Rick Rubin: Legendary Music Producer
Guests: Rick Rubin
Full transcript · Read the full conversation in order, with its original context.
Contents13 chapters
§01Transcript · 00:00–09:36§02Transcript · 09:39–18:46§03Transcript · 18:47–28:23§04Transcript · 28:29–38:02§05Transcript · 38:05–47:43§06Transcript · 47:49–57:57§07Transcript · 57:59–1:08:38§08Transcript · 1:08:40–1:18:47§09Transcript · 1:18:49–1:29:21§10Transcript · 1:29:23–1:38:22§11Transcript · 1:38:24–1:49:18§12Transcript · 1:49:21–1:58:48§13Transcript · 1:58:50–2:04:10§01Transcript · 00:00–09:36
There are no right answers for anything involved in art.
We're all trying experiments to find a way.
And even for the things that I work on,
I don't have a set way that I do anything.
Every, I come to every project blank.
- Maybe you're just a meat vehicle
and you're channeling ideas from somewhere else.
- I believe we know close to nothing,
close to nothing about anything.
If we embrace that not knowing,
we'll have a healthier experience going through life.
- The following is a conversation with Rick Rubin,
one of the greatest music producers of all time,
known for bringing the best out of anyone he works with,
no matter the genre of music or even the medium of art,
or just the medium of creating something beautiful
in this world.
And the list of musicians he produced includes many, many,
many of the greats over the past 40 years,
including the Beastie Boys, Eminem, Metallica,
LL Cool J, Kanye West, Slayer, Tom Petty,
Johnny Cash, Dixie Chicks, Aerosmith, Adele,
Danzig, Red Hot Chili Peppers, System of a Down,
Jay-Z, Black Sabbath.
I can keep going for a very long time here.
Most importantly, Rick is just an amazing human being.
We became fast friends, which is surreal to say,
and is just an incredible honor.
I felt truly heard as a person when I spent the day with him
eating some delicious Texas barbecue,
talking about life, about music, about art, about beauty.
This was a conversation and experience I'll never forget.
This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.
To support it, please check out our sponsors
in the description.
And now, dear friends, here's Rick Rubin.
Are you nervous?
- I'm not shaky, but I would say I feel uneasy.
And I feel like the sooner we start talking,
the more relaxed we'll get.
- Yeah.
Well, maybe we should sit in this moment
and enjoy the nervousness of it.
Let me start with Nietzsche.
He said, "Without music, life would be a mistake."
What do you think he means by that?
Let's talk some philosophy.
Let's try to analyze Friedrich Nietzsche from a century ago.
- It seems like music has the ability to bring us
so much depth in our soul
that's hard to access any other way.
And without it, there would be a loss
beyond the pleasure of it.
Feels like it's a window into something else.
- Something that no other medium
can express quite the same way.
- I would say not as automatically.
Something about music can do it automatically.
Maybe poetry or maybe certain abstract forms
can get us there.
But there's something about music
that really can get us there quickly.
- But it's also the time, the place, the history.
There's something about,
like a lot of my family's still in Philly,
there's something about driving through Jersey
and listening to Bruce Springsteen.
And then it just, I'll get like emotional.
Like listening to "I'm On Fire."
That like, one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen songs,
there's a haunting kind of strumming to it.
It's not a strumming, it's actually picked.
Has a country feel to it,
almost like a Johnny Cash feel actually.
And it, I don't know, makes me feel,
so for people who don't know "I'm On Fire,"
that song is, I guess, a love song to a woman
that you can't have because she's married
or she's with somebody else,
which I guess is quite a lot of love songs.
But there's something about the haunting nature
of the guitar and then it has to be driving through Jersey.
And I feel like everyone has fallen in love
with a Jersey girl at one point in their life.
I don't know if that's true for everybody.
But I feel like that.
I haven't either, but I just feel like that.
There's something about Bruce Springsteen's like,
"Yeah, I've been there."
And that just takes you to a place of emotion
that you just, that captures love,
that captures longing, that captures the heartbreak
of just the way time flows in life
and the fact that it's finite
and just all of that in a single, simple song.
What else can capture that?
- Yeah, I don't know.
But it's true that there's a connection
both between time and place and music.
Certain music growing up on the East Coast
didn't really resonate with me
until I spent time on the West Coast.
Eagles being an example.
When I lived in New York,
the Eagles didn't really speak to me.
ZZ Top didn't really speak to me.
And then when I started spending time in California
and driving through Laurel Canyon,
all of a sudden the music of the Eagles
felt appropriate somehow.
And I started listening to it more.
- Got it.
So not until you went out West
can you understand the sounds of the West.
So it's really like New York has a sound.
What other places have a sound in the United States?
- I think every place does.
And that said, sometimes we can get an experience
through music of a place,
like we can resonate with the music and not understand why.
And then maybe when we go to the place where it was created,
it's almost like we have a knowingness of that place.
It's not a strange place anymore.
- Yeah, Stevie Ray Vaughan with blues and Texas blues.
You can just listen to Texas Flood and just,
again, there's like a woman you're missing, a broken heart,
and somehow that connects you to the place.
The Eagles, what song with the Eagles connects with you?
Are we talking about like "Take It Easy"
or are we talking more like "Hotel California"?
- I'm thinking "Take It Easy," but both are great.
- Yeah, there's certain songs
when I started learning guitar when I was young
that's like, I would like to be the kind of person
that not only knows how to play this song,
but understands this song.
And like have that song be something I played 20 years ago.
And I've lived with that song for a while.
Like "Hotel California" is an example.
Obviously there's the solo,
but there's also the soulfulness of the lyrics,
which I still don't understand.
And it could be about anything.
And as you get older,
I feel like the meaning of the song could be anything.
- Yeah, I think that's true.
I think that's the beauty of them.
I think when the person wrote them,
they may have had one interpretation,
but it's not contingent on us getting that interpretation
to like it or resonate with it or feel it.
In some ways, the best art is open enough
where the artist gets to have their experience
when they make it.
And then the audience gets to have their experience
when they listen and they don't have to be the same.
- And then it connects thousands
or millions of people together.
There's a togetherness of music when you share that music,
when you're listening to stuff together, like in a car.
First of all, the car is a sacred place.
So I work in part on autonomous vehicles.
And you start to think, well, what are the things you lose
when the car stops being the central part of American life?
The car ownership.
It just feels like the car, when you're alone,
it's like a therapist thing, session,
because you get angry at other humans,
you get to, and then you get to like sit
in your own anger and emotion.
You get to listen to the song on a long road trip
and remember, like run through your memories,
the heartbreak, I don't know, the one that got away,
but also like the beautiful moments, all of it.
Yeah.
And all of that in the car. (laughs)
- Yeah, driving also serves another purpose.
And it's one of the things that we can do
that we have to pay attention enough,
not to crash, but typically can essentially run
on autopilot enough where we could be thinking
about something else or concentrating on something else.
And the difference between concentrating on something
or trying to solve a problem,
when you're solely trying to solve a problem
versus when you have some little task
that's keeping you occupied,
I find if I have something slight to take care of,
it frees a more creative side of my mind
to better solve problems.
- You know, I'm kind of jealous of people
that found that in painting, for example.
They'll be drawing or painting and listening to,
so that's the small task you do.
You're coloring in the lines.
It's like this gentle, peaceful, slow process
that requires just a small fraction of your mind
and then you can listen.
Some people listen to podcasts that way.
Some people listen to music that way.
§02Transcript · 09:39–18:46
Yeah.
- How do you do it?
How do you free your mind?
- Running is one of them.
There's a process.
So most freeing of the mind for me has to go
through a process of a bit of pain for a bit.
So doing something difficult,
it's just like a airplane taking off or something.
So I have to, like for example, running,
the first few miles would just be just,
first of all, the physical aspect,
which is like, ah, you're so fat, you're out of shape,
you're, this is, this is, getting old, this, that.
Okay, that slowly dissipates.
And then the demons come in who are like,
you should be getting this and that and this done.
You haven't gotten it done.
You're like breaking promises,
all those kinds of voices coming in.
And after that, maybe mile four, it's like, fuck it.
You just, you just run, run with the wind
at a very slow pace, but with the wind,
and then, and then you could think.
So it's the footsteps, the physical activity,
then you could deeply think about stuff, ideas,
sort of design, whether it's program design stuff
or like high level life decisions,
all those kinds of things.
I would say running.
I used to build bridges from toothpicks.
It used to be a thing.
It's an engineering, I guess some people like
glue together airplanes and stuff like that.
But the bridges, it's such deeply honest work
because at the end of it,
you're gonna have to test that bridge.
And you're gonna see how good your work was,
the little details, but also the big picture.
- Do you use glue or no?
- Yeah, I use glue.
So it's not pure physics.
It's materials engineering too.
'Cause the way you want to do it is
you actually split the wood as thin as possible
and then glue it back together
'cause the glue is really strong,
except for the arches and things like that.
So you're building arch bridges,
which is a whole nother skill
'cause you have to bend the wood.
And it's so cool 'cause the thing can hold
thousands of times its weight.
And then you get to watch it explode
at a certain point from the pressure.
And when you do a really good job,
it doesn't explode in a kind of some weak point
that you didn't anticipate,
just kind of starts cracking.
Everything cracks, everything explodes.
It's just pieces fly everywhere.
And it's literally hundreds of hours of work
just explode in front of you.
And that's a metaphor for life maybe.
And it's all for nothing.
(laughs)
Except for the journey that you took to get there.
And no one understands.
Speaking of which, back to Nietzsche.
These questions are ridiculous.
So you're gonna have to try to figure out
what the heck I'm trying to do here.
So Nietzsche also said,
a line I love, which is,
and those who were seen dancing
were thought to be insane by those
who could not hear the music.
Do you, Rick Rubin, ever feel crazy?
Or maybe you're the one who's sane
and everybody else is crazy.
You know that the dancing, the joy of the music,
of just feeling the music
and everybody else just doesn't understand.
And this doesn't have to be literally about music.
This is about art, about creation.
- I would say I feel different.
And it's hard to say, it's like,
which side of the equation is crazy, you know?
- Did you ever find a group of people
that you get, they get you?
- Yes.
- Is that what producing is essentially?
Is you try to find the moments
when you just get each other?
- No.
I would say they're definitely,
certain artists with certain temperaments,
when you're around them,
it feels like you can finish each other's sentences,
you know, just see the world the same way.
