WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1245 - Rick Rubin

Episode Date: July 19, 2021

Rick Rubin's love of music led him to help popularize hip-hop, rejuvenate artists' careers, and leave his mark on literally thousands of popular songs. But there was a point in his youth where Rick put music aside and focused on something else: Comedy. Rick talks with Marc about being a self-described hardcore comedy nerd and how that informs his process with the artists he produces. They also talk about Johnny Cash, Rick's love of pro wrestling, and his interviews with Paul on “McCartney 3, 2, 1.”. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series, streaming February 27th, exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required.

T's and C's apply. Lock the gates! Alright, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck, buddies? What the fuck, Knicks? What's happening? I'm Mark Maron.

This is my podcast. How are you? Rick Rubin is on the show. What the fuck, buddies? What the fuck, Knicks? What's happening? I'm Mark Maron. This is my podcast. How are you? Rick Rubin is on the show. He's doing things. He's got a podcast now. And he's got this thing on Hulu where he's interviewing Paul McCartney as part of the documentary series McCartney 321. He's famous.

He's infamous. He's mysterious. He co-founded Def Jam Records, was the former president of Columbia Records. In helping to popularize hip hop in the 80s, he produced for Run DMC, LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy. He produced metal and hard rock artists like Slayer and Danzig, comedy records for Andrew Dice Clay. He produced Johnny Cash's late career work, both original Johnny songs and covers like Nine Inch Nails Hurt. And he's worked with literally hundreds of other artists, Adele, Lady Gaga, Kanye, Metallica, Tom Petty, hundreds more. And I talked to him about almost none of that. Why, you ask?

How are you going to do that? How are you going to cover all that? It's just too much, and that's sort of like, I mean, seriously, man. What, are you going to go record for record? I just did what I do, tried to get to know the guy a little bit. We had a nice chat.

By the way, the shows are going well. Last Thursday at Dynasty Typewriter, I definitely kind of broke new ground. Something went down last Thursday. Something came together. The interesting work for me is that can I make things work twice? And do I still like it if it works twice? Just improvising through these subjects and these topics and finding jokes is the most rewarding part of doing stand-up and it doesn't happen all the time. I mean, you can have freedom of mind,

you can riff all you want, but you sort of want to hit pay dirt with the riff. You want to be in the moment and all of a sudden be delivered something beautiful from who knows where the muse, the ether, the necessity of trying to get the laugh. And for me, sometimes dark moments is where it's at. But some things were coming together, themes, callbacks, ideas. And it's wild. It's it's it's multileveled and it's it's exciting. And I'm going to keep at it. I got one more Thursday and then we go on the road with some of this stuff and we'll see what happens. Primarily to work it out in front of my fans who come out to see me on the road, but also in front of normal people. People who may not think like me. think like me.

That's always a good test. Isn't that what you need? Doesn't that determine something? If you want to see me, Dynasty sold out, but I'll be in Denver August 5th, 6th, and 7th at the Comedy Works. I'll be at Stand Up Live August 12th in Phoenix. That's sold out. I believe

they added a show on August 13th. I'll be at Wise Guys in Salt Lake City August 19th, 20th, and 21st. I will be at Helium in St. Louis. That is if the entire state does not buckle from COVID and anti-vax stupidity. That really hinges. But I'm planning on being there September 16th, but I'm planning on being there September 16th, 16th, 17th and 18th. That's at Helium St. Louis. I know I've got a date in Bloomington coming up at the Comedy Attic. I'm not sure when that is because it's not on my website.

And I'm dealing with that. I'm putting it up there. It'll be up there. And then the New York Comedy Festival in November. I feel like I'm going to add stuff in there. I feel like I'm going to add stuff in there. But what's the point of going back? I've been thinking about my past.

I've been thinking about all of it. I am going over gigs that I had a million years ago. I can remember almost every embarrassing moment in my life. I can remember almost every moment where I've been hurt by even mundane shit i can remember not i don't have a a clear memory of a lot of good things i'm not sure i looked at him like that i just saw i think i just i i had fucking anxiety inducing painful things uh interspersed with things that weren't that. So the painful things and anxiety inducing and embarrassing things are wired in. I can jump right back into those. And the things that were not that, they're kind of passive. They don't have any, there's nothing

holding them together unless they were in my mind, unless they were specifically attached to giving me some relief. I am sort of amazed that I've never framed the first maybe 10 or 15 years of my comedy career as just fucking trauma. Trauma. I mean, that's paying your dues, right it is on some level and i'm not i'm not considering myself a victim i'm not even saying that i need help because of it but it was fucking trauma learning to do what you love to do being you know compulsive and and single like myopic in pursuing comedy and what I put myself through to get there. It's fucking traumatic. But you kind of romanticize, you know, you romanticize it.

Like I was just paying my dues, man, paying my dues. It was a fucking nightmare. And I don't know how the fuck I did it. This aggravated, neurotic, angry, terrified Jewish kid, 22, 23 years old, driving around the fucking highways of New England to one-nighters at bowling alleys, discotheques, hotel ballrooms, pubs, restaurants, and just spewing my shit to a cold room, not even properly set up for comedy. What was, is that just sort of, that's just the way it is, man. That's how I started. But God damn it.

Right now I look back on some of my past and how I got where I am. It's just fucking heartbreaking what I dragged my younger self through, But it's like, I'm here. I'm here now. And it's good. It all paid off, right? But for some reason lately, I've been feeling the weight of it. I've been feeling the weight of it. And I don't know what that implies. I guess I've been feeling the weight of life in general. And I do understand all of a sudden. Like I've talked about, you know, retiring or what I would do. I'm doing it. Like I'm, you know, I've never really known the line between work and not work.

Because for me, I'm always actively working somehow. It's not an on-the-clock type of thing. It's a life choice. I've chosen this life that requires self-employment, that requires creative thought, and that requires to be active creatively in all your waking hours. And when you're not fully awake, apparently that's where I take a break. And I've got a different job that's not as demanding. My shoes are not nice.

I don't care about my pants. My worries are different, but my life is sort of defined by process. That's where I relax. That's the life I didn't choose, but apparently I can visit in my waking consciousness. shoes but apparently i can visit in my waking consciousness you've probably heard me talk a lot about the new aretha franklin movie respect over the past couple years well it's here folks and i just did uh i just did a bunch of press for respect we did a junket just one after the other this uh you know this zoom thing it's really changed the way things are done or the way we know we can now do them.

I wonder if people are ever going to go back. Because I did like 22, maybe 25 TV spots, four to eight-minute TV spots, sitting in one chair in one room with people coming and going on screen with me. It's just as exhausting. And I don't know where a lot of them will end up. I imagine perhaps you'll see me when you're putting gas in your car on that screen. It felt like a lot of them were that kind of thing. But then we did a bunch of print press the same way.

Just Zoom, just sitting there. Kind of amazing. Very exhausting. So Rick Rubin, outside of producing almost every record of the last 30 years, all six parts of the documentary series, McCartney 321, are now streaming on Hulu. It's him and Paul. He walks Paul through stuff and gets some good stuff.

I tell him about it, you know, cause Paul, as I've mentioned to Rick, it's like a, an old gold mine. That's a tourist attraction now because they assume there's no nuggets in there, but everybody wants to have a look. Well, Rick got a few. This is me talking to Rick. Are you self-employed? Don't think you need business insurance? Think again. Business insurance from Zensurance is a no-brainer for every business owner because it provides peace of mind. A lot can go wrong. A fire, cyber attack, stolen equipment, or an unhappy customer suing you. That's why you need insurance. Don't let the, I'm too small for this mindset, hold you back from

protecting yourself. Zensurance provides customized business insurance policies starting at just $19 per month. Visit Zensurance today to get a free quote. Zensurance. Mind your business. Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. To show your true heart is to risk your life.

Will I die here? You'll never leave Japan alive. Disney+. 18+. Subscription required. T's and C's apply. Are you in an underground bunker that has two twin beds in it? Yes. Funny you ask. I knew it. I can see right there. What is that? Where are you, bud? You're in New York? No, I'm just kind of moving around. I'm not anywhere. Okay. All right. Well, I mean, okay, that's challenging, but my audio hijacks a little

hot. How do we fix that? I wonder why that is. I don't have any control on my side. No, it's not you. It's not you. It was me. It was me. I'm not, uh, I'm not good on the knobs, Rick. I, I, I'm with you. I, I'm technically, that's not my thing. So what does that mean? You just have a guy you're like, can we make it sound better? Yes. That's pretty much what it sounds like. To the left, to the left, to the left the left no stop back to the right back to the right that's what i do you're telling me that like in all these years if you sat down in a mixer you'd be lost completely lost i'm a non-technical person i don't sit yeah where the machinery is i sit away from the machinery where i have a good uh where i can hear what's going on and can voice my concern.

