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Hey Chris Jericho depth McKagan call me up hope everybody's doing good enough of course. Listen up to you the other day and I saw a piece of toast in a cage. It's a bread and captivity. Thank you very much. Good luck. All right. Well, we started off with the joke. Yes, it definitely was a joke. So thank you to Duff and guns and roses tearing it up a stadium. So I'm going to see guns and roses tonight in Las Vegas at a Legion Stadium, but guns will be going on the road until the fall.
Go to guns and roses dot com for all ticket information and fuzzy rock dot com is where you can find ticket information for our recently announced 2022 Australian tour. The country is kind of in lockdown right now with this is six months away. So hopefully things will be back up at that point in time.
So we'll be headed down under with Buck cherry in February and of course we're going to the UK in December and we are starting to save the world tour in the United States on Thursday next Thursday September second in Columbus at the Newport musical September 3rd and Jolietta at the forage. It's just the hour from Chicago.
If you guys are going to all out looking for something to do on the Friday and on the Saturdays Belvedere Illinois also about an hour away at the Apollo Theater. So come check us out if you are in Chicago for all out. Come check us out in Kansasville Wisconsin at 1175. It's also close to Milwaukee in Chicago.
A lot of shows in Milwaukee in Chicago lately. Go to Fizer Rock dot com to check out all the shows Pittsburgh sold out Flint Michigan solo Cleveland Ohio sold out Johnson City Tennessee sold out other sellouts coming all of the VIPs are almost sold out as only six shows left for some VIPs available.
Fizer Rock dot com for all that information and don't feel like I said we're going to the UK starting November 30th Manchester Newcastle Glasgow Dublin Bell fast Birmingham swanzy whales sold out London nodding am sold out so lots of stuff going on with Fizer Rock dot com sane is actually number 15 this week which is huge on the radio.
Big day for Fizer and a big day here on talk is Jericho episode 800 and we wouldn't have made it this far without you guys like I said so thanks for listening and supporting the show all these years and I marked the occasion as I do every single century episode I've got an incredible guest a huge guest for a huge episode and the century guests that I've had just to keep track is that episode 100 was Paul Stanley episode 200 was Dennis Miller.
300 was Tony I only 400 was Gene Simmons 500 was Paul Stanley again 600 was Kevin Smith 700 was the talk in shop reunion that's after Gowell's Nannison Squelstar beef that we had for over a year and of course 800 which is today the special guest Rick Rubin makes his talk is Jericho debut and it's been a long time coming I've been waiting to talk to Rick for a long time he used to be my boss which we'll find out he co founded of course the Dan Diff Jam records.
He founded American recordings he's got eight Grammy Awards and just a shitload of classic records that he produced. He's also the guy that had the brilliant idea to get Paul McCartney into a recording studio to talk about bass playing songwriting production Beetle stories. Wing stories that incredible conversation is what turned into the new Hulu documentary series McCartney 321.
You hear exactly how that happened would it took to get it done how long they really spent filming and what it was like from Rick's perspective is such a great documentary you got to watch it Rick also tell some amazing stories but working in the studio producing records by AC DC black Sabbath of course his famous Johnny Cash recordings that revive Johnny's career system of it down the red hot chili peppers Tom petty so many classic records and artists that he's worked with but like I said he was my former boss because as a die hard wrestling fan he was a great guy.
He was the owner of smokey mountain wrestling back in the early 90s when I was there we talk all about his love of wrestling how he came to meet Jim Cornett became the financial backer of SMW. I'm just going to stop here on the conversation role a classic special episode number 800 with the classic and special Rick Rubin right here now on talk is Jericho 800.
So this is a long time coming here talk is Jericho one of my most coveted guests that I have a lot of different connections to Rick Rubin and we've seen each other a few times and kind of cross pass in here and there's lots of stories that will tell as we go along but it's great to actually have a chance to talk to you Rick because you are actually and we'll get to were my former boss at one point in time.
I mean we might as well get in this you're a huge wrestling fan. Yes but the big it's not a secret anymore but it was at the time that you were the financial backer for smokey mountain wrestling. Yes it was always kind of a little bit of a secret that you were the guy behind it. Yeah it wasn't meant to be a secret but it just we just didn't talk about it but it wasn't intentionally a secret.
Well how did that ever come to be because it's for people that know so smokey mountain wrestling was a regional wrestling territory based in Tennessee in kind of the mid 90s and Rick was the backer behind it. Yeah the way it happened was I've been a wrestling fan since I can really since I can remember I probably started watching wrestling when I was 5 or 6 years old and just never stopped to this day you know I watch a solid 8 hours of wrestling a week.
And it was a moment in time when wrestling went let's say went mainstream maybe it was when the rock wrestling connection happened. Something happened where then WWF or WWWF I can't even remember changed its focus to be more like superheroes for children.
And became the PG era of wrestling maybe even the G era of wrestling right and but then there was still the NWA and then the NWA was what my head turner and then it seems like I again I don't know the exact timing of this but whether it was the NWA or WCW I believe was WCW they sort of followed suit because they were competing with WWE and WWE went kid show.
So people like me who liked old school blood and guts crazy wrestling you know offensive wrestling real wrestling we were not as a fan I wasn't being serviced.
So the purpose of it was only for all of us fans who weren't getting what we wanted from either of the two big brands this was an alternative that was the whole idea of it was was again I just watch all the time and what I wasn't getting what I wanted to see so that that was how it started but then that led to and again I'm not saying we had anything to do it at all but then the attitude here came and it kind of righted the wrongs of the past.
So Smoky Mountain was less necessary when the big companies did wrestling again. So how did you get connected with Cornette? I can't even remember how I met him but I was just a fan and he was a fellow frustrated wrestling fan and just through through our frustration was really born out of the frustration with wanting wrestling to be wrestling.
I think there was a guy that was in the middle of his name was Kat Collins and remember that guy and he was a he might have been he was a radio promotion guy he was and I think he also had a lot to do with getting the black crows off the ground because he was an Atlanta guy and I think that might have been where the connection could be could be because I remember at some point him being involved and he was the guy maybe said that you were involved as well.
It's interesting though because when you think about Smoky Mountain because that's also around the time when ECW was going and like you said then it kind of spawned the attitude era. So because Smoky even though it was regional it was kind of a nationwide at least there was a buzz about it for hardcore fans and tape traders and all that sort of thing. So it could have had something to do with kind of getting that envelope expanded.
I have no idea. All I know was we lost a fortune of money and what I learned was that there are like two halves of the wrestling business. There's the wrestling business and there's the television business and I felt like we had some understanding of the wrestling business but we didn't have any understanding of the television business.
