Exploring Rick Rubin’s production discography is like taking a tour through the commanding heights of American music over the past few decades. From Run-DMC to Jay-Z to Adele, the record producer joins to talk about his legendary career making classic songs with the best musicians in the world.
Debbie Millman:
When the celebrated record producer Rick Rubin decided to write about making great art, he created a book about how to be in the world. This is because he believes, as I do, that life itself is a creative act. Rick Rubin has won nine Grammy Awards, and over the years he has produced a who’s who of musical artists, from Adele to the Beastie Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Johnny Cash, and Jay-Z. His range is vast and his talents are many. They also include prose. This man can really write. Rick’s latest creation is a rich meditation and love letter of sorts to creativity, and it just debuted at the very top of the New York Times Best Seller list. It’s titled The Creative Act: A Way of Being. We’re going to talk all about it and more in our conversation today.
Rick Rubin, welcome to Design Matters.
Rick Rubin:
Hello, pleasure meeting you.
Debbie Millman:
Rick, you were born on Long Island in the 1960s. Your dad was a shoe salesman and your mother a stay-at-home mom. I understand your Aunt Carol was like a third parent to you. In what ways did she influence you as you were growing up?
Rick Rubin:
Both of my parents were the youngest in big families and were always the youngest and always childlike. My Aunt Carol was my mom’s oldest sister, and she functioned as my second mom. My Aunt Carol worked at Estee Lauder in Manhattan. She ran the creative services department at a time when many women didn’t have jobs like that. I would spend time with her both in her office at Estee Lauder and she would take me to the theater and she would take me to museums and to movies. She had a very different cosmopolitan life than my parents who had a more… We lived at the beach, it was more of a beach life. So I got to experience two very different upbringings because of my Aunt Carol. My parents would drop me off with my Aunt Carol on Friday night, and I would be with her until Monday morning. And then she would take the train back to Manhattan and go to work. So my parents got the weekend off, I got to have the benefit of a third parent. It was a really good deal all the way around.
Debbie Millman:
I believe you first fell in love with magic when you were nine years old. Why magic?
Rick Rubin:
Something sparked in me when the mystery of this something happening that didn’t seem possible. The impractical happening excited me. When you’re a kid, the difference between doing a card trick and speaking to a dead relative, let’s say, they’re closer. When you’re nine years old, it’s all the same. The things that you can’t explain, some of them are done through learning a technique, and some of them we just can never figure out. I was interested in all of those, in all of the things that couldn’t be explained or the things that were baffling, and I spent a lot of time trying to figure everything out.
Debbie Millman:
Shortly thereafter I understand that you began to have recurring problems with your neck, I believe you were around 14, and your doctor diagnosed this as stress related and recommended that you undertake different types of meditation to help manage the stresses in your life. This must have been in the ’70s. It sounds pretty progressive for a doctor to recommend that at that time. What kinds of meditation were you doing back then?
Rick Rubin:
I learned TM at that time, transcendental meditation. I loved it, and it’s been a big part of my life ever since. Now, I’ve learned many forms of meditation since, and sometimes I use other forms for a particular purpose, but I tend to keep coming back to TM. I don’t know if that’s because it works the best for me or if it’s because of when I learned it and how many years that was, because it was my first practice, maybe that’s the reason that I stick with it. I also quite like guided meditations and yoga nidra, where I’ll lay down and be guided through a process. Instead of having to keep the attention myself, to check out and listen to instructions is very relaxing as well.
Debbie Millman:
I think another influence at that time was a teacher you had at Long Beach High School, Mr. Freeman. I believe it was he who first taught you how to play guitar.
Rick Rubin:
Yes. He ran the audio visual department at school, and any possibility to not go to class and hang out in the AV department and play guitar and watch videos and just hang out with artistic… It was an artistic bunch of people who were into both artistic stuff, but also the technology of the arts because we all could run the projectors and we could all could deal with all the machinery of it.
Debbie Millman:
At that point in your life, what did you think you wanted to do professionally?
Rick Rubin:
I didn’t have any ideas on my own. I imagine maybe when I was 14 I was probably still interested in magic. My parents had in mind for me to be on a professional track, and their first choice would’ve been a doctor. I’m needle phobic and pass out at the sight of blood, so they would settle for me being a lawyer. In their mind that was the track I was on. I guess in my mind I was a kid, I didn’t know anything. So there were things that I loved, that wasn’t one of them, but I assumed that would be the path I would go on.
Debbie Millman:
While in high school, you started a punk band you named the Pricks. Can you talk to us or tell us about the brawl that ensued at your debut gig at CBGBs?
Rick Rubin:
Yeah, it was a planned event, it wasn’t a real brawl. I also like pro wrestling quite a bit, so it was a theatrical event. My father played a policeman in the story. It was like a performance art piece. It’s funny that you ask about it, that it has taken on some sort of a mythology enough for you to ask about it when in reality there were probably 12 people in the room. Even as a performance art piece, it was not particularly successful.
Debbie Millman:
Was it performance art or was it more of a stunt?