So you say you're floating, but I heard you're like, are you living in Scandinavia? No. Oh. I talked to somebody. You're one of these guys where like, am I wrong? Did you not like talk publicly for a decade or two? Or am I making that up? I think you made that up.

You didn't like live some sort of hermit like life where you didn't, you didn't talk much. That's the majority of my life. I don't talk much. I don't talk much in real life. I rarely speak. But now you're talking. It just worked out that way. Oh, really?

It wasn't the grand plan. No, not at all. So, so the Scandinaviaavia myth that's a lie uh i wouldn't call it a lie but who like it's just uh it's a myth myth and lie are two very different things but you're okay so you're not denying you're not confirming you live in sweden yeah i cannot affirm or deny that I live in Sweden. This is going to be a tricky interview. No, we're going to have fun.

It's relaxed. I'm relaxed. The beauty of it is the stakes are low. Totally. Are you centered? We were told you needed to get centered. I'm okay. I'm pretty good.

I'm not great. No, I will tell you, I was traveling yesterday. I'm in a different time zone. I woke up at a different time. I woke up at a different time than normal. I didn't do all my normal morning routine. So I'm thrown off. I'm on a deadline for a project. So I'm crazed about that. So I would say I am not my normal Zen self. I'm a different version. Okay. So let's like, you just, that's a lot to unpack. What project are you on a deadline for? Secret project. How's that?

Oh, chill, for Christ's sake. So now, what's the morning routine then? Typically, if I'm in a place where there's a beach, is there a beach in Sweden? I'll usually do an hour to 90-minute walk on the beach in the sun barefoot daily. I listen to, um, typically I listen to podcasts, but I might listen to music or, uh, uh, a book. I like to listen to books when I walk. So no meditating. There's meditation, but it depends when sometimes it'll be right when I wake up right now, I'm going through a phase where I don't have a daily meditation practice, but I learned when I was 14 and it comes in and out of my life in years at a time, you know, do you have a meditation practice?

I just started like four or five months ago, I think, uh, you know, to, uh, to figure out what that is. Cause I've been told to meditate forever. And yeah. And then I, and then I was told sort of that people have been meditating since the beginning of people. So it had some foundation in the great mystical frequencies. And then, you know, I got an app and I do okay with it, man. It's not really attached to any big spiritual principle other than to be present and move past the thoughts. Have you noticed a difference since you started doing it? I feel like I understand the tool of it. I understand the sort of like, hey man,

your brain's making that up. You have control over that. It's different than, you know, like there's a, you're about to get hit by a car. Do you know what I mean? So the stuff that I have control over, maybe I can temper that if it's hobbling me somehow. Yeah. I have a friend who had road rage. And since he started meditating, he has less. So hearing that sounded good. I know for me, it has radically altered the course of my life. So I feel blessed that I learned it at the time that I learned it without knowing its power. What compelled you?

I was 14 years old. 14? I was 14. My neck hurt when I was in school. It always hurt. Yeah. And I had a, the doctor who delivered me, pediatrician, was kind of a hip doctor. This was in the 70s. And I went to see him and I i said my neck hurts all the time

my mom brought me to the doctor and he said okay i think you need to learn to meditate and i remember thinking hmm that's interesting no one in my family meditated no one i knew meditated sounded completely foreign and um and i remember thinking hmm i don't think my mom's gonna go for this like this and i said to my my mom, well, Dr. Pizzicano said, I need to learn to meditate. And she's like, okay, that's what the doctor said. Let's do that. So then I learned TM at 14. And, and I probably didn't understand the effect of it on me until I stopped meditating when I went to college, and then moved to California. And then I started meditating again. And then I started meditating again.

And when I started meditating again, I realized, whoa, this like I am who I am because I did that for those years. I didn't know that until the gap and the coming back to it. Well, it seems like, well, if that sort of sinks. So 14 TM. So your mom, where'd you grow up on the island? Long Island, Long Beach. Yeah. So your mom's like, you know what? Or no, she was just sort of like.

You follow medical advice. That's what it's. So she did that. It still works for people today. They do what the doctors say. Of course. Of course. But like, you know, I don't know what kind of person your mother

was, but there was no kind of moment of like, that's all right. Well, it may have been like, again, my thought was she would just not be into it. Yeah. But she wanted what was best for me. And if that's what the doctor said was best for me, she didn't know anything about it, but she was open-minded enough to let that happen. Did you have open-minded parents in general? In general, yes. I would say both of my parents were the youngest of, my mom was the youngest of four. My dad was the youngest of three. And both of them were essentially children. I'm an only child and I was the adult in the house and they were the children. Interesting. So you feel that that that because i

guess usually when you're the last one uh that the parents have had enough already so you left to bring up yourself is that what i think i think everyone just baby they were just the baby they were always the baby yeah and they just remained the baby and they were very childlike and um in a good way or no but both i would say in a good way i would say for the most part in a good way but you feel like that as parents because my parents were somewhat immature but and because of that i felt they were somewhat selfish and a bit emotionally uh incapacitated in terms of nurturing and making decisions yes That I would say that was exactly accurate in my case, but because it was an only child and because I was their project, all of that emotion went into me

in a, in a, through love, you know, like they really, uh, through love. And, you know, if I say it, it goes like they just believed they believed in me. Oh, so that's good. So you are not only the adult, but you are the you are the the the miracle. Absolutely. Absolutely. They raised me to be a king. And it worked. You did it.

You did it. You're the king without borders. I we don't know where you are. But so when you were growing up there in Long Beach, did they, so she took you to like a TM place where you had to get the mantra and do the business? It was in a person's house. And I remember it vividly because it was unlike anything I'd seen before. It was a typical house on a block, typical block in my small neighborhood. But in this house, I walked in and there was no furniture. It was completely empty.

And then we went into this room and there was a wooden chair that was painted red. And that was the chair that I sat in. And I can't remember exactly. I remember the chair that she was sitting in. The teacher was not red, may have just been wood, but the starkness of the environment struck me, I would say in a positive way. And, and, and I can't say that it has influenced me, but telling you the story now and remembering how I felt walking into that empty house could have had more, uh, the, the combination of walking into the empty house, being struck by it, and then how I felt in that empty house through this practice had a very positive, profound effect on me.

Yeah, and you re-arrived there later in your life as a music producer. You know, let's just have you with the guitar in the chair. Yeah, if it's right. Again, if that's what's right, I definitely like the least amount of material needed to get the job done for different reasons, but then certain projects call for something very different than that. And that's fine too. It's like, there's not, there's no, there's no rules. There's no, right. There's no system. No, it's like, depends on what the project say project said but my taste my taste is i like things that are pretty sparse but do you think like do you like have a sense of of ritual because it seems like a red chair

like there was definitely kind of some a magical thing going on there was all intentional i don't know i don't know the girl was like kind of a young hippie girl i don't know how intentional it was honestly but you got your you got your mantra that you used until you went to college? I still use it to this day. Really? Oh, absolutely. And when you're taught it, you never speak it again, and I've never spoken it. But did you go full in Buddhism at some point? I'm interested in Buddhism, and I would say I study Buddhism, but I study all spiritual paths. I'm a spiritual seeker. Did you grow up Jewish?

I was born Jewish, but I didn't really grow up with much religious training. No bar mitzvah? I was bar mitzvahed. That's something. That's a little bit of training. I mean, you don't have to be a rabbi to be bar mitzvahed. Not the way it was's a little bit of training. I mean, you know, you don't have to be a rabbi to be bar mitzvahed. Not the way it was done in my town. I'm being honest. It was really just some memorization for essentially for a party. It was no, all spirituality was removed from it.

When I talk about Judaism and my Judaism, I always say that we were never taught how to use God. I never was taught the nature of it or the morality of it or even the spirituality of it. I was not taught to pray or anything. So it was just this kind of thing we did. It was more of a community event. Yeah, same. And not even a community event because I felt like my parents had some sense of obligation to it with no understanding of it, no understanding or interest, but just a belief that this is what we're supposed to do. And again, the actual practices of it are cool if you're doing them with knowledge of what they are and if you're actually participating in them instead of mouthing the words, you know?