Without that piece I don't think it's possible to be in the wrestling business and that was just again if I were to do it again which I have no plans to do that would be the key is knowing you want a partner, you want a TV partner as much as you want the wrestling partner. Again, it didn't know that it was just at a pure fandom.
Was there any kind of similarities because you obviously started deaf American and then American recordings. You were running a very successful record company. Was there similarities between running a wrestling company and a record company? Both were passion projects based on the same reasoning. Like in the early days of hip hop I would go to hip hop clubs and the music was a particular form of it was hip hop.
But the records that were coming out at that time were not hip hop records. They were R&B records with people wrapping on them. As a fan I was frustrated. I wanted the experience that I got when I went to the hip hop club on record and it didn't exist. So that was really the reason deaf jams started. Again, there were no big aspirations at any point in time. It was purely as a fan, not being serviced, wanting to make the records that I wish I could have bought but nobody was making them.
So with the smokey mountain, were you involved, like would you do a weekly call with Jim, for example, or were you involved in creative or were you just kind of silent? Pretty silent. My only thing, so I would really talk about with Jim, would be more just going harder and having it be more whatever extreme was.
Like say extreme, it doesn't mean more violence in the matches, it doesn't mean that. It's just a style of storytelling that's more extreme, more charged, more personal, more whatever it is, had more of a personal offensive story. So it was just hotter stories. That was really what interested me. You know, it's interesting because there was some of those, I mean when they brought the gangsters in at first that was caused a huge controversy, especially in the south and that sort of thing.
But as much as that kind of push the envelope, that also I kind of think was one of the beginnings of the end of smokey because a lot of people that didn't want to deal with that dark of a subject. But that's what that's what rest the beauty of wrestling. That's one of one of the great things of the art of wrestling is that it touches on all of these dark things that are real that nobody wants to talk about.
So it's acknowledging the shadow side, the real shadow side. It's not, maybe it's done in a cartoon way. But the reason the idea is like it's, I worked with the comedian Andrew Dice Clay. People thought of it as offensive because they took the words he was saying and they were saying, well these words mean offensive things.
Now the only reason that it's funny is because you know that it's offensive. If you don't know that it's offensive, you hear it and you don't laugh. If everybody's laughing, they know it's offensive because that's what the joke is. The joke is saying things you're not allowed to say. So wrestling is, it serves a purpose in that it talks about these dark fringes of life or these lower vibration feelings that people have.
It's the same way in a book's bunny cartoon when someone gets hit by an anvil. You know, in the real world, you can't hit somebody with an anvil. They're not in the next scene if you hit them with an anvil. But we understand that's how it works. So I feel like in many ways wrestling is truer to life than any of the documentaries or nonfiction stories were told. I don't think they get as close to the truth as wrestling gets. I think wrestling is the most legitimate form of entertainment there is.
You bring up a lot of great points, Rick. And one of the things that kind of got me into wrestling when I was a kid, I remember the angles and it was Nick Bach, Winkle, hurting Hulk Hogan's arm. And it was Randy Savage crushing Ricky steamboats throat with the ring bell. The real things where you were pulling for your favorite movie character, Indiana Jones getting the crap kicked out of it. You just want to see him push that Nazi into the spitting propeller of the airplane.
And that really connected you to the stories and the spectacle of wrestling. Like I said, I am 40 years later telling you the angles verbatim because it stuck in my mind. Yeah, I can remember when they broke Dusty's arm. Right. How meaningful it was or one of the matches where someone lost an eye is like, you don't forget it. It's just so unbelievable. I know I know you've been talking to Tony Conn recently. Do you find AEW has some of those qualities for you?
Absolutely. I feel like it's a good time in wrestling. I see it on both AEW and XT even sometimes in WWE. I mean, talking about losing an eye, there was a whole angle between Seth Rollins and Rey Mysterio, an eye for an eye. That's insane. That's as extreme as it gets. Did you go to the garden and watch the matches when you were a kid? I went to the garden every month. I had a wrestling subscription which gave me the same seats every month at Madison Square Garden.
I was an intern at the wrestler and inside wrestling magazines when I was a little kid, my mom who drive me to their office and he was in Rockville Center. I would organize photographs, I worked for a black there. Really? I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. Just obsessed my whole life. And to this day, to this day. There's so much that we can talk about here before we move along. Is there a favorite wrestler that you have and a favorite match that you can recall from all your years of being a fan?
I would say Ric Flair is my favorite wrestler. But I can't say that there's anyone match he's just amazing. And then in terms of great matches, recently there were some really great matches. The two that come to mind recently both involved to Maso Champa. There was a tag team match with the DIY, the best two out of three tag team match with DIY and then revival was an unbelievable as good as wrestling gets.
And then you kind of match that if someone doesn't like wrestling, you show them that match and their minds blown. And then more recently, there was the one with Tomaso and Walter, which was just, I don't know if you saw that match. Fantastic match. I did see. Fantastic match. You'd love it. I didn't, like I knew you were a fan, but I didn't know you were this much of an ardent fan that blows my mind. That's great.
That's great that you're still connected to it. So I'm remembering more recent matches, but there being over the course of my life, there are the matches that you remember from that period of time. I can't remember back to I used to love super star Billy Graham when I was a kid. I used to love no mascara when I was a kid. And I was the head muscle and that was really exciting.
Something else very exciting is your Hulu series with Paul McCartney. We want to talk about how that happened. I just loved all episodes of it. All right, get in on all the NFL action at Fan Duel America's number one sports book. I just placed a couple of bets for my wife Jessica. You know she's a huge Minnesota Vikings fan. So I picked the Vikings to win the NFC North great value for a top tier team.
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Another thing that's very pointed right now and it was just incredible, somebody that you love when you were a kid and all the way through your adult life is as your series on Hulu with Paul McCartney. Yeah. First of all, I'm a Beatles and my all time favorite band, have been since I was a little kid. So any, I always said I would love to put Ringo and Paul in a room and just roll a camera, just let them talk.
We haven't had that but you and Paul got that and I was really impressed with a how you handled it and be how candid he was with you. And it's really just a brilliant series, whether you're a Beatles fan or not, if you're a musician, if you just like great stories. Once again, how did this come about? Because it is kind of seems like an odd pairing of Rick Rubin and Paul McCartney on the surface.
Yeah, I was thinking about how the most interesting documentaries are ones that focus on one aspect of a person as opposed to trying to tell their whole life story. Agreed. And I was thinking about, I don't know if you know this fact, but there's been more written about the Beatles than anyone other than Jesus. So there's the most information out about the Beatles. There's an endless amount of documentaries, there's an endless amount of books that were flooded with information about the Beatles.
