January 26, 2023 • 62 mins
In which Malcolm reunites with his colleague, friend and fellow host of Broken Record (not to mention a music icon in his own right), Rick Rubin.
This month Rick released his first book, called "The Creative Act: A Way Of Being." In it he shares practical principles on how anyone can generate creative authenticity and ultimately find their voice.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hello, Hello revisionist history fans, it's been way too long.
In case you're curious, we are hard at work cooking
up all sorts of mischief for you already. I've been
to Alabama twice. That's how deep we're going this year.
But while we wait for all those new episodes, I
wanted to share with you an interview I did with
(00:40):
my friend and colleague Rick Rubin. If you know your
Pushkin shows, you'll know that Rick is the driving force
behind our music podcast Broken Record, in addition, of course,
to being maybe the most important music producer of his generation.
I mean, he's worked with Metallica, Adele, Johnny Cash, the
Beastie Boys, jay Z, the Chili Peppers, Neil Young, on
(01:01):
and on. I met Rick years ago, and I've been
out to Shangrilot many times, which is the famous recording
studio Rick runs up in Malibu. Rick and I once
interviewed Bruce Springsteen together, which is an experience I'll never forget.
If you meet Rick, you'll understand immediately what makes him
such a brilliant producer, because he's one of the most
open and generous listeners I've ever met. Anyway, over the
(01:25):
last couple of years, very quietly, Rick's been working on
a book about creativity called The Creative Act, A Way
of Being. I read it in one sitting. I loved it,
and I called up Rick and I asked him, can
we talk about it? And what follows is that interview
which I wanted to share with all of you. We
read it in the Broken Record feed for the music diehards,
(01:47):
but I thought it made sense to oneted again here
because although it's a book about creativity by a music producer,
and many of the examples Rick talks about are about music,
it's not a music book. It's this beautiful exploration about
how to open up your imagination that I believe has
useful insights for all of us. Anyway, here goes our conversation.
(02:10):
I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Rick Hey.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
So I have a million questions, and I thought the
fun thing to do would be to go through and
I would just read you things I underlined, because there
are things that I would love for you to talk
or that we could talk about, but to you in particular.
But one of the fantastic things about this book is
that I'm almost rarely read a book where I felt
like I was being invited to contribute.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Like, every time you made a point, I was like, Oh,
I have something to add about that or this. I mean,
I've never read a book like that where I'm like,
half the time I'm talking to myself as I'm reading it.
So that's what I thought. We would get into that
as well a little bit.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
But that's great, that's great. I'm so happy. First of all,
I'm happy you like it, happy you read it, happy
you like it, and I'm happy that it had that
effect on you. And there was I will tell you
there was a version of the book, an unsuccessful version
of the book, maybe four years ago, that talked about
a lot of the same stuff that the book talks about.
(03:22):
The content was similar and the writing was beautiful, but
it wouldn't have elicited the reaction that you had, and
that's why it didn't come out then. And from the beginning,
the purpose of the book was always I want people
to make great things. I want people, I want as
much beautiful art in the world as possible. I'm a
(03:44):
fan of beautiful things and exciting things and new things
happening all the time. And the book was like a
call to arms to go out and make something beautiful
change the world. You know.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
So I've known questions, but I wanted to start with
a very general one, which is, because you're in a
world of music, we're reading a lot of this through
the lens of music. We're assuming you're talking about musicians,
and you give examples of musicians from timesam From time
to time. You also talk about visual artists. You add
that into the mix. But I was curious about are
(04:23):
we really talking about all art here or is there
a difference in the way that music and visual art
are done that you're specifically speaking to.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
I think it's how all creative choices are made. So
not only does it include the visual arts, it includes
starting a new business, a new recipe you're making as
a chef, architectural choices you might make, solving a problem
in life where you're not getting along with a family
(04:58):
member and you want to get closer to them and
have better communication. Yeah. Originally I thought of it as
more of a how to book about creativity. It became
a book about how to be, how to be in
the world to allow creativity to happen, and as it
turns out, how to be in the world that allows
creativity to happen, solves a lot of issues.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah, I did feel like about halfway through, I began
to forget you were in music, and I felt like
he was starting to talk more broadly about everyone. It's
hard to escape the assumption that this is going to
be a book about music at the very beginning. But
so there's a couple I'm want to start reading to
you some things and getting you to to talk about
(05:42):
them a little bit. One is without the spiritual components
from page from the chapter called the Unseen. Without the
spiritual component, the artist works with a crucial disadvantage. It's
a really really interesting idea, and one weirdly that I
had heard that phrase that way before. What is a
(06:03):
disadvantage here? And what are you meaning by the term
spiritual component?
Speaker 1 (06:11):
The spiritual component is belief in something bigger, something different,
whatever it is. It could be believing in some universal power,
believing that if you walk under a ladder you'll have
bad luck. You know, it could it could be anything
that takes you out of the ordinary to allow you
(06:34):
to see a wilder potential is good. When you're making art.
The goal of making art is not to show you
just what everybody else sees. It's to see what's possible,
and what's possible is radical. It really is radical. It's
(06:54):
like we've built very a very small world for ourselves
with our reason. Have you ever had a mystical experience
in your life?
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Okay, do you want to describe it at all?
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Oh? Well, I mean maybe my definition of mystical I
have had him.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
I'm open, I'm wide open whatever however you describe it.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
I mean, I've had moments probably around the death of
my father would be an example of the death of
my father, was a lot more than just about the
death of my father. I guess that's the best way.
You become aware in that moment that oh, he's part
of joining going somewhere whatever, much much, much, much, much
(07:36):
larger and older than we would have imagined. That's that
was probably the closest I came to that, that I
saw that in the gift of my grief, was that, yes,
was becoming aware of that.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Would you say that based on that you have been
able to live at times in a deeper way based
on that experience. Did it opened something into you to
allow you to see more than you saw before?
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yes, I have, absolutely I would. I would count that
experience as one of the most crucial of my life.
And in a million years, I would never have thought
that the death of someone I love more than anyone
else would open me up in that way.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
That would be an example of touching something. I would
say spiritual, something unseen, something from beyond, something that wouldn't
have made sense to you before it happened. Yeah, if
someone would have described it to you, you might have thought,
that doesn't really make sense to me, But then you
got to feel it, and then you understood. And belief
(08:40):
is that way. There's a part in the book that
talks about what you believe in doesn't have to be true,
that doesn't really matter, but belief has a power, and
belief allows you to go further than you thought you
can go. Yeah, and there are a lot of tools
(09:00):
in the book that talk about overcoming voices that tell
us we can't do things because we've learned we can't
do things. You know, we've learned what's possible and what's impossible.
And if we accept what's possible and what's impossible, we
can't go beyond. If the Wright brothers accepted it was
(09:21):
impossible for man to fly, we still wouldn't be flying.
