 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. 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 will 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 you just, I'll get 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. It 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 her, but I feel like that. I haven't either, but I just feel like that. There's something about Bruce Springsteen is 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. And I, 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, this is like a woman you're missing, a broken heart and somehow that connects 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 the 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 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. 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. Yeah. How do you do it? How do you free your mind? Yeah, 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, so it's like an airplane taking off or something. So that's 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 the 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 run, run with the wind at a very slow pace, but with the wind, 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. I 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, use glue. So it's not pure physics. It's materials engineering too. Because the way you want to do it is you actually split the wood as thin as possible and then glue it back together because 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 because you have to bend the wood. And it's so cool because 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, 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 there are 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 the right coach for the right athlete really works and other times there's a mismatch. Have you seen the movie Whiplash? I did. I saw it 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. Yes. 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, is 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. No, 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 Roshi's 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 till 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. We all came from fish. So somewhere in you, deep down there, there's the other stuff too. It's just that you haven't been yet, by the way, because 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. 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. 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 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, you know, not 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, or if you say something that somehow triggers me in a way that that's, you know, I wonder how he came to that. I wouldn't challenge you, I would ask, like, how did you find that? You know, how did you get to that place? From 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? Like, is it just trial and error? Like, let's try this. It's definitely trial and error. It's always trial and error. Are you afraid of making a mistake? Like, let's add this instrument, let's remove this instrument. 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 will always demonstrate it, will 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 hear, 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. Well, 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 then 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. It doesn't, if everyone's there with the purpose of making the best thing we can, there's nothing else. There are no, 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 every once in a while. I'm fine to talk about anything. To sample it, anything? We'll see. 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 at Workaround 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 artists is doing less. Sort of the tending towards simplicity in some kind of way. So that choice of acapella is really interesting because 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 listened 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. 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 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's just, 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, because unfortunately I have to admit I've gotten lazy and stopped taking in albums as albums. 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 that 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. Like people, it makes me wonder if it's possible to pull off like most of his songs with no instruments. Like 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. Hey, what's happening? What's up, brother? What's up? Hey, how you doing? Hey man. Wow. Hey man. Mother, mother, 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 this one hurts father father we don't need to escalate i wonder who the father he's talking about is oh that's interesting i mean i have so for people who don't know his his own father ended up uh killing marvin gay yeah i mean that one is really pain i mean for a lot of people your relationship with your father your mother i mean there's different dynamics but there's it's almost like part of life is resolving some kind of complex puzzle you have or 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 um 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 there's so much it's like both hope and melancholy you seeing war is not the answer it's like you you don't tell your father war is not your your blood father war is not the answer it's strange conversation it's a bigger conversation they're not personal don't you think it feels like war if one is personal what's the difference between is the war is personal too it's only leaders think about war in a geopolitical sense yeah when people that fight wars you lose your brothers you lose i mean you 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 like also a song where is that is that a hopeful is that cynical is it like melancholy like heartbroken like you you hope you wish things would be a certain way and they're not yeah i don't know i don't know john lennon is giving up on the world in imagine yeah i don't know you know it's a it's an interesting question there's another uh john lennon lyric um in let me think of what it is take me a second and different songs keep coming into my head the one that i'm looking and you keep pressing next um across the universe um nothing's going to 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 i always like look for the hope and the actually the harshest love uh heartbreak songs are always somehow hopeful to me that's a love song uh to me like a song about losing love is 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 because 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 what it means to be human when you're that um what is it uh we're