Comedians as well.
- And that's not essential for the two of you together
creating something special?
- No, no.
- So it could be attention too?
- It could be anything, it could be any,
there's no rules.
It'd be like, think of it like a coach.
A coach could bring what they have to bring
to any talented individual
and help them find their way.
And sometimes it's the right,
the right coach for the right athlete really works.
And other times there's a mismatch.
- Have you seen the movie "Whiplash"?
- I did.
- When it came out, so I don't really remember it well,
but I did see it.
- So there's a coach type of figure
who is pushing a drummer to create,
to grow as a musician,
but also to create something special.
I don't know if it's even special music skill wise,
it's a special moment.
I don't know what he's trying to create.
From one perspective, it's just an abusive,
a person who selfishly gets off on being abusive
to those he's with.
But from another perspective, the way I saw that movie,
it's just the two right humans finding each other
at the right moment in life
and risking destroying each other in the process,
but maybe something beautiful will come of it.
Do you think that's a toxic relationship?
Or is there, does some of that movie resonate with you
as that sometimes is required to create art?
That kind of suffering.
- Yeah, it doesn't.
Well, there's suffering involved,
but not that kind of suffering.
Not for me.
There are some people who that's their process
and that's whatever works.
There's no right answers for anything involved in art.
We're all trying experiments to find a way.
And even for the things that I work on,
I don't have a set way that I do anything.
I come to every project blank
and see, I really listen to what the artist plays and says.
And through what they explain they wanna do,
help find the best way to get there.
Was it implicit in the movie
that the mean teacher liked being a mean teacher?
You said the way you described it
was that he got off on treating people this way.
Do we know that to be the case?
I don't remember that in the movie.
- But we sometimes project that onto people,
people who are really rough on students.
You start to think, well, maybe,
maybe that is fundamentally who they are.
And if it's fundamentally who they are,
that there must be some pleasure in it
or it's an addiction of some sort.
But it could be also a deliberate choice made by the teacher.
- It also could be a lineage.
Like in the Zen tradition,
there are sort of the mean Roshis,
who if you do something wrong, take a physical action.
And it's just in the lineage,
it's considered that's how you teach.
I didn't come from that lineage.
So I'm much more of a,
I feel like it's more of a collaboration
between people working together to make the best thing.
It's not a boss-slave relationship at all.
It's much more of a, let's find our way.
And we agree at the beginning of the process
that if either of us or any of us
don't like what's happening, we say it.
And the goal is to keep working
until we get to a point where we're all really happy with it.
It's like if we make something
that an artist likes and I don't like,
or that I like and they don't like,
we haven't gone far enough.
- In terms of lineage,
the ones that seek destruction
and the ones that seek happiness
all come from the same lineage.
Well, it came from fish.
So somewhere in you, deep down,
there's the other stuff too.
It's just that you haven't been yet, by the way,
'cause you said every new project,
including maybe starting today,
is an opportunity to channel, to plug into something
that was always there
and you haven't gotten a chance to plug into.
You mentioned listening.
§03Transcript · 18:47–28:23
How do you listen to a person?
How do you hear a person?
When you first come in, like we just met,
what's the analysis happening?
But I mean, with me is one thing.
I'm an artist of sorts.
I program and I'm just, I'm human, I guess.
We're all creating art.
How do you see, like, how do I bring out?
So for people who don't know,
I mean, obviously everyone knows
that you've produced some of the greatest records ever,
but the way I see that is you just brought out the best
in a lot of interesting artists.
And so in order to bring out the best
in them, you have to understand them.
You have to hear the music of their soul,
hopefully I'm not being too romantic here,
but just like, is there something you can say
of how difficult that is, if there's a process,
if there's tricks, if it's luck?
- I think it starts with this, again, coming in blank,
like not having any preconceived ideas,
being open and really listening,
listening and not thinking about what you're gonna say next
or what your opinion is or any,
basically being a recorder and just hearing what comes in.
And then once you hear what comes in,
processing that information and trying our best to do that
without any of the beliefs that we might have
to impact what that is.
If I ask you a question, I don't wanna hear what,
I don't wanna listen to you and have any reaction happening
when you're speaking.
I wanna be as neutral as possible.
For me, my goal is not to form an opinion,
it's to understand.
So if anything, I would draw you out further
and just ask questions to really understand.
- And if you say something that somehow triggers me
in a way that I wonder how he came to that,
I wouldn't challenge you, I would ask,
how did you find that?
How did you get to that place?
- Form a place of curiosity.
You would try to figure out--
- Yeah, I wanna understand who the person is
and through questioning, we can usually get there
or through just spending time together,
you find out who the person is.
- What about finding out and figuring out
how to then take the next steps
of bringing out the best in them?
Is it just trial and error?
Let's try this.
- It's definitely trial and error.
It's always trial and error.
- Are you afraid of making a mistake?
Let's add this instrument, let's remove this instrument.
- Let's try. - Let's add this line,
let's remove this line.
- Let's try.
And let's be open.
So one of the, we don't really have rules,
but one of the agreements in the studio
is any idea that anyone has,
we'll always demonstrate it, we'll always try it
because I can describe to you an idea
and you can think that's a terrible idea,
let's not do that.
And then I can play you the idea
and then you can say, oh, that's really good.
And it's completely different because we,
when we're told something,
we have to imagine what that is.
And the way you see something and imagine it
and the way I see something and imagine it
are completely different.
- So you say a thing and now there's two humans
that play that thing in their mind differently,
in their imagination,
and then there's a cool creative step
and when you actually do it,
to see how it differs in the imagination,
and then the difference or the commonality
will be like an exciting little discovery together.
- So many groups of people making things together in a room,
one person will suggest something
and someone else in the room say,
"Ah, that doesn't sound like a good idea,
let's not do that."
And then they move on.
The testing of every idea is really important
and that's how you get to see,
oh, that's not at all what I thought it was gonna be.
Happens to me all the time, I know,
because someone will suggest,
why don't we do it like this?
And I'll think, that sounds bad.
And then I'll think, okay, let's try it.
And then we hear it and then eight times out of 10,
it's nothing like I imagined and great.
- And you try not to have an ego about the fact
that you thought it was not a good idea in your head.
- There can't be any ego in this.
If everyone's there with the purpose
of making the best thing we can,
there's nothing else.
There can't be any boundaries to that.
- So there's a moment I saw with,
I know you don't love talking about
previous things you've done,
but it's cool to dive in there.
- I'm fine to talk to maybe.
- To sample it.
Anything?
Well, I have this pain I gotta talk now.
I'll think of something ridiculous
that would make you change your mind.
You mentioned, I saw a video of you with Jay-Z
and working on 99 Problems where you suggested acapella,
opening the song with acapella,
just no instruments, just voice.
That to me, I mean, that's one of the characteristics
of the things, of the ways you've brought out
the best in an artist is doing less.
Sort of the tending towards simplicity in some kind of way.
So that choice of acapella is really interesting
'cause I could see a lot of people think
that that's a bad idea,
but it turned out to be a really powerful idea.
Can you maybe talk about the simplicity,
how to find simplicity,
why you find simplicity is beautiful?
It does appear to be beautiful.
What is that?
- Yeah, I don't know where it comes from.
It has been with me from the beginning of my work.
The very first album I ever produced,
the credit I took was reduced by me
instead of produced by me.
For that reason, I like the idea
of getting to the essential.
And I have a better idea now that I've done it for a while,
but at the time it was purely an instinctual thing.
And part of it is a sonic, there's a sonic benefit,
which is the less elements you have,
you can hear each of the ones that are there
and they can sound better.
And the less there are,
the more space they could have around them
and the more you can hear their personality.
If you were to record 10 people playing the same guitar part
and you listen to it, it would sound like guitar.
And if you record one person playing a guitar part,
it sounds like a person playing the guitar.
It's different than just guitar.
And often in the studio,
the idea of building upon things
and adding layers to thicken, to make it sound bigger,
sometimes the more things you add, the smaller it gets.
So a lot of it is counterintuitive
until you just in practice see what works.
- To try it, to try removing stuff until it's just right.
It's the Einstein thing,
make it as simple as possible, but not simpler.
That's such a, like finding a stopping place,
just keep chopping away and chopping away.
- Yeah, there's something we also like to do
called the ruthless edit, which is,
let's say you're at a point where it can work for anything,
but I'll give you the example with an album.
We've recorded 25 songs.
We think the album is gonna have 10.
Instead of picking our favorite 10,
we limit it to what are the five or six
that we can't live without?
So going past even the goal
to get to the real like heart of it,
and then see, okay, we have these five or six
that we can't live without.
Now, what would we add to that
that makes it better and not worse?
- It puts you in a different frame
when you start with building instead of removing.
- And you might find that there's nothing you need to add.
- Sometimes.
Sometimes something happens when you get to the real essence.
Then when you start adding things back,
it becomes clear that it was just supposed to be
this tight little thing.
- Can I ask you like a therapy session question?
So you mentioned somewhere that one way
to kind of think about music to get into music
is to look at the top like 100 albums of all time
and just go down the list and like just take it all in
like one piece of artwork.
So I was doing that for a while.
It's a cool experiment 'cause unfortunately I have to admit,
I've gotten lazy and stopped taking in albums as albums.
§04Transcript · 28:29–38:02
And I looked at one interesting top 100 list,
top 500 actually, which is put together by Rolling Stone.
And they put, this is the therapy session part,
and this has to do with simplicity too.
They put Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" at number one.
Spoiler alert.
So I'd like to maybe get your opinion on that choice.
The reason Marvin Gaye is really interesting,
it'd actually be cool to play what's going on in a second,
but when you just listen to his like acapella,
just listen to his voice, it is really good.
It makes me wonder if it's possible to pull off
like most of his songs with no instruments.
In many parts, there's so much soul
in just "Mercy, Mercy Me," "What's Going On."
There's so many songs that you could just be like,
"I wonder if you could just like, just go raw."
Or maybe in parts, or maybe do what you do with Jay-Z,
just open up with nothing.
Anyway, there's something so powerful
to a great soulful voice.
Do you mind if I play it real quick?
- No, please.
- "What's Going On."
This is probably one of my favorite songs.
I mean, it's up there.
(indistinct chatter)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
That voice.