That said, if you were to make a list of the 10 best bass players in the world, many people wouldn't put Paul on the list. He belongs at number one, but you don't think of him as a bass player because he's a Beatles. And the Beatles transcend music in some ways, even though all of the reason we care about them is the music we think of, Beetlemania, and we think of the songwriting. Again, both of which, incredible, but we don't think of the musicianship so much.
And I thought it's as much as been written about the Beatles, it's somewhat of a disservice for people not to know what great musicians they were. And I called Paul and said, have an idea, a documentary about you as a bass player, you as a musician, we don't really talk about that. We talk about the songwriting, we talk about Beetlemania, but we don't talk about the bass playing. And he said, sounds good, let's do it. That was basically how it happened.
I just love the, and then once again, the world that you live in, where I called Paul, just to say, what's up Paul, got an idea for you? But I've also heard too that your series with him might be his last in-depth long form interview. And I don't know if that's true or not, but if it is, I mean, you guys touched so many great things where a six, 30 minute episode was not enough. It wasn't enough. It wasn't enough for me there, I feel like if you go on forever.
I have endless questions. And when we heard the tracks individually together, it sparked memories in him that he hadn't thought about. If you think about it, there's no reason. I don't know if you ever go back and watch your old matches. I never go back and look at anything I've worked on before. I might hear it somewhere from out of the party in the song. I produced K-Mart and I'll recognize I produced that song. But I don't go back and listen to my old work because I'm always making new work.
And saying with Paul, it's like he has no reason to go back and listen to it unless maybe he's going to go on tour and he's teaching the band, you know, a song they haven't played before and they listen to it together. But he's never analyzed the tracks. That's, you know, why? Why would he ever do it? Right, right, right. So this was the first time, it's also the first time that the master recordings ever left Abbey Road in history.
It was a big deal and we were listening to the individual tracks and I could see his surprise. And again, we take it for granted because it's the Beatles and he was there in the room. But even for him, now looking back, it's miraculous. It is miraculous. There's a great scene where I mean, and you are once again one of the greatest producers of all time. But also too, now you're standing next to Paul McCurney and you turn into a fan asking questions.
And there's a great scene where there's a piece of masking tape hanging from your finger as you're talking to Paul. And like you don't even know, you don't even remember it now. You don't even notice that this, it's a piece of masking tape. And it's like, you know, super long, but it's not even in your mind because you're so entranced and what he's saying. That's what I was like, okay, this is really something else because not only are we seeing Paul, but from the Rick Rubin side of things,
you are now just engrossed in these stories as well. You know, I just thought that was a really cool detail. We were definitely present in the moment and we set up where we didn't really see any cameras. We didn't really see any lighting. It really was just this big dark space with a recording console in the middle. And I like to think of it as the recording studio in Paul's mind. The space doesn't give you any cues to any kind of reality. It's more like just an imaginary space.
And the whole thing really did feel like a dream to me. I mean, when I was, even before I saw a rest thing, I was Beatles fan. And I had a poster of the Beatles over my bed when I slept in our four years old. Going from there to standing next to Paul talking about the music, it just doesn't... It's still hard for me to believe that it actually happened.
But it's cool too, because Paul obviously respects your pedigree as well. So you guys are once again, two goats in a lot of ways just talking shop. How long did you guys record for? Was that over the course of a few days? One day? It was two days. Two days. Yeah, it was two days. That's it. Wow. And it was supposed to be originally when we were setting it up. And it was after Paul agreed to do it. We were talking about the schedule with his manager.
And I said, you know, I was thinking maybe like we filmed for a week. And he said, Paul likes to do it in one day and he'll commit to one hour. It's like, okay. So we went in and said, so anything you want to ask, I would try to ask it in the first hour. Because chances are, that'll be it because that's typically what happens. And we did the first day, we ended up doing about five hours. Wow. And then at the end of the first day, he said, let's do it again tomorrow.
So we ended up recording a lot to get what you saw. But it was unusual. It was unusual the way it happened. And it was. It's like we followed his feeling of what he wanted to do. And that's the genius of it. I had William Shatner on the show. And there was actually the second time, he's like, William's got 30 minutes. And I like doing about an hour. And once again, he got so into the conversation was having so much fun. After an hour and a half, I had to cut him off
because I had to go somewhere else. But it's like, like you said, it's good that he had an hour. But he obviously was very engrossed in what you guys were talking about as well. Yeah. And the same. Like I asked to start half hour earlier today because in case it goes longer, I had more time. I had B.S. to have an hour before. And I don't have that much time after. Right. And I know once we're talking about music or wrestling, it's probably going to go on for a while.
Yeah. Just once again, just to kind of finish up with the whole thing, you mentioned his bass playing it. And I totally agree with you with the greatest bass player of all time. And when you hear, like, and once again, I am a bass player. I am a musician. And I can't really listen. But when you were able to pull those tracks down and you just hear something or come together or and your bird can sing, which is super almost obscure.
But when you hear this, like this is so brilliant, how did you choose what songs you're going to listen to? Or did you just kind of go with the flow of the conversation? I collected a bunch of songs in advance that I thought would be good subjects based on different things. And often it was based on the bass playing. Sometimes it was based on, like, and your bird can sing has the really interesting guitar parts that play harmony.
I don't know any other record that sounds like that. And I thought that'd be good when you talk about this because it's so unique. Maybe some black came up because of the two voices singing and harmony from the beginning till the end, which, you know, usually the harmony comes in for the chorus. So, and that was more an Everly Brothers style. And I just thought again, all of these different facets I thought might lead to interesting stories.
Why this, you know, why each of those choices were made. So if someone is a great chef and they go to a restaurant and they're eating food, I always ask, are you thinking of this as a guy eating food or are you thinking of it as a chef? If you're a movie maker, can you watch a movie and not think about as a producer? I mean, it's almost sacrilegious to say, but do you listen to Beatles songs sometimes and go, I might have tried something different here. Or do you kind of just leave that alone?
I would say for most music, I have that feeling of, I know how I would do it differently. With the Beatles, I can't imagine it being different. I cannot imagine any of it, a note being different. It's perfect to me. But my understanding of perfect is from listening to the Beatles. So it's my, it's the North Star from which everything else is compared. There was something that came up in the interview with Paul where he talked about him, baby's in black being a waltz.
Now, I know what a, you know, I know what a waltz sounds like, but it never occurred to me it was a waltz because at the time that I heard it, I didn't know what a waltz was. And it got stuck in my mind as babies in black is thin. And with all the Beatles songs, I never really stopped to analyze the components because for my whole life, they've been fully formed.
You know what I'm saying? They, they three date the analysis of music. All analysis of music is based on comparing it to what the Beatles did. I love some of the scenes like what come together with the original was they were playing it almost like a like a blick. Like you said, the Chuck Bear like fast and then they slow it down and just to hear that process, man, it really was like just when you think you might have heard all the trivia and all the stories.