just listening uh the only man who could have reached me was the son of a preacher man so see um it's like that early love or something or partially sexual or whatever that's not as interesting to me it's fun it's great but it's not as interesting to me as it is 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 uh detroit mix of the marvin gay album no call it up how by far better mind blowing i just heard it recently blew my mind oh wow reverb distant interesting there's there's far too many of you it feels like it's all around the room more to bring some loving here today more voices more voices he's layering his own vocals just like there's multiple people singing don't punish me with brutality talk to me so you can see oh what's going on that's beautiful yeah seems to have more energy if you if you listen to the whole album even even though you just said you don't listen albums anymore the detroit mix of the whole album changes the album a lot i mean that that felt uh so that's the opposite of a cappella i would say yes because it's saying it's it's um there's layers there's um and that maybe i don't know if you remember but if memory serves me uh correct here he produces this own album here marvin gay 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 an out 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 should watch but is is there this is continuing our therapy session is there a case to be made that uh what's going on is number one album above the beatles uh white album or abbey road above pet sounds can you still manage case there's there's always a case i mean there's always a case every there's no uh in reality in art there is no um there's no metric that makes sense so um 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 so i think it's a very personal decision i don't i think you can make you can make your choice to represent the human species and i'll make mine you know well i would pick the beatles over the beach boys so that's my if i became dictator of the world i was talking to the aliens but i do think that 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 from because i've never been able to understand uh beach boys god only knows the song god only knows god only knows but all of it the album the pet sounds just in my room was uh in my room that's all um is that what's your favorite on the album that sounds album that sounds um the opening track do you mind if i play it please it's it's it's too fun that's part of their trip though the you uh you open the heart with the fun it's possible original mono and stereo mix versions i don't know what's the opening song wouldn't it be nice yeah that's the song we could say good night and stay together wouldn't that be nice wouldn't it be nice wake up together but we're not there's heartbreak in this one too still to me like george harris like um uh is that the way that album while my guitar gently weeps i mean that um with the beatles it's so hard to depending on the day i'll i'll say a very different song that's my favorite song but i often return to while my guitar gently weeps is my favorite song spectacular spectacular anything george harrison honestly something something in the way she moves the bet i what would you classify that there's like several beatle songs categories of beatles categories of beatles songs so that's like the melancholy love songs or ballads or something like that um yesterday let it be what's do you have favorites so from your like how have you changed as a man as a human being as a musician and music producer ever having done that lengthy interaction with with mccartney hmm 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 you know that they're just human that well obviously i mean every everyone's just human and um 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 i 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 it's mind blowing that's the voice that's the it's overwhelming is it inspiring or is it um like because sometimes when you have and i've gotten a chance to me i mean i love people in general like every every person is fascinating to me but yeah when you've been a fan for a long time and you meet a person uh sort of uh i'll just remove present company is you um 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 in around us it's it's somehow peaceful this is it's more uh comforting to know that there's you know uh there's bigger fish i'm just a small fish and then there's bigger fish and it 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 it's like that i i would make a case so the variety of artists that you worked with and brought the best out of it does seem the year 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 i believe we all are though you know i believe we are um 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 um 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 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 going to it's being broadcast by whatever the source whatever the source is uh yeah i tend to i tend to see humans as not quite special in that way yeah it's it's different kinds of antennas walking around listening to ideas and ideas that are i like the the notion of uh richard dawkins of memes or it's kind of the ideas of the organisms and they're just using our brains to multiply to to select to compete to to evolve and humans we really want to hold on to the specialness of our body of our mind but it's it's really the ideas so for a group when 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 is coming in uh or you'd be hearing a potentially a different signal is there um i think we all have our own antenna for whatever it is that we you know maybe not everyone has tuned into their antenna to see what it is that their strength and bringing through is i'm lucky in that it found me because 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 the specs of my antenna what am i put on this earth to do like if um you know i i can live a thousand lives there's so many trajectories and imagine the greatest possible trajectory that reveals the the most beautiful thing i can possibly create in this world live the most beautiful way uh what is that i feel like that's a good exercise to think about um because it's also liberating to think that you can do anything i mean that um more and more i suppose that's kind of life it's like society is pushing conformity on you you know i thought i i had my own flavor of conformity i thought i'm 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 do you can like um i would never wear a suit if i listened to like my colleagues and community who think a suit is like the symbol of uh what is it a symbol of conformity actually which is hilarious but uh it's actually a kind of rebellion and everything else like of that nature doing doing these silly podcasts like um i have a question i have to ask sure because