Rick Rubin:
I don’t know where the line is. I think the line between those things is very close. The things that Andy Kaufman did, you could say they were stunts, and you could also categorize them as performance art. He did the concert at Carnegie Hall, and at the end of the concert he had everyone in theater go outside and get on buses and go to a junior high school cafeteria for cookies and milk.
Debbie Millman:
I know somebody that was there. It was really phenomenal. It was a phenomenal experience for them.
Rick Rubin:
Yes. It’s clearly a stunt, and it’s clearly performance art. It’s both.
Debbie Millman:
Without a doubt. Without a doubt. You founded your next punk band, Hose, in 1981, and I understand that at the time the band Flipper was a big influence. I have been a huge Flipper fan for as long as I can remember. I think they had one of the greatest rock and roll logos of all time. In what way were they an influence to you?
Rick Rubin:
Up until that point I understood punk rock to be fast music. Flipper was the first punk band that played slow music, almost like sludgy music, and it was very innovative to me and it inspired me to start a slow punk band. So I would say that was probably as close as it got to Flipper, but it’s pretty close because they were the only ones doing that. So it was definitely derivative of Flipper. I don’t think so many bands came in their wake doing what they did. But then Kurt Cobain says Flipper was his biggest influence as well, so interesting to see the tentacles of a band. Because it’s funny, everyone I knew, all the punk rockers I knew had the Flipper album. I knew the guys in the band and I met the people at the record company, and everyone I knew had this album and it sold 10,000 copies, which other albums sell 500,000 copies or a million copies at that time. Yet, here’s one that sold this many, and everyone I know has it.
Well, it messed up my sense of thinking I know what popular is, because I didn’t, and the idea of how much love and energy can be created with a small group of people with a niche audience, because for a period of time, Flipper was my very favorite band, whereas, maybe three years earlier, four years or five years earlier, maybe it would’ve been ACDC, who sold millions and millions of albums. So for me, their impact on me was the same, but their impact on the world was not.
Debbie Millman:
Which I find really upsetting. I think that their seven-minute song, Brainwash, from the compilation Sex Bomb Baby is one of the best pop punk rock songs ever written.
Rick Rubin:
It’s so cool. Love Canal, so cool. The Wheel, they have a song called The Wheel that’s incredible.
Debbie Millman:
Your first 12-inch EP was titled Hose, and according to the liner notes, it was recorded on one Sunday in April, 1982 between the hours of 10:00 PM and 1:00 AM. I believe you designed the cover which was an homage to Composition II made by Mondrian.
Rick Rubin:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
The Hose album was the first time the Def Jam logo was placed on a cover, I believe. Def Jam was the record company you started in your dorm room at NYU. Your dorm room was literally the company’s headquarters, and the NYU mail room became Def Jam’s as well. Your dorm room address was on the album sleeves. How did you first come up with the name Def Jam?
Rick Rubin:
It was street slang for great music, great record. It was something you might hear somebody say who spoke the lingo of the street.
Debbie Millman:
You’ve said that the large D and J letter forms were as much for the role of the DJ in Def Jam as for the words themselves.
Rick Rubin:
Absolutely.
Debbie Millman:
Why so?
Rick Rubin:
One of the reasons I started recording rap music at all was the people who were making it were experienced music makers who had made music before. Hip hop was a really revolutionary new genre, and the people who made music in other ways from before hip hop didn’t really understand what it was. They made it more like the things that had come before. It was not unusual to hear on the earliest of rap records before the Def Jam records the musical track might sound the same as an R&B track that you might hear someone singing on if you went to a nightclub. The perception of the more experienced people at that time was, “Okay, we’ll make this R&B song, and instead of having someone sing the melody, we’ll get a rapper to rap on it.” That’s one aspect of hip hop, but it’s not the whole picture of hip hop.
I would go to hip hop clubs and what was exciting about it was the DJ really was the star of the show. It was all about montage. It was about taking old things and finding a way to reinterpret them. It’s so interesting because it wasn’t copying something. It was taking a tiny aspect and turning this tiny aspect into something new. And it was very exciting. And it was done through human DJing. It was done through dexterity, it wasn’t done through machines. So there was a performance aspect even in replaying someone else’s music, and that’s what hip hop really was. I would have these experiences of going to these clubs with this incredible music, beside the rapping, incredible music. I wanted to basically just document that because as a fan. If someone had already done it, I probably wouldn’t have done it. The only reason I did it was as a fan wanting to be serviced as a fan, and I wasn’t being serviced, so I made it because I wanted it to exist.
Debbie Millman:
You’ve said that when you were first involved in hip hop the idea that it would become what it became was not a possibility. You stated that nobody who was making hip hop music thought this is going to be the biggest thing in the world. Most people didn’t even think it was music. It was that outside everything else that was going on. And at the time, Rick, I was working at HOT 97. I was working with Steve Smith and Judy Ellis, Rocco McRight, Tracy Cloherty, and we were trying to reposition HOT 97 from a dance music radio station, which is what it was, to the first hip hop radio station in the world. Even people at the radio station thought we were nuts.