And then something like that came out and just kind of opened up a whole new can of stories. Yeah, again, for me, it's like again, dream. And I feel like one of the reasons it's resonating with people is that so much of the things that we see on television are product. And they're, they, they have this like commercial intention from the beginning. And this didn't this really was a true love story.
It has the love of music and talking about the love of music. And that's really what it came from. And, and I had no idea when we were filming it that it was going to end up being that the final form would be so close to what happened in the room that day. I thought we were filming it. It might be more of a traditional documentary.
But the conversation was just so intimate and personal and real that anytime we can experimenting that we tried to make it more like a regular documentary wasn't as good. We really followed paid attention to what was happening and focused on what was good instead of what are preconceived idea of the thing we were trying to make was. You were living in the moment. That's it. Did you ever meet George Martin at all over your years? I met George Martin a couple of times. Just just just just hello.
But I was in Abbey Road studio working on something and he came in and say hello. And I know his son who's who's great and he's doing all of the new virgins of the. Yeah, Jiles. Yeah, Jiles. And he did the new version of the white album is I don't know if you've heard that, but it's unbelievably beautiful.
Yeah, all the bonus tracks and demos and all that sort of stuff. You know, it's like I said, like being a Beatles fan and not just like when I was nine or 10, I knew everything about the Beatles and that I read all the books and I knew who magic Alex was and whatever you name it. And that's when I really learned what a producer is because a lot of people who aren't maybe musicians or whatever they think producers are the guys that basically are engineers.
Producers are not producers are collaborators and that's what George Martin did with the Beatles and that's kind of that's obviously what Rick Rubin does as well is more just a collaborative voice. Did that come from Georgia? Did you start off as a as we say a knob twidler as well? Yeah, I was not a knob. I've never been a knob to a learn a non technical person and I don't know anything about music.
It much more has to do with taste. It's just a bit. Yeah, it's just taste. And that started with with the hip-hop bands that artists that you work with at first, is that kind of the first things that you produced? Pretty much. I had a pro-grapman before and I would record my own band, but other than that, it was hip-hop. And I would program the beats, but again, I wouldn't call that really being a musician.
So it's just more opinions, right? Just kind of thinking. Yeah, it's I would view it as conceptual art. It's having an understanding of the form being worked on and seeing how to bring bring the best out of it. More like a director of a movie would do. Seeing where where there could be improvements in the material, if the material's good enough, and then getting the best performance or what's the most interesting angle to approach it from.
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So I think one of the first things that really made you stand out to me is obviously I'm a big fan of all the bands that you did not all, but most of them, fish the peppers and, you know, Slayer. I love the trouble album that you did of a big trouble fan. Amazing band, great Eric Wagner, great haunting singer that a lot of people will never know about. But I think the Johnny Cash records were really were like, what's Ruben doing now? Johnny Cash. That's kind of strange.
But you revitalized his career and we all know the great music that he made. But how did that connection happen? And how was I mean, Johnny Cash is in the Paul McCartney category of there's legends and then there's Johnny Cash. Was he receptive to you and kind of how did that relationship start? Paul and Johnny were in very different positions in their lives. Paul has always been a beetle and has been wildly successful pretty much at all moments.
There's a little bit of time when the Beatles, when he talked about in the documentary when the Beatles broke up and he started doing stuff on his own and it took a few years before things got back on their feet and he was Paul McCartney, the solar war. With Johnny, he had great success in the 1950s, originally on Sun Records. Then he had a second wave of tremendous success. He was the most successful, he sold more records than anybody.
I think it was the late 60s for Columbia Records that was after his 50s run. So he had two huge biggest in the world moments and then he had been at the time that I met him, he had been dropped by two labels. He was playing in small dinner theaters and he was pretty much relegated to being an old exact and not thought of as Johnny Cash in the way that we think of him today.
So when I approached him, he was more interested in why I was even interested. He didn't even understand why anybody would be interested because he had lost faith in himself. He didn't believe he was similar to when Rick Flair lost his... I worked with him at that time.
Same kind of thing, like Johnny did not believe in himself. So he was open to the fact that I cared so much about trying it, he was open to trying it, but not because he thought it would work because he felt like he had nothing to lose. Were you a big Johnny Cash fan or did you just pop in your head like I got to do something with Johnny Cash? It was actually neither of those. Most of the artists had produced at that point in time where young artists usually first album artists.
And had great success, pretty consistently working on a bunch of different music, different styles of music as well. And I just had a thought it would be interesting to try the things that we're doing with new artists, with a grown-up artist, and a grown-up artist who maybe isn't doing their best work. And I'm thinking about okay now, who's great, but who hasn't done great work in a long time.
And the first person I thought it was Johnny Cash. So it was more like fitting the bill of the casting of someone who has been great and has potential to be great, but hadn't been great in a long time in the public that. And then what's your motivation, how do you inspire him to be great again? I think it was just spending time together and talking about music and really getting him to re-engage in why it started making music in the first place.
You know, a lot of it has to do with when you become successful, so many things change in your life that the original excitement about music or love of music gets overtaken by other business concerns or other responsibilities in life. And you know, when you make your first album, it's the most important thing in the world. When you've made your 50th album, it's just another album.
Right. To re-engage in a way that we want to make, and I remember saying it to him, I can remember saying this, I can remember the same conversation with Johnny and with Billy Gibbons that our goal is to make the best album you've ever made in your whole career. And I remember both of their reactions were similar, which they looked at me like, are you crazy? Are you insane? What are you talking about?
Like, literally, that's not possible. I know it's possible. I know it's possible. And we'll do everything we can to make that happen. And I don't know if I'm paraphrasing this, but one of the things that I've heard that you did was play older albums by, like, play older albums, listen to some old Johnny Cash, Johnny Cash, or maybe it was easier. Maybe you didn't do it at all. Was there that element where you did that?
Now, Johnny, not so much. That might have been something we did with Metallica. Like, listen back. You may have listened to Master of Puppets together and talked about that. That's my favorite Metallica album. And that might have been one of the things that we were going to do to follow up to Master of Puppets today. What would that sound like?
It's interesting because there's so many bands that I can think of that I'd like to talk about with Metallica because they had gone through that period with the St. Anger record and kind of losing Jason News that, et cetera, et cetera. So once again, are they receptive to hearing what Rick Rubin has to say? Are they listening to Master of Puppets? Are you able to break that down to where they go?
Remember that day when we recorded this baseball with Cliff, and is that where you get them to? Almost like a psychotherapist in a lot of ways. In a lot of ways, that's what it is. And there was another, I can remember another homework assignment or mindset exercise that we did with them, which was, let's say Metallica didn't exist. And you were a new band just getting together now. And there's a battle of the bands coming up. And you guys are going to enter in the battle of the bands.
