1: it would be a band, it would be a band
Speaker 1: record with a woman singing R and B. That would
Speaker 1: be the club record. And then when the people who
Speaker 1: didn't understand hip hop but understood making club records saw
Speaker 1: this new thing, rap music, they thought, Okay, we'll do
Speaker 1: the band doing the R and B song, and we'll
Speaker 1: have the guy rap on it instead of having the
Speaker 1: girls sing on it. And that's what hip hop records
Speaker 1: sounded like. But that's not what the clubs sounded like.
Speaker 1: The club sounded like DJ culture, drum machines. Maybe not
Speaker 1: so many drum machines, but some at that point more
Speaker 1: DJ culture. It was really about the DJ cutting it up.
Speaker 1: So if you went to see it, if you went
Speaker 1: to see the Treachers three live, it wasn't a band
Speaker 1: playing their song like it was on even the Enjoy records.
Speaker 1: It was the DJ cutting up the records with the
Speaker 1: MC's and that's what That's how I understood hip hop,
Speaker 1: was this homemade music with rapping. So that's and that's
Speaker 1: why Jazzy why it was important for me, like I
Speaker 1: would never want to sign, I would never think of
Speaker 1: doing a tele rock record without having a DJ associated
Speaker 1: with it, because it's like what made it hip hop
Speaker 1: was the two of them, it was the band, you know,
Speaker 1: together they were the Beatles, right, but himself it was
Speaker 1: just to say it was another singer, you know, it
Speaker 1: was Frank Sinatra. It's it's different. So I saw it
Speaker 1: as a group and the music was an important part
Speaker 1: of for me. The DJ culture was as important as
Speaker 1: the MC. Always it was always both. So that's and
Speaker 1: then I and Jesse. J was my favorite DJ, and
Speaker 1: I asked him if you would be on the record
Speaker 1: and join the group with Special K. That's how That's
Speaker 1: how it happened. Wow, was it hard to because you know,
Speaker 1: the stories that I've heard from Russell's reaction to the
Speaker 1: record was that it was hard to believe that this
Speaker 1: white boy made such a definitive black album. So how
Speaker 1: how how hard was it to convince people that you're
Speaker 1: the guy that made it's yours? Like, was it a
Speaker 1: hard sell? Or the whole thing was so strange? Like
Speaker 1: it was the record was already a weird record, yes,
Speaker 1: you Russell always referred to it as more black than
Speaker 1: anything else. But to me, it was just more representative
Speaker 1: of the club, you know, it was more like it
Speaker 1: was like a documentary of what I experienced going to
Speaker 1: the club. All right, So since we're talking about your
Speaker 1: eight h eight period and I guess our listeners, it
Speaker 1: should be noted that, really, I mean, yes, I know
Speaker 1: that there's a tie between like you and Arthur Baker.
Speaker 1: That Telo Rock single was like sort of a cross
Speaker 1: between def Jam and Wasn't Start Whatever Party Time? Party
Speaker 1: Time wasn't that one of the author Baker's offspring labels
Speaker 1: as well? At the way, I could tell you how
Speaker 1: that happened as well, which was I was going to
Speaker 1: put it out independently myself, the way I put out
Speaker 1: my punk rock records with nine nine Records, which is
Speaker 1: a record store, really cool independent record store, Google Street, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: GESG And they put out Bush Tetras Yeah, and Liquid
Speaker 1: Liquid they put out the record that the message was
Speaker 1: based on. Actually yeah, I have those records. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: the guy who ran that record store was sort of
Speaker 1: my mentor in that he walked me through the process.
Speaker 1: He's like, Okay, here's a list of studios you could
Speaker 1: go to. Here's a place you could have the vinyl press,
Speaker 1: here's a place you can have the labels made. The
Speaker 1: labels were made in Brooklyn. The vinyl was pressed in
Speaker 1: I think Long Island City. The covers were printed in Canada,
Speaker 1: and he kind of walked me through, here's people who
Speaker 1: could do mastering for you, and he just walked me
Speaker 1: through how to do it because I didn't know anything,
Speaker 1: as I said, So I did that first for my
Speaker 1: punk rock records and I was about to do that
Speaker 1: with It's Yours when Jazzy called me because they were
Speaker 1: making some movie that Arthur Baker was involved in. I
Speaker 1: don't know what it was. I can't remember what it
Speaker 1: was beat Street and he said, Hey, just met this guy,
Speaker 1: Arthur Baker. He wants to hear our record. He's got
Speaker 1: a label, maybe he can help us. And then I
Speaker 1: went up and I met Arthur Baker at Shakedown Studio,
Speaker 1: which is where we ended up doing a lot of
Speaker 1: work in the future as well mixing. I think we
Speaker 1: mixed half of License to Ill there and MCA from
Speaker 1: the BC Boys work there. He worked as a as
Speaker 1: like a tape op assistant there, okay, assistant engineer. So
Speaker 1: I went up, I met Arthur for the first time
Speaker 1: and he was already, you know, like a successful person
Speaker 1: in the music business. And again I'm still this kid
Speaker 1: in school playing the song. He's like this is great.
Speaker 1: His main label was called street Wise Streetwise, and he
Speaker 1: said put out and it really Yeah, it doesn't really
Speaker 1: fit street Wise, but we could put it on Party Time,
Speaker 1: which is like a sub label. Said fine, and he
Speaker 1: bought the record to put Out and I said, the
Speaker 1: only thing is it has to have the def Jam
Speaker 1: logo on it. Um even though I drew that looking,
Speaker 1: you drew that looking, I drew the yeah, I did.
Speaker 1: My aunt Carol worked at Este Lauder in the creative
Speaker 1: creative services department, and I would hang out there a lot,
Speaker 1: and I used press type and I made it on
Speaker 1: a day that either they were closed or just when
Speaker 1: nobody was around at one of the designers tables, just
Speaker 1: experimenting with different things. And the reason, the reason it
Speaker 1: has the big DJ was to make that point of
Speaker 1: like this is DJ culture. So I thought having the
Speaker 1: big DJ in the logo quietly told the story of
Speaker 1: what the label was about. Was that a one day
Speaker 1: Willie drawing or was that like okay, on the fifth one,
Speaker 1: I liked this one. I tried a lot of things.
Speaker 1: I mean I tried a lot of things, but it
Speaker 1: happened pretty quick. It came in, you know, came in
Speaker 1: a day. I drew it a bunch of like uppercase
Speaker 1: lowercase what looks good and moving it around and then
Speaker 1: still have your sketches of it or are they long
Speaker 1: gone thing? So I probably long gone it. I don't.
Speaker 1: It's possible that they exist because I had a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff at my parents house and then some of
Speaker 1: that stuff is in a in storage somewhere, but I've
Speaker 1: never looked at it. I was gonna ask what does
Speaker 1: it feel? Because I've heard a mirror and Tariq say
Speaker 1: that sometimes they went on def jam just because they
Speaker 1: wanted to be able to have that logo affiliated with
Speaker 1: their name. That's gotta feel crazy, just from a drawing
Speaker 1: not eat. Yeah, like you know, I in class, I
Speaker 1: draw that logo on imaginary uh roots albums that didn't
Speaker 1: exist yet, like hanging that shit on my wall. I
Speaker 1: probably did exactly the same thing, and then it ended
Speaker 1: up becoming you know, they weren't roots albums, but they
Speaker 1: were whatever it was. It was just like playing with
Speaker 1: how do we say that, what's the name gonna be,
Speaker 1: what's it gonna look like? How does how does it work?
Speaker 1: In eighty three eighty four, how expensive are eight or
Speaker 1: eight drum machines. I don't mean that you casually come across.
Speaker 1: It's something that I luckily came across because there was
Speaker 1: a guy in my dorm room who was in an
Speaker 1: alternative rock band called the Speedies, and he had that
Speaker 1: machine and he lent he lent me the eight oweight
Speaker 1: drum machine. That's how I came across it. So were
Speaker 1: you able to program and save beats or is it
Speaker 1: just like you turn on you show what you could
Speaker 1: do in print it? You could make twenty or so
Speaker 1: pre program beats. So how long is the conversation with
Speaker 1: Russell Simmons before you realize that you're going to go
Speaker 1: into partnership with him and start the label officially? I
Speaker 1: met Russell at a party for Graffiti Rock that that
Speaker 1: TV Wow where Treacher's Three and Render Yeah. And I
Speaker 1: went there, you know, hoping that Treacher's Three would be
Speaker 1: there because they were, you know, my favorite group. And
Speaker 1: this is like an after party. This was an after
Speaker 1: party and someone introduced me to Russell and I told
Speaker 1: him I made it's yours and he couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: It's just like no way, It's like you're white. You
Speaker 1: didn't make that record and again. But you have to
Speaker 1: understand that were there were really were well. Tom Silverman
Speaker 1: was involved in hip hop. He was the only other
Speaker 1: white person I would say that I knew who had
Speaker 1: any relationship to hip hop at that time. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: he wasn't making beats. He was he was really helpful.
Speaker 1: He was really helpful to us, like he was someone
Speaker 1: another Like I had these great mentors. I had the
Speaker 1: guy at nine nine Records, ed Ed Bellman. His name
Speaker 1: was and Um And I had to Tommy and I
Speaker 1: would call Tom's just like, hey, what do I do?
Speaker 1: Monica Lynch, who worked with Tommy, It's like what do
Speaker 1: we do? How do how do it? What's the next step?
Speaker 1: And I can remember his story. I don't think I've
Speaker 1: ever told Anyone's interesting why I was excited about having
Speaker 1: Russell as a partner. I was walking on in front
Speaker 1: of the dorm, across the street from the dorm, turning
Speaker 1: the corner I ran into and I don't even know.
Speaker 1: This is strange because I don't know how I knew
Speaker 1: who he was. But there was a writer for the
Speaker 1: Village Voice named Aaron Fuchs. He wrote the Village He
Speaker 1: was a writer first he was a he was a writer.
Speaker 1: Fus but listen, let me let me tell you, let
Speaker 1: me tell you the story. So again, it's amazing the
Speaker 1: fact that I even I don't know how I knew
Speaker 1: who he was or how it worked out that I
Speaker 1: that I, but I literally went up to him on
Speaker 1: the street and said, hey, I made this record, and
Speaker 1: what do I have to do to get people to
Speaker 1: hear it? Like how do I do this? And this
Speaker 1: was it's yours. I don't even think I had the
Speaker 1: I was just more of a conversation. It's like, how
Speaker 1: does it work? How does this work? So now I'm
Speaker 1: at the stage where because I was always comfortable asking questions,
Speaker 1: you know, I would if someone had information that I needed,
Speaker 1: I was. I felt comfortable asking and sometimes they would
Speaker 1: help and sometimes they wouldn't. So I thought he was
Speaker 1: someone who might be able to help. And I just said,
Speaker 1: you know, what's the next step? How do I get
Speaker 1: people to hear this thing? And he said, you need
Speaker 1: promotion and you can't do it. And he said the
Speaker 1: only person who knows how to do promotion for hip
Speaker 1: hop records is Russell Simmons, and Russell Simmons won't do
Speaker 1: anything for anyone except his brother Run. He works with
Speaker 1: a lot of artists, but he said, unless your run,
Speaker 1: he won't promote your records. So it's like, Okay, I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: maybe someday I'll meet this guy Rustling. At least he'll
Speaker 1: tell me what he does, even if he won't do
Speaker 1: it just in hopes of getting the word out. I
Speaker 1: gotta get to the bottom of the story. Now. If
Speaker 1: he was a writer for the Village Voice, and he
Speaker 1: too was, you know, a hopeful record mogul, yet you
Speaker 1: know the story and the fable of Aaron is that
Speaker 1: he would go hard and the paint and suing any
Speaker 1: product on deaf Jam that contains any of the samples
Speaker 1: that he owned. I would say even beyond that is
Speaker 1: that if he knew any song had the potential to
Speaker 1: be sampled, he'd try to buy up the rights so
Speaker 1: that he could sue whoever sampled it. Well, yeah, that too.
Speaker 1: But I'm almost feeling like maybe he has a personal
Speaker 1: beef with Russell that none of us are aware of,
Speaker 1: because there are other samples that he could have went
Speaker 1: after that he never did. But if it was on
Speaker 1: def Jam, it's like like goodfellas, fuck, you pay me
Speaker 1: I always wanted to know if that was if there
Speaker 1: was like a burnt bridge, and it's sort of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get you. When he told when he told
Speaker 1: me about Russell, he was not positive about him. It
Speaker 1: was not a positive conversation, but it was just this.
Speaker 1: It was a piece of information that was helpful. There's
Speaker 1: an article that or a block that Harry Allen once
Speaker 1: wrote in an honor of your early production methods, in
Speaker 1: which you know, it's noted that you have the left
Speaker 1: out as eight h eight sounds the loudest scratches, like
Speaker 1: your scratches on going back to CALLI like, it's just
Speaker 1: louder than everything. So even like what's your engineering process
Speaker 1: or just your whole theory on pushing it to the limit,
Speaker 1: there is none I will say. I like, if you're
Speaker 1: gonna put something in there, I want to be able
Speaker 1: to hear it, Like I want the idea of having
Speaker 1: scratching as this sort of background element that's going on
Speaker 1: all the time is not so interesting to me. It's like,
Speaker 1: if it's gonna be there, it should be only exactly
Speaker 1: when it needs to be there, and it should be
Speaker 1: crazy loud because in some ways It's like it's like
Speaker 1: lead guitar, you know, it's a punctuation moment. It's not
Speaker 1: a background sound. And as a rule, I'm not so
Speaker 1: into background sounds. You know. It's more about having the
Speaker 1: least amount of stuff going on, creating space where each
Speaker 1: thing that you hear, hopefully very few of them sound
Speaker 1: as clear and have as much personality as possible. And
Speaker 1: as soon as you start blanketing sounds, all of each
Speaker 1: of those sounds gets diminished. And I can hear that
Speaker 1: in your I can really hear that in your rock production,
Speaker 1: predicular particularly on Californication, which is probably my favorite Rick
Speaker 1: Rubin produced album. But but now I love that recommend.