Rick Rubin:
Absolutely.
Debbie Millman:
They were absolutely convinced that this was going to be a huge failure.
Rick Rubin:
Yes, I remember. I mean, it was incredible cause it was a new urban art form, and the stations that played the urban music refused to play it. The first stations to play hip hop were rock stations and alternative stations and college stations because in some ways the R&B stations were the most resistant to it.
Debbie Millman:
Many of the artists you worked with at that time, including your Def Jam partner, Russell Simmons, used the word fearless to describe you, Rick. Was that a word you’d used to describe yourself then or now?
Rick Rubin:
I would say artistically I’m fearless. I’m not fearless outside of the world of art. The things that turn me on are the things that are radical. I like edgy things, I like extreme things, I like unusual things. I tend not to like the typical mainstream thing. My tastes run that way, and because I know that’s what moves me, I want to make things that move me as well. I know as someone who practices trying to make things to excite myself, there can’t be any rules, there can’t be any boundaries in art. Now, outside of art, it’s a whole different issue. I’m terrified on a regular basis, but when it comes to art, I know… It’s funny, it comes out of knowing it’s what’s best. I know this is what’s best for the art. I know the art has to be free. There’s a line in the book that the world is only as free as it allows its artists to be. It’s true.
Debbie Millman:
You’ve since gone on to be one of the most successful producers in music history. You sold your share of Def Jam to Russell Simmons and started your own labels. You were the co-president of Columbia Records and now own your own studio, Shangri-La Studios. As I mentioned in the intro, you’ve won nine Grammy Awards. You’ve been named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine, named the most successful producer in any genre by Rolling Stone, you’ve collaborated with many of the biggest artists in every genre of music. Now I want to spend the rest of the show today talking about your new book, the Creative Act: A Way of Being. The first question that I want to ask you about is something I heard you say on my dear friend Tim Ferris’s podcast. Is it really true that he thought you writing this book was a bad idea?
Rick Rubin:
Everyone I spoke to about what I imagined the book could be before starting it, from publishers to friends, thought it was a terrible idea.
Debbie Millman:
Because you weren’t going to be talking about Jay-Z and Ye and Adele? I mean, why, why did they think-
Rick Rubin:
Exactly.
Debbie Millman:
… it was such a bad idea?
Rick Rubin:
The general consensus was the book that people want from me is a book about the stories that they know about that I was involved in. That’s what people want. The reason I was talking to people early on, I was like, “I don’t know what’s in this book. I don’t even know how to figure out what’s going to be in this book, but I have an idea that this is something I want to make happen. I don’t know how it’s going to work, but I’m willing to do the work for it to happen.” The general consensus was why do you want to write a book about something you don’t know about when you can write a book about something you do know about, and that’s the book that everybody wants?” I said, “It’s because it wasn’t interesting to me. I’m not interested in talking about myself at all.”
The whole purpose of me deciding to do a book was based on I get to work with very few artists. I get to work with a lot of artists for someone in my position, but compared to artists in the world, I work with a tiny amount of artists. So if I work with seven or eight artists in a year, that’s a lot. If that’s the whole reach of my creative impact is working with this small group of people, I want to be able to share this information with more people. I don’t know how to do it, but I want to be able to do that and I’m willing to figure it out. And that was a eight-year process to get there.
Debbie Millman:
You said that you wanted people reading this book to have a Dao-like experience. The Dao was written 3,000 years ago. What do you mean by a Dao-like experience?
Rick Rubin:
One of the things that’s so powerful about the Dao is that every time you go back to it, you have a new experience of it. It’s written in an open-ended enough way where the reader is involved in what the book is saying. The book is giving clues for us. It’s not telling us what to do. It’s giving us clues about how to think about things. I wanted the book to be a book that you could open randomly anywhere and get good information, which is what the Dao does, and I wanted a book where every time you read it, you’ll feel like you can learn something new from it. Again, it was a tall order in the beginning of the process.
Debbie Millman:
The book is beautifully designed, it’s very minimal, it’s very clean. There’s no pages and pages of acknowledgements or an intro or an epilogue. There’s a timelessness to the design. In looking through the book to try to find some evidence of who designed it, I saw that actually you designed it. You do give a shout out of thanks to Pentagram, and I know Paula Scher did your Republic Records logo. Did you work with Paula on this as well?
Rick Rubin:
I did. Paula was great and a great collaborator. I thought she would have the credit on the book and she said, “I think the credit is your credit with me,” so that’s how Paula wanted the credit. But I counted on her confidence in what was good when I was making decisions that go against a lot of… When I went to Book Soup to look at what all the new books look like, all the new releases, none of them looked like this book. None of them look remotely like this book.
Debbie Millman:
Which is nice. You can see it from on a table from a distance really easily.
Rick Rubin:
Yeah, it almost feels like it’s from another time, and I like that about it.
Debbie Millman:
Talk about the circle and the dot. That’s a recurring motif. It’s on the cover and then it’s used in each chapter underneath the chapter head.