And nobody knows who you are. And you have no hits to rely on. What does the music sound like that you make to win the Battle of the Bands next week? What is that music? It's great. Yeah. So sometimes it's just like getting out of the head of, well, we've done this. What do we do? You know what I mean? Like all these stories that we've built up, expectations of what we can't do, what we did, or we need to only do what we did.
All of those stories just get in the way of what's possible. And I'm really into tapping into what's possible, which really that's one of the beauties of pro wrestling. Like the pro wrestling mindset is anything is possible. You know, things happen in wrestling that could not happen otherwise. Yeah. It's one of the reasons I love it so much to spend disbelief. That's what wrestling is. If you live your life in a world where everything is pro wrestling, anything's possible.
And by the way, it really is anything is possible. It turns out, you know what I mean? Like it's up. You're talking to one of the few that does both, you know, wrestling and music. And there is so many similarities and such a correlation between the two not just from a live performance element where the crowd really dictates how the performance goes.
But also from a creative side. Like you said, there shouldn't be any rules when you're writing a song or if you're a band like the peppers of the perfect example of this. You know, Zeppelin was great at it. You too, the Beatles, duh. There's no what's what what are the peppers? Are they heavy metal kind of are they punk rock? Yeah, are they scar? Yeah, are they jazz?
And that's the way it should be where you don't have to have any boundaries same with wrestling. What can we do to tell this story that's going to captivate people's attention and connect with them?
There's such a connection between those two. Yeah, and it's not only what's going to I look at it more as what's going to make the artist excited more than what's going to make the audience excited because I think there's some energy that's in something that you care about when you're making something you really care about for the right reasons because you love it.
Not because you think someone else is going to like it. Not because you're looking for commercial success, but because you put yourself into this thing that you can feel, you know, you feel this is about you're excited to play it for your friends. That's the highest the highest levels like right. If you can do a match that you're excited to show to your friends, not to the audience. If you're if you're excited to show to your friends, there is no better litmus test for how good it probably is.
When you work with the peppers, like how do you corral them? I know I know like you worked with them for so many years. What was your role because they're obviously very artistic and very free in their jams and their song writings? Where did you fit in? Yeah, and still is where we're finishing their new album right now. Oh, you're working on the new record with them. Yeah, amazing. I know that right.
Chad Smith is one of my favorite people on the planet, just a great and one of the best drummers in the world is you know because he used them all the time. Absolutely. I went to the first rehearsal that I was invited to after John rejoined the band and made me cry. It was so thrilling to see them about seeing that group of people back together because they just made sort of such great music for such a long time together.
This really hit me in an emotional way. So with the peppers, we just talk about songs. They have really good habits and that they write lots of songs. If something I would say that we probably develop together from the beginning, this idea of overwriting, you know, if there's going to be 12 songs on an album, they might write 50. They might write 100 to find those 12.
And then we just talk, you know, they'll play for me in rehearsals. We talk about songs, strengths, weaknesses, how to make them better, what we could do, where they work, where they don't. And then we try different stuff. And I'm not, I don't necessarily have the way to fix them. I can just say what I think where I notice where the weaknesses are. And just say, this part going into this part doesn't sound so is there a better way to do it? And then they come up with a better way.
That's just a great relationship over years of just trusting each other. You know, and I love that relationship between a band or an artist and a producer. And we've been fortunate and positive to have a guy named Johnny Anders that we worked with our last two records, actually last three records. And you do establish a little bit of like, we called him the principal.
Like his decision goes, and what do you think of this, Johnny? Do you like it? Do you like it? Yes, I like it. Yeah, Johnny likes it. I mean, it's kind of that great feeling. The beauty of it is, is if you've written something, you have an attachment to it that's different to someone who's just listening to it.
And in a band, everyone would be attached to their piece of it. You know, each band member, you know, this is the old joke, like the drummer wants the drums louder, the bass player wants the bass player. I'm not attached to any of it. Do you know what I mean? I didn't write it in it. I don't have an opinion about, I'm not going to make often a band when there's a band that has several writers.
Like, let's say there's a band where there are two songwriters and they each write songs. I never want to know who wrote what. Because that's not going to help me just say, this is what it sounds like to me, because then it's like, what if I only like one of the guys songs? That's going to make the other guy feel bad. But if that's what's best for the album, that's what's best for the album.
So, but it's helpful to me to have the least amount of information so that I close my eyes and listen to the music, I respond to the music. That's the only thing that matters, because that's what the audience does. The audience doesn't know the backstory. The audience doesn't know why the personal story in the song is so meaningful to the artist or why this decision was made instead of that decision. The only thing that the audience has to go by is the music coming out of the speakers.
And that's all I want to hear is the music coming out of the speakers and then talk about, this is how it makes me feel. This is what I think of when I hear it. This is what I think it means. So, it means that. And by the way, if what I think it means and what the artist thinks it means are different, that's fine. I just want them to know this is what comes up when I hear it. Because sometimes I go, oh, I don't want anyone to think that.
It's a huge step for a musician and a band as well, but more specifically for the musicians involved to be able to say, take your ego out and what's best for the song. What's best for the album? When you can finally make that transition, I'm sure most pro bands with any longevity have. I'm the singer, so I have to write the lyrics. It's like, no.
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, right? It is one artist I know who a great artist who insists on producing her material herself and really takes pride in that. And I say, you know, you don't get any extra credit for that. It's fine. It's what you can, but to think that it somehow makes it better that you do it makes no difference. All that matters is that the thing that people hear is the best it could be. It doesn't matter who writes it, doesn't matter who's playing on it.
None of those things matter. All that matters is that you're making something great to the best it could be. And in service to the song, the song is sort of the most important piece of everything is the material itself, what it wants to be. You know, it's not so much what we want it to be. It's what it wants to be. That's a great point. You know, it's like the way a flower grows direction of flower grows.
I want it to look like this. You don't get to say that. It's an organic process and it grows the way it wants to grow. And when you try to impose too much on it, it doesn't grow as well. For it to be the best that it could be, you want to see what it wants to do just naturally.
And you'll probably appreciate this and I don't mean by not a thought about it, you know, at this stage of the game for me, with my wrestling career, I pretty much am writing the matches, you know, in my head. And then I'll work with whoever we're working with and we collaborate. But I usually come to the table with a few ideas and where the where do you get your ideas? You don't get them from anywhere. They're in this pro wrestling universe.
And when it's time to come to you, it comes to you. And like you mentioned, you don't know which way it's going to go. But when it goes the way it needs to go and should go, the best invention ever is the phone notes thing. I can just put it in my notepad thing and I got it. And then I look at it the next day and it's like, well, that doesn't fit anymore, but that's really good. And it seems like writing a matches is very similar to writing a song and you have to let it go where it wants to go.