Speaker 1: Like I when I preserted it was just I was
Speaker 1: taken it back by just how the way you track
Speaker 1: Anthony's vocals, Like it sounded almost like to the edge
Speaker 1: of distortion but not quite, and it just had that
Speaker 1: kind of grid on it, and it was just really
Speaker 1: in your face. And I love that record. I just
Speaker 1: want to get balls on that one. So you were
Speaker 1: you were about to tell the rock the Bell story.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I'll tell you what I remember, but
Speaker 1: but I don't remember the Bob James record ever being
Speaker 1: in the conversation. It may have been it may have
Speaker 1: been something that L had been thinking and wanting to do. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: but I don't remember it. I don't remember talking about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, it's even possible that when it
Speaker 1: was time to record it, that he suggested it, And
Speaker 1: it is possible that we were already working on the
Speaker 1: run DMC, the Peter Piper song. It is possible, all right,
Speaker 1: what was your one of the one of the factors
Speaker 1: that you also used in your early production was the
Speaker 1: sound of Go Go and rock the bells and then
Speaker 1: She's crafty um and also you know, I'll say that
Speaker 1: one of the things I've done in the Quarantine Punishment
Speaker 1: is practically purchase every Go Go album made available and
Speaker 1: nothing I hate. And I know a lot of it
Speaker 1: has to do with either the studios that they record in.
Speaker 1: Either it's too clean or it's too amateurish. But Sardines,
Speaker 1: to me is probably the best. Yeah, Sardines is probably
Speaker 1: the best produced Go Go record, probably second to Pump
Speaker 1: Me Up. So, first of all, Sardines is such a
Speaker 1: stripped down song. How did you record Junkyard drop the bombs?
Speaker 1: Incredible to Okay, I'll say early early Trump of early
Speaker 1: Trump Funk. Yes, there, there, there there. Mixing was immaculate.
Speaker 1: But um, what was the process in recording the Junkyard
Speaker 1: band and why didn't you press on further with them? Okay,
Speaker 1: let me, I'm gonna just talk for a second about
Speaker 1: I agree with you. The only the only Go Go
Speaker 1: records I like are old Trouble Funk records other than Sardines,
Speaker 1: which I think was good. And I want to talk
Speaker 1: about that a little bit because what you're describing is
Speaker 1: exactly the way I felt about hip hop where you
Speaker 1: could buy in those days, early days of hip hop,
Speaker 1: I could buy a twelve inch or two every week.
Speaker 1: That's all that would come out. That would be hip hop.
Speaker 1: And none of them did for me what the Trouble
Speaker 1: Funk records did as it relates to Go Go. Do
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. Yeah, it's like the the
Speaker 1: hip hop records were like the bad Go Go records. Say,
Speaker 1: it's the same, It's the same in any genre. It's like,
Speaker 1: it's not about the genre, it's the way the records
Speaker 1: are made. And in some ways I felt like Gogo
Speaker 1: was gonna be the next hip hop. I usually believe
Speaker 1: that was going to happen, but they didn't make the
Speaker 1: right records. They sounded, they watered down what Gogo was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the records on Island. Island signed all the bands,
Speaker 1: and those records are terrible. Do you think that's because
Speaker 1: it's kind of designed for it to be a live
Speaker 1: situation more than a record at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: like a studio album. I just think the wrong people
Speaker 1: were helping make the music, the wrong people were involved
Speaker 1: on the recording side. Yes, I don't like how half
Speaker 1: the Google records are engineered. Not I mean, I love
Speaker 1: Rare Essence more than any band on Earth, but it
Speaker 1: just frustrates me that the energy and that the engineering
Speaker 1: of when I hear them live or even I hear
Speaker 1: like some of their live mixtapes, that's not captured on
Speaker 1: a studio cut. For me, that's what I'm ye. And
Speaker 1: so why was Sardines and the Word just a one
Speaker 1: off twelve inch? Was there ever a conversation about recording
Speaker 1: Junkyard as a band or I'm Not as a band
Speaker 1: as a full album? I don't. I don't really remember,
Speaker 1: and I think not long after I ended up leaving
Speaker 1: Deaf Jam. So it may have been that it was
Speaker 1: just like towards the end of the time that I
Speaker 1: was doing stuff with def Jam and then just stopped.
Speaker 1: But I don't remember. I don't remember there being First
Speaker 1: of all, nobody particularly cared about it, like we liked it,
Speaker 1: but it's not like there was any demand for the
Speaker 1: Junkyard band. As crazy as that sounds, I loved them.
Speaker 1: I was told to ask you about the making of
Speaker 1: Crush Groove the song. What tell me the story the
Speaker 1: making of Crush Groove the song? What's I was thinking,
Speaker 1: it's funny that this has been I couldn't. I didn't
Speaker 1: remember what song that was there. I had a memory
Speaker 1: that we did a song with run DMC and other artists,
Speaker 1: and I remember the conversation in the studio because it
Speaker 1: was heated and particularly as it related to me, like
Speaker 1: I was very unhappy with what was going on, and
Speaker 1: I thought it for some reason, I thought it was
Speaker 1: a Christmas song, but have come to realize it's actually
Speaker 1: that Crush Groove song and um and I could never
Speaker 1: find it anywhere because it's listed as the Crush Grewve
Speaker 1: All Stars. So yeah, so it's not like if you're
Speaker 1: looking back at run DMC songs, that comes up right.
Speaker 1: So I haven't heard it in a long time, but
Speaker 1: I had this vague memory. It's like we did this song,
Speaker 1: and I remember there was a little bit of an
Speaker 1: argument in the studio, and what the argument was was,
Speaker 1: if you listen to the track, should we play it
Speaker 1: because it'll it'll or at least play some of it.
Speaker 1: You want to play a little bit of it? The track?
Speaker 1: Who were the who the who are the other artists
Speaker 1: on it? Do you remember? Okay, the movie people wanted
Speaker 1: a song for the movie. They got the Fat Boys,
Speaker 1: Sheila E and Curtis Blow on this track. That sounded
Speaker 1: like a track that would fit on maybe any one
Speaker 1: of the three of their albums, maybe she'lla E Less,
Speaker 1: But it sounded most like a Fat Boys record or
Speaker 1: Curtis Curtis Blow record. Yeah, it sounds like a pop
Speaker 1: word Curtis Blow record. So when we got to the studio, okay,
Speaker 1: do you want to play it? Rush Man Biting Love,
Speaker 1: Rush Biting Love that I think I was five when
Speaker 1: it came out. I love this fucking song way now. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so what's what's When we got to the studio. The
Speaker 1: mission was, we're doing this song for the movie. They
Speaker 1: provided us this song. The other MC's ready on it,
Speaker 1: and now I'm there as Run DMC's producer, and they're
Speaker 1: supposed to get on this on this track. And it
Speaker 1: sounded only like the beginning of the song didn't sound
Speaker 1: like the run DMC part right, And I said, there's
Speaker 1: no way Run DMC could be on this. They cannot
Speaker 1: be on this. It's like, this sounds like a Fat
Speaker 1: Boys record. This sounds like a Curtis Blow record. That's
Speaker 1: not a Run DMC record. I love Run DMC. This
Speaker 1: is something else. And and then I said, well, the
Speaker 1: only way we could have Run DMC on this would
Speaker 1: be if we make our own track and drop it
Speaker 1: in in the middle where it could sound like this
Speaker 1: is a run DMC song. And that's it's how that
Speaker 1: ended up. And I was the only one who cared.
Speaker 1: Nobody else cared nobody, you know, it would have just
Speaker 1: been like Larry, Larry and Curtis weren't offended. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't even know. I didn't even know who produced it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. I do remember Curtis was stuff
Speaker 1: after saying how come I can't be over the part
Speaker 1: that runs on like, how come he couldn't write breakdown? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the breakdown? Can you talk about? You know, there's there's
Speaker 1: producer as as song clinician and arranger and music person,
Speaker 1: and there's something about producer as social psychologist. And I
Speaker 1: feel like, your your life and correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: It's sort of this weird thing that rides between them
Speaker 1: and the great producers that I know run this line
Speaker 1: that I don't fully understand how to run, and I
Speaker 1: feel like you've mastered it and and in your career
Speaker 1: have sort of defined what a producer is. And so
Speaker 1: there are some producers that are that are beat makers,
Speaker 1: there are some producers that are songwriters. You're able to
Speaker 1: encompass all of them, and not only in one particular genre,
Speaker 1: but in about four or five. So like, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, you call yourself a reducer, and I get
Speaker 1: that sort of play on words, but like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: what what is it? What is it about all of
Speaker 1: that that makes it work, that makes that makes you
Speaker 1: enjoy what you do as well? Because that to me
Speaker 1: is fascinating. I'll say that I think it always changes
Speaker 1: at the time that I was more of a beat
Speaker 1: making producer, which are the days we're talking about now
Speaker 1: I was. I was not good at the psychology part
Speaker 1: and the collaborating I was not good. I was much
Speaker 1: more of a I know what's good and you're going
Speaker 1: to do it my way, probably for my hip hop
Speaker 1: early hip hop days. And then as I started working
Speaker 1: with more rock bands, I started understanding more the dynamics
Speaker 1: of working with a group of people. And now the
Speaker 1: most interesting thing for me when I work with an
Speaker 1: artist is I can clearly point out where I think
Speaker 1: the strengths and weaknesses are. But I don't feel like
Speaker 1: it's my responsibility to solve the weaknesses. All I have
Speaker 1: to do is point out, like, M, this section here
Speaker 1: isn't as good as it could be. What can we
Speaker 1: do to make it better? Whereas in the old days,
Speaker 1: I'd say this section isn't as good and this is
Speaker 1: what we're gonna do. Now it's this part isn't as good.
Speaker 1: How do you guys suggest we fix it? And all
Speaker 1: of that is subjective. It's all based on your opinion, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, like it's it's all how you. All it
Speaker 1: is is opinion. Everything everything has to do with opinion.
Speaker 1: The whole job, the whole job of doing this is
Speaker 1: pure opinion. Yeah yeah, Okay, So before before I get
Speaker 1: to the Beastie Boys, well Unpaid Bill sort of sorry
Speaker 1: enemy to divert, but I was because actually my next
Speaker 1: question leads to what you headed with uh Unpaid Bill,
Speaker 1: which is basically, whenever you show up and whenever you
Speaker 1: show up in the credits, two things are bound to happen,
Speaker 1: and that is you're going to us to sound. So
Speaker 1: we already talked about the idea of you stripping stuff
Speaker 1: down to just its bare bones and making it loud.
Speaker 1: But it's also you really introduced the idea of cross
Speaker 1: genres in modern hip hop music. I mean with with
Speaker 1: RUNDEMC having their biggest hit with Walk This Way, even
Speaker 1: with the Beastie Boys, at least in their their narrative
Speaker 1: of it, like we were making fun of smoking in
Speaker 1: the boys rooms and now here we go with fight
Speaker 1: for You Right to Party. But even with Johnny Cash
Speaker 1: doing Hurt, or even with Mick Jaggers singing over and
Speaker 1: Peach the President, even with the stuff with Slayer or
Speaker 1: working with Neil Diamond, like there's always an element or
Speaker 1: Kanye rhyming over industrial shrew noises. There seems to be
Speaker 1: a common denominator of you pushing artists. I don't willing
Speaker 1: or unwillingly. I mean, Kanye seems like the type of
Speaker 1: person that's like, let's let's let's go to the edge
Speaker 1: of it, let's do something different, whereas like run DMC
Speaker 1: was legendary for not liking or wanting to do walk
Speaker 1: this way the way that you wanted them to do it.
Speaker 1: So how much hold handing and Jedi mind tricks and
Speaker 1: psychology it's all psychology? It seems like, yeah, how like,
Speaker 1: how much of that is a nightmare for you when
Speaker 1: you just want to make the damn song and leave?
Speaker 1: My whole relationship too has changed over the years. So
Speaker 1: in the case of run DMC, then it was frustrating
Speaker 1: and I didn't have the tools to deal with it.
Speaker 1: But luckily Russell called called run in dy and said,
Speaker 1: just do whatever Rick says. It's like real knows what
Speaker 1: he's doing. Just do what Rick says. So had that
Speaker 1: not happened, they wouldn't have they wouldn't have been on
Speaker 1: the record. That record wouldn't have happened. So it that's
Speaker 1: how that happened, and even after Rockbox and King of Rock,
Speaker 1: they don't know that they're on a winning formula, just
Speaker 1: like one one moment away from super Jackpot. Well, this
Speaker 1: had less to do with it being a rock song.
Speaker 1: Had more to do with singing someone else's words and
Speaker 1: singing someone else's which they had never done before, and
Speaker 1: singing someone else's words that they didn't necessarily like. How
Speaker 1: long did that process take? Walk this way? I'm talking
Speaker 1: same as everything you know, same as everything else. The
Speaker 1: only thing that was different was because Steve and Joe
Speaker 1: appeared on the record. There was an extra day working
Speaker 1: on it with those guys playing guitar and singing, singing vocals,
Speaker 1: the guys from Aosmith with the Beastie Boys. Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, I want to know who introduced I have
Speaker 1: so many questions. Number One, the Beastie Groove Rock Hard
Speaker 1: twelve inch Who were the Latin Rascals because I've always
Speaker 1: I've seen their names and like all these twelve inches
Speaker 1: from eighty three to eighty five, and then poof Nothing,
Speaker 1: who were the Latin Rascals? The Latin Rascals were two
Speaker 1: club DJs who worked at Shakedown Arthur Arthur Baker's studio
Speaker 1: who invented this is pre sampler. There were no samplers,
Speaker 1: and they invented away. It was their own style of
Speaker 1: doing remixes where they would do these edits on half
Speaker 1: inch tape where they would repeat the same like dad
Speaker 1: one through editing. So it was like it wasn't scratching.
Speaker 1: There was no sampling yet, and there was this other
Speaker 1: way of manipulating the music, and the Latin Rascals invented it,
Speaker 1: and they did it on all of Arthur's records and
Speaker 1: um and they did a lot of club remixes and that,
Speaker 1: and I can't remember what they did on that. I
Speaker 1: don't remember them doing anything on those, but it's possible.
Speaker 1: On this Party's Getting Rough, that little see Philadelphia where
Speaker 1: I come from, has a very different relationship with this
Speaker 1: Party's getting rough and hold it now hit it, you know,
Speaker 1: because Lady b and her Street By show that came
Speaker 1: on a Power ninety nine between like twelve and five
Speaker 1: pm on Sundays, they made they basically made an edit
Speaker 1: where they would play that middle sketch of this Party's
Speaker 1: Getting Rough where it's like, oh man, you just fested man, yo,
Speaker 1: you you didn't even turn up the boombox and all
Speaker 1: that stuff, all all all that chaos in the middle,
Speaker 1: and then they attached I don't remember it. I don't
Speaker 1: really remember man. Yeah, this is this like the Philly anthem.