Rick Rubin:
I like that it’s a symbol that’s open to interpretation. What do you see when you see the circle and the dot?
Debbie Millman:
I see the world, the globe, and the dot is the heart of the globe.
Rick Rubin:
Beautiful. I’ve asked other people, and one person who was an eye doctor said it’s an eye. And another person said it’s a target. I said, “Really? Why do you think it’s a target?” He’s like, “Because it’s a target. That’s clearly what it is.” It’s so funny how when whatever we see, we think that’s what it is, and I like the open poetic nature. I found the symbol a long time ago. It’s the alchemical symbol for the sun. I used it on my phone for a long time. It’s just a symbol that I like to look at. And that’s how it started. I liked that it had some history, some esoteric history to it, yet it doesn’t scream overtly mystical. It’s very open to interpretation.
Debbie Millman:
I mean, the one that I would push back against from your eye doctor was the I, because it feels like there’s not a lot of Is, capital letter I, in the book. It’s not a book that feels I or ego-driven, it feels very much a sort of gift or a love letter, as I mentioned earlier. The titles of the chapters in the Creative Act are just a few words each, most are one or two words, and you call them 78 areas of thought. In the chapter title Tuning In you state, “Just as trees grow flowers and fruits, humanity creates works of art, the Golden Gate Bridge, the White Album, Guanica, Hagia Sophia, the Sphinx, the Space Shuttle, the Autobahn, Clair de Lune, the Coliseum in Rome, the Philips screwdriver, the iPad, Philadelphia cheese steak. The artist is on a cosmic timetable, just like all of nature.” Can you talk a little bit more about what you mean by the artist being on a cosmic timetable?
Rick Rubin:
Yes. In the same way that the seasons change, who orchestrates that change? Who orchestrates the bee moving from flower to flower? It’s all instinctual. All these things happen on an instinctual basis. And if we’re in tune, we can be guided in the same way that a hummingbird is guided to build a nest. The same way, we can get back to our true connection if we get out of our own way. If we try to make it, this is the way I think it, that’s not what I’m talking about. It’s if you’re in tune with the planet and you’re playing your role in this giant orchestra that’s going on all the time, and that’s the culture moving forward, that’s everything we get to see is either natural or added to the nature by us.
I’m arguing that we are an extension of nature continuing to unfold. We’re part of it now. We can be part of it in a way that upsets nature, and nature wouldn’t do that. I remember I was in Hawaii years and years ago and I was listening to a public radio station there. There was a very old Hawaiian man being interviewed. He might have even been reading poetry, it was very beautiful. One of the things that he said was, “When I go on the boat and I look back at my island, I see all the things that man made on my island, and none of them make it more beautiful than it was before. None of them make it better.”
The book is arguing that if we are really in tune with what’s going on, we would be making things that make the world a better place. We can’t help but do it. And when I say a better place, maybe I say more in balance because so much of it is balance. Nature gives us terrible storms that wipe out communities. That’s all part of this balance. If we can tap into this energy that’s happening all around us at all times, it’s clear what our choices will be. It’s almost as if it happens for us if we really stay still, really tune.
In the early days of my career, I used to live very against the planet. I would stay up all night, which is not a natural thing to do. I lived in very controlled spaces that were manmade spaces where I didn’t have much connection to nature. I found since living in more outdoor spaces, spending much more time outside, I’m more in tune with the planet now because I’m living the way people lived thousands of years ago. I think that that helps me tune into this energy. I’m not suggesting that’s for everybody, there are degrees of all of this, but I think if we can tune in to what’s going on around us, it becomes clear what our part is.
Debbie Millman:
The whole notion of tuning in feels sort of cosmic and magical to some degree. You go on to state in the book, “If you have an idea you’re excited about and you don’t bring it to life, it’s not uncommon for the idea to find its voice through another maker. This isn’t because the other artist stole your idea, but because the idea’s time has come.” I’m wondering if you think ideas come through the artist rather than from the artist?
Rick Rubin:
Yes, the ideas come through the artist, not from the artist. The artist may make connections between things, but the grand vision doesn’t come from us. I think the more artists you speak to, they would all tell you this. The ones who really have done it consistently over a period of time tend to get more mystical just through the reality of their experience. When you see something remarkable happen over and over again that you can’t explain, you start to realize, “Well, that’s how it is because it happens all the time.” And once you let your guard down because you see it happen all the time, you can welcome it. You can put yourself in a position to allow it to happen more often.
Debbie Millman:
This reminds me of something Elizabeth Gilbert said about the American poet Ruth Stone, and I wanted to read you verbatim what she said because I think it’s really a perfect example of tuning in and what happens when you do that. She stated that Ruth Stone, who’s now in her 90s, has been a poet her entire life, and described when she was growing up in rural Virginia she’d be out working in the fields, and she would feel and hear a poem coming at her from over the landscape. She said, “It was like a thunderous train of air, and it would come barreling down at her over the landscape. And she felt it coming because it would shake the earth under her feet. She knew that she had only one thing to do at that point, and that was to, in her words, run like hell. And she would run like hell to the house, and she’d be getting chased by this poem. The whole deal was that she had to get to a piece of paper and a pencil fast enough so that when it thundered through her she could collect it and grab it on the page.
