Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to another episode of Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 1: My name is Quest Love.
Speaker 2: We're here today with Layah Sugar, Steve Unpaid, Bill.
Speaker 1: And Von Tigelow. Hello.
Speaker 2: I will say that our guest today is world renowned.
Speaker 2: He's a world renowned reducer. Those are his words, not
Speaker 2: my words. World renowned reducer. From establishing one of the
Speaker 2: greatest hip hop labels in history, Deft cham Uh, to
Speaker 2: working with all the greats from Read Now, Chili Pepper,
Speaker 2: Tom Petty, there's Slayer, there's the Cult, There's Kanye West,
Speaker 2: There's Dixie Chicks, There's Mick Jagger, there's Neil Diamond.
Speaker 1: There's the Roots.
Speaker 2: I'm putting it out there anyway. Ladies, please welcome the
Speaker 2: Guru of music to Quest Love Supreme, to know Rick Rubin.
Speaker 2: Thank you for doing our show today. Finally, where are you?
Speaker 2: Where are you currently right now?
Speaker 1: Rick?
Speaker 3: I am right now in Kawhi on lockdown. That's a
Speaker 3: good place to be on lockdown? Do you consider is
Speaker 3: that home for you?
Speaker 2: Or is it just like Okay, if I have to
Speaker 2: be on lockdown, I'd rather be in this particular environment.
Speaker 3: We mainly live in Malibu and spend some time here,
Speaker 3: usually in the winter, and this year the winter extended
Speaker 3: because of the lockdown, so it seemed like a better
Speaker 3: place to be on lockdown.
Speaker 2: Ah okay, are you able to operate under your your
Speaker 2: sort of your creative guys at least uh in Kawai?
Speaker 1: Or are all these toys in LA?
Speaker 3: Toys are in La, But we have a setup here
Speaker 3: that's working working well.
Speaker 2: You have you have an extensive history, So I was
Speaker 2: debating with myself whether or not to do the normal
Speaker 2: chron logical thing or should we just go kamakazi because
Speaker 2: there's so many stories I want to learn about your production.
Speaker 2: But I do want to know about your introduction to music.
Speaker 2: First of all, where.
Speaker 1: Were you born?
Speaker 3: Long Beach, Long Island?
Speaker 2: Long Beach, Long Island? Is that where you're born on? Paybill?
Speaker 1: No, I was just born on Long Island. Shout out
Speaker 1: to Long Island. Oh okay, all right, Birds of a Feather,
Speaker 1: that's cool. What was your the very first record that
Speaker 1: you purchased?
Speaker 3: I remember buying. I don't remember what was the first one,
Speaker 3: but I remember the experience of buying seven inches. I
Speaker 3: can remember shopping for forty fives in Times Square store
Speaker 3: in Oceanside and Snoopy Versus the Red Baron may have
Speaker 3: been one of them, but I don't I don't remember
Speaker 3: exactly what the record was.
Speaker 2: What was the moment that you realized that, okay, I'd
Speaker 2: like a space in the music world, or that's what
Speaker 2: I want to do.
Speaker 3: I don't know that I ever had that feeling. I mean,
Speaker 3: I knew that I loved it, and I knew that
Speaker 3: it would be a huge part of my life, but
Speaker 3: I never thought it would be my job. Really, Okay, well,
Speaker 3: I didn't think that was a I didn't think that
Speaker 3: was a realistic possibility. I was going to have a
Speaker 3: real job and that would support my music habit. What
Speaker 3: were you planning on becoming. I was on track. My
Speaker 3: parents had me on a track to be a lawyer.
Speaker 3: That would have been there. Their wish would have either
Speaker 3: been a doctor or a lawyer, and I was always
Speaker 3: afraid of afraid of blood. I don't know. And then
Speaker 3: I thought, oh, well, there are lawyers involved in the
Speaker 3: music industry, so maybe I could be involved in that
Speaker 3: way because I'd have to have a job. But my
Speaker 3: real love is music. But I didn't know anyone who
Speaker 3: did music as a job. I didn't think that was
Speaker 3: a real thing.
Speaker 1: What were your parents?
Speaker 3: My dad was a businessman, store owner, my mom was
Speaker 3: a housewife.
Speaker 1: Is Rick Rubin your birth name?
Speaker 3: Frederick J. Rubin is the name I was born with,
Speaker 3: but I was called Rick from the time I was
Speaker 3: a kid. No one ever called me anything else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you would have been in the Ruben attorney at law. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why. That's that's a lawyer's dare. Okay, I get it.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: There's there's a story that I heard about once performing
Speaker 2: at CBGB's and it was less than desirable, and I
Speaker 2: believe the end result was your father coming down from
Speaker 2: Long Island, but he was dressed as a cop. Did
Speaker 2: I make up that story in my mind or something?
Speaker 2: But I don't remember ever telling that story. But the
Speaker 2: story is around and it may be rooted in something
Speaker 2: that actually happened. I have a vague memory of it,
Speaker 2: but I don't remember. I can't I can't remember telling
Speaker 2: the story, but I think it might have happened. I
Speaker 2: think I think the story that I heard was that
Speaker 2: you were in a band called the Pricks. I believe,
Speaker 2: and either it's kind of like you know a modern
Speaker 2: showed time at the Apollo story where the opening actor
Speaker 2: or another act brings all their fans down.
Speaker 1: They were heckling you guys.
Speaker 2: You guys only did like two songs, and then to
Speaker 2: give revenge on the other band, your dad came down
Speaker 2: dressed as a cop trying to shut the show down
Speaker 2: or something like that.
Speaker 3: Nothing like that happened. That was that's the story.
Speaker 2: If that was an urban legend or for real.
Speaker 3: That's an urban legend. But in the sort of theatrical
Speaker 3: punk rock pandemonium of making a show more exciting, it
Speaker 3: is possible that my dad dressed as a cop to
Speaker 3: stop the show, our show, not to affect anyone else
Speaker 3: because it would have. It just created a something. I
Speaker 3: can remember the time we did a show where we
Speaker 3: worked it out for the sprinkler, the fire sprinklers to
Speaker 3: go off during the show and just create a general
Speaker 3: sense of pandemonium in the room.
Speaker 4: And what were you were you a what instrument did
Speaker 4: you play in the band?
Speaker 1: Guitar? Are you guitarists? Okay, got I did. I was not.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't say I was a guitarist, but I played
Speaker 3: the guitar. You played the guitar.
Speaker 2: Being being as though we rarely get guests on the
Speaker 2: show that were really really of age, and I mean
Speaker 2: like in their in their early twenties, at least in
Speaker 2: New York City. Much as much is made about the
Speaker 2: legend of of what nightlife culture was in New York
Speaker 2: City because you had like one foot plan in CBGB's
Speaker 2: I don't know about your history of Dancittaria or those
Speaker 2: hip hop clubs at the time, but he just briefly
Speaker 2: described what the environment was like in the first half
Speaker 2: of the eighties as far as club life is concerned, Like,
Speaker 2: do you see it with fond memories?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 1: Was it the best time ever?
Speaker 2: Are you one of those people that are like ah
Speaker 2: Man New York in the early eighties, there's nothing like
Speaker 2: it ever, like it these romanticized feelings about it.
Speaker 3: Yes, it was an incredible time and we would go
Speaker 3: out every night and uh, there was very little hip
Speaker 3: hop at that time. You couldn't really see hip hop.
Speaker 3: You could only see hip hop one night a week.
Speaker 3: But we went out every night and you would see
Speaker 3: there was a thriving dance music scene that would have
Speaker 3: had like groups like Liquid Liquid and ESG and conk
Speaker 3: Oh Wow. You got to see them in person, all everybody.
Speaker 3: I saw everyone.
Speaker 1: What were they like?
Speaker 3: Incredible?
Speaker 1: Like ESG, what were they like?
Speaker 3: It was just all around the base. It was sort
Speaker 3: of like a if you think about it looking back,
Speaker 3: it would be you'd say it was a pretty boring show.
Speaker 3: But the group was incredible. But it wasn't like a show.
Speaker 3: It wasn't a show like putting on a show. It
Speaker 3: was like people in a band standing on stage and
Speaker 3: playing their songs. So it wasn't theatrical in any way. ESG.
Speaker 3: As I recall, I think I saw them play at
Speaker 3: Danceteria if I remember correctly, wow wow. But we would
Speaker 3: go like if a band was playing at Irving Plaza,
Speaker 3: we'd go to Irving Plaza. If a band playing at
Speaker 3: the Mud Club, we'd go to the Mud Club. Maxis
Speaker 3: Kansas City. I caught the tail end of Maxis Kansas City.
Speaker 3: I saw James White and the Blacks play there. I
Speaker 3: saw Devo play there. I saw Wayne County maybe Jane County.
Speaker 3: At that time. I saw so many great shows. I
Speaker 3: saw The Bad Brains play at CBGB's, I saw the
Speaker 3: Bad Blaine's Brains play at Irving Plaza. I saw a
Speaker 3: minor threat play at Irving Plaza. I saw the Cramps,
Speaker 3: which was my very first technically punk rock show at
Speaker 3: Irving Plaza, and then there'd be a gig at the Garden.
Speaker 3: I remember seeing David Bowie at Madison Square Garden in
Speaker 3: the same night seeing the Bad Brains after at CBGB's.
Speaker 3: That would be a typical. It was an incredible time
Speaker 3: to be a fan of music, and there was both
Speaker 3: this live performance scene of music, and then there was
Speaker 3: also this incredible dance music scene with places like Dance
Speaker 3: Atyria then Area the garage was still going on, so
Speaker 3: really you could you could get very different experiences, even
Speaker 3: on the same night, going from club to club. And
Speaker 3: then when hip hop started bubbling, the only place you
Speaker 3: could really see it downtown was at Nagrill, which was
Speaker 3: a reggae club on Avenue A. I believe I remember correctly.
Speaker 3: I think it was either.
Speaker 2: Sadly anyway first making restaurant down.
Speaker 3: A flight of stairs.
Speaker 2: Is it still there, Yeah, it's still there, but it's.
Speaker 1: Shadow of what it shadow of what it used to be.
Speaker 3: But that's the place that I used to go to
Speaker 3: see Jazzy j and uh Africa, Islam and Uh, Busy
Speaker 3: Bee and Treacherous three and everybody played there and it
Speaker 3: was one night a week Tuesday, KLB Productions, Cool Lady Blue,
Speaker 3: And then when it got big, after it got big,
Speaker 3: then they moved it to the Roxy and that was
Speaker 3: one night a week with the Rocks. I went to
Speaker 3: the Roxy the first night ever that it was hip hop,
Speaker 3: and it was this giant roller rink with maybe I
Speaker 3: don't know, there were maybe fifty of us there for
Speaker 3: the first night, and then it ended up just watching
Speaker 3: it grow every week and get bigger and bigger and
Speaker 3: bigger until it became what it became.
Speaker 2: You know, So I know about your dorm being def
Speaker 2: Jam's headquarters, But what was your major at NYU when
Speaker 2: you were attending.
Speaker 3: I started as a philosophy major, and after two years
Speaker 3: I switched to film and television because, as I said,
Speaker 3: I was planning on going to law school. You don't
Speaker 3: need a particular the degree you have undergraduate degree doesn't
Speaker 3: matter to get into law school. And most of my
Speaker 3: friends that I liked hanging out with were in film
Speaker 3: school and that just seemed more fun than the liberal
Speaker 3: arts side that I was that I started on. So
Speaker 3: I just switched over, since it didn't matter.
Speaker 2: What year was def Jam as a punk label started first, Wait.
Speaker 3: Year eighty three, eighty four, something like that.
Speaker 1: What were the who were the artist or the label?
Speaker 3: At the time, the only records that I made of
Speaker 3: my own band, all there was was hose hosc and
Speaker 3: there was a twelve inch and a seven inch, a
Speaker 3: twelve inch EP and a seven inch. That's all there was.
Speaker 3: And then I made my first hip hop record, which
Speaker 3: was It's Yours, which and I'll tell you the story
Speaker 3: of how that came about because it's interesting. If you
Speaker 3: want again, if you want to hear it, I'll tell you.
Speaker 1: Yes, Yes, we're rabbit Hole Central, We're waiting time.
Speaker 3: My favorite group at the time were The Treacherous Three.
Speaker 3: And I didn't know anything at all about the record business.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that there were I didn't know what
Speaker 3: a producer did. I didn't know that there were record companies.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that people had contracts. I literally knew
Speaker 3: nothing other than I love music more than anything. I
Speaker 3: read everything I could read about music. I read even Billboard,
Speaker 3: which was a weird thing for a kid to read
Speaker 3: when I was even in you know, sixth grade, seventh grade,
Speaker 3: I would read Billboard just because there might be a
Speaker 3: little story about an artist I liked, and it never
Speaker 3: made like I was never really interested in what it said.
Speaker 3: But I just wanted to learn anything there was to
Speaker 3: learn about anyone that I liked in music, So if
Speaker 3: I saw their name in an article, I had to
Speaker 3: read it. I reached out to After the show at Nagrill,
Speaker 3: I reached out to Kumo D. Kumo Du is my
Speaker 3: favorite MC, and I gave him my number and I said,
Speaker 3: let's get together and chat.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: Kumo D was going to school on Long Island, so
Speaker 3: they were all like college age at this time. And
Speaker 3: then Kumo D came to visit me at the dorm.
Speaker 3: That was my first attempt at being involved in this
Speaker 3: thing that I loved, and I said they had been
Speaker 3: making records on Enjoy Records, which I loved, and then
Speaker 3: they made their first thing, the first thing that came out,
Speaker 3: if I remember correctly, I'm not sure the timing of this,
Speaker 3: but I heard a treacherous three song that I thought
Speaker 3: wasn't as good as all the ones that I liked.
Speaker 2: Was it Yes we Can Can on sugar Hill might
Speaker 2: have been. I didn't like that yeah, yeah, so I
Speaker 2: might have made so high.
Speaker 3: So as a fan, I said, let's get together. I
Speaker 3: just want to talk to you about this music. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm a fan. I want to talk to you. And
Speaker 3: then I said, and then again I was I had
Speaker 3: great confidence in my taste just because I really you know,
Speaker 3: I truly felt it with all of my heart. And
Speaker 3: this was in a time when not a lot of
Speaker 3: people were listening to this music. It was a tiny
Speaker 3: underground scene at the time. You have to keep in
Speaker 3: mind this is there were the first round of def
Speaker 3: jam records. We might have pressed up, you know, three
Speaker 3: thousand copies. You know, that might be the starting run
Speaker 3: of a record. So that's how big the world of
Speaker 3: hip hop was at that time.
Speaker 2: By this point, Uh is this pre or post? It's
Speaker 2: yours like this that's.
Speaker 3: Leading up, this is leading up to it. There's no
Speaker 3: I've done nothing.
Speaker 2: Oh so he just he just befriended you on trust,
Speaker 2: not knowing anything about your.
Speaker 3: No, he didn't even befriend me on trust. He's just
Speaker 3: like somebody cares in a time when nobody cares. Why
Speaker 3: nobody cares? You understand, it is a tiny little world
Speaker 3: that nobody was interested in. I was interested. I could
Speaker 3: speak about it with passion because I had that passion.
Speaker 3: So there weren't that many heads at that moment in time.
Speaker 3: So I get together with Kulmo D and I say, okay,
Speaker 3: the records you made on Enjoy are great. Now there's
Speaker 3: this new thing. It's not as good as the rest.
Speaker 3: Let's figure out together. I'm your fan. I don't want
Speaker 3: it to go that way. I don't want it to
Speaker 3: get worse. Let's figure out how to make it get better. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and let's figure out. I swear it's true. Let's figure
Speaker 3: out how to do this great. And he said, I
Speaker 3: would love to do this, but I can't do this.
Speaker 3: We're signed to sugar Hill. I didn't Again, I had
Speaker 3: no idea. I didn't know anything. I didn't know what
Speaker 3: a producer was. I didn't know what that there were contracts,
Speaker 3: but he said, we're signed a sugar Hill, but you
Speaker 3: should talk to Special K. He's in the group, and
Speaker 3: he writes he might have an idea. So he introduced
Speaker 3: me to Special K. Got together Special K, and Special
Speaker 3: K said, okay, I like the idea. And I was
Speaker 3: already programming beats, so I played him some beats. On
Speaker 3: my eight oh eight, Special K said, Okay, I wrote,
Speaker 3: I just wrote this record called It's yours. I can't
Speaker 3: do it because I'm signed to sugar Hill, but Tilura
Speaker 3: can do it. He's where we're related. And that's the
Speaker 3: way it really happened, me wanting to work with Treacher's three,
Speaker 3: them saying me not knowing, me not knowing anything about business,
Speaker 3: and them basically saying, this is the guy who can
Speaker 3: do the song, and Special K wrote the lyrics.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 3: It was essentially like a Special K solo record lyrically.
Speaker 4: What and even lyrically that was really ahead of his
Speaker 4: time even back then as.
Speaker 3: It was incredible.
Speaker 1: Story just what ever?
Speaker 2: Else?
Speaker 1: I don't know it's yours?
Speaker 2: Wait, Rick, are you even familiar about the Tela Rock
Speaker 2: situation right now?
Speaker 3: I've heard a little bit recently.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on. It's in Okay.
Speaker 2: I won't do any I won't do any justice to
Speaker 2: the story. I'll just say that if you google Tela Rock.
Speaker 2: GQ magazine. GQ magazine, damn near gave Tela Rock a
Speaker 2: seven page feature story, long story short. I meet this woman,
Speaker 2: this like this high society hoity toity, upscale woman from
Speaker 2: like the West Side, and she comes to me and says, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm doing Think of like the woman the woman in
Speaker 2: Wild Style, like totally a fish out of water, right,
Speaker 2: older white woman comes to me. He says, hey, I'm
Speaker 2: doing a biopic or rapper Tila Rock, And already I'm turned.