Yeah, I think it was an identity thing. You know, I think that generation was sort of like, look, we're Jews. We're great. Be careful out there. That was sort of what you needed to know. So when you were 14, 15, when did the interest in music start? I've been obsessed with music for as long as I can remember. There was a window.

Obsessed. Obsessed. start um i've been obsessed with music for as long as i can remember there was a window obsessed obsessed from and it was really the beatles that that sparked it it was um everybody right yeah and and i remember even from four years old five years old yeah the beatles first the beatles then the beatles and the monkeys then also the whole British invasion, Dave Clark Five, all of that music really spoke to me. And I probably listened to music then for, I suppose, about nine. Well, you know, I watched a bit of the Paul stuff, and it's interesting with Paul. I talked to Paul for this show, but, you know, there's definitely this feeling that you're going down a gold mine that has become a sort of a tourist attraction and no one assumes there's any gold in there anymore. And you kind of you were able to find some gaps. I think as Paul continues to talk, he develops a deeper and more resonant opinion, certainly about John as he ages.

And I think that there was a couple of great moments that you seemed to kind of, that seemed to happen. And right at the beginning, I thought, when you put on All My Lovin', there was this moment there where, like, you know, he's just listening to the different parts of the song and he just goes, oh, country. You know, like, just based on that one riff, ka-doom-doom-doom, you know, like,

he was so aware of what they were mashing up then. And then that was John on guitar. Yes. And it kind of made me think about, you know, like he was so aware of what they were mashing up then. And then that was John on guitar. And it kind of made me think about, you know, that there was this sort of, and you have this sort of awareness too in your choices. You know, it seems like you have been wrangling, you know, since you began doing music that, you know, there are these forces, you know, metal, punk, country, and hip hop that, you know, there are these forces, you know, metal, punk, country, and hip hop that, you know, that you are kind of, those are the four horsemen for you, you know?

And there was something about his awareness of just these stylistic decisions that made up their sound that I thought was self-aware, but also, you know, there's something professional, something, I don't know what would you make of your experience with him well i learned a tremendous amount and i felt like he actually came to realize some things because he doesn't if you think about i don't know how much you go back over your old material and focus on it and take it apart and i don't think he does so much i think if he's going on tour, he might listen to what he needs to listen to

to learn how they do it for the band. But I don't think the actual making of it is anything that interesting to someone who's made it. I know I've never done it with all the stuff I've made. I never look back. You don't? No. So to look back on something from that long ago and to have that ability to kind of take it apart, I think kind of blew his mind, even though he was there when he, you's emotional state because of what he came through.

It just seems that John continues to evolve as a human being through people's interpretations and understanding of him. I think that's true with everybody. That's how the world works. When they go, you mean? When they're gone? Both. Both. Yeah. you know it's like that's that's how the world works you mean when they're gone both both yeah i think yeah the this the story continues and depending on what else happens the story changes

having nothing to do with the person at that point anymore just the conditions change and as the conditions change our views change and if our views change the way we see something from the past changes we see it we see it everywhere yeah and and i was listening to they just re-released um that record you did with petty the she's the one soundtrack right they re-released it on vinyl with a new cover and i just got these new fancy speakers and i was listening to it on vinyl and it made me cry. What speakers did you get? Sabrina Xs.

I love those. The Wilsons. Yeah, yeah. I have Sabrinas. They're great. They're great. But it made me cry to listen to that thing. Yeah.

It's like, I don't know why. Because I listen to other people that have passed away. But there's something about Tom. And there's something about how forward you put the voices. that just was like, oh my God. And those speakers, it's just terrible that he's gone. Yes. I still can't believe it. Can't believe it. Yeah. I mean, like what, how did that relationship evolve with you guys? Cause that was a later thing for you, wasn't it? Not really. Um, I met him soon after i moved to california which was 1989 something like that 1990 what year did um what year did wildflowers come out do you know 94 okay so i probably met him i'm guessing i met him in 91 and we worked on it for a couple of

years because the she's the one album was an outgrowth of the wildflowers project yeah the wildflower project started as a double album it ended up being a single out released as a single album we had all these songs some of them made it on she's the one and the rest of them kind of disappeared the conversation you had about with him like going into wildflowers because it was sort of a departure and then that album sounds totally different than any other albums was that one of the the was that one of the first times you really started to well i guess you did it with with with johnny cash too but i mean was that one of the times where you realized that these guys that have been around for a while or somebody like tom had never like put his voice so forward that you know because like it's sparse

but like there's there's a quality to his voice that you never would have heard before that, I think. I tend to like being able to really hear the singer in a personal way, like to almost feel like they're in the room with you. And many, historically, the way vocals have been treated is with a reverberant effect that kind of makes them larger than life. And I just prefer almost more of a documentary approach where it's more intimate than that. Do you remember when you started to think that way? Well, it started with rap records, because when we were making rap records,

you didn't want it to sound like a big production. You wanted it to be a true... The reason I started making records was I was listening to hip hop music and it was... The records that were coming out were not reflective of the world of hip hop that I was participating in. If you went to a hip hop club, it didn't sound like rap records. It sounded like something else. It sounded like the records we started making because the people who made the rap records originally were people who made other kinds of records saw that rap was starting to bubble up so they used all of the the approaches that you'd use for other kinds of music and then just applied them to rap. Production values and whatnot. Production values, but also musical.

Like the early rap records were bands playing R&B, essentially. Yeah. With a guy rapping. Whereas if you'd go out to a club, it'd be a DJ cutting up breaks. And it would be much more edgy and energetic. Very different than what the record sounded like. And you wanted to get that. So just as a fan, that's what I wanted to hear.

And no one else was making it. So I started making them really just, that's what I, there was no, I wasn't doing it with any expectation of anything to happen from it. It was more like I would like it. And I thought my friends would like it. And that was the reason to do it. What were your feelings like sound wise about punk rock? Cause that's sort of where you started, right? Yeah. I mean, like that energy. So it's a different energy, but there was a rawness to it, but it's a different rawness. Not really. I mean, raw is raw. It's, it's, um, in some ways, hip hop and punk rock are are very closely interlinked they're both uh made by essentially

non-musicians you know it's it's really bringing music back to the street level um if you have something to say you can make a good punk rock if you punk rock record if you have something to say you can make a good hip-hop record right i it seems that sometimes punk rock has some you know musicality and instruments so no doesn't matter it's it doesn't matter yes but it doesn't matter i'm speaking more like energetically it's an energetic thing in some ways that the uh the pieces that make it up don't really matter in any of these in any of these things the pieces don't matter it's really more the energy but if you have something to say it changes the way you feel that energy because i for me the energy starts in the music but then the lyrics can do something out can take it to another place yeah i i i'm more of a uh i guess it's energy i i or melody

i don't know i don't lyrics are the last thing that fall into place for me. And I have other friends who the first thing they listen to is the lyrics. Like that's when they hear a song, they just, it's the lyrics. So when you were, when you went, it's sort of interesting to me, just in talking to you the little bit that I have that when you went to college, is that where you started to get into hip hop or was it before? Before I was in, in my high school, I started hearing hip hop when I was in high school. And that was that at the beginning of hip hop? Yeah, I was in high school when Rapper's Delight, the first, you know, the first rap record came out. And at that time you were

playing, were you playing music? I was playing punk rock music at that time. Do you still play guitar? Not really. I mean, no. I would say no. I never really played guitar. I mean, I spent a lot of hours playing guitar then, but it was as much meditation and therapeutic as anything else.

It was something to invest yourself in. But you didn't enjoy playing it was it was fine i mean i like music like i like music is good if you get to play it or hear it it's good when there's music well i just i i mean i play and i don't you know not for any reason other than playing i just was i am not i don am not a... I don't play like that. I don't play like that. But if I'm somewhere and there's no other music source and there's a guitar, I might pick it up

because I want to hear music. So when did you start thinking about recording? I'm just trying to track like this because it seems like that when you really got engaged in the process of making music, that it was like

right around the same time that you quit meditating for a while. I don't know if that's exactly right. music that it was like right around the same time that you quit meditating for a while i don't know if that's exactly right i think it was well you said you quit meditating when you went to college it's true but i was already interested in recording music before that my punk rock band when i was in high school i would make cassette recordings i was into recording a lot of things because the thing i started saying before writing, I didn't get to was sorry. I know my, my,

yeah, we got, we went in a different direction, but, um, we were talking about the Beatles and the monkeys and that world of music. And then I stepped away from music for a few years and only listen to comedy albums.