♪ There's too many of you to cry ♪
♪ Brother, brother, brother ♪
♪ There's far too many of you to die ♪
There's some just very subtle backing vocals.
♪ You know we've got to find ♪
♪ To bring some loving in today ♪
♪ Father, father ♪
This one hurts.
♪ We don't need to escalate ♪
Father, father, we don't need to escalate.
♪ You see, war is not the answer ♪
♪ For only love can hold a hand ♪
- I wonder who the father he's talking about is.
- Oh, that's interesting.
I mean, so for people who don't know,
his own father ended up killing Marvin Gaye.
I mean, that one is really painful.
I mean, for a lot of people,
your relationship with your father, your mother,
I mean, there's different dynamics,
but it's almost like part of life is resolving
some kind of complex puzzle you have
with the people you love, the people close to you,
or the people who are not there, all those kinds of things.
That's so much pain in that,
we don't need to escalate, father, father.
I never thought if it's,
I always thought it's his father directly.
- Yeah, I don't get that.
It could be, but I don't, I feel like it's a more
masculine spirituality.
- Like a father figure,
or just broadly some kind of spirituality.
- Could be like God, father God, mother God,
you know, like could be, I don't know.
- But there's so much, it's like both hope and melancholy.
- You're saying war's not the answer.
It's like, you don't tell that your father war's not,
your blood father war's not the answer.
It's a strange conversation.
It's a bigger conversation than a personal.
- Don't you think it feels like war when it's personal?
What's the difference between,
is, war is personal too.
It's only leaders think about war in a geopolitical sense.
When people that fight wars, you lose your brothers,
you lose, I mean, death is just right there.
So it might feel just like that.
But yeah, there is a dance between like the personal
and like talking to the entirety of the society.
It's like John Lennon, imagine,
also a song where, is that hopeful?
Is that cynical?
Is it like melancholy?
Like heartbroken?
Like you hope, you wish things would be a certain way
and they're not.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know if John Lennon is giving up
on the world in "Imagine."
- Yeah, I don't know.
No, it's an interesting question.
There's another John Lennon lyric in,
let me think of what it is, take me a second.
Different songs keep coming into my head.
It's not the one that I'm looking for.
- And you keep pressing next.
- Um,
cross the universe.
Nothing's gonna change my world.
And when I hear that, I hear it as hopeless.
But I don't think, I don't believe that that's,
well, it may be how he meant it,
but I don't think that's how it's normally taken.
- And it's also the taker is important.
I'm generally optimistic and hopeful,
so I always look for the hope.
And actually the harshest love heartbreak songs
are somehow hopeful to me.
That's a love song.
To me, a song about losing love
is a song about the great capacity for love
in the human heart.
That's what I hear.
So to me, losing love is exciting.
'Cause it's like, that means you really cared.
That means you felt something, you feel something,
you can sit in that pain,
and that pain is a reminder of what it means to be human.
When you're that, what is it?
We're just listening.
The only man who could have reached me
was the son of a preacher man.
So it's like that early love or something,
partially sexual or whatever.
That's not as interesting to me.
It's fun, it's great.
But it's that heartbreak.
That's the reminder that it can go deep.
Although that's a damn good song.
- Have you ever heard the Detroit mix
of the Marvin Gaye album?
- No.
- Call it up.
By far better.
Mind-blowing.
I just heard it recently, blew my mind.
(upbeat music)
- Oh, wow.
Reverb.
Distant.
Interesting.
♪ There's too many of you to cry ♪
♪ Brother, brother, brother ♪
♪ There's far too many to love you, die ♪
- Feels like it's all around the room more.
♪ I know we've got to find a way home ♪
♪ To bring some loving here today ♪
- More voices.
More voices.
♪ For you to escalate ♪
♪ War is not the answer ♪
♪ For only love can end ♪
- He's layering his own vocals.
♪ You know we've got to find a way ♪
♪ To bring some loving here today ♪
- Feels like there's multiple people singing.
♪ Punish me with brutality ♪
♪ Talk to me so you can see ♪
♪ Oh, what's going on, what's going on ♪
- Yeah, that's beautiful.
- Yeah.
Seems to have more energy.
If you listen to the whole album,
even though you just said you don't listen to albums anymore,
the Detroit mix of the whole album changes the album a lot.
- I mean, that felt,
so that's the opposite of a cappella, I would say.
- Yes.
- 'Cause it's,
there's layers, there's,
and maybe, I don't know if you remember,
but if memory serves me correct here,
he produces this own album here, Marvin Gaye
was the producer on this, I believe.
- I believe so.
And this one sounds more like it's a get-together.
And the whole album sounds more like a get-together
where it's a group of people in a room
playing music together,
whereas the album version sounds more like a recording.
This sounds less like a recording
and a little more like a party.
- Now, you had a series of conversations
with Paul McCartney, which is amazing
that people should watch,
but is there, this is continuing our therapy session,
is there a case to be made that what's going on
is number one album above the Beatles,
a white album, or Abbey Road above Pet Sounds?
Can you still manage case?
- There's always a case.
I mean, there's always a case.
In reality, in art, there is no metric that makes sense.
So you could put numbers on things,
but it's like, is this apple better than this peach?
Like, it's not really a fair comparison.
- But if you just had to keep one
to represent the human species,
that's the way I think to the aliens.
§05Transcript · 38:05–47:43
- So I think it's a very personal decision.
I think you can make your choice
to represent the human species and I'll make mine.
- Well, I would pick the Beatles over the Beach Boys,
so that's my, if I became dictator of the world
and was talking to the aliens,
but I don't know the full historical context
to the impact of the music.
I don't know if that's something to consider,
like this kind of thought experiment
of imagine what it was like back then
to create, to go into the studio,
to do such interesting work in the studio,
as opposed to like listening to just as a pop song almost.
'Cause I've never been able to understand
Beach Boys, God Only Knows.
- The song God Only Knows?
- God Only Knows, but all of it,
the album, the Pat Siles just--
- In My Room?
- What, In My Room?
- That song.
- Is that, what was your favorite on the album?
That non-favorite? - On the Pat Siles album?
- Pat Siles.
- The opening track.
- Do you mind if I play it?
- Please.
- It's too fun.
- That's part of their trip though.
- You open the heart with the fun?
- It's possible.
Original mono and stereo mix versions.
- What's the opening song?
Wouldn't It Be Nice?
Yeah, that's the song.
(upbeat music)
♪ Wouldn't it be nice if we were older ♪
♪ Then we wouldn't have to wait so long ♪
♪ And wouldn't it be nice to live together ♪
♪ In the kind of world where we belong ♪
♪ No one's gonna make it that much better ♪
♪ When we can say goodnight and start living together ♪
- This part is good, man.
And then back to fun.
- Yeah, that we could say goodnight and stay together.
Wouldn't that be nice?
- Wouldn't it be nice?
- To wake up together.
But we're not.
- There's heartbreak in this one too.
- Still, to me, George Harrison,
is that the way the album, While My Guitar Gently Weeps?
With the Beatles, it's so hard to,
depending on the day, I'll say a very different song
that's my favorite song, but I often return
to While My Guitar Gently Weeps as my favorite song.
- Spectacular, it's spectacular.
- And anything George Harrison, honestly.
Something in the way she moves.
What would you classify that?
- There's several Beatles songs,
categories of Beatles songs.
That's the melancholy love songs
or ballads or something like that.
Yesterday, Let It Be.
Do you have favorites?
So from your, how have you changed as a man,
as a human being, as a musician and music producer,
ever having done that lengthy interaction with McCartney?
- Anytime you're around someone who's such a hero
and you spend time with them and they're a human being,
it helps put perspective on everything.
- Oh, that they're just human?
- Well, obviously.
I mean, everyone's just human.
But I remember the first time I got to see
Paul McCartney play live, it was in a stadium
of 70,000 people and he started playing
and I started crying and I couldn't believe I was in,
even with 70,000 people, I couldn't believe
that this man walks the earth
and that I'm in the same place as him
and he's the person who wrote that and played that
and now he's here playing it for us.
Mind-blowing.
That's the voice.
- That's the, I--
- It's overwhelming.
- Is it inspiring or is it,
like, 'cause sometimes when you have,
and I've gotten a chance to meet,
I mean, I love people in general,
like every person is fascinating to me,
but yeah, when you've been a fan for a long time
and you meet a person, sort of,
I'll just remove present company,
is you, it's like, oh, they're just human.
So there's both, it's both inspiring
that just a simple human can achieve such beautiful things,
but it's also like almost wishing
there were gods moving around us.
It's somehow peaceful.
It's more comforting to know that there's,
there's bigger fish, I'm just a small fish,
and then there's bigger fish,
and they will take care of the ocean for us.
- I think we're all capable of being big fish.
I don't think that there are special people.
I don't think it's like that.
I would make a case, so the variety of artists
that you worked with and brought the best out of,
it does seem that you're out of this world.
So do you think you would know,
like, if you're the same kind of species,
maybe you're just a meat vehicle,
and you're channeling ideas from somewhere else?
- I feel like I'm channeling ideas
from somewhere else, 100%.
But I think--
- Have you asked questions about where from?
- I believe we all are, though.
I believe we are,
we're vehicles for information
that when it's ready to come through, it comes through,
and the people who have good antennas pick up the signal.
But if, I'm sure you've had an experience in your life
where you've had an idea for something,
and you've not acted on it,
and eventually someone else does it,
and it's not because they're doing it
because you had the idea and they stole your idea,
it's because the time has come for that idea.
And if you don't do it, someone else is gonna do it.
- It's being broadcast by whatever the source is.
- Whatever the source is.
- Yeah, I tend to,
I tend to see humans as not quite special in that way, yeah.
It's different kinds of antennas walking around,
listening to ideas, and ideas that are,
I like the notion of Richard Dawkins of memes,
it's kind of the ideas of the organisms,
and they're just using our brains to multiply,
to select, to compete, to evolve.
And humans, we really wanna hold onto the specialness
of our body, of our mind, but it's really the ideas.
So if Rick Rubin was born two centuries ago,
you wouldn't be a music producer.
You'd be, or I mean, maybe,
but you have an antenna.
And if no signal's coming in,
or you'd be hearing potentially a different signal.
Is there--
- I think we all have our own antenna for whatever it is
that we, maybe not everyone has tuned into their antenna
to see what it is that their strength
in bringing through is.