Speaker 1: So they made they kind of made an edit. Philly
Speaker 1: made an editor of their own of this party's getting
Speaker 1: rough and the Beastie groove and just between Latin rascals
Speaker 1: and mantronics. Just the idea of like multiple sampling or
Speaker 1: like those crazy edits. That's all we heard. But what's
Speaker 1: even weirder for holding Now Hit It? Because of a
Speaker 1: pressing mistake. The initial Deaf Jam pressings have hold It
Speaker 1: Now Hit It had the acapella as side one, Yes,
Speaker 1: had the acappella as side one, and the the DMX
Speaker 1: drum Machine version that's on the album as side too.
Speaker 1: We never heard of the drum machine version in Philly ever,
Speaker 1: So when when they're playing hold It, Now Hit It,
Speaker 1: there's no such thing as an acappella or you juggling
Speaker 1: called it acapulco version. Yeah, and we thought, yo, dude,
Speaker 1: it was such. It was the most radical shit we
Speaker 1: ever heard. Because our thing was like the only way
Speaker 1: I can to describe it is if you ever seen
Speaker 1: Pootie Tang And when Chris Rock asked, the DJ introduces
Speaker 1: that song of silence, like and now this new song. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying he's friends with Chris Rock. I don't
Speaker 1: know anyway. The whole point was that we made up
Speaker 1: in our minds like, yo, these dudes are so incredible
Speaker 1: they don't even need music and hold it now hit it.
Speaker 1: The acapella was number one on the Power nine at
Speaker 1: nine for months. Wow, to the point where when we
Speaker 1: got the album and heard that drum. Now, it's weird
Speaker 1: because in Florida, every everyone from down south, I know,
Speaker 1: even Premier tells the story like when you're getting your
Speaker 1: car system, the song that you tested to see if
Speaker 1: you're if you're almost rights holding now hit it because
Speaker 1: you like you mix your your joints loud as fuck.
Speaker 1: When we got that in Philly, we didn't know what
Speaker 1: the like, Yo, what's this drum? Shit like this ain't
Speaker 1: on the album. To this day, I will never acknowledge
Speaker 1: the album version of holding Out Hit I will only
Speaker 1: DJ the acapella version, but even love to hear I've
Speaker 1: never heard the acapella version. I'd love to hear it.
Speaker 1: I don't remember ever hearing it. Bet it's great, probably better,
Speaker 1: that's crazy. It's your labels. It's the first acapella in
Speaker 1: history like that, Yeah, it's the first acapoca in history.
Speaker 1: And in working their album, like how involved are you
Speaker 1: with with the marketing? And because I'll be honest with you,
Speaker 1: we for two years from eighty five till we purchased
Speaker 1: the album and saw the gatefold cover. I didn't know
Speaker 1: the Best boys were white. We thought they were Puerto
Speaker 1: Rican affili at least, So was that by design to
Speaker 1: like not put them on the album cover and just
Speaker 1: to ride it out till not at all the way
Speaker 1: we did it. We didn't. We never even thought about it.
Speaker 1: On the seven original def Jam singles, the Maroon label singles,
Speaker 1: of which where rock Hard was one of those, I
Speaker 1: think that's the only BC record that was in those
Speaker 1: There was an LLL. There was that. There was Hollis Creek,
Speaker 1: Hollis Crewe, Jimmy Spicer' I'm a Girl Watcher with Papa
Speaker 1: d and Papa Son. I don't think that was on Maroon.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, well there was also mcam Bazooti. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Zooti is an engineer in New York named Jay Burnett,
Speaker 1: and he was the guy who turned me onto the
Speaker 1: studio that we lovingly renamed Chung King. The original, the
Speaker 1: original chunking, the unking Wow. Yeah. And the reason I
Speaker 1: called it chun King was I didn't want anyone to
Speaker 1: know that it was such a terrible place that we
Speaker 1: were working in, so I made up Chunking. House of
Speaker 1: Metal was like a just the one or the other,
Speaker 1: the one on There was one it was on was
Speaker 1: a church between Broom and Grand something like that. Across
Speaker 1: from the pool. There's that police building, you know, the
Speaker 1: police building. It was on mat block, five floor walk up.
Speaker 1: The rest of the building were like sweatshops. It was
Speaker 1: a really weird place. It was it really Again, I
Speaker 1: didn't know this because I wasn't into it, but it
Speaker 1: was just a drug dealing place they had They just
Speaker 1: had a studio, but it was mainly drug dealing. But
Speaker 1: I didn't know that those Steve Yes, you know, speaking
Speaker 1: of which you know, I don't mean that I was
Speaker 1: just I'm reminiscent. I think I think I was at
Speaker 1: that place dropping off tapes at first as an intern. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the first place. Yeah, it was, I was only there ONCET.
Speaker 1: But we recorded, um, all of the BCT boys stuff there.
Speaker 1: We recorded raising hell there recorded a lot of the
Speaker 1: early def jam stuff there, maybe all of it, maybe
Speaker 1: all of it. I was gonna say, Steve, that that
Speaker 1: DMX dram machine that's taking in our studio. Yeah, that's ricks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I know this is all tell the world,
Speaker 1: but you know, I mean that in this room. Okay?
Speaker 1: Is that a stolen or no? Um? We know, is it?
Speaker 1: You know what? We had to re record. I can't
Speaker 1: right left handed with John Legend, and we were running
Speaker 1: out of studios and it just so happens that that
Speaker 1: was open. And when we got there, we were told
Speaker 1: this is our last day and kind of you know,
Speaker 1: I was just like doing my fan boys thing like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this is the old Chunk King and no, no,
Speaker 1: no no. And whoever the owner was a guy he's
Speaker 1: like just like on some Me and Joe Green here
Speaker 1: a kid catch um wow, he showed me this season
Speaker 1: is this DMX And he's just created you know, all
Speaker 1: the deaf jam days has been here forever. You know,
Speaker 1: you'll take care of this and I took it. Sorry
Speaker 1: Vitt anyway, may that may or may not be true. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's multiple I'm sure there's multiple DMX drum scenes,
Speaker 1: but I prefer my version of it. Um was the
Speaker 1: was the just the floodgate of License to Ill? Was
Speaker 1: that scary to you or overwhelming at the time? And
Speaker 1: how are you guys treated by Columbia Records? By this
Speaker 1: point we would never eated well by anybody, even when
Speaker 1: selling twelve million units? Yes, even then, man? Really why so?
Speaker 1: He was still we were off the red nose the rain.
Speaker 1: I mean it was yet Nikoff period. Was this uh
Speaker 1: Montola period? Like where was yet nikoffin a'l teller? Those
Speaker 1: were the people that I don't teller from MCA was
Speaker 1: at Columbia first. He was the president of Columbia at
Speaker 1: the time that we were there. Damn. The only person
Speaker 1: that I ever really dealt with on a regular basis
Speaker 1: was Jeff Jones, who was a great guy. He was
Speaker 1: a product manager and he now runs Apple Records for
Speaker 1: the Beatles based in London, and he's still around and
Speaker 1: he remembers, like he told me stories of things that
Speaker 1: happened back then that I didn't remember. But it was funny,
Speaker 1: like like with License to Ill? He said he goes
Speaker 1: into a meeting, is like, well, Rick Rubin says, we
Speaker 1: can't put a bar code on the outside of the cover,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, we have to figure out how
Speaker 1: we're going to do this because we've never done this before.
Speaker 1: And that, you know, the people in the meeting like,
Speaker 1: who the fuck is Rick Rubin? What do you mean?
Speaker 1: It's like, we do this all, we're doing this. Of
Speaker 1: course it's going to have a barcode. He's like, no,
Speaker 1: but Rick won't let us have the barcode. He's like,
Speaker 1: he's insistent. So again, I had no memory of that.
Speaker 1: But we would fight, We would fight for the art,
Speaker 1: to get the art the way we want it all
Speaker 1: the time, and people just didn't know what it was,
Speaker 1: you know, you say, it's very little understanding of what
Speaker 1: it was that we were doing. Who conceptualize the album
Speaker 1: cover for License to Ill? That was me, I'll tell you.
Speaker 1: I had just read the led Zeppelin book Camera the
Speaker 1: Gods about them being on torn all the debauchery of
Speaker 1: crazy rock stardom and I and there were images of
Speaker 1: led Zeppelin's airplane in the book, and it just seemed like, wow,
Speaker 1: that's just like the height of decadence. This an airplane
Speaker 1: at with this crazy rock and roll lifestyle going on,
Speaker 1: and I thought it would be interesting to have a
Speaker 1: Beastie Boy, a Beastie Boy airplane representing this sort of
Speaker 1: crazy debauchery all made up. You know, none of this
Speaker 1: was true. We were kids, we were kids in school.
Speaker 1: You know, this was none of this was accurate. This
Speaker 1: was a fantasy based on loving, loving led Zeppelin. It
Speaker 1: was the fantasy of, well, what about a Beastie Boys
Speaker 1: jumbo jet that rams into a mountain like that? That's
Speaker 1: like the way the story ends is the it goes
Speaker 1: with this crazy rock and roll lifestyle. And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: because it would be a gatefold, it'd be like you'd
Speaker 1: see the front of it and you'd think it was
Speaker 1: you'd just think it was an airplane, and then you'd
Speaker 1: open it up and you'd get the reveal of the
Speaker 1: back and then yeah. And then when I would drive
Speaker 1: from my parents' house on Long Island into the city,
Speaker 1: I would always pass the globe um from the that's
Speaker 1: in the centerfold, and I was thought, oh, it'd be great,
Speaker 1: like someday that would be a great thing to use
Speaker 1: in a photograph. And then the opportunity was with the
Speaker 1: Beastie Boys in the inner sleeve. Has anyone ever you know,
Speaker 1: it's weird when I've seen it. I remember getting the
Speaker 1: album like Thanksgiving of eighty six, so I would like
Speaker 1: to think that I think the album came out in
Speaker 1: November of eighty six, like late November. Um, but this happened.
Speaker 1: The album cover occurred like nine months after the Space
Speaker 1: Settle Challenge thing. The challengers join the challenge like traumatize
Speaker 1: the shit out of me in kindergarten, yo, Yeah, and like,
Speaker 1: so to that album and see that crash, like just
Speaker 1: traumatize me even more. So it's weird, Like I have
Speaker 1: this love, this love relationship with with the album because
Speaker 1: it's so you know, monumental, but it's like, ah, the Knights.
Speaker 1: I just looked at that album cover like, ah, it's
Speaker 1: killing me. I didn't I didn't know about the crash,
Speaker 1: and it didn't I'll tell you now, And I knew
Speaker 1: it at the time, but I didn't know enough to
Speaker 1: be able to get it the way I really wanted it.
Speaker 1: But it never was the way I really wanted it,
Speaker 1: which was I wanted it to look more really like
Speaker 1: a photograph, and instead it looks more like a Mad
Speaker 1: magazine cover cartoon like it. It's more cartoony looking than
Speaker 1: I would have liked it to be. I would have
Speaker 1: liked it to be like photo realists. The artist that
Speaker 1: drew it, was he a friend of yours or no, no,
Speaker 1: he was a friend of um. The guy who was
Speaker 1: our art director at the label, Steve Byrom was his name,
Speaker 1: And I would just say, hey, this is the vision
Speaker 1: for the cover. How do we get this made? And
Speaker 1: then he had his friend he commissioned it. But which
Speaker 1: is why it didn't come out the way I wanted
Speaker 1: it to come out. You know, it's so you've seen it.
Speaker 1: We're disappointed. Yeah, I said, this isn't really It's like
Speaker 1: the image is right, but the way it was done
Speaker 1: was not right. It felt more like a cartoon. But
Speaker 1: it was like, well, you know, the album's coming out
Speaker 1: and we have no time. It's like okay. And and
Speaker 1: to eat meat that was not that was a creative
Speaker 1: like the eating that I didn't That was not my idea.
Speaker 1: But so what did you think about Eminem's arm? But
Speaker 1: then I forgot you produced that? You produced that? Did
Speaker 1: you talk him to do it or did he say
Speaker 1: I want to watch you one Eminem's album, Uh not
Speaker 1: abuse it to be murdered by It was the one
Speaker 1: before that one. It was the Recovery. That wasn't Recovery.
Speaker 1: It just came out like a year or two ago. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm looking right, produce that? Wait? Which was you to
Speaker 1: my question, which is Rick, how do you pick your
Speaker 1: projects just based on liking him, like either liking the
Speaker 1: music or liking the artists one or the other. Like
Speaker 1: Kama Kazi, Sorry, Kamakazi, that was it? Yeah, it just
Speaker 1: didn't produce that. Oh I thought you produced the last
Speaker 1: Karmic Kazi. Yikes, Okay, I stand corrected. Well, tribute to
Speaker 1: you License to Ill so oh cool? Yeah, as as
Speaker 1: an album cover. Just on the back of Bill's question, Rick,
Speaker 1: how come you only did one? I've noticed you only
Speaker 1: did the Andrew Dice Clay album, like that was your
Speaker 1: only comedian that you work with? Well, we did. I
Speaker 1: think we did five five Andrew Dice Clay alum right,
Speaker 1: and I always looked for other comedians to work with
Speaker 1: but never found there was At one point I was
Speaker 1: interested in recording Carlos Mencia. I don't know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think we like started talking about it, maybe
Speaker 1: even recorded a little bit, but it just never never
Speaker 1: came together for whatever reason. Have you got any more
Speaker 1: requests though? I'm comedian wise, well, I loved Gerard. I
Speaker 1: think he's incredible. I've never thought about him doing an album,
Speaker 1: but that's a really interesting idea. Okay, he wants it.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. How long did you have to bug public
Speaker 1: get him me until Chuck finally relented and signed to
Speaker 1: the label. It was a really long time. It was
Speaker 1: a long time. I want to say it felt like
Speaker 1: forever then, but it was probably nine months, maybe a year,
Speaker 1: but for at you know, when you're twenty years old,
Speaker 1: a year is forever. No, that's a long time. And
Speaker 1: they had to post it note of Chuck's number next
Speaker 1: to my phone, and anytime I would walk by the phone,
Speaker 1: i'd see it and I would call. And then Bill Stephanie,
Speaker 1: who was our first employee at def Jam, he knew Chuck,
Speaker 1: and at one point I got so frustrated, I said,
Speaker 1: you have to tell Chuck. If he doesn't sign to
Speaker 1: def JAM, I'm firing you. Like, you have to convince
Speaker 1: him he has to do this. And it's not like
Speaker 1: he wanted to sign to someone else. He didn't want
Speaker 1: to make records. That was the thing. It's like he
Speaker 1: was too old. He thought he was too old. How
Speaker 1: did you How did you feel about the Bomb squads
Speaker 1: production methods, because that's the total opposite of your reduction
Speaker 1: love Brooch loved it. I like I like different things,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not. I like all kinds of different things.