you brought up the suit yeah uh do you wear the suit is this your daily uniform outside of podcasting so uh for the longest time it was some kind of suit and then recently i mean coinciding with going to texas there's a 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 um to not make fame recognition money all those things a motivation at all and the world kind of wants you to make those motivations not not the world but i would say maybe the western world and 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 i'm like a like a baby deer trying to find his legs you don't have to buy in because i love people and i think i'm kind of an idiot and so when other people say do this and do that it uh there's a 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 you know just kind of sticking a ground but if you want to be like 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 and uh but then again that pain like if you don't let it destroy you can grow 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 um i'm aware that when i go out people will you know say nice things to me which is great but that's about it that's about as far as 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 the thing 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 conform to either conform to someone else's idea what you should be doing it just seems like uh it doesn't make sense do you have a sense of who you are because i don't necessarily have a i don't know i i know that i really like making good things and i know that i'm um crazy about it in that um it's like an obsession and i want things to be as good as they could be whatever it is and if i'm 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 prod 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 uh that didn't allow me to flourish and i turned i focused the creativity and on myself and i lost a bunch of weight and changed my life and so that was the kind of art like the 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 yeah 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 stew middleman a runner who ran a thousand miles in 11 days and i thought wow i you know 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 you know i'm doing clearly i'm doing something wrong and um and i reached out to a person that stew mentioned in the book phil maffatone who's a legend i i really appreciate him as well he's math 180 method too he's such an interesting i think he focuses on heart rate uh training and he was the first person to talk about um essentially a low carbs paleo yeah keto diet 40 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 um you know talked about heart rate training him and other endurance athletes he influenced he gave me permission to like run slower yeah it's the first time i realized oh i can run long distances if i just run slower and then take that seriously and i actually fell in love with running very much so because for me everyone's different but for me the love of running happens in the longer distances yeah did you read born to run great book amazing book there is something special about running and everybody has their own their own journey with it and even ultra marathon running those kinds of things it's a it is like many journeys one that can pull you in like you won't be the same person after and i i try to be deliberate about making deliberate about making choices after which you'll not be the same person and so i'm nervous about like 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 i'm 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 the i mean just the there's also a music video which for a lot of people adds a lot to it uh for me just the music alone is i mean the guitar every choice on that see the 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 um to to the degree i i think you had a huge role in sort of bringing johnny cash back from from a different part of his life it's like bringing something out that wasn't there before and it was it was it was incredible it was a celebration of a really special musician and a totally new kind of celebration now hurt is just one of the songs that's that's a that's an amazing celebration of johnny cash but hurt is like at the at the at the peak of that so what was that like putting that song together okay maybe maybe uh it might be nice to listen to it because i freaking love that song and as a guitarist i just the simplicity of it uh it seems like every choice contributes to the greatness of the song simple it's crisp but it's dark too i hurt myself today it's one of the greatest opening lines of any song to see if i still feel yeah i'm talking about the lyrics i don't even mean the performance the words 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 the way the guitarist played the choice of instrument the layers there the uh the freedom to give him to use the voice that's um fading it's not fading it's changing maybe he's losing some aspects of his voice and it's it's almost like shaking a little bit and it's a little bit out of tune in parts uh how much of that was deliberate how much was like how do you give johnny castor freedom to to do that how do you find that together is there any insights you can give i think it's a it's a case almost of like the right pairing the right role with the right actor you could say the the song lyrics that the reason we chose the song was because 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 um that was one that i sent him and he didn't respond to initially i sent i would send him see 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 he burned a cd for johnny cash and you sent him uh of different songs of like songs to consider recording yeah um 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 you know and that one i remember i sent it again and i put it first on the next on the next cd and um and when when we spoke about when he listened to 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 because 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 for president yeah i know that trant was trant had trepidations in the evening um but if you listen to the words if you forget the music and if you get what if you forget what nine ish nail 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 it'll be profound it's profound so that was the based on lyrics that started the journey and then at this point in time johnny was not in great health and uh 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 was there were so many songs we wanted to try he would start sometimes recording just a straight acoustic version like you'd 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 um and that was when we said i don't want to 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 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 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 yeah it's heartbreaking