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, he's trying to scam you, Like, okay,
Speaker 2: whatever biopic because I'm like, what is it about Tela
Speaker 2: Rock that deserves a biopic?
Speaker 1: Three years later, there's a story in.
Speaker 2: GQ magazine that I didn't know, which basically he went
Speaker 2: into a coma and because he had no ID or
Speaker 2: anything on him. Think of like Michael Jackson's character on
Speaker 2: The Simpsons. He winds up in this old folks home
Speaker 2: in the Bronx. They don't know who he is, or
Speaker 2: he doesn't know who he is, knows nothing. I think
Speaker 2: it about in months or so, his family finally locates him,
Speaker 2: but he's comfortable with his life at this old folks
Speaker 2: home and now they have to explain to him who
Speaker 2: he was.
Speaker 1: You were once you were the first.
Speaker 6: Rapper's brutal attack a mirror.
Speaker 7: But the headline is the man who forgot he was
Speaker 7: a rap legend, right, which is pretty great.
Speaker 2: I don't know how he got into that coma, but
Speaker 2: I do know that he was in a coma and
Speaker 2: he didn't know who or what he was, and he
Speaker 2: slowly had to be taught everything about himself. But now
Speaker 2: he just has this new life and as the young guy,
Speaker 2: as the young stud in a nursing home.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, and he likes his life there.
Speaker 6: But it's they say that other residents are mostly elderly
Speaker 6: Jewish and Yiddish speakers, so that must be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like the word about like who's this black guy?
Speaker 2: And are are missing? They're like, well, he was once
Speaker 2: a rapper on Russell Simmons label like that sort it's
Speaker 2: the crazy story you ever heard, but it's yeah. I
Speaker 2: was floored once I seen it. Now I wish I
Speaker 2: wouldn't have dismissed that woman, like that movie has to
Speaker 2: be made.
Speaker 1: Nah, that's a movie.
Speaker 3: Sounds great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's him now. Yeah, it's a crazy movie.
Speaker 3: And it looks exactly the same. By the way, it's
Speaker 3: exactly what you looked like. Then.
Speaker 1: How old were you when you did that record?
Speaker 3: Twenty shit, maybe maybe nineteen, I don't know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that was just you on the on the
Speaker 4: eight away and then what did y'all track it on?
Speaker 3: If you remember, we tracked it this There was a
Speaker 3: studio that advertised in the Village Voice called power Play
Speaker 3: in Long Island City, which was the cheapest studio you
Speaker 3: could go into, and we recorded it. I recorded my
Speaker 3: punk rock band there before, and then we recorded that
Speaker 3: it's yours there and we recorded it, you know, in
Speaker 3: a couple of hours, pretty pretty quick. Another piece, the
Speaker 3: reason Jazzy J. The reason it is Telarak and Jazzy
Speaker 3: J was again as a fan of hip hop, as
Speaker 3: someone going to the club. The whole idea always of
Speaker 3: the records that I made were that the energy in
Speaker 3: the club was a very specific thing and the records
Speaker 3: that were coming out didn't sound like what the club
Speaker 3: sounded like, and a fan now had had the record
Speaker 3: sounded the same. I don't know that I would have
Speaker 3: ever made a hip hop record at all, because it
Speaker 3: was more just I want to hear this. I want
Speaker 3: to hear what I'm hearing at the club, but nobody's
Speaker 3: making that record, so I made it to be able
Speaker 3: to hear it. But that's all it was. It wasn't
Speaker 3: there was no Uh. I had no expectation that anybody
Speaker 3: else would like it or that it would have any success.
Speaker 3: It was never about you know, you could never assume
Speaker 3: that in this little world that it was that we
Speaker 3: were coming from. It's like anyone who was making music
Speaker 3: at that time clearly did it out of the love
Speaker 3: of it, because it was no upside.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was no industry read that was Bill.
Speaker 7: New And what was the fundamental difference between the club
Speaker 7: and the and the record. What were you trying to capture?
Speaker 7: Was it just the I'll you tell you no?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 2: Because even on the a cappella version of that record.
Speaker 2: In my mind, there's a million people in the room,
Speaker 2: do it like because you're the king of the who
Speaker 2: ho like that?
Speaker 1: That that sort of thing, like the people in the background.
Speaker 2: Yes, how many people were in the room when that
Speaker 2: those party noise were made?
Speaker 3: Four or five? Five or six of us? Two times?
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe three? Was that Rock one of those people? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 3: Okay? At yeah, me Ad Rock, probably Special k Jazzy
Speaker 3: j who everybody who was in the hit, maybe even
Speaker 3: the engineer of the session, like any people we had
Speaker 3: on hand to get the the that party vibe. So Okay,
Speaker 3: so let me explain how I heard what I heard
Speaker 3: different about the club versus the records, and a lot
Speaker 3: of this has to do with me not knowing anything
Speaker 3: the way that rap records had been made up until
Speaker 3: that point. Those records were made by people who had
Speaker 3: made other records. So at the time, if you were
Speaker 3: going to make a club record, it would be like heartbeat,
Speaker 3: it would be a band. It would be a band
Speaker 3: record with a woman singing R and B. That would
Speaker 3: be the club record. And then when the people who
Speaker 3: didn't understand hip hop but understood making club records saw
Speaker 3: this new thing, rap music, they thought, Okay, we'll do
Speaker 3: the band doing the R and B song, and we'll
Speaker 3: have the guy rap on it instead of having the
Speaker 3: girl sing on it. And that's what hip hop records
Speaker 3: sounded like. But that's not what the club sounded like.
Speaker 3: The club sounded like DJ culture, drum machines, maybe not
Speaker 3: so many drum machines, but some at that point more
Speaker 3: DJ culture. It was really about the DJ cutting it up.
Speaker 3: So if you went to see if you went to
Speaker 3: see The Treacher three live, it wasn't a band playing
Speaker 3: their song like it was on even the enjoy records.
Speaker 3: It was the DJ cutting up the records with the
Speaker 3: MC's and that's what that's how I understood hip hop
Speaker 3: was this homemade music with rapping. So that's and that's
Speaker 3: why Jazzy why it was important for me, Like I
Speaker 3: would never want to sign. I would never think of
Speaker 3: doing a Tela rock record without having a DJ associated
Speaker 3: with it, because it's like, what made it hip hop
Speaker 3: was the two of them. It was the band, you know,
Speaker 3: together they were the Beatles, right, but by himself it
Speaker 3: was just to say it was another singer, you know,
Speaker 3: it was Frank Sinatra. It's it's different. So I saw
Speaker 3: it as a group and the music was an important
Speaker 3: part of for me. The DJ culture was as important
Speaker 3: as the MC always it was always both. So that's
Speaker 3: and then I and Jesse. J was my favorite DJ,
Speaker 3: and I asked him if you would be on the
Speaker 3: record and join the group with Special K. That's how
Speaker 3: that's how it happened.
Speaker 2: Wow, was it hard to get because you know the
Speaker 2: stories that I've heard from Russell's reaction to the record
Speaker 2: was that it was hard to believe that this white
Speaker 2: boy made such a definitive black album. So how how
Speaker 2: how hard was it to convince people that you're the
Speaker 2: guy that made it's yours?
Speaker 1: Like was it heart cell or.
Speaker 3: The whole thing was so strange, like it was the
Speaker 3: record was already a weird record. Yes, Russell always referred
Speaker 3: to it as more black than anything else. But to me,
Speaker 3: it was just more representative of the club, you know,
Speaker 3: it was more like it was like a documentary of
Speaker 3: what I experienced going to the club.
Speaker 2: All Right, So since we're talking about your eight o
Speaker 2: eight period, and I guess our listeners, it should be
Speaker 2: noted that, really, I mean, yes, I know that there's
Speaker 2: a tie between like you and Arthur Baker. That Tela
Speaker 2: Rock single was like sort of a cross between def
Speaker 2: Jam and it wasn't start whatever Party Time?
Speaker 1: Party Time?
Speaker 2: Wasn't that one of the author breakers Offspring Levels as well?
Speaker 3: At the way I can tell you how that happened
Speaker 3: as well, which was I was going to put it
Speaker 3: out independently myself, the way I put out my punk
Speaker 3: Rock Records with nine to nine Records, which is a
Speaker 3: record store or really cool independent record store on Google Street, Yeah, DSG,
Speaker 3: and they put out Bush Tetras and Liquid Liquid. They
Speaker 3: put out the record that the message was based on actually.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have those records. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the guy who ran that record store was sort
Speaker 3: of my mentor in that he walked me through the process.
Speaker 3: He's like, Okay, here's a list of studios you could
Speaker 3: go to. Here's a place you could have the vinyl press,
Speaker 3: here's the place you could have the labels made. The
Speaker 3: labels were made in Brooklyn, the vinyl was pressed in
Speaker 3: I think Long Island City, the covers were printed in Canada,
Speaker 3: and he kind of walked me through, here's people who
Speaker 3: could do mastering for you, and he just walked me
Speaker 3: through how to do it because I didn't know anything.
Speaker 3: As I said, So I did that first for my
Speaker 3: punk rock records and I was about to do that
Speaker 3: with its yours when Jazzy called me because they were
Speaker 3: making some movie that Arthur Baker was involved in. I
Speaker 3: don't know what it was. I can't remember what it was,
Speaker 3: Street Street, and he said, Hey, just met this guy,
Speaker 3: Arthur Baker. He wants to hear our record. He's got
Speaker 3: a label, maybe he can help us. And then I
Speaker 3: went up and I met Arthur Baker at Shakedown Studio,
Speaker 3: which is where we ended up doing a lot of
Speaker 3: work in the future as well mixing. I think we
Speaker 3: mixed half of License to Ill there and MCA from
Speaker 3: the BC Boys work there. He worked as a as
Speaker 3: like a tape op assistant there, assistant engineer. So I
Speaker 3: went up. I met Arthur for the first time and
Speaker 3: he was already, you know, like a successful person in
Speaker 3: the music business. And again I'm still this kid in
Speaker 3: school playing the song. He's like, this is great. His
Speaker 3: main label was called street Wise street Wise and he said,
Speaker 3: and it really yeah, it doesn't really fit street Wise,
Speaker 3: but we could put it on Party Time, which is
Speaker 3: like a sub label. Said fine, and he bought the
Speaker 3: record to out oubt and I said, the only thing
Speaker 3: is it has to have the deaf Jam logo on it.
Speaker 3: Even though it came over.
Speaker 1: I drew that looking, you drew that looking.
Speaker 3: I drew the Yeah, I did. My aunt Carol worked
Speaker 3: at Este Lauder in the creative creative services department, and
Speaker 3: I would hang out there a lot, and I used
Speaker 3: press type and I made it on a day that
Speaker 3: either they were closed or just when nobody was around
Speaker 3: at one of the designers tables, just experimenting with different things.
Speaker 3: And the reason the reason it has the big DJ
Speaker 3: was to make that point of like, this is DJ culture.
Speaker 3: So I thought having the big DJ in the logo
Speaker 3: quietly told the story of what the label was about.
Speaker 6: Was that a one thing Willie drawing or was that like, okay,
Speaker 6: on the fifth one, I liked this one.
Speaker 3: I tried a lot of things. I mean I tried
Speaker 3: a lot of things, but it happened pretty quick. It
Speaker 3: came in, you know, came in a day. I drew
Speaker 3: it a bunch of like uppercase lowercase, what looks good
Speaker 3: and moving it around and then found I.
Speaker 1: Still have your sketches of it? Or are they long?
Speaker 1: A think?
Speaker 3: So? I probably long got it. I don't. It's possible
Speaker 3: that they exist because I had a lot of stuff
Speaker 3: at my parents' house and then some of that stuff
Speaker 3: is in a in storage somewhere, but I've never looked
Speaker 3: at it.
Speaker 5: I was going to ask, what does it feel?
Speaker 6: Because I've heard a Mirror and Tarik say that sometimes
Speaker 6: they went on deaf Jam just because they wanted to
Speaker 6: be able to have that logo affiliated with their name.
Speaker 5: That's gotta feel crazy just for my drawing.
Speaker 2: That's yeah, Like you know, I in class, I draw
Speaker 2: that logo on imaginary roots albums that didn't exist yet,
Speaker 2: like hanging that shit on my wall.
Speaker 3: I probably did exactly the same thing, and then it
Speaker 3: ended up becoming you know, they weren't roots albums, but
Speaker 3: they were whatever it was. It was just like playing
Speaker 3: with how do we say that, what's the name going
Speaker 3: to be? What's it going to look like?
Speaker 1: How does it work?
Speaker 2: In eighty three eighty four? How expensive are are eight
Speaker 2: to weight drum machines? I don't know, something that you
Speaker 2: casually come across.
Speaker 3: It's something that I luckily came across because there was
Speaker 3: a guy in my dorm room who was in an
Speaker 3: alternative rock band called the Speedies, and he had that
Speaker 3: machine and he lent he lent me the eight a
Speaker 3: weight drum machine. That's how I came across it.
Speaker 2: So were you able to program and save beats or
Speaker 2: is it just like you turn on you show what
Speaker 2: you could do.
Speaker 1: And print it.
Speaker 3: You could make twenty or so pre program beats.
Speaker 2: So how long is the conversation with Russell Simmons before
Speaker 2: you realize that you're going to go into partnership with
Speaker 2: him and start the label officially?
Speaker 3: I met Russell at a party for a Graffiti Rock,
Speaker 3: that that TV Wow where Treacher's Three and run. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I went there, you know, hoping that Treacher's Three
Speaker 3: would be there because they were, you know, my favorite group.
Speaker 1: And this is like a party.
Speaker 3: This was an after party. And someone introduced me to
Speaker 3: Russell and I told him I made It's yours and
Speaker 3: he couldn't believe it. It's just like, no way, It's like,
Speaker 3: you're white, you didn't make that record.
Speaker 1: And again, but you have.
Speaker 3: To understand, there were there really were.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 3: Tom Silverman was involved in hip hop. He was the
Speaker 3: only other white person I would say that I knew
Speaker 3: who had any relationship to hip hop at that time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he wasn't making beats. He was.
Speaker 3: He was really helpful. He was really helpful to us,
Speaker 3: like he was someone another Like I had these great mentors.
Speaker 3: I had the guy at nine nine Records, ed Ed Baleman,
Speaker 3: his name was and and I had to Tommy and
Speaker 3: I would call Tom's just like, hey, what do I do?
Speaker 3: Monica Lynch who worked with Tommy, like it's like what
Speaker 3: do we do? How do What's the next step? And
Speaker 3: I can remember his story. I don't think I've ever
Speaker 3: told anyone. It's interesting why I was excited about having
Speaker 3: Russell as apart. There I was walking on in front
Speaker 3: of the dorm, across the street from the dorm, turning
Speaker 3: the corner I ran into and I don't even know.
Speaker 3: This is strange because I don't know how I knew
Speaker 3: who he was. But there was a writer for the
Speaker 3: Village Voice named Aaron Fuchs.
Speaker 1: He was a writer.
Speaker 3: He was he was a writer. But listen, let me
Speaker 3: let me tell you. Let me tell you the story.
Speaker 3: So again, it's amazing the fact that I even I
Speaker 3: don't know how I knew who he was or how
Speaker 3: it worked out that I that I. But I literally
Speaker 3: went up to him on the street and said, hey,
Speaker 3: I made this record, and what do I have to
Speaker 3: do to get people to hear it? Like how do
Speaker 3: I do this? And this was it's yours. I don't
Speaker 3: even think I had there. I was just more of
Speaker 3: a conversations like how does it work? How does this work?
Speaker 3: So now I'm at the stage where because I was
Speaker 3: always comfortable asking questions, you know, I would if someone
Speaker 3: had information that I needed I was. I felt comfortable
Speaker 3: asking and sometimes they would help and sometimes they wouldn't.
Speaker 3: So I thought he was someone who might be able
Speaker 3: to help. And I just said, you know, what's the
Speaker 3: next step. How do I get people to hear this thing?
Speaker 3: And he said, you need promotion and you can't do it.
Speaker 3: And he said the only person who knows how to
Speaker 3: do promotion for hip hop records is Russell Simmons, and
Speaker 3: Russell Simmons won't do anything for anyone except his brother Run.
Speaker 3: He works with a lot of artists, but he said,
Speaker 3: unless you're Run, he won't promote your records. So it's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm thinking, maybe someday I'll meet this guy Rustling. At
Speaker 3: least he'll tell me what he does, even if he
Speaker 3: won't do it just in hopes of getting the word out.
Speaker 1: I got to get to the bottom of this story.
Speaker 2: Now, if he was a writer for the Village Voice,
Speaker 2: and he too was, you know, a hopeful record mogul.
Speaker 2: Yet you know the story in the Fable of Aaron
Speaker 2: is that he would go hard and the paint ensuing
Speaker 2: any product on def jam that contained any of the
Speaker 2: samples that he owned.
Speaker 3: I would say even beyond that is that if he
Speaker 3: knew any song had the potential to be sampled, he'd
Speaker 3: try to buy up the right so that he could
Speaker 3: sue whoever sampled it.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that too.
Speaker 2: But I'm almost feeling like maybe he has a personal
Speaker 2: beef with Russell that none of us are aware of,
Speaker 2: because there are other samples that he could have went
Speaker 2: after that he never did.
Speaker 1: But if it was on deaf Jam, it's like like Goodfellas,
Speaker 1: fuck you pay me.
Speaker 2: They always wanted to know if that was if there
Speaker 2: was like a burnt bridge, and it's sort of like, okay,
Speaker 2: well I get you.
Speaker 3: When he told me about Russell, he was not positive
Speaker 3: about him. It was not a positive conversation, but it
Speaker 3: was just this. It was a piece of information that
Speaker 3: was helpful.