Absolutely, absolutely. I remember, I can't remember if it was a raw or smack them taping, but I was standing in the audience and you were introduced first in a match. There was a, I can't remember who you were fighting, but you came out first, but then there was a break because it was TV, a commercial. And you came and talked to me while we were waiting for your opponents to come to the ring. And I remember we talked about the paleo diet.
And yes, and I wanted to ask you about in your years of training and dieting, what are the things that worked and what are the things that didn't and tell me a little bit about that. That's so funny because I vividly remember that now I mentioned the paleo diet because obviously you're not hard, you're not hard to spot in the crowd.
And it was in an anaheim and you were in the frost. Yeah, there's Rick. Hey, so the paleo diet, this is super funny and this might have even been around the time when you were working with them, but I started on that because of Hetfield. Wow. He, I saw James actually was the 30th anniversary of Metalka. So it's 2011 and he was, and I just seen him four months earlier at download and he was bigger. And when I saw him at the anniversary, he was really thin.
What did you do? He said the caveman diet. What's the caveman diet? Basically paleo diet. So I started doing that very strictly. And if you can accept that, that works better than anything I've ever done. Wow. Anything. Intermittent fasting is something I've been experimenting with recently. That really works too. But once again, you got to be really, you got to be really devoted and focused on it.
I'm not sure if it really worked back in the day was all the supplements in the creatine and that's what we used to take in the 90s. You know, all the, whatever it was, the little drips that you put in your mouth and all this sort of stuff. And I don't know if it really did anything or not. You know, I'm glad I don't do that. I don't have a lot of take some vitamins, but I don't do any supplements. Now it really is all on your diet.
You know, and you've lost weight over the years too. I think that's what you did as well. So I've got a bit of three pounds unbelievable all from paleo from high protein low carbol hydrate was how I lost it. I was doing like seven protein chicks a day and then fish soup salad, something like that for dinner. No, that's what you have to do, you know. Have you ever wanted to learn another language? Maybe it's something you've always wanted to do or maybe you're planning a trip abroad,
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When you got to your level of production expertise and name value, it seems like you picked the bands that you want to work with, which is amazing. And one of them that I was really interested in is the ACVC ball breaker record. What was it like working with ACVC because I know from the mutt-lang years after a couple of records of that, Malcolm was done and they did those three or four records where they produced themselves. And then, you know, 95 here, you come along or 94 whatever it was.
Yeah, we did one song together for a movie soundtrack, which was really successful. And they were happy with that. And then we went on to make the album, the ball breaker album. And it was honestly, it was weird. They're my favorite, you know, my favorite group, post Beatles, would be ACVC. And I think the best rock band in the world and of all time, you know, the best rock band. The older I get, the more I realize that.
Yeah, they're perfect band. They don't have the breath and depth of songwriting that the Beatles have, but for a straight up rock, ACVC is perfection. So it was another like dream come true scenario, but I will say it was a difficult process. And it was difficult process. I don't know why it was as difficult as it was. We got off to a bad start because we went to work. We worked in a studio in New York that didn't sound good.
And it was a studio that I always wanted to work in. I was excited to work there with Power Station, famous studio. But it never sounded good. It just always sounded like, and we had all these different things. It's this huge space, it's like a dome and we ended up like a full string, the whole dome. We did a million things trying to make it sound good. Nothing worked. And I remember saying the Malcolm at one point after like three weeks, like maybe we should just move somewhere else.
And he said, we did this with Mark Lang, and we went to every studio in New York. We're staying here. This is a perfectly good studio. So I was like, okay. And then we, so then we stayed like another few weeks. And then at the end of that, he's like, you know what? Let's just go to a studio you like. And then we ended up going to LA to a studio where I worked in a lot.
And then it got better. But I think those, I don't know, five or six weeks of trying to make the album in this bad sounding space took a lot of the spark out of the, or just the good vibe out of it, which is a shame. It was the first album that the original drummer came back into the band, which was a big deal for me, because I thought he was a key component of the AC. Agreed. Yeah. Phil Rudd is, is, is, is that's the, the secret to AC DC for sure, you know?
Absolutely. But I don't think a lot of people realize and we know about, we know more now, but just how like that was Malcolm's band. I mean, he was the boss and the lead. Of course, everyone thinks it's Angus because he's front and center, but Malcolm was the, was the general. Yes, 100%. I remember Angus coming to me and, or Malcolm coming and saying, you know, I went through all the amps and I have a, I found a great amp that I'm going to use.
I'm just going to go through this cabinet and, and he's explaining all the technical things that he's going to do. And then I, and then Angus comes over and goes, and he's got a great one for me too. You play this little brother. But you can tell the influence that AC DC had because you, another one of my all time favorite records, ever is called electric.
And I remember my friend, because I was the metal guy and he was a techno guy. Like he was, you know, new wave and he was talking about the cult. And of course we're thinking, you know, revolution and rain and spirit walking. I'm like, he goes to the new cult record is great. And he's like, whatever, because it sounds like AC DC. I'm like, whole shant. And then he put it on. I was like, oh my gosh, this is brilliant.
How did you make that leap from this new wave band to this great crunchy rock and roll album? It's kind of music. I like that was the first rock out made ever produced by the way. Really? Yeah, I was still living in the dorm at NYU. And I walked from the dorm to electric lady, which is where we recorded that. And they thought of themselves as this sort of arena rock band. And I school, you don't really sound like that.
And they're like, well, we, you know, we think of ourselves as rock. So, okay, well, we can make it more rock if that's what you want. And they're like, yeah, that's what we do. Like, okay, let's try it more like this. Yeah, because I mean, that was a total sea change, but that really opened up their commercial, you know, famed for sure. Yeah. And again, it were from my perspective, it weren't commercial intentions. It was just what I liked.
You know, I wanted to make it feel like exciting to me. It's amazing too with all of the great records you've made that sometimes I mean, I think people when they bring in Rick Rubin should know what they're going to get with you. But sometimes a band will say, well, Rick was never there or Rick didn't do this or that.
You would think at this point that people would know that what you bring to the table is your mind, maybe not necessarily being, once again, knob to a link, being there for every note played, right? Well, it really depends on what's necessary. It's funny. I just listened to an interview with Dan, the singer of Imagine Dragons, and I produced their new album.
And he was saying it's like everyone says that Rick's not hands on. It's like he's the most hands on person we have worked with. So it's like it really, it's whatever is necessary. And I definitely don't like to, if it's not broken, I don't try to fix it. You know, in a perfect world, if everything's going good, my job is to be invisible.