All of the great revolutions that have happened have happened
because someone believed in something that everyone thought wasn't possible.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Yeah, this taps into a larger theme in your book,
which I thought was really powerful, which is time and
again you come back to the idea that the artists
one of the artist's jobs is our obligations is to
look outside of him or herself. I mean, you do
talk about how you need there's that chapter where you
(09:57):
talk about the importance of paying very close attention to
what's going on inside your own head and heart. Like
here's an example not long after that first quote, when
looking for a solution to a creative problem, pay close
attention to what's happening around you. And what I love
about that is like, it's not that you think back
over your history, remember some important thing you read five
(10:20):
years ago written by some genius. No, No, you're talking
about in the moment here and that look around and
you can find kind of solutions clues, what have you
just in the kind of most prosaic details of your
existence at that moment, like in the room where you.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Are, yes now I can't say it works one hundred
percent of the time. It's not saying that, it's saying
that if you live in a way where you're really
open and paying attention to everything around you, the answers
you're looking for are knocking on the door all the time.
They don't come when you're searching for them. They come
(11:02):
when you're open and allow them to come. One of
the things that I talk about in the book is
if you have a problem them to solve, instead of
thinking about it, hold the question in your awareness and
go for a walk or swim or do something that
takes your mind off of what you're trying to solve
(11:23):
and engages you in something else. Yeah, and most often
when you're engaged in something else, the part of you
that's in the way of solving the problem loses its
control over you, and you through whatever it is. You
can find a way to go for a drive something
where you have to you have to pay attention enough.
(11:45):
If you're driving, you can sort of drive on autopilot
in you know, without really paying attention. But if you're
really not paying attention, you'll crash. You mean, you can
you can tune out that much. So there is some
part of you that's occupied when you're driving with the
work at hand.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
The reason I thought that was interesting was I wondered,
I mean that one thing that struck me, And I
could be totally wrong, but my sense is that increasingly,
in a lot of creative fields, creativity is defined as
something that is internal and deliberate. You look within yourself
and your own experience and you mind them for and
you're talking about something that is in part external and unconscious.
(12:28):
And I have a good friend who's a screenwriter, and
I think by virtue of being my friend and watching,
I'm a reporter, a journalist, you know, I call people
up and interview them and record what they say. He's
changed the way he writes screenplays. Now he does as
much reporting as he does as much as someone who's
writing a nonfiction book. And he's doing it not because
(12:51):
he's just cutting and pasting what he hears in the world.
To do is but he's doing a version of what
you're talking about, which is he's opening himself up to
the if he wants to talk about, you know, scientists,
he goes and talks to lots and lots of scientists,
and it opens him up to the way they think
and feel, and that kind of approach to creativity strikes
(13:11):
me as being one that seems out of vogue in
a certain way. I mean, it's not what they're teaching
in writing schools.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
No, it's not what they're teaching. And there was a line,
there's a line in the book and I only know
it because I was working on the audiobook yesterday and
I read it yesterday, and it's against funny, counterintuitive line
that self expression is not about you and it's just
such a and when I read it, you know, it's
(13:37):
stopped me in my tracks, even though it's an idea
from several years ago, but it hit me hard again,
you know, recognizing it. So everything we are comes from
outside of us. The data that we take in from
which we make, whatever it is that we make comes
from outside of us, all of it. None of it
starts with us. Everything starts outside of us. So we
(14:01):
have a storehouse of all of the stuff that we've
experienced over the course of our lives. And then we
can find connect between those things, and we can find
connections between those things from the past and these things
happening now, whatever it may be. And when you're looking
for it. It's surprising how often the answers are right there. Yeah,
(14:25):
this is.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Read another one of my favorite lines. Distraction is not procrastination.
Procrastination can consistently undermines our ability to make things. Distraction
is a strategy in service of the work, which is
to your point. So a lot of what this exposure
to the world outside of us is about is a
kind of productive distraction, right, That's what you're saying.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
With that, it's a combination. There's a productive distraction and
an inspiration. The connection with the outside world also can
be really inspiring. It can be inspiring if you pick
places that are inspiring. I try to pick places to
be where I find inspiration on a daily basis.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
You have a little moment where you're talking about how
different all of us have different strategies, or that kind
of inspirational place, and you said Andy Warhol was said
to create with a television, radio, and record player all
on simultaneously. For eminem the noise of a single TV
set is his preferred backdrop. Marcel Bruce lined his walls
with soundless absorbing cork clothes, the drapes and warrior plugs.
(15:27):
And I was curious what's yours. Do you have a
kind of mode like that.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
I would say I like to be in a quiet place,
big beautiful nature, less people. Yeah, i'd say natural beauty
and less people. It's funny.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
I'm exactly the opposite.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
I was right.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
I had a very productive morning in a coffee shop.
It was crowded and I was seating it like literally
right up against this six foot four kid, I think
it was like twenty two years old, sitting next to
his parents, and the kid was super interesting, and he
was talking about the PLO in the nineteen seventies and
(16:05):
wow yair Arafat and there was something about like, I
don't know, I can't put my finger on what. That
kind of triggered. After a while, I kind of he
became my background noise. But it was such a different
voice that I was fixing a chapter of something I
was working on, and I just saw suddenly sound a solution,
And I think it was what we were talking about.
(16:26):
It was some combination of there's something about that being
surrounded by unusual voices that really wakes me up to
the range of solutions. Right, I'm a reminder. Oh, there's
like there's this kid who's thinking about something I don't
think about in a context I'm not in. Who's super interesting, Like, wow,
so you know there's a solution out there.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
It was that.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
It was funny because I had just read your chapter
which talks about that, and I was in that situation.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Is is that a place that you go to every day?
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Many days? I like, I need I need so, I
need voices, I need noise and voices and activity in
order to be able to create. During the pandemic, I
had one Stirgle Simpson album that I played over and
over and over again.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
He was my voice?
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Was it meta? Modern?
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Meta?
Speaker 2 (17:16):
What is that album? Fantastic album?
Speaker 4 (17:17):
Whatever?
Speaker 2 (17:20):
He's great. I don't know if he's out there. He
helped me through is that many many lean times during
the pandemic. But that idea, I almost feel like you're
describing the things you have learned by working with elite
practitioners of the art of creativity. But I was struck
by the gap between what you've learned from the top
(17:43):
performers and what we're teaching to people at the outset,
and that it concerned me. I almost feel like there's
a gap between what we're telling people and what the
truly creative.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Are doing Yes, yes, that's true.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
On the same point on this gap. There's a moment
when you're talking about it's actually my favorite part of
the book, when you're talking about strategies for unblocking yourself
into all the different ways that you think about that
or approach that. When you're working with people and one
of them was right, writ in the voice of someone else,
that's right, that's what we said, and Rick, once again,
(18:21):
in the world we live in, that is an incendiary thought.
