Author: Adam Gorecki. Adam is a London-based writer, maker, and photographer with a broad love for anything that catches his curiosity, particularly music. Graduating with a Level 4 Diploma in Copywriting from The College of Media and Publishing, he sees music as a complex social study and is fascinated by how brilliant ideas can be brought to life. He has a critical eye for great storytelling and thrives in exploring the philosophical side behind an artist’s intentions and what can ignite a spark that lasts for generations.

“The consumer didn’t want Jimi Hendrix, but they got him, and it changed the world” – Liam Gallagher.

The truth is, we’re not intelligent enough to know what other people are going to enjoy. We’re entitled to try, but there is a great risk of our ideas coming across as ingenuine if we try to second-guess our own tastes. At the very core, it’s our own unique perceptions of the world that are what make us all capable of producing good art.

For the record, I don’t tend to read a lot of other musical articles unless I’m researching information for a piece of my own. This isn’t for any other particular reason other than whenever I try to emulate the works of others, the outcome feels relatively uninspiring and deadbeat. The main reason that I wanted to get into writing about music is that I felt it would encourage me to explore why I was enticed by the music I listened to to fully understand why I like a genre or an artist. I also enjoyed the idea of encouraging others to find resonance in the music they listened to. It brought me a sense of honesty. There’s no real way to achieve something like this other than to listen to yourself, the music and nothing else – then you just write. Now, this isn’t me comparing my waffling with the musical greats, but I’ll certainly say that I take my inspiration from a few of them – as we all should.

Particularly, I’ve taken plenty from none other than Rick Rubin.

Rick, The Artist and The Audience

Rubin is a world-recognised musical collaborator, producer and mentor to some of your favourite artists (most likely). Originating from the grassroots of hip-hop in the early 1980s New York, he gained his status by aiding up-and-coming artists (such as LL Cool J and Run DMC) to find their authentic and distinctive sound through artistic instinct and minimalism. He’d go on to work with the likes of Johnny Cash, Adele, Ed Sheeran, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Kanye West, Tom Petty, Mick Jagger and Black Sabbath to produce some of their most iconic pieces of work. What’s most unusual, is that Rick’s professional reputation never came from extensive musical knowledge or ingenious technical arrangements. In fact, he’d go as far as to say that he had no musical skills at all.

So why would these legendary artists insist on working with him?

Instead, Rick acts as a bridge between the artist and their truest form of creative outlet. He’d describe himself as a ‘reducer’ rather than a ‘producer’. Granting the artist the sensation of having a blank canvas and to trust their own fluid intuition, whilst taking them out of their creative comfort zones. With the intention of restoring a ‘childlike perception’, there’s an active encouragement to experiment, be wrong, find what feels right, as well as strip back the unnecessary elements of an artist’s work to uncover its purest form without fear of prejudice. Much like when children play. It’s for no one else but their wild imagination to enjoy.

‘Look for what you notice but what no one else sees’ Rick Rubin – The Creative Act

I’ve read his 2023 book ‘The Creative Act: A Way of Being’ around three times now, as it’s structurally written to have short and minimalist chapters which are easy to absorb. The book mostly surrounds the fundamentals of his teachings with artists which can apply to everyday life and creative projects. There’s one quote, however, that stands out to me.

“In terms of priority, inspiration comes first. You come next. The audience comes last.”

It’s something that I feel is truly crucial towards any activity you choose to embark on in life. Specifically, I write this article to explore how Rick has used this mantra to revitalise or give birth to some truly outstanding and historic artists and their music.

Rick, Run, and Aerosmith

Like many emerging art forms, record labels of the early 1980s struggled to recognise hip-hop as a legitimate form of music. This was due to the genre’s lack of melodies, association with urban communities and the overall experimental nature of the art form. At this time, having founded his own record label and consistently producing for underground hip-hop artists, Rubin was eager to break down this barrier and get his artists on the radio. One group, in particular, was the promising Run-DMC. There was an incentive to prove that the cadences, vocal rhythms and drum beats of rap music were almost exactly the same as the popular songs of the rock genre. In fact, many of the early beats of hip-hop came from sampled and mixed rock records.

