Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Rick Rubin

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Rick Rubin · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin, Pushkin. Just a quick note here. You can listen
0:32
Speaker 1: to all of the music mentioned in this episode on
0:34
Speaker 1: our playlist, which you can find a link to in
0:37
Speaker 1: the show notes for licensing reasons. Each time a song
0:40
Speaker 1: is referenced in this episode, you'll hear this sound effect.
0:46
Speaker 1: All right, enjoyed the episode. I first met Rick Rubin
0:50
Speaker 1: years ago at someone's house in Los Angeles. He's impossible
0:53
Speaker 1: to miss long white beard low soft voice, one of
0:57
Speaker 1: the great music producers of our time. He was there
1:00
Speaker 1: at the birth of hip hop. He produced Jay Z's
1:03
Speaker 1: ninety nine Problems. He did five Chili Peppers albums, produced
1:07
Speaker 1: Adele's twenty one, Tom Petty's Flowers. He resurrected Johnny Cash.
1:12
Speaker 1: That could go on. Then I met him again about
1:14
Speaker 1: a year ago because I'd been talking about doing a
1:16
Speaker 1: music podcast with my old friend Bruce Headlam, and I
1:19
Speaker 1: heard that Rick had been talking about doing a music
1:21
Speaker 1: show too, which is a bit like saying that Bruce
1:23
Speaker 1: and I have been thinking about starting a pickup basketball game.
1:26
Speaker 1: And then we heard that Lebron James had been thinking
1:28
Speaker 1: the exact same thing. I mean, whose pickup game are
1:31
Speaker 1: you going to join? The two short Canadians or lebron
1:35
Speaker 1: So I started going up to Rick's recording studio in
1:38
Speaker 1: Malibu whenever I was in La just to chat and
1:40
Speaker 1: listen to music. His place is called Shango Law, an oasis,
1:45
Speaker 1: one of the most famous recording studios in the country,
1:48
Speaker 1: built by Robbie Robertson in the band years ago. Bob
1:51
Speaker 1: Dylan recorded there and after him everyone, I mean everyone.
1:55
Speaker 1: There's a main building, a cottage all in white. There's
1:57
Speaker 1: another building that looks like a chapel, and there's Bob
2:00
Speaker 1: Dylan's old tour bus which has been retrofitted as a
2:03
Speaker 1: small studio, which is my favorite place at Shango Law,
2:07
Speaker 1: all on a shimmering hiltop with the sound of the
2:09
Speaker 1: ocean surf in the background. We started taping our conversations
2:13
Speaker 1: and Rick started calling in the musicians he knew, and
2:16
Speaker 1: Bruce started sitting down with his favorite artists. And now
2:19
Speaker 1: we have this show, a podcast about musicians and their music.
2:24
Speaker 1: Our pickup game has come to life. My name is
2:30
Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell. Welcome to Broken Record, a production of Pushkin Industries.
2:38
Speaker 1: Rick and I began recording the episode You're about to
2:41
Speaker 1: hear at Shango Law, not long ago, and I was
2:44
Speaker 1: going to go back up and finish talking to him
2:46
Speaker 1: when the Woolsey Fire started, one of the worst fires
2:49
Speaker 1: in La County history. It engulfed Malibu. As I'm recording this,
2:54
Speaker 1: thousands of acres of burned, countless homes are gone, an
2:58
Speaker 1: entire community lost. So I met Rick in Santa Monica
3:03
Speaker 1: instead the afternoon after Rick and his family fled the fire.
3:08
Speaker 1: Maybe just tell me about you yesterday. Woke up yesterday morning,
3:13
Speaker 1: was told that Malibu was going to be evacuated soon.
3:17
Speaker 1: So packed up the baby and left. Didn't really take anything,
3:20
Speaker 1: just took sort of what we were wearing, what we
3:23
Speaker 1: had on, a couple of t shirts, no stuff, and
3:28
Speaker 1: just left. What time did you leave? Nine thirty? And
3:32
Speaker 1: you say it took how many hours to get to
3:35
Speaker 1: It took a little over four hours to get Santa Monica.
3:37
Speaker 1: It's normally a twenty minute drive. And it was bumper
3:40
Speaker 1: to bumper parking lot like traffic the whole way. And
3:44
Speaker 1: did you when you were leaving, could you see the fires?
3:48
Speaker 1: You saw the smoke. Let me show you this picture.
3:51
Speaker 1: Let's see kind of give you a sense of it.
3:57
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, that has bananas it's insane. Look it
4:01
Speaker 1: looks fake, it looks photograph that looks like it looks
4:05
Speaker 1: like a nuclear bomb. So what do you know at
4:09
Speaker 1: this point? What do you know about your house and studio?
4:12
Speaker 1: I don't know much. I know there have been reports
4:16
Speaker 1: that the house is gone, but it's impossible to know
4:20
Speaker 1: because no one can get there. There's this map that
4:25
Speaker 1: the county put up of where things burned, but it's
4:28
Speaker 1: not so accurate. But that map shows that my house
4:32
Speaker 1: is gone, and that map shows that the studio is
4:35
Speaker 1: still surviving. There's a map on a website maintained by
4:39
Speaker 1: Ventura County. The purple colored parts are where the fire is,
4:44
Speaker 1: and if you zoom in right where Rick's house is,
4:46
Speaker 1: it's inside the purple area just and his studio is
4:51
Speaker 1: just outside the purple area. That's all he knew. I
4:55
Speaker 1: would have been a wreck. Rick isn't like that. This
5:00
Speaker 1: is I can't imagine being in your shoes. It's pretty strange.
5:04
Speaker 1: It's definitely, it's more strange than anything else. It's just
5:08
Speaker 1: I don't know what to make of it. Are you
5:10
Speaker 1: someone who's attached to your belongings? Not particularly? I mean
5:14
Speaker 1: I like the things I like, but I feel like,
5:19
Speaker 1: ultimately it's just stuff. Yeah, and most stuff is replaceable.