That's called appropriation. And you have this beautiful I want
to quote in a similar vein you say there are
countless examples of imitation turning into legitimate innovation. Having a
romanticized vision of an artist, genre, or tradition may allow
(18:43):
you to create something new because you see it from
a different perspective than those closer to it. So not
only are you saying that it can be really useful
to inhabit someone else's voice or tradition, you're also saying
that that can spark a whole new, more beautiful, greater
kind of innovation because you're approaching it from your own perspective.
(19:04):
You talk about Sergio Leoni spaghetti westerns, being a good
example of that that they transform understanding of what a
what a question is. I thought a lot about the
audiobook we did with Paul Simon when he's talking about Graceland,
which is that right, yes?
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Or or talking heads you know, remain in light or
fear of music. Those were inspired by African rhythms. Yeah,
there's a great tradition in doing this. I mean pretty
much the best of everything was based on something else always,
and then it's the it's through the new interpretations. Like
(19:41):
the Beatles were doing American motown music, but because they
were English and because of the distance, they weren't trying
to do it different. They did it different because they
were different, and that was the beauty of it. And
that's how the Beatles became the Beatles. You know. Yeah,
they became the Beatles because they are the Beatles. But
the music they were doing was they were trying to
(20:03):
do motown.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Or as you point out, the Ramones were trying to
be the Bay City Rollers, yes.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Which is a true.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Johnny Ramone told me that himself, so I know that
to be true.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
It is so for those of you who don't know
the basy De Rollers, they were just about the dumbest
bubble bubble gum band of the they were't like the
boy band of the early seventies, and the Ramones think that.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Well, they had that song s A t U r
d A y s A t u y. And then
if you listen to the Ramones, they have those type
of gabba gabba we accept, you know, similar types of chance.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Yes, that's right, Yeah, they take it and they twist
it in this brilliant, beautiful, revolutionary way. But so we
walk about it was sort of harp on this, but
how do we get away from that notion? So it
is legitimately the case. And I know this because I
are examples of people who I know who are legitimately
terrified of even so much as dipping their toe in
(21:03):
another traditionary voice for fear of being criticized. It's almost
like we're terrified of the sources of creativity. We're terrified
to admit to ourselves what we're doing in the name
of creativity.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
The reason someone imitates someone else is because they love
someone else. That's why it's only flattery when someone is
inspired by someone else. If you if you decided to
write because someone else wrote and you like their writing,
and you decide to become a writer that's not against them,
that doesn't take anything away from them. That's a tribute
(21:40):
to them. Yeah, and all of the music that gets
made based on loving someone else's music is a tribute
to them, whether it be people of the same color
or different color. It doesn't matter that it has nothing
to do with that. That's not what it's about. Yeah,
it's a current misread of the situation.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Yes, you know what it is. And it goes to
something else. You talk a little bit. You talk about
the abundance mindset. In getting to that part of the book.
You talk about the importance of understanding that number of ideas,
essentially the number of ideas out there is infinite, not finite. Yes,
when you understand it's infinite, then you're not scared of
imitating someone because you're like, there's a million things out there.
(22:22):
We don't we don't have to hold tightly to what
we've done and be react in a hostile manner if
someone tries to imitate us because there's a million efficiency,
you know, it's fine. I think the idea that the
number of new ideas is infinite has kind of fallen
out of favor somehow.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Yeah, it's it's just odd. It's I mean, people can
be wrong and it's okay, you know, like that's fine.
In some ways, the fact that it's falling out of
favor means the people who embrace the tried and true
methods that have worked will find greater success and they'll
be less stuff in between.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Yeah, is your understanding of this notion of abundance? Is
it a product of having worked for I don't know
how many years you've been in the industry, many decades.
Did you feel the same way when you were twenty one?
In other words, is it natural for the very for
the very young to be much more jealous, much more
jealousy guard their ideas because they haven't had years and
(23:23):
years of experience in seeing the kind of waterfall of
ideas that's out there. Is that fair?
Speaker 1 (23:28):
No, it's fair. I've always felt this way because I
see it, you know, I see all of the ideas
I see. I want to learn everything. There's no time.
There's no time to learn all the things I want
to learn. I'm endlessly curious, and I'm always looking I'm
thinking back to It's really more about what we were
just talking about But the reason I learned about reggae
(23:50):
music was because of the Clash. If it weren't for
the Clash, I don't know if I would have ever
come in contact with reggae music. So is it bad
that the Clash did reggae music? Yeah, because they turned
on a whole generation of people who otherwise may not
have ever heard about it. Do you know? It's like,
it's a crazy idea to think that, not to be
(24:15):
inspired by the things that are inspiring us and to
show it and to own it and to fly the
flag of these great trends or genres is nothing more beautiful. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
I'm gonna pause for a quick break, and then we'll
be back with more from Rick Rubin and Malcolm Gladwell.
We're back with more from Rick Rubin and Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
I remember pretty early in my writing career when I
was unhappy. I thought I was limited as a writer.
And I remember sitting down with I've forgotten which book
it was, one of Michael Lewis's books and one of
Janet Malcolm's books, two narrative nonfiction writers who are extraordinarily
good at the one thing I thought I was weak at,
(25:03):
which is character literally sitting down and studying them like
they were with a talmud, Like, what's he doing here?
How much time does he spend literally measuring how much
time does he spend describing someone? I was getting itchy feet.
I would I did introduce a character and I think, oh,
you must be bored of the character list.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
And then I would.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Then it would Michael Lewis and is like, he has
the same character the whole book and we're not bored
of him. How does he do that?
Speaker 4 (25:27):
Right?
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Or Jed and Malcolm would like peel one layer after
another off the onion. You'd be like, there can't be
any onion left. There was always onion left. I was like,
how does she do that? To your point about you
got that lovely thing about the back and forth between
the Beatles and the Beach Boys. Brian Wilson sees White
Album and says, is it White album that inspired always?
Speaker 1 (25:48):
It starts with it starts with rubber Soul. It starts
with rubber soul. Yeah, And then based on Brian Wilson
hearing Rubber Soul, he makes pet sounds based on the
song God only Knows. Paul has the idea for Sergeant pepper. Yeah,
And the point that I make there is not they
(26:09):
weren't doing that at a competition. It was out of
love and inspiration, and it was an upward spiral between
them of inspire a reaction, inspire a reaction, inspire, lifting
the level, lifting the level. It was they made each
other better. They weren't trying to beat each other. It
(26:30):
was different than that they loved each other.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Yeah, explain to me. It's sort of obvious, but I'd
love for you to talk about it. Why is it
important that it comes out of love and not competition.
What is it about a competitive drive that is more
limiting than a drive of love.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Well, first of all, we're talking about. Majority of what
we're talking about is art, and the way that I
see art is it really is about our own self expression.
So I'll give you an example. I just wrote a book.