And I listened to George Carlin, Cheech and Chong, Bill Cosby, Bob Newhart, Chris Rush. I don't know if you knew Chris Rush. I knew Chris Rush, yeah. They actually advertised his album in comic books. I remember seeing an ad in a comic book and I already liked comedy albums. It's like, hmm, they're advertising it here. Maybe it's going to be good. You were a comic book kid too? already like comedy albums like they're analyzing it here maybe it's gonna be good you're a comic book kid too not so much but enough where i noticed it i noticed yeah i'm let was less of

a comic book kid so okay so you go from music to comedy albums for a few years yes and then during that time i would watch johnny carson every night and always have my little recorder there because like if rodney dangerfield was on and he was on a lot, I would always record Rodney Dangerfield set. I would record anyone good who came on to be able to just think, think about the jokes and think about the language of the jokes. You know, that was another thing. It's like, cause you can remember a joke. You can remember the premise of the joke, but a lot of times it's the actual language the choice of language and the uh the rhythm of the way it's said yeah to make it funny so i i started analyzing

that which then came to use when we were like writing for beastie boys songs you know like that's very much rooted in listening to you you know, Steve Martin and Monty Python. And that's interesting. But you didn't know that going in. Did you have some idea for yourself that you might want to do comedy? Just loved it. Never imagined doing it, but I loved it. So you recorded it essentially to see how you could continue getting laughs.

Just to learn it, to understand how it works. And yeah, maybe to tell a joke to my parents but never i never thought about doing it in front of people right but you just felt like deconstructing it because you were like a deep comedy nerd and you wanted to figure i would say it was a deep comedy nerd for sure yeah why me too i i mean i certainly those people that you just mentioned were you know high watermarks of using language and rhythm you know i mean rodney rodney does not get oddly and ironically does not get the respect he deserves do you think rodney would you put rodney as could you make an argument that he's the greatest of all

time definitely yeah could you yeah yeah because there's no there was no better fusion of persona and material and and just the pure heartbreaking fury at the core of it that you know the whole package was so so tight so earned and and so oddly real. Yeah. And the fact that he was doing one-liners. He was just doing jokes. He didn't reinvent comedy. It's different. Talking about Richard, it's different.

Yes, for sure. He changed comedy. Rodney didn't really change comedy. He just probably did it better than anybody else. But he was also, I think it was very telling when you'd watch him on uh on on carson i'll watch him now and i came to rodney like i always knew rodney when i was a kid and i always liked him but it's taken me you know years and years to come back to him and and watch and rickles too yeah and and there are moments where you watch both of them engaging with Johnny and the

greatest moments where the joke doesn't land. And they were both so highly aware of it, Rickles and Rodney, that you have this weird moment of like who they really are and what's at stake for them in those moments of not getting the laugh. And it's

really those moments that ground them as being amazing comedians because you can just you can feel their whole being just like oh okay so that's how it's you know yeah or some and sometimes johnny would laugh with them at the jokes that didn't work yeah yeah it was just there was something uh there was something about him about those guys who were you who turned it on like that. There was no illusion that they were just being themselves. It was like, here comes the, you know what I mean?

Dice was, I mean, you did those Dice records. I mean, that Dice record you did became fairly huge because it wasn't getting laughs. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we did all, we did, I think we did six dice albums starting with the first one. And the first ones were more normal comedy albums in that he went on stage and told jokes and people laughed. Yeah. But the, for, for my taste, the breakthrough was the day the laughter died when he was playing at Madison

Square Garden, three nights sold out, which no one had done before. And and I would watch him at the comedy store in the original room lit and on the right night with the right audience he would bomb really bad and for me and did you ever meet hot tub johnny do you know hot tub johnny yeah yeah yeah yeah i knew i was a doorman at the store in 87. You might have seen me around. I mean, I was around. So, okay. So you're watching him bomb in the OR.

And for me and Hot Tub Johnny, who would see him see his ascent, it was much funnier to us when he bombed than when he killed. It was just funny. Like the way he dealt with it and how hard, how much harder he would go not to be funny, but just in his character and in what he'd say, like, again, like you talked about with with Rickles, like a defense mechanism would come on when it's not working. Yeah. And he would push harder. And to hear someone like screaming and get no nothing back just funny you know it's funny so so the idea was playing at madison square garden biggest comedian in the world and instead of recording the garden shows and making that the record let's find a small club and record him bombing and have that be, you know, this is the moment in time

as if that's what's really, you know, as if that's what's going on with Dice now. And he was on board with that. Again, happily, Dice is like, oh, yeah, that sounds great. Let's do it. But he has a great sense of humor. So I think he understood how ridiculous it was. Sure. But did he bomb on purpose?

No. The key is the right audience, you get the right audience, the right audience to be the wrong audience, the right audience to be the wrong audience. And to get up, like if he would do that same act, which was not really an act,

he would just, just up there talking. He didn't tell jokes. It was one of the things that we said on the, on the, on the sticker for the double album was, uh, you know,

uh, two albums of new material and no jokes you know well i like you know like despite you know outside of whatever controversy he may have caused or whatever that character said that people were unhappy with or whatever anybody thinks about andrew is that he's a funny guy and he's got a unique point of view and to watch him do 45 minutes in the or now even like but without him getting angry just about talking about you know sandals or going to staples is it's great it's great to watch you know it's better if he's not angry but you know sometimes that happens yeah then you get like it either way i think i yeah i find the joy in it both ways.

Why no other comedy records for you? Did you not do any? Why was he your guy? Kinison asked me to make his next album after that Dice albums I made, but he was not in a great way at that time. Did he want to do music? No, he wanted to do a comedy album he but he ended up dying before it ever came to pass but i also don't know if he was in a place to make his best work yeah i don't know like it's hard to beat that first record you know that material was so fucking tight man that's the one yeah let's talk about that for a minute okay you make a definitive first album then what and

who's able to do it and why you know that's it's like so many are so many artists put out their first album music all kinds all kinds of yes sure you make your first one it's great and then the you know sophomore slump and then some people can recover and many don't well you you have seen it i mean you, you've salvaged careers. You have been the thing that you have changed the artist's approach or helped them redefine themselves. I mean, what do you think? I mean, it's like, you know, the difference between, you know, that first cult record and the record that you produced with them is profound. And I love that record. Is profound. And I love that record. But you somehow saw that they could alter something and do something else with the sound that they were naturally making. I think the biggest liability, which seems to be something that you work against a bit, at least in whatever record they do with you first, is that I think the big problem is if you have that one great album and an executive or a producer says, let's make that again and again and again, then like, you know, they might

make a billion dollars, but then they're kind of stuck. Right. Yeah. And it ends up, I think it ends up being short lived. You can ride it for a certain amount of time. You know, maybe you could have two or three in a row, by four it's just not interesting well look what happened with the beasties i mean you guys did the stuff you did together so you like reinvent well you i think you invented a lot of modern hip-hop by fusing uh punk rock sensibility in the classic sense in the real sense with with hip-hop that you were taking in it was your natural approach, whether it was Rodney Dangerfield

or just the hybrid of those guys and still with the remnants of the guitars. But there's the difference between License to Ill and all of the other records is huge. Yeah. Because License to Ill is a punk rock record. It is to me. It is to me. Right.

But that said, Paul's Boutique, which came out after it, is one of the greatest hip hop albums ever made. It's just very different. It's an amazing record. I think that actually ended up being good for the Beastie Boys because they continued to evolve. Same with the Beatles. If you listen to the Beatles records, they're different. There may be two that are similar, but by the third one, it's really different. And they made all those albums, 13 albums in seven years. It's amazing. It's harder to do when you're a comic because once you get your point of view and your tone,

that's sort of what the – the jokes are different. You're writing a new act every time, but you don't necessarily – wouldn't want to necessarily hear Don Rickles fabricating a voice or not doing what he does. Have any comedians changed their character after being successful and had it work? Has that happened? After being successful? Yeah. Well, I think that like I'm trying to remember.

It seems to me that some comics have shifted a bit, but that was usually out of desperation. You know, they drop a name or add a hat, something. But I don't know. Can you think of any? I can't. I'm thinking about it. I can't think of any. Yeah, I think comedy is a little bit different.

But I mean, how do you approach that? Yeah. I mean, what, where did you, there's these relationships that you have with certain acts, you know, that where you do several records with them, like, you know, how does, how does like Slayer and Danzig, where is that part of your childhood? How do you mean? Is it part of my childhood? I mean, were you a metal fan? Absolutely. I love metal. I would,, actually, hard rock more than metal. Hard rock would be Black Sabbath. Iron Maiden is more metal, and that was less my taste. Black Sabbath is more heavy rock.