5:25
Speaker 1: In a way, it feels like a potential for a
5:29
Speaker 1: clean start. Yeah. When I moved from in town, I
5:35
Speaker 1: lived in a big, old Spanish house filled with antiques.
5:38
Speaker 1: And when I moved to Malibu, I moved to this
5:40
Speaker 1: very empty, zen house and that felt good. And this
5:43
Speaker 1: seems like an even more radical version of that, to
5:46
Speaker 1: where there's no house or stuff. You've gone back to
5:51
Speaker 1: the Oh my lord, we're traveling very light. Yeah. Have
5:55
Speaker 1: you talked to other people? Many? There are lots and
5:58
Speaker 1: lots of musicians in Malibu, many musicians, many friends, and
6:03
Speaker 1: and people are reacting differently. Some people are really hysterical,
6:07
Speaker 1: hysterically upset. Some people are concerned with losing specific things.
6:14
Speaker 1: But there's the reality of the situation. There isn't much
6:19
Speaker 1: to think about. Whatever energy I put into thinking about
6:23
Speaker 1: it won't change the situation. And I was thinking about it.
6:26
Speaker 1: Of all the you ask about the stuff, And when
6:30
Speaker 1: I was thinking about it last night, I got a
6:32
Speaker 1: little sad. When I was kind of envisioning walking through
6:36
Speaker 1: the house. The thing that made me saddest were the trees.
6:42
Speaker 1: The trees are these big beautiful, old trees that have
6:46
Speaker 1: been there for at least one hundred years, and you
6:51
Speaker 1: can always build a house, but the trees will never
6:55
Speaker 1: be those trees, And so much of the personality of
6:57
Speaker 1: the place for me was the setting of the trees.
7:01
Speaker 1: So in that way, I started thinking, Oh, it really
7:04
Speaker 1: is a loss because those trees will likely not be there.
7:09
Speaker 1: Returned to Malibu, I don't know, we'll see. This was
7:13
Speaker 1: going to be broken record brought to you from Shangolaw
7:16
Speaker 1: in beautiful Malibu, but now it's something else. So keep
7:20
Speaker 1: that in mind as you listen to the earlier part
7:22
Speaker 1: of our conversation. The part that follows it was recorded
7:27
Speaker 1: in a Malibu that doesn't exist anymore, at a little
7:30
Speaker 1: oasis that is no longer an oasis. The grass was green,
7:34
Speaker 1: the sky was blue, the trees were beautiful. We sat
7:37
Speaker 1: in the main studio at Shanglaw, me all jumpy and
7:40
Speaker 1: ramped up as always, Rick barefoot sitting cross legged on
7:45
Speaker 1: one of the couches in the central studio, talking softly
7:49
Speaker 1: like the og that he is a happier time back then.
7:55
Speaker 1: I had to ask about one of the Rick Ruben
7:56
Speaker 1: urban legends about the time he played the famous New
7:59
Speaker 1: York punk club CBGB's in high school with his band
8:03
Speaker 1: The Pricks. Did he or did he not have his
8:06
Speaker 1: dad dress up in a policeman's uniform and shut down
8:09
Speaker 1: the show because the Pricks were too extreme even for CBGB's.
8:14
Speaker 1: Is this true that? Do you really menu? It's possible?
8:17
Speaker 1: I honestly don't remember, but it's possible. And I remember
8:20
Speaker 1: even with the early days of the Beastie Boys, we
8:23
Speaker 1: would sort of manufacture an incident. Yeah, just exciting situations. Yeah, this,
8:35
Speaker 1: this is consistent with your understanding of your dad's personality
8:38
Speaker 1: that he would play along. He would do that. Okay,
8:41
Speaker 1: any any opportunity to perform as a policeman, we love that.
8:45
Speaker 1: Do you ever go back and listen to the music
8:47
Speaker 1: you played at that age? I do not. I haven't
8:50
Speaker 1: heard it in a long time. Yeah, what do you
8:52
Speaker 1: think you would? How do you think you would? I
8:54
Speaker 1: don't honestly listen back to music I've worked on at
8:57
Speaker 1: any point, really not so much. Why is it just
9:00
Speaker 1: kind of moving forward? Yeah? I rarely read things that. Yeah.
9:05
Speaker 1: I also think when you put a lot of time
9:07
Speaker 1: into something, you've already spent that time with it. It's
9:11
Speaker 1: like if you've spent a thousand hours on a book,
9:14
Speaker 1: you don't want to spend more time you've already done that, yea.
9:18
Speaker 1: So same with music. So we work on it for
9:20
Speaker 1: a long time and by the time it's done, it's done.
9:27
Speaker 1: Was there a point where you decided you would rather
9:31
Speaker 1: produce and make music than perform it. I was on
9:35
Speaker 1: tour with the Beastie Boys, the first Beastie Boy tour
9:38
Speaker 1: was opening for Madonna, which was Madonna's first tour, the Virgin.
9:41
Speaker 1: The Beastie Boys opened for Madonna. Hilarious, It's hilarious. There
9:45
Speaker 1: was a whole aspect of the Beastie Boys that were
9:47
Speaker 1: really influenced by Monty Python and Steve Martin, and there
9:51
Speaker 1: was definitely a outrageous, surreal comedy aspect to it, and
9:58
Speaker 1: being on the Madonna tour was sort of like that
10:01
Speaker 1: because the Beasties were sort of rowdy and dirty, and
10:06
Speaker 1: Madonna's audience were fourteen year old girl those twelve year
10:09
Speaker 1: old girls, so it was a really dicey It's like
10:13
Speaker 1: when Jimmy Hendrix opened for the Monkeys, you know, it's
10:16
Speaker 1: like it's a weird doesn't really work, so you would
10:21
Speaker 1: literally look at in the audience, and would you see
10:22
Speaker 1: a mixture of these kind of yeah, little girls and
10:26
Speaker 1: their moms mixed in with some Beastie fans, not so
10:30
Speaker 1: many Beasti fans, And we didn't even have We had
10:32
Speaker 1: very little, We didn't even have an album out yet.