Speaker 2: There's an article that or a block that Harry Allen
Speaker 2: once wrote in in honor of your early production methods,
Speaker 2: in which you know, it's noted that you have the
Speaker 2: loudest eight h eight sounds, the loudest scratches, like your
Speaker 2: scratches on going back to Cali, Like it's just louder
Speaker 2: than everything. So even like what's your engineering process or
Speaker 2: just your whole theory on pushing it to the limit.
Speaker 3: There is none. I will say, I like, if you're
Speaker 3: gonna put something in there, I want to be able
Speaker 3: to hear it, like I want. The idea of having
Speaker 3: scratching as this sort of background element that's going on
Speaker 3: all the time is not so interesting to me. It's like,
Speaker 3: if it's gonna be there, it should be only exactly
Speaker 3: when it needs to be there, and it should be
Speaker 3: crazy loud, because in some ways it's like it's like
Speaker 3: lead guitar. You know, it's a punctuation moment. It's not
Speaker 3: a background sound. And as a rule, I'm not so
Speaker 3: into background sounds, you know. It's more about having the
Speaker 3: least amount of stuff going on, creating space where each
Speaker 3: thing that you hear, hopefully very few of them sound
Speaker 3: as clear and have as much personality as possible. And
Speaker 3: as soon as you start blanketing sounds, all of each
Speaker 3: of those sounds gets diminished.
Speaker 4: And I can hear that in your I can really
Speaker 4: hear that in your rock production Predicative, particularly on Californication,
Speaker 4: which is probably my favorite Rick Rubin produced album.
Speaker 1: How cool but nah, I love.
Speaker 4: That recormand like I when I preserved it, it was just
Speaker 4: I was taken aback by just how the way you
Speaker 4: track Anthony's vocals, like it sounded almost like to the
Speaker 4: edge of distortion but not quite and it just had
Speaker 4: that kind of grid on it and it was just
Speaker 4: really in your face.
Speaker 1: And I love that record. I just wanted to hear
Speaker 1: on that one.
Speaker 2: So you were about to tell the Rock the bell story,
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, and I'll tell you what.
Speaker 3: I remember, But but I don't remember the Bob James
Speaker 3: record ever being in the conversation. It may have been,
Speaker 3: it may have been something that Elle had been thinking
Speaker 3: and wanting to do. Oh, okay, okay, but I don't
Speaker 3: remember it. I don't remember talking about it. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: was gonna say, it's even possible that when it was
Speaker 3: time to record it, that he suggested it. And it
Speaker 3: is possible that we were already working on the run DMC,
Speaker 3: the Peter Piper song.
Speaker 2: It is possible, all right, what was your one of
Speaker 2: the one of the factors that you also used in
Speaker 2: your early production was the sound of Go Go and
Speaker 2: Rock the Bells. And then She's crafty and also you know,
Speaker 2: I'll say that one of one of the things I've
Speaker 2: done in the Quarantine Punishment is practically purchased every Go
Speaker 2: Go album made available and nothing I hate. And I
Speaker 2: know a lot of it has to do with either
Speaker 2: the studios that they record in. Either it's too clean
Speaker 2: or it's too amateurish. But Sardines, to me is probably
Speaker 2: the best. Yes, Sardines is probably the best produced Go
Speaker 2: Go record, probably second to Pump Me Up. So, first
Speaker 2: of all, Sardines is such a stripped down song. How
Speaker 2: did you record Junkyard?
Speaker 3: The drop the bombs incredible?
Speaker 4: Okay, I'll say early early Trumpel, early trumble Funk.
Speaker 1: Yes, they're they're, they're. Their mixing was immaculate. But what was.
Speaker 2: The process in recording the Junkyard band and why didn't
Speaker 2: you press one further with them?
Speaker 3: Okay, let me I'm going to just talk for a
Speaker 3: second about I agree with you. The only the only
Speaker 3: go Go records I like are old Trouble Funk records
Speaker 3: other than Sardines, which I think was good. And I
Speaker 3: want to talk about that a little bit because what
Speaker 3: you're describing is exactly the way I felt about hip hop.
Speaker 3: Where you could buy in those days, the early days
Speaker 3: of hip hop, I could buy a twelve inch or
Speaker 3: two every week, that's all that would come out that
Speaker 3: would be hip hop, And none of them did for me.
Speaker 3: What the Troublefunk records did. As it relates to Go Go.
Speaker 3: Do you know what I'm saying. It's like the the
Speaker 3: hip hop records were like the bad Go Go records say,
Speaker 3: it's the same, It's the same in any genre. It's like,
Speaker 3: it's not about the genre, it's the way the records
Speaker 3: are made. And in some ways I felt like Go
Speaker 3: Go was gonna be the next hip hop I usually
Speaker 3: believe that was going to happen, but they didn't make
Speaker 3: the right records. They sounded, they watered down what Go
Speaker 3: Go was like. The records on Island. Island signed all
Speaker 3: the bands, and those records are terrible.
Speaker 6: Do you think that's because it's kind of designed for
Speaker 6: it to be a live situation more than a record
Speaker 6: at the end of the day, like a studio album.
Speaker 3: I just think that the wrong people were helping make
Speaker 3: the music. The wrong people were involved on the recording side.
Speaker 2: Yes, I don't like how half the Go Go records
Speaker 2: are engineered. Not I mean, I love Rare Essence more
Speaker 2: than any band on Earth, but it just frustrates me
Speaker 2: that the energy and the engineering of when I hear
Speaker 2: them live or even I hear like some of their
Speaker 2: live mixtapes that's not captured on a studio cut.
Speaker 5: For me, That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: And so why was Sardines and the Word just a
Speaker 2: one off twelve inch? Was there ever a conversation about
Speaker 2: recording Junkyard as a band or I mean, not as
Speaker 2: a band, as a full album.
Speaker 3: I don't really remember, and I think not long after
Speaker 3: I ended up leaving Deaf Jam, So it may have
Speaker 3: been that it was just like towards the end of
Speaker 3: the time that I was doing stuff with Deaf Jam
Speaker 3: and then just stopped. But I don't remember. I don't
Speaker 3: remember there being First of all, nobody particularly cared about it,
Speaker 3: like we liked it, but it's not like there was
Speaker 3: any demand for the Junkyard band. As crazy as that sounds,
Speaker 3: I loved them.
Speaker 2: I was told to ask you about the making of
Speaker 2: Crush Groove the song. What tell me the story the
Speaker 2: making of Crushgroove the song?
Speaker 3: What's I was thinking about? It's funny that this has
Speaker 3: been I couldn't. I didn't remember what song that was there.
Speaker 3: I had a memory that we did a song with
Speaker 3: run DMC and other artists, and I remember the conversation
Speaker 3: in the studio because it was heated and particularly on
Speaker 3: my as it related to me, like I was very
Speaker 3: unhappy with what was going on, and I thought it
Speaker 3: for some reason, I thought it was a Christmas song,
Speaker 3: but have come to realize it's actually that Crush Groove song.
Speaker 3: And I could never find it anywhere because it's listed
Speaker 3: as the Crush Groove All Stars Soars. So it's not
Speaker 3: like if you're looking back at run DMC songs that
Speaker 3: comes up. So I haven't heard it in a long time,
Speaker 3: but I had this vague memory. It's like we did
Speaker 3: this song, and I remember there was a little bit
Speaker 3: of an argument in the studio, and what the argument
Speaker 3: was was, if you listen to the track, should we
Speaker 3: play it because it'll it'll or at least play some
Speaker 3: of it. You want to play a little bit of
Speaker 3: a the track? Who are who? Who are the other
Speaker 3: artists on it? Do you remember.
Speaker 1: Curtis Blow?
Speaker 3: Okay, the movie people wanted a song for the movie.
Speaker 3: They got the Fat Boys, Sheila E and Curtis Blow
Speaker 3: on this track that sounded like a track that would
Speaker 3: fit on and maybe any one of the three of
Speaker 3: their albums, maybe she'lla eat Less, but it sounded most
Speaker 3: like a fat Boys records.
Speaker 1: Like a fat Boy Curtis blow record.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it sounded like a fat Boy Curtis blow record.
Speaker 3: So when we got to the studio, okay, do you
Speaker 3: want to play it?
Speaker 1: Many in love? Then in love?
Speaker 4: Then I think I was five when this came out.
Speaker 1: I love this fucking song a long way.
Speaker 3: Now we heal, okay, so what's what's When we got
Speaker 3: to the studio, the mission was, we're doing this song
Speaker 3: for the movie. They provided us this song. The other
Speaker 3: EMC's ready on it, and now I'm there as Run
Speaker 3: DMC's producer, and they're supposed to get on this on
Speaker 3: this track and right, and it sounded only like the
Speaker 3: beginning of the song didn't sound like the run DMC
Speaker 3: part right, And I said, there's no way Run DMC
Speaker 3: could be on this. They cannot be on this. It's like,
Speaker 3: this sounds like a Fat Boys record. This sounds like
Speaker 3: a Curtis blow record. That's not a Run DMC record.
Speaker 3: I love Run DMC. This is something else. And and
Speaker 3: then I said, well, the only way we could have
Speaker 3: Run DMC on this would be if we make our
Speaker 3: own track and drop it in in the middle where
Speaker 3: it could sound like this is a run DMC song.
Speaker 3: And that's it's how that ended. And I was the
Speaker 3: only one who cared. Nobody else cared nobody, you know,
Speaker 3: it would have just been.
Speaker 1: Like Larry, Larry and Curtis weren't offended. I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't even know.
Speaker 3: I didn't even know who produced it. Yeah, I didn't
Speaker 3: know that. I do remember Curtis was pissed off after saying,
Speaker 3: how come I can't be over the part that runs on? Like?
Speaker 3: How come he couldn't.
Speaker 1: Write a breakdown? Yeah? The breakdown?
Speaker 7: Can you talk about? You know, there's there's producer as
Speaker 7: as song clinician and arranger and and music person, and
Speaker 7: there's something about producer as social psychologist. And I feel
Speaker 7: like your your life and correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 7: It's sort of this weird thing that rides between them
Speaker 7: and the great producers that I know run this line
Speaker 7: that I don't fully understand how to run, and I
Speaker 7: feel like you've mastered it and and and in your
Speaker 7: career have sort of defined what a producer is. And
Speaker 7: so there are some producers that are that are beat makers,
Speaker 7: there are some producers that are songwriters. You're able to
Speaker 7: encompass all of them. And not only in one particular genre,
Speaker 7: but in about four or five.
Speaker 1: So like, I don't know.
Speaker 7: I mean, you call yourself a reducer, and I get
Speaker 7: that sort of play on words, but like, I don't know,
Speaker 7: what is it? What is it about all of that
Speaker 7: that makes it work, that makes that makes you enjoy
Speaker 7: what you do as well? Because that, to me is fascinating.
Speaker 3: I'll say that I think it always changes. At the
Speaker 3: time that I was more of a beat making producer,
Speaker 3: which are the days we're talking about now, was not.
Speaker 3: I was not good at the uh psychology part and
Speaker 3: the collaborating I was not good. I was much more
Speaker 3: of a I know what's good and you're going to
Speaker 3: do it my way, probably for my hip hop early
Speaker 3: hip hop days. And then as I started working with
Speaker 3: more rock bands, I started understanding more the dynamics of
Speaker 3: working with a group of people. And now the most
Speaker 3: interesting thing for me when I work with an artist
Speaker 3: is I can clearly point out where I think the
Speaker 3: strengths and weaknesses are. But I don't feel like it's
Speaker 3: my responsibility to solve the weaknesses. All I have to
Speaker 3: do is point out, like, hm, this section here isn't
Speaker 3: as good as it could be what can we do
Speaker 3: to make it better? Whereas in the old days, I'd
Speaker 3: say this section isn't as good and this is what
Speaker 3: we're going to do. Now it's this part isn't as good.
Speaker 3: How do you guys suggest we fix it? And all
Speaker 3: of that is subjective. It's all based on your opinion, right,
Speaker 3: I mean like it's it's all how you're all. It
Speaker 3: is his opinion. Everything, everything has to do with opinion.
Speaker 3: The whole job, the whole job of doing this is
Speaker 3: pure opinion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's yeah, that's.
Speaker 2: So learn Okay, So before before I get to the
Speaker 2: Beastie Boys, well, unpaid Bill sort.
Speaker 1: Of sorry y divert, but because.
Speaker 2: Actually my next question leads to what you would headed
Speaker 2: with uh unpaid Bill, which is basically, whenever you show
Speaker 2: up and whenever you show up in the credits, two
Speaker 2: things are bound to happen, and that is you're going to.
Speaker 1: Reduce the sound.
Speaker 2: So we already talked about the idea of you stripping
Speaker 2: stuff down to just its bare bones and making it loud.
Speaker 2: But it's also you really introduced the idea of cross
Speaker 2: genres in modern hip hop music. I mean with with
Speaker 2: run DMC having their biggest hit with Walk This Way,
Speaker 2: even with the Beastie Boys, at least in their their
Speaker 2: narrative of it, like we were making fun of smoking
Speaker 2: in the boys rooms, and now you can go with
Speaker 2: fight for your Right to party. But even with Johnny
Speaker 2: Cash doing hurt, or even with Mick Jaggers singing over
Speaker 2: and peached the President, even with the stuff with Slayer
Speaker 2: or working with Neil Diamond, like there's always an element
Speaker 2: or Kanye rhyming over industrial noises. There seems to be
Speaker 2: a common denominator of you pushing artists. I don't willing
Speaker 2: or unwillingly. I mean, Kanye seems like the type of
Speaker 2: person that's like, let's let's let's go to the edge
Speaker 2: of it, let's do something different, whereas like run DMC
Speaker 2: was legendary for not liking or wanting to do Walk
Speaker 2: This Way the way that you wanted them to do it.
Speaker 2: So how much hold handing and Jedi mind tricks and psychology.
Speaker 1: It's all psychology?
Speaker 2: It seems like, yeah, how how much of that is
Speaker 2: a nightmare for you when you just want to make
Speaker 2: the damn song and leave.
Speaker 3: My whole relationship to it has changed over the years,
Speaker 3: so in the case of run DMC. Then it was
Speaker 3: frustrating and I didn't have the tools to deal with it.
Speaker 3: But luckily Russell called called run Indee and said, just
Speaker 3: do whatever Rick says. It's like, really knows what he's doing.
Speaker 3: Just do what Rick says. So had that not happened,
Speaker 3: they wouldn't have they wouldn't have been on the record.
Speaker 3: That record wouldn't have happened. So that's how that happened.
Speaker 2: And even after Rock Box and King of Rock, they
Speaker 2: don't know that they're on a winning formula, just like
Speaker 2: one one moment away from super Jackpot.
Speaker 3: Well, this had less to do with it being a
Speaker 3: rock song. It had more to do with singing someone
Speaker 3: else's words and singing someone else's which they had never
Speaker 3: done before, and singing someone else's words that they didn't
Speaker 3: necessarily like.
Speaker 1: How long did that process take? Walk this way? I'm talking.
Speaker 3: Same as everything you know, same as everything else. The
Speaker 3: only thing that was different was because Steve and Joe
Speaker 3: appeared on the record. There was an extra day working
Speaker 3: on it with those guys playing guitar and singing, singing vocals,
Speaker 3: the guys from Merrismith.
Speaker 2: With the Beastie Boys, Well, first of all, I want
Speaker 2: to know who introduced ah. I have so many questions.
Speaker 2: Number one, the bast groove rock hard twelve inches? Who
Speaker 2: were the Latin Rascals because I've always I've seen their
Speaker 2: names and like all these twelve inches from eighty nine,
Speaker 2: eighty three to eighty five, and then poof Nothing, Who
Speaker 2: were the Latin Rascals.
Speaker 3: The Latin Rascals were two club DJs who worked at Shakedown,
Speaker 3: Arthur Baker's studio, who invented this is pre sampler. There
Speaker 3: were no samplers and they invented away. It was their
Speaker 3: own style of doing remixes where they would do these
Speaker 3: edits on half inch tape where they would repeat the
Speaker 3: same like through editing. So it was like it wasn't scratching.
Speaker 3: There was no sampling yet, and there was this other
Speaker 3: way of manipulating the music. Yeah, and the Latin Rascals
Speaker 3: invented it, and they did it on all of Arthur's
Speaker 3: records and they did a lot of club remixes that
Speaker 3: and I can't remember what they did on that. I
Speaker 3: don't remember them doing anything on those, but it's possible.
Speaker 2: On this Party's getting rough that little see Philadelphia where
Speaker 2: I come from has a very different relationship with this
Speaker 2: Party's Getting rough and Hold It Now Hit It? You know,
Speaker 2: because Lady B and her Street be show that came
Speaker 2: on a Power ninety nine between like twelve and five
Speaker 2: pm on Sundays, they made they basically made an edit
Speaker 2: where they would play that middle sketch of this Party's
Speaker 2: getting rough where it's like, oh man, you just fess it, man,
Speaker 2: you know you you you didn't even turn up the
Speaker 2: boombox and all that stuff, all the all the all
Speaker 2: that chaos in the middle, and then they attached Tomber. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this is this like the Philly anthem. So they made
Speaker 2: they kind of made an edit. Philly made it editor
Speaker 2: of their own of this Party's Getting rough and the
Speaker 2: Beastie groove and just between Latin rascals and mantronics, just
Speaker 2: the the idea of like multiple sampling or like those
Speaker 2: crazy edits. That's all we heard. But what's even weirder
Speaker 2: for Holding Now Hit It? Because of a pressing mistake.
Speaker 2: The initial def Jam pressings of Holding Now Hit It
Speaker 2: had the a cappella as side one, Yes, had the
Speaker 2: a cappella as side one and the the DMX drum
Speaker 2: Machine version.
Speaker 1: That's on the album as side too.