ACDC, that's my taste. ACDC. The best. Yeah. Aerosmith. Hard blues-based rock. That first Aerosmith. The first. Hard blues based rock. That first Aerosmith record, man. See, there's a band that, they never got back to that, dude.

No. They never got back to that first one. They maybe still could. I think so. I mean, what did you think of that Stones blues record? I haven't heard it. Is it good? Oh, my God.

I mean, are you a Stones guy? I am. I am now. I am now it good? Oh, my God. I mean, are you a Stones guy? I am. I am now. I am now. I grew into being a Stones guy. I was so much of a Beatles guy that I couldn't be a Stones guy. But now that I've, over time, my understanding of music continues to develop, and I've become much more of a Stones guy.

You've got to listen to that Blue and Lonesome. Okay. But that's so funny, because even when I talk to Paul, you know, I'm so fucked up in my head. Like, I get this opportunity to talk to Paul. It was in a live event, which is not optimum, but I would do it because I get to talk to Paul. But there was still part of me that's sort of like, well, I'm kind of a John guy. Like I literally.

I wonder how he would have reacted. There was a great moment in that interview, though, where I said it was sort of a trick question because I talked to a lot of some of these older rock guys and they really kind of have to on some level believe it but they a lot of them think they're doing their best work now and you know they're not so they might be for them that's the other thing you're asking them their opinion and sure well that's what I said that to Paul I said you know a lot of guys you're raising they're doing their best work now do you feel that way and he just without missing a beat he goes i was in the beatles that's a pretty high bar i have i have a funny story that tom petty told me that he was they were working on the traveling wilburys record and yeah it was him bob dylan and george harrison sitting together working on a song and. And George Harrison got up to go to the bathroom

or to step out of the room and get a drink. And after he walked out, Bob Dylan leaned over to Tom conspiratorially, seriously, not as a joke, and said, you know, he was in the Beatles. Seriously. Beatles. Seriously. Bob, like, how come, like, did you, you never wanted to record with Bob?

I would love to record with Bob. I don't think Bob would want to record with me. No? I don't know. It's up to him. I know. I know. But, like, do you have people?

Like, the people ask me if I want to interview certain people. Do you have people where you're like, I'd be, I'd be'd be great you don't think about it it just sort of comes your way it's meant to be it's going to happen and let the universe figure it out the johnny cash records when they started because it seemed to change i maybe i'm wrong but i'm assuming that those records had a profound change a profound effect on on both of you in how you approached life and saw what you did in the world. I don't really know how to answer that. Well, I mean, meeting Cash and then deciding to do those records and having the opportunity to not only introduce him to music that he

might not have seen before, but also give him this sort of opportunity to play songs that he had amassed later in life that he had not laid down. I just thought, I can't imagine what the feeling was once you did that first record and realized that this guy had so much more to offer. I mean, that was on you. That wasn't the perception at the time in general. And I remember when I met with him about recording with him, he couldn't understand why I wanted to record with him.

Why? Because in his mind, he was washed up. You know, I saw him, he was playing in a little dinner theater in Orange County for, I don't know, maybe 150 people sitting, people were sitting down eating dinner while he played. Oh my God. Yeah. And, and he'd been dropped from two labels. He probably hadn't had a hit in 20 years and,

and he was largely forgotten. And at the time when I wanted to sign him, people thought I was crazy. Like, why would you do that? Why did you do that? Well, I didn't really do it for the for the um i didn't do it for the reasons that now looking back the reasons that make sense it was more sense of most of the artists i'd worked with at that time were young like first-time artists yeah and um and i'd done a you know a good amount of recording already by this time. And I felt like, wouldn't it be interesting

to work with a grown-up artist instead of kid artists? I understand what the energy is like in the room when it's kids. And I just thought about, okay, who's who I would view as a legendary artist who isn't doing their best work? And the first person I thought of was Johnny Cash. would view as a legendary artist who isn't doing their best work and the first person I thought of was Johnny Cash and I thought so it was in a way it was more like a conceptual idea of what's a great what's a great new album from a grown-up artist it didn't so what I'm saying is the idea didn't start with Johnny Cash it started more with just this idea of a legend making something to see if the same principles that I use with young artists would work with an old artist almost. It was like a test case, you could say. Which principles are those?

I'm starting to understand them now. At that time, it was more intuitive, but I've come to realize over the last few years i've been analyzing the decisions on a daily basis in the studio and it'll start with either an intuition or something that i've learned from doing it in the past yeah and then i try to when i get home after like in the when i'm in the session i'm just in the moment dealing with it um and almost every session something happens that has never happened before. Almost always. The way we solve a problem, the way something comes up, and the way we solve it is something that we've never done before or I've never done before. And it's an exciting feeling

when that happens. And that could be a problem relating to how something is played or mixed or vocalized. It could be anything. It could be anything. I'll give you an example from pretty recently. I was in the artist with the studio who was writing words for a song. Who's this? Just say a name. The artist?

Yeah. I'd rather not say. I don't like to say artists' names. I feel like in some ways the work's almost like uh it's like therapy sure i just i just picturing it this is for my own visual go ahead yeah i'd rather you didn't for the same reason also i'd rather picture the person for the story okay good that that's the thing is like if you if you if you picture it if you're imagining who i'm talking about it changes the story to be about them and i'm telling you the story is about the principal

and it's not about that it just happened happened to be that person when, when this happened. Okay. Okay. So the person was writing lyrics and I thought the lyrics could be better. And we looked at the existing lyrics and we started by looking at what was working and what was not working and why. And then I realized when the person told me the emotion behind the story, that the emotion behind the story was much stronger than the lyrics in the song. So what I suggested as a homework assignment was to go home that night and not try to write the words, but to write the emotion, not as a song, just write pages, write an essay about how you feel about this, the situation, all of the emotions, the observations, everything, write it all out. at that uh you know let's say it's yeah pages of material and look through those eight pages and just kind of underline where the most uh interesting or charged material is

and then think about how to get those things into the song because if you're starting with a song structure and you're trying to make something that rhymes and fits, you're not starting with the story. You're starting with, you're trying to, you're doing a puzzle. Right. But the content is secondary in the puzzle. The puzzle is getting the puzzle right. It's not the content. So it was an exercise to really draw all of the content out of, out of herself first, and then highlight all the charge stuff and then figure out how just, because if, if you're,

again, if you're starting with the rhyme scheme, you might luck into getting one of those, but you're not going to get a lot of them because you're not thinking about the big picture. You're just trying to fit in these little gaps. So that's an example of now that's i've never i've been making records for 35 years i never thought about that before but in retrospect i

realized that's a really good tool for an artist i i have a feeling that i'll recommend that again someday did she do it yeah it's not done yet but that's it's happening so that and that's that was a new thing to you, the idea of that? To me, it was. Usually, we're just working on the words. Yeah, because plenty of people get away with puzzles. They finished a puzzle. Most artists write the words based on the puzzle.

Well, I guess that's what makes the sort of rare exception so outstanding, especially in country music, too. Yeah, I mean, you know, because where stories are like really defined. I mean, some things in rock music get pretty cryptic. But I mean, in country music and certainly in hip hop, you're looking for the punchline, you have the setup and the concept and you're only focused on the punchline and you're just looking for the punchline, might you miss a five-minute story that's better than the punchline? Look, yeah. I mean, the type of comedy I do is generally going to come from the story first. So it's a matter of rendering. You know, I wish I was more punchline driven. Audience too, I bet. Sometimes, yeah.