You write a lot of books. The idea of Rick's
book competing with Malcolm's book is an insane idea. You
(27:07):
write a Malcolm book, I write a Rick book. No
one but Malcolm can write a Malcolm book. No one
but Rick can write a Rick book. They're mutually exclusive things.
Everything is like that. So if you're focused on beating
someone else. It makes me think you're not actually playing
(27:28):
the same game that I'm playing. The game that I'm
playing is I want to make the best thing that
I can make for me, that's all, and if someone
else likes it, it's great. There's a chapter in the
book about success, which is success is when you feel
good enough about it a piece of work you've made
to share it in the world. That's the moment of success.
(27:49):
Whatever happens after that's completely out of our control. But
the moment that you sign off, it's like you're okay,
here we go, and then move on to your next project.
That's where success lies. So to work on a vibration
of competition. It's one thing. If it's about running a race,
this is not running a race. This really is always
(28:11):
apples and oranges.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Yeah, although you know it's funny, I think you're selling
your idea a little short. I was thinking about this
when I read that part. I'm a big fan of cars,
and there's a very particular moment in the early aughts
when car design goes through a stage that I think
(28:33):
everyone in the who loves cars thinks was one of
a kind of extraordinary moment of it was a kind
of when cars started to look very kind of bowhusy.
I don't know if you know cars, but there was
a very beautiful E Class that Mercedes put out in
the early aughts, which is veryy, clean lines, round headlights.
At the same time, Audi put out the first iteration
(28:54):
of Estyle. They're still in but it was very clean
and very They all were doing this a very similar aesthetic,
which was a rejection of a lot of the kind
of clutter and complication that had gone on in the
in the previous generation of car design. And you could
see it across all the kind of elite car makers.
And you know, normally you would say, these are guys
who really are in competition with each other. They are
(29:16):
battling over a finite marketplace. They're making the same thing
cars that people drive. But they weren't all pursuing this
Bauhaus design strategy. It was out of love.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
The guy at Audi saw the E Class and it's like,
oh my god, that's a gorgeous car. I want to
do my version of it. I mean it was no,
it wasn't like let's take market share from you know,
at that level. I mean, maybe it was in the
marketing group, but at the level of the designer it
was clearly they all fell in love, yes, with this
(29:49):
particular So I think it goes beyond what we think
of as the as the art narrowly as the arts.
I think you see it everywhere that fundamentally, in a
million different ways. Even people who are locked in competition
with each other sometimes push that aside and do things
out of a genuine affection for what they were just
(30:11):
they're just blown away by something they see and know, like,
oh my god.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Here's an even more metaphysical version of that, where the
same thing happens, but it's not a reaction. So in
the example you gave, Mercedes came out with a beautiful
new design, and Audi, inspired by that design, made something new.
(30:35):
They're also throughout history examples of two or three similar
novel approaches entering at the same time, not based on
seeing each other, yeah, just based on it's time for this. Yeah.
(30:56):
And maybe it's possible that the thing that inspired Mercedes
to want to do it is the thing that inspired
Audi to want to do it. But that's different than
Audi wanting to copy what Mercedes did, And that's a
fascinating thing when there are these movements of art where
it just springs up all over the planet at the
same time, not because they saw it and wanted to
(31:18):
do it, but because now is the time for this
new thing, whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
But at its root, it's the same thing, because they're
falling in love with the same idea in the world simultaneously.
You can d of fall in love with what Joe
across the pond is doing, or me and Joe can
fall in love with something you know in the world
of ideas that's really beautiful and novel. But I think
the engine is the same, which is it's love.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Yes, it seems more magical when there isn't when you
don't see one like it first. There's something about it
when I don't know if it's ever happened to you,
it has happened to me where I'll have an idea
for something and I don't act on that right away,
and then within six months or a year someone else
does it. They didn't steal my idea. It was time
(32:07):
for that to happen.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Let's keep going to so much wonderful stuff here. I
want to give listeners more of a taste of it.
Was several moments when I was out of surprise and
in one case really genuinely wanted more of a explanation,
and that was when the work has five mistakes, it's
not yet completed. When it has eight mistakes, it might
(32:29):
be yes, Rick, what does that mean?
Speaker 1 (32:32):
We get hung up on the idea of perfection, and
we think perfection is what we're looking for, when really
what we're looking for is something with emotion in it,
something with humanity in it, and humanity has flaws. So
we can use the example of the leaning Tower of Pisa.
(32:53):
At the time that it was made, it was a mistake,
and now it's one of the most visited buildings in
the world, and it's visited purely because of the mistake.
You know, we collect old Persian rugs that were handmade
and that had been lived in whereas you can buy
a new machine made rug. Now that's more perfect than that,
(33:15):
but it doesn't have the same humanity in it. And
the reason I use the example of five and eight
are their random choices. Those are not specific. Those are
not if you have five, you got to get to
eight for it to work. But it's a way of
thinking where we're not looking to make it perfect. We're
(33:36):
looking for the soulful version that could either be going
further towards perfection or backwards away from it, and it
might just as well be backwards away from it for
it to feel good.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
When we're making art, can you think about a project
you've worked on that you think is beautiful and authentic
in precisely this imperfect way, that has mistakes that you
think it benefited from.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
I can give you an example close to both of
our hearts, which is interesting. When we had the Broken
Record logo designed, it was originally done. It was designed
on a computer, and it was a very formal design,
graphic design, and a friend of mine suggested, you don't
(34:23):
have tried doing that by hand? Yeah, And then we
suggested to the design and try it by hand. And
the one that we ended up picking was the one
done by hand. It was less perfect, yeah, than the
original version, but it had more personality. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
It's very clarifying because I think it's very easy to
lose sight of what the audience for a work of
art wants. They want the creator, they want it. It's
a way of looking into the mind or heart of
the creator. They want, don't want some abstract thing that
fits every criteria of perfection, right we're looking for, you know,
(34:59):
to give the example back of when I was went
through my period where I was obsessively reading Michael Lewis
and Janet Malcolm. Jenna Malcolm is a good eample.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
This or both.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
When you read them, you feel like you know the
two of those writers. When you read their writing, at
the end of a Michael Lewis book, you feel like
you've been hanging out with him and have a window
into his world. Jenna Malcolm's books are weird and quirky
and sometimes disturbing, but you love that because you're like, oh,
she's such a kind of fascinating character. And my worry
(35:32):
when I was reading them was that people weren't having that.
That was not the experience my readers were having. That
they were getting something that was too abstract. They were
getting information, but not that kind of they were really
getting me. You know, it took a long time. We're
talking about. That thing I've describing was twenty years into
(35:54):
my writing career.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
And what you're talking about is really moving away from
classical journalism. Yeah, because my understanding of journalism is the
writer is invisible it's only the story, and it's just
you know, just facts, that's all it is. Yeah. So,
in a way, this would be a bastardization of journalism.