10:34
Speaker 1: It was it was very early in the Beasti's career.
10:37
Speaker 1: We did the shows from the point of view of
10:40
Speaker 1: being the bad the bad guys. So in like pro
10:46
Speaker 1: wrestling world, you have good guys and bad guys, and
10:50
Speaker 1: the Beasties always sort of played the role of the
10:52
Speaker 1: bad guys, which wasn't completely understood by the audience. It
10:57
Speaker 1: was just, you know, there were a lot of booze,
10:59
Speaker 1: and it was all sort of an inside joke. Every
11:03
Speaker 1: everything to do with the Beastie Boys was essentially an
11:06
Speaker 1: inside joke, and we the lyrics to the songs were
11:09
Speaker 1: often things that just we either inside jokes or things
11:13
Speaker 1: that we found funny, but with no looking past a
11:18
Speaker 1: very small audience. How did you how did you meet them?
11:23
Speaker 1: Was this when you were in Nyu? I was at Nyu.
11:26
Speaker 1: I think Adam Yauk was going to barred. Adam Harvetz
11:30
Speaker 1: might have still been in high school I can't remember
11:33
Speaker 1: if Mike was still in school, but we met through
11:36
Speaker 1: punk rock circles. We were all into punk rock and
11:40
Speaker 1: there was a little teeny punk rock record store called
11:43
Speaker 1: Rat Cage Records, who actually put out the first Beastie Boys,
11:47
Speaker 1: maybe even the first two Beastie Boys singles, and I
11:51
Speaker 1: probably met them at the Rat Cage Store. Then there
11:55
Speaker 1: was a club called Nagrill on Second Avenue that was
11:58
Speaker 1: a reggae club and one night a week that had
12:02
Speaker 1: hip hop Night, and I remember meeting Mike d at
12:05
Speaker 1: that as well. What's fascinating to me about that era
12:08
Speaker 1: is the line between punk and hip hop is so porous.
12:17
Speaker 1: Is Yes and no. They were definitely two different scenes,
12:23
Speaker 1: but they were both bringing music back to a street level,
12:30
Speaker 1: so there was a crossover appreciation. But it was definitely
12:34
Speaker 1: two different worlds. Yeah, but you had a foot in both, absolutely,
12:39
Speaker 1: as did the Bcie Boys. That's what we really had
12:42
Speaker 1: in common was our punk rock roots and love of
12:46
Speaker 1: hip hop. When I was in high school in Long Island,
12:51
Speaker 1: there was a radio show called Mister Magic's Rap Attack
12:57
Speaker 1: on WHBI, but that was the only place that hip
13:00
Speaker 1: hop was on the radio. The kids who liked hip
13:04
Speaker 1: hop in my high school would record this show and
13:08
Speaker 1: listen to it on boombox all week, and I had
13:12
Speaker 1: friends in that circle, and I would listen to music
13:15
Speaker 1: with them, And then I was also listening to punk
13:18
Speaker 1: rock on my own, but there were no I was
13:20
Speaker 1: the only punk rocker in my high school. So in
13:24
Speaker 1: rap music I had some friends. In punk rock, I
13:26
Speaker 1: didn't really have friends. Yeah, again, because it was pre internet.
13:31
Speaker 1: If it was Internet time, i'd have friends all over
13:33
Speaker 1: the world who liked the things I like. But then
13:36
Speaker 1: it was really the people that you were around. So
13:39
Speaker 1: because of the community of hip hop, it took on
13:42
Speaker 1: a bigger role in my life. And it wasn't in
13:46
Speaker 1: those years unusual for white kids in New York to
13:51
Speaker 1: be going to hip hop shows or absolutely it was
13:53
Speaker 1: very unusual. So you would show up and I'd be
13:56
Speaker 1: the only white person and how did you did that?
14:00
Speaker 1: Did you like that? Did you do you notice? Did
14:03
Speaker 1: you really think about it? I went for the music,
14:06
Speaker 1: And while sometimes I went places where I felt like
14:10
Speaker 1: when I would walk in, I would feel like, hmm,
14:13
Speaker 1: I wonder if I belong here, But then as soon
14:16
Speaker 1: as the music would start, my relationship to the music
14:20
Speaker 1: and the rest of the audience relationship to the music
14:22
Speaker 1: was the same. So I felt camaraderie in terms of
14:28
Speaker 1: musical taste and fandom. But you what's interesting is that
14:33
Speaker 1: your career is defined by an indifference to boundaries, right.
14:40
Speaker 1: It's almost like you're completely uninterested in the kind of
14:44
Speaker 1: genres other people set up, And I'm just curious. Was
14:48
Speaker 1: that there from the very beginning? Yeah, music was always music,
14:51
Speaker 1: and I always liked a wide variety. I was like
14:54
Speaker 1: James Brown and the Talking Heads and Barry White, the Beatles.
15:01
Speaker 1: When you toured with the Beasties and Madonna. Did you
15:03
Speaker 1: like Madonna's music? It was probably poppy for my taste
15:13
Speaker 1: at that time. Yeah, Yeah, I tended to like more edgy,
15:19
Speaker 1: more edgy things like hip hop, punk, rock, heavy metal. Parenthetically,
15:24
Speaker 1: did you guys all hang out together? We did? Man,
15:29
Speaker 1: I wish I had it a fly on a wall
15:32
Speaker 1: for that. So you're like, how long did the two
15:36
Speaker 1: go on? I remember it being a summer. But oh
15:40
Speaker 1: but what I didn't get to in the story was
15:43
Speaker 1: I got an ear infection and had to stop had
15:46
Speaker 1: to stop touring. And if it wasn't for that, I
15:51
Speaker 1: probably would have kept doing it. But in reality it
15:54
Speaker 1: was I think it was sort of the universe stepping
15:57
Speaker 1: in saying, you know, you belong in the recording studio,
15:59
Speaker 1: and it felt right, like it felt more right for me.