“And other times she wouldn’t be fast enough, so she’d be running and running and she wouldn’t get to the house and the poem would barrel through her and she would miss it. And she said it would continue on across the landscape looking, as she put it, for another poet. And then there were those moments where she would almost miss it. She’s running to the house and she’s looking for the paper and the poem passes through her and she grabs a pencil just as it’s going through her. And she would reach out with her other hand and she would catch it. She would catch the poem by its tail, and she would pull it backwards into her body as she was transcribing on the page. In these instances, the poem would come up on the page perfect and intact, but backwards from the last word to the first.”
Rick Rubin:
Wow. So cool, I love it. Beautiful.
Debbie Millman:
I was reading your book and I’m like, “Oh my God, Ruth Stone, that’s what happens.” And then I also read that Tom Waits would do that. He’d be driving in the car, and if he couldn’t get to where he was going fast enough, he’d be like, “Don’t you see I’m driving?”
Rick Rubin:
Beautiful. What’s interesting about both of those stories is not just the cosmic transmission aspect, it also tells us the commitment that the artist needs to make that when it’s happening, we have to be present for it. We must be present for it because it’s coming and it’s going. There’s a section of the book called An Area of Thought 24/7, and it’s about the commitment. It’s funny because we say it’s not really about us, yes, it’s not really about us, but if we’re not actively participating with all of ourselves at all times, it doesn’t happen. It takes a tremendous work ethic and commitment to wait for lightning to strike, to wait for it to happen.
And then there’s another part in the book where we talk about you can’t just wait for that, so you have to show up to work either way. And sometimes through that experimentation process, before the lightning strikes, we still have to show up, whether it’s our recording studio or our table to write, where we’re going to sculpt or our design table, whatever it is, we show up. And we show up on a regular enough basis that hopefully, hopefully the lightning will strike more often. And if it doesn’t, we’re going to be so much better at crafting that when it does strike we’re going to be able to make a much more beautiful thing using the information that comes through.
Debbie Millman:
You talk in the book about the playfulness and sense of relaxation that is evident in great work. I know that showing up every day, sitting down every day, doing it every day can be torturous. A lot of the time when I’m making something, I feel like I’m having a fight with whoever I’m making it with. I mean, I’m not talking about a person, I’m talking about a pen or when I’m making art tortured with the canvas, or if I’m writing something, I’m just being tortured by the words. And then it might take, I don’t know, however long, sometimes hours, sometimes weeks to get to that place where you feel like the work is coming through you as opposed to from you. And that’s the torture, that fight within myself. What kind of advice would you have for people listening that want to try to get more comfortable with the playfulness or get more in tune with the playfulness?
Rick Rubin:
Well, I want to say something about what you just said before I answer that question…
Debbie Millman:
Sure.
Rick Rubin:
… just because it happened to me this morning. I’m starting a new podcast because I’ve been doing Broken Record for five years where I’ve been talking to musicians, and I realized I like to talk to people who are not musicians. I like to talk to all kinds of people. So I’m starting a new podcast, which will be called Tetragrammaton, and I made a little welcome recording to start the process. I made a version of it with a friend talking to me, asking me questions and talking about the podcast. And it was fun and it worked well. And then I listened back and I thought, “I didn’t really like my choice of words. I feel like I could do better.” Also now that I’m written a book and I know the amount of time that went into picking every word in the book, writing and rewriting and trying to convey information in a way that it’s both accurate and hold some energy.
So I thought, “Okay, I’m going to rewrite my answers to be more together, more like in the book.” I rewrote it last night and then I rerecorded it. And then this morning I got back the edit with the new rewritten version, and it was terrible. I immediately was like, “Oh, I have to go with the first one. It’s imperfect. It’s casual. It’s fun, and it says what it needs to say.” Me working on it didn’t make it better. Me giving it better words didn’t make it better. And being open to, even though in my mind I can make it better, me doing the work to make it better, me putting the time in to make it better and then saying, “You know what? I’m going with the original that I thought wasn’t good enough. I’m going back to that because it has something that I can’t explain.”
So knowing that the amount of time or effort we put into a project gives no connection between the amount of work that goes in and how good it gets. Unless you do the work, you never know if it could be better. So when we’re working in the recording studio, often an artist is playing a song and it gets better and it gets better and it gets better and we keep playing it and we keep playing it until it gets worse and worse and worse because it still might get better, it still might get better. But once the momentum shifts and it gets worse a couple of times in a row, the chances in that moment of getting a better one, unlikely. We may come back to it at another time or rethink it at another time, but in the moment when it’s happening, there’s a momentum that’s generated where it’s getting better or hanging around the same area, and then there’s a time when it gets worse.
Debbie Millman:
How do you know when it’s getting worse?