And I want the artist to always, I can remember Tom from Slayer coming to me at one point after we, after I stopped producing their records, a few years later, he came to me and he said, I have no idea what it is that you do in the studio. But whatever it is, would you please come back and do it with us again? I don't need to know what it is, but whatever it was worked.
I think it's a vibe, right? It's a vibe and a, like I said, a sounding board. If Rick likes it, then this is the way we should go. You know what I mean? I think that there's a trust that you build with a band over multiple records. Yeah, but again, it depends on the artist. Some artists need really specific direction. Some artists need, this is good. This is not, you know, like going to help helping work it out. Some artists need go back to what you did in the past.
Some artists need, you need to do something unlike anything you've ever done before. You know, like it really is. Case by case, and a lot of it comes from what they tell me, like when I sit down and talk to them, I ask a bunch of questions, and they tell me what they need. And then I just help them accomplish that. Anything that I can do to help them accomplish the thing that they want to make happen.
Like with the cult thing, they think of themselves as a serenerot band, yet they sound like what they sound like. If you want to do that, we can do that. It's just different than what you're doing. A few more questions, Rick. Another huge album that you did that every metalhead was waiting for at the time was, was Sabbath, Black Sabbath 13.
Once again, I was like, ah, this is Rubens just going for every band he's ever loved and super jealous of it. How was that experience? Because the one monkey wrench that was thrown in the mix was Bill Ward was out. And Bill Ward, much like Phil Rudd, is a very integral part of those early Sabbath records. Absolutely. And men, we did rehearsals with different drummers, and Brad from Rage came to rehearsal, and he played like Brad from Rage, and everybody's mind was blown.
And if you listen to the record, I think he killed it. I was laughing because I was like, you used Chad for every record, except for that one. And Chad's like, why didn't he use me on that one? I'm on the Dixie Chicks. But what was the experience like working with those guys, too? Because obviously those guys are total vets. And I don't know if it's hard to teach old dogs new tricks. If you had to try, what was your motivation with those guys?
It seems always just have to make the greatest thing of all time, and whatever it takes. And we would listen to materials together, talk about it, how it could be better, what we could do. And eventually we got there. And I think it's really good. I love it. It's a great record. Even the songs that didn't make the record, like the B-sides that they released afterwards, they just had too much material for the record.
Yeah, we try to make as a rule, that's an end of thing. When we're making it, I never think in terms of singles, or because some artists get hung up on a single, and then they give extra attention to that, which could hurt it, because they overthink it. And then they give not enough attention to the other songs. I always work on everything as it's every song is the most important song when you're working on it.
But everything we make has to be as good as it could possibly be. And we don't even talk about anything like what would be a single, or what could work in format, until after the album is completely done, the creative is right. And we have all of these beautiful songs, the only thing about okay, which ones fit together to make the best album. One of my all-time favorite singers is Ozzy. What was it like working with him in the studio?
He's great. He sings great. He likes to double every line, and he'll do it like a single line, and then double the line. And so, he'll sing it and double it, and say it and double it. So it's less singing the song, and more like singing it bit by bit to get through. But it works for him, works for him every time. As we start to wind down, I was looking kind of at your discography, and it's from 1980 to 1985 to now always doing new projects and new bands.
You mentioned Imagine Dragons, who is one of the hot rock bands, one of the new rock bands. What still motivates you to make records is the same thing that always motivated you just to make the greatest thing ever. Are you looking for new bands to try and work with? Whatever feels exciting to me, I love the process. I mean, I don't really honestly, I'm lazy, I don't like to work. That said, there's something that happens in a recording studio when something goes from mediocre to really good.
That's like a miracle. It's like you get to witness magic. And those feelings when a band's playing, and it's like it's okay, it's okay, and they're playing, they're playing, and all of a sudden something happens. And you don't know what it is, and it might not, you might not even be able to recognize what's different than the take before to the good take. Or all of a sudden, you just feel like the hair on your arms stand up.
I mean, pay attention, and it gets a little scary, because you feel like, oh my god, it's amazing. Are they going to be able to make it to the end of the song? Like, will it stay this good? Because it's out of our control. And we can't make it happen. So it's like fishing. You're just kind of waiting. You try to set the stage, you get the best bait. You do everything you can to get the best results.
But you can't make it happen. It either happens, or it doesn't happen. And you just got to be patient. And so I don't love the feeling of just waiting around for something good to happen. But when the good thing pops out of it, it's so exciting. It's so thrilling. And you just get this feeling like you can't believe you're in the room. Like you can't believe you're in this place where this magic thing is happening. How do you accept projects, for example, like Imagine Dragons?
Are they approaching you? Are you hearing their song on the radio and saying, I want to work with these guys? They reached out to me, just so they were looking for someone to kind of make wrote a bunch of songs, trying to figure out what to do. We ended up meeting about it. But it happens in different ways. Like I probably tried to get a black Sabbath reunion to happen for 20 years.
I can remember having a meeting with all of the members of Black Sabbath, including Bill Bourd, 15 years before the album we made at my house in Hollywood, talking about doing it then. And it just, for whatever reason, it didn't happen. So would that be like Rick Rubin wants to talk to you guys and the caveat of reuniting is that Rick Rubin will help you. And you were thinking that might that might course them to do it.
I don't know. It was just like, let's do it. That we have an opportunity to make something great. Let's do it. Let's talk about it. Is there a record for you that you produced that you feel is underrated that didn't get as big as it could ever should have? I'm sure there are many. I can't think of hand. Because once they come out, I don't really follow what happens so much. Oh really? Yeah. So you're not checking the Billboard charts to see where they go or...
Really someone will tell me like, when someone tells me something's going good, it's exciting. But I don't really follow it. Because you should making the next thing. I don't really look back. And by the time it comes out, it's already that was a year ago or six months ago, what I was doing. And now my head is completely in probably three or four new projects where I'm really focused on the new thing.
Has anything... I was just thinking about this with the amount of technology and recording records. And we're going back to the days of, you know, splicing takes together and now which is all digital. Has anything changed for you as a producer though? Because we mentioned the word of the day is knob twiddly. You're not a knob twiddly. It ever... same difference. The difference is you don't have to wait for it to rewind, which is good. So it's faster.
There are more options which could be good and could be bad. Do you know what I'm saying? Like it could... By having unlimited options doesn't necessarily make it better. What wouldn't group I realized we didn't talk about that I would love to talk about a system of a damn. Sure. It's such a special band. There's nobody like system of it down in there on top of my mind because I think it's the 20th anniversary of the toxicity album.
And I was just thinking about the fact that nothing has happened since system of it down like that. Do you know what I'm saying? It's like when... Yes. When Guns and Roses was big, it was really exciting. And then Nirvana happened and it kind of usurped Guns and Roses. Even though it's not the same but it like you surped it. Nothing has usurped system of it down. It's so hard and crazy that I don't think anything that's come along topular has topped the hardness and craziness of that band.