but it's heartbreaking in a different way because you have your 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 yeah it's brutal so that was the initial spark of doing it and then we when we recorded it i believe it was um two guitar players if i remember correctly maybe even three um smoky 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 and 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 it's building and it even gets distorted at the end it gets really uh like over overpowering and that's part of the emotion of it you know it's uh i hear almost anger and frustration 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 in an old johnny cash voice and heart and mind i had um are you a fan of tom waits of course uh tom waits when he was younger had his this is 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 uh 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 uh i've had a lot of people like tell me how real that uh 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 um when a young person writes a sad song they almost seem more willing to go to a more hopeless place because they have they have a so much time ahead and older artists tend to want to look at the bright side of things which which also i think comes from the wisdom of aging it's 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 um middle to late era beatles which is still you know they're in their 20s you know early 20s i guess wow that's hard to think about so much accomplished unbelievable and they they went through the full journey from fun to darkness in the span of a few years uh you mentioned lyrics um 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 let it go i'm a fan of poetry period is there something um about highlighting the poetry of it the power of words as you did with with heart if uh like if i have to play it again it's one uh 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 has just a few lines it's called i want you and all it is is him saying i want you i want you this is a 22 year old Tom Waits all i want is you give you stars above the sun on the brightest day giving you all my love if only you would see that i want you you you you all i want is you you you and then he hums for 20 more seconds beautiful so so simple man that young man like low and 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 the artist over time because that's a young like 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 uh musically is there um sort of laying that out on the table is there ways to that you like to highlight the voice the lyrics or there's no one rule so do you what is the thing that makes music special is it the rhythm the melody the uh 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 that it's not about you you don't want the answers i'll listen uh i look forward to your comments the internet okay uh you have the greatest producer of all time in front of you and you can't shut the hell up that's right friends uh 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 uh whatever the thing that makes the thing good is the thing that i'm drawn to for me um for a long time lyrics meant very little i would say from me really yes yes from the earliest days for your right to party beastie boys yeah it was it was fun i thought they were good lyrics but it wasn't what was important i mean it was in a 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 uh lyrics became more important over time but it's always been a always changing what what draws me in and one of the things i found as it relates to lyrics that that can give a lyric a different power has to do with rhythm where if there's no drum um the lyrics tend to mean more so earlier what you were saying about if it was just acapella you felt you felt marvin gay in a different way hearing the acapella can you comment on i mean in terms of one of the greatest albums ever why does it sound so raw her voice she's just a great singer but this is that you're not doing anything else you're doing the uh there's there's there's strumming and then there's just a single beat and then it builds starting in my heart this gets simpler but it feels like it's a giant orchestra we almost had it all the scars of your love they leave me breathless i can't help feeling there's backing vocals the anger i love it i just there's something about uh such a powerful voice and the instruments not getting in the way i mean the same with the with hurt and johnny cash it is there um why does it sound so like raw it's the same as hurt there's a it feels like you're in the room with them it feels like they're not even singing they're like uh they're literally freshly mad and angry i think those are the things that make great singers sound like great singers it's not it's not anything that that's happening in the studio i mean we're i would say the only thing that us in the studio can do is kind of get out of the way and not not ruin it you know it's like that's that's what comes through of these 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 uh is it is that a neil damon song it's funny you talk about them as songs because i tend to i tend to listen more to albums than songs so if you really you're that's what you're doing 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 when that song comes up in the sequence of the album um it has a really powerful effect in me let's see what it does if you just started if you could read my so interesting wow i could tell 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 see that's beautiful such a beautiful choice beautiful melody such a beautiful melody and haunting words sung so simply i i have to um i mean so uh i was born in the soviet union when when you when you're growing up uh there's a few bands that kind of i mean they're probably forbidden still but they seep in and you get like uh bootlegged and and they somehow take over the culture of the young of the young folk such as myself so uh on the metal side it was metallica and iron maiden and uh on the i don't know what you call them but beastie boys i remember hearing uh 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 um i probably heard it uh a few years after it was released because it kind of it dissipates to the culture you get the bootlegged i mean it's hard to get your hands on but i just remember me i i wanted to kind of 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 you know 20 21 years old and we just well you were that kid too right we're just making fun songs for our friends there was no there was no uh 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 it's 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 and the lyrics are ridiculous so hearing that and hearing metallica master 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 like that was kind of the longing for freedom it felt like at least at the time if this is allowed that