16:03
Speaker 1: I was never a good traveler. I was better being
16:08
Speaker 1: in one place. You weren't but you on that tooy,
16:11
Speaker 1: you weren't playing. I was the DJ. Oh you were
16:13
Speaker 1: the DJ. Yeah? Oh I see, yeah, I was the
16:17
Speaker 1: DJ in the group. Yeah yeah, oh that's oh. I know.
16:20
Speaker 1: I had forgotten that fact. And we got to play.
16:22
Speaker 1: I mean, we played at Madison Square Guarden, we played
16:24
Speaker 1: at Radio City Musical. It was unbelievable. I mean for
16:27
Speaker 1: a kid growing up in New York getting to play
16:29
Speaker 1: in the places that you maybe twenty one, yeah, twenty
16:34
Speaker 1: twenty one, you're just out of NYU, still in NYU. Yeah,
16:39
Speaker 1: so maybe even younger. Yeah, in nineteen living in NYU dorm.
16:43
Speaker 1: Are you going to class? Are you? I didn't take
16:46
Speaker 1: any classes before three in the afternoon because I knew
16:49
Speaker 1: I wouldn't wake up. Yeah, how do you have time
16:51
Speaker 1: to take classes when you're are you out every night?
16:54
Speaker 1: Out every night? And I would go to these clubs
16:57
Speaker 1: like Nagrill and the Roxy and see what was going
17:00
Speaker 1: on there, and the records that were coming out didn't
17:04
Speaker 1: reflect hip hop. Hip Hop was a whole interactive culture
17:10
Speaker 1: and the DJ. The reason in the Deaf Jam logo
17:13
Speaker 1: the DJ is big is because the DJ was a
17:17
Speaker 1: key piece of the hip hop world, but the records
17:22
Speaker 1: at the time didn't reflect that. The records at the
17:25
Speaker 1: time were a band playing and a guy rapping. But
17:29
Speaker 1: if you went to a hip hop club, you saw
17:31
Speaker 1: a guy DJing and cutting up records and scratching and
17:36
Speaker 1: guys rapping and sort of the interaction between that was
17:40
Speaker 1: the version of the hip hop band was the DJ
17:42
Speaker 1: and the MC. So really the goal of making records
17:47
Speaker 1: was more almost like a documentarian of like, I'd go
17:50
Speaker 1: to these clubs, I'd hear this incredible music. Then I
17:53
Speaker 1: would buy the records and they wouldn't be anything like it.
17:57
Speaker 1: And just from the fan point of view of wanting
18:00
Speaker 1: records that sounded like what I heard at the club,
18:04
Speaker 1: I started making them. What in your mind, is that
18:07
Speaker 1: is the first great true hip hop record or one
18:13
Speaker 1: of the first Yeah, I would say run DMC, Sucker MCS,
18:20
Speaker 1: that's probably the best hip hop record. They were rap
18:26
Speaker 1: records before that, but that was maybe the first hip
18:29
Speaker 1: hop record you know, in that era, I had a
18:33
Speaker 1: jade tree in my dorm room which I which I dubbed,
18:37
Speaker 1: which I named run DM Tree. Wow, that's just how
18:41
Speaker 1: that's how far from the mainstream we were in in
18:44
Speaker 1: Toronto in nineteen eighty the U and I had all
18:48
Speaker 1: I rewrote the lyrics of the song to be all
18:50
Speaker 1: about my jade tree. J trees are lucky. You're supposed
18:55
Speaker 1: to be lucky. Really. Yeah, we'll be back with more
18:58
Speaker 1: broken record after this. If we were to make a
19:06
Speaker 1: musical biography of Rick Rubin in which we list all
19:10
Speaker 1: of the transformative songs music you worked on over the
19:14
Speaker 1: course of your life, tell me the next one, what's
19:17
Speaker 1: the next song? That kind of opens up your sense
19:21
Speaker 1: of what's possible musically as a listener. As a listener
19:25
Speaker 1: and also as a producer, I can say another one
19:28
Speaker 1: that was meaningful was before there was a group called
19:31
Speaker 1: Public Enemy. Chuck d had a radio show and the
19:37
Speaker 1: theme song from his radio show was called Public Enemy
19:41
Speaker 1: Number one, and that's what ended up being what the
19:45
Speaker 1: band was based on. But when we first heard that
19:48
Speaker 1: little minute long promo for his radio show, something that
19:52
Speaker 1: didn't sound like anything else. I think another key piece
19:58
Speaker 1: in the story of the music that we were making
19:59
Speaker 1: at the time was walked this way. Was it really
20:03
Speaker 1: bridged a gap for people who didn't understand hip hop,
20:06
Speaker 1: and that was really the purpose of doing it. People
20:09
Speaker 1: at the time didn't think hip hop was even music,
20:13
Speaker 1: and the idea was if we could find a song
20:16
Speaker 1: that was familiar, that was very close to hip hop
20:20
Speaker 1: and could be given a hip hop treatment, that it
20:24
Speaker 1: would help people bridge the gap. But what was it
20:27
Speaker 1: about that particular song by Aerosmith that made you think
20:30
Speaker 1: it was appropriate for this kind of treatment. It's lyrically
20:35
Speaker 1: it's very close to a rap record already. You know,
20:38
Speaker 1: if you listen to the original Aerosmith version, the way
20:42
Speaker 1: Steven does the vocals, it's essentially a rap record. And
20:47
Speaker 1: that was the key. It was like, Okay, this is
20:50
Speaker 1: music that people are familiar with, that they grew up liking,
20:54
Speaker 1: and now here's this other music that's similar to it,
20:57
Speaker 1: but they don't get it at all. If we could
21:00
Speaker 1: just point to this connection, maybe the lights will go off.