There was one rock song in particular that Rick was keen to sample for the group. A song that when you heard the first few beats of the snare and kick drum, you’d think you were hearing the beat of an 80s hip-hop anthem. This song was ‘Walk This Way’ by Aerosmith. In this 1975 hit, Rick found that the drum beat, guitar riff and vocal rhythms were exactly the same as an 80’s hip-hop track and resonated with the style and charisma of Run-DMC. Give it a listen and see for yourself. This was a golden opportunity to bridge the gap between genres. Instead of sampling the track’s beat and looping it, Rubin had a more open-minded and revolutionary approach that had never been done before in music. He invited Joe Perry (Aerosmith Guitarist) and Steven Tyler (vocalist) to come and collaborate with Run-DMC to re-record the track over 10 years after its initial release. This time, Run-DMC performed their own verses and Aerosmith remained on the hook.

Despite initial criticisms, the song ended up receiving countless requests from radio stations. DMC’s album, Raising Hell, went down as being one of the most well-received classic hip-hop albums of all time. Not only did this transform them into one of the first mainstream rap groups, but it revitalised the career of Aerosmith who at that time were struggling to sell out their tours. It’s seen universally as a commercial turning point for the culture of hip-hop. In 2017, hip-hop surpassed rock as America’s number 1 streamed genre for the very first time.  Darryl “DMC” McDaniels continues to hold motivational talks in middle schools across the country and uses this story to remind children that they should “always be willing to try something new because it might not only change your life, but it could change the world”.[1]

Rick, Cash and Hurt

When you think of Johnny Cash, you think of the thumping feet and roaring crowds at Folsom Prison or swaying with June Carter at The Grand Ole Opry. The first time Rick Rubin had gone to see The Man in Black perform, was at a derelict dinner theatre in Orange County during the early 1990s. There, he found an ageing Johnny Cash with a decaying attempt to hold a room of which at one time he could uproar. There was a heavy weight on Cash’s shoulders that suggested his legacy had now left him behind and that his glory days were over. Years prior, he was the biggest-selling artist on Columbia Records (more than all other artists combined), he was then dropped due to a slump in albums sales. Furthermore, upon meeting with Rubin, he had just lost his record deal with Mercury Records. His career had turned into an ageing strive for relevance, losing touch with his own authenticity along the way. The pair mutually agreed that this was definitely a low point for Cash. Where they differed, however, is that Rick didn’t feel like this was the end for him just yet.

“You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.”—Johnny Cash

The proposal was for Rick and Cash to work together under the condition that there would be no core incentive to sell records. It was necessary for Cash to gravitate towards songs that resonated with him, to find the things that he felt were beautiful. Rick believed that the key for Cash was in the lyrics. It was the storytelling that his gravely, wise voice carried so well. Cash was initially sceptical due to Rick having a scarce history working with country artists, but over time, the pair grew a strong bond. Cash eventually agreed to work with Rick on his label and record a series of albums that spanned over nearly a decade called The American Recordings Series. The sessions consisted of Rubin supervising Cash with only his guitar, situated either in Tennessee or Rick’s living room in California (which also happened to be a former Bob Dylan and The Band recording studio). This was a return to Cash’s early recording styles – minimalist, pure and for the love of the art. This run of albums was critically praised as some of Johnny’s most refreshing and breathtaking pieces of honest work. They were known for their sincerity, intimacy and raw captivity from an artist who had seen and bared it all throughout his many years. There was one song, however, that stood as a testament towards seeing the sunset on such a life and career. In his final years, Cash saved his best till last.   