Speaker 1: I actually heard something on your on your James Brown
Speaker 1: recent DJ set, right, maybe it was night two if
Speaker 1: I remember correctly, for the first time, I heard what
Speaker 1: I think was the inspiration for the Bomb Squad that
Speaker 1: I'd never heard before. Wow, I have to find I'll
Speaker 1: find it and send it to you, just so you
Speaker 1: have for your own reference. I think you pieced, you
Speaker 1: put the pieces of a puzzle together from me that
Speaker 1: I never knew were there. You know, during this period
Speaker 1: at least between eighty six and eighty nine, I mean
Speaker 1: between your work with LLL and I am curious as
Speaker 1: to why you did not produce bigger than ever. And
Speaker 1: I always wanted to know how you felt about like
Speaker 1: the La Posse and I Need Love and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: But you're doing these Slayer records and not to mention
Speaker 1: like I mean, your heart meant like, how what is
Speaker 1: your approach to Are you just leading from the gut
Speaker 1: or do you have like a mapped out plan that
Speaker 1: you're explaining to the group. This is the vision I
Speaker 1: have for you, Like, how do you work with Slayer?
Speaker 1: Just going into the studio and first going into pre
Speaker 1: production talking about the parts in the songs, helping make
Speaker 1: them as good as they could be, and then figuring
Speaker 1: out how to In their case, it was interesting because
Speaker 1: they already were popular, a popular underground band. Like the
Speaker 1: night I saw them, they sold out the Ritz, which
Speaker 1: is pretty substantial place. I saw them at the Ritz.
Speaker 1: Blew my mind. It's like, I like heavy music. I
Speaker 1: never heard of these guys before, and this was one
Speaker 1: of the craziest, heaviest concerts I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 1: How is this? It's like a parallel universe that this exists.
Speaker 1: And um and I talked to them that night after
Speaker 1: the show and then ended up flying out and meeting
Speaker 1: him in California after that. Who was their drummer? Because
Speaker 1: I've never heard I've never heard someone play double kick
Speaker 1: that intense. Yeah, And you know, not not only is
Speaker 1: it intense, it's funky. That's the He's the only of
Speaker 1: all the heavy metal drummers I've ever heard who play
Speaker 1: in that double kick drum style. He's the only one
Speaker 1: where it's groovy maybe Lars who else thing though that's
Speaker 1: not what Lars does. Okay, that's not what Lar does groovy,
Speaker 1: Lars does something else. So Ar someone like a pro fast,
Speaker 1: prog rock drummer. So some kid at school puts me
Speaker 1: on you know, by the time I get Nation of Millions,
Speaker 1: some kid puts me onto Rain and Blood and then
Speaker 1: uh plays yeah, yeah she You know when I was
Speaker 1: listening to see and they're like, well, you know that's
Speaker 1: that's a Slayer song and playing the original join and
Speaker 1: then like I started buying the records just as a completest.
Speaker 1: But yeah, trying to play that ship because there was
Speaker 1: like a hard rock band that I joined, like in
Speaker 1: high school for like four months, but I quit because
Speaker 1: like I can't do double foot action that good. But
Speaker 1: it's like, how did you capture those performances? Like are
Speaker 1: there jam sessions? Are there? Like guys, here's a course,
Speaker 1: let's or is it just like okay, open to e
Speaker 1: open just boss the wall go no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 1: They wrote the songs. I came in. I said, maybe
Speaker 1: this part's too long, maybe this part's too short, maybe
Speaker 1: we need another part here. But very it's all them.
Speaker 1: It's all them and Slayer were unbelievable, and then it
Speaker 1: was just properly recording them in a way not to
Speaker 1: screw it up. And here was a big breakthrough. Sonic
Speaker 1: breakthrough in my mind, was the only records you could
Speaker 1: hear that were that approach that speed at that time
Speaker 1: would be like Metallica's first record. I think that's all
Speaker 1: that was out. I don't even think their second record. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but Metallica, those records were recorded like a traditional rock band,
Speaker 1: which again it like it goes back to the hip
Speaker 1: hop argument in the beginning. It's like nobody's looking at
Speaker 1: the thing for what it is, to make it the
Speaker 1: best version of what it is. People are looking at okay. Well,
Speaker 1: on rock records, we use big drum sounds with long
Speaker 1: with long um reverbs. Yeah, long sounds, and that's what
Speaker 1: makes them sound big. But if you're playing fast, and
Speaker 1: if you do that, it's just a blur. You don't
Speaker 1: hear anything, it's just out exactly, So I'm looking at okay,
Speaker 1: this band's incredible and they play tight and fast, And
Speaker 1: the key is how do we get it to sound
Speaker 1: like like you're listening to them with a magnifying glass,
Speaker 1: not how do you blend it together into an Impressionist painting.
Speaker 1: So in the case of Slayer, it was, okay, how
Speaker 1: do we make the drums sounds super tight, super tiny
Speaker 1: because the speed of the drums, the only way you're
Speaker 1: going to even be able to hear it is if
Speaker 1: they're basically taps, you know, like tiny little taps. So
Speaker 1: it really a lot of it has to do with
Speaker 1: in each of these cases of the things that I've
Speaker 1: on the records where I've worked on where they sound
Speaker 1: different than the records that came before them, it was
Speaker 1: only looking at them for what they are and figuring out,
Speaker 1: how do we make this thing sound good? Not how
Speaker 1: do we use the baggage of the past, how do
Speaker 1: we apply old methods to this? It's how do we
Speaker 1: what's right for what this is? So how do you
Speaker 1: know the difference between what to give a Slayer as
Speaker 1: opposed to like the word that you did with the
Speaker 1: call As far as rock sounds are concerned, Now I
Speaker 1: know you know, like how much research do you have
Speaker 1: to put into the acts that you work with to
Speaker 1: know what their strengths and their weaknesses are. I put
Speaker 1: no research in whatsoever. But the research that I do
Speaker 1: is as a fan all the time, listening to music
Speaker 1: all the time, and I listen and then based on
Speaker 1: what I'm hearing, I'll make suggestions just based on whatever
Speaker 1: whatever little bit that I've picked up from listening to
Speaker 1: music my whole life. We should probably be asking to
Speaker 1: LL this. But since you were there to help make
Speaker 1: the track, what exactly went between LL and Cool mood
Speaker 1: that made him make Jack the Ripper? I remember, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know that anything happened. I think it might
Speaker 1: have just been that. I mean, did you realize that
Speaker 1: you were making a Cool Moody disk record? Nope, and
Speaker 1: one of the first disk records. I never thought about
Speaker 1: it because that was your boyfriend in the day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I loved him. You you also thought about it that
Speaker 1: way at all. And it kind of goes back to
Speaker 1: your go Go love too, because it was the Chuck
Speaker 1: Brown temple that it's also the temple Yeah yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I forgot. I forgot that. Athley's road clip is Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not just the paintingful break Yeah, how how what
Speaker 1: was your experience like shooting Tougher Than Leather? Terrible experience directed? Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm a first time director. What what what can you what? What?
Speaker 1: What advice can you give me? I mean, sorry, my
Speaker 1: movie he's already done, so okay. I was going to say,
Speaker 1: if you have an opportunity not to do it, don't leave. Okay,
Speaker 1: So tell me about your experience in directing Tougher Than Leather. Well,
Speaker 1: where I didn't know what I was doing. In the
Speaker 1: recording studio, it was easy because there were so few
Speaker 1: people there and mistakes were low. And on a movie
Speaker 1: set there are many more people and the schedule is like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be an hour late to the studio today.
Speaker 1: Talk to you, talk to you guys later. No problem,
Speaker 1: movie sets not like that. It's like everything was and yeah,
Speaker 1: and we were our whole lives were you know. I
Speaker 1: slept until I never took a class before three in
Speaker 1: the afternoon when I went to NYU, because I slept
Speaker 1: until probably one, and then we went out all night
Speaker 1: every night. So the idea of showing up on a
Speaker 1: movie set at six o'clock in the morning every day,
Speaker 1: that wasn't anything that I anticipated, and that was not
Speaker 1: a it was not a realistic ask in the way
Speaker 1: my life worked. So it was a terrible experience and
Speaker 1: I wouldn't wish it, wouldn't wish it on my enemy.
Speaker 1: Did you insist on directing that movie or was it
Speaker 1: like you had an upcoming april or to do it
Speaker 1: or something like? How did you wind up holding the
Speaker 1: director's manual? Me and my friend Rick wrote the idea.
Speaker 1: It was Rick was really more the writer than I.
Speaker 1: We would throw ideas together, but Rick was the main writer.
Speaker 1: Rick Minello and who was the guy who ran the
Speaker 1: desk at my dorm, so he'd be the night He
Speaker 1: would work at the dorm from midnight to six. He
Speaker 1: was the night watchman essentially, and the dorm was pretty
Speaker 1: quiet from midnight to six, so I would usually get
Speaker 1: home from the club two three and I would sit
Speaker 1: there with Rick and we would order food from cozy
Speaker 1: Superenberger around the corner and watch old movies on TV.
Speaker 1: And he was a film major and film historian new
Speaker 1: tremendous amount and then in later years ended up, you know,
Speaker 1: working with Darren Aronovski and James Gray. James Gray some
Speaker 1: great directors, and all of my friends who were directors
Speaker 1: would always anytime anyone I knew who made movies had
Speaker 1: a movie question, they would all call Rick Manello because
Speaker 1: he knew more than everybody that Rick Mannello was the
Speaker 1: main scriptwriter. He's in it too. I can't remember what
Speaker 1: his character. He was played, sort of the sidekick guy
Speaker 1: to my guy. I can't remember his character's name. I
Speaker 1: can't remember. I really blocked out a lot about that movie. Actually,
Speaker 1: he was also in the Beastie Boys video for No
Speaker 1: Sleep Till Brooklyn. He was like the club, you know
Speaker 1: in the beginning, there's like a skit with a that's
Speaker 1: Rick Mannello. So he's been in a few depths him
Speaker 1: products or Yes. And he directed Going Back to Kelly
Speaker 1: as well. Oh the video of Going Back to Kelly,
Speaker 1: which we story boarded together at the desk at Weinstein
Speaker 1: the dormitory at NYU. Okay, So something I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you ever went on record. I
Speaker 1: never knew how or why you left Deaf Jam. I
Speaker 1: just remember your name being on the executive producer for
Speaker 1: Nation of Millions, and then when I looked for your
Speaker 1: name on Fear of a black planet. You weren't there anymore.
Speaker 1: And then I next I heard of you. You had
Speaker 1: a funeral for the word death. So what I mean,
Speaker 1: why did you decide to leave the your your your
Speaker 1: first love? It really had to There were two things
Speaker 1: going on. One was over the time together. However many years,
Speaker 1: it was three, four or five years, my relationship with
Speaker 1: Russell was starting to I wouldn't say it ever turned bad,
Speaker 1: because we were always good friends, but it felt like
Speaker 1: our what we wanted was changing. And I felt like
Speaker 1: I really loved our friendship and didn't want our friendship
Speaker 1: to end. And I thought, if we remained partners, our
Speaker 1: friendships probably going to end. So maybe it's better just
Speaker 1: not to be partners anymore. And then there was something
Speaker 1: going on that really triggered. It had to do with
Speaker 1: the way we were being treated by Columbia and what
Speaker 1: we needed Columbia to do to fix the situation for
Speaker 1: our artists. For example, I remember the first time we
Speaker 1: went to England and the guy at Columbia basically told us,
Speaker 1: you know, we're just we're not interested in your records
Speaker 1: that they said. They said, we look at Columbia records
Speaker 1: in New York as an albatross. And it's nothing against
Speaker 1: you personally, but because you come from them, we're just
Speaker 1: not really interested even though you're making that money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm in eighty seven. You guys are so more units
Speaker 1: than Michael Jackson's bed. Yeah, And it was unbelievable. I
Speaker 1: had a meeting with al Teller at the time, who
Speaker 1: was the president of the company, and told him all
Speaker 1: of my concerns and I talked for a half hour
Speaker 1: and I got really emotional. I started crying because again
Speaker 1: I care so much about this shit, It's my whole life.
Speaker 1: And at the end of the conversation, I say, you know,
Speaker 1: we gotta we have to figure out a way to
Speaker 1: fix this, because if not, I have to leave. Like
Speaker 1: I can't. I can't keep doing this. I can't put
Speaker 1: my heart into this and have partners who don't care
Speaker 1: or who are not going as hard as they can
Speaker 1: as hard as we're going. I can't do this. And um,
Speaker 1: and this is after a half hour of my I
Speaker 1: remember I had a pad and I listed all the
Speaker 1: things that were wrong in the relationship. Whatever if I
Speaker 1: would have known that they put the wrong a side
Speaker 1: on the record, that that's an example they've been on
Speaker 1: the list. Yeah, it's like but that was indicative of
Speaker 1: what it was like. It was like nobody really cared.
Speaker 1: These guys do this shit that we don't understand and
Speaker 1: luckily itselves, but we don't know what it is and
Speaker 1: we don't really care what it is. We just don't
Speaker 1: want it to stop. Um. But they always one with
Speaker 1: yet nikof or one on one with Ideas or Matola,
Speaker 1: none of those guys. Einer wasn't there, Matola wasn't there yet.
Speaker 1: It was so the guy al Teller was the president
Speaker 1: of the company. Matola was his boss, but he wasn't
Speaker 1: really involved in what the day to day of Columbia record.
Speaker 1: So I had this meeting with the guy the right
Speaker 1: person to have a meeting with. I have this meeting.
Speaker 1: I'm have a heartfelt emotional He's sitting there holding a
Speaker 1: baseball bat through the meeting because yeah, he saw himself
Speaker 1: as kind of like tough. So he's sitting there holding
Speaker 1: this baseball bat. I'm talking twenty minutes, twenty five minutes.