Speaker 2: We never heard of the drum machine version in Philly ever,
Speaker 2: so when they're playing holding now hit it, there's no
Speaker 2: such thing as an a cappella or you jogglingly called
Speaker 2: it acapolca version, and we thought, yo, dude, it was such.
Speaker 2: It was the most radical shit we ever heard because
Speaker 2: our thing was like, the only way I canna describe it.
Speaker 1: Is if you ever seen pooty Tang. And when Chris.
Speaker 2: Rock asked, the DJ introduces that song of silence, like
Speaker 2: and now this new song.
Speaker 1: Slence, I'm just saying he's friends with Chris Rock. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Anyway.
Speaker 2: The whole point was that we made up in our
Speaker 2: minds like yo, these dudes are so incredible they don't.
Speaker 1: Even need music and hold it now hit it.
Speaker 2: The a cappella was number one on the Power nine
Speaker 2: at nine for months to the point where when we
Speaker 2: got the album and heard that drum now, it's weird
Speaker 2: because in Florida, every everyone from down South, I know,
Speaker 2: even Fromier, tells the story like when you're getting your car.
Speaker 1: System, the song that you tested to.
Speaker 2: See if you're if your car system was right was
Speaker 2: holding out hit It because you like you mix your
Speaker 2: your joints loud as fuck. When we got that in Philly,
Speaker 2: we didn't know what the like, Yo, what's this drum ship?
Speaker 2: Like this ain't on the album. To this day, I
Speaker 2: will never acknowledge the album version of holding Out Hit.
Speaker 2: I will only DJ the a cappella.
Speaker 3: Version, but even love to hear I've never heard the
Speaker 3: a cappella version. I'd love to hear it. I don't
Speaker 3: remember ever hearing it. I bet it's great, probably better.
Speaker 1: That's crazy.
Speaker 8: It's your label. It's the first acapella in the history.
Speaker 8: Like love that, Yeah, this is the first in history.
Speaker 2: And in working their album, like how involved are you
Speaker 2: with with the marketing? And because I'll be honest with
Speaker 2: you for two from eighty five till we purchased the
Speaker 2: album and saw the gatefold cover, I didn't know the
Speaker 2: Beastie Boys were white. We thought they were Puerto Rican
Speaker 2: affiliate at least, So was that by design to like
Speaker 2: not put them on the album cover and just ride
Speaker 2: it out till.
Speaker 3: Not at all the way we did it. We didn't.
Speaker 3: We never even thought about it. On the the seven
Speaker 3: original Deaf Jam singles, the Maroon label singles of which
Speaker 3: where rock Hard was one of those. I think that's
Speaker 3: the only Beast record that was. Yeah, there was an
Speaker 3: l there was that. There was Hollis Creek, Hollis Crew,
Speaker 3: Jimmy Spicer, Jim y'all, I'm a Girl Watcher with Papa
Speaker 3: d and Papa Son. I don't think that was on Maroon.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, Well there was also mc A and BAZOUDI.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Zuti.
Speaker 3: Zuti is an engineer in New York named Jay Burnett,
Speaker 3: and he was the guy who turned me onto the
Speaker 3: studio that we lovingly renamed chun King, the original the
Speaker 3: original Chunk King, And the reason I called it chun
Speaker 3: King was I didn't want anyone to know that it
Speaker 3: was such a terrible place that we were working in,
Speaker 3: so I made up Chunking.
Speaker 1: House of Metal was like a just the.
Speaker 3: The one on that was on.
Speaker 1: No, it's before the very.
Speaker 3: One, before the veryck one it was on. It was
Speaker 3: it church between Broom and Grand something like that, across
Speaker 3: from the there's that police building, you know, the police building.
Speaker 3: It was on that block, five floor walk up. The
Speaker 3: rest of the building were like sweatshops. It was a
Speaker 3: really weird place.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 3: It was really Again, I didn't know this because I
Speaker 3: wasn't into it. But it was just a drug deal
Speaker 3: in place I think had they just had a studio,
Speaker 3: but it was mainly drug dealing. But I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: I speaking Steve, Yes, you know, speaking of which now,
Speaker 1: I don't mean I was just reminiscent.
Speaker 9: I think I I think I was at that place
Speaker 9: dropping off tapes as an intern. Yeah the first place, Yeah,
Speaker 9: it was. I was only there once. So but we recorded.
Speaker 3: We recorded all of the Beat Boys stuff there. We
Speaker 3: recorded Raising Hell there. We recorded a lot of the
Speaker 3: early Deft Gem stuff there, maybe all of it, maybe
Speaker 3: all of it.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, Steve, that that d m
Speaker 2: X drum machine that's hanging in our studio, Yeah that's ricks.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I know, I know this is all tell the world.
Speaker 9: But you know, I mean that one question knows that
Speaker 9: in this room?
Speaker 1: Okay, is that a stolen or no? We know? Is it?
Speaker 1: We you know what we had to re record.
Speaker 2: I can't write left handed with John Legend, and we
Speaker 2: were running out of studios and it just so happens
Speaker 2: that that was open, and when we got there, we
Speaker 2: were told this is our last day and kind of
Speaker 2: you know, I was like doing my fan boys thing like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, this is the old chun king and no, no,
Speaker 2: and whoever the owner was a guy he's like just
Speaker 2: like on some me and Joe Green here kid catch.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: He showed me this is this d m X and
Speaker 2: he's has created you know, all the deaf jam days
Speaker 2: has been here forever. You know, you'll take care of
Speaker 2: this and I took it.
Speaker 3: Sorry anyway that may that may or may not be true.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm sure.
Speaker 2: There's multiple I'm sure there's multiple DMX drum scenes. But
Speaker 2: I prefer my version of it was the was the
Speaker 2: just the the flood game of Licensed to Ill? Was
Speaker 2: that scary to you or overwhelming at the time? And
Speaker 2: how are you guys treated by Columbia Records?
Speaker 3: By this point we were never treated well by anybody.
Speaker 1: Even when selling twelve million units? Yes, even then, man,
Speaker 1: really wow?
Speaker 2: So you were still we were off the red nose
Speaker 2: the rain? I mean, was this it was this yet
Speaker 2: Nakoff period? Was this U Matola period?
Speaker 3: Like? Where was Yetnikoff? And al Teller? Those were the
Speaker 3: people that I don't.
Speaker 1: Tell her from. MCA was at Columbia.
Speaker 3: First, he was the president of Columbia at the time
Speaker 3: that we were there.
Speaker 1: Damn.
Speaker 3: The only person that I ever really dealt with on
Speaker 3: a regular basis was Jeff Jones, who was a great guy.
Speaker 3: He was a product manager and he now runs Apple
Speaker 3: Records for the Beatles based in London, and he's still
Speaker 3: around and he remembers, like, he told me stories of
Speaker 3: things that happened back then. I didn't remember, but it
Speaker 3: was funny, like like with License to Ill, he said.
Speaker 3: He goes into a meeting, he's like, well, Rick Rubin says,
Speaker 3: we can't put a barcode on the outside of the cover,
Speaker 3: and uh, you know, we have to figure out how
Speaker 3: we're going to do this because we've never done this before.
Speaker 3: And that, you know, the people in the me are like,
Speaker 3: who the fuck is Rick Rubin?
Speaker 1: What do you mean?
Speaker 3: It's like, we do this all we're doing this. Of
Speaker 3: course it's going to have a barcode. He's like, no,
Speaker 3: but Rick won't let us have the barcode. He's like,
Speaker 3: he's insistent. So again, I had no memory of that.
Speaker 3: But we would fight. We would fight for the art
Speaker 3: to get the art the way we want it all
Speaker 3: the time, and people just didn't know what it was,
Speaker 3: you know, say, very little understanding of what it was
Speaker 3: that we were doing.
Speaker 2: Who can sceptualize the album cover for License to Ill?
Speaker 3: That was me? And what was hard, I'll tell you.
Speaker 3: I had just read the led Zeppelin book Hammer of
Speaker 3: the Gods, about them being on tour and all the
Speaker 3: debauchery of crazy rock stardom, and and there were images
Speaker 3: of led Zeppelin's airplane in the book, and it just
Speaker 3: seemed like, wow, that's just like the height of decadence.
Speaker 3: This an airplane with this crazy rock and roll lifestyle
Speaker 3: going on. And I thought it would be interesting to
Speaker 3: have a beastie boy, a beastie boy airplane representing this
Speaker 3: sort of crazy debauchery all made up. You know, none
Speaker 3: of this was true. We were kids, We were kids
Speaker 3: in school, you know, this was none of this was accurate.
Speaker 3: This was a fantasy based on loving, loving led Zeppelin.
Speaker 3: It was the fantasy of, well, what about a Beastie
Speaker 3: Boys jumbo jet that rams into a mountain like that?
Speaker 3: That's like the way the story ends is the it
Speaker 3: goes with this crazy rock and roll lifestyle. And I thought, well,
Speaker 3: because it would be a gatefold, it'd be like you'd
Speaker 3: see the front of it, and you'd think it was
Speaker 3: you just think it was an airplane, and then you'd
Speaker 3: open it up and you'd get the reveal of the
Speaker 3: back and then yeah. And then when I would drive
Speaker 3: from my parents' house on Long Island into the city,
Speaker 3: I would always pass the globe from the that's in
Speaker 3: the centerfold, and I was thought, oh, it'd be great,
Speaker 3: like someday that would be a great thing to use
Speaker 3: in a photograph. And then the opportunity was with the
Speaker 3: Beastie Boys.
Speaker 2: The inner sleeve has anyone ever, you know, it's weird
Speaker 2: when I seen it. I remember getting the album like
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving of eighty six, so I would like to think
Speaker 2: that I think the album came out in November of
Speaker 2: eighty six, like late November, but this happened. The album
Speaker 2: cover occurred like nine months after the Space Settle challenge thing.
Speaker 4: The challenges joint the challenge like traumatize the shit out
Speaker 4: of me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in kindergarten, yo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like so so that album and see that
Speaker 2: like just traumatize me even more.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: It's weird, like I have love this.
Speaker 2: Love relationship with with the album because it's so you know,
Speaker 2: my monumental but it's like, ah, the nights.
Speaker 1: I just looked at that album cover like it's killing me.
Speaker 3: I didn't. I didn't know about the crash, and it
Speaker 3: didn't I'll tell you now in I knew it at
Speaker 3: the time, but I didn't know enough to be able
Speaker 3: to get it the way I really wanted it. But
Speaker 3: it never was the way I really wanted it, which
Speaker 3: was I wanted to look more really like a photograph,
Speaker 3: and instead it looks more like a Mad magazine cover
Speaker 3: cartoon like it. It's more cartoony looking than I would
Speaker 3: have liked it to be. I would have liked it
Speaker 3: to be like photo realist.
Speaker 1: Who will be ohms. The artist that drew was he
Speaker 1: a friend of yours or no?
Speaker 3: No, he was a friend of the guy who was
Speaker 3: our art director at the label, Steve Byron was his name,
Speaker 3: And I would just say, hey, this is the vision
Speaker 3: for the cover. How do we get this made? And
Speaker 3: then he had his friend he commissioned it. But which
Speaker 3: is why it didn't come out the way I wanted
Speaker 3: it to come out. You know, it's like, uh, so
Speaker 3: you've seen it, We're disappointed. Yeah, I said, this isn't
Speaker 3: really It's like the image is right, but the way
Speaker 3: it was done was not right. It felt more like
Speaker 3: a cartoon. But it was like, well, the you know,
Speaker 3: the album's coming out and we have no time. It's
Speaker 3: like okay, and to eat me that was not that
Speaker 3: was a creative advice that did that.
Speaker 1: I didn't know. That was not my idea?
Speaker 2: So what did you think about Eminem's to it?
Speaker 1: But then I forgot you produced that? He produced that?
Speaker 2: Did you talk to you want it? Or did he
Speaker 2: say I wanted to wi one? Eminem's album, Uh not
Speaker 2: a music to be murdered by? I was the one
Speaker 2: before that one. It was the Recovery at the pull
Speaker 2: Up Recovery. It just came out like a year or
Speaker 2: two ago.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm looking right now to produce that. Yeah, we wait,
Speaker 1: which would you white? Question? Which is rick? How do
Speaker 1: you pick your projects.
Speaker 3: Just based on liking them, either liking the music or
Speaker 3: liking the artist one or the other.
Speaker 1: Like Coma Cozi Sorry Kamakazi, that was it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't produced that.
Speaker 1: Oh I thought you produced the last comic Cozi. Yikes? Okay,
Speaker 1: I stand corrected. Well.
Speaker 2: Tribute to Licensed to ILLM so oh cool? Yeah, as
Speaker 2: an album coming just.
Speaker 6: On the back of Bill's question, Rick, how come you
Speaker 6: only did one? I noticed you only did U the
Speaker 6: Andrew Dice Clay album, like that was your only comedian
Speaker 6: that you work with?
Speaker 3: Well, we did. I think we did five five Andrew
Speaker 3: Dice Clay out right right, And I always looked for
Speaker 3: other comedians to work with, but never found there was
Speaker 3: At one point I was interested in recording Carlos Mencia.
Speaker 3: I don't know, oh wow, And I think we like
Speaker 3: started talking about it, maybe even recorded a little bit,
Speaker 3: but it just never never came together. For whatever reason.
Speaker 5: Have you gotten any more requests though comedian?
Speaker 3: Why? Well? I love Girod. I think he's incredible. I've
Speaker 3: never thought about him doing an album, but that's a
Speaker 3: really interesting idea.
Speaker 5: Okay, he wants it. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: How long did you have to bug Public get him
Speaker 2: until Chuck finally relented and signed to the label.
Speaker 3: It was a really long time. It was a long time.
Speaker 3: I want to say it felt like forever then, but
Speaker 3: it was probably nine months, maybe a year, but fort
Speaker 3: you know, when you're twenty years old, a year is forever.
Speaker 1: No, that's a long time. And they had.
Speaker 3: A post it note of Chuck's number next to my phone,
Speaker 3: and anytime I would walk by the phone, I'd see
Speaker 3: it and I would call. And then Bill Stephanie, who
Speaker 3: was our first employee at def JAM. He knew Chuck,
Speaker 3: and at one point I got so frustrated, I said,
Speaker 3: you have to tell Chuck. If he doesn't sign to
Speaker 3: deaf Jam, I'm firing you. Like, you have to convince
Speaker 3: him he has to do this. And it's not like
Speaker 3: he wanted to sign to someone else. He didn't want
Speaker 3: to make records. That was the thing. It's like, here's
Speaker 3: your's too old. He thought he was too old.
Speaker 2: How did you How did you feel about the Bomb
Speaker 2: Squad's production methods, because that's the total opposite of your
Speaker 2: reduction love Brooch loved it.
Speaker 3: I like I like different things, you know I'm not.
Speaker 3: I like all kinds of different things. I actually heard
Speaker 3: something on your on your James Brown recent DJ set right.
Speaker 3: Maybe it was nine two if I remember correctly, For
Speaker 3: the first time I heard what I think was the
Speaker 3: inspiration for the Bomb Squad that I'd never heard before.
Speaker 1: Wow, I have.
Speaker 3: To find I'll find it and send it to you,
Speaker 3: just so you have for your own reference. I think
Speaker 3: you pieced you put the pieces of a puzzle together
Speaker 3: for me that I never knew were there. I see.
Speaker 2: You know during this period at least between eighty six
Speaker 2: and eighty nine, I mean between your work with ll
Speaker 2: and I'm curious as to why you did not produce
Speaker 2: bigger endeavor And I always wanted to know how you
Speaker 2: felt about like the La Posse and I Need Love
Speaker 2: and all that stuff. But you're doing these Slayer records
Speaker 2: and not to mention, like I mean your heart met,
Speaker 2: Like how what is your approach to Are you just
Speaker 2: leading from the gut or do you have like a
Speaker 2: mapped out plan that you're explaining to the group. This
Speaker 2: is the vision I have for you, Like how do
Speaker 2: you work with Slayer?
Speaker 3: Just going into the studio and first going into pre production,
Speaker 3: talking about the parts in the songs, helping make them
Speaker 3: as good as they could be, and then figuring out
Speaker 3: how to In their case, it was interesting because they
Speaker 3: already were popular, a popular underground band. Like the night
Speaker 3: I saw them they sold out the Ritz, which was
Speaker 3: pretty substantial place I saw them at. The Rits blew
Speaker 3: my mind. It's like, I like heavy music. I never
Speaker 3: heard of these guys before, and this is one of
Speaker 3: the craziest, heaviest concerts I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 3: How is this? It's like a parallel universe that this exists.
Speaker 3: And and I talked to them that night after the
Speaker 3: show and then ended up flying out meeting them in
Speaker 3: California after that.
Speaker 1: Who was there drummer?
Speaker 2: Because I've never heard I've never heard someone play double
Speaker 2: kick that intense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and.
Speaker 3: You know, not not only is it intense, it's funky.
Speaker 3: That's the He's the only of all the heavy metal
Speaker 3: drummers I've ever heard who play in that double kick
Speaker 3: drum style. He's the only one where it's groovy. Maybe
Speaker 3: Lars isn't that Lars thing though, That's not what Lars does. Okay,
Speaker 3: that's what Lars does groovy. Lars does something else. So
Speaker 3: it's more like a prog a fast prog rock drummer.
Speaker 2: So some kid at school puts me on you know,
Speaker 2: by the time I get a nation of millions, some
Speaker 2: kid puts me onto Random Blood and then uh plays yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: she you know when I was listening to she watch
Speaker 2: Channel Zone and they're like, well, you know, that's that's
Speaker 2: a Slayer song and playing the original journ and then
Speaker 2: like I started buying.
Speaker 1: The records just as the complete its.
Speaker 2: But yeah, trying to play that ship because there was
Speaker 2: like a hard rock band that I joined, like in
Speaker 2: high school for like four months, but I quit because
Speaker 2: like I can't do double foot action that good. But
Speaker 2: it's like, how did you capture those performances? Like are
Speaker 2: there jam sessions?