21:07
Speaker 1: What does it mean when you say that it's essentially
21:11
Speaker 1: a hip hop record in a way lyrically what does
21:14
Speaker 1: that mean? The way the song works is built on
21:19
Speaker 1: a rhyme scheme and phrasing more than melody. Most hip
21:24
Speaker 1: hop is based on a rhyme scheme more than melody.
21:28
Speaker 1: That's really the big change is like the difference between
21:32
Speaker 1: singing and rapping is rapping is words in a rhythm
21:41
Speaker 1: that are catchy because of the rhythm, whereas most music
21:48
Speaker 1: up until rapping, it's based on the melody. And that's
21:53
Speaker 1: really the difference. Yeah, and the Aerosmith song is rooted
21:57
Speaker 1: in the phrasing. Sometimes drawing those connections are the things
22:04
Speaker 1: that help an audience understand what's happening. Is your photo?
22:08
Speaker 1: Can you play it just a little bit of the original?
22:11
Speaker 1: I want to kind of hear that what you're talking about. Okay,
22:15
Speaker 1: so this is the Aerosmith version. Yeah, that much. You'd
22:26
Speaker 1: hear in every hip hop club what I just played
22:28
Speaker 1: you that that was an accepted norm, norm in the
22:34
Speaker 1: vocabulary of hip hop. Yeah, nobody knew there was a
22:37
Speaker 1: song after that in hip hop. Yeah, all they knew
22:40
Speaker 1: was just that much. Just that much. So if you
22:51
Speaker 1: had two turntables, you would play that much on one
22:54
Speaker 1: turntable and you'd get the second one ready in the
22:57
Speaker 1: same spot, and you would continue just that much, and
23:01
Speaker 1: then a rapper would rap over the top, and they
23:04
Speaker 1: would make up freestyle raps of what they wanted, usually bragging.
23:08
Speaker 1: So that's what most rap was at that time. So
23:11
Speaker 1: the idea of asking run DMC to learn the words
23:16
Speaker 1: to an Aerosmith song was a very foreign concept at
23:20
Speaker 1: the time. There had been no cover songs done in
23:23
Speaker 1: the hip hop world, and they thought it was a
23:26
Speaker 1: terrible idea, and they thought it was like country lyrics.
23:29
Speaker 1: I remember them thinking, it's like, these are terrible lyrics.
23:35
Speaker 1: And how long did it take for them to come
23:37
Speaker 1: around after the Recker came out. I don't know that
23:41
Speaker 1: they ever came around until it was really successful. Like
23:45
Speaker 1: I can remember even when we recorded the vocals, they
23:51
Speaker 1: were sort of not into it. Can we hear a
23:54
Speaker 1: little bit of the vocals and then explain to me
23:56
Speaker 1: why you say there was a hip hop vocals? Yeah? So, now, okay,
24:01
Speaker 1: So we'll listen to the Aerosmith version first. Not very now,
24:29
Speaker 1: so that phrasing is very hip hop, very yeah, it's
24:36
Speaker 1: it's as close to a hip hop record without being
24:39
Speaker 1: a hip hop record as can be. Wait, so we
24:41
Speaker 1: so we should we listen to the hip so we
24:43
Speaker 1: listen to Ren dmc version. Is it's not so different? Yeah,
25:08
Speaker 1: it's not very different. Do you have a fan? Do
25:12
Speaker 1: you prefer one to the other? Uh? I guess I
25:17
Speaker 1: probably have a preference for the original, just because growing
25:21
Speaker 1: up it was in my vocabulary. What did what did
25:25
Speaker 1: Aerosmith say about it? Do you know? They loved it?
25:29
Speaker 1: They loved it. Yeah, and they were always into street
25:31
Speaker 1: culture and they always wanted to be part of street culture,
25:36
Speaker 1: so for them it was really exciting. Yeah. And then
25:38
Speaker 1: you said you would have meetings with people who understood
25:42
Speaker 1: the popularity hip up but didn't understo didn't accept it
25:44
Speaker 1: as music? What does that mean? That was the words.
25:49
Speaker 1: Those were the words that I heard, and it was
25:50
Speaker 1: so unusual to me. I can remember a specific quote
25:54
Speaker 1: from a record company executive at the time, which is,
25:58
Speaker 1: what do you attribute the success of this? I mean,
26:00
Speaker 1: we know it's not music, and they were saying this
26:03
Speaker 1: as like fans, Yeah, and they just didn't they didn't
26:08
Speaker 1: see it, didn't. I mean, I think a lot of
26:12
Speaker 1: people reacted that way. A lot of people didn't see
26:15
Speaker 1: it as music in the same way that a lot
26:17
Speaker 1: of people from the jazz eor It didn't see rock
26:19
Speaker 1: and rollers music. It's the same. It's those revolutions really
26:24
Speaker 1: changed things. What it helped do was open up hip
26:30
Speaker 1: hop music to the suburbs and being a suburban kid.
26:35
Speaker 1: That was in some ways the intention. It's also interesting
26:40
Speaker 1: because it wasn't done for the sake of popularity at all.
26:45
Speaker 1: It was done for the sake of explaining something. You know,
26:48
Speaker 1: it wasn't done. I didn't. I didn't think of it
26:51
Speaker 1: as a commercial idea at all. That wasn't not at all.