Speaker 1: I'm crying at the end and telling them finally that
Speaker 1: if we can't work this stuff out, we can't get
Speaker 1: to the bottom of this. I got to leave, and
Speaker 1: I said, you know, I never signed a contract. Russell
Speaker 1: signed the contract. I never signed anything, so and I
Speaker 1: have to leave. And he said, wait, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, what did you just say. And I said,
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, I said I never signed a contract,
Speaker 1: you know, only Russell signed. And he said, okay, wait
Speaker 1: a minute. You're gonna have to start back at the
Speaker 1: beginning because I wasn't listening to anything. You were saying, oh,
Speaker 1: we're at my sound effect with me. This is this
Speaker 1: is really, this is real. So how long until death
Speaker 1: American is started right away? Because when I left def Jam,
Speaker 1: I had already started, like Slayer was signed to death
Speaker 1: Jam originally, Danzig was signed to deaf Jam originally, and Dice.
Speaker 1: I can't remember if Dice was if I had already
Speaker 1: signed Ice or not. When I remember going out to
Speaker 1: lunch with Russell and saying, you know, this isn't going
Speaker 1: to work. I don't the relationship with Columbia is bad.
Speaker 1: And oh, so what that meeting that I told you about,
Speaker 1: the start at the beginning again meeting? When that meeting,
Speaker 1: after that meeting, I told Russell, you know this is
Speaker 1: not good. We can't do this anymore. And the way
Speaker 1: that Columbia ended up fixing it was to write a
Speaker 1: big check to death Jam without dealing with any of
Speaker 1: the problems. It was just a check and Russell was
Speaker 1: cool with that, and I was not cool with that.
Speaker 1: So that was sort of the you know what, I
Speaker 1: don't think we can do this anymore, Like this doesn't
Speaker 1: feel right. And I said to him, I said, do
Speaker 1: you want to leave the company? And he said I
Speaker 1: don't want to leave. And I said, okay, I guess
Speaker 1: I have to leave. And it was just like that.
Speaker 1: It wasn't even I thought, yeah, yikes, because you left
Speaker 1: before well you left the beasties left, correct let Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: how did um did you and um like uh at
Speaker 1: Rock or any of them? Did y'all have conversations about
Speaker 1: why you both left? Or interestingly interestingly, we have never
Speaker 1: really discussed it. And it's definitely an elephant in the
Speaker 1: room that would be good to discuss, and we just
Speaker 1: never did. But I'm sure it'll happen. It may happen
Speaker 1: next week, like it'll happen. What were your thoughts on
Speaker 1: Paul's boutique? Loved it, thought it was the I remember
Speaker 1: listening to it at the Mandrean Hotel, me and Chuck
Speaker 1: d together. We were We were there because I think
Speaker 1: Public Enemy was gonna appear somewhere in California. I don't
Speaker 1: know whether it was a club date or a TV show,
Speaker 1: but we're at the Mandrean. We got an advance. I
Speaker 1: don't even know if it was an advance. It might
Speaker 1: have just been like from the studio, like they had
Speaker 1: just finished it and me and Chuck listened to it
Speaker 1: and we both thought, oh my god, this is the
Speaker 1: greatest thing we've ever heard. This is the future hip
Speaker 1: hop like this is. It doesn't get better than this,
Speaker 1: and we were shocked that it was not as well
Speaker 1: received as we thought it deserved to be. The thing
Speaker 1: that I remembered the most, at least your first year
Speaker 1: of Death American was all the press that you got
Speaker 1: as far as the Ghetto boys were concerned. How did
Speaker 1: they come, how did they come across your radar? And
Speaker 1: what was it about them that drew you to them?
Speaker 1: And all the ensuing controversy that came with them, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I had never heard like NWA was already happening. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe just the Easy E album. I don't know if
Speaker 1: there was an NWA album. Yet there was an Easy
Speaker 1: E album for sure, and I loved easy And then
Speaker 1: I heard the Ghetto Boys and I felt like, oh,
Speaker 1: like where NWA was gangster, this is like hard in
Speaker 1: that way, but more like more unhinged, more like um
Speaker 1: horror m like like violent but not violent like a
Speaker 1: bad drug deal gone wrong, like violent like a horror movie,
Speaker 1: you know, like dismemberment, crazy and um. And I just
Speaker 1: liked the how extreme it was. It spoke to me
Speaker 1: right away, and I thought that the album UM didn't
Speaker 1: sound it didn't sound as good as it could have.
Speaker 1: So I remixed the album. I didn't add anything to
Speaker 1: it or I just basically remixed the album and change
Speaker 1: the cover and change the name because they were called
Speaker 1: the Ghetto Boys g H yeah, and I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: it sounds too ordinary, like they could be the Ghetto Boys,
Speaker 1: but should be the Geto Boys just because it I
Speaker 1: don't know, I just thought it was more interesting. I
Speaker 1: would look better on T shirts as well. Okay, so
Speaker 1: how how much of I mean now? It's like, especially
Speaker 1: in the environment that we're in right now, as far
Speaker 1: as like uh, right wing Republican Christian news talking points
Speaker 1: in those things like you know now it's sort of
Speaker 1: like you collectively roll your eyes or that you know,
Speaker 1: like that side of the fences lying. But back in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, ninety like they it just seemed like
Speaker 1: royal threats. And I remember I knew the Ghetto Boys
Speaker 1: because one Chuck Chuck D's shadowed them out, or fear
Speaker 1: of a Black Panic Planet album. But all the controversy
Speaker 1: of scarfaces lyrics being talking points for everybody running for Senate,
Speaker 1: any Republican running for Senate or the House using this
Speaker 1: thing like to this was this manner from heaven like
Speaker 1: for you is I had min diversity and bad news,
Speaker 1: like yes, this is what I want to be your
Speaker 1: parents worst nightmare. This is the first time I'm ever
Speaker 1: hearing of that being the case. What you read Ted White?
Speaker 1: Ted White, I think who ran billboard? Oh man, he
Speaker 1: wrote like paragraphs and dissertation of Mind of a Luna.
Speaker 1: I would have never ever like the sure fireway to
Speaker 1: get a seventeen eighteen year old to buy the ship.
Speaker 1: It's because Ted White could not a billboard, could not
Speaker 1: stop writing about how violent Scarface's Mind of a Lunatic
Speaker 1: was and this needs to be banned and shit. I
Speaker 1: was like, word, I'm about this shit. Yeah, Clay parents
Speaker 1: hated it must be good. Yeah. I always like crazy shit,
Speaker 1: you know, I like edgy crazy shit. It's it's interesting
Speaker 1: to me. It's fun. I mean, but you do realize,
Speaker 1: like being parents were nightmare is also like that's great marketing.
Speaker 1: That's a regged exact candy. Like that's that's so that
Speaker 1: never excited you at all. No, I never never thought
Speaker 1: about it because usually I would have to get the
Speaker 1: calls more like the record company not wanting to put
Speaker 1: it out, you know. That's what I had to deal with,
Speaker 1: Like Slayer, Columbia Records refused to put out that Slayer record,
Speaker 1: So then I had to find a new way to
Speaker 1: release it, even though the first one was on def Jam,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't through Columbia because they refused to release it.
Speaker 1: Then I made a deal with Geffen Records, which is
Speaker 1: where that went. And then in my deal with Geffen,
Speaker 1: I had to have complete creative control where they could
Speaker 1: never come to me and say they're not going to
Speaker 1: put something out. And then when it came to Andrew Dice,
Speaker 1: Clay or the Ghetto Boys, they're like, well, we're not
Speaker 1: going to put it out. It's like, well, the whole
Speaker 1: reason I'm at your company is because I need a
Speaker 1: safe place to put out crazy shit. So why I'm here.
Speaker 1: This is what I do. And you'll see when you
Speaker 1: look back on it in time, it'll be the right decision.
Speaker 1: It'll be like you're too you're too close to the
Speaker 1: story now. But if you look back in history, important
Speaker 1: things often stick out like soft thumbs in their day
Speaker 1: and are hated or vilified. Or they burned Beatles albums.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, man, Elvis was the you know, the devil.
Speaker 1: What was it about the Black Crows that excited you
Speaker 1: to sign them to the label? Did you sign all
Speaker 1: the acts that were at least on the first run
Speaker 1: of Death American to the label? Or was it like
Speaker 1: did you have a full staff? And you know I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't have a full staff. But there was my
Speaker 1: friend who I went to school with named George Treculius.
Speaker 1: Who Culius, who's been called out on a Beast record
Speaker 1: maybe well he's also been my boss the few movies
Speaker 1: that I scored. George. If you're clearing music in movies,
Speaker 1: George Culiac, is that that's your guy that you work with? Okay, great,
Speaker 1: So George was, Um, he was an inter. It's funny.
Speaker 1: I was an intern at Death Jam when I owned
Speaker 1: Deaf Jam at NYU. And the reason I was an
Speaker 1: intern was because then I got school credit for working
Speaker 1: at Deaf Jam. George was. George was my intern at
Speaker 1: Deaf Jam where he got credit in the dorm, and
Speaker 1: then there was a time when he was my roommate
Speaker 1: in the dorm, if I remember correctly. Um and George,
Speaker 1: he found the Black Crows and that was his both
Speaker 1: his signing and his production. That was his vision, and
Speaker 1: the Jayhawks as well. He signed the Jayhawks and never
Speaker 1: told me that. Wow, I didn't know. Ye Hey, wait
Speaker 1: all these old Deaf Jam questions are coming back to
Speaker 1: me now. Um. The storyline to Crust Groove, Um, how
Speaker 1: much of that was actual life? I'm trying to get
Speaker 1: to be kind of uncut. Gim's robbing Peter to pay Paul,
Speaker 1: narrative of like did you guys ever have Like that's
Speaker 1: the storyline of having to borrow money to press up
Speaker 1: twelve inches or to keep up with demand. That's Hollywood,
Speaker 1: Hollywood fickery. That's none of that, Okay, just checking, just
Speaker 1: check it. Yeah, um, so outside of Deaf American recordings,
Speaker 1: can you talk about your your your work with with
Speaker 1: Johnny Cash and how you got him back to his
Speaker 1: glory point, because I mean, I would imagine before you
Speaker 1: two worked together he was sort of waning in the
Speaker 1: creative department at least, like with the last four records
Speaker 1: that he worked on with you, that was like probably
Speaker 1: one of the best storied comebacks in a music career.
Speaker 1: What was it like working with him? Coolest thing, coolest
Speaker 1: thing that ever happened in my life. He was a beautiful, brilliant, humble, interesting,
Speaker 1: quiet guy who studied history off. He had a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of wisdom that he didn't offer unless you drew
Speaker 1: him out, because he was pretty reserved. But if you
Speaker 1: if you asked him about stuff, he would tell you
Speaker 1: about it. And he knew a lot about a lot
Speaker 1: of things, and a tremendous amount about music and the
Speaker 1: history of country music and folk music. And I learned
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount being around him. Did you get a
Speaker 1: chance to personally know him? Like what was he telling
Speaker 1: you stories of recording for Son and that whole million
Speaker 1: dollars session thing and everything you ever wanted to know,
Speaker 1: and he would I got to know him personally well.
Speaker 1: He would stay at my house when he came to
Speaker 1: LA I would say at his house if I went
Speaker 1: to Nashville. Um, I don't know how much we talked
Speaker 1: about old times unless there was a specific reason to
Speaker 1: her if I had a particular interest. He would tell
Speaker 1: me stories about about Sam Phillips, though okay, he loved
Speaker 1: Sam Phillips. Which artist opens up to you the most
Speaker 1: as far as uh, I don't know if you have
Speaker 1: the same relationship would say a Jay Z that you
Speaker 1: would with Anthony Keatis. So I know there's different degrees
Speaker 1: of getting to know your clients as you're producing them.
Speaker 1: And I know there's an an artist producer trust that
Speaker 1: has to be established, but I know there's different degrees
Speaker 1: of that of like which artists I mean, And this
Speaker 1: is not asking what's your favorite artists you ever worked with,
Speaker 1: but who's who's the closest, Who do you know the
Speaker 1: best that you feel that you're just actual friends with,
Speaker 1: like really friends? Is that the Mars Bold guys is it?
Speaker 1: And I feel like I'm friends with a lot a
Speaker 1: lot of them. I'm just thinking if there are any
Speaker 1: unique standouts I would say the people who I've made
Speaker 1: the most albums with. That plays a role, just because
Speaker 1: you're around them more. You know, it's just more hours together. Yeah. So, like,
Speaker 1: I've been around the Chili Peppers a lot, so I
Speaker 1: probably know them better than somebody who I did, you
Speaker 1: know a couple of songs with like jay Z. But
Speaker 1: I feel very comfortable when I hang out with jay Z.
Speaker 1: I feel like pretty good friends. Feels good. I mean
Speaker 1: Andrew Dice Clay though I'm just saying I was. I
Speaker 1: was pretty close with Dice. I would go out every
Speaker 1: night to the Comedy Store after my session and we
Speaker 1: would hang out in the kitchen of the comedy stoor.
Speaker 1: Chris Rock would be there often also, I mean with
Speaker 1: with the Chili Peppers, how do you how do you
Speaker 1: see their growth as from where they were in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one. I'd assume that Blood Sugar, Sex Magic was
Speaker 1: the first time you work with them. You didn't do
Speaker 1: Mother's Milk? Correct? No, No, Although I like I thought
Speaker 1: Mother's Milk was their best record to date. That was
Speaker 1: the Mother's Milk was the record that made me excited
Speaker 1: to work with them. Okay, so how is it working
Speaker 1: with them? And managing their you know whatever, you have
Speaker 1: to juggle to make it right, as opposed to once
Speaker 1: they became more like a comfortable shoe that you were
Speaker 1: familiar with. I'll say, I think it's the same. I
Speaker 1: don't think um. I think the goal is always to
Speaker 1: treat people respectfully and honestly, and that happens regardless of
Speaker 1: how deep the relationship is. I don't. I don't think
Speaker 1: that changes. It's pretty much the thing we're there to
Speaker 1: do looks the same either way. The only other thing
Speaker 1: that I'll say, with the artists who I've made many
Speaker 1: records with another like system of a Down, I made
Speaker 1: all of their albums. With the bands that that I've
Speaker 1: worked with several times, there there gets to be a
Speaker 1: shorthand or like usually the first record we make together, same, Tom, Petty,
Speaker 1: all all of them. The first record we make together
Speaker 1: takes the longest because we're like filling each other out, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like figuring out a vocabulary of how we're gonna do it.