anything is allowed yeah and i think that uh the rebellion of it the uh is i guess it's also fun i just i just loved it is there if you look back to that because you're you're uh uh i mean you were that person not just the producer it feels like yes and no like it was even to us then it was still like satirical you know it wasn't oh absolutely but isn't like music in part like you're dancing in the line is part satirical part serious in in the sense like you're losing yourself in the satire like when you have anytime you go over the top isn't that part of the or is this is it explicitly satirical you make it fun i mean girls there's a lot of ridiculous songs in that album i don't know i just think it's 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 we're trying to make each other laugh but that person how's that person different than the person today in you the the person that produced that i wouldn't say so different it's like it really is that that um i like things that make me laugh you know i like ridiculous things it's the same person still i think so that is a strange just how many incredible i mean i wouldn't i don't think i would make that today but i understand why we made it when we did it's uh in the vocabulary of of um 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 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'll be able to hang out with the with a teenage and the 20s recruitment i think yeah i i don't i don't think i was so different honestly that's hilarious it's funny i ran into someone um 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 um 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 ferris asked you about like who's the most successful person you know that's the definition of success i would say it's exactly the same person you haven't lost yourself and or rather you found yourself early on i would say there there are aspects of me that have changed for sure um but i but i can't say that it's that it's necessarily better it's different um at that 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 um confidence and i think now it's a little more um based in reality at that point in time i had never been depressed and then once you go through a depression you well some people i know in my case and when i went through depression afterwards i was a different person than i was before and i and i feel more um 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 this the same thing that makes uh an artist uncomfortable other people don't feel at all 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 you know it was like uh 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 um i felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me even beyond the rational part of it of understanding you know 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 um starting with alternative therapies i was seeing i would say between seven and eight doctors and or therapists a week um acupuncture uh talk therapy um herbs or any any possible modality tried everything for a long time and um and and nothing seemed to have an impact and then finally um i'm wary of taking any western medicine i'm not a drug taker and or drinker partier in any way and um i found a a psychopharmacologist who was a psychic but because she was a psychic i was okay to see her because she's like i'll i'll do i'll listen to a psychic yeah but i'm not going to listen to a psychopharmacologist but the fact that she had the the psychic uh that made her fit into my world view and um and she recommended antidepressant which went terribly wrong in the first night that i took it and then i that set me on a journey of looking for the right antidepressant which was a long and painful process heck of a journey every one that i took made me sick everyone and then finally i don't know five months later six months later i found the magic one that worked for me and it um it shifted me out of the depression i took it for my camera 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 is there something or is it random events of life i think it's more that um because of the way that i grew up i never had to deal with much controversy ah and um when i when i was challenged i didn't have any ability to deal with it it's like um you know jonathan hight talks about it's like that so you've actually also mentioned like business sometimes gives you stress so these 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 um can sometimes destroy a fragile mind and soul like uh to me like one of the best representations of an artist honestly johnny i have 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 a small design team because he was so nervous that it would it would break let's give it a chance let it give it a chance to grow and it seems like the outside world uh business people pr people people kind of um have not lost themselves in the passion of creating but instead of kind of representing or like making deals all that kind of stuff they they can kind of trample on those little ideas and it's it's sad to see yeah it's really it's really heartbreaking to see because you know how much trampling there's going on it's one of the main jobs my jobs as a record producer is to um keep the keep the voices away from the artist from all the people who are really on their side but don't know you know like the uh whether it be people um 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 the art that you make to me then we can start the project yeah um 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 um 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 students are the creative folk yeah they create stuff they dream they have wild ideas that go on tangents and so on they they uh they have hopes and they they go with those and they get like on these weird passionate pursuits and then the administration can often just trample on that um and they they set up bars on all kinds of in all kinds of ways that you think you're not actually hurting um but you really are and you know i won't mention why but because 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 like we really want your career to succeed be careful and that little pressure to an artist you know do you want to go acapella do you want to go do you want to do a country record like be careful like you're already a superstar be careful yeah and then in that way you kind of push people like flock of fish into one fish tank where they're all the same and it's 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 because they get to put themselves to the world and get a little bit more confidence maybe different funding mechanisms all that kind of stuff but tremendous problem that the 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 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 they don't have anything to bump up against anymore have a realistic uh sense