Rick Rubin:
It’s a feeling. It’s a feeling. I’ll tell you, one of the things that’s hardest about it is if you’re listening to the same thing over and over again, you can definitely lose perspective. Sometimes I’ll say five hours into playing something, “I can’t really tell anymore, let’s listen to it tomorrow.” Or go out for a walk, go for a swim, or work on something different. If you really engage in a different project and you come back to the project you had tunnel vision on, the tunnel vision’s gone as soon as you really engage in something else.
Debbie Millman:
I want to talk with you about the artist’s antenna. You state that we are all translators for messages the universe is broadcasting, and the best artists tend to be the ones with the most sensitive antenna to draw in the energy resonating at a particular moment. I think connects a bit to the tuning in aspect as well. How do you think that artists are able to pick up what is resonating through this antenna? Do you think it’s magic?
Rick Rubin:
Yeah, I think it starts through the love of the thing that you’re making. When you go into a creative pursuit, chances are you doing it because you love that form. I think that devotion plays a role. Through repeated viewing, repeated listening, repeated the study, the care that goes in as a fan, I think that opens the channel. Now, in terms of sensitivity, the same sensitivity that makes you a great artist makes you a sensitive person. There’s great beauty in being more sensitive, and there’s great pain in being more sensitive. So it’s not uncommon to see great artists have drug problems or not be able to handle their life in a way that’s sustainable. That same sensitivity is the thing that makes them the great artist. It makes the world too painful to be in, can make the world to be. It can also make the world an ecstatic place. The highs tend to be higher and the lows tend to be lower if you’re really sensitive. Where another person having the same input feels it as a three or a seven, and we might feel it as a zero or 11 based on the same input.
Debbie Millman:
You state that many great artists first develop their sensitive antenna not to create art but to protect themselves.
Rick Rubin:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
And they have to protect themselves because everything hurts more and because they feel everything more deeply.
Rick Rubin:
An example of that would be it’s not unusual to hear stories of artists whose parents maybe were alcoholics, and when a parent would get home and they wouldn’t know which version of the parent it would be, “Is this the one that I can talk to, or is this the one if I try to talk to, I’m going to get hurt or threatened?” Even as children, to protect themselves, they’re learning to study the situation in very advanced ways, unrealistically advanced ways.
Debbie Millman:
I have spoken to psychologists about how that awareness is created to try to stay as safe as possible. And if you can be that attuned to what somebody might do to you, you can try to protect yourself from it. But that’s a tough exchange.
Rick Rubin:
Absolutely. The other beautiful part of it is through the self-expression, we can heal. There’s something about being able to say, “This is me as I am. This is how I see the world,” it’s really enlivening. And through the creation of art we can heal ourselves and we can heal the audience as well. We heal each other. It’s a beautiful form of connection and communication.
Debbie Millman:
Especially when great music speaks to the person individually but universally at the same time.
Rick Rubin:
Yes. When it’s speaking to different people, different people can like it for completely different reasons and have a completely different relationship to it. And none of that matters. Once we make a piece of art to our standard and put it out into the world, after that, the audience gets to… It gets to become theirs. And when I say theirs, each person who interacts with it gets to have their own story with it, and based on their life experiences, they’ll see it in a different way.
Debbie Millman:
Have you been able to work with artists to try to calibrate their antenna to use that sensitivity without being self-destructive?
Rick Rubin:
Absolutely. Myself. I tend to be depressive, and being a Pisces, I’m a person who historically-
Debbie Millman:
Water.
Rick Rubin:
… would be one who might fall prey to addiction. Luckily I’ve been able to avoid that as it relates to drugs or alcohol. I definitely had a food problem, and I was very overweight earlier in my life, and luckily found a way out of that.
Debbie Millman:
How would you define your own antenna?
Rick Rubin:
I would say I’m an open channel. When something interests me, it doesn’t matter where it’s coming from or why. I notice what’s interesting to me. I don’t feel like I have a thing that’s mine in terms of the way that I’m engaging as making creative things. Sometimes when I look at many of the things I’ve made, I can see themes that run through them, but it never happens intentionally that way. I get to realize I like things that have a believability about them. I like it to feel natural and in the moment, and I like things that are surprising.
Debbie Millman:
You have a chapter titled Self-Doubt, and you state that self-doubt lives in all of us. While we may wish it to be gone, it is there to serve us. I was surprised to hear that you have a depressive tendency because so much of your work seems so buoyed by light. How do you manage self-doubt? Do you still have self-doubt? I think I heard, actually, on 60 Minutes that you feel like you’re paid for your confidence and decision making. Is there room for self-doubt in that?
Rick Rubin:
There’s definitely room for self-doubt. The purpose of it is to know what you’re doubting. When the work is in front of me and I have the reaction that I have, whatever that is, I think it’s beautiful, I think it’s challenging, I think it’s exciting, I think it’s not good enough. I trust that a million percent, and the reason is if I feel it, I’m not thinking past that. It’s like if I’m shown two pieces of clothing and asked which one I like better, it’s usually easy for me to say, “I think I like this one better than that one.” That’s all I’m doing. I never go past what that means or what are the commercial implications or what the companies are going to think. I never think past just, how does it make me feel? Would I wear that piece of clothing or do I think it needs to be a better piece of clothing? Do I want a different choice?
