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