But it sounds to me, it sounds like you would appreciate it on a good night if I just floundered around up there desperately trying to find my way out of the box. Nothing better. It's fascinating. But that's how I write, you know, and I don't know if musicians work that way. It's like I just, you know, after a year in lockdown, you know, and going through some personal tragedy, I got to do. I don't I'm not sitting around writing jokes. You know, I got to take a month long residency at a small theater and improvise for an hour, an hour and a half to figure out what the fuck I'm thinking about and seeing how that kind of renders down,

you know, seeing, you know, and my, the way I do it is like, I know I'm funny. So if I put myself in that position, it will be delivered to me in the moment. You know, if I'm worth my salt, like if I, you know, I'm a funny guy, so I'm going to try to avoid that total discomfort innately. And that's when the punchlines are delivered. I don't know where they come from. I didn't write them down. They come in that moment of fucking like need for deliverance. Does it take an audience to make that happen? Can you do it at a, could you do it at dinner with one person? Yes. Yeah. Sometimes I do it on the mic alone. It's, it's a could you do it at dinner with one person yes yeah sometimes i do it on the mic alone it's it's it's about thinking you can do it alone without an audience well if

i'm well i'm talking on a mic but there's no one sitting in front of me you know like if i'm doing the intro to the podcast hearing yourself yes yes yes is it you think it has to do with that you think if you weren't wearing headphones it would still do it it's the mic itself has to do with that you think if you weren't wearing headphones it would still do it it's the mic itself no i i think that for it to really like usually if i do it like the stream of consciousness when i'm just talking i can surprise myself but you know when there's a connection in place whether it be one person or a crowd of people then that relationship's playing into the choices you're making right there's a line to line to be written there that doesn't exist if I'm just alone with my headphones on. So, you know, you're calibrating your sort of,

you know, kind of emotional risk, you know, when you're- Do you feel like depending on if the audience was different, would the material evolve in a different way? Yeah, I think so. Like, and sometimes like, you know, what you're saying with Dice, I mean, if you're at odds with them or you've decided they're contentious or detached you're going to chase it down in a different way and you might go down a darker

road and be like i don't know if that's going to work with a room full of normal fucking people but those those people had it coming it's really funny i i think when i was a kid probably it was rodney was big but also steve martin like steve martin blew my mind um because of the surreal nature of the comedy um did you ever listen did you ever uh read born standing up i didn't read it but i remember seeing him when i was a kid and i listened that first record yeah it was not it was not essentially my jam because i tend to i tend to sort of be emotionally uh drawn to like you know kind of raw uh you know either jewish guys or black dudes you know who are really kind of like he was a little too goofy for me yeah uh you know i do like goofballs but i

still like it to be i don't like it to be so heady you know yeah i yeah i like that it was as conceptual as it was and even as a kid it just struck me as really really funny really funny and and in the in the book he explains we had this breakthrough. It's a great book. I highly recommend the book. And the audio is great because it's him reading the book. I read the book first and then I listened to the audio. And he talks about how unsuccessful he was for how long he was, which was a really long time. And he kind of made a deal with himself that, you know, in 12 years when he turns, I can't remember the age.

Maybe it was when he, if he didn't remember the age, maybe it was when he, if he didn't make it by the time he was 30, he was going to quit. And then he gets to 30 and he didn't make it and he doesn't quit. But he already, like he bypassed, like every reasonable expectation was not met along the way.

And then he had this breakthrough idea which was he talked about how he would see these comedians and he talked about a guy named jackie leonard and jackie leonard would tell a joke and he would like slap his belly as he said said the punch line and he realized that the whole joke was in the rhythm of, because he said eventually Jackie Leonard could then do the setup, slap his belly and say anything, could say nonsense. And everybody would laugh because it was almost like a reaction to the rhythm that made people laugh. Yeah.

That's a timing thing. Yeah. So he saw this natural and he said, every comedian had a version of this build up and then release and how it was timed. And the punchline was the timing of where the release happened. And he thought about what would it be like if the punchline never came like if the if if the tension just kept building and the joke never came he he he thought to himself at some point people have to release that energy and they'll just start laughing when they want to it won't be on cue and it won't be all together but they're gonna have

to release the energy at some point. And that's sort of the, it seems like that's the basis of the guy in the white suit and the white hair and the way he did his act. It was less rooted in this sort of end of the bit. Like the bits often, they end in a disappointing way, but the premises are so weird that you're kind of invested in going on the ride. And I liked the modern thought involved. And even as a kid, I didn't know that there was

modern thought involved, but somehow on a deeper level, it just resonated with me. Sure. I mean, and you're hoping that the release will not be get off. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And also that there was this tremendous amount of showmanship in how he, you know, the white suit, you know, the the the balloons, the nose, the banjo. I mean, it was a spectacle. So it wasn't just a rhythm. I mean, this guy was, you know, he was moving around and, you know, and he was dancing and he was doing, you know, it was it it was all, you know, before I finish my thought here, I want to, you'll enjoy this. And I've told this story before because I remember asking Kennison where he got, you know, his sort of hook, you know, because he was a builder, you know, like the build, what you're talking about, the build towards release. Sam's was unique in that it was sort of a preacher's momentum. But I say, where did you get the idea for that? The way you do that? Gene Wilder. Really? Yeah. Let me guess that in a billion years, but that's great.

Isn't it amazing when you hear those stories of where something came from and it seems completely foreign, but once you see it, you can never unsee it. You know, once you know that Mick Jagger was definitely impressed with the way that Tina Turner moved. Yeah. You realize that's where that is. That's where it came from. You know,

if you've ever seen the Tammy show, he must not yet have seen Tina. Right. Do you, have you, have you had experiences with that in music where people tell you that stuff or you've seen it happen all the time all the time all the time we use it to our advantage like we'll often find a way in by using another artist as a reference where you you never

know it when it's happening but it's a it's a it'll be a a seed idea to get into something that you wouldn't get into otherwise. So I'll give you an example. If an artist is having a hard time writing new material for themselves, and a lot of it is, you know, I don't know exactly what I want to say, exactly what's right for me. I wrote this one song. I think it's good, but I don't know if it's right for my voice. There are a lot of ifs in the way.

I might suggest, think of your favorite artist and write a song for that artist to sing. Like the song that you wish you could hear them sing, write it for them to sing. And it's a, it's a, it's fun for an artist to get to do that. It gets them out of their head. And it gets them thinking about music they like. And any ways that we can remove the boundaries between us and making things.

And there's a million of them. And they're all self-imposed. All these guards that we have up, walls that we have up. We don't want to go there. We don't want it to be like that. We don't want it to, we don't want to do that. To remove as many of those as possible and just see what comes is, is really helpful. And, and we've done it with, with writing songs for other people.

Sometimes the song that comes is really good. And I'll tell you where the idea came from. I didn't make it up. I mean, I made it up as an exercise but the story came from the beegees who wrote the song um to love somebody to love somebody the way i love you they wrote that for otis redding and then otis redding died so they ended up singing it themselves they had no no plans on singing it. They only wrote it for him. And it's one of their quintessential songs. It may be one of their biggest early hits and they didn't write it as a Bee Gees song. So that's where that exercise comes from. So this is this process that you have with artists. It's sort of like an actor

generating backstory for a character. Yes. But this is the thing that you like about the process. You're not a tech guy. You're not a board guy. You're not a knob guy. But you're like sort of a vibe guy and an energy guy, and you want to get in there and work with these people in a way that pushes them a little bit. Yeah, and to make something, to make the best.

I always try to, my goal is always to make the best thing they've ever made in their lives. That's the goal. It's like a lot of pressure. It's a, it's high. I don't know if it's pressure. It's like high expectation. It's like,

um, the bar's high. Like I want the bar to be high. We're not just, we're not phoning it in, you know, we're making, we're making something.

And I remember when I said, I think it was Johnny Cash. When I said to him, it's like, I, you know, we're not phoning it in you know we're making we're making something and i remember when i said i think it was john cash when i said to him it's like i you know we're gonna our goal is to make the best album you've ever made and i remember the look on his face like you're insane it's like you know i do you know what i mean that's an insane statement and and and you did you made i mean that's not for me to say but it's at least we made stuff that would be in the conversation my my producer thinks thinks the man comes around is the best johnny song ever yeah that may be i think that was the very last song he ever wrote the very last song and he worked on that one for years and years and years

and when he came to the studio to record it he he had a book of lyrics for that of that song of different verses of different different iterations he'd worked on it for a really long time and we had already been working together for you years at that point. And I'd never heard of it before. That was the death song. He also had one called the 309. The two last songs were The Man Comes Around and the 309, which is like it's coming around like the 309. And the 309 coming is the end of the line.

When the 309 comes, it's over. Yeah, man. Yeah. It's interesting how that imagery, you know, was that train, I imagine, right? Yeah. I remember we finished, I think it was the fourth album. We did like six official albums, but then, you know, box sets of additional material. Because we would always over-record for everything.

box sets of additional material because we were always over record for everything um but for the six official albums we finished the fourth album and he had been sick and um and i think june had already passed and we finished the last song the last day and he came over and he got very serious and he shook my hand and he said you know thank you so much for thank you so much for doing this with me and i really appreciate it and that was great and i said okay well you know tomorrow we start the next one and i remember he looked at me like like what do you mean it's like let's go it's like if if this one's done we got to start the next one yeah and and his demeanor kind of changed like okay i'll start like i'll start working on it like it because i it always felt like the only reason for him to be

alive was to make these records because before that he was the only reason to be alive was to be an artist and most of that had to do with going on the road and then when he got too ill to be able to go on the road all that was left were the recordings. So we had set up recording sessions every single day, every day, always. And if he was able to participate, you know, if he was able to sing, he would sing. If he wasn't feeling well, he wouldn't participate. But the fact that there was always a session tomorrow was really good psychologically for him because it was a reason to get out of bed. You know, it was.