(36:19):
But that's why it's engaging, and that's why it's interesting,
and that's why it's popular. It's not regular journalism. It's
journalism through your filter, the personal filter. There's a documentarian
named Nick Broomfield who I love, who makes these crazy movies.
He tends to pick outrageous characters to focus on, but
(36:41):
he always ends up part of the movie. And usually
when documentarians make a movie, you just see the subject,
but he ensconces himself into the finds a way to
insinuate himself into the story. And it's wild and bizarre,
and it's unusual for the director of a documentary to
become a main character in every one of the documentaries
(37:03):
he makes about different people. Fascinating. Yeah, so I love it.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Wait, couple of other things I wanted. I want to
make sure we you you had a little section that
I loved. When you're talking about Alpha Go, the AI
software system that was designed to master the game of
the Japanese game of Go, and how there's this famous
showdown between the computer and a Go grand master, and
(37:30):
the computer wins by making a move that had never
occurred to any Go player. You know, they had you say,
you say it was most Go players would have considered
A or B choice, and the computer went to C
and it blew everyone's mind. And you said, when you
read about that that you cried.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
I did, and it was it wasn't. I didn't read
about it. I watched the documentary, But you watched the documentary. Yeah,
I was watching a documentary about it and it made
me cry. And when I cried, I didn't understand it
at first. It took it took a while. I thought
about it more. My reaction forced me to think about
(38:08):
it more. It's like, why am I crying? I'm not investing.
I don't play Go, I'm not invested in this story
at all. Yet I'm crying. And originally my first thought was,
am I crying because machines are beating humans? No, that's
not what it is. I'm crying because the way that
(38:32):
the computer won wasn't by knowing more than the grand master.
The computer one because it knew less than the grand master.
And that's what made me cry. It's that the computer
didn't have all of the baggage and cultural dogma of
(38:53):
how you're supposed to play Go. It only knew these
are the rules of the game. I'm playing the rules
of the game. And it was fascinating to me because
it made me realize, if we can let go of
the beliefs of what we're how we're supposed to do things,
anything maybe possible. It's the tip of the iceberg for
(39:15):
the game Go, for sure, but maybe it's the tip
of the iceberg for everything. And if we can get
back to that beginner's mind of not knowing, of accepting
that we don't know, we can break through in ways
never understood before. Yeah, never thought possible before.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
It's funny because I didn't see this documentary, and when
I read about your description of how much you were
moved by that moment, I was also moved, but not
for the reasons you were. I was moved because what
that told me was that when human beings play Go,
they're not playing Go. In other words, the computer saw
(39:59):
Go in its entirety, in a technical sense, saw every
conceivable move you could make, made one that would never
have occurred to us. When human beings played We're playing
this very small parochial version, governed not just by the
rules and potentials of the board, but by our own assumptions, habits, practices, culturals.
(40:26):
And I actually kind of love that about us, in
other words, that we've colonized and humanized and brought all
of our kind of heartrending limitations even to something like
a board game. That's very moving to me. That was like,
the computer has the chile impersonal version of Go, and
(40:48):
this reminds us we're not playing the chile impersonal version.
Our Go bears the imprint of our own limitations and
cultural specificities. And I find that really endearing, you know, Like,
but it's funny we both see the same thing and
are moved by it. I don't think what I'm saying
what you're saying incompatible. I think they're actually competiven.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Know, I think they're almost opposites, and the fact that
they are both something to fall in love with about
the story is amazing. I love that.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Yeah, but this is actually something that you What I've
just described is something you do a lot in this book,
which is there are a lot of moments where it
appears that you're making points that contradict each other, but
you're not. This is the furthest from Black and White.
This book, there is a lot of this kind of
yinging and yanging in it. I thought was really very
(41:42):
very you. It's very like it's not like you do
it this way, not this way, like the necessity of
being both inwardly sensitive and outwardly sensitive. It's not one
or the other. It's like just there's a balance that
you have to kind of observe.
Speaker 4 (42:00):
We'll be right back with the rest of Malcolm Gladwell
and Rick Rubin's conversation. After a quick break, we're back
with more from Rick Rubin and Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
There's a passage there that I really love. Were you
talking about Sometimes there is a musician who you'll listen
to when they're trying something radically new. Do you remember
this and you're baffled by it the first time you listen,
and baffle the second time, and you keep listening and
keep listening, and then finally become something you can't live without.
And I was wondering, was there someone in mind?
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Would you several the first my first experience of that
was a group called Trouble Funk in the early days
of hip hop. When I was in high school, the
only place you could hear hip hop was once a week,
one hour show on WHBI called Mister Magic's Rap Attack,
(42:54):
and that was the only and I recorded it. I
Cassette recorded it every week, as did all the other
hip hop heads in my high school and you know,
maybe the six of us, and we would record that
every week and then that would be all we would
listen to all week because there were at this point
in time, there really were no hip hop records available
to buy. There may have been the Sugar Hill Gang's
(43:16):
Rappers Delight, but that was the only one. Yet on
this radio show, he played all these songs. It's like,
I don't even know where they came from, and they
were all like twelve inch you know, DJ living where
I live, it didn't exist. So listen to that every
week and hear whatever was going on in rap music.
And again it was a very tight time because all
(43:37):
there was was an hour and with you know, plus
it had commercials in it for places like Brad's Record
Den in the Bronx, which is I guess where you
could have bought some of those other songs that I
had never gone at that time. I have gone since.
And one week, in the middle of these all rap songs,
he played a Troublefunk song, which is not rap music.
(44:00):
It's go go music, and it's long. And the song
was maybe seven or nine minutes long. So a seven
or nine nine rap song took up seven to nine
minutes of my sixty minutes plus commercials removed my little
bit of rap music for the week, and I was
(44:20):
so angry, and I would every time I would listen
to the cassette, I would forward through the Troublefunk song
to get to the rap music. And I did this,
and then one time I listened to the Troublefunk song.
And then it took time, but eventually, within a couple
of weeks, the only thing I was listening to on
that tape was the Troublefunk song. Yeah, so that's one example,
(44:43):
but I'm sure there are many more. When the first
I first I remember the first time I heard nine
inch Nails. I didn't like any of the industrial music
I had heard up until the point of nine inch Nails,
and when I heard nine inch Nails, my initial reaction
to it was, this is that kind of music I
don't like. I don't like the production. I don't like
(45:03):
those sounds. And then eventually took probably a year, Nine
Inch Nails became my favorite group. But the things that
I didn't like about it weren't the things that were
good about it in the case of Nine Inch Nails,
case in Nine Nails case, Trent's songwriting was so far
(45:24):
superior to anyone else making that kind of music that
once I could hear his songs, it didn't matter whether
or not I liked the style. And then when I
liked the songs, eventually I grew to even like the
style because his songs made me like the style. Oh,
I see.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
It's this interesting thing about for different kinds of experience
and creative experiences, there are different thresholds. The familiar has
a very low threshold. The unfamiliar has a much longer threshold.