I’m making things as the audience. I’m always the audience for the things that I’m working on, and I never think past what I like. The self-doubt can come when you get past what you think. I would say in my work, I’ve never had self-doubt. All it is is a reflection of where I’m at. It’s like, “This is the best version of this that I can make at this time. I like it. I like it enough for you to hear it” Or “I’m collaborating with a person whose name’s on the front of the record and this is how they want it to be, and I support them in their vision. It’s theirs.” But beyond that, it’s out of our control. So self-doubt would come in different ways. In the book, we talk about doubting a work into greatness, and that’s the difference between doubting yourself and doubting a work.
Debbie Millman:
How do you deal with artists that are concerned or worried or doubting that they’re not going to ever be able to make something as good as they already did?
Rick Rubin:
I come in with the confidence of saying, “We’re going to make the best thing you’ve ever made.” The reason there is for us to work together to make the best thing you’ve ever made. Whether that’s possible or not, we’ll see, but that’s the intention. We go in with the intention it’s going to be the best it could ever be. I could remember when I said that to Johnny Cash, he looked at me like I was insane because he had reached such heights and so long ago. The last 20, 25 years before us working together, there were no glimpses that he would get to the place where he was before. But I definitely went in with that intention, that was my goal. Again, I don’t know if it’s possible, but that’s the intention and it’s a belief that it’s possible, because everything’s possible. We don’t know. We can’t know. I always start with the idea of, “I know I’m willing to do whatever I can do for it to be as good as it could be. We’re going to find out how good that is.”
Debbie Millman:
Do you believe that something needs to be believed as possible in order to make it possible?
Rick Rubin:
I think it helps because sometimes we surprise ourselves into the possibility of something existing that we don’t think is possible. We can be working on something and through a mistake discover, “Whoa, that thing I didn’t think was possible is possible.”
Debbie Millman:
I loved your book. The one part that actually made me cry, and I don’t cry at a lot of books, you wrote about fear. I am going to try to read this without actually tearing up. “Ultimately, your desire to create must be greater than your fear of it.” What would be your advice to anyone like me that might be having a war between fear and art?
Rick Rubin:
I would suggest lowering the stakes and know that the thing that you’re making is… Think of it more like a diary entry. You’re making a diary entry. Tomorrow you’re going to make a new diary entry. The work that you’re making doesn’t define you for the rest of your life. It’s a moment in time. If you like the thing that you make enough to show it to a friend, it’s ready to go to the world. Because if you’ll show it to your friend or someone with good taste, that’s all it is. It’s no more than that. Everything else is a story in our head. But if it’s good enough to show to your friend, it’s certainly good enough to show to a stranger.
The other thing that I would recommend is anything you can do to get on a roll of momentum of like a diary entry, make something small, release it into the world. No one has to see it. Just put it up. Whatever your version of publishing is, publish it. Do another one, publish it, do another one, publish it, do another one, publish it. Get past the idea that this thing is going to define me forever and it has to be perfect. I don’t know if it could ever be finished. What’s today’s version? Put it out. What’s tomorrow’s version? Put it out. Through that process you build the musculature and the confidence to be able to do it.
Debbie Millman:
Where do you see the role of shame in making art?
Rick Rubin:
Any of the negative emotions that we have can be channeled into the thing that we’re making. Whatever our state is when we’re making things is somehow inhabited in the art, and that’s part of what makes the art great. The art isn’t great because of how perfect it is. It’s great because of how close of a reflection it is to our humanity, flaws and all. In terms of shame from the outside on work that you do, all I could say is to ignore it, because if someone doesn’t like something you make, that’s fine. That tells you more about them than it does about you. It’s funny, I’ve read a bunch of reviews about the book, they’ve been a bunch of great reviews. There are some reviews of people saying, “This is the worst book I’ve ever read.” No, it’s amazing to see, and the best work divides the audience, I talk about it in the book. If everybody likes it, you haven’t gone far enough.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, that’s like the worst thing that could possibly happen. Then it’s just middle of the road.
Rick Rubin:
Yeah. So it’s okay if someone doesn’t like the work. Going from someone hating it to loving it is easier than having someone not care about it. Not care about it as a non-starter.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, actually reminds me of something that you said in the chapter on greatness, where you state that if you think, “I don’t like it, but someone else will,” you’re not making art for yourself. You’ve found yourself then in the business of commerce, which is fine, but it’s not art, which is something I’ve been thinking about a lot. Seth Godin said something very similar in an interview that I did with him several years ago that also is a mantra in my mind. Would you say that any art that involves ego or vanity or self-glorification or need for approval is anti-art?
Rick Rubin:
Not necessarily. Honestly, not necessarily, because there aren’t any rules. There are some really great artists who are complete egomaniacs, and they find a way to make that work. There’s no blanket rule for any of these things. You can always find the exception.