I'm lucky in that it found me,
'cause I didn't know that it was a,
I didn't even know this was a job.
I sometimes wonder, I mean, a lot of young people,
a lot of people wonder, like, what's the purpose
and the specs of my antenna?
What am I put on this earth to do?
Like if, you know, I can live a thousand lives.
There's so many trajectories.
And imagine the greatest possible trajectory
that reveals the most beautiful thing
I can possibly create in this world.
Live the most beautiful way.
What is that?
I feel like that's a good exercise to think about.
'Cause it's also liberating to think
that you can do anything.
I mean, that, more and more, I suppose that's kind of life.
It's like society is pushing conformity on you.
You know, I thought, I had my own flavor of conformity.
I thought I was supposed to be following.
And then early on, I would say like in the late 20s,
you realize, wait a minute, you don't have to tell,
you don't have to do what teachers tell you to do,
what parents tell you to do, what society tells you to do.
You can, like, I would never wear a suit
if I listened to like my colleagues in community
who think that a suit is like the symbol of, what is it?
A symbol of conformity, actually, which is hilarious.
But it's actually a kind of rebellion
and everything else of that nature,
doing these silly podcasts.
- I have a question I have to ask.
- Sure. - 'Cause you brought up the suit.
- Yeah.
- Do you wear the suit?
Is this your daily uniform outside of podcasting?
- So for the longest time, it was some kind of suit.
And then recently, coinciding with going to Texas,
I'm such a loner, I'm an introvert,
and there's a bit of a hiding from the world
when I wear other stuff.
I really want to not make fame, recognition,
§06Transcript · 47:49–57:57
money, all of those things a motivation at all.
And the world kind of wants you to make those motivations.
Not the world, but I would say maybe the Western world,
maybe America, maybe a capitalist system does.
But--
- That's a choice to buy into that or not.
- Right.
It takes a brave person, a person of character
to not buy in.
And I'm like a baby deer trying to find its legs.
You don't have to buy in.
'Cause I love people, and I think I'm kind of an idiot.
And so when other people say, do this and do that,
there is a pressure there.
It's actually very difficult to not listen necessarily
to the advice of others,
and yet keep yourself fragile and open to the world.
It's easy to be like, I'm always right,
just kind of sticking your ground.
But if you want to be vulnerable,
if you want to connect with people
and just wear your heart on your sleeve,
then you're going to listen to them.
I mean, that's the double-edged sword of it.
But then again, that pain, if you don't let it destroy you,
you can grow from that.
Has fame affected you at all?
Did you unplug from the system at some point?
- Same.
I've always been sort of removed.
I don't feel like I'm part of any system.
- Do you feel famous?
- I'm aware that when I go out,
people say nice things to me, which is great.
(laughing)
But that's about it.
That's about as far as it goes.
- But it doesn't affect your art, about your creativity,
or your thoughts.
Like when you're sitting alone and thinking about the world.
- It can't.
It's a destructive force.
The reason that you're who you are,
and the reason that you're finding the success
you're finding is because you've been true to yourself
to get to that stage.
So to start changing that, to either conform
to someone else's idea of what you should be doing,
it just seems like it doesn't make sense.
- Do you have a sense of who you are?
'Cause I don't necessarily have a--
- I don't know.
I know that I really like making good things,
and I know that I'm crazy about it in that
it's like an obsession.
And I want things to be as good as they could be,
whatever it is.
And if I finish a music project,
and I have a window of time where I'm not working on music,
I might be moving the furniture around in the house.
You know, I'm always looking for a creative outlet
to find a way to make something better.
Or there was a period of time where I was in a weird
corporate situation that was,
that didn't allow me to flourish.
And I turned, I focused the creativity in on myself,
and I lost a bunch of weight and changed my life.
- So that was the kind of art,
like you've gone through a whole process of losing weight,
getting in shape, getting healthy.
That was a kind of creative act.
- It certainly was.
It wasn't an intentional creative act,
but I had a lot of energy.
And I just, a series of events happened.
I read a book.
At the time, that was my heaviest.
I weighed about 318 pounds.
And I'd never been, I'd been sedentary my whole life,
basically laying on a couch working on music.
So I've never been physically active in my life.
And I read a book about a guy named Stu Middleman, a runner,
who ran a thousand miles in 11 days.
And I thought, wow, I get out of breath
walking to the corner,
and another human being can run a thousand miles in 11 days.
I feel like I have bad information.
Clearly I'm doing something wrong.
And I reached out to a person
that Stu mentioned in the book, Phil Maffetone.
- Who's a legend.
I really appreciate him as well.
He's Math 180 Method 2.
He's such an interesting, I think he focuses on--
- Heart rate training.
And he was the first person to talk about essentially a--
- Low carbs.
Paleo, keto diet.
- For a person-- - 40 years ago.
- For a person who's going to be healthy,
who can exercise and actually perform at an early level.
He's the first person when I,
talking about heart rate training,
him and other endurance athletes he influenced,
he gave me permission to run slower.
- Yeah.
- It was the first time I realized,
oh, I can run long distance as if I just run slower
and then take that seriously.
And I actually fell in love with running very much so.
'Cause for me, everyone's different,
but for me the love of running happens
in the longer distances.
- Did you read Born to Run?
Great book.
- Amazing book.
There is something special about running.
And everybody has their own journey with it.
And even ultra marathon running, those kinds of things.
It is like many journeys,
one that can pull you in.
Like you won't be the same person after.
And I try to be deliberate about making choices
after which you'll not be the same person.
And so I'm nervous about the ultra marathon running world.
I have to talk to you about Johnny Cash.
I mean, when people ask me what my favorite musical thing is
of all time,
you know, it's a very difficult question to answer,
of course, but I'm pretty quick,
if I'm not allowed to pick anything by Tom Ways,
I'm pretty quick to say Hurt by Johnny Cash,
the performance, the whatever you call it,
whatever the heck that is.
Because that's not just a song covered by an artist.
That's a human being at the end of their life.
That the rawness of that,
I mean, just there's also a music video,
which for a lot of people adds a lot to it.
For me, just the music alone is,
I mean, the guitar, every choice on that.
See, the few things I've heard about it,
it seemed like almost accidental.
I mean, like little subtle choices here and there.
Can you maybe comment on that to the degree,
I think you had a huge role
in sort of bringing Johnny Cash back
from a different part of his life.
It's like bringing something out that wasn't there before.
And it was incredible.
It was a celebration of a really special musician.
And that's totally new kind of celebration.
Now, Hurt is just one of the songs
that's an amazing celebration of Johnny Cash.
But Hurt is like at the peak of that.
So what was that like putting that song together?
It might be nice to listen to it
'cause I freaking love that song.
And as a guitarist,
I just, the simplicity of it,
it seems like every choice contributes
to the greatness of the song.
(gentle music)
Simple, it's crisp, but it's dark too.
♪ I hurt myself today ♪
- It's one of the greatest opening lines of any song.
♪ If I still feel ♪
- The shape. - I miss that.
- Yeah, to see if I still feel.
- Yeah, I'm talking about the lyrics.
I don't even mean the performance, the words.
♪ The only thing that's real ♪
♪ The needle tears a hole ♪
- But those words out of Trent Reznor are not the same.
They have a different meaning
coming out of Johnny Cash's mouth.
♪ Try to kill it all away ♪
♪ But I remember everything ♪
♪ What have I become ♪
- What have I become?
♪ My sweetest friend ♪
- Written probably for a young man.
- I think he was 20 when he wrote it, Trent.
♪ Goes away in the end ♪
♪ And you could have it all ♪
♪ My empire of dirt ♪
- Anger, regret, pain.
♪ I will let you down ♪
♪ I will make you blue ♪
- The way the guitarist played,
the choice of instrument, the layers there,
the freedom to give him, to use the voice that's fading.
It's not fading, it's changing.
Maybe he's losing some aspects of his voice.
And it's almost like shaking a little bit.
And it's a little bit out of tune in parts.
How much of that was deliberate?
Like, how do you give Johnny Cash the freedom to do that?
How do you find that together?
Is there any insights you can give?
§07Transcript · 57:59–1:08:38
- I think it's a case almost of like the right,
pairing the right role with the right actor, you could say.
The song lyrics, the reason we chose the song
was because of the lyrics, purely about the lyrics.
And at that point in time,
both Johnny and I would send each other songs
of possible ideas to record.
And that was one that I sent him
and he didn't respond to initially.
I would send him, at that time we would burn CDs
and I would send him like CD of 20 songs or 25 songs.
And then, and he would send them to me.
- You burn a CD for Johnny Cash
and you send him of different songs.
- Of like songs to consider recording.
- Yeah.
- And we would send these back and forth.
And then that I had hurt on one of the ones that I sent him
and he didn't respond.
And usually if he didn't respond, we didn't go back to it.
And that one, I remember I sent it again
and I put it first on the next CD.
And when we spoke about when he listened to the CD again,
he didn't respond.
I said, check out that first song.
And I really feel like that one could be good.
- What did you see in that song?
- It's the lyrics.
It's the lyrics.
'Cause I feel like nobody,
there's very few people in the world
that would see these lyrics in Johnny Cash's mouth
and think this is a good idea, including Trent Reznor.
- Yeah.
I know that Trent had trepidations in the beginning.
But if you listen to the words, if you forget the music
and if you forget what Nine Inch Nails sounds like
and you just read it like a poem,
and then you imagine a 70 year old man reading these lyrics,
it'll be profound.
It's profound.
So that was the, based on the lyrics
that started the journey.
And then at this point in time,
Johnny was not in great health.
And sometimes I would go to Nashville
and record with him at his house.
Sometimes he would come to California,
but he was coming to California less regularly.
And because there were so many songs we wanted to try,
he would start sometimes recording
just a straight acoustic version.
Like he would have someone play guitar, he would sing,
and they would send those to me.
And we would discuss like, is this one to build on?
And that was when we said,
I don't wanna record this one until we're together.
I feel like we should do this one together.
So on the next trip to California,
we recorded it at my old house.
And I mean, all the songs we recorded felt special.
So I can't say this one felt special,
but lyrically it just, it's more,
the lyrics have such a profound sense of regret.
- What have I become?
- Yeah, and to hear, when you're 20 years old,
talking about regret, it's heartbreaking,
but it's heartbreaking in a different way
because you have a whole life to figure it out.