Yeah. And you had this sort of revolving door, almost of all these amazing musicians coming in yeah every day every day there would be a new session and he loved it he was great so let me ask you how you got from because it seemed like early on you know when talking about steve martin too that early on in in certainly in hip-hop and whatever uh the the sort of hybrid of punk and moving forward that. And you've said it before that the idea of spectacle and the idea of putting on a show that sort of, you know, kind of evolved out of your love of wrestling was sort of like part of the hype that defined, you know, who you were and also hip hop to a degree. When did now was there ever a time i mean we were talking a lot about energy and passion but was there a time where you

really thought that this is the way i'm gonna make money never there was no there was no point in time yeah i still can't believe that i that i don't have to have a job to support my music habit because that's what I always thought. Like from the beginning, I started making music as a hobby while I was going to go to law school and get a degree and have a job. And hopefully I would have a job tangentially involved in the music industry. But whatever money I made would go towards making music because that's what I liked. I didn't know anyone who did that as a career. It wasn't a realistic career path. Where do you stand with wrestling now?

Absolutely love it. I watch more than eight hours every week. More than eight hours? Yeah. Well, there's- Every week. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a tremendous amount of pro wrestling on TV. And you just love it i absolutely love it it's a really beautiful fine art form it's it's storytelling taken to the next level it's beautiful it's beautiful it's it's it's american opera i was i was on a television show for three seasons about female wrestlers.

The Glow Show? Yeah. How was it? How was the experience? It was great. I mean, I wasn't a wrestling guy, and I'm not a wrestling guy in the show either. I'm a film director who gets stuck with the job of making a wrestling show. So I had to educate myself.

So I don't come at it. When did you start loving wrestling? Around the same time I started loving music, like very young. And there's also all that rawness. It's very punk rock in a way. Absolutely. It's definitely DIY crazy. The stories they tell are reckless in a way that you don't get to see in the mainstream. There'd be violence towards people in a completely inappropriate way on a regular basis. But it makes sense because you're setting up bad guys and good guys. So the bad guy has to do something really despicable to be a bad guy.

So they do some things that are really despicable. But because it's like this hyper real, not real, it's like you're not going to the movies. They're not really characters. They are, but they aren't. It's like that line line it's like where what's real what's not and the fact that they work reality into it like if a guy gets hurt that becomes part of the storyline but then sometimes they say a guy gets hurt and he didn't get hurt it's it's only the storyline or sometimes like one of the characters gets divorced and then you like he might be getting divorced but maybe it's just story and you never know it's it's this like parallel reality

always going on and it never ends and it goes on forever it's amazing so it's a it's a perfect reflection of life in a controlled way for you i would say it's it's closer it's more honest it's the most honest form of information in our society like pro wrestling is the most accurate representation of life dude like right now you've got heels in in government donald trump was the biggest heel and the best heel that ever lived. Yes. And by the way, in the WWE Hall of Fame, he's in the WWE Hall of Fame. Makes sense. It's like the best heel president has to be in the Hall of Fame. But do you find it upsetting in any way that it's bleeding into our politics?

No, because it always did. Now we see it. I feel like the beauty of where we are now is it's always been wrestling it's always been wrestling just now we know it it's like the curtain's been drawn back and we see oh it's pro wrestling all this time we thought it was real it was there ever a dream of yours to be like vince mcmahon like because i mean you did some you funded some some promotions not like vince mcmahon but i did invest in a wrestling company also like all the things that i that i make i make out of a desire as a fan of not being served and there was this window in time in pro wrestling where so when i was a kid wrestling was great and then there was a second league called n NWA in the South. And that was great.

And both leagues were kind of going along great for a long time. And then the rock wrestling connection happened. Do you know about this? Yeah. Cyndi Lauper. When Cyndi Lauper got involved and it became more of a, it changed. It changed for a minute. And in the success of it changing, it got very popular in that change more than it had ever been it went from like cable tv

to network tv during that time because it got so popular the new audience was mostly kids whereas before wrestling was it was kids but it everybody. And it was sort of adult entertainment that kids loved. Like horror movies were originally made for adults, but kids loved them. And it's like that. It's like genre, you know, it's like genre, the exploitation movies, all of that kind of stuff, the harder stuff. It's made for adults, but kids always love it because it's radical. You know, it's, it's radical. It goes past the back.

It breaks the rules. It's taboo. And then wrestling in this moment of the wrestling connection, a lot of kids started watching and then they changed the nature of the stories and the characters to be more like kids' superheroes

and it became much more of a kids show much less you know guys hitting each other with chairs and bleeding all over the place because it was for kids and when that happened the nwa the southern league was But then as WWE got more kid friendly, NWA, which always basically imitated whatever Vince did, then they followed suit. And then everybody was doing wrestling for kids. So I'm a hardcore wrestling fan for, you know, the craziness of it. And now kind of got dumbed down to be for kids. the craziness of it and now kind of got dumbed down to be for kids so i supported a new league starting really just for the purpose of doing kind of old time hardcore um blood and guts wrestling you know life and death and you know offensive wrestling the good time the real kind it's like

dirty jokes you know i like dirty jokes if if all jokes became clean i might want to help somebody do dirty joke you know like support someone doing dirty jokes just because they have to stay we need dirty jokes yeah they're still around good i hope so well so how how in in in terms of of your feelings about wrestling and your feelings about music, what what about wrestling has contributed to how you perceive the world that you work in? I mean, how do you what is important about music? I just heard what you told me is important about wrestling. And it was very deep and very passionate and sort of thought out. You know, and I understand all those reasons. It's a way of feeling alive

and it's a way of engaging in something that takes a lot of risks that you can't really take in life, but also there's story and there's characters and there's people you follow and you don't know what's real and what isn't. I mean, that's all consuming. That's an amazing world.

And the feeling of you can't believe what you're seeing. Like you can't believe, like sometimes you cannot believe what happens. You cannot believe what happens. When it's good, when it's good, you can't believe it. You love it so much. I do. And those same emotions I'm interested in in music. You know, I'm interested in when you hear something,

if it can provoke an emotion, if it can make you cry, great. If it can make you, if you can, if you, if it can make someone say that's the worst thing I've ever heard. Yeah. That's pretty good. It's like, it's like the worst, the worst. Okay, I'll take it. You know, not interested in it being mediocre, middle of the road.

So it's not really, those are about, that's about energy and about feelings and not about the spectacle of it. But that's what you sort of, you get from wrestling is this ability to take it to the edge. Yeah. from wrestling is this ability to take it to the edge yeah it's an it's an energetic feeling of you can't believe what you're you know nothing more exciting to me than listening to a piece of music and feeling like well i've never heard anything like this before or making me laugh not because it's funny but because it's gone so far yeah you know after all the music i've heard

over the course of my life someone can still put on something and i listen to it and it makes me laugh that's got power now in in you in the 9 000 records that you've been involved with yeah are there disappointments absolutely absolutely it depends what you mean by disappointment so it's like well i'm a because my job is a collaborator i'm not the artist i'm a i'm a, because my job is a collaborator. I'm not the artist. I'm a, I'm a collaborator. My job is to help the artists be the best they could be. Ultimately at the end of the day, it's the, the artist makes the last call. So sometimes I have a vision for it. I don't usually have a vision when we go into it, but a vision develops as we're working on it. And sometimes at the end of it, the artist's vision is different than mine and their vision is what wins.

I'll state mine. You know, I'll, I'll explain how I see it. Sometimes they want to do it the way I want to do it. Like, like with the day the laughter died, dice was like,

let's do that. That sounds great. He could have just as easily say, you crazy. I'm playing Madison square garden. That's the album. Just as easy may have been more reasonable to say that, you know? Yeah. But my tendency is to push artists to be the most pure version of themselves. And I tend

to like kind of radical artists. So the pure version of themselves is usually pretty edgy. It's not always the case. It's not the case with every artist I work with. But the ones that I tend towards are pretty edgy. And what about the ones that tend towards you? How do you mean? Well, I mean, it seems like some people, like, you know, either get sort of recommended or referred, you know, fairly large acts, sort of like, I need to work with Rick because I'm hitting a wall. Yeah. Well, then I, I listen to what they're doing. I'll usually listen to what they're doing,

listen to their best work from the past and have a conversation with them. And based on the conversation, I usually get a sense of some path forward, not what it's going to be, but some path forward, which could be rooted in something for the past that's happened. Like I remember with Metallica when, when we got together, they, they had just made that movie, which sort of, sort of showed how internally not working Metallica was at that time. Yeah. Do you ever see that movie?