26:55
Speaker 1: It wasn't about that at all, because what do you
26:57
Speaker 1: think of I mean, just to use myself as an example,
27:01
Speaker 1: I am this kid in rural Ontario. I am listening
27:07
Speaker 1: to basically British New Way of music on a scratchy
27:12
Speaker 1: that's coming in from a station in Toronto, which doesn't
27:15
Speaker 1: really you know, the signal is really weak. I know
27:19
Speaker 1: nothing about hip hop, and that song like it's like, oh,
27:25
Speaker 1: you know, wow, like just kind of you know, that's
27:28
Speaker 1: when the door. I mean, I imagined that, Mike, is
27:30
Speaker 1: that your first memory of hip hop? I think? So wow?
27:34
Speaker 1: So then, I mean I was aware of it, but
27:36
Speaker 1: I didn't The reason I'm so interesting point is I
27:39
Speaker 1: am exactly in the position of that whoever it was
27:41
Speaker 1: says it's not music. It just didn't register for me.
27:44
Speaker 1: I didn't understand it. I no place to put it.
27:47
Speaker 1: I was, you know, I was interested in Elvis Costello
27:52
Speaker 1: and the Clash or whatever. It wasn't That's what I thought.
27:54
Speaker 1: That's actually another interesting aspect of this, which is that
27:59
Speaker 1: ultimately there is a race issue involved. Also in the
28:03
Speaker 1: same way that Elvis was essentially making music that Chuck
28:09
Speaker 1: Berry and Little Richard had made before, but because he
28:12
Speaker 1: was white, it got mainstream popularity. And to some degree,
28:20
Speaker 1: what we did with the Basti Boys wasn't so different
28:25
Speaker 1: than what we were doing with Run DMC. With the
28:27
Speaker 1: b c's was not so different than what we did
28:29
Speaker 1: with Run DMC or El COOLJ or Public Enemy, but
28:34
Speaker 1: the fact that they were white allowed it to spread
28:37
Speaker 1: in a way that was harder to do otherwise. Again,
28:40
Speaker 1: this was not an intentional This wasn't premeditated at all,
28:44
Speaker 1: just sort of happened. But it was interesting to see that, like, oh,
28:50
Speaker 1: they're more the audience is more accepting of the Beastie
28:53
Speaker 1: Boys than Run DMC. Yeah, well, cap people permission to
28:58
Speaker 1: listen in a certain sense. And then interestingly it ended
29:03
Speaker 1: up having a good effect on hip hop in general,
29:05
Speaker 1: which was the Beastie sort of opened the door for
29:08
Speaker 1: people who made not have been interested in this niche
29:12
Speaker 1: black music. But then once they were in the door,
29:16
Speaker 1: then they wanted all the niche black music. So it did.
29:19
Speaker 1: It did help the revolution to happen. Yeah, yeah, Do
29:23
Speaker 1: you remember the reaction of run DMC themselves to this
29:27
Speaker 1: idea to work this way? Yeah? Yeah, they were not
29:30
Speaker 1: into it. They were not into it. Really, Yeah, did
29:34
Speaker 1: you did you talk them into it? I tried to
29:36
Speaker 1: talk them into it unsuccessfully. Russell really talked them into it.
29:40
Speaker 1: Russell said, just do what Rick says. We're going to
29:47
Speaker 1: take a little break and be right back. I'm back
29:53
Speaker 1: with Rick, and I asked him about the origins of
29:56
Speaker 1: one of his most famous collaborations, Rick Rubin, Jewish Kid
30:00
Speaker 1: from Long Island and the Man in Black. How did
30:04
Speaker 1: that happen? By the way, did Johnny Cash thing? It's
30:07
Speaker 1: also unusual. The way it happened was I had worked
30:10
Speaker 1: with almost all the artists I had produced up until
30:13
Speaker 1: that time were young artists for first time artists, and
30:17
Speaker 1: all the artists I signed were debut artists, and I
30:21
Speaker 1: thought it would be a fun challenge to make a
30:25
Speaker 1: really good album with a great artist who maybe hasn't
30:29
Speaker 1: done great work for a while. So it was more
30:31
Speaker 1: like a It was like a puzzle to solve. And
30:36
Speaker 1: when I thought about the different great artists who weren't
30:39
Speaker 1: doing great work, the first one that came up was
30:41
Speaker 1: Johnny Cash. Just thought he's I mean, he's Johnny Cash.
30:46
Speaker 1: You listen to much country, not really, so you think
30:50
Speaker 1: of him, and then you so what comes next? I ask,
30:52
Speaker 1: what's going on with him? Is he on a record label?
30:55
Speaker 1: He's playing At that time, he was playing in like
30:57
Speaker 1: small dinner theaters around and following that love Yeah, and
31:03
Speaker 1: he'd been dropped from his label. It was sort of
31:05
Speaker 1: like he had been discarded by the industry at that time.
31:10
Speaker 1: And I think part of the reason that he was
31:14
Speaker 1: open to working with me wasn't because he believed in
31:18
Speaker 1: me or believed in the idea. I think he was
31:23
Speaker 1: excited that somebody cared enough to want to do something
31:26
Speaker 1: because nobody else did. Had he heard of you? I
31:30
Speaker 1: don't know if he had, I don't think so. I
31:33
Speaker 1: don't know why he would have. Did he ever listen
31:35
Speaker 1: to hip hop? No? No, So you're just you're basically
31:38
Speaker 1: co calling him, I mean through his people, I'm guessing. Yeah.
31:40
Speaker 1: And we met backstage at a dinner theater in Orange County,
31:44
Speaker 1: and I remember it being awkward because both of us
31:46
Speaker 1: are pretty quiet. But I remember sitting on the couch
31:49
Speaker 1: for a long time and not really talking but feeling
31:53
Speaker 1: even though it was awkward, I felt comfortable with him. Yeah,
31:57
Speaker 1: And there was no idea of what it would be
32:00
Speaker 1: at the time. It was just sort of, let's go
32:01
Speaker 1: on this journey, let's do something and find what's great.