When you're looking back over your life
at the end of your life with regret, it's brutal.
It's brutal.
So that was the initial spark of doing it.
And then when we recorded it,
I believe it was two guitar players,
if I remember correctly, maybe even three,
Smokey Hormel, Matt Sweeney, and Mike Campbell, I believe.
And Ben Montench was playing the piano in my living room
as we were doing it.
And we cut the basic track with Johnny singing.
And then Johnny probably sang over that basic track
a few more times.
And then we comped his vocal and then built up the drama.
And you didn't get to the part,
but at the end of the song, it gets very loud.
The music gets very loud.
It's subtle because it's not anything that takes your ear
and the vocal is so powerful
that you don't really think about what's going on.
- But it's building the whole time musically.
- It's building and it even gets distorted at the end.
It gets really like overpowering.
And that's part of the emotion of it.
- It's a...
(soft music)
I hear almost the anger and frustration.
♪ You know ♪
♪ If I could start again ♪
♪ A million miles away ♪
♪ I would keep myself ♪
♪ I would find a way ♪
- And it just rings out, the clean vocal.
I mean, it's so simple, so incredible.
And it's interesting to have a young man's lyrics
in an old Johnny Cash voice and heart and mind.
Are you a fan of Tom Waits?
- Of course.
- Tom Waits, when he was younger,
there's a song called "Martha,"
but there's a bunch of songs he's written when he was young.
It's like, how does a young man
have that like melancholy wisdom?
The song "Martha" is about an older man
calling a woman he used to love
that she's now married and he's married.
And they're having that conversation.
They haven't spoken for 30 years
and they realize that there's still love there
and it could have been a different life,
a different world where they could have been together.
And here's like a 23-year-old Tom Waits
writing so beautifully about something that's very...
I've had a lot of people like tell me
how real that as an older person,
looking back at that love that you had
and realizing it wasn't, it was really, it's still there.
Inklings of that love are still there.
- I think there's a...
When a young person writes a sad song,
they almost seem more willing to go to a more hopeless place
because they have a long journey ahead.
And older artists tend to wanna look
at the bright side of things,
which also I think comes from the wisdom of aging.
It's a more realistic position.
So it's not uncommon for younger people to write.
I think even in the Beatles,
you'll see like they're very heavy lyrics,
middle to late era Beatles, which is still,
they're in their early 20s, I guess.
- Wow, that's hard to think about.
So much accomplished. - Unbelievable.
- And they went through the full journey
from fun to darkness in the span of a few years.
You mentioned lyrics.
So you've obviously produced albums with incredible lyrics.
I think you've mentioned the interesting characteristics
of hip hop, of rap is that you're writing poetry to rhythm
versus writing poetry to melody.
So that's like one way to think about it.
And I'm a fan, I mean, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen,
I'm a fan of poetry, period.
Is there something about highlighting the poetry of it,
the power of words as you did with "Hurt"?
- If I have to put, it's one, a Tom Waits song
that's like less than a minute long
that I always go back to, it's one I really love.
And it has just a few lines.
It's called "I Want You."
And all it is is him saying, "I want you."
(gentle music)
♪ I want you, you, you ♪
- This is a 22 year old Tom Waits.
♪ All I want is you, you, you ♪
♪ All I want is you ♪
♪ Give you stars above ♪
♪ The sun on the brightest day ♪
♪ Give you all my love ♪
♪ If only you would see ♪
♪ That I want you, you, you ♪
♪ All I want is you, you, you ♪
- And then he hums for 20 more seconds.
(laughs)
- Yeah, beautiful.
So simple, man, that young man,
but for people who don't know Tom Waits,
you should definitely listen to him.
And his voice sounds very different now.
And it's interesting to see the evolution of a human voice,
the artist over time,
because that's a young, boy-like voice, hopeful,
less clever, less witty, more simple.
That simplicity is there.
And he's not, I mean, that takes guts to be so simple,
I would say, lyrically and musically.
Is there, sort of laying that out on the table,
is there ways that you like to highlight the voice,
the lyrics, or is there's no one rule?
So do you, what is the thing that makes music special?
Is it the rhythm, the melody,
or is ultimately the lyrics are always there, or the idea?
- You just asked me five different questions.
- I don't care, I'll just get back.
(laughs)
It's not about you.
(laughs)
- You don't want the answers.
- I don't want the answers.
- Just wanna ask questions.
Okay, I'll listen.
§08Transcript · 1:08:40–1:18:47
(laughs)
- I look forward to your comments, the internet.
Okay.
(laughs)
You have the greatest producer of all time in front of you,
and you can't shut the hell up.
That's right, friends.
Is, but you do value lyrics.
Is there a way to celebrate lyrics?
- I value lyrics if the lyrics are important.
I'm not a lyric person.
I'm very much, whatever the thing that makes the thing good
is the thing that I'm drawn to, for me.
For a long time, lyrics meant very little.
I would say from the--
- Really?
- Yes. - In the beginning?
- Yes.
From the earliest days--
- Fight for your right to party, Beastie Boys?
- Yeah, it was fun.
I thought they were good lyrics,
but it wasn't what was important.
I mean, it was in a, almost a novelty way,
not in a serious way.
Early in my career, I was much more focused on the rhythm,
first the rhythm.
And I would, if the lyrics weren't good enough,
I would be aware of it,
but it wasn't the driving force for me.
And eventually over time,
then melody became an important piece,
which it wasn't in the beginning.
And then lyrics became more important over time,
but it's always been a,
always changing what draws me in.
And one of the things I found as it relates to lyrics
that can give a lyric a different power
has to do with rhythm, where if there's no drum,
the lyrics tend to mean more.
So earlier what you were saying about
if it was just acapella,
you felt Marvin Gaye in a different way
hearing the acapella.
- Can you comment on, I mean,
in terms of one of the greatest albums ever,
♪ There's a fire starting in my heart ♪
- Why does it sound so raw, her voice?
- She's just a great singer.
- But this is, you're not doing anything else.
You're doing the, there's strumming,
and then there's just a single beat.
And then it builds.
♪ Don't underestimate the things that I will do ♪
♪ There's a fire starting in my heart ♪
♪ I'm reaching a fever ♪
♪ Pigeon is bringing me out the door ♪
♪ The scars of your love remind me ♪
- This is getting simpler,
but it feels like it's a giant orchestra.
♪ I'm reaching a fever ♪
♪ And look, we almost had it all ♪
♪ The scars of your love, they leave me breathless ♪
♪ I can't help feeling ♪
♪ We couldn't have it all ♪
- There's back and vocals.
♪ Rolling in, you have my heart ♪
♪ I'm loving when she's mad at me ♪
- The anger.
♪ Never let me be ♪
- I love it.
♪ I never could have been ♪
♪ Baby, I have no ♪
- It just, there's something about such a powerful voice
and the instruments not getting in the way.
I mean, the same with her and Johnny Cash.
Is there, why does it sound so like raw?
It's the same as her.
There's a, it feels like you're in the room with them.
It feels like they're not even singing.
They're like, they're literally freshly mad and angry.
- I think those are the things
that make great singers sound like great singers.
It's not anything that's happening in the studio.
I mean, I would say the only thing
that us in the studio can do
is kind of get out of the way and not ruin it.
You know, it's like, that's what comes through
of these people.
- I should also, before I forget,
there is a lot of song choices on that CD.
I would love to see the full options on the CD
that you sent to Johnny Cash that I love.
So "Solitary Man" is one of my favorite choices made there.
Is that a Neil Diamond song?
- It's funny you talk about them as songs
'cause I tend to listen more to albums than songs.
So.
- That's what you're doing in your head.
You're pulling up the album, essentially.
- No, I'm like, I'm going to that song,
but I don't know, I've never listened to that song.
But I know that when that song comes up
in the sequence of the album,
it has a really powerful effect in me.
Let's see what it does if you just start it.
(gentle music)
(gentle music)
♪ If you could read my mind ♪
- Oh, so interesting.
Wow.
♪ Just like an old time movie ♪
♪ About a ghost from a wishing well ♪
♪ In a castle dark ♪
♪ Or a fortress strong ♪
♪ With chains around my feet ♪
♪ You know that ghost is me ♪
♪ And I will never be set free ♪
♪ As long as there's a ghost that you can't see ♪
(gentle music)
- That's beautiful.
- If I could. - Such a beautiful choice.
- Beautiful melody. - Try.
- Such a beautiful melody in "Haunting Words".
- It's sung so simply.
I have to, I mean, so I was born in the Soviet Union.
When you're growing up,
there's a few bands that kinda,
I mean, they're probably forbidden still,
but they seep in and you get like bootlegged
and they somehow take over the culture
of the young folks such as myself.
So on the metal side, it was Metallica and Iron Maiden.
And on the, I don't know what you call them,
but Beastie Boys, I remember hearing "Fight for Your Right"
and it was just like, for some reason that stuck
as it did for a lot of people in Russia.
It's like, wow, America is when you get to say fuck you
to the man, the rebellion, the freedom.
I probably heard it a few years after it was released
because it kinda, it dissipates to the culture.
You get the bootleg, I mean, it's hard to get your hands on.
I just remember, I wanna kinda bring that up
because it was such a personally important song to me.
And yet probably you didn't even think of that.
You probably thought of it as its role in the culture here
in the United States, like in terms of musically.
- But I was 20, 21 years old and we just--
- Well, you were that kid too, right?
- Yeah, we were just making fun songs for our friends.
There was no expectation.
- That's just a fun song.
- Yeah, no one thought, we never imagined
anybody would like any of it.
- One of the greatest albums ever.
♪ Yeah ♪
I have to, I love this so much.
I just remember, this is America.
I didn't even know, I didn't even understand the lyrics
to be honest.
♪ You wake up like a school man ♪
♪ You don't wanna go ♪
And the lyrics are ridiculous.
- Ridiculous.
♪ Yeah, I get my way ♪
♪ But you still said no ♪
♪ You missed two classes and no homework ♪
♪ But your teacher brings you to life ♪
♪ Like you're some kind of jerk ♪
♪ You gotta fight for your right to party ♪
- So hearing that and hearing Metallica, Master of Puppets,
I was like, I knew I'm gonna have to end up
in America one day.
I mean, maybe now that I'm more mature
or maybe a little bit more mature,
I realized that was kind of the longing for freedom.