Speaker 1: But once that's established, it's much easier after that, but
Speaker 1: only only out of just that decoding, you know, decoding
Speaker 1: the system. Do you prefer piecemeal projects as far as
Speaker 1: getting uh, you know, they just say, look, I just
Speaker 1: want one song like you did one song on Justin
Speaker 1: Timberlakes record for Future Sex Sounds. Damn that sounds sex
Speaker 1: Love Sounds, Future Sex Magic Sounds. I don't know. As
Speaker 1: opposed to doing an entire album, what would you what
Speaker 1: do you prefer? I really like making albums. I don't
Speaker 1: like doing songs because I think that the nature of
Speaker 1: the process to get to an album, to get to
Speaker 1: one song, or to get to an album could be
Speaker 1: the same amount of experimentation. Do you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 1: Like to to find the voice. If you're working on
Speaker 1: one song, it takes just as long to figure out
Speaker 1: what that is. It may be longer because in a way,
Speaker 1: when you're working on shot, you only got one shot
Speaker 1: and it's hard to even know the way in it.
Speaker 1: But sometimes you'd be working on twenty songs and one
Speaker 1: song you're like, oh, that's the key to the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Now we know how it's all gonna work. Do you
Speaker 1: do you ever run into a situation in which where
Speaker 1: that trust isn't isn't there where you know an artist
Speaker 1: is stubborn They feel that you know, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm given a hypothetical example. I don't know, like if
Speaker 1: you can tell Adele okay sing this shit again, give
Speaker 1: me take nine and she'll knock it out. The part
Speaker 1: as opposed to again convincing the beastie boys that fight
Speaker 1: for your right is the song. And trust me on
Speaker 1: this one? Like how much trust me on this one?
Speaker 1: End quote? Do you have to go through in your post?
Speaker 1: In your post def jam posts American Recordings career? It's
Speaker 1: like now in terms of like working with Neil Diamond
Speaker 1: or even James Blake, Yeah, almost never, almost never. Trust
Speaker 1: me on this one. I don't like that the goal
Speaker 1: is to I always say at the beginning of a project,
Speaker 1: it's like everyone has to like it. Everyone here has
Speaker 1: to love it. If I love it and you don't
Speaker 1: love it, we've failed. If you love it and I
Speaker 1: don't love it, we've failed. It just means we haven't
Speaker 1: gone far enough if we don't all love it. Have
Speaker 1: you ever had to walk away from a project. I've
Speaker 1: never had to walk away, but I've been walked away
Speaker 1: on I'm not a quitter. I don't I don't quit projects,
Speaker 1: but there have been there've been a I can tell you.
Speaker 1: I can tell you about a couple. Uh tell, we tried,
Speaker 1: Like I started an album with Crosby, Sills and Nash
Speaker 1: and when ten years ago, twelve twelve, about ten years ago,
Speaker 1: and it was a and there was a case of
Speaker 1: there being a lack of trust, but the lack of
Speaker 1: trust more had to do with themselves, like within the band.
Speaker 1: Like there's another interesting thing. When the Chili Peppers first
Speaker 1: asked me to produce them, it was before Blood Sugar
Speaker 1: Sex Magic. It was two albums before that Sally, I
Speaker 1: think it was Freaky Sally, the one, the one where
Speaker 1: it was all of the original members. And I remember
Speaker 1: a friend of mine mofo thing yea, whichever one had
Speaker 1: all of the original members because a friend of mine said,
Speaker 1: who loved them, said, if you're ever going to produce
Speaker 1: the Chili Peppers, now as the time. It's all of
Speaker 1: the original members. This is the time. So me and
Speaker 1: Adam Harvits, beastie boy Adam Harvitz went to a rehearsal
Speaker 1: in La on Sunset Boulevard of the Chili Peppers at
Speaker 1: that time, and there was just a weird, bad vibe
Speaker 1: in the room. Had nothing to do with us. It
Speaker 1: was just between them. It felt shady, and I didn't
Speaker 1: know what it was. Now I've come to learn later
Speaker 1: it was drugs, but I didn't I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what to look for it that time.
Speaker 1: I just felt like yes, but there was the sense
Speaker 1: that these guys don't trust each other, like they didn't
Speaker 1: look at each other with like. It just felt shaky,
Speaker 1: the whole thing shaky, and it felt like I don't
Speaker 1: really think this is right for me to be around,
Speaker 1: Like I don't know how to do this. And another
Speaker 1: one was Joe Cocker. I went to the studio with
Speaker 1: Joe Cocker. I had it at the time that I
Speaker 1: produced a CDC and I got Malcolm Young to play
Speaker 1: rhythm guitar on Joe Cocker record. Mike Campbell from the Heartbreakers,
Speaker 1: Ben Mount from the Heartbreakers. It was a really good band.
Speaker 1: It was really good session and Joe. I wanted it
Speaker 1: to be a very raw, guttural, emotional album. And Joe
Speaker 1: saw himself more like Sting. He wanted to be more
Speaker 1: like a Sting album, like jazzy Stings, like very produced, adult,
Speaker 1: very adult man. He wanted, he wanted, he wanted his
Speaker 1: Grammy moment and thing, and I just it wasn't. It
Speaker 1: wasn't so much as I don't feel like I quit.
Speaker 1: It was just like our visions were so different that
Speaker 1: it just no one was really interested. We didn't nobody
Speaker 1: wanted to make the same thing, so that one didn't happen. Yes,
Speaker 1: but considering how many albums I've made, I could count
Speaker 1: on one hand, less than one hand, how many times
Speaker 1: it has not worked out. You mentioned a CDC, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna forget this question. Are they do they have
Speaker 1: an iota or are they even remotely aware of how
Speaker 1: much flick of the switch has changed your life personally?
Speaker 1: Other than what I told them, you know, I told
Speaker 1: I would tell them it's like their their music. They
Speaker 1: have no idea that that one note has fed is
Speaker 1: that where it's from. I don't even know. I just
Speaker 1: randomly switch no, no, I knocked the bells and just
Speaker 1: the trademark Rick Rubinow, Okay, I always wanted to know.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even know. It's so funny. I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: even known that that's what it was. I just literally
Speaker 1: every time it's like, oh, I think it's on an
Speaker 1: ACDC record, and I just hunt through every track until
Speaker 1: I find something and something like that. Man, it's very
Speaker 1: hip hop with you, okay, so LL's sophomore record. It's interesting, unusual,
Speaker 1: unusual story. I don't believe I've ever told it publicly. Um.
Speaker 1: At the time that I met El, he was being raised.
Speaker 1: His mom was in the picture, but he was mainly
Speaker 1: being raised by his grandmother, and he didn't know his dad.
Speaker 1: And then we made our first album together, and then
Speaker 1: he became LL cool J probably seventeen at that time.
Speaker 1: And then LLL's dad appears, Oh wow, and he comes back,
Speaker 1: and LLL obviously wants his dad and his and Russell
Speaker 1: was managing LLL and ll IF I remember correctly fired
Speaker 1: Russell and hired Jimmy, his dad, to be his manager,
Speaker 1: and I just I just felt like it was a
Speaker 1: bad vibe. Like I never discussed it with L. We
Speaker 1: never talked about it. It just felt like something's going
Speaker 1: on here that's dark, and this is not energy for
Speaker 1: me to be around. This good is not going to
Speaker 1: come from this situation, and I just sort of bowed
Speaker 1: out and then it ended up it ended up turning
Speaker 1: bad Um sometime I don't know how much longer, but
Speaker 1: I think there were ended up being problems between Ell
Speaker 1: and his dad after that, but it just yeah, it
Speaker 1: just felt too shady, felt too um. I didn't like
Speaker 1: that they were not nice to Russell when Russell really
Speaker 1: cared about Elle, like firing a guy who was really
Speaker 1: working for you. This new guy coming in the scene
Speaker 1: kind of under questionable. Yes he was his dad, but
Speaker 1: still why wasn't his dad before? He was all cool? Right,
Speaker 1: It was just it just felt very weird. Can you
Speaker 1: explain to me what exactly was your role in Jesus
Speaker 1: and in the life of Pablo, Because to see the
Speaker 1: credits on the albums, I'm just assuming that you're in
Speaker 1: a room with over twelve to twenty chefs and everyone's
Speaker 1: just throwing ideas in well, just based on looking at
Speaker 1: the album credits, like exactly, it's not exactly how it worked.
Speaker 1: Kanye built up the material over years? Is the for that?
Speaker 1: What ended up being? Yess? Okay? When he first came
Speaker 1: he called me, he called me and said, hey, I
Speaker 1: want to come over and play in my new album. Okay,
Speaker 1: It's like great. He came over and we listened to
Speaker 1: three hours of music yo, with almost no vocals, like
Speaker 1: just yes, and it's like wow, cool, It's like off
Speaker 1: to a good start. What do you know, what are
Speaker 1: you thinking you're gonna you know, make you think you'll
Speaker 1: finish next year or something. He's like, it's coming out
Speaker 1: in three weeks, and I said, what it's like? It
Speaker 1: made no sense. And then and I played in Black Sabbath.
Speaker 1: I said, you know, ad this Black Sabbath album that's
Speaker 1: done and mastered, and that's not coming out in three weeks,
Speaker 1: that's coming out later than that. It's like this, this
Speaker 1: is what it sounds like when it's coming out in
Speaker 1: three weeks. And and he said, I want you to
Speaker 1: help me finish it. I want it to be like,
Speaker 1: let's finish it. And it was a terrifying experience because
Speaker 1: I've never worked on anything like that. I don't like
Speaker 1: to work on a deadline ever. Anyway, It's like I
Speaker 1: always feel like it sort of happens as it's supposed
Speaker 1: to happen. Some things happened very quickly, some things take
Speaker 1: a long time. LLL's first album probably took less than
Speaker 1: a month to record. And when I say less than
Speaker 1: a month, meaning a song a day that's on the
Speaker 1: album over the course of a month. Do you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying? Not in the studio every day for
Speaker 1: a month, Like I got a new track, Let's go
Speaker 1: in on Thursday. That happening totally a month, whereas the
Speaker 1: First beast with the First Beasties album was probably two
Speaker 1: years in the making, and it just took that long.
Speaker 1: It just took not every day again, it was like,
Speaker 1: it just takes a long time because the you're waiting
Speaker 1: for the ideas to come. It's like, it's not pre written,
Speaker 1: we're writing it now. Now most of the artists I
Speaker 1: work with, we don't go into the studio until it's
Speaker 1: mostly all written. So it's a different it's a different experience,
Speaker 1: and that could happen in a much shorter time. Wait,
Speaker 1: so did Kanye already have his verses written but they
Speaker 1: just weren't on the tracks? No? No, it wasn't even
Speaker 1: clear what the songs were going to sound like or
Speaker 1: what was going to be on the album. It was
Speaker 1: a very wide range of songs and it was super cool.
Speaker 1: It was cool. I've come to learn that's the way
Speaker 1: he works. This was I'd never worked like that before,
Speaker 1: so it was unusual to me. To him, it was
Speaker 1: standard in the past. When I've said he wrote you
Speaker 1: know half of the lyrics on the last two days
Speaker 1: that like I'm saying he doesn't care about it, that's
Speaker 1: not at all the case. It's his process is living
Speaker 1: with it. He's singing to himself internally all the time,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't like to commit. He doesn't commit it
Speaker 1: down until it's gonna stay because otherwise it's gonna change.
Speaker 1: So he doesn't like if he would have done if
Speaker 1: he would have played me songs with vocals done, the
Speaker 1: album already would have been out. In the way he works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, I remember whatever day that Jesus
Speaker 1: came out. I remember texting you maybe like three days before,
Speaker 1: just doing some okay, is it going to happen or not?
Speaker 1: Because I think they had a pushback date or whatever.
Speaker 1: There's like a day that I was supposed to come
Speaker 1: out and it didn't and you were like, we're literally
Speaker 1: in the middle of trying to wrap up right now.
Speaker 1: And I was like, wait a minute, if you're in
Speaker 1: the middle of trapping right like doing it right now,
Speaker 1: and then is the record pressed up? And like I'm
Speaker 1: thinking in terms of the old system where you had
Speaker 1: to turn it in three months ahead of time, factory
Speaker 1: all those things, and literally, well, even with Pablo, you
Speaker 1: guys were still editing and changing it. And next thing
Speaker 1: I knew I had three different versions of the Pablo
Speaker 1: record because he just kept changing it over again. I
Speaker 1: remember when we finished Jesus and it came out about
Speaker 1: a week later. A week or two later, Kindie came
Speaker 1: to the studio in Malibu and just we just started
Speaker 1: talking about what do you think's next, Like what do
Speaker 1: you think the next one's going to be like? And
Speaker 1: he was kind of excited to at least start marching
Speaker 1: in a direction, and we just started brainstorming and we
Speaker 1: had an idea then that actually ended up it ended
Speaker 1: up not being so much what not so much what
Speaker 1: Pablo's like. But it has come around to that eventually.
Speaker 1: But after we had a similar conversation the end. When
Speaker 1: Pablo got delivered, I was in Hawaii and I remember
Speaker 1: getting new versions of the album every day to listen
Speaker 1: to and give my notes. And I was giving notes
Speaker 1: every day. It's like I just listen. I would drive
Speaker 1: up and down the road here in Kauai and listen
Speaker 1: and like, okay, this is you know, this is working.
Speaker 1: Let's remix this, let's try this, and whatever. Notes, you know,
Speaker 1: anything that I could add to help make it better. Um.
Speaker 1: And then I talked to Kanye again like it was
Speaker 1: now a ritual a couple of weeks after the record
Speaker 1: comes out, and um, and I'd say, oh, so, what
Speaker 1: are you thinking about? What are you what are you
Speaker 1: working on? He's like, I'm working on this mix on
Speaker 1: SO and so. It's one of the songs on Pablo.
Speaker 1: It's like, that's out. What are you talking about. It's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's out, but I'm not done yet. Like really, It's like,
Speaker 1: I it just like, blew my mind the conversation. Blew
Speaker 1: my mind. You still because up until well up, yeah,
Speaker 1: in my over the course of my life, once it
Speaker 1: came out, that was it. Ye. So to just that
Speaker 1: his ability to see pass well, just because that's the
Speaker 1: way it always is. That means the way it is. No,
Speaker 1: it's like, if I want to change it, I'll change it,
Speaker 1: and I'll change as many times as I want. It's incredible.