But what's interesting with that story that is, and it's
very particular to you, is that you had the patience
to wait long enough so you could reach the threshold
(46:04):
of understanding what was what Troublefunk was doing or what
Trent Resident was doing. That's unusual. So a lot of
what you're talking about in this book really does seem
to be things that can be taught and understood. And
the shift you're this, what you're describing now is something
very not impossible to teach, but very hard to teach.
(46:25):
To persist with something you didn't like, the Troublefunk, and
yet somehow you kept coming back in one way, you
didn't dismiss it. You disliked it without dismissing it. That's
I guess what I'm trying to say. That ninety nine
percent of people when they disliked, they dismiss, but you didn't.
I want to understand why didn't you.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
I may have back then, I may have dismissed it,
but for whatever reason, because it was on a cassette,
and because I had to keep coming back and forward
when it would come on and I might be doing
something else in my room, it was able to get
through to me. And this again we get to the
metaphysical aspect of it. The universe wanted me to hear Troublefunk.
That's why I was able to hear it. If it
(47:08):
wouldn't have resented itself over and over to me, I
wouldn't have. So yes, I allowed it in, but it
wasn't all me. I'll give you another example. It's not
uncommon when I'm out and about to have someone recommend
something that they think I'll like, and when they recommend
(47:29):
it to me, I listen and it sounds like a
terrible thing, something that I don't like, the kind of
thing I don't like. Whatever it is. An example would
be it's not a real example. A hypothetical example is, oh,
you love this new horror movie. I don't like horror movies.
There's no chance I'm going to watch a horror movie.
That wouldn't work. If three different people who don't know
each other all suggests to me to watch that horror movie,
(47:54):
I will watch that horror movie, even though I know
it's something I don't like. And the reason is the
universe really wants me to be aware of this. People
are telling me. Why are people telling me this is
not for me? So that's an example of a and
paying attention to the signs around you. If several of
your friends tell you the same thing that you initially discounted,
(48:18):
it might be worth a look.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
This is funny because this goes into one of my
It's similar to one of my little I have a rule.
I have these implicit rules I carry around in my
head and one of my rules is never say some
things that you consume or see or whatever is bad,
only say I think it's bad right now.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
Yes? Great.
Speaker 2 (48:43):
And by the way, the whole world social media particularly
would be so greatly improved by that rule. Right, I
don't like what you I don't like what you said
right now?
Speaker 1 (48:57):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (48:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
It's very different from saying what you said is wrong,
right it's absolutely whole or opposite. And but adopting that
with art, I wonder about how many I'm talking about
some of the critical community, how much criticism, how much
it would change our understanding of art if critics universally
followed that rule, and it was if they always acknowledged
(49:21):
that they may be in a situation that you were
in with trouble Funk, that the universe wasn't there yet,
You weren't there yet. And also that story about Troublefunk
is that you weren't looking for trouble Funk, you were
looking for hip hop. So like it was an intrusion
in the beginning, It wasn't a treasure. It was something
that didn't belong, yes, and.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
It was something that didn't belong and was taking up valuable.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
Time, valuable cassette tech cassette deck space. Yes, because it
was only sixty minutes. Did you have the nineties back
then or just the sixties?
Speaker 1 (49:54):
We had sixties and nineties and eventually one twenties.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
I remember that when twenties were huge. But that idea
of building into our critical assessments some notion about probability,
that my judgment is conditioned on two things. It do
seem credic to me, and it is at this moment,
and both of those things may not be true in
some future date. I just that just is so insanely
(50:19):
liberating to me, Like, and I don't understand. Can we
pass this law that says you're only allowed you must
always use I think and right now in any creative judgment.
Speaker 1 (50:31):
Yeah. It's also related to another thing mentioned in the book,
the idea of I can't do that. Yes, we never
say I can't do that. You can say I haven't
done that yet.
Speaker 3 (50:42):
Yes, that's yes.
Speaker 2 (50:43):
That is the same that functions the same way. The
reason I think a book like this is so important
is this is a little bit of a tangent. But
I went to give a talk at a university two
weeks ago and I was to the psychology department and
I was talking to these psychologists and they were talking
about mental health, and they were talking about a lot
of really lovely research right now about how the language
(51:05):
that you use to describe your feelings in emotions and
traumas and things is enormously important. You know, to describe
something this way or that way is not a difference
in style. It is actually a difference in the way
that you are processing, understanding, recovering all those kinds of things.
And one of the things this book did to me was,
(51:27):
I think this one way of understanding your book is
it is in that spirit the categories that we use
and the language that we bring to our understanding of
creativity really really matters. Like in that section I love
this that I love so much about when you're talking
about all the ways you can jog someone out of
being stuck. When you're stuck, you don't think you don't
(51:49):
think you can be jogged out by some change in
your setting or some but in truth, you can. You
remain acutely sensitive to the influences of your environment. And
it's so hard for us to understand that those kinds
the influence and impact of those kinds of framing devices
and settings. Language are framing devices, right, that is often
(52:13):
what causes us to suffer unnecessarily.
Speaker 1 (52:17):
Absolutely. There's a teacher named Marshall Rosenberg who wrote a
book which is not a great book, called Nonviolent Communication,
and he's a great teacher, but he's not a great writer,
and he passed recently unfortunately. But I would suggest people
if they're interested in Marshall Rosenberg, there is an audio
called speaking Piece that is better than the book, and
(52:42):
then watch videos of him on YouTube, just because the book.
I found the book hard to understand, but it's basically
all about this. The language of our culture is violent,
and it's not just violent towards each other, it's violent
towards ourselves. Every time we say I should have done that,
(53:03):
When you say I should, it's called a make wrong.
So by saying I should have done it means I
was wrong. This is the right way to do it
when at the time you were doing the best you could.
So when at the time you're doing the best you can,
to make yourself wrong isn't helpful. Yeah, And there's a
whole list of trigger words and ways of sharing a
(53:28):
vocabulary of feeling that helps us better communicate, and when
we communicate better, we tend to get along better. It's beautiful,
beautiful teaching.
Speaker 2 (53:38):
Yeah, a couple other smaller things. There's a couple of
bones in this book where I scribbled in the in
the margins who is Rick talking about? But there was
one that I wanted you to if you don't mind.
You talked about how you were working with an artist
on a song which was a love song, and you
were trying to solve the problem, and you finally solve
(54:00):
the problem by telling the artists don't think of a
romantic partner, think of it as a devotional to God.
Who is the song and who was the artist?
Speaker 1 (54:09):
Can you tell me? That was Johnny Cash? And the
song was the first time ever I saw your face.