It felt like, at least at the time,
if this is allowed, then anything is allowed.
- Yeah.
- And I think that the rebellion of it,
I guess it's also fun.
I just loved it.
If you look back to that, 'cause you were,
I mean, you were that person, not just the producer.
It feels like--
- Well, yes and no.
Like it was, even to us then, it was still satirical.
You know, it wasn't just-- - It was.
- Oh, absolutely.
But isn't music in part, like you're dancing in the line,
it's part satirical, part serious in the sense,
like you're losing yourself in the satire?
Anytime you go over the top, isn't that part of the,
or is it explicitly satirical?
You're making fun, I mean, "Girls,"
there's a lot of ridiculous songs in that album.
- I don't know, I just think it was definitely
to make each other laugh.
Like we were trying to make each other laugh.
We weren't trying to make a point.
§09Transcript · 1:18:49–1:29:21
We were trying to make each other laugh.
- But that person, how's that person different
than the person today in you?
The person that produced that record?
- I wouldn't say so different.
It's like, it really is that,
I like things that make me laugh.
You know, I like ridiculous things.
- It's the same person still.
- I think so.
- Is it strange, just how many incredible--
- I mean, I don't think I would make that today,
but I understand why we made it when we did.
It's in the vocabulary of ridiculous
that would make sense to do.
You know, for the right artist today,
could make something ridiculous and gives you that feeling.
- I mean, there's just a sense when you make
so many different albums,
then you look back at that creation,
and it can feel like a different person created that.
But you're making it seem like if you travel back in time,
or maybe do a memory replay,
you'd be able to hang out with a teenage
and then a 20s recruitment.
- I don't think I was so different, honestly.
- That's hilarious.
- It's funny, I ran into someone recently in Costa Rica,
who I hadn't seen in a long time,
and who I knew from the New York days
when those days, and we spent a couple of hours talking
and she said, "You're exactly the same person
that you were then."
So I have a short, you know, a recent confirmation
that that's the case.
- That's beautiful.
Was it, Tim Ferriss asked you about like,
who's the most successful person you know?
That's the definition of success, I would say.
You're exactly the same person.
You haven't lost yourself,
or rather you found yourself early on.
- I would say there are aspects of me
that have changed for sure,
but I can't say that it's necessarily better.
It's different.
I would say at that time,
I was more confident than I am now,
and I'm very confident now,
but then I had an unrealistic confidence.
And I think now it's a little more based in reality.
At that point in time, I had never been depressed.
And then once you go through a depression,
well, some people I know in my case,
when I went through depression afterwards,
I was a different person than I was before.
And I feel more grounded now than I did then.
And I probably relate to the artists who,
so many of the artists I work with suffer.
So many artists suffer because that's part
of what makes an artist great,
is their level of sensitivity.
That the same thing that makes an artist uncomfortable,
other people don't feel at all.
- The time you were depressed,
what was the darkest moments of your life?
What took you there?
How did you get out?
- It was triggered by a person making a comment
about something to do with work that didn't matter.
It was like to anyone else, they would hear that
and it would just be like,
"Okay, we'll deal with it next week, whatever."
But for some reason, I took it in a way that I felt
like the rug had been pulled out from under me.
Even beyond the rational part of it, of understanding,
even after the problem that came up was solved,
it somehow undermined something in me
and made me feel very vulnerable
in a way that I hadn't felt before.
- And it spiraled, how did you get out?
- I did a lot of different kinds of therapy.
I did, starting with alternative therapies,
I was seeing, I would say,
between seven and eight doctors and or therapists a week.
Acupuncture, talk therapy, herbs,
or any possible modality, tried everything for a long time.
And nothing seemed to have an impact.
And then finally, I'm wary of taking any Western medicine.
I'm not a drug taker or drinker or partier in any way.
And I found a psychopharmacologist who was a psychic,
but because she was a psychic, I was okay to see her
'cause like, I'll listen to a psychic,
but I'm not gonna listen to a psychopharmacologist.
But the fact that she had the psychic,
that made her fit into my worldview.
And she recommended antidepressant,
which went terribly wrong in the first night that I took it.
And then that set me on a journey
of looking for the right antidepressant,
which was a long and painful process.
- That's a heck of a journey.
- Every one that I took made me sick, every one.
And then finally, so I don't know, five months later,
six months later, I found the magic one that worked for me.
And it shifted me out of the depression.
I took it for, I can't remember, it was six months
or a year, and then weaned off and was okay.
And then I had another event some years later.
I think I took it again for a short period of time
and got out of it and I've not needed it since.
- Were you able to kind of introspect the triggers
that led to the events?
Or is it random events of life?
- I think it's more that because of the way that I grew up,
I never had to deal with much controversy.
And when I was challenged,
I didn't have any ability to deal with it.
It's like Jonathan Haidt talks about, it's like that.
- So you've actually also mentioned
like business sometimes gives you stress.
So this was business-related stuff.
- Yeah, it was a business-related thing.
It just made me feel bad.
- It's one of the sadder things about art and music
is that it's often interleaved with business folk.
I suppose that's the way of the world
if you have a capitalist system,
but it makes that business folks rubbing up against artists
can sometimes destroy a fragile mind and soul.
To me, like one of the best representations of an artist,
honestly, is Johnny Ive, the designer from Apple.
And he's just so fragile with his ideas.
And you talked about like when he has ideas,
he really wouldn't show it to Steve Jobs or anybody
except for the small design team
'cause he was so nervous that it would break.
Let's give it a chance, let it give it a chance to grow.
And it seems like the outside world,
business people, PR people,
people that kind of have not lost themselves
in the passion of creating,
but instead are kind of representing
or like making deals, all that kind of stuff.
They can kind of trample on those little ideas.
And it's sad to see.
It's really heartbreaking to see
'cause you know how much trampling there's going on.
- It's one of the main jobs,
my jobs as a record producer is to keep the voices
away from the artist,
from all of the people who are really on their side,
but don't know, like the, whether it be people,
anyone on the business side who doesn't make things
they're excited to do their part.
You know, they're excited.
If when you deliver the thing, the art that you make to me,
then we can start the project.
But there's nothing to sell
if the art doesn't happen in the right way
and it has to be protected and it can't happen
on the same kind of a timetable that business can.
It's just a different thing.
It doesn't, art doesn't come in a quarterly way.
- And that doesn't apply just to music or it applies to art,
it applies to all creative pursuits.
Like this is generally the case, like at MIT,
it's just, there's the administration
and then there is the professors and students.
And the professors and students are the creative folk.
They create stuff, they dream,
they have wild ideas that go on tangents and so on.
They have hopes and they go with those
and they get like on these weird, passionate pursuits
and then the administration can often just trample on that.
And they set up bars on all kinds of,
in all kinds of ways
that you think you're not actually hurting,
but you really are.
And I won't mention why, but,
'cause this happens to everybody
and I have a large amount of leverage at MIT now,
but even I get a little bit of pressure
in such stupid ways to like, don't,
like be careful, be careful, Lex.
Like we really want your career to succeed, be careful.
And that little pressure to an artist,
do you wanna go acapella?
Do you wanna go, do you want to do a country record?
Like be careful, like you're already a superstar,
be careful.
And then in that way, you kinda push people,
like flock of fish into one fish tank
but they're all the same.
And it's sad to see.
And it's obviously in the modern world,
there's nice mechanism to protect,
to let artists flourish a little bit more
'cause they get to put themselves to the world
and get a little bit more confidence,
§10Transcript · 1:29:23–1:38:22
maybe different funding mechanisms, all that kind of stuff.
- Tremendous problem.
The voices that don't understand
interfering with the process is huge.
The other side of it is in success,
there can be a lack of reality
where all of the people around the successful person
just tell them everything they do is great.
And then they don't have anything to bump up against anymore
or have a realistic sense of how things work
or how things measure.
So both sides are really important,
both avoiding the voices getting in the way
and having a trusted group of, a sangha,
a group of people who can say,
I don't know if that's as good.
And you can still say, I don't care what you think,
that's fine, but it helps to hear it.
It helps to have, if someone who you respect
tells you something isn't good enough, it's helpful.
- When you know it comes from a place of love,
when it comes from a place of wisdom.
- 100%, and not from a place of fear,
not from a place of, oh, this doesn't sound like
it's gonna do as well as your last thing.
That's not the point.
The point is on this quest for greatness,
are you living up to your ability?
- By the way, is there something interesting to say
about your worldview?
'Cause you mentioned psychic
and sort of the ways we can be healthy,
the ways we can grow in how much maybe medicine
or science has the answers.
Is there some interesting way to describe that worldview?
- I would just say I'm open-minded.
I believe anything's possible.
And if I was gonna trust in any practical information,
it would be something thousands of years old.
- There's wisdom in that history, yeah.
- Well, it's more tested.
It's not always right,
but at least it's been somewhat tested.
- Though science is also tested.
The thing I'm a little bit skeptical of sometimes
is just the hubris that often comes with the modern,
with the latest, the newest,
this feeling like you figured it all out.
Everything that's been done in the past has no wisdom.
And we basically solved every problem.
There's nothing else to be solved.
I mean, that's a defining characteristic of any age
is like we've solved all the problems there are,
we've had the final answers,
and our parents are all stupid.
That kind of energy, yeah.
And you have to be extremely, extremely careful with that
when it talks about,
when you think about something as complex
as the human body or the human mind,
you have to be very, very, very careful.
- I believe we know close to nothing.
- Yeah, exactly. - Close to nothing.
- That's-- - About anything.
- About anything. - About anything.
- That place of humility is a good place
to start to figure it all out.
And in the end, we'll still know almost nothing.
- Yeah, I don't think we need to know.
It's like we need to see what works,
and we need to see what works for us.
It's interesting to know.
I know on the art side,
knowing how it works isn't what makes it work.
Isn't the magic of it, isn't how it works.
The magic is the magic.
And the magic happens in a way that's intuitive
and accidental at times,
or incidental where you're trying many things,
all of a sudden something works,
and you don't know why.
And it's okay not to know why.
It doesn't really matter why,
as long as it does the thing that you want it to do,
whatever that is.
- Yeah, that's so weird.
When you know the components,
you don't, you still, yeah, the magic.
What's the magic, where is the magic?
We know the components for stuff I care about,
artificial intelligence.
We know the components of a powerful computing machinery.
Where does consciousness come from?
What is that?
