The Gobblers Knob

I love it when I can curl up to a good music-related book and tear through it over the course of a weekend. Not because it’s overly simplistic or light, but because I just cant put it down. The new book, Rick Rubin – In The Studio, digs just deep enough to give serious fans of the man’s work some specifics and perspective that likely haven’t been put together in one place before.

Much of the book, whether it’s interviews and comments with artists that have benefited from Rubin’s magic, or the man himself, are culled from previously published articles over the past 20+ years. That said, Jake Brown does an excellent job of streamlining all of the information, crafting a story and constructing themes from the source material. The book does begin with Rubin’s introduction into the music business when he helped start Def Jam Records with Russell Simmons. Once we get past that initial phase, however, the book becomes the “Rubin, Chili Peppers and Johnny Cash Anthology”. Don’t take that as a bad thing, by any stretch. It’s Rubin’s work with the legendary rock/funk misfits and the giant who was the revered, elderly statesman of American Music that has been chiefly responsible for vaulting Rubin into modern-day legend status himself.

The book delves deep into the relationships that Rubin nurtured with many of his artists. Again it’s the examples of the RHCP and Cash bonds that provide the greatest peek inside the chemistry that created such amazing, groundbreaking albums. Between being basically an extra member of the Chili Peppers and taking communion with Cash on a near daily basis, we are shown what is perhaps Rubin’s greatest strength as a producer, the ability to relate. Sometimes that means Rubin is reaching out to the band and driving them to create something that achieves a higher standard than they had originally shot for, and sometimes he simply knows how to turn a rambling rhyme with no real focus into something that the fan will want to hear, thanks to an accessible song structure. We learn that Rubin produces based upon feel and not by jumping into the booth and spanking the bass or playing lead on his albums while being a knob-nazi on the board. It is relayed to us that Rubin possesses such a keen understanding for what makes genuinely good music and he knows how to get a band effectively craft an album that will force the listener to engage themselves fully into the final product. While much attention is given to the technical and instrumental aspects of the various works, those specifics serve to round out the picture, not jump in front of it.

Yes, the book discusses Rubin’s work with the many other artists in which he helped produce some really great albums. The Cult, System of a Down, Audioslave, Neil Diamond, Danzig, Beastie Boys, Slayer, and Metallica are all discussed here. Rubin’s guidance of the historic project where Run DMC and Aerosmith teamed up on what many consider to be the first rap/rock combination, “Walk This Way”, is detailed as well. What is striking to me, as with many other occurrences mentioned in the book that are fascinating to me, is that the seminal track that brought Hip-Hop to the mainstream and reminded the public that Aerosmith was still alive was merely an idea that Rubin had and thought would work. As one can see, especially after reading this book, most of Rubin’s ideas are pretty good.