Speaker 1: Are there?
Speaker 2: Like, guys, here's a chorus's or is it just like okay,
Speaker 2: open e open minor just boss the wall go.
Speaker 3: No no, no no no. They they wrote the songs.
Speaker 3: I came in. I said, maybe this part's too long,
Speaker 3: maybe this part's too short, maybe we need another part here.
Speaker 3: But very it's all them, it's all them. And Slayer
Speaker 3: were unbelievable, and then it was just properly recording them
Speaker 3: in a way not to screw it up. And here
Speaker 3: was a big breakthrough. Sonic breakthrough in my mind was
Speaker 3: the only records you could hear that were that approached
Speaker 3: that speed at that time would be like Metallica's first record.
Speaker 3: I think that's all that was out. I don't even
Speaker 3: think their second record was out yet. And yeah, but Metallica,
Speaker 3: those records were recorded like a traditional rock band, which
Speaker 3: again it like it goes back to the hip hop
Speaker 3: argument in the beginning, it's like nobody's looking at the
Speaker 3: thing for what it is, to make it the best
Speaker 3: version of what it is. People are looking at Okay. Well,
Speaker 3: on rock records, we use big drum sounds with long
Speaker 3: with long reverbs. Yeah, long reverbs, long sounds, and that's
Speaker 3: what makes them sound big. But if you're playing fast,
Speaker 3: and if you do that, it's just a blur. You
Speaker 3: don't hear anything. It's just exactly so I'm looking at Okay,
Speaker 3: this band's incredible, and they play tight and fast, and
Speaker 3: the key is how do we get it to sound
Speaker 3: like like you're listening to them with a magnifying glass,
Speaker 3: not how do you blend it together into an impressionist painting.
Speaker 3: So in the case of Slayer, it was, okay, how
Speaker 3: do we make the drums sounds super tight, super tiny,
Speaker 3: because the speed of the drums, the only way you're
Speaker 3: going to even be able to hear it is if
Speaker 3: they're basically taps, you know, like tiny little taps. So
Speaker 3: it really a lot of it has to do with
Speaker 3: in each of these cases of the things that I've
Speaker 3: on the records where I've worked on where they sound
Speaker 3: different than the records that came before them. It was
Speaker 3: only looking at them for what they are and figuring
Speaker 3: out how do we make this thing sound good? Not
Speaker 3: how do we use the baggage of the past, how
Speaker 3: do we apply old methods to this? It's how do
Speaker 3: we what's right for what this is?
Speaker 2: So how do you know the difference between what to
Speaker 2: give a slayer as opposed to like the word that
Speaker 2: you did with the cull as far as rock sounds
Speaker 2: are concerned.
Speaker 1: Now, I know you know, like how much.
Speaker 2: Research do you have to put into the acts that
Speaker 2: you work with to know.
Speaker 1: What their strengths and their weaknesses are.
Speaker 3: I put no research in whatsoever. But the research that
Speaker 3: I do is as a fan all the time, listening
Speaker 3: to music all the time, and I listen and then
Speaker 3: based on what I'm hearing, I'll make suggestions just based
Speaker 3: on whatever whatever little bit that I've picked up from
Speaker 3: listening to music my whole life.
Speaker 1: We should probably be asking to LL this.
Speaker 2: But since you were there to help make the track,
Speaker 2: what exactly went between LL and cool Mode that made
Speaker 2: him make Jack the Ripper?
Speaker 3: I remember it? Yeah, I don't know that anything happened.
Speaker 3: I think it might have just been that.
Speaker 2: I mean, did you realize that you were making a
Speaker 2: cool mod diss record.
Speaker 3: Nope, and one of the first disc records. I never
Speaker 3: thought about it.
Speaker 5: That was your boy friend back in the day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I loved him.
Speaker 3: You You never thought about it that way at all.
Speaker 1: And it goes back to.
Speaker 4: Your go go love too, because it was the Chuck
Speaker 4: Brown tample, the sol disamble.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh yeah, I forgot. I forgot that. Ashley's George's
Speaker 1: clip is yeah, Chuck, it's not just the paint and
Speaker 1: full break Yeah. How how Uh? What was your experience
Speaker 1: like shooting Tougher than Leather?
Speaker 3: Terrible experience you directed?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, Okay, I'm a first time director.
Speaker 1: What what what can you what? What? What advice can
Speaker 1: you give me? I mean, sorry, my movie's already.
Speaker 3: Done, so okay. I was going to say, if you
Speaker 3: have an opportunity not to do it, don't leave.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Okay, So tell me about your experience in directing Tougher
Speaker 2: than Leather?
Speaker 3: Uh, Well, where I didn't know what I was doing.
Speaker 3: In the recording studio, it was easy because there were
Speaker 3: so few people there and mistakes were low and on
Speaker 3: a movie set, there are many more people, and the
Speaker 3: schedule is like, Hey, I'm going to be an hour
Speaker 3: late to the studio today. Talk to you, talk to
Speaker 3: you guys later, No problem, movie sets not like that.
Speaker 3: It's like everything was and yeah, and we were our
Speaker 3: whole lives were you know, I slept until I never
Speaker 3: took a class before three in the afternoon when I
Speaker 3: went to n YU, because I slept until probably one,
Speaker 3: and then we went out all night every night. So
Speaker 3: the idea of showing up on a movie set at
Speaker 3: six o'clock in the morning every day, that wasn't anything
Speaker 3: that I anticipated, and that was not a It was
Speaker 3: not a realistic ask in the way my life worked.
Speaker 3: So it was a terrible experience and I wouldn't wish
Speaker 3: it on, wouldn't wish it on my enemy.
Speaker 2: Did you insist on directing that movie or was it
Speaker 2: like you had an upcoming aprier to do it or
Speaker 2: something like? How did you wind up holding the director's manual?
Speaker 3: Me and my friend Rick wrote the idea. It was
Speaker 3: Rick was really more the writer than I. We would
Speaker 3: throw ideas together, but Rick was the main writer. Rick
Speaker 3: Manelo and who was the guy who ran the desk
Speaker 3: at my dorm, so he'd be the night He would
Speaker 3: work at the dorm from midnight to six. He was
Speaker 3: the night watchman essentially, and the dorm was pretty quiet
Speaker 3: from nine to six, so I would usually get home
Speaker 3: from the club two three and I would sit there
Speaker 3: with Rick and we would order food from Cozy Supenberger
Speaker 3: around the corner, and we would watch watch old movies
Speaker 3: on TV. And he was a film major and film
Speaker 3: historian new tremendous amount and then in later years ended up,
Speaker 3: you know, working with Darren Aronofski and James Gray. James Gray,
Speaker 3: some great directors, and all of my friends who were
Speaker 3: directors would always anytime anyone I knew who made movies
Speaker 3: had a movie question, they would all call Rick Minelo
Speaker 3: because he knew more than everybody that Rick Minelo was
Speaker 3: the main scriptwriter. He's in it too. I can't remember
Speaker 3: what his character. He was played, sort of the sidekick
Speaker 3: guy to my guy. I can't remember his character's name.
Speaker 3: I can't remember. I really blocked out a lot about
Speaker 3: that movie. Actually, he was also in the Beastie Boys
Speaker 3: video for No Sleep Till Brooklyn. He was like the club,
Speaker 3: you know, in the beginning there's like a skit with
Speaker 3: a that's Rick Minelo.
Speaker 1: So he's been in a few Deaf Jam.
Speaker 3: Products or yes, and he directed Going Back to Cali
Speaker 3: as well. Oh the video of Going Back to Cali,
Speaker 3: which we storyboarded together at the desk at Weinstein the
Speaker 3: dormitory at NYU.
Speaker 2: Okay, So something I don't know, and I don't know
Speaker 2: if you ever went on record. I never knew how
Speaker 2: or why you left Deaf Jam. I just remember your
Speaker 2: name being on the executive producer for a Nation of Millions,
Speaker 2: and then when I looked for your name on Fear
Speaker 2: 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 deaf.
Speaker 2: So what I mean, why did you decide to leave
Speaker 2: the your your your first love?
Speaker 3: It really had to There were two things going on.
Speaker 3: One was over the time together ever many years. It
Speaker 3: was three, four or five years. My relationship with Russell
Speaker 3: was starting to I wouldn't say it ever turned bad,
Speaker 3: because we were always good friends, but it felt like
Speaker 3: our what we wanted was changing, and I felt like
Speaker 3: I really loved our friendship and didn't want our friendship
Speaker 3: to end, and I thought, if we remained partners, our
Speaker 3: friendship's probably going to end, so maybe it's better just
Speaker 3: not to be partners anymore. And then there was something
Speaker 3: going on that really triggered. It had to do with
Speaker 3: the way we were being treated by Columbia and what
Speaker 3: we needed Columbia to do to fix the situation for
Speaker 3: our artists. For example, I remember the first time we
Speaker 3: went to England and the guy at Columbia basically told us,
Speaker 3: you know, we're just we're not interested in your records,
Speaker 3: said they said, we look at Columbia records in New
Speaker 3: York as an albatross, and it's nothing against you personally,
Speaker 3: but because you come from them, we're just not really interested.
Speaker 1: Even though you're making that money. Yeah, I'm in eighty seven.
Speaker 2: You guys are so more units than Michael Jackson's bed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and yeah.
Speaker 3: It was unbelievable. I had a meeting with Al Teller
Speaker 3: at the time, who's the president of the company, and
Speaker 3: told him all of my concerns and I talked for
Speaker 3: a half hour and I got really emotional. I started
Speaker 3: crying because again, I care so much about this shit.
Speaker 3: It's my whole life. And at the end of the conversation,
Speaker 3: I say, you know, we got to we have to
Speaker 3: figure out a way to fix this, because if not,
Speaker 3: I have to leave. Like I can't. I can't keep
Speaker 3: doing this. I can't put my heart into this and
Speaker 3: have partners who don't care or who are not going
Speaker 3: as hard as they can, as hard as we're going.
Speaker 3: I can't do this. And and this after a half
Speaker 3: hour of my I remember, I had a pad, and
Speaker 3: I listed all the things that were wrong in the relationship.
Speaker 3: Whatever if I would have known that they put the
Speaker 3: wrong a side on the record, that that's an example
Speaker 3: they've been on the list. Yeah, it's like, but that
Speaker 3: was indicative of what it was like. It was like
Speaker 3: nobody really cared. These guys do this ship that we
Speaker 3: don't understand, and luckily it sells, but we don't know
Speaker 3: what it is, and we don't really care what it is.
Speaker 3: We just don't want it to stop. But they always
Speaker 3: on one with Yetnikov or one on one with Dianor
Speaker 3: or Mattola, none of those guys. Einer wasn't there, Matola
Speaker 3: wasn't there. Yet It was so the guy al Teller
Speaker 3: was the president of the company. Mattola was his boss,
Speaker 3: but he wasn't really involved in what the day to
Speaker 3: day of Columbia records. So I had this meeting with
Speaker 3: the guy, the right person to have a meeting with.
Speaker 3: I have this meeting. I have a heartfelt, emotional He's
Speaker 3: sitting there holding a baseball bat through the meeting because he, yeah,
Speaker 3: he saw himself as kind of like tough. So he's
Speaker 3: sitting there holding this baseball bat. I'm talking twenty minutes,
Speaker 3: twenty five minutes. I'm crying at the end and telling
Speaker 3: them finally that if we can't work this stuff out,
Speaker 3: we can't get to the bottom of this. I gotta leave.
Speaker 3: And I said, you know, I never signed a contract.
Speaker 3: Russell signed the contract. I never signed anything. So I'm
Speaker 3: gonna have to leave. And he said, wait, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, what did you just say. And I said,
Speaker 3: I said I never Yeah, I said I never signed
Speaker 3: a contract. You know, only Russell signed. And he said, okay,
Speaker 3: wait a minute. You're going to have to start back
Speaker 3: at the beginning because I wasn't listening to anything. You
Speaker 3: were saying.
Speaker 1: That sound effect with me.
Speaker 3: This is this is really, this is real.
Speaker 1: So how long until death? Americans started right away?
Speaker 3: Because when I left Fjam I had already started, like
Speaker 3: Slayer was signed to death Jam originally, Danzig was signed
Speaker 3: to deaf Jam originally, and Dice. I can't remember if
Speaker 3: Dice was if I had already signed Dice or not.
Speaker 3: When I remember going out to lunch with Russell and saying,
Speaker 3: you know, this isn't going to work. I don't the
Speaker 3: relationship with Columbia's bad. And oh so what that meeting
Speaker 3: that I told you about, the start at the beginning
Speaker 3: again meeting? When that meeting, after that meeting, I told Russell,
Speaker 3: you know this is not good. We can't do this anymore.
Speaker 3: And the way that Colombia ended up fixing it was
Speaker 3: to write a big check to death Jam without dealing
Speaker 3: with any of the problems. It was just a check
Speaker 3: and Russell was cool with that, and I was not
Speaker 3: cool with that. So that was sort of the you
Speaker 3: know what, I don't think we can do this anymore,
Speaker 3: Like this doesn't feel right. And I said to him,
Speaker 3: I said, do you want to leave the company? And
Speaker 3: he said I don't want to leave and I said, okay,
Speaker 3: I guess I'll have to leave. And it was just
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 2: It wasn't I thought that, Yeah, yikes, because you left
Speaker 2: before well you left after the Beasties left, correct.
Speaker 3: Well left after the Beasties left. Yeah, yeah, how did
Speaker 3: did you?
Speaker 4: And like uh at Rock or any of them, did
Speaker 4: y'all have have conversations about why you both left or where?
Speaker 1: Interesting?
Speaker 3: Interestingly, interestingly, we have never really discussed it, and it's
Speaker 3: definitely an elephant in the room that would be good
Speaker 3: to discuss, and we just never did. But I'm sure
Speaker 3: it'll happen. It may happen next week, like it'll happen.
Speaker 1: What were your thoughts on Paul's boutique?
Speaker 3: Loved it, thought it was the I remember listening to
Speaker 3: it at the Mandrian Hotel, me and Chuck d together.
Speaker 3: We were We were there because I think Public Enemy
Speaker 3: was going to appear somewhere in California. I don't know
Speaker 3: whether it was a club date or a TV show,
Speaker 3: but we're at the Mandre on we got an advance.
Speaker 3: I don't even know if it was in advance. It
Speaker 3: might have just been like from the studio like they
Speaker 3: had just finished it and me and Chuck listened to
Speaker 3: it and we both thought, oh my god, this is
Speaker 3: the greatest thing we've ever heard. This is the future
Speaker 3: hip hop like this is. It doesn't get better than this,
Speaker 3: and we were shocked that it was not as well
Speaker 3: received as we thought it deserved to be.
Speaker 2: Thing that I remembered the most, at least your first
Speaker 2: year of Death American, was all the press that you
Speaker 2: got as far as the Ghetto Boys were concerned. How
Speaker 2: did they come, how did they come across your radar?
Speaker 2: And what was it about them that drew each to them?
Speaker 2: And all the ensuing controversy that came with them, Like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I had never heard like NWA was already happening.
Speaker 3: Well maybe just the Easy E album. I don't know
Speaker 3: if there was an NWA album yet. There was an
Speaker 3: Easy E album for sure, and I loved Easy E.
Speaker 3: And then I heard the Ghetto Boys and I felt like, oh,
Speaker 3: like where NWA was gangster, this is like hard in
Speaker 3: that way, but more like more unhinged, more like horror
Speaker 3: like like violent but not violent like a bad drug
Speaker 3: deal gone wrong, like violent like a horror movie, you know,
Speaker 3: like dismemberment crazy. And I just liked the how extreme
Speaker 3: it was. It spoke to me right away, and I
Speaker 3: thought that the album didn't sound It didn't sound as
Speaker 3: good as it could have. So I remixed the album.
Speaker 3: I didn't add anything to it, or I just basically
Speaker 3: remixed the album and changed the cover and changed the
Speaker 3: name because they were called the Ghetto Boys g hgg yeah,
Speaker 3: and I thought, you know it, it sounds too ordinary,
Speaker 3: like they could be the Ghetto Boys, which would be
Speaker 3: the get Old Boys, just because it I don't know,
Speaker 3: I just thought it was more interesting, would look better
Speaker 3: on T shirts as well.
Speaker 1: Okay, so, how how much of I'm in now?
Speaker 2: It's like, especially in the environment that we're in right now,
Speaker 2: as far as like uh, right wing Republican Christian news
Speaker 2: talking points and those things like you know, now it's
Speaker 2: sort of like you collectively roll your eyes or that,
Speaker 2: you know, like that side of the fence is lying.
Speaker 2: But back in nineteen eighty nine, ninety like, they it
Speaker 2: seemed like real threats. And I remember I knew the
Speaker 2: Ghetto Boys because one Chuck Jees chucked Thees shouted them
Speaker 2: out on fear of a Black Panet Planet album. But
Speaker 2: all the controversy of Scarface's lyrics being faling points for
Speaker 2: everybody running for Senate, any Republican running for Senate or
Speaker 2: the House using this thing like to this was this
Speaker 2: manner from heaven like for you is, I had controversy
Speaker 2: and bad news, like, yes, this is what I want
Speaker 2: to be your parents' worst nightmare.
Speaker 3: This is the first TI I'm ever hearing of that
Speaker 3: being the case.
Speaker 1: What you mean, Ted White? Ted White? I think who
Speaker 1: ran Billboard? Oh man?
Speaker 2: He wrote like paragraphs and dissertation of mind of all
Speaker 2: I would have never ever like the surefireway to get
Speaker 2: a seventeen eighteen year old to buy the ship. It's
Speaker 2: because Ted White could not a billboard, could not stop
Speaker 2: writing about how violent Scarface's mind of a lunatic was
Speaker 2: and this needs to be banned and shit. I was like, word,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna buy this shit. Yeah, Lama parents hated it
Speaker 2: must be good.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I always like crazy shit, you know, I like
Speaker 3: edgy crazy shit. It's interesting to me. It's fun.