Where does the brilliant moments of insight come from?
What's that?
Even in simple games of chess, or in simple,
where do those breakthrough ideas
of taking the big risk that doesn't make any sense,
and then all of a sudden it becomes something beautiful.
Yeah, we don't need to understand why.
It just happens.
- It just happens.
And often the things that end up breaking through
don't break through in the way we thought,
or turn out to be a third iteration of something
that we thought was an entirely different thing.
We don't know.
And I think it's, if we embrace that not knowing,
we'll have a healthier experience going through life.
- You made a lot, it's not just music, everything.
Rearranging the chairs, the furniture as well.
You've done, like I said, the documentary,
I guess you would say, with Paul McCartney.
And you've done a podcast yourself,
Broken Record podcast,
and you've done conversation too.
So what have you learned from that process
about the art of conversation?
And also maybe what advice would you give to this,
to me about how, what to do with conversation?
Like what is interesting to you about conversation?
- One of the things that I like
is to not feel like it's,
there is any stakes,
or that it's actually, almost that it's not happening.
Like the fact that when I came in,
you were setting up cameras,
made it less good for me.
I knew that that would impact the conversation
in a negative way.
The best version of it would be
if we didn't see the cameras,
and we didn't see any technology,
and we were just sitting at this table
having a conversation.
Maybe even if we were mic'd beforehand,
would be okay if it was necessary.
But then we were just sitting here having a conversation,
no people in the room, nothing,
and feeling like we're just having a conversation.
I feel like it would get closer to,
closer to the relaxed feeling.
Same thing we do in the studios.
Like you've heard of red light fever,
you know when artists get nervous
when like they play a song great,
and then the tape starts rolling,
and they can't play it.
And it's, we're all to some degree like that.
- When you were with Paul McCartney,
I mean, were you cognizant of cameras?
- We had the room black.
Everybody who was working there was dressed in black.
Everything was invisible.
We were lit in a way where,
even though there were probably 20 people,
between 12 and 20 people working in the room,
within three minutes of starting the conversation,
Paul and I were alone in the room.
So that was the feeling.
On occasion you'd hear a noise, and it would be weird.
People, we also had, nobody was allowed to wear shoes,
because it had to, we were trying to create
this intimate space.
And I know from in the recording studio,
when we're recording, if even one person is there,
that's just watching and not working,
you know, like there's usually,
I'm usually there, and an engineer is there
technically making it happen.
If anyone else is in the room, it's different,
because then it goes from this moment
where the person's doing a performance,
to the sense, or where the person is
feeling something internally, and we're capturing it,
to the other version is, they're performing for someone.
- It's so interesting.
So like to push back in the alternatives here.
So one, about the third person,
not to make people self-conscious,
but I find that I'm so torn on that,
'cause sometimes when that person,
so Evan is in the room here,
he's been in the room before,
he's a huge fan of yours, by the way.
So he'll nod, yeah, yeah, he'll get excited.
He's like, and you can see that nodding,
and for some reason for me, it's like, yeah,
you get it, like, yeah, you get excited together.
I mean, that third person can be like a really special,
so having an audience, when it's a friend,
or somebody that has that love in them.
- It depends on the performer.
It's all positive, yeah.
Yeah, some people really thrive in front of an audience.
- And you're saying you like that simple intimacy
of everything just evades.
- Well, I like the reality of it not being,
I want it to be as far from a performance as possible.
§11Transcript · 1:38:24–1:49:18
- Got it.
- And if someone, I'll tell you a story,
a story that just happened, and it was viewed as kind of a,
it seemed uncool in the moment
to the person that it happened to.
It wasn't at all.
We were recording the new "Chili Peppers" album,
which is coming out, I think, any day now.
Like, I don't know what today's date is,
but within the next, maybe by the time this airs,
it will be out.
And the band was playing in the studio,
and it was ripping 'cause they're incredible.
And one of the members walked through the control room
after a particularly great performance,
and the engineer said, "Wow, that solo's really great."
And the person who heard this said,
"Please don't say that," and walked away.
It's like, it was not, it just changed
this feeling of we're in this place
where we're doing this thing,
and there is no outside world.
You know, we're doing this for us.
We're going as deep as we can for us.
And as soon as there's an acknowledgement to someone else,
in a way, it breaks the concentration of being inside of it.
- That's so well told.
But something about saying, "Wow, that solo's great,"
is shows the, it reminds you that there's an outside world,
but I feel like there's a way to enter the inside world
as an audience.
So you just have to do that.
(laughing)
So it matters what you say.
It matters how you look.
It matters, so there's these generic compliments,
not generic, but they sound in the way
an outside world would interact,
as opposed to in that creative thing
where you're dancing around the fire together or something.
- There's actually, I can tell you,
there's another interesting one that happened to me,
and I didn't know this until I saw the film of it,
which was a strange one.
We were recording with the Avett brothers,
and the song was called "No Hard Feelings,"
and it was this recording of "No Hard Feelings."
(gentle music)
♪ No hard feelings ♪
♪ When my body won't hold me anymore ♪
♪ And it finally lets me free ♪
♪ Will I be ready ♪
♪ When my feet won't walk another mile ♪
- Such a great voice.
- So beautiful.
♪ Kiss goodbye ♪
♪ Will my hands be steady ♪
♪ When I lay down my fears ♪
♪ My hopes and my doubts ♪
♪ The rings on my fingers ♪
♪ And the keys to my house ♪
♪ With no hard feelings ♪
♪ When the sun hangs low in the west ♪
♪ And the light in my chest ♪
♪ Won't be kept held a day any longer ♪
♪ When the jealousy fades away ♪
- So bright, so hopeful, so lighthearted.
♪ For cash and lust ♪
♪ And it's just hallelujah ♪
♪ And love and thought ♪
♪ Love and the words ♪
♪ Love and the songs they sing in the church ♪
♪ And no hard feelings ♪
♪ God knows they haven't done ♪
♪ Much good for anyone ♪
♪ Kept me afraid and cold ♪
♪ With so much to have and hold ♪
♪ Mm-mm-mm ♪
♪ When my body won't hold anymore ♪
♪ And if I'm weak ♪
♪ Let's be free ♪
♪ Where will I go ♪
- Does he sound as good in the studio?
- Yes, every bit.
♪ But the straight winds take me south ♪
♪ Through Georgia plain ♪
♪ And tropical rain ♪
♪ Or snow from the heavens ♪
♪ Will I join with the ocean blue ♪
♪ Or run into a savior true ♪
♪ And shake hands laughing ♪
♪ And walk through the night ♪
♪ Straight to the light ♪
♪ Holding the love I've known in my life ♪
♪ And no hard feelings ♪
♪ Lord knows they haven't done ♪
♪ Much good for anyone ♪
♪ Kept me afraid and cold ♪
♪ With so much to have and hold ♪
♪ Under the burning sky ♪
♪ I'm finally learning why ♪
♪ It matters for me and you ♪
♪ To stay and be here too ♪
♪ The life that it's all we get ♪
- It's building and building and building.
♪ Oh, it's all we get ♪
♪ Good as it's been to me ♪
♪ I have no enemies ♪
♪ I have no enemies ♪
♪ I have no enemies ♪
♪ I have no enemies ♪
- Wow.
He's got the power of like Jeff Buckley
with more like so much more sort of flavor to the voice.
He's go so many different places.
It's cool when it's like acappella just mostly him.
You could do like "Hallelujah"
the Jeff Buckley way I could tell.
It's incredible.
That's an incredible song.
Is this a new record?
- This was, I don't know, four or five years ago,
something like that.
But what happened with this, that happened.
And I mean, they're great and it's always good.
But that performance in that moment
was felt like the sky opened up.
It was unbelievable.
- But this was a single take?
- This was a single take.
- Oh, wow.
- That was just like--
- That was incredible.
Yeah, that was perfect.
That was perfect, yeah.
- When it ended, I said, "Great, what do you wanna do next?"
And they said, "We just need a few minutes."
And they walked out and that's all I know.
It's like, okay, I'm laying down,
waiting until they're ready to start again.
And in the film, there was a film made
of the sessions of this.
They went out and they're like,
what was that like?
Like, didn't he get what just happened?
Like, because it was so heavy.
- Yeah.
- And it was just as heavy for me.
And in the spirit of we're here to make
the most great stuff we can,
we're not gonna like open champagne.
Like, that's not, it's like, great,
what do you wanna do next?
It's like, let's not revel in this.
But they took it as like,
this guy just like doesn't even understand
what we're doing.
(laughing)
But I had no idea until I saw the film.
- That's funny.
- Whoa, that was the reaction.
- Yeah, but I think your response
is the right risk to take, right?
'Cause it's the celebration at the end of a,
you wanna keep like, people celebrate too early.
- Yes, great.
And now let's use that momentum.
We're in the zone.
What's next?
- Yeah.
But you, yourself in conversation.
So you said that you wanna create this,
would you use the word intimacy?
Like, is it to create, or just the most real?
Like there's no cameras, there's no mics.
- I would say a place where you're comfortable to be naked.
You know, a place where you can be your most vulnerable
without questioning it.
You wanna really be able to let your guard down
and to, you know, if you wanna start crying
when you're singing, whatever it is, whatever it is.
And it's hard to get to that place.
And again, just the idea of someone, you know,
like, hey, that was good.
That could take you right out of that going in,
you know, going in.
- It's so interesting to think about how to achieve that
and still have mics.
- Yeah.
- That.
- It's hard, it's harder, it's harder.
- Some of it is space,
some of it is raw conversational skill.
Like there's something about certain,
well, some of that is also just like,
you have that, as I'm sure you are,
there's a legend to Rick Rubin.
And there's like my now friend Joe Rogan,
there's a legend to him.
And when you show up into Joe Rogan's studio,
§12Transcript · 1:49:21–1:58:48
the legend creates an aura.
And he, I think, subconsciously or consciously uses it.
To like, this is somehow, it's nervous, nervous, nervous.
And then you realize, oh, he's just human or something.
There's a relief.
And then, yeah, you could be yourself.
And that, so it's that nervousness, nervousness, nervousness
and it's like, oh, it's not that,
this legend is just a human and it's just, it's normal.
So I don't know how that's done.
But it's so interesting to think about how that's,
because I forget recording,
I just enjoy it when it's real.