Speaker 1: Blew my mind loved it. Wow to me hearing the
Speaker 1: Jesus record. And you know, I admit that I'd consume
Speaker 1: most of my music now via my iPhone and my computer,
Speaker 1: not in the same way that I would have, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, like and put it in the stereos
Speaker 1: and yeah, that sort of thing. So at first I was,
Speaker 1: I was, the mix was just really harsh to me.
Speaker 1: And then once I heard it at Madison Square Garden
Speaker 1: with no drums, I mean, the thing was like, drums
Speaker 1: is almost non existent on this record, And then I
Speaker 1: realized that, oh wow, this album was made for stadiums,
Speaker 1: and stadiums. Only when you guys are working in the studio,
Speaker 1: are you blasting the music at the highest levels possible,
Speaker 1: like z he violating the don't kill your ears in
Speaker 1: the studio thing, or because I was taught like when
Speaker 1: you're in the studio, you're supposed to have soft volumes,
Speaker 1: so that way you don't kill your ears when you're mixing.
Speaker 1: But I know, like rappers, not to take him as
Speaker 1: quote rappers, but I know that we you know, want
Speaker 1: to hear that shit loud and you know, hit the
Speaker 1: OX button now like that sort of thing. But we listen.
Speaker 1: We listen at realistic levels. So in other words, if
Speaker 1: the thing we're making is meant to be heard loud,
Speaker 1: we listen to it loud. And we don't have giant speakers.
Speaker 1: We just use regular you know, like the monitors that
Speaker 1: would sit on the desk. We don't use big giant monitors.
Speaker 1: Um okay. Kanye uses some some big ones with with
Speaker 1: that are much louder than the ones that we have
Speaker 1: in the studio that I always request it to be
Speaker 1: turned down because it's too much for me. Um, you're
Speaker 1: to for a while you were president of Columbia Records.
Speaker 1: Why did you decide to take a desk job and why?
Speaker 1: I mean, how how was that experience for that that
Speaker 1: that tenure as president of Columbia. Uh, it was not
Speaker 1: a desk job, which is why I entertained. And my
Speaker 1: thought was the thing that I do on records has
Speaker 1: has very little to do with music. It's like my
Speaker 1: style of production. It would it would work regardless of
Speaker 1: whether it was music. It's like a way to look
Speaker 1: at things. It's a recontextualization of what we're working on
Speaker 1: and solving problems. I happened to do it mostly in
Speaker 1: music because that's just how it ended up, right, But
Speaker 1: the idea was to apply the same like what would
Speaker 1: it be like to produce a record company? Wow? And
Speaker 1: there were other people to do the desk work. And
Speaker 1: this was to be more of a helping curate the
Speaker 1: best artists, helping the artists make the best records that
Speaker 1: they can. Basically the same thing that I do, except
Speaker 1: on a bigger scale. And at the time we by
Speaker 1: the time, right till the end there, Columbia Records went
Speaker 1: from sort of a not great roster to maybe the
Speaker 1: best roster in the business at that moment in time.
Speaker 1: The corporate politics of it were not something that suited
Speaker 1: who I am, and I didn't engage. So basically it'd
Speaker 1: be like if you're running for a office for office
Speaker 1: and you're fighting with You're in a debate with someone
Speaker 1: who's screaming at you and lying and cursing. I'm not
Speaker 1: doing that. So ultimately the situation worked in a way
Speaker 1: where it wasn't really good. It could have been great,
Speaker 1: and it creatively was great, but had had the politics
Speaker 1: not come into it, I think would still be doing it.
Speaker 1: And will you ever establish a label? Well, I don't
Speaker 1: know there's a need to establish a label in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: but whatever the twenty twenty version of starting a deaf
Speaker 1: jam or a Deaf American or Colombia, will you ever
Speaker 1: dive in that Pool again, Are you fine with the
Speaker 1: zone that you're in right now? If there are any
Speaker 1: acts that I want to work with which are few
Speaker 1: and far between, that I want to sign, then I
Speaker 1: have a relationship with Universal where I can sign an
Speaker 1: act and it'll be on American and it'll come out
Speaker 1: and I don't have to have a staff. It's like
Speaker 1: they do the record company part and I could be
Speaker 1: the creative partner. And that feels about right. I mean,
Speaker 1: if there was a reason to reinvent the label or
Speaker 1: help them get better, I'd be open to discussing. It's
Speaker 1: like I like making. I like the challenge of making
Speaker 1: something good whatever it is, like figuring out how do
Speaker 1: we make this better. I always wanted to ask you
Speaker 1: about sir mix a lot Man. What led you signing him?
Speaker 1: My buddy, yeah, shout him, my buddy Dan Charnis who
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And he brought up
Speaker 1: a real We had him on the show like when
Speaker 1: we first started, like a couple of years back, and
Speaker 1: he brought up a really interesting thing I never really
Speaker 1: noticed about you of like he noticed you kind of
Speaker 1: tend to go for kind of nasally mcs like ad
Speaker 1: Rod mix a Lot you know what I mean, they
Speaker 1: have that kind of similar tone. Um, so I was
Speaker 1: curious to know, like, what how did you find out
Speaker 1: about Mix a Lot and what led do you signing him?
Speaker 1: Love the record Posse on Broadway? Yes, yes, your record? No, well,
Speaker 1: no was on this. This is all I'm saying, and
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you brought this up. Fante, How did
Speaker 1: you I never as a Philadelphia and I feel guilty
Speaker 1: for not mentioning what your relationship to PSK was and
Speaker 1: by the transit of Vaccium, how did you feel about
Speaker 1: the way the entire West Coast sort of ate up
Speaker 1: that particular style because that was with sir Mix a Lot.
Speaker 1: That was especially with the first in Way record. Every
Speaker 1: song was like it was practically the West Coast. Like
Speaker 1: were you at all aware of the blueprint that license
Speaker 1: the ill gave to the entire coast? Not really, I think,
Speaker 1: probably too close to see. How Also, you know, I
Speaker 1: come to realize later that Brass Monkey, like there was
Speaker 1: no such thing as Miami Base before Brass Monkey. So
Speaker 1: it's like it it led to a lot of different
Speaker 1: It had different tentacles that inspired people in different ways, No,
Speaker 1: no doubt, man, So a Mix a Lot, how you
Speaker 1: like Plasto braadway? And then how'd you go about it?
Speaker 1: I just reach out to him and said, hey, if
Speaker 1: this ever an opportunity to work together, I'd love to
Speaker 1: do it. And then it ended up working out. He's like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm on my own label. I don't really want to
Speaker 1: do that now. But and then eventually came around like, yep,
Speaker 1: I think I'm ready to do this. Let's do this American?
Speaker 1: Was that on American? Yes? Oh? Okay? That was? That
Speaker 1: was on a Macdaddy album? Okay, And I can't remember.
Speaker 1: I've heard Mix a Lot say that I changed the
Speaker 1: tempo of it drastically in a way that he loves.
Speaker 1: But like that I heard it differently than he heard it.
Speaker 1: I don't really remember that, but that I've heard him
Speaker 1: say that. He's saying that he physically slowed it down.
Speaker 1: I think I sped it up. They sped it up,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure. I honestly I don't remember it
Speaker 1: at all. He would, he would know better than I.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say. Just back on your American stee
Speaker 1: there was a record you signed that was It really
Speaker 1: took me by surprise that you signed them because it
Speaker 1: was unlike anything that you would ever sign or worked
Speaker 1: with before the record The Knots were ultimate. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you even remember. Yeah, yeah that was that
Speaker 1: was a Dan Charnis signing. That was n Chars my shit,
Speaker 1: and I forgot Yeah, of course a bad Lad too.
Speaker 1: Is that Dan Charnis as well? I think so damn yes, Okay,
Speaker 1: I totally forgot about those too. So with your A
Speaker 1: and R is you just pretty much let them kind
Speaker 1: of do them, just like if y'all like it, y'all
Speaker 1: believe in it, I'll fuck with it. Like what was
Speaker 1: your Roland it was? It was a combination. It's like
Speaker 1: if they were really passionate, either I had to like
Speaker 1: it too, or if they were really passionate, it's like,
Speaker 1: this is the one. The whole idea of having more
Speaker 1: A and R people was not just to find stuff
Speaker 1: for me. It was like if someone really was in
Speaker 1: love with something, then it was exciting to see what
Speaker 1: could happen. And it worked out in the case of
Speaker 1: the if you like those records that dance, and if
Speaker 1: you liked the Black Crows that George signed, then it worked.
Speaker 1: I got warmer music question before I ask you my
Speaker 1: last question, because we could be twelve hours working. Well,
Speaker 1: I know that you produced, and I'm a big fan
Speaker 1: of the Strokes. I know that you worked on the
Speaker 1: New Abnormal. First of all, did that title come up
Speaker 1: in very last minute? No, in relation to where we
Speaker 1: are now, because that that that's sort of a apropos title,
Speaker 1: did not It just it was a title that m
Speaker 1: that Julian came up with their pre pre virus, and
Speaker 1: it's again just sort of the universe conspiring to make
Speaker 1: the art, right. I'm assuming that they recorded out in
Speaker 1: Hawaii with you. With you we recorded in Malibu, Okay,
Speaker 1: which I think is kind of different than all the
Speaker 1: studios that they pre obviously recorded their music. And so
Speaker 1: how hard was it to get the well oiled machine
Speaker 1: of what the Strokes represented, especially in in the early aughts,
Speaker 1: And I know there was so much pressure on them
Speaker 1: to be the next big thing in quotes like how
Speaker 1: much of that was on their minds making this record?
Speaker 1: Because I can only assume that they took a ten
Speaker 1: year hiatus because of the pressure of living up to
Speaker 1: something that they couldn't sort of jump over a hurdle
Speaker 1: that they couldn't match or whatever. Well, I think that
Speaker 1: the first record they put out was there considered their
Speaker 1: like breakthrough. That was the one, that's the one that
Speaker 1: sort of lit everything up. And the second album, the
Speaker 1: second album seems like it didn't change the world, but
Speaker 1: continued that and then since then it's been more hit
Speaker 1: and miss. So I don't think they felt a tremendous don't.
Speaker 1: I didn't get the sense that they felt a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of pressure. I think they felt like, let's make
Speaker 1: another album because that's what we do, we haven't done
Speaker 1: it in a while, and hoping it would be good.
Speaker 1: You know. It's another like the Chili Peppers. They had
Speaker 1: asked me to produce an album eight or ten years ago,
Speaker 1: and they sent me demos and I listened to demos
Speaker 1: and I just I couldn't hear. I couldn't imagine how
Speaker 1: this like, how to make something that interesting with what
Speaker 1: they sent like it didn't. It was just not a
Speaker 1: good starting point. And if that's a no from you,
Speaker 1: is does that filter to them that oh shit, this
Speaker 1: might be bad. I don't know. I just I just said,
Speaker 1: I don't think this is right for me. I don't
Speaker 1: I don't see how to do this and then on
Speaker 1: this album they sent me demos and these were probably
Speaker 1: the worst quality demos I've ever gotten from any artist,
Speaker 1: in that one track might be a thirty second voice
Speaker 1: note on the phone, like real, very very basic, like
Speaker 1: thumbnail sketches, and I listened to that vs and it's like, Oh,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be great. We gotta make this. It's
Speaker 1: like I could I could feel what was there was inspiring.
Speaker 1: It's like you could listen to a twenty second clip
Speaker 1: and go, oh, if there was a song that sounded
Speaker 1: like this twenty second clip, I'd listen to that all day.
Speaker 1: Let's make that. So is that the beginning of working
Speaker 1: with you, like one has to send the roughest sketch
Speaker 1: of a song before you can see the light to
Speaker 1: see how you can develop it. Or does everyone do
Speaker 1: the Kanye thing where it's damn near completed and then
Speaker 1: you just you can add the finishing touches to it.
Speaker 1: There's no rule, there's no rule. It's like, have you
Speaker 1: ever built an album from the ground up? Like okay,
Speaker 1: songwriting session less songwriting sessions, But like with the Chili Peppers,
Speaker 1: I would come to rehearsals pretty early on. We would
Speaker 1: probably go through. They might they might have written a
Speaker 1: hundred songs for every album we did, and we would
Speaker 1: talk about him and narrow him down, and what was
Speaker 1: it about under the Bridge that attracted you? The way
Speaker 1: that it happened was just based on the lyric. It
Speaker 1: was a lyric that I found in Anthony's Book of poetry.
Speaker 1: And I asked him what song is this and he said,
Speaker 1: that's not really Chili Pepper song. That's more of a
Speaker 1: like personal thing, more of a poem. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: how would you sing it if you were to sing it?
Speaker 1: And he sang it for him. He's like, he said,
Speaker 1: it's like it's a ballads not it's not a Chili
Speaker 1: Peppers thing. And he sang it to me and I said,
Speaker 1: really beautiful. And people like the Chili Peppers not necessarily
Speaker 1: because you're a funk band with rap lyrics. People like
Speaker 1: the Chili Peppers because they like the music you, for
Speaker 1: guys make And if this is an example of something
Speaker 1: good that you make, I think I think people will
Speaker 1: accept that. It's like that's you don't have to put
Speaker 1: social limitation on what the band is. It's like it's
Speaker 1: about the band is about the people in it what's
Speaker 1: so great about the Beatles? If you listen to their
Speaker 1: early records, in their late records, they don't sound like
Speaker 1: the same band. And that's just in seven years that arc.
Speaker 1: Is there an act that you never with the exception
Speaker 1: of a bill whether and I know the stories of
Speaker 1: you pursuing them, is there an act that you would
Speaker 1: have liked to have worked with it? You never got
Speaker 1: a chance to ave alive or not alive, or disbanded
Speaker 1: or not disbanded well obviously Beatles or led Zeppelin or
Speaker 1: any of the great So like, has McCartney ever approached
Speaker 1: you about producing a record or Fishbone or you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I met with McCartney and talked about making something has
Speaker 1: not yet happened, but you never know. I would be
Speaker 1: interested to see how that works. What made you settle
Speaker 1: down into the podcast world? And was it the allure
Speaker 1: of doing it with Malcolm Gladwell? And was heatlam or
Speaker 1: like why do you? Why is that now another part
Speaker 1: of your wait? Can I give a small preface for
Speaker 1: this question? So I did your very first podcast correct?
Speaker 1: Was that something like that? One of the one of
Speaker 1: the one of the first time is like the pilot?