Speaker 2: But you do realize like being parents' worst nightmare.
Speaker 1: Is also like that's great marketing.
Speaker 2: That's a regged execs candy like that. That's so that
Speaker 2: never excited you at all.
Speaker 3: No, I never never thought about it because usually I
Speaker 3: would have to get the calls more like the record
Speaker 3: company not wanting to put it out, you know, that's
Speaker 3: what I had to deal with, Like Slayer, Columbia Records
Speaker 3: refused to put out that Slayer record, So then I
Speaker 3: had to find a new way to release it, even
Speaker 3: though the first one was on Deaf Jam, but it
Speaker 3: wasn't through Columbia because they refused to release it. Then
Speaker 3: I made a deal with Geffen Records, which is where
Speaker 3: that went. And then in my deal with Geffen, I
Speaker 3: had to have complete creative control where they could never
Speaker 3: come to me and say they're not going to put
Speaker 3: something out. And then when it came to Andrew Dice
Speaker 3: Clay or the Ghetto Boys, You're like, well, we're not
Speaker 3: going to put it out. It's like the whole reason
Speaker 3: I'm at your company is because I need a safe
Speaker 3: place to put out crazy shit. That's why I'm here.
Speaker 3: This is what I do. And you'll see when you
Speaker 3: look back on it in time, it'll be the right decision.
Speaker 3: It'll be like you're too you're too close to the
Speaker 3: story now. But if you look back in history, important
Speaker 3: things often stick out like saw thumbs in their day
Speaker 3: and are hated or vilified, or they burned Beatles albums.
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, man, Elvis was the you know the Devil.
Speaker 2: What was it about the Black Crows that excited you
Speaker 2: to sign them to the label? Did you sign all
Speaker 2: the acts that were at least on the first run
Speaker 2: of Deaf Americans to the label or was it like,
Speaker 2: did you have a full staff and.
Speaker 3: You know didn't. I didn't have a full staff. But
Speaker 3: there was my friend who I went to school with
Speaker 3: named George Treculius, who who's been called out on a
Speaker 3: Beastie record.
Speaker 2: Maybe well, he's also been my boss the few movies
Speaker 2: that I scored.
Speaker 1: George.
Speaker 2: If you're clearing music in movies, Georgia Koliac, is that
Speaker 2: that's your guy that you work with?
Speaker 3: Okay, great? So George was he was an inter. It's funny.
Speaker 3: I was an intern at Deaf Jam when I owned
Speaker 3: Deaf Jam at NYU. And the reason I was an
Speaker 3: intern was because then I got school credit for working
Speaker 3: at Deaf Jam. George was. George was my intern at
Speaker 3: Deaf Jam where he got credit in the dorm, and
Speaker 3: then there was a time when he was my roommate
Speaker 3: in the dorm if I remember correctly. And George he
Speaker 3: found the Black Crows and that was his both his
Speaker 3: signing and his production. That was his vision and the
Speaker 3: Jayhawks as well. He signed the Jayhawks and never.
Speaker 1: Told me that. Wow, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Hey, wait all these old Deaf jam questions are coming
Speaker 2: back to me now. The the storyline to crust groof
Speaker 2: how much of that was actual life. I'm trying to
Speaker 2: get to the kind of uncut Jim's robbing Peter to
Speaker 2: pay Paul narrative of like did you guys ever have
Speaker 2: Like that's the storyline of having to borrow money to
Speaker 2: press up twelve inches or to keep up with demand.
Speaker 3: That's holly Hollywood fakery. That's none of that.
Speaker 1: Okay, just check it, just check it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So outside of Deaf American recordings, can you talk about
Speaker 2: your your your work with with Johnny Cash and how
Speaker 2: you got him back to his glory point, because I mean,
Speaker 2: I would imagine before you two worked together he was
Speaker 2: sort of waning in the creative department at least, like
Speaker 2: with the last four records that he worked on with you.
Speaker 2: That was like probably one of the best storied comebacks
Speaker 2: in a music career.
Speaker 1: What was it like working with him?
Speaker 3: Coolest thing, coolest thing that ever happened in my life.
Speaker 3: He was a beautiful brilliant, humble, interesting, quiet guy who
Speaker 3: studied history. He had a tremendous amount of wisdom that
Speaker 3: he didn't offer unless you drew him out. He was
Speaker 3: pretty reserved, but if you asked him about stuff, he
Speaker 3: would tell you about it. And he knew a lot
Speaker 3: about a lot of things, and a tremendous amount about
Speaker 3: music and the history of country music and folk music.
Speaker 3: And I learned a tremendous amount being around him.
Speaker 2: Did you get a chance to personally know him? Like
Speaker 2: was he telling you stories of recording for Son and
Speaker 2: that whole million dollar session thing and everything you ever
Speaker 2: wanted to know?
Speaker 3: And he would I got to know him personally well.
Speaker 3: He would stay at my house when he came to
Speaker 3: LA I would say, at his house if I went
Speaker 3: to Nashville. I don't know how much we talked about
Speaker 3: old times unless there was a specific reason to her.
Speaker 3: If I had a particular interest, he would tell me
Speaker 3: stories about about Sam Phillips. Though, okay, oh wow, he
Speaker 3: loved Sam Phillips.
Speaker 2: Which artist opens up to you the most as far
Speaker 2: as uh, I don't know if you have the same
Speaker 2: relationship with say A jay Z that you would with
Speaker 2: Anthony Keatis So I know there's different degrees of getting
Speaker 2: to know your clients as you're producing them. And I
Speaker 2: know there's an an artist producer trust that has to
Speaker 2: be established, but I know there's different degrees of that
Speaker 2: of like which artists I mean, And this is not
Speaker 2: asking what's your favorite artist you've worked with, but who's
Speaker 2: who's the closest. Who do you know the best that
Speaker 2: you feel comfortable that you're just actual friends with, like
Speaker 2: really friends?
Speaker 1: Is that the mars? Well, the guys? Is it?
Speaker 3: I feel like I'm friends with a lot a lot
Speaker 3: of them. I'm just thinking if there are any unique standouts,
Speaker 3: I would say the people who I've made the most
Speaker 3: albums with. That plays a role, just because you're around
Speaker 3: them more, you know, it's just more hours together.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, like I've been around the Chili Peppers a lot,
Speaker 3: so I probably know them better than somebody who I
Speaker 3: did you know a couple of songs with like jay Z.
Speaker 3: But I feel very comfortable when I hang out with
Speaker 3: jay Z. I feel like pretty good friends feels good.
Speaker 5: I me just so close with Andrew Dice play though,
Speaker 5: I'm just saying I was.
Speaker 3: I was pretty close with Dice. I would go out
Speaker 3: every night to the comedy store after my session, and
Speaker 3: we would hang out in the kitchen of the comedy Storre.
Speaker 3: Chris Rock would be there often also.
Speaker 2: I mean with the Chili Peppers, how do you how
Speaker 2: do you see their growth as from where they were
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety one. I'd assume that Blood Sugar, Sex
Speaker 2: Magic was the first time you work with them.
Speaker 1: You didn't do Mother's Milk?
Speaker 3: Correct, No, No, although I like I thought Mother's Milk
Speaker 3: was their best record to date. That was the Mother's
Speaker 3: Milk was the record that made me excited to work
Speaker 3: with them.
Speaker 2: Okay, so how is it working with them and managing
Speaker 2: their you know whatever, you have to juggle to make
Speaker 2: it right as opposed to once they became more like
Speaker 2: a comfortable shoe that you were familiar with.
Speaker 3: I'll say, I think it's the same. I don't think.
Speaker 3: I think the goal is always to treat people respectfully
Speaker 3: and honestly, and that happens regardless of how deep the
Speaker 3: relationship is. I don't I don't think that changes. It's
Speaker 3: pretty much the thing we're there to do looks the
Speaker 3: same either way. The only other thing that I'll say
Speaker 3: with the artists who I've made many records with another
Speaker 3: like System of a Down, I made all of their albums.
Speaker 3: With the bands that that I've worked with several times,
Speaker 3: there there gets to be a shorthand where like usually
Speaker 3: the first record we make together, same Tom, Petty, all
Speaker 3: of them. The first record we make together takes the
Speaker 3: longest because we're like.
Speaker 1: Filling each other out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like figuring out a vocabulary of how we're going
Speaker 3: to do it. But once that's established, it's much easier
Speaker 3: after that, but only only out of just that decoding,
Speaker 3: you know, decoding the system.
Speaker 2: Do you prefer piecemeal projects as far as getting you know,
Speaker 2: they just say, look, I just want one song like
Speaker 2: you did one song on Justin Timberlake's record for Future
Speaker 2: Sex Sounds. Damn that sounds sex Love Sounds, Future Sex
Speaker 2: Magic Sounds.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: As opposed to doing an entire album, what would you
Speaker 2: what do you prefer?
Speaker 3: I really like making albums. I don't like doing songs
Speaker 3: because I think that the nature of the process to
Speaker 3: get to an album, to get to one song, or
Speaker 3: to get to an album could be the same amount
Speaker 3: of experimentation. Do you know what I'm saying? Like to
Speaker 3: find the voice. If you're working on one song, it
Speaker 3: takes just as long to figure out what that is.
Speaker 3: It may be longer because in a way, when you're
Speaker 3: working on one shot, you only got one shot and
Speaker 3: it's hard to even know the way in. But sometimes
Speaker 3: you'd be working on twenty songs and one song you're like, oh,
Speaker 3: that's the key to the whole thing. Now we know
Speaker 3: how it's all gonna work.
Speaker 2: Do you do you ever run into a situation in
Speaker 2: which where that trust isn't isn't there where you know
Speaker 2: an artist is stubborn, they feel that you know, well,
Speaker 2: you know. I'm giving a hypothetical example. I don't know,
Speaker 2: like if you can tell Adele okay, sing this shit again,
Speaker 2: give me take nine and she'll knock it out the
Speaker 2: part as opposed to again convincing the beastie boys that
Speaker 2: fight for your right is the song and trust me
Speaker 2: on this one?
Speaker 1: Like how much trust me on this one?
Speaker 3: End? Quote?
Speaker 2: Do you have to go through in your post in
Speaker 2: your post def Jam post American Recordings career? It's like
Speaker 2: now in terms of like working with Neil Diamond or
Speaker 2: even James.
Speaker 3: Blake, Yeah, most never, almost never trust me on this one.
Speaker 3: I don't like that. The goal is to And I
Speaker 3: always say at the beginning of a project, it's like
Speaker 3: everyone has to like it. Everyone here has to love it.
Speaker 3: If I love it and you don't love it, we failed.
Speaker 3: If you love it and I don't love it, we failed.
Speaker 3: It just means we haven't gone far enough if we
Speaker 3: don't all love it.
Speaker 1: Have you ever had to walk away from a project.
Speaker 3: I've never had to walk away, but I've been walked
Speaker 3: away on I'm not a quitter. I don't I don't
Speaker 3: quit projects. But there have been there have been a
Speaker 3: I can tell you. I can tell you about a couple. Okay,
Speaker 3: tell me we tried like I started an album with Crosby,
Speaker 3: Sills and Nash and ten years ago twelve okay twelve ten,
Speaker 3: about ten years ago, and it was a and there
Speaker 3: was a case of there being a lack of trust,
Speaker 3: but the lack of trust more had to do with themselves, well,
Speaker 3: like within the band. Like there's another interesting thing. When
Speaker 3: the Chili Peppers first asked me to produce them, it
Speaker 3: was before Blood Sugar Sex Magic. It was two albums
Speaker 3: before that. Sally Think it was Freaky Sily, the one,
Speaker 3: the one where it was all of the original members.
Speaker 3: And I remember a friend of mine, Yeah, whichever one
Speaker 3: had all of the original members, because a friend of
Speaker 3: mine said, who loved them, said, if you're ever going
Speaker 3: to produce the Chili Peppers, now is the time. It's
Speaker 3: all of the original members. This is the time. So
Speaker 3: me and Adam Harrovitz, beastie boy Adam Harvitz, went to
Speaker 3: a rehearsal in La on Sunset Boulevard of the Chili
Speaker 3: Peppers at that time, and there was just a weird,
Speaker 3: bad vibe in the room. Had nothing to do with us.
Speaker 3: It was just between them. It felt shady, and I
Speaker 3: didn't know what it was. Now I've come to learn
Speaker 3: later it was drugs, but I didn't I didn't know that.
Speaker 3: I didn't know what to look for at that time.
Speaker 3: I just felt like I think it was before he died. Yes,
Speaker 3: but there was a sense that these guys don't trust
Speaker 3: each other, like they didn't look at each other with
Speaker 3: like it just felt shaky. The whole thing felt shaky,
Speaker 3: and it felt like, I don't really think this is
Speaker 3: right for me to be around, Like I don't know
Speaker 3: how to do this. And another one was Joe Cocker.
Speaker 3: I went into the studio with Joe Cocker. I had
Speaker 3: it at the time that I produced a CDC, and
Speaker 3: I got Malcolm Young to play rhythm guitar on Joe
Speaker 3: Cocker record, Mike Campbell from the Heartbreakers, Benmont from the Heartbreakers.
Speaker 3: It was a really good band. It was really good
Speaker 3: session and Joe I wanted it to be a very raw, guttural,
Speaker 3: emotional album. And Joe saw himself more like Sting. He
Speaker 3: wanted it to be more like a Sting.
Speaker 1: Album, like Jazzy Sank, like.
Speaker 7: Very produced, adult, very adult.
Speaker 2: A man he wanted, he want, he wanted his Grammy moment,
Speaker 2: and and I.
Speaker 3: Just it wasn't. It wasn't so much as I don't
Speaker 3: feel like I quit. It was just like our visions
Speaker 3: were so different that it just no one was really interested.
Speaker 3: We didn't nobody wanted to make the same thing, so
Speaker 3: that one didn't happen. Yes, but considering how many albums
Speaker 3: I've made, I could count on one hand, less than
Speaker 3: one hand, how many times it has not worked out.
Speaker 1: You mentioned a c DC, and I'm gonna forget this question.
Speaker 2: Are are they do they have an iota or or
Speaker 2: are they even remotely aware of how much flick of
Speaker 2: the Switch has changed your life personally.
Speaker 3: Other than what I told them, you know, I told
Speaker 3: I would tell them it's like their their music.
Speaker 1: They have no idea that that one note has. Oh
Speaker 1: is that where it's from?
Speaker 3: I don't even know. I just ran on.
Speaker 1: No, no, I knocked the bells and just the the
Speaker 1: trademark Rick Rubin is okay. I always wanted to know.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't even know. It's so funny. I wouldn't have
Speaker 3: even known that that's what it was. I just literally
Speaker 3: every time it's like, oh, I think it's on an
Speaker 3: ac DC record, and I just hunt through every track
Speaker 3: until I find something.
Speaker 2: Something like that. Man, Okay, so El's sophomore record.
Speaker 3: It's an interesting, unusual, unusual story. I don't believe I've
Speaker 3: ever told it publicly. At the time that I met Elle,
Speaker 3: he was being raised. His mom was in the picture,
Speaker 3: but he's mainly being raised by his grandmother, and he
Speaker 3: didn't know his dad. And then we made our first
Speaker 3: album together, and then he became cool J probably seventeen
Speaker 3: at that time. And then ELL's dad appears, Oh wow,
Speaker 3: and he comes back, and Ell obviously wants his dad
Speaker 3: and his and Russell was managing Ell, and Ell, if
Speaker 3: I remember correctly fired Russell and hired Jimmy, his dad,
Speaker 3: to be his manager, and I just I just felt
Speaker 3: like it was a bad vibe. Like I never discussed
Speaker 3: it with L. We never talked about it. It just
Speaker 3: felt like something's going on here that's dark, and this
Speaker 3: is not energy for me to be around. This is
Speaker 3: good is not going to come from this situation, and
Speaker 3: I just sort of bowed out and then it ended
Speaker 3: up it ended up turning bad sometime. I don't know
Speaker 3: how much longer, but I think there ended up being
Speaker 3: problems between Ell and his dad after that. But it
Speaker 3: just it just felt too shady, felt too I didn't
Speaker 3: like that they were not nice to Russell when Russell
Speaker 3: really cared about L, like firing a guy who was
Speaker 3: really working for you. This new guy coming in the
Speaker 3: scene kind of under questionable. Yes he was his dad,
Speaker 3: but still why wasn't he his dad before? He was
Speaker 3: all cool, just right. It was just it just felt
Speaker 3: very weird.
Speaker 1: Can you explain to me what exactly was your role
Speaker 1: in Jesus.
Speaker 2: And in the life of Pablo, because it just to
Speaker 2: see the credits on the albums I'm just assuming that
Speaker 2: you're in a room with over twelve to twenty chefs
Speaker 2: and everyone's just throwing ideas in well, just based on
Speaker 2: looking at the album credits, like.
Speaker 3: Exactly, it's not not exactly how it worked. Kanye built
Speaker 3: up the material over years for the for that what
Speaker 3: ended up being uses.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: When he first came he called me. He called me
Speaker 3: and said, hey, I want to come over and play
Speaker 3: you my new album. Okay, It's like great. He came
Speaker 3: over and we listened to three hours of music yo
Speaker 3: with almost no vocals, like just yes, and it's like wow, cool,
Speaker 3: it's like off to a good start. What do you know?