Like this microphone gives us an excuse
to connect on a human level and forget,
and nobody's listening, it doesn't matter.
- I would say I felt maybe in the last 15 minutes,
I was less aware of anybody else being in the room
or any equipment here.
- Yeah. - But it took that long.
- That's so interesting.
I didn't have that at all.
All I had, I mean, the wind calmed down outside,
but there was a wind before.
And there's something about the wind,
that you can think of it
from an audio engineering perspective.
Like, oh, I wonder if the wind creates sound
or whatever that you hear.
But I was thinking like, none of this matters.
(laughing)
Like the wind is like nature will be here before us,
after us, and all of this will be dead and forgotten.
That's what the wind was reminding me of.
It's almost like laughing at the fact
that we could even consider ourselves important enough
to put on clothes and talk.
You love it, you love talking.
You love the podcast and just that.
Why did you dive into that?
Like why?
- It was a strange occurrence.
My friend Malcolm said he wanted to start doing a podcast
about music and asked if I would do it with him.
He's like, I like Malcolm.
And I thought it would be more like his podcast,
which is, it's not an interview podcast.
I thought it was gonna be telling stories
in the music world using audio stories.
And then it just started being interviews.
Not again, it wasn't intentional,
just started that way and ended up being that.
But I love it.
And I love both because I get to talk to people
that I don't know, but also when I get to talk to people
that I know and ask them about things
that we would never talk about ever.
I don't know the origin stories of any of the people,
any of my friends.
So to get to hear their perspective,
another like relating to Chili Peppers,
their album's coming out now.
I interviewed all four members of the band individually.
I interviewed John and midway through Anthony came in
and then I interviewed Flea separately
and I interviewed Chad separately.
And it was fascinating.
I know them for 30 years and I learned a tremendous amount
because you don't ask people about themselves
when you're just workmates or friends.
I do this sometimes, I'll just set up my microphones
and I'll record a thing for private consumption
from with friends or loved ones.
- Yeah. - It's fascinating.
- Good idea.
- 'Cause you get to ask those ridiculous questions.
First of all, about life, about the future,
about the past, about little fears and the things you miss.
And yeah, there's something people just reveal.
First loves, all those kinds of things.
Your view on love, your view on,
and those are things don't come up in regular conversations.
It's so nice that that's something about,
see, that's the pushback.
There's something about this microphone
or maybe it's just the deliberate nature of sitting down
and let's just talk.
There is something about the microphone that for me thinks,
just same with the suit.
I'm gonna take this moment seriously.
I've long forgotten that anyone is listening.
I'm gonna try to really listen to another human,
first of all, and to also ask the questions
that are really interesting.
I feel like when I talk to normal people out on the street,
I'm not allowed to ask anything.
I'm allowed to ask only the more generic things.
- I think you can ask anything.
- I'm starting to think that.
- I think you're allowed to ask anything.
- I think you're allowed to basically do anything,
especially in Texas.
- Yeah, I think it's okay to ask people
and I think people like it when you ask them.
People like to be seen and like to show who they are.
- As the wind blows again,
do you have advice for young people?
You have a fascinating life journey.
Is there advice you can give to people in high school
and college about how to have a life like yours
in whatever pursuit in terms of,
success is such a silly word,
but just find success or maybe happiness in career
or just in life in general?
- Yeah, the only advice I would have
would be to not listen to anyone
and to do what you love and to make things that you love,
whatever it is, make your favorite things.
Be the audience, you be the audience.
Make the thing for you, the audience.
And it doesn't really matter what anyone else thinks
and if you have to get a job to support yourself
so that you can make your art, that's fine.
You can't make art for someone else,
you can't make art with someone else in mind,
I don't believe, I don't believe it can be good.
- So what does success feel like?
Are you grateful, are you proud of the work
you've done in the past
or is there some engine of constant dissatisfaction,
like self-criticism of I could have done better?
- No, I'm pleased with the work that we did,
excited to keep working, it's fun.
I don't know what else I would do with myself
'cause I like making things, it's fun.
I feel like it's my reason to be on the planet
so I just keep doing it.
- Whatever ideas are actually coming from elsewhere
and are using your mind as a temporary vehicle,
that's their purpose to be on this planet.
Your purpose is to procreate and not die
and eat regularly enough such that the brain is alive,
it's a biological purpose.
- Yeah, and anything I can do to keep the channel open
to allow what wants to come through to come through,
I'm a willing channel.
- It's so interesting 'cause I'm extremely self-critical
so you don't have that self-criticism harsh,
like this could have been better, this--
- If it could have been better, I would keep working on it.
It's like if it could be better, it's not done.
- So when it's done, it's done.
- Well, it's the best it can be.
I've done everything I can to make it the best it can be
and I can't do more than that
so there's nothing to be critical of.
I did my very, if you always give all of yourself
and do your best, which you're capable of doing,
I'm not suggesting that you're capable
of doing more than you can do,
but whatever it is that you can do,
if you've given all of yourself to it,
you've done your best, where could there be regret?
- Yeah, there could be, you re-listen to an album,
you re-listen to anything you've created
and think, oh, there's so many interesting ideas missed.
- It's fine though, but that was that moment.
It's like everything is like a,
it's almost like a diary entry.
Everything we make is a reflection of a moment in time,
a window in time.
Could be a day, it could be a year,
it could be whatever window you decide that it is.
But if you give it all of yourself
and you know if you're not interested
in working on it anymore, it's done.
Now you may decide it's not good enough
to share with people and that's fine,
but if it's good enough to share with people,
there's no regret looking back.
- That's funny, 'cause like think of it as a diary entry.
It's hard to look back at a diary entry and say, you know--
- I did it wrong. - I did it wrong.
- It's impossible.
- Yeah, and even if it's read by 100 people,
a thousand people, a million people,
it's just a diary entry. - Doesn't matter.
- Speaking of doesn't matter, this life is finite.
All of us, even recruitment, will be forgotten one day.
Do you think about your mortality--
- Tomorrow. - Tomorrow, yes.
Do you think about the finiteness of this thing?
Do you think about mortality, about your mortality?
Does it make any sense to you?
Do you think about death?
Are you afraid of death?
- I don't think about it very much.
- Are you afraid?
- I don't think I'm afraid.
I mean, I don't wanna die,
§13Transcript · 1:58:50–2:04:10
but I know that that's in the cards,
and when it happens, it happens.
- Your nature of not wanting to die is kinda like,
you don't wanna go to a shitty restaurant.
You'd like to go to a nicer one.
So it's just a preference thing.
- Well, I wanna keep living
because I wanna do what I like to do.
So whatever, now who knows?
Whatever comes next may be even better.
Maybe we're, I don't know.
I can't, I haven't experienced it yet, so who knows?
- What do you think happens after we die?
- I believe we go on in some capacity.
I don't know what that means,
but in the same way that everything recycles,
everything comes around.
I don't know why we would be different.
- In some way.
- In some way.
I don't know what that way is,
and I don't know that it's in the same being,
or in the same grouping of information, whatever that is.
But the thing that makes us us,
that information, I imagine, goes on.
- Yes, it does seem like our world here,
at least on Earth, has a memory.
And just like history, it kinda rhymes.
It brings back creations of the past and riffs on them,
improvises on top of them,
and in that way, humanity propagates.
- I mean, you see it with garbage.
You see the mountains of garbage.
It's like it doesn't really go anywhere.
Even when it breaks up, it disintegrates,
but it's never really gone.
Same.
- Is there anything in this world you're afraid of?
- A lot of things.
- But not death.
- I mean, I don't know.
I don't know.
- What are you afraid of?
- Death is more of a question mark.
Again, I'm not in any--
- To be answered.
- Yeah, I'm not in any hurry for that to happen,
but it will happen, and when it does,
we get to experience what that is.
- Well, okay, then the big question mark,
what's the meaning of this whole thing?
It's the meaning of life, Rick Rubin.
- Putting my name on it makes it harder to answer.
- It's just a diary entry, like we said.
- It's true, it's true.
- You will get a different answer tomorrow.
Let's see, what's the meaning of life today?
- Late and later today.
It could be, so for people who don't know,
we were maybe thinking of maybe meeting in Austin,
have some barbecue, and now we're in the middle of nowhere
in beautiful West Texas, and this is basically
a glorified delivery of barbecue, of my favorite barbecue,
maybe one of your top favorite barbecues,
to one of my favorite humans,
so we get to eat some barbecue today.
Maybe that's the meaning.
Do you have something bigger than barbecue?
- Barbecue's pretty big.
(Lex laughing)
Barbecue's pretty good.
- Where's your love for barbecue come from, by the way?
Do you, is this--
- Well, I was a vegan for 20-something years,
and once I found my way back into eating meat,
I think barbecue's my favorite of any of the things
that I didn't eat for so long.
- I have to ask you, I almost forgot.
So there's an SNL skit with Will Ferrell that he wrote
about "Don't Fear the Reaper,"
where it's Bruce Dickinson as the producer.
I always think about you when I see that skit.
I don't know why, people should definitely watch it,
and he demands more cowbell into the mix,
and the whole band,
this is how I imagine people interact with you.
The whole band is really impressed.
We get to work with the great Bruce Dickinson,
and then it's played by Christopher Walken,
and he says, "Fellas, fellas,
I put on my pants one leg at a time,
just like the rest of you,
but once my pants are on, I make gold records."
(Lex laughing)
And I just, and then the whole skit continues,
and he wants to add more and more cowbell,
and Will Ferrell said he wrote that skit
'cause he always heard the song "Don't Fear the Reaper,"
and there's a distant cowbell.
It's very light in the mix,
and he's like, "I wonder what the story of that cowbell is.
Like, if we just look at that one layer,
who's that guy that was in there?"
- That's me.
- So is that basically exactly how your life is,
is Bruce Dickinson from the cowbell?
I don't know if you've seen that skit.
- I don't think it's like that.
- It's not, okay, all right.
I'm just gonna pretend then.
Rick, this is a huge honor that you sit with me.
I mean, what can I say about how incredible of a human you are?
You truly are out of this world,
and thank you so much for talking today.
- I'm a great fan.
I'm so happy that you agreed to do this with me.
- Thanks for listening to this conversation
with Rick Rubin.
To support this podcast,
please check out our sponsors in the description.
And now, let me leave you with some words
from Albert Einstein.
Imagination is everything.
It is the preview of life's coming attractions.
Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)