Now it's funny because as you know, as we both know, if you really want to make it in anything, but let's music wrestling too. You have to do something that's different and outside the box and be completely original. But it's hard to get the powers that be to go with that. And I still use this as an example of this day. When Chopsuie came out, that is not a hit song. It has nothing like any hit song. And yet it becomes the biggest song of the year.
What are you thinking when they present this song to you and how did the record company react to it? Well, I will say over the course of my career, continually the record companies don't understand what's happening. It's spent because when you do something new and revolutionary, they're basing everything based on what's going on. What's currently going on. If you do something revolutionary that's counter to everything going on, there's no metric for that.
So everyone gets scared. I can remember when I turned in the 99 problems master to Death Jam, which was a label that I found it. I was no longer working there. You have a JZ 99 problems? When I remember the person running Death Jam, my old company saying to me, wow, that's a really cool song. I'll never be a single. That's really cool. I have no idea. I don't think in those terms. But because it didn't sound like everything else that was on the radio, it can't be a single.
When it turned out to be a really important song in that case. In the case of Chop Sui, I remember having a conversation with Serge about the vocals and the verses. Because it was a wake up wake up. I still don't really understand why he did that. It's so unusual, but somehow it's catchy. And that's one of the things with system up and down is that for as left field, as what they're doing is, it's done so well.
And with such precision that the power of the performance overwhelms the fact that it's so bizarre. What you talked about about the gatekeepers, Kevin Weatherly is the person who is the program director of K-Rock, which is the big rock station in Los Angeles, New Music Station. That basically was the gatekeeper for all new music. And I can remember, since we were down and starting to get popular, we just signed them. They were getting popular in the club scene.
And we brought them to Kevin Weatherly and Kevin Weatherly, we got the word back said, he will never play system up and down on his station. No matter what. It's like this is not for us. One year later, top song on the station. Most played song on the station. Now again, it's like the audience demands it. It's like, it's like, yes, Romania. Well, it's like, some things just, it's populism. You know, the people get to decide. The people make it happen.
And it's fun to watch it happen. It's fun to see the powers that be be confused by the thing, in the early days of hip hop, I can remember being asked by people who wanted to be a physicist of me. And they're like, what do you think of the record companies? What do you attribute the success of this music? Why is there success for this? We mean it's not music. And they were telling me that rap music is not in their mind. It's not music.
Wow. Why do you think it's successful? It's not music. I guess you just don't understand it. I was at Ozfest when you're hanging with Zach Wilde and Ozzy was there and system was on stage. And Ozzy was like, look how it sings like Tarzan. It's so funny. It's amazing to me, Rick, just talking with you. And we're talking, mentioning from hip hop to thrash metal to funk metal to Johnny Cash, to the system of a down.
And it's the amount of influence you have in so many genres of music. Do you ever sit back and think about that? No. You don't seem like a type of guy that would. No, I will say when I do, like if you ask that question, it's hard for me to believe. I know it's true. I'm just there for it. It's amazing, but it's just like trying to make things out of it. So it's all said, we've been.
We've been working with great people in our department. I get to work with the most talented people in the world. And every time I'm in the studio and I hear something amazing happen, I can't believe I'm there. I can't believe I'm seeing this happen. This thing evolved in front of me. It's so exciting. One more name I want to mention before we split is Tom Petty, another one of the all-time greats. How was your relationship with him while you were working together?
It was amazing. I remember the first time we made together was called Wild Flowers. We worked on it for a long time. It was about a two-year process, not every day. But a lot, you know, regular. And I remember thinking, I didn't care if it ever ended. I didn't care if we ever finished the record because it was just so much fun working on music with that group of people.
It was writing such good songs and the band was so good. And it was just fun. And sometimes we would get together for a whole day work to like maybe work on one-based part on one song. And that would be the day. And because that was on the, you know, we had it to do list of a million things to do. And sometimes we would get through 20 things and sometimes we'd get through one. And it didn't matter because it was just fun. We would just into it.
So it was a great, great experience working with Tom. It's cool that you get a guy like Petty, like who is obviously a master songwriter who's still taking advice. Most guys, it would seem at his level would be like, I don't need to produce, like you mentioned, the artist that wants to produce herself. I know what I want and it doesn't matter anymore. So once the guy like Petty at his level, you know, to even have that relationship, it's cool and shows a lot on his end, I think.
Yeah, but it's also not a, it's not in my role with, with Petty, I wouldn't say was the principal. It was more like a trusted collaborator. Someone to bounce stuff off of. Because he was a great songwriter and a craftsman in the studio. He could conceivably do everything himself. I don't often did. Having someone to bounce it off of and make helping to choose, make the best choices was just something that he found valuable and it worked, you know, it worked.
Is there any artist I'm sure you've been asked this before that you haven't worked with that you'd like to someone that's on your bucket list? I'm sure there is, but nobody, like nobody comes to mind, but I'm sure there are plenty of people that love to make music. Paul, if McCarty was going to do this solo record. Paul would be incredible. I mean, I feel like getting to do what we did together was every bit as good as making an album together. Agreed.
That's what I said. If you ever asked me to do an album, I'd be happy to. That's great, man. The last question for you, is there an album that stands out of all that you've made that one of that, like this one has always been a favorite? I don't think so. I'll say I probably reference wildflowers because if I get into a pair of speakers, I'll probably listen to wildflowers to understand how the speakers work. So it's got a quality of like a standard for me, but I mean, I love many of them.
Yeah, I got to go with electric and of course the classic blood sugar sex magic, but stadium arcade is incredible too. Great. It's great. Yeah, so many songs on it's like a white album. There's just too much on it, right? Yeah, I hope you like the new stuff. I think if you like the camera, you might like this. For Shoddy to me is like Adrian Smith and Iron Maiden or Phil Rudd and ACDC. Without that integral part, people might not realize, but for Shoddy is the peppers.
And you know that hopefully everything is cool because they brought him back for a third time. And that rarely happens in rock and roll. Yeah, and I would say that it's the combination. You know, it's when Flea and John play together, something magic happens. When Chad plays with Flea and John, something magic happens. When Anthony sings based on what those guys play, it sounds like a chili peppers.
You know, it's like it's, and sometimes like there are some flavors on the new album when it happens. It's just like, oh my god, nobody sounds like that. It's so quintessentially chili peppers. Yeah, such a, it makes you feel good. Rick, I could talk to you all day, man, about a multitude of subjects. I'm glad we finally got to do this and we'll have to just have a chat again, not 25 years later. Cool, let's do it. Perfect, man. Thank you so much, Rick. I appreciate it, dude.
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