Speaker 3: What are you thinking you're going to you know, make
Speaker 3: you think you'll finish next year or something. He's like,
Speaker 3: it's coming out in three weeks, where I said what
Speaker 3: it's like it made no sense. And then and I
Speaker 3: played on Black Sabbath. I said, you know, I have
Speaker 3: this Black Sabbath album that's done and mastered and that's
Speaker 3: not coming out in three weeks. That's coming out later
Speaker 3: than that. It's like this, this is what it sounds
Speaker 3: like when it's coming out in three weeks. And he said,
Speaker 3: I want you to help me finish it. I want
Speaker 3: it to be like, let's finish it. And it was
Speaker 3: a terrifying experience because I'd never worked on anything like that.
Speaker 3: I don't like to work on a deadline ever. Anyway,
Speaker 3: it's like I always feel like it. It sort of
Speaker 3: happens as it's supposed to happen. Some things happened very quickly,
Speaker 3: some things take a long time. ELL's first album probably
Speaker 3: took less than a month to record. And when I
Speaker 3: say less than a month, meaning a song a day
Speaker 3: that's on the album over the course of a month,
Speaker 3: you know what I'm saying. Not in the studio every
Speaker 3: day for a month, like I got a new track,
Speaker 3: let's go in on Thursday. That happening totally a month.
Speaker 3: Whereas the First beast With the First Beasties album was
Speaker 3: probably two years in the making, and it just took
Speaker 3: that long. It just took not every day again, it
Speaker 3: was like, I gotcha. It just takes a long time
Speaker 3: because the you're waiting for the ideas to come. It's
Speaker 3: like it's not pre written, we're writing it now.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: Most of the artists I work with, we don't go
Speaker 3: into the studio until it's mostly all written, so it's
Speaker 3: a different it's a different experience, and that could happen
Speaker 3: in a much shorter time.
Speaker 6: Wait, so did Kanye already have his verses written but
Speaker 6: they just weren't on on the tracks?
Speaker 3: No? No, Well, it wasn't even clear what the songs
Speaker 3: were going to sound like or what was going to
Speaker 3: be on the album. It was a very wide range
Speaker 3: of songs and it was super cool. It was cool.
Speaker 3: I've come to learn that's the way he works. This
Speaker 3: was I never worked like that before, so it was
Speaker 3: unusual to me. To him, it was standard in the past.
Speaker 3: When I've said he wrote you know, half of the
Speaker 3: lyrics on the last two days, that like I'm saying
Speaker 3: he doesn't care about it. That's not at all the case.
Speaker 3: It's his process is living with it. He's singing to
Speaker 3: himself internally all the time, and he doesn't like to commit.
Speaker 3: He doesn't commit it down until it's going to stay
Speaker 3: because otherwise it's going to change. So he doesn't like
Speaker 3: if he would have done if he would have played
Speaker 3: me songs with vocals done, the album already would have
Speaker 3: been out right in the way he works.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was going to say, I remember whatever day
Speaker 2: that Yeesues came out, I remember texting you maybe like
Speaker 2: three days before, just on some okay, is it going
Speaker 2: to happen or not? Because I think they had a
Speaker 2: pushback date or whatever. There was like a day that
Speaker 2: I was supposed to come out and it didn't, and
Speaker 2: you were like, we're literally in the middle of trying to.
Speaker 1: Wrap up right now.
Speaker 2: And I was like, wait a minute, if you're in
Speaker 2: the middle trapping like doing it right now, then is
Speaker 2: the record pressed up? And like I'm thinking in terms
Speaker 2: of the old system where you had to turn it
Speaker 2: in three months ahead of time, factory all those things,
Speaker 2: and literally, well even with Pablo, you guys were still
Speaker 2: editing and changing it. And next thing I knew I
Speaker 2: had three different versions of the Pablo record because he
Speaker 2: just kept changing over again.
Speaker 3: I remember when we finished Yesus and it came out
Speaker 3: about a week later. A week or two later, kind
Speaker 3: of came to the studio in Malibu and just we
Speaker 3: just started talking about what do you think's next, Like
Speaker 3: what do you think the next one's going to be like?
Speaker 3: And he was kind of excited to at least start
Speaker 3: marching in a direction, and we just started brainstorming and
Speaker 3: we had an idea then that actually ended up it
Speaker 3: ended up not being so much what not so much
Speaker 3: what Pablo's like, but it has come around to that eventually.
Speaker 3: But the but after we had a similar conversation the end.
Speaker 3: When Pablo got delivered, I was in Hawaii and I
Speaker 3: remember getting you know, new versions of the album every
Speaker 3: day to listen to and give my notes. And I
Speaker 3: was giving notes every day. It's like I just listened.
Speaker 3: I would drive up and down the road here in
Speaker 3: Kawhi and listen and like, Okay, this is you know,
Speaker 3: this is working. Let's remix this, Let's try this, and
Speaker 3: whatever notes, you know, anything that I could add to
Speaker 3: help make it better. And then I talked to Kanye again,
Speaker 3: like it was now ritual a couple of weeks after
Speaker 3: the record comes out and and I say, oh, so
Speaker 3: what are you thinking about? What are you what are
Speaker 3: you working on? He's like, I'm working on this mix
Speaker 3: on so and so. It's one of the songs on Pablo.
Speaker 3: It's like, that's out. What are you talking about. He's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's out, but I'm not done yet, like really, like
Speaker 3: I it just like blew my mind. The conversation blew
Speaker 3: my mind because up until well yeah, in my over
Speaker 3: the course of my life. Once it came out, that
Speaker 3: was it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So to just that his ability to see passworal
Speaker 3: just because that's the way it always is. That means
Speaker 3: the way it is. No, it's like, if I want
Speaker 3: to change it, I'll change it, and I'll change as
Speaker 3: many times as I want. It's like, it's incredible, blew
Speaker 3: my mind. Loved it.
Speaker 2: Wow to me hearing hearing the Yesus record, and you know,
Speaker 2: I admit that I'd consume most of my music now
Speaker 2: via my iPhone and my computer, not in the same
Speaker 2: way that I would have, you know, twenty years ago,
Speaker 2: like put it in the stereoptics and yeah, that sort
Speaker 2: of thing. So first I was, I was the mix
Speaker 2: was just really harsh to me. And then once I
Speaker 2: heard it in Madison Square Garden with no drums, I mean,
Speaker 2: the thing was like, drums is almost non existent on
Speaker 2: this record. And then I realized that, oh wow, this
Speaker 2: album was made for stadiums and datum is only when
Speaker 2: you guys are working in the studio are you blasting
Speaker 2: the music at the highest levels possible? Like is he
Speaker 2: violating the don't kill your ears in the studio thing,
Speaker 2: or because I was taught like when you're in the studio,
Speaker 2: you're supposed to have soft volumes, so that way you
Speaker 2: don't kill your ears when you're mixing. But I know,
Speaker 2: like rappers, not to peg him as quote rappers, but
Speaker 2: I know that we you know, want to hear that
Speaker 2: shit loud and you know, hit the OX button now
Speaker 2: like that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: But uh, we listen. We listen at realistic levels. So
Speaker 3: in other words, if the thing we're making is meant
Speaker 3: to be heard loud, we listen to it loud. And
Speaker 3: we don't have giant speakers. We just use regular you know,
Speaker 3: like the monitors that would sit on the desk. We
Speaker 3: don't use big giant monitors. Okay, Kanye uses some some
Speaker 3: big ones with with that are much louder than the
Speaker 3: ones that we have in the studio that I always
Speaker 3: request it to be turned down because too much for me.
Speaker 2: I see you're tenure for a while, you were president
Speaker 2: of Columbia records. Why did you decide to take a
Speaker 2: desk job and why, I mean, how how was the
Speaker 2: experience for that that that tenure as president of Columbia.
Speaker 3: Uh, it was not a desk job, which is why
Speaker 3: I entertained. And my thought was the thing that I
Speaker 3: do on records has has very little to do with music.
Speaker 3: It's like my style of production. It would it would
Speaker 3: work regardless of whether it was music. It's like a
Speaker 3: way to look at things. It's a recontextualization of what
Speaker 3: we're working on and solving problems. I happened to do
Speaker 3: it mostly in music because that's just how it ended
Speaker 3: up upright, But the idea was to apply the same
Speaker 3: like what would it be like to produce a record company?
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 3: And there were other people to do the desk work,
Speaker 3: and this was to be more of a helping curate
Speaker 3: the best artists, helping the artists make the best records
Speaker 3: that they can. Basically the same thing that I do,
Speaker 3: except on a bigger scale. And at the time we
Speaker 3: by the time right till the end there, Columbia Records
Speaker 3: went from sort of a not great roster to maybe
Speaker 3: the best roster in the business at that moment in time.
Speaker 3: The corporate politics of it were not something that suited
Speaker 3: who I am, and I didn't engage. So basically it'd
Speaker 3: be like if you're running for a off for office
Speaker 3: and you're fighting, You're in a debate with someone who's
Speaker 3: screaming at you and lying and cursing. I'm not doing that.
Speaker 3: So ultimately the situation worked in a way where it
Speaker 3: wasn't really good. It could have been great, and it
Speaker 3: creatively was great, but had the politics not come into it,
Speaker 3: I think would still be doing it.
Speaker 2: And will you ever establish a label? Well, I don't
Speaker 2: know there's a need to establish a label in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Well whatever the twenty twenty version of starting a deaf
Speaker 2: Jam or a Death American or Colombia, will you ever
Speaker 2: dive in that pool again? Are you fine with the
Speaker 2: zone that you're in right now?
Speaker 3: If there are any acts that I want to work
Speaker 3: with which are few and far between, that I want
Speaker 3: to sign, then I have a relationship with Universal where
Speaker 3: I can sign an act and it'll be on American
Speaker 3: and it'll come out and I don't have to have
Speaker 3: a staff. It's like they do the record company part
Speaker 3: and I could be the creative partner, and that feels
Speaker 3: about right. I mean, if there was a reason to
Speaker 3: reinvent the label or help them get better, I'd be
Speaker 3: open to discussing. It's like I like making I like
Speaker 3: the challenge of making something good, whatever it is, like
Speaker 3: figuring out how do we make this better?
Speaker 1: I always wanted to ask you about sir mix a
Speaker 1: Lot Man, what led you, buddy? Yeah, shout my buddy
Speaker 1: Dan Charnis who.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 4: And he brought up a real We had him on
Speaker 4: the show like when we first started, like a couple
Speaker 4: of years back, and he brought up a really interesting
Speaker 4: thing I never really noticed about you of like, he
Speaker 4: noticed you kind of tend to go for kind of
Speaker 4: nasally EMCs like ad Rod Mix a Lot, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean, They have that kind of similar tone.
Speaker 4: So I was scurious to know, like, what how did
Speaker 4: you find out about Mix a Lot and what led
Speaker 4: to you sign to him?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 3: Loved the record Posse on Broadway?
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, well it was your record. No, well, no
Speaker 1: that I know this. This is all I'm saying.
Speaker 2: And I'm so glad you brought this up, Fante, How
Speaker 2: did you I never as a Philadelphian, I feel guilty
Speaker 2: for not mentioning what your relationship to PSK was And
Speaker 2: by the transit of Vaxiom, how did you feel about
Speaker 2: the way the entire West Coast sort of ate up
Speaker 2: that particular style because that was with Sir mix a
Speaker 2: lot that was especially with the first n w A record.
Speaker 1: Every song was.
Speaker 2: Like it was practically the West Coast, Like, were you
Speaker 2: at all aware of the blueprint that license to ill
Speaker 2: gave to the entire coast?
Speaker 3: Not really, I think, probably too close to to see.
Speaker 3: I also, you know, I come to realize later that
Speaker 3: Brass Monkey, like there was no such thing as Miami
Speaker 3: Base before Brass Monkey. So it's like it it led
Speaker 3: to a lot of different It had different tentacles that
Speaker 3: inspired people in different ways, No, no.
Speaker 1: Doubt, man.
Speaker 4: So it mixed a lot. How you like pasta on Broadway?
Speaker 4: And then how'd you go about it?
Speaker 3: And I just reached out to him and said, hey,
Speaker 3: if there's ever an opportunity to work together, I would
Speaker 3: love to do it, and then ended up working out.
Speaker 3: He's like, well, I'm on my own label. I don't
Speaker 3: really want to do that now. But and then eventually
Speaker 3: he came around, He's like, Yep, I think I'm ready
Speaker 3: to do this. Let's do this by Baby American? Was
Speaker 3: that on American? Yes?
Speaker 1: Oh okay, that was on That was on a mac
Speaker 1: Daddy album. Okay, and I and.
Speaker 3: I can't remember. I've heard mix a lot say that
Speaker 3: I changed the tempo of it drastically in a way
Speaker 3: that he loves, but like that I heard it differently
Speaker 3: than he heard it. I don't really remember that, but
Speaker 3: that I've heard him say.
Speaker 1: That, you're saying that you physically slowed it down.
Speaker 3: I think I sped it up. They sped it up,
Speaker 3: but I'm not sure. I honestly I don't remember it
Speaker 3: at all. He would, he would know better than I.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say.
Speaker 4: Just back on your American stage, there was a record
Speaker 4: you signed that was. It really took me by surprise
Speaker 4: that you signed them, because it was unlike anything that
Speaker 4: you would ever sign or work with before.
Speaker 1: Uh, the record the nots were ultimate. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you remember American.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was. That was a Dan Charnas signing. That
Speaker 3: was a.
Speaker 1: Ship and I forgot yep. Of course Bad Lad too.
Speaker 1: Is that dance as well?
Speaker 3: I think so?
Speaker 1: Damn yes, Okay, I totally forgot about this too.
Speaker 4: So with your A and RS, you just pretty much
Speaker 4: let them kind of do them. Just like if y'all
Speaker 4: like it, y'all believe in it, I'll fuck with it, Like,
Speaker 4: what was your role.
Speaker 1: In it was?
Speaker 3: It was a combination. It's like if they were really passionate,
Speaker 3: either I had to like it too. Or if they
Speaker 3: were really passionate, it's like this is the one. The
Speaker 3: whole idea of having more A and R people was
Speaker 3: not just find stuff for me. It was like if
Speaker 3: someone really was in love with something, then it was
Speaker 3: exciting to see what could happen. And it worked out
Speaker 3: in the case of the if you like those records
Speaker 3: that Dan signed, and if you liked the Black Crows
Speaker 3: that George signed, then it worked.
Speaker 2: I got one more music question before I ask you
Speaker 2: my last question, because we could be twelve hours working. Well,
Speaker 2: I know that you produced, and I'm a big fan
Speaker 2: of the Strokes. I know that you worked on the
Speaker 2: New Abnormal. First of all, did that title come up
Speaker 2: in very last minute? No, in relation to where we
Speaker 2: are now, because that sort of a apropos title did not.
Speaker 3: It just it was a title that Julian came up
Speaker 3: with the pre pre virus, and it's again just sort
Speaker 3: of the universe conspiring to make the art right.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming that they recorded out in Hawaii with with you.
Speaker 2: We recorded in Malibu, Okay, which I think is kind
Speaker 2: of different than all the studios that they previously recorded
Speaker 2: their music in. So how hard was it to get
Speaker 2: the well oiled machine of what the Strokes represented, especially
Speaker 2: in the early arts.
Speaker 1: And I know there was so much pressure on them to.
Speaker 2: Be the next big thing in quotes like how much
Speaker 2: of that was on their minds making this record because
Speaker 2: I can only assume that they took a ten year
Speaker 2: hiatus because of the pressure of living up to something
Speaker 2: that they couldn't sort of jump over, a hurdle that
Speaker 2: they couldn't match or whatever.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that the first record they put out
Speaker 3: was there considered their like breakthrough. That was the one,
Speaker 3: that's the one that sort of lit everything up. And yeah,
Speaker 3: the second album, the second album seems like it didn't
Speaker 3: change the world, but continued that and then since then
Speaker 3: it's been more hit and miss. So I don't think
Speaker 3: they felt a tremendous I don't I didn't get the
Speaker 3: sense that they felt a tremendous amount of pressure. I
Speaker 3: think they felt like, let's make another album because that's
Speaker 3: what we do, we haven't done it in a while,
Speaker 3: and hoping it would be good, you know, it's another
Speaker 3: like the Chili Peppers. They had asked me to produce
Speaker 3: an album eight or ten years ago, and they sent
Speaker 3: me demos and I listened to demos and I just
Speaker 3: I couldn't hear. I couldn't imagine how this, like, how
Speaker 3: to make something that interesting with what they sent like
Speaker 3: it didn't. It was just not a good starting point.
Speaker 2: And if that's a no from you, is does that
Speaker 2: filter to them that oh shit, this might be bad.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I just I just said I don't think this is
Speaker 3: right for me. I don't I don't see how to
Speaker 3: do this. And then on this album they sent me
Speaker 3: demos and these were probably the worst quality demos I've
Speaker 3: ever gotten from any artist, in that one track might
Speaker 3: be a thirty second voice note on the phone, like real,
Speaker 3: very very basic, like thumbnail sketches, and I listened to
Speaker 3: that these and it's like, Oh, this is going to
Speaker 3: be great. We got to make this. It's like I
Speaker 3: could feel what was there was inspiring. It's like you
Speaker 3: could listen to a twenty second clip and go, oh,
Speaker 3: if there was a song that sounded like this twenty
Speaker 3: second clip, I'd listen to that all day. Let's make that.
Speaker 2: So is that the beginning of working with you, Like
Speaker 2: one has to send the roughest sketch of a song
Speaker 2: before you can see the light to see how you
Speaker 2: can develop it. Or does everyone do the Kanye thing
Speaker 2: where it's damn near complete it and then you just
Speaker 2: you can add the finishing touches to it.
Speaker 3: There's no rule. There's no rule.
Speaker 2: It's like, have you ever built an album from the
Speaker 2: ground up? Like okay, songwriting.