Debbie Millman:
You have a chapter in The Creative Act called The Abundant Mindset, which reminded me of something that the late great Milton Glaser said in an interview I had with him. He stated, “If you perceived the universe as being a universe of abundance, then it will be. If you think of the universe as one of scarcity, then it will be.” Milton always thought there was enough to go around for everyone if we were willing to share. There are enough ideas in the universe and enough nourishment. Why do you think people get so protective of ideas? One of the things that I love about hip hop is the sharing and the sampling and the building from one art form to another. Yet, people are so litigious and contentious about it now.
Rick Rubin:
In the early days of hip hop, the people who were doing it were purely doing it out of love. I think anything that turns into big business ends up becoming more contentious. It’s just a byproduct of success.
Debbie Millman:
I have one last question for you today. I have about 400 other questions I’d like to ask you, maybe even more, but I’m conscious of our time.
Rick Rubin:
We will do this again, for sure.
Debbie Millman:
Absolutely. Thank you. You write in The Creative Act that it’s not uncommon to long for outward success, hopeful that it will fill a void inside ourselves, some imagine achievement as a remedy to fix or heal a sense of not being enough. For those of us struggling, so self-serving question is my last question, sorry about that, very obvious, for those of us struggling with filling that void with productivity or achievement or success, what would be the first thing you’d recommend people do to try and reset?
Rick Rubin:
I would say get some sort of help outside of art to work on yourself because they’re two separate things. The first album I produced that was a number one album was the Beastie Boys Licensed to Ill.
Debbie Millman:
License to Ill, yeah.
Rick Rubin:
I remember getting a call from the lawyer I worked with at that time who said, “You have the number one album in the country, how does that feel?” I remember saying, “I’ve never felt worse in my whole life,” in that moment. All I thought was, “All I ever want to do is make good music. I’m making something that I love that the world loves, and it did nothing for whatever was going on inside.” If it wasn’t for that phone call, I would think back think, “Oh, that must’ve been the greatest.” But I remember how surreal it was having this conversation. I’ve had great success over the course of my life, and I have a great life outwardly because of it. None of that healed whatever’s going on inside of me, and that was a whole other full-time job for as long as I’ve been doing this.
Debbie Millman:
How long does the feeling of pride or accomplishment stay with you after you make something you’re proud of?
Rick Rubin:
In the moment that it happens, I feel the excitement of like, “There it is.” As soon as I let it out into the world, I usually don’t think about it again. I’m doing things like reading the reviews of the book. This is the first time I’ve ever written a book. It’s the first time my name has been on the front of something. My name’s always on the back. In some ways, this is my first project, even though I’ve made hundreds of things over the course of my life. So I’m treating it in a different way than anything else I’ve done before. Really out of the curiosity of just like, “How does this work? What does this feel like? What’s going on?” and luckily, I’ve in a place where I can read someone say something really beautiful and I can see, “Oh, I understand what they see in it, and that’s beautiful.” And then I can read someone who hates it and I can laugh, it’s like, “Wow, they don’t get it at all. I feel bad for them.”
For me, it’s beautiful, and I know for some people it’s beautiful, so I feel bad if someone doesn’t feel it. But again, not everything’s for everybody. It’s one of the things I love so much about Seth Godin. Seth really instills this idea of finding your tribe, finding whatever size it is, the people who like what you do, that’s your audience. And if you cater to them… When I say cater to them, meaning you make the things you want to make that they like. Catering to them can be misinterpreted. It’s like you’re making what they want. No, no, no, you’re making what you want, and they are the right audience. They feel what you are doing, whatever size that is.
And then on occasion, out of that something transcends that small tribe and has a universal appeal. That’s all we could ever do. You can’t aim for any more than really yourself first, yourself and the one friend that you feel good enough about playing it for that tells you, “Okay, I’m ready for this to be seen by someone.” And then you know, “Okay, it’s time for this to be seen.” Or you can say, “I’m going to work on it a little more, see what happens.” Work on it a little more. If it gets better, great. If it gets worse, okay, there it is. Let’s start the next one. Let’s send this out into the world and start the next one.
I learned something recently about the musical artist Drake, very popular rapper, and I learned that over the course of the year, he put out 80 songs, 8-0. Now, he’s one of the biggest artists in the world. He doesn’t put out an album every year, but he put out 80 songs, many of which I’m thinking other than the hardcore Drake fans never heard. It’s not like the batting average is high. He’s taking a lot of swings all the time. I didn’t know that. I only know the ones that everybody knows. I thought it was fascinating. So even when you’d think you’re under the microscope because the whole world is watching because you’re at the top of your game, there’s 80 songs that argue otherwise.
Debbie Millman:
Rick Rubin, thank you so much for making this beautiful book that matters, and thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.
Rick Rubin:
Thank you so much.
Debbie Millman:
Rick Rubin’s latest book, his first book, is The Creative Act: A Way of Being. This is the 18th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.