32:06
Speaker 1: Did he have? Did he who was a one who
32:09
Speaker 1: first sort of suggested the idea of doing these stripped
32:14
Speaker 1: down covers? Is that your idea? It wasn't. It wasn't.
32:18
Speaker 1: It started where we were looking for songs and we
32:23
Speaker 1: would get together, and so in terms of finding the
32:25
Speaker 1: material that best fit his voice, we would do these
32:28
Speaker 1: demos basically solo demos, But there was no thought that
32:34
Speaker 1: that's what the record would be like. It was more
32:37
Speaker 1: the first stage of this expedition was figuring out the
32:44
Speaker 1: material that was going to work. Give me an example
32:47
Speaker 1: of a song that doesn't fit his voice and tell
32:49
Speaker 1: me why it doesn't. There's a handful of things. One
32:52
Speaker 1: is he has to feel an affinity for it. If
32:56
Speaker 1: he doesn't feel it, it's much harder. Second is subject
33:02
Speaker 1: matter would have to make sense for In his case,
33:06
Speaker 1: it was different because there's Johnny Cash, the human being,
33:10
Speaker 1: and then there's Johnny Cash, the mythical man in black.
33:14
Speaker 1: And my goal was to make music that always fit
33:18
Speaker 1: the mythical man in black. Now, if it fit Johnny
33:21
Speaker 1: Cash the human being as well, that's fine, but it
33:24
Speaker 1: didn't have to. It was more important that it was
33:29
Speaker 1: this sort of looming cartoon figure of who he was. That.
33:34
Speaker 1: But that's sort of interesting. I thought you were going
33:36
Speaker 1: to say the exact opposite. I thought you were going
33:38
Speaker 1: to say, we have been joined by a dog by
33:40
Speaker 1: the way. I thought you were going to say, my
33:43
Speaker 1: goal was to make music to fit the human human. No,
33:47
Speaker 1: he had even done that along the way, not always
33:50
Speaker 1: so successfully. And I think it really went back to,
33:53
Speaker 1: like I think of the great Johnny Cash moments, I
33:56
Speaker 1: shot a man in Reno just to watch him die,
33:59
Speaker 1: this sort of outlaw figure. Now, Johnny Cash in real
34:03
Speaker 1: life never shot a man in Reno just to watch
34:05
Speaker 1: him die, but the mythical man in black did and
34:08
Speaker 1: we responded. So it was more that it was more
34:13
Speaker 1: like these sort of brooding, heavy, introspective or revelatory thoughts,
34:24
Speaker 1: because in real life Johnny also had a great sense
34:26
Speaker 1: of humor. I didn't want to do any funny songs.
34:29
Speaker 1: I didn't want that to be part of the I
34:30
Speaker 1: wanted to really focus. You don't want to do my
34:33
Speaker 1: Name is Sue No, even though that's a great one.
34:35
Speaker 1: Even though it's a great one, But I wanted to
34:38
Speaker 1: really focus the story on this mythical presence. And also
34:43
Speaker 1: because now that I think about it, if he's playing
34:46
Speaker 1: Dinner Theater in Orange County, the myth has fallen away.
34:50
Speaker 1: He's sort of hit rock bottom. There's no you're trying
34:53
Speaker 1: to build him back up. What do you consider to
34:55
Speaker 1: be the best of the songs you did with him?
34:58
Speaker 1: I mean, I have a favorite, but there's a lot
35:01
Speaker 1: of good ones. One of the ones we did that
35:03
Speaker 1: I really liked was the Mercy Seat in the Cave
35:07
Speaker 1: song in credit. Tell me what it is you heard
35:12
Speaker 1: in the original that made you think it would work
35:14
Speaker 1: for Johnny Cash. It's just the lyrics, just the lyrics,
35:18
Speaker 1: just the lyrics. We have this mythical man in black.
35:21
Speaker 1: What are stories he can tell that you'd believe coming
35:24
Speaker 1: from that guy? And this was one sort of like
35:27
Speaker 1: this biblical heavy heavy story. It's funny. It's the third
35:35
Speaker 1: time you've used the word heavy, and you're absolutely right.
35:38
Speaker 1: There's there's a heaviness to all of those records. That's
35:42
Speaker 1: kind of it's so unusual. I don't associate that word
35:45
Speaker 1: heavy with popular music, no, and certainly not with country
35:50
Speaker 1: music or folk music, which is essentially the Johnny records
35:54
Speaker 1: are sort of folk records. Yeah, where some of the
35:58
Speaker 1: songs that were like the Mercy Seed or the Nine
36:03
Speaker 1: Inch Nails song. Yeah, it's great, it's really great. I
36:09
Speaker 1: just love the I love the way the song is
36:12
Speaker 1: just transformed. When the idea of an old man singing
36:14
Speaker 1: it the end of his life changed. Everything changes, every
36:18
Speaker 1: changes everything. Is that? What so with Hurt? Is that
36:22
Speaker 1: what you were thinking when you I'm assuming you brought
36:25
Speaker 1: that song to Johnny and you were like, oh my god,
36:27
Speaker 1: when a sixty something year old man sings this, it's
36:30
Speaker 1: a different It's a totally different song, a totally different
36:33
Speaker 1: song and much more hopeless like it's oh it's bleak. Yeah,
36:37
Speaker 1: you don't. Usually by the time you're that age, you
36:40
Speaker 1: found resolution. So to have sort of twenty year old
36:45
Speaker 1: angst in your sixties or seventies is not angst anymore.