Speaker 3: Less songwriting sessions, but like with the Chili Peppers, I
Speaker 3: would come to rehearsals pretty early on. We would probably
Speaker 3: go through they might they might have written one hundred
Speaker 3: songs for every album we did, and we would talk
Speaker 3: about him and narrow him down, and what was it
Speaker 3: about under the Bridge that attracted you? The way that
Speaker 3: it happened was just based on the lyric. It was
Speaker 3: a lyric that I found in Anthony's book of poetry.
Speaker 3: And I asked him what song is this and he said,
Speaker 3: it's not really chili pepper song. That's more of a
Speaker 3: like personal thing, more of a poem. And I said, well,
Speaker 3: how would you sing it if you were to sing it?
Speaker 3: And he sang it for me. He's like He's said,
Speaker 3: it's like it's a ballad, it's not. It's not a
Speaker 3: Chili Peppers thing, and and he sang it to me
Speaker 3: and I say, it's really beautiful. And people like the
Speaker 3: Chili Peppers not necessarily because you're a funk band with
Speaker 3: rap lyrics. People like the Chili Peppers because they like
Speaker 3: the music you four guys make. And if this is
Speaker 3: an example of something good that you make, I think
Speaker 3: I think people will accept that. It's like, that's you
Speaker 3: don't have to put such a limitation on what the
Speaker 3: band is. It's like, it's about the band, is about
Speaker 3: the people in it. What's so great about the Beatles?
Speaker 3: If you listen to their early records, in their late records,
Speaker 3: they don't sound like the same band. And that's just
Speaker 3: in seven years that arc.
Speaker 2: Is there an act that you never with the exception
Speaker 2: of Bill Withers and I know the stories of you
Speaker 2: pursuing them, Is there an act that you would have
Speaker 2: liked to have worked with it you never got a
Speaker 2: chance to live alive or not alive, or disbanded or
Speaker 2: not disbanded.
Speaker 3: Well, obviously Beatles or led Zeppelin or any of the like.
Speaker 2: Has McCartney ever approached you about producing a record or
Speaker 2: fish Bone or you.
Speaker 3: Know, yeah, I met with McCartney and talked about making
Speaker 3: something has not yet happened, but you never know.
Speaker 1: I would be interested to see how that works.
Speaker 6: What made you settle down into the podcast world and
Speaker 6: was it the allure of doing it with Malcolm Gladwell
Speaker 6: and hitlerm or like why do you?
Speaker 5: Why is that now another part of your Wait?
Speaker 2: Can I give a small preface for this question? So
Speaker 2: I did your very first podcast?
Speaker 3: Correct?
Speaker 1: Was that something like that?
Speaker 3: One of the one of the.
Speaker 5: Preson is like the pilot?
Speaker 1: But yeah, maria'rer in there, Okay.
Speaker 2: I literally had no idea what I was walking into
Speaker 2: because you know, sometimes my business being just a little
Speaker 2: bit yanky. So I was I was on my way
Speaker 2: to the studio thinking I was doing a QLs episode
Speaker 2: because it was the same studio wherever we interviewed Heather
Speaker 2: Hunter or that jazz studio that Steve recommended. I got
Speaker 2: there and I was like, oh shit, I'm here to
Speaker 2: do a QLs episode with Malcolm Gladwell. And then I
Speaker 2: was like, wait, where's where's Laiah and everyone at? And
Speaker 2: then I was like wait, Rick Rubin you're on this
Speaker 2: episode two and I.
Speaker 1: Just winged it in.
Speaker 2: About twenty minutes into it, I realized, oh, I'm here.
Speaker 1: I got to read my emails better. I'm here to
Speaker 1: do That's.
Speaker 6: The interview you got to prepare for right in me
Speaker 6: here like be an interviewed by at least those two.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I fly out the seat.
Speaker 2: You know, we're just freestyling a podcast show and having
Speaker 2: no clue what I'm there for and just getting lucky.
Speaker 2: So when I did their episode, I literally went to
Speaker 2: that building thinking it's a Malcolm Gladwell episode A Quest
Speaker 2: Loove Supreme. And then when I saw Rick Rubin's face
Speaker 2: on the television thing because he did it by monitor,
Speaker 2: I was hella confused.
Speaker 1: I was like, wait a minute, what am I doing here?
Speaker 1: I had to run in the other room and like
Speaker 1: call it, wait, what am I doing? You're doing someone's fun.
Speaker 1: I didn't do this, so, but.
Speaker 5: Yeah, talk about why you even chose to put that.
Speaker 3: Into I was friendly with Malcolm and I loved his podcast,
Speaker 3: Revisionist History, and he told me he had an idea
Speaker 3: to do a new podcast around music and asked if
Speaker 3: I would be interested in being involved. And I thought
Speaker 3: I'm a fan of his work. Be fun. It's like, dude,
Speaker 3: something with Malcolm I wouldn't have normally. I probably wouldn't
Speaker 3: have chosen to do a music podcast on my own
Speaker 3: at that time, just because I feel like talk about
Speaker 3: music most of the time in my normal life. It's
Speaker 3: almost like the podcast would be to talk about something
Speaker 3: else that I'm interested in. I don't even know what
Speaker 3: that would be like. There are a lot of things.
Speaker 3: It's hard to say. I never thought about it, but
Speaker 3: this was more his invitation made it seem like, Oh,
Speaker 3: that'd be fun. I love what he does, so maybe
Speaker 3: I'll learn something about podcasting doing something with him.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it seems like y'all don't ever have to worry
Speaker 6: about guests. So I was I was kind of cramming,
Speaker 6: and I was listening.
Speaker 1: To Andre episode.
Speaker 6: I was just about to say, like, yeah, that was
Speaker 6: like say, especially.
Speaker 5: When y'all talked about like beyond moments.
Speaker 6: We were had made a note about that and the
Speaker 6: moments that are just beyond, and you were talking about
Speaker 6: how just these moments in your life where it's like
Speaker 6: if you did not do one thing, these other things
Speaker 6: wouldn't happened, Like if you would have stayed in Chicago.
Speaker 5: Chicago, right, bab we were listening together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we we have a lot of mutual friends in common.
Speaker 2: So just hearing of your evolution, your spiritual evolution, your
Speaker 2: physical evolution. You know, you've been definitely kind of a
Speaker 2: life goal mission for me at least where you are
Speaker 2: with your life and everything, like what's your daily routine
Speaker 2: and I know like surfings played.
Speaker 1: A part of it and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: In Kawai. Now, I've been doing a ninety minute walk
Speaker 3: every morning on the beach barefoot, a lot of sun
Speaker 3: and listening to podcasts that ninety minutes. That's where I
Speaker 3: listen to you. If I listen to one of your pieces,
Speaker 3: it'll be while I'm walking on the beach. And that's
Speaker 3: the very first thing every day, and I get that
Speaker 3: out of the way and then I can start focusing
Speaker 3: on work or whatever else there is to do for
Speaker 3: the rest of the day. But I feel like having
Speaker 3: that right when I wake up, because if I wait,
Speaker 3: if I wait an hour, I won't do it.
Speaker 1: Facts, that's me.
Speaker 3: And if I wait an hour, not only will I
Speaker 3: won't do it, I'll eat.
Speaker 1: You do something, Yeah, you do some funds I'll.
Speaker 3: Definitely eat because if I'm sitting around and I'm hungry,
Speaker 3: if I'm walking for ninety minutes, I'm not thinking about
Speaker 3: food because I'm involved in the podcast or book on
Speaker 3: tape and I'm walking and enjoying myself and my mind
Speaker 3: is completely occupied because I'm very you know, I listen
Speaker 3: to things that I'm interested in and learn stuff, and
Speaker 3: it's great. I look forward to it. Every day. I
Speaker 3: feel like I run out of time, you know, Like
Speaker 3: I listened in the car on the way I listen
Speaker 3: on the beach walk, I listen on the way back,
Speaker 3: and then usually I have stuff to do to start
Speaker 3: my day and it's like put it. But I have
Speaker 3: so much more research to do, I have so many
Speaker 3: more things to listen to, and I run out of time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. What has quarantine been like for you? Rick?
Speaker 4: What is what changes quarantine like? Just kind of how
Speaker 4: we're in quarantine now and kind of be in lockdown.
Speaker 4: What has that been like for you?
Speaker 3: It hasn't changed so much other than the fact that
Speaker 3: we're in Kawhi because normally we wouldn't normally be in
Speaker 3: Kawhi now, we'd be in Malibu. But because Malibu is
Speaker 3: locked down. Kauhi is lockdown too. We were here in
Speaker 3: over the holidays and we were going back to start.
Speaker 3: I was going back to start new Avitt Brothers album
Speaker 3: first week of March, and then I got a call
Speaker 3: days before saying, hey, stuff's getting sketchy. We're thinking maybe
Speaker 3: we should just stay home. And it's like, perfect, I'm
Speaker 3: staying here. You guys stay home. Let's you know, let's
Speaker 3: wait a minute and figure out what's happening. And that
Speaker 3: leads us to today.
Speaker 1: How severe is it in Hawaii right now?
Speaker 3: As far as there are no cases on the island,
Speaker 3: which is unbelievable, there's no There are seven islands of
Speaker 3: Kawaii there, you know, half hour flight apart, but this yeah,
Speaker 3: this one has none.
Speaker 5: And Kawaii has like a lower population.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's very few people and they're far apart, and
Speaker 3: it's a great place to be on quarantine. Again. We
Speaker 3: if we weren't here, I don't think we would have
Speaker 3: come here for it, But the fact that we were
Speaker 3: here and the opportunity arose seemed like a good choice.
Speaker 3: The universe again was smiling on us.
Speaker 2: These two are those those dogs I saw you once
Speaker 2: with the dogs with the mop.
Speaker 3: Heads I have won. His name is Champa. I had
Speaker 3: two before him named The current dog's name is Yellow.
Speaker 3: The two prior where Champa and Monday. Chump and Monday
Speaker 3: passed away at eighteen nineteen years old. And now Champa
Speaker 3: is Monday's brother, brother's son. I think so in the family,
Speaker 3: and he's probably twelve now.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a pack of him, I could have sworn.
Speaker 1: I seen like a family of them. I had you before,
Speaker 1: and now I have one.
Speaker 2: I saw one and then the other one. The other
Speaker 2: would follow wherever one would go, Okay, I remember that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I want to know, man, do you still when you're
Speaker 4: working out your ideas? Are you like still making tracks
Speaker 4: or does it start on an instrument?
Speaker 1: How do you flesh out the ideas that you may have.
Speaker 3: It really depends. I don't. I don't do it for
Speaker 3: the sake of doing it. So it's more like if
Speaker 3: there's a reason to make something, if there's a from
Speaker 3: working on a project that needs a piece of music
Speaker 3: that needs to start with me, which I'd prefer not
Speaker 3: to do. I like. I like elaborating. I like hearing
Speaker 3: something and finding pieces that I could make into the
Speaker 3: thing that I want to make as opposed to starting
Speaker 3: from scratch. I have to start from scratch. I can,
Speaker 3: but it's not my favorite thing to do. And if
Speaker 3: it is, I'll either make a beat on a drum machine,
Speaker 3: or I'll start with a sample and then build up
Speaker 3: a track around the sample and then either keep the
Speaker 3: sample in, remove the sample, mess with the sample.
Speaker 4: Yeah, are you using like Ableton or like what software?
Speaker 3: We usually do everything in pro Tools, although it's still
Speaker 3: you know, just still out of you know, I don't
Speaker 3: know any better and I don't know how to run
Speaker 3: pro Tools. I don't really I'm not a technical person
Speaker 3: at all. I just can say I like it, like this,
Speaker 3: let's change this beat.
Speaker 2: When you take on a project, do you stay on
Speaker 2: that project or are you able to hop from project
Speaker 2: to project? Like Okay, I'm gonna work with Chili Peppers
Speaker 2: at the studio on Monday and then run to do
Speaker 2: the Dixie Chicks next week over there and blah blah blah,
Speaker 2: like or are you stay? I do you?
Speaker 1: You hire me?
Speaker 2: And we If it's over three months, then we're in trouble,
Speaker 2: Like how do you schedule.
Speaker 3: The first one? Because it's I don't think it's possible
Speaker 3: to say, we're going to put three months on hold,
Speaker 3: and in that three months, we're going to make the
Speaker 3: best album the world has ever heard. I don't. I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't believe in that. I don't believe it's possible.
Speaker 3: Maybe some people can do it, I don't know. I
Speaker 3: don't know how that works. So every project has its
Speaker 3: own rhythm, and as I said, sometimes it happens very quickly.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it takes a long time, and I don't I
Speaker 3: try not to do it as much as possible based
Speaker 3: on my schedule. It's always about the artist schedule. And
Speaker 3: when I say the artist schedule, I don't mean the
Speaker 3: artist schedule of when they want to go on vacation.
Speaker 3: I mean the artist schedule of when the idea is hot,
Speaker 3: you know, when the songs are ready. We have to
Speaker 3: find a way that, when the moment is right to
Speaker 3: make it, that we can make it. And I can
Speaker 3: think of very few times in my life where it
Speaker 3: hasn't worked out where at a time I might have
Speaker 3: been making five albums at the same time. Back in
Speaker 3: the days when I would have to go from studio
Speaker 3: to studio, it might be we're doing overdubs with this
Speaker 3: artist and I'm working on just vocals with another artist
Speaker 3: on a different album at at the same time. Maybe
Speaker 3: I do noon to noon to three with one artist
Speaker 3: and three to six with another artist that way, or
Speaker 3: maybe I'm doing pre production with one and working on
Speaker 3: mixing with another, And it could be as many as
Speaker 3: four or five or six going on same time. It's
Speaker 3: not unusual because some of them could go on for years,
Speaker 3: you know, do you I work with engineers and each project.
Speaker 3: Usually I try to have an engineer dedicated to that
Speaker 3: particular project, like a tag team partner. So and also
Speaker 3: I like to work like in the old days, I
Speaker 3: used to work all night, drive home as the sun
Speaker 3: was coming up. Now I'm on an early schedule, so
Speaker 3: I like to have the sessions start at like noon
Speaker 3: or one, and I like to be done by six.
Speaker 3: Now that doesn't mean like on the Strokes album which
Speaker 3: we just you know, made recently, just came out three
Speaker 3: weeks ago or something, I would come from noon to six,
Speaker 3: and then I would leave a list, a to do list,
Speaker 3: so the band could go on working as late as
Speaker 3: midnight if they you know, they band could work as
Speaker 3: long as they want and have a list of things
Speaker 3: to do. In addition to anything that they would want
Speaker 3: to try on their own, and then the next morning
Speaker 3: I would come in, we would review what happened the
Speaker 3: night before, and then we would start on the day's work.
Speaker 3: I gotta try it, yeah, And I've also by making
Speaker 3: a lot of our albums, I've come to realize when
Speaker 3: my voice is particularly helpful in the process, and sometimes
Speaker 3: it's in pre production, it means a lot. In the
Speaker 3: basic track, it means a lot. Getting the vocals, it
Speaker 3: means a lot. But many of the other times, during overdubs,
Speaker 3: during guitar solos, I usually if I trust the artist,
Speaker 3: I let them do it, and then I might come in,
Speaker 3: Like with Tom Morello, if we're doing on either a
Speaker 3: rage record or an Audio Slave record, He'll do solos
Speaker 3: on everything, and then I might come and say, you know,
Speaker 3: those are all great, and this one's not as good.
Speaker 3: We gotta and then maybe redo this, or if there's
Speaker 3: ever ones where it's like, let's work on this one
Speaker 3: together for some reason, if he can't crack the code
Speaker 3: on his own, then we'll do it together. But I
Speaker 3: don't like to hold an artist's hand. I don't like
Speaker 3: to ultimately, if the artist feels like they've done everything themselves.
Speaker 3: That's the best feeling for me. I don't want I
Speaker 3: don't want it to I don't want the process to
Speaker 3: be about me.
Speaker 1: Life lessons one and only life lessons.
Speaker 4: Rick Rubin, don't make it about you and walk the
Speaker 4: first thing in the mornings.
Speaker 5: I don't want the process to be.
Speaker 3: Ugly for you.
Speaker 2: See that's the one thing because you know who downstairs
Speaker 2: always says, See, Rick Rubin walks early in the morning,
Speaker 2: and you don't do it.
Speaker 1: So now I'm gonna have to wake my answer up
Speaker 1: at six in the morning.
Speaker 2: You wake up, your first thing is just doing because
Speaker 2: I'll create a bunch of excuses. I have to get
Speaker 2: up at six and walk. All right, thank you, Rick.
Speaker 2: I will now reach my goal of two twenty pounds.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna walk because Rick said, Because Rick said so.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Rick, dude, this is this has been what like
Speaker 1: four years in the making.
Speaker 6: Yes, exactly, Shout out today, Shout out today.
Speaker 3: I have a suggestion quest, which is every day for
Speaker 3: the next let's make it three weeks. When you go
Speaker 3: on your walk, just send me a message at the
Speaker 3: end saying I walked this along today, just a little
Speaker 3: check in like, Hey, I did this today.
Speaker 1: Accountability, I will do so. Yes, just about accountability.
Speaker 2: I'm about accountability, and I'm about integrity, life coach. Yes,
Speaker 2: about integrity. Two twenty is right around the bin. I'm
Speaker 2: ready for this shit.
Speaker 6: Thank you, and send a group text to all of
Speaker 6: us and we'll go Yeah, we finished ours too.
Speaker 1: You're going to be a sleep all right. So on
Speaker 1: behalf of uh Rick Rubin.
Speaker 2: Yes on, behalf of Sugar Steve On, pay bill by
Speaker 2: Vroon Tigelow and be great incomparable Rick Rubin. Four years
Speaker 2: We've been dying for this. My name is Qus Loved.
Speaker 2: This is plus Love Supreme. We will see you on
Speaker 2: the next around.
Speaker 10: Thank you Must Love Supreme.
Speaker 1: It's a production iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.