‘We all are creative beings’: Rick Rubin says anyone can make a great work of art

Rick Rubin is one of the most prolific music producers of all time and a master at helping artists tap into their creativity.

In the ’80s, he started Def Jam Recordings out of his dorm room at New York University, launching the careers of hip-hop legends like Run-DMC, Public Enemy and LL Cool J.

But Rubin isn’t a single-genre producer. His resumé is basically a crash course in the last 30 years of pop culture, featuring an endless list of stars including Adele, Johnny Cash, Kanye West, Lady Gaga, Kesha, Green Day and the Chicks.

Now, he’s released a new book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being, to help people connect with the creativity that he says is inside of everyone.

In an interview on Q with Tom Power, the nine-time Grammy-winning producer reflected on his career and some of his most famous collaborations, and shared a few tips for burgeoning artists.

Here are some highlights from the interview.

He says everyone is capable of unlocking their creativity

The premise of Rubin’s new book is that we’re all capable of being artists. While the artists he’s worked with have built huge fan bases and sold millions of records, he said there’s no special quality that makes them different from the rest of us.

“We all are creative beings,” he told Power. “We all have our own experience and then, based on our own experience, find ways to share that experience so others can get a glimpse of what we’re experiencing. And when something connects, it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily better than something that doesn’t connect.”

On making No Sleep Till Brooklyn

When it comes to his own creative process, it’s hard for Rubin to describe exactly what he does as a producer. “It’s radically different even from song to song, much less artist to artist,” he said.

For the song No Sleep Till Brooklyn by Beastie Boys, it all started with a phrase written on a mixtape Adam Yauch had made. Rubin suggested to Yauch that it would make a good song title.

“He’s like, ‘Yeah, it’d be cool,'” said Rubin. “And then I programmed the drums, played the guitar, made the track — I did that all on my own. Usually, I would work on my own because I didn’t really know what I was doing. I still don’t know what I’m doing. So I do a lot of experimentation until I get something that’s interesting to me.”

He became a meme for claiming to know nothing about music

In an interview with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes earlier this year, Rubin made some self-deprecating comments about his production abilities and style that caught the internet’s attention.

“Do you know how to work a soundboard?” asked Cooper. “No. I have no technical ability,” Rubin responded. “And I know nothing about music.”

He added that it’s the confidence he has in his taste that’s made him so successful.

In his conversation with Power, Rubin said he can build a track or write lyrics when it’s “called for” but that’s always decided on a case-by-case basis.

“With Public Enemy, I signed them, but what they were doing was so self-contained and interesting, most of what my job was was just saying, ‘Yes, this is great. Do more of this,'” he said.

On helping Johnny Cash resurrect his career

One of Rubin’s most famous collaborations is with Johnny Cash, who was in the twilight of his career when they started working together. Rubin convinced Cash to record covers of songs by contemporary artists, including an iconic rendition of Hurt by Nine Inch Nails.

“At that point in time, almost everything I produced was by either a first- or second-album artist,” said Rubin. “I thought about who are the different grown-up artists who are significant artists and who may not be doing their best work or may not have been doing their best work for a long period of time?… The first person I thought of was Johnny Cash.”

‘The audience comes last’

When Rubin makes music, the audience isn’t on his mind at all. “The expression is ‘the audience comes last.’ And I really mean that,” he said.

“What’s funny about it is the audience comes last in service to the audience. It’s not that we don’t care about the audience — it’s that if we want to make the best thing we can, we can’t care about the audience.”

From Rubin’s perspective, making something new requires authenticity and confidence in your vision, and if you cater to your audience, you’ll only ever be able to make something that’s been done before.

“I will say my long career has been a testament to me making music that’s purely for myself and maybe something I’m excited to play for a close friend,” he said. “That’s it — never considering past that. And for whatever reason, it has spread past that.”

He made Walk This Way to help people understand hip-hop

In 1986, Rubin was already two years into running Def Jam Recordings, “a successful rap label in a world of not-successful rap labels.” That put him in the unique position of hearing what people in the industry thought about rap music.

“They didn’t view hip-hop as music — they thought it was something else,” he said. “So they didn’t understand it at all.… Even experienced, smart people in the music business [didn’t] know it’s music. And I thought, ‘Is there some way to bridge this gap?'”

The result was Run-DMC’s cover of Aerosmith’s Walk This Way, in collaboration with Steven Tyler on vocals and Joe Perry on guitar.

“When I presented it to [Joseph Simmons and Darryl McDaniels of Run-DMC], they loved the idea of using the beat … but they wanted to write their own words because there were no cover songs in rap at this point in time,” said Rubin. “And I said, ‘The whole purpose of this exercise, it’s to do the Aerosmith song because it’s already a rap song. It’s written as a rap song. If you do this, then all of the people who think rap music isn’t music, maybe they’ll understand.’

“That was the idea. And the idea of it being a hit was not at all. It was an afterthought. But it was more of an experiment.… It wasn’t an experiment to see if it would work; it was an experiment to see if this connected the dots so people understood what hip-hop was — not for it to be commercially successful.”

On finding the riff for Mary Jane’s Last Dance

Mary Jane’s Last Dance by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers was born from a few stray guitar chords on a demo tape Petty submitted. Rubin wasn’t particularly blown away by the demo, but he thought that small fragment had the potential to be something more.

“Tom wrote five new songs,” Rubin recalled. “And honestly, in that moment in time, for whatever reason, none of those songs were like, ‘That’s what we’ve been waiting for!’ Yet between maybe song 3 and song 4, the opening guitar riff of Mary Jane was there just as like a checking if the guitar was in tune before playing the next song. And I heard that, and it just felt like ‘Oh, whatever that is, I want to hear the song that follows that. I want to hear where that goes.'”

His one tip for accessing your creativity

Rubin shared one overarching piece of advice for those looking to tap into their creativity.

“I would say to not equate putting more time or effort into something with making it better,” he said. “I’m not saying don’t put more time or effort into it — I’m not saying that. But I’m saying because you put more time and effort into it, that doesn’t mean it’s better.…

“The idea of ‘Oh, the demo was so good, but the record didn’t live up to the demo.’ That’s a standard story you hear in the record industry. And I don’t want that to ever happen.”

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