Speaker 1: But yeah, Mirry're in there, Okay. I literally had no
Speaker 1: idea what I was walking into because you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: my business being just a little bit jankie. So I
Speaker 1: was I was all my way to the studio thinking
Speaker 1: I was doing a QLs episode because it was the
Speaker 1: same studio wherever we interviewed Heather Hunter or that jazz
Speaker 1: studio that Steve recommended. I got there and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh shit, I'm here to do a QLs episode with
Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell. And then I was like, wait, Where's where's
Speaker 1: lay and everyone at? And then I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: Rick Rubin, you're on this episode two? And I just
Speaker 1: winged it, and about twenty minutes into it, I realized, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm here. I gotta read my emails better. I'm here
Speaker 1: to do there. That's the interview you got to prepare for,
Speaker 1: right in me or like being an interview by at
Speaker 1: least those two. Sometimes I fly out the seat. You know,
Speaker 1: we're just freestyling a podcast show and having new clue
Speaker 1: what I'm there for and just getting lucky. So when
Speaker 1: I did their episode, I literally went to that building
Speaker 1: thinking it's a Malcolm Gladwell episode of Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 1: And then when I saw Rick Rubin's face on the
Speaker 1: television thing because he did it by monitor, I was
Speaker 1: hella confused. I was like, wait a minute, what am
Speaker 1: I doing here? I had to run in the other
Speaker 1: room and like call, like, wait, what am I doing?
Speaker 1: You're doing someone's puck? How did you do it? So,
Speaker 1: but yeah, we talk about why you even chose to
Speaker 1: put that into coortunity. Was friendly with Malcolm and I
Speaker 1: loved his podcast, Revisionist History, and he told me he
Speaker 1: had an idea to do a new podcast around music
Speaker 1: and asked if I would be interested in being involved,
Speaker 1: and I thought, I'm a fan of his work. Be fun.
Speaker 1: It's like, dude, something with Malcolm I wouldn't have normally.
Speaker 1: I probably wouldn't have chosen to do a music podcast
Speaker 1: on my own at that time, just because I feel
Speaker 1: like talk about music most of the time in my
Speaker 1: normal life. It's almost like the podcast would be to
Speaker 1: talk about something else that I'm interested in. I don't
Speaker 1: even know what that would be like. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of things, so it's hard to say I never
Speaker 1: thought about it, but this was more his invitation made
Speaker 1: it seem like, oh, that'd be fun. I love what
Speaker 1: he does, so maybe I'll learned something about podcasting doing
Speaker 1: something with him. Yeah, it seems like y'all don't ever
Speaker 1: have to worry about guess so I was I was
Speaker 1: kind of cramming. I was listening Andre episode. I was
Speaker 1: just about to say, like, yeah, that was like saying,
Speaker 1: especially when y'all talked about like beyond moments. We were
Speaker 1: had made a note about that and the moments that
Speaker 1: are just beyond and you were talking about how just
Speaker 1: these moments in your life where it's like if you
Speaker 1: did not do one thing, these other things wouldn't happen,
Speaker 1: like if you would have stayed in Chicago. Chicago right back,
Speaker 1: we were listening together. Yeah, yeah, we we have a
Speaker 1: lot of mutual friends in common. So just hearing of
Speaker 1: your evolution, your spiritual evolution, your physical evolution. You know,
Speaker 1: you've been definitely kind of a life goal mission for
Speaker 1: me at least where you are with your life and everything,
Speaker 1: Like what's your daily routine and I know like surfing
Speaker 1: has played a part of it and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: In Kawai now, I've been doing a ninety minute walk
Speaker 1: every morning on the beach barefoot, a lot of sun
Speaker 1: and listening to podcasts that ninety minutes, that's that's where
Speaker 1: I listened to you. If I listened to one of
Speaker 1: your pieces, it'll be while I'm walking on the beach.
Speaker 1: And that's the very first thing every day, and I
Speaker 1: get that out of the way and then I can
Speaker 1: start focusing on work or whatever else there is to
Speaker 1: do for the rest of the day. But I feel
Speaker 1: like having that right when I wake up, because if
Speaker 1: I wait, if I wait an hour, I won't do it.
Speaker 1: Facts that's me. And if I wait an hour, not
Speaker 1: only will I won't do it, I'll eat. You do something, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you do some I'll definitely eat because if I'm sitting
Speaker 1: around and I'm hungry, if I'm walking for ninety minutes,
Speaker 1: I'm not thinking about food because I'm involved in the
Speaker 1: podcast or book on tape and I'm walking and enjoying
Speaker 1: myself and my mind is completely occupied because I'm very
Speaker 1: you know, I listen to things that I'm interested in
Speaker 1: and learn stuff, and it's great. I look forward to
Speaker 1: it every day. I feel like I run out of time,
Speaker 1: you know, Like I listened in the car on the way,
Speaker 1: I listen on the beach walk, I listen on the
Speaker 1: way back and then usually I have stuff to do
Speaker 1: to start my day and it's like, but I have
Speaker 1: so much more research to do, I have so many
Speaker 1: more things to listen to, and I run out of time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thats quarantine been like for you? Rick? What is what
Speaker 1: changes quarantine like? Just kind of how we're in quarantine
Speaker 1: now and kind of be in lockdown. What is that
Speaker 1: like for you? It hasn't changed so much other than
Speaker 1: the fact that we're in Kawaii because normally we wouldn't
Speaker 1: normally be in Kawhi now, we'd be in Malibu, but
Speaker 1: because Malibu is locked down, Kawhi is lockdown. Two. We
Speaker 1: were here in over the holidays and we were going
Speaker 1: back to start I was going back to start a
Speaker 1: new Abot Brothers album first week of March, and then
Speaker 1: I got a call days before saying, hey, stuff's getting sketchy.
Speaker 1: We're thinking maybe we should just stay home. And it's like, perfect,
Speaker 1: I'm staying here. You guys stay home. Let's you know,
Speaker 1: let's wait a minute and figure out what's happening. And
Speaker 1: that leads us to today. How severe is it in
Speaker 1: Hawaii right now? As far there are no cases on
Speaker 1: the island, which is unbelievable this island. There are seven
Speaker 1: islands of Kawaii. They're you know, half hour flight apart.
Speaker 1: But this, this one has done. And Kauahi has like
Speaker 1: a lower population. Yes, it's very few people and they're
Speaker 1: far apart, and it's a great place to be on quarantine. Again,
Speaker 1: we if we weren't here, I don't think we would
Speaker 1: have come here for it. But the fact that we
Speaker 1: were here and the opportunity arose seemed like a good choice.
Speaker 1: The universe again was smiling on us. Yet still those uh,
Speaker 1: those dogs, I saw you once with the dogs with
Speaker 1: the mop I have won. His name is Chompa. I
Speaker 1: had two before him named. The current dog's name is Clo.
Speaker 1: The two prior were Chompa and Monday. Chump and Monday
Speaker 1: passed away at eighteen nineteen years old. And now Chompa
Speaker 1: is Monday's brother, brother's son. I think so in the family,
Speaker 1: and he was probably twelve. Now, it wasn't a pack
Speaker 1: of them, I could have sworn a seem like a
Speaker 1: family of them. I hope you before. Now I have
Speaker 1: one I saw one and then the other one. The
Speaker 1: other would follow wherever one would go. Okay, I remember
Speaker 1: that Yeah, I want to know. Man, do you still
Speaker 1: when you're working out your ideas? Are you like still
Speaker 1: making tracks or does it start on an instrument? How
Speaker 1: do you flesh out the ideas that you may have.
Speaker 1: It really depends. I don't. I don't do it for
Speaker 1: the sake of doing it. So it's more like if
Speaker 1: there's a reason to make something, if there's a from
Speaker 1: working on a project that needs a piece of music
Speaker 1: that needs to start with me, which I'd prefer not
Speaker 1: to do. I like, I like collaborating. I like hearing
Speaker 1: something and finding pieces that I could make into the
Speaker 1: thing that I want to make, as opposed to starting
Speaker 1: from scratch. I have to start from scratch, I can,
Speaker 1: but it's out my favorite thing to do. And if
Speaker 1: it is, I'll either make a beat on a drum machine,
Speaker 1: or I'll start with a sample and then build up
Speaker 1: a track around the sample and then either keep the
Speaker 1: sample in, remove the sample, mess with the sample. Yeah,
Speaker 1: are you using like Ableton or like what software? We
Speaker 1: usually do everything in pro tools, although it's still you know,
Speaker 1: just still out of you know, I don't know any
Speaker 1: better and I don't know how to ren pro tools.
Speaker 1: I don't really I'm not a technical person at all.
Speaker 1: I just can say I like it, like this, let's
Speaker 1: change this beat. When you take on a project, do
Speaker 1: you stay on that project or are you able to
Speaker 1: hop from project to project? Like Okay, I'm gonna work
Speaker 1: where Chili Pepper is at the studio on Monday, and
Speaker 1: then running do the Dixie Chicks next week over there
Speaker 1: and blah blah blah, like or are you just a
Speaker 1: I do you? You hire me? And if it's over
Speaker 1: three months, then we're in trouble, Like how do you
Speaker 1: schedule the first one? Because it's I don't think it's
Speaker 1: possible to say we're gonna put three months on hold
Speaker 1: and in that three months we're gonna make the best
Speaker 1: album the world has ever heard. I don't. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't believe in that. I don't believe it's possible.
Speaker 1: Maybe some people can do it. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know how that works. So every project has its
Speaker 1: own rhythm, and as I said, sometimes it happens very quickly.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it takes a long time, and I don't I
Speaker 1: try not to do it as much as possible based
Speaker 1: on my schedule. It's always about the artist schedule. And
Speaker 1: when I say the artist schedule, I don't mean the
Speaker 1: artist schedule of when they want to go on vacation.
Speaker 1: I mean the artist schedule of when the idea is hot,
Speaker 1: you know, when the songs are ready. We have to
Speaker 1: find a way that when the moment is right to
Speaker 1: make it, that we can make take it. And I
Speaker 1: can think of very few times in my life where
Speaker 1: it hasn't worked out where at a time I might
Speaker 1: have been making five albums at the same time, back
Speaker 1: in the days when I would have to go from
Speaker 1: studio to studio. It might be We're doing overdubs with
Speaker 1: this artist and I'm working on just vocals with another
Speaker 1: artist on a different album at a at the same time.
Speaker 1: Maybe I do noon to noon to three with one
Speaker 1: artist and three to six with another artist that way,
Speaker 1: or maybe I'm doing pre production with one and working
Speaker 1: on mixing with another, and it could be as many
Speaker 1: as four or five or six going on same time.
Speaker 1: It's not unusual because some of them could go on
Speaker 1: for years, you know. You I work with engineers, and
Speaker 1: each project usually I try to have an engineer dedicated
Speaker 1: to that particular project, like a tag team partner. So
Speaker 1: and also I like to work like in the old
Speaker 1: days that you to work all night, drive home as
Speaker 1: the sun was coming up. Now I'm on an early schedule,
Speaker 1: so I like to have the sessions start at like
Speaker 1: noon or one, and I like to be done by six.
Speaker 1: Now that doesn't mean like on the Strokes album which
Speaker 1: we just made recently, just came out three weeks ago
Speaker 1: or something. I would come from noon to six, and
Speaker 1: then I would leave a list to do list so
Speaker 1: the band could go on working as late as midnight
Speaker 1: if they you know, they band could work as long
Speaker 1: as they want and have a list of things to
Speaker 1: do in addition to anything that they would want to
Speaker 1: try on their own. And then the next morning I
Speaker 1: would come in, we would review what happened the night before,
Speaker 1: and then we would start on the day's work. I
Speaker 1: gotta try it, yeah, And I've also, by making a
Speaker 1: lot of albums, have come to realize when my voice
Speaker 1: is particularly helpful in the process, and sometimes it's in
Speaker 1: pre production, it means a lot. In the basic track,
Speaker 1: it means a lot. Getting the vocals, it means a lot.
Speaker 1: But many of the other times, during overdubs, during guitar solos,
Speaker 1: I usually if I trust the artist. I let them
Speaker 1: do it, and then I might come in, like with
Speaker 1: Tom Morello, if we're doing on either a rage record
Speaker 1: or an audio slave record, he'll do solos on everything,
Speaker 1: and then I might come and say, you know, those
Speaker 1: are all great and this one's not as good like
Speaker 1: we gotta and then maybe redo this, or if there's
Speaker 1: ever ones where it's like, let's work on this one
Speaker 1: together for some reason. If if you can't crack the
Speaker 1: code on his own, then we'll do it together. But
Speaker 1: I don't like to hold an artist's hand. I don't
Speaker 1: like to. Ultimately, if the artist feels like they've done
Speaker 1: everything themselves, that's the best feeling for me. Like I
Speaker 1: don't want I don't want it to I don't want
Speaker 1: the process to be about me life lessons. I want
Speaker 1: and only life lessons proving don't make it about you
Speaker 1: and walk first thing in the morning. I don't want
Speaker 1: the process to be ugly for you. See that's the
Speaker 1: one thing because you know who downstairs always says, see
Speaker 1: walks early in the morning, and you don't do that.
Speaker 1: So now I'm gonna have to wake my ass up
Speaker 1: for six and you wake up. Your first thing is
Speaker 1: doing because I'll create a bunch of excuses I have
Speaker 1: to get up at six and walk. All right, thank you, Rick.
Speaker 1: I will now reach my goal of two twenty pounds.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna walk because Rick said, Because Rick said so. Anyway, Rick, dude,
Speaker 1: this is this has been what like four years in
Speaker 1: the making. Yes, exactly today. I have a suggestion quest,
Speaker 1: which is every day for the next let's make it
Speaker 1: three weeks. When you go on your walk, just let
Speaker 1: me a message at the end saying I walked this
Speaker 1: along today. Just just a little check in, like, hey,
Speaker 1: did this today? Accountability? I will do so. Yes, just
Speaker 1: about accountability, partner, I'm about accountability, and I'm about integrity,
Speaker 1: life coach. Yes, about integrity. Two twenty is right around
Speaker 1: the bend. I'm ready for this ship than you can
Speaker 1: send a group text to all of us and we'll go, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we finished ours too, y'all gonna be a sue all right.
Speaker 1: So I'm the half of the half of Sugar Steve.
Speaker 1: I'm paid bill by Fontigolo and be great incomparable, Rick Rubin,
Speaker 1: four years we've been dying for this. My name is
Speaker 1: quess Love. This quests Love Supreme. We will see you
Speaker 1: on the next round. Thank you, of course. Love Supreme
Speaker 1: is a production i heart Radio. For more podcasts from
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Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.