Some kind of monster. So I think we worked pretty soon after that. Yeah. And, and I listened back to all the Metallica records and my favorite Metallica record was called master puppets, which was not their biggest record. It was before their biggest record.

That's another thing. Many artists will go back. Like if they're going to go back, they go back to what's popular. It's like, I usually go back to what's good. And sometimes what's good happened before what, what pop what's popular.

So you went back to that, went back to that and said, okay. And I said, for me, this is your best album. If we were going to do a sequel to that album, like what would that sound like like if you if your career

let's say you just finished that album and that came out and you wanted to continue that in that direction what might that sound like that's one of the questions another question would be i remember saying let's say metallica didn't exist and you were just, you four guys were a band. There was no such thing as Metallica. Nobody ever heard of you. There's a battle of the bands coming up and you need to write material to win the battle of the bands. It doesn't matter what it is.

It's a wrestling script. Yes. It's like, what is, what, what is the music you play to win the battle of the bands it's just a different mindset to write from and because when you come in and play me something it's like do you really believe that's going to win the battle of the bands and yes they've showed

up with we're going to win the battle of the bands check this you. Yeah. And it was, did you love the record? I think it's great. Now, when, when you've had problems with artists or they've had problems with you, how, how do you frame that in your head? Just sort of didn't work out or.

It depends. It depends on the, you know, it's everything is case by case for the most, honestly, for the most part, it usually works out for the, for the volume of things I've recorded,

there's a very short list of things I can think of that either didn't work out or never got finished or I even intend not to quit. And we find a way. We find a way. Well, great, man. And so you're busy. You're working on a record.

I think I'm working on either four or five albums right now. And do you show up for all of them in full capacity? Yeah. Yeah. They're all, they're like all at different stages. It's, um,

we finished the basic tracks for an album and then there was vocal work to do, which ended up taking months. And we worked on that together. Like it just goes in, in cycles. Pieces. Right.

Right. Yeah. So when you say you're doing five records it doesn't mean like tomorrow i've got to work on all five no no no no it's like there are projects that start and then they're like at different stages of one might be just in the writing stage one might be about to be mixed and we're doing the final details all different all different you and you don't have the Houdini house anymore, huh? I still own the Houdini house.

You do? Yeah. Yeah, it's a cool place. We recorded Blood Sugar Sex Magic there. That was the first thing we recorded there. We recorded System of a Down in that house. Yeah. Do you think that house is magic

or it just happens to be Houdini's old house? Well, there's different stories. Like Houdini never lived in the house. He did live on the land and actually the house that, that was his house was diagonally across, but it burnt down, but he never lived in that one either, but he did live on the land where this house is, but he didn't live in the house. What in a box that he couldn't get out of? Where did he live? He's just saying on the land. Was it a tent?

I don't know, but I know he didn't live in the, it was not, I just know the history, the way it was told to me was while they were working on his house, he was living on the land on this house. It wasn't in that house. Maybe it was in to me was while they were working on his house he was living on the land on this house it wasn't in that house maybe it was in one of the smaller houses so uh in closing enjoy sweden and it's nice to see you come by the comedy store some night and we'll hang out do you spend time there still yeah i'm there right when the pandemic was over like given even after i spent a year going like maybe i don't need to do stand-up anymore maybe i'm all better

uh as soon as it fucking opened i'm there every night i'm going tonight are you really you're there every night pretty much and you get up every night yeah do you go to get up or do you go just to be in i go to work i'm i working out, buddy. I'm working out. I'm doing this residency and then I'm going to go do some clubs in August and I'm going to do the New York Comedy Festival in November. And if I feel like that, the hour I have built is worthy,

I'll take it on the road a bit. How much does the hour change from night to night once it's developed? Well, right now, I leave a lot of room. You know, right now it's still, it's not, it's not an hour yet. It's like an hour and a half. And there's a lot of bits and pieces that need to kind of work together. So, so it's, it's, it's, it's changing. It's very fluid. But once it's organized, would, would like the order of events over the course of the night be the same every night or not necessarily?

Not for me, no. I generally leave room. You know, if I have to shoot the special, I'm usually tweaking things right up to like the day before a special. But I've gotten very kind of later in my life here, the last two or three specials I've become, I was always kind of loose. Like I did a 90-minute special called Thinky Pain, which I was loose on purpose, even with notes. But then I got kind of hung up on callbacks and structure and tightening it up. So I think the last two or three specials are very, they're pretty, you know, pretty set. But, you know, leading up to those, you know, it's always, I like, the only way i know i'm alive is when things happen that

i don't plan so you know over the over the course of looking back how many have you done how many specials well i've done like four or five cds and i guess one two three four four hour plus ones and if you looked at the uh thecoaster ride of how they turned out, was the last one, the best one, the ball question. Yes. Yes,

it was for sure. So you weren't in the Beatles. I was not in the Beatles. I was never a beetle. I was, I was always, uh, you know,

I, I was always in a, in a lot of bands that just, uh, didn't quite make the break. I was always in a lot of bands that just didn't quite make the break. I was almost, we almost had a hit. But it didn't really. I didn't really land in myself totally until the last two or three. It took me about 30 years. You think, is it mainly the time?

Was it just the years of Was it like just the, the, the years of doing it to get to that stage? I don't know, man. It was just like, you know, you spend a lot of time as a comic, or at least I did pretending to be fearless, you know? And that's part of the, the, that's part of the thing, you know, taking the hits, pretending to be fearless. And, and also I was always a guy that I wasn't really setting out to be entertaining. I was always setting out to find some truth for myself. And I chose that format, right? And that was the way I always sort of did it. So I was difficult to digest on and off throughout the years. I was always pretty funny, but I was pretty intense and somewhat off-putting at

different times. But I was on Conan 50 times, you know, and I never really got an audience. So it took me until the podcast to get an audience, and now I can sort of deliver with a certain amount of fearlessness, and I even enjoy being up there. I don't think I enjoyed doing it until six years ago. So I don't know why I was doing it, but it was because I had to in my heart, not because I loved it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was what I was, it was what I was born to do in my brain. That was like, this was the only job for me. If you didn't, if you didn't love it, what, what did you love? Well, I liked the immediacy of being alive in like, you know, for me, like those moments I was talking to you about where something is delivered to me. Like, you know, I don't know how my jokes are written. I don't sit there and write these equations or these math problems that are jokes that fit a rhythm. I go on stage and I put myself out there and I wait for something to be delivered to me.

And that's how it happens. I don't know where they come from. I don't know why they come from, but that's what I'm gunning for. And generally, you know, it hasn't made me Kevin Hart. I don't fill arenas, but I've got a pretty good size audience now that keeps me feeling like I'm doing something relevant. So it happens. Might something as simple as what you notice on your way to the store be the way it starts?

Oh, definitely. Like I did that last week about being on the 101 and there was a Lamborghini in front of me. You judge a Lamborghini and it's never in a good way. I mean, who buys that car? But the thing was is like, I'm behind this guy and he's doing what Lamborghinis do, but he's using his blinker. And I'm like, who the fuck uses their blinker in a Lamborghini? I mean, be the douchebag. I didn't know they had blinkers. Right.

You committed to being a douchebag. Do it. Be the Lamborghini, you blinker in a Lamborghini. I mean, yeah. I didn't know they had blinkers. Right. You committed to being a douchebag. Do it. Be the Lamborghini. You blinker pussy. So yeah, that's the way I do it. Yeah. I bring it up there. I bring it all up there, man. Cool. Beautiful. Yeah. Anytime you want to come, let me know. Yeah, I will be my guest. Thank you. A pleasure speaking to you, sir. All right, Rick, you too. Take it easy, man. A pleasure speaking to you, sir. All right, Rick, you too. Take it easy, man. Bye.

Rick Rubin. The series is McCartney 321. It's streaming on Hulu. And they did a record store re-release of that She's the One, that Tom Petty album that was from the wildflowers period that Rick, uh, had a hand in and God damn, it's good. And now I'm going to try to do a rhythm.

I haven't done on my guitar. Thank you. Boomer lives. Monkey. Lafonda. Cat angels everywhere. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Thank you. a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category,

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