“Sitting and talking and playing music… that was when we got to build up a friendship. My fondest memories are just of hanging out and hearing his stories. He didn’t speak much but, if you drew him out, he seemed to know everything. He was shy and quiet but a wise, wise man.”[2]– Rick Rubin on working with Johnny

Johnny Cash recorded ‘Hurt’ with Rick Rubin around one year before he died in his final instalment of the album ‘American IV: The Man Comes Around’. It was initially a cover of a Nine Inch Nails track from 1994. Rick would typically send Cash a batch of songs they could cover together, ‘Hurt’ was constantly at the top. Cash would always ignore it. It seemed too distorted and jarring to the ear. Of course, it was a part of the concept, but it wasn’t Cash. The encouragement to reinvent the song would allow Cash to find his own relationship with the hard-hitting lyrics, his guitar and nothing else. He agreed, and it worked. Cash’s version strips the song down to the bare acoustic essentials, with a haunting piano and drums that creep into an explosive ending full of crisis and nostalgia. The lyrics become reinvented as one final glance back at the life that Cash had built and what he has lost in time. We’re forced to feel all of the regret that he holds close and what legacy may be left after. The sentiment of this reincarnated track is a heartbreaking one, but that’s what makes it so devastatingly beautiful. The music video won the best that year at the Grammys and CMA awards. Billboard ranked the song as the 4^th greatest song that Cash has ever produced, and till this day remains at the top of his most listened-to songs of all time. Nine Inch Nails songwriter, Trent Reznor, went as far as to say that “the song isn’t mine anymore”.[3]

Cash died a legend, and at peace.

The Audience Comes Last

“It has always been enough to be in the natural sequence of things” – Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens

When a three-year-old is playing and they lose interest, they do not force it. They move on. Similarly, I remember it being no concern of mine whether someone understood the squiggly drawings or gibberish writing that I produced at that age. You love it because it is yours, and it is an expression of what you felt was right at that moment in time.

Each day, we have the choice to regurgitate, or go on an adventure to find something new and exciting. The same applies to the music we listen to and the art that we make. Nowadays, I can’t help but notice a general attitude from mainstream artists and makers that consists of ‘keeping the audience happy’ and ‘giving them what they know’. I don’t think there’s anything uglier than trying to go back. It tends to be the things we’ve never seen before that will make the real difference and more often than not, we tend to fall in love with the things that we do not anticipate, as opposed to the ones that we do.

Kanye West released ‘808s and Heartbreak’ in 2008 off the back of three sparky, upbeat albums that broke him into the mainstream. Following a gruelling divorce and the death of his beloved mother, he instinctively churned this pain into an experimental album within just two weeks. 808 drums, autotune, crying and singing were not how we recognised Kanye at this time… and maybe we’d never see work like that from him again afterwards. But undoubtedly, despite the mixed reception this record received at the time, this project went on to inspire multiple subgenres and artists that we still reap the benefits from to this day. It’s a beautiful album that encapsulates the suffocating strain of heartbreak. No one asked Ye to shift genres so dramatically, no one expected him to either. But it happened, it was totally different, and it worked. It’s also how he ended up working with Rubin for his next experimental project, Yeezus. A great album will have people debating whether they love or hate it. A mediocre piece of art will consistently keep opinions in the middle.

As I write my monthly column pieces, I want to constantly explore this theme around how great music creates such an impact on its listeners. I wanted to focus a singular article around Rick Rubin because he bases his entire professionalism around ‘knowing nothing about music’. Whether this is true or not, it reminds us that technical skill is only half of what is required when making an impactful project. The other, remains to be a wild whirlwind of fanatical fantasies that no one can put a lid on. It’s just as crucial. What’s more important, is that it continues to grow and change in spite of those who question it. Uncalculated reincarnation is the crucial formula for any artist who looks to make a difference.

“Living in discovery is at all times preferable to living through assumptions” Rick Rubin

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[1] https://youtu.be/5ikJrtxRovI?si=zPs1di7je0WpD2YS&t=239

[2] Rees, Paul (October 2009). “The Q Interview: Rick Rubin”

[3] Rickly, Geoff (June 26, 2004). “Geoff Rickly Interviews Trent Reznor”. Alternative Press.