of what's what how things work or how how it how the how things measure you know um so both sides are really important both both avoiding the voices getting in the way and having a trusted group of you know a sangha a group of people who can say you know i don't know if that's as good and you can still you know say i don't care what you think that's fine but it helps to hear it you know 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 percent and not from a place of fear not from a place of oh this doesn't sound like it's going to do as well as your last thing that's yeah that's not the point the point is on this uh quest for greatness are you living up to your ability by the way is there something interesting to say about your world view because you mentioned psychic and instead of the ways we can be healthy the ways we can grow and how much maybe medicine or science or has um has the answers is there is there some interesting way to describe that world view i would just say i'm open mind i believe anything's possible and if i was going to trust in any practical information it would be something thousands of years old there's wisdom in that history yeah well it's it's more tested it's not always right but it's at least it's been somewhat tested so 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 the this this feeling like you figured it all out everything that's been done in the past has no wisdom and uh we basically solved every problem uh you know there's nothing else to be solved this i mean that's the defining characteristic of any age is like we've solved all the problems there are we have the final answers and our parents are all stupid that kind of energy yeah and that 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 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 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 i know on the art side knowing how it works isn't what makes it work you know 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 uh incidental where you're trying many things all of a sudden something works and um and you don't know why and it's okay not to know why it doesn't matter 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's the magic like 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 uh where does the uh brilliant moments of insight come from what's that when uh 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 or we don't know you know it's and i 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 um you've done a podcast yourself uh broken record podcast and just 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 uh to me about how what to do with conversation like what is interesting to you about conversation one of the things that i 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 from 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 if we were and we didn't see any technology and we didn't see any technology and we were just sitting at this table having a conversation maybe even if we were miked 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 um closer to the relaxed feeling same thing we do in the studios like you know you've heard of red light fever you know when uh 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 we're all to some degree like that when you were with paul mccartney i mean you're did were you cognizant of cameras we had the room black everybody who was working there was dressed in black everything was invisible that 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 it that was the 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 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 does 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 is feeling something internally and we're capturing it to the 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 because sometimes when that person uh like um so evan is in the room here he's been in the room before he's a huge fan of yours by the way uh so he'll he'll nod yeah he'll get excited he's like and you can see that nodding and for some reason for me he's like yeah yeah you get it like yeah you get excited together i mean that's that third person can be like a really special so having an audience uh when it's a friend or somebody that has that love in them it depends on the performer right yeah some people really thrive in front of an audience and you're saying you like that simple intimacy well i like the reality of it not being i want it to be as far from a performance as possible got it and if 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 um we were recording the new chili peppers album which is coming out i think any day now like uh i don't know what today's date is but within the next it maybe by the time this airs it will be out and um the band was playing in the studio and it was ripping because they play they're incredible and um one of the members walked through the control room after a particularly great performance and um the engineer said wow that solo is really great and the person who heard this said please don't say that and walked away it's like it it was not it it just changed yeah this feeling of we're in this place where we're doing this thing and there's there is no outside world yeah 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 and but it's something about saying wow that's always great is is uh 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 so it matters what you say it matters how you look it matters uh so there's like these generic compliments not generic but they 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 it was 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 um we were recording with the avid brothers and um the song was called no hard feelings and it was this recording of no hard feelings when my body won't hold me anymore it finally lets me free well i'll be ready when my feet won't walk another such a great voice so beautiful kissed 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 hell today any longer when the jealousy fades away so bright so hopeful so lighthearted and it's just hallelujah and love involved love in the words love in the songs they sing in the church and no hard feelings Lord knows they have it done much good for anyone kept me afraid and cold with so much to have and more when my body won't hold me anymore it finally lets me free is he sound as good as good, yeah? yes, every bit of snow from the heavens will i join with the ocean blue or run into the 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 have it done much good for anyone kept me afraid and cold with so much to have and more under the burning sky i'm finally learning why it matters for me and you to say it and mean it too life is loneliness it's loneliness good as it's been to 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Rick Rubin: Legendary Music Producer | Lex Fridman Podcast #275