36:48
Speaker 1: It's despair. It's flat out despair. It's brutal. Did it
36:53
Speaker 1: affect you emotionally to do You're sitting in the in
36:58
Speaker 1: close proximity to this mythical man singing these songs with
37:02
Speaker 1: an unbelievable emotional weight to them. Are you emerging at
37:06
Speaker 1: the end of the day like devastated? You go and
37:10
Speaker 1: like curl up in a ball, and you're pretty excited
37:12
Speaker 1: because when you hear something a really good version of
37:16
Speaker 1: what it is, it's I wouldn't go into the emotion
37:20
Speaker 1: of it so much as the excitement of seeing something
37:25
Speaker 1: come together that has this power. Yeah, did you ever
37:30
Speaker 1: talk to who's the Nunes? Oh? TRENTR I did. I
37:34
Speaker 1: actually sent it to him when we finished. I don't
37:37
Speaker 1: think he liked it so much when he first heard it. Yeah,
37:40
Speaker 1: then Mark Romannick made the video for it, and then
37:44
Speaker 1: when he saw the video, Trent's like, oh, I see
37:48
Speaker 1: what this is. I think he was too close at first.
37:51
Speaker 1: And it was just odd hearing someone else. I can
37:53
Speaker 1: remember we covered a Beck song and I remember playing
37:58
Speaker 1: it for Beck and I remember him saying, this is
38:01
Speaker 1: the first time I've ever heard anybody sing my lyrics
38:05
Speaker 1: besides me, and it's Johnny Cash. He was like, so oh.
38:10
Speaker 1: It was just so mind blowing because he was probably
38:13
Speaker 1: twenty two at the time, twenty one at the time. Yeah,
38:17
Speaker 1: I would think it must be so thrilling to understand
38:20
Speaker 1: that you're what you think of as a very deeply
38:22
Speaker 1: personal song has a life outside of you that it
38:26
Speaker 1: you know, it can have an alternate meaning in a
38:28
Speaker 1: different universe when sung by someone from a different that's
38:32
Speaker 1: got to be like so interesting. What's really interesting? I
38:35
Speaker 1: want to go to this idea that we started talking
38:36
Speaker 1: about in the beginning, about your sort of indifference to boundaries,
38:40
Speaker 1: to musical boundaries, and that clearly allows you to kind
38:46
Speaker 1: of move. You don't get defined by your relationship with
38:49
Speaker 1: hip hop. You end up doing well. I do and
38:51
Speaker 1: I don't. So from a creative standpoint, I don't, But
38:56
Speaker 1: from an outside standpoint, anytime I tried to do something
39:01
Speaker 1: different than what I did before, there was always great
39:04
Speaker 1: resistance every step of the way, tell me a little
39:06
Speaker 1: bit about that. Whoever I was in business with major
39:11
Speaker 1: label wise or they just wanted more of the thing
39:15
Speaker 1: that happened before that was successful. And every step of
39:18
Speaker 1: the way, it was just a struggle, and I was
39:22
Speaker 1: told often that I couldn't do what I was doing,
39:26
Speaker 1: whether it was Slayer or Johnny Cash or whatever it was.
39:31
Speaker 1: It was just like the idea of working on different
39:35
Speaker 1: kinds of music was really frowned upon for some reason.
39:38
Speaker 1: I don't know what. What's so weird, of course, is
39:39
Speaker 1: that the very reason you were you were so good
39:42
Speaker 1: at working in the hip hop world was that you
39:45
Speaker 1: were already crossing a boundary. And I think most people
39:50
Speaker 1: who make the best music, I think that's the case,
39:53
Speaker 1: Like people who grow up listening to electronic dance music
40:00
Speaker 1: and then making electronic dance music tend to make more
40:05
Speaker 1: mediocre dance music, whereas people who come from some other
40:10
Speaker 1: form of music and crossing to dance music make much
40:15
Speaker 1: more interesting dance music. Yeah, it's just a perspective. It's
40:18
Speaker 1: just a wider perspective. Rick and I talked for a
40:22
Speaker 1: lot longer, and we'll talk again. We've only scratched the surface.
40:27
Speaker 1: Whether we'll meet again at Shango. Law is another matter,
40:31
Speaker 1: I hope so. Coming up on Broken Record, many many
40:37
Speaker 1: more new episodes, including now Rogers, Rufus Wainwright, country music
40:43
Speaker 1: songwriting greats Don Henry, Don Schlitz and Bobby bradickin Conversation,
40:47
Speaker 1: heavy metal demigod Dave Hill. This is the first new
40:52
Speaker 1: show from Pushkin Industries, the new audio studio I started
40:56
Speaker 1: with Jacob Weisberg and named in honor of the great
40:58
Speaker 1: Russian Biracial polymath and poet Alexander Pushkin, who is our
41:03
Speaker 1: patron saint and whose name we think sounds really cool.
41:09
Speaker 1: Coming up from Pushkin a whole new show from Michael
41:13
Speaker 1: Lewis called Against the Rules, not to mention, another season
41:16
Speaker 1: of revisionist history. Broken Record is produced by Me Label
41:21
Speaker 1: and Jason Gambrell, with help from Bruce Headlam, Jaquita Pascal,
41:25
Speaker 1: Jacob Smith, Julia Barton, Justin Richmond, Jacob Weisberg, and of
41:29
Speaker 1: course Rick Rubin. This show is brought to you by
41:34
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. I'm Malcolm Timer. You a really forgot to do?
41:39
Speaker 1: I forgot to I wrote a whole rap back then
41:41
Speaker 1: about the Jade Tree. I'm a sucker. Jade tree can't
41:44
Speaker 1: grow much higher. All you other jade tree is gonna
41:46
Speaker 1: call me sire, and I forgot I was gonna say it.
41:48
Speaker 1: I was like, no, this is too stupid. I can't
41:50
Speaker 1: break up Rick's flow with this guy. I'm an idiot anyway,