Speaker 2 (54:15):
Oh my goodness. Oh that's so interesting. I know that
version so well. That's totally blowing my mind because that's
what it listens like. Yeah, oh my god, it's genius, Rick,
that is genius.
Speaker 1 (54:29):
And it was also Oh and I interviewed Roger mcgwinny
the other day and he talked about the first Bird
single was Mister Tambourine Man and out of the blue.
He said, yeah, when I sang it in the studio,
no one knows this, but I sang it as a
devotional to God. I said, but the lyrics aren't about that.
(54:50):
I was like, yeah, I know, but that's how I
was able to sing it and feel it, and it
blew my mind.
Speaker 2 (54:57):
Oh that's really interesting. This is why I missed liner
notes so much. I feel like this is the functional
but ray those two facts about the first time I
saw your face and mister Tamery Man, those both changed
radically change the way you hear those songs. Yes, the
Cash song makes way more sense. I've almost not understood
(55:20):
why I found that song so powerful. Yes, it really
in the context of all those ones, it's one of
the ones that it pops in this kind of strange
way and it's haunting in a way you don't And
now I understand why he's singing it with a completely
different intention than I imagined.
Speaker 1 (55:37):
Yeah, it's and if you listen to the original song,
it's unbelievable. Or when I say the original the popular version,
because the popular version is not the original either. You
know it was written by Iwan McCall and it's an
Irish folk song. And if you've ever heard the Irish
folk song version of it, it's almost like a yodel,
you know, it's very unlike all the versions that we're
(56:00):
familiar with.
Speaker 2 (56:01):
I realized when I read that as well, that I
have a version of that, which is years and years ago.
I sat down on an airplane next to a guy
who happened to be reading one of my books, and
I had this very very long conversation with him, and
he was I s don't know what he did.
Speaker 3 (56:16):
He opened.
Speaker 2 (56:18):
His job was to go around the country opening Trader Joe's.
He was coming from New York. They were opening a
store like in Brooklyn or something. And he'd just been
in Brooklyn for a month, lived in Atlanta, had two kids,
was about thirty, you know, eight years old, business school degree.
I think maybe not. Anyway, I had a lovely chat
with him, and I realized, oh, that's my reader. And
(56:40):
every time I'm stuck I think about him. Beautiful, it's
for him. He was beautiful and he said because he
only read. He told me. He said, I'm very very busy.
I teach Sunday school, like I'm a coach in my
kids little league, and I have this job which is
very demanding. I have time to read three books a year.
And I realized, oh, and he's chosen one of mine.
I'm one of his three, which is like phenomenally flattering thing.
(57:05):
And I realized, Oh, if I can keep being one
of his three books every year, then I I will succeed.
Beautiful and that beautiful about them all the time it
was like.
Speaker 1 (57:15):
A let's love great.
Speaker 2 (57:16):
Yeah really really but it is. It's insanely liberating to
know that's what it's for, right, Yes.
Speaker 1 (57:23):
On the fact that you randomly got assigned that seat
he happened to be reading your book on that particular flight. Yeah,
it could be it's all a coincidence. Yet it's what
you needed to hear to be able to keep doing
what you've been doing for all these years since then
maybe it's accidental. Who knows. That's that's that's the points,
(57:47):
Like these things happen all the time. Yeah, maybe they're
all accidents. It's fine, it doesn't matter if they are
or not. Yeah, but if they happen, and if you
can use that information like you do, we all win.
Speaker 2 (58:04):
Yeah, all to the better or one last thing, the
last the underlines in your book, Page three sixty five,
and I was like, wait, I didn't expect this. Rich
was hold on, let me just go there. Also, I
don't know why in retrospect I found this so surprising,
but you say, when I work with artists, we make
(58:26):
an agreement, we continue the process until reaching the point
where we are all happy with the work. All in
is italicized in that. And I was like, I realize,
and maybe this is because how badly I needed your book.
It never occurred to me that there would be art
on the level that you have been a part of
(58:48):
creating without dissent. I just I was just shocked by
I was like, wait, You've done all this for so
many years, with so many different people under an explicit
promise of unanimity. That blew my mind.
Speaker 1 (59:04):
They'll be descent along the way. Yeah, but that just
means we haven't gone are enough. It just means if
you like it and I don't, it's not good enough.
And if I like it and you don't, it's not
good enough. And if we can get to the point
where we both love it, it's probably better than the
one that one of us loved and the other didn't.
(59:25):
And if there are five people in a band, and
if three of them like it and two of them don't,
and you get to the point where all five of
them like it, chances are it's better and not.
Speaker 2 (59:37):
Just that you're done. Yes, yeah, No, it was just
like such a kind of I just thought of that.
That idea that what you're building in the end is
a kind of harmony among all the all of the voices,
is a beautiful way to end a very very beautiful book.
Speaker 1 (59:54):
There's there's a part in the book where we talk
about cooperation, which is exactly this working with other people. Historically,
I'll say most times that people work together, there's a
rivalry of ideas. Each person is arguing to win the
debate to have their idea be the one that's chosen.
(01:00:15):
And I'm saying that's not productive, and the best way
to do it is for everyone to demonstrate their ideas.
It's even better if they're demonstrated in a blind way
where we don't even know whose idea is what. We
just hear the ideas and then everybody picks and usually
it's pretty obvious, and it really does happen naturally, and
(01:00:38):
it's only through the ego of wanting it to be
my way. That they are these conflicts, but if everyone
is working together for it to be the best that
it can be, and if we respect each other enough
to know, if I think it's the best it can
be and you think it can be better, I'll go
on that ride and same the other way. Ultimately we
(01:01:02):
get to a beautiful place Rick. That is lovely.
Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
And thank you for writing such a beautiful book. Any
many many people enjoy it as much as I have.
Speaker 1 (01:01:11):
Thank you so much. I really appreciate you reading it.
It's fantastic. It makes me happy.
Speaker 4 (01:01:19):
I want to thank Rick on the Record for taking
the time to put his philosophies around creativity and a book.
The Creative Act, A Way of Being is out now.
Be sure to check it out. You can subscribe to
our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast.
We can find all of our new episodes. You can
follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is
(01:01:40):
produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrel, Ben Talliday,
and Eric Sandler. Our editor is Sophie Crane. Broken Record
is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this
show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin plus
Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content
an uninterrupted ad free listening for four ninety nine a month.
(01:02:02):
Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if
you like the show, please remember to share, rate, and
review us on your podcast app. I Think Music, Expectkenny Beats.
I'm Justin Richmond
Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
M HM.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hello, Hello revisionist history fans, it's been way too long.
In case you're curious, we are hard at work cooking
up all sorts of mischief for you already. I've been
to Alabama twice. That's how deep we're going this year.
But while we wait for all those new episodes, I
wanted to share with you an interview I did with
(00:40):
my friend and colleague Rick Rubin. If you know your
Pushkin shows, you'll know that Rick is the driving force
behind our music podcast Broken Record, in addition, of course,
to being maybe the most important music producer of his generation.
I mean, he's worked with Metallica, Adele, Johnny Cash, the
Beastie Boys, jay Z, the Chili Peppers, Neil Young, on
(01:01):
and on. I met Rick years ago, and I've been
out to Shangrilot many times, which is the famous recording
studio Rick runs up in Malibu. Rick and I once
interviewed Bruce Springsteen together, which is an experience I'll never forget.
If you meet Rick, you'll understand immediately what makes him
such a brilliant producer, because he's one of the most
open and generous listeners I've ever met. Anyway, over the
(01:25):
last couple of years, very quietly, Rick's been working on
a book about creativity called The Creative Act, A Way
of Being. I read it in one sitting. I loved it,
and I called up Rick and I asked him, can
we talk about it? And what follows is that interview
which I wanted to share with all of you. We
read it in the Broken Record feed for the music diehards,
(01:47):
but I thought it made sense to oneted again here
because although it's a book about creativity by a music producer,
and many of the examples Rick talks about are about music,
it's not a music book. It's this beautiful exploration about
how to open up your imagination that I believe has
useful insights for all of us. Anyway, here goes our conversation.
(02:10):
I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Rick Hey.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
So I have a million questions, and I thought the
fun thing to do would be to go through and
I would just read you things I underlined, because there
are things that I would love for you to talk
or that we could talk about, but to you in particular.
But one of the fantastic things about this book is
that I'm almost rarely read a book where I felt
like I was being invited to contribute.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Like, every time you made a point, I was like, Oh,
I have something to add about that or this. I mean,
I've never read a book like that where I'm like,
half the time I'm talking to myself as I'm reading it.
So that's what I thought. We would get into that
as well a little bit.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
But that's great, that's great. I'm so happy. First of all,
I'm happy you like it, happy you read it, happy
you like it, and I'm happy that it had that
effect on you. And there was I will tell you
there was a version of the book, an unsuccessful version
of the book, maybe four years ago, that talked about
a lot of the same stuff that the book talks about.
(03:22):
The content was similar and the writing was beautiful, but
it wouldn't have elicited the reaction that you had, and
that's why it didn't come out then. And from the beginning,
the purpose of the book was always I want people
to make great things. I want people, I want as
much beautiful art in the world as possible. I'm a
(03:44):
fan of beautiful things and exciting things and new things
happening all the time. And the book was like a
call to arms to go out and make something beautiful
change the world. You know.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
So I've known questions, but I wanted to start with
a very general one, which is, because you're in a
world of music, we're reading a lot of this through
the lens of music. We're assuming you're talking about musicians,
and you give examples of musicians from timesam From time
to time. You also talk about visual artists. You add
that into the mix. But I was curious about are
(04:23):
we really talking about all art here or is there
a difference in the way that music and visual art
are done that you're specifically speaking to.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
I think it's how all creative choices are made. So
not only does it include the visual arts, it includes
starting a new business, a new recipe you're making as
a chef, architectural choices you might make, solving a problem
in life where you're not getting along with a family
(04:58):
member and you want to get closer to them and
have better communication. Yeah. Originally I thought of it as
more of a how to book about creativity. It became
a book about how to be, how to be in
the world to allow creativity to happen, and as it
turns out, how to be in the world that allows
creativity to happen, solves a lot of issues.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah, I did feel like about halfway through, I began
to forget you were in music, and I felt like
he was starting to talk more broadly about everyone. It's
hard to escape the assumption that this is going to
be a book about music at the very beginning. But
so there's a couple I'm want to start reading to
you some things and getting you to to talk about
(05:42):
them a little bit. One is without the spiritual components
from page from the chapter called the Unseen. Without the
spiritual component, the artist works with a crucial disadvantage. It's
a really really interesting idea, and one weirdly that I
had heard that phrase that way before. What is a
(06:03):
disadvantage here? And what are you meaning by the term
spiritual component?
Speaker 1 (06:11):
The spiritual component is belief in something bigger, something different,
whatever it is. It could be believing in some universal power,
believing that if you walk under a ladder you'll have
bad luck. You know, it could it could be anything
that takes you out of the ordinary to allow you
(06:34):
to see a wilder potential is good. When you're making art.
The goal of making art is not to show you
just what everybody else sees. It's to see what's possible,
and what's possible is radical. It really is radical. It's
(06:54):
like we've built very a very small world for ourselves
with our reason. Have you ever had a mystical experience
in your life?
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Okay, do you want to describe it at all?
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Oh? Well, I mean maybe my definition of mystical I
have had him.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
I'm open, I'm wide open whatever however you describe it.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
I mean, I've had moments probably around the death of
my father would be an example of the death of
my father, was a lot more than just about the
death of my father. I guess that's the best way.
You become aware in that moment that oh, he's part
of joining going somewhere whatever, much much, much, much, much
(07:36):
larger and older than we would have imagined. That's that
was probably the closest I came to that, that I
saw that in the gift of my grief, was that, yes,
was becoming aware of that.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Would you say that based on that you have been
able to live at times in a deeper way based
on that experience. Did it opened something into you to
allow you to see more than you saw before?
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yes, I have, absolutely I would. I would count that
experience as one of the most crucial of my life.
And in a million years, I would never have thought
that the death of someone I love more than anyone
else would open me up in that way.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
That would be an example of touching something. I would
say spiritual, something unseen, something from beyond, something that wouldn't
have made sense to you before it happened. Yeah, if
someone would have described it to you, you might have thought,
that doesn't really make sense to me, But then you
got to feel it, and then you understood. And belief
(08:40):
is that way. There's a part in the book that
talks about what you believe in doesn't have to be true,
that doesn't really matter, but belief has a power, and
belief allows you to go further than you thought you
can go. Yeah, and there are a lot of tools
(09:00):
in the book that talk about overcoming voices that tell
us we can't do things because we've learned we can't
do things. You know, we've learned what's possible and what's impossible.
And if we accept what's possible and what's impossible, we
can't go beyond. If the Wright brothers accepted it was
(09:21):
impossible for man to fly, we still wouldn't be flying.
All of the great revolutions that have happened have happened
because someone believed in something that everyone thought wasn't possible.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Yeah, this taps into a larger theme in your book,
which I thought was really powerful, which is time and
again you come back to the idea that the artists
one of the artist's jobs is our obligations is to
look outside of him or herself. I mean, you do
talk about how you need there's that chapter where you
(09:57):
talk about the importance of paying very close attention to
what's going on inside your own head and heart. Like
here's an example not long after that first quote, when
looking for a solution to a creative problem, pay close
attention to what's happening around you. And what I love
about that is like, it's not that you think back
over your history, remember some important thing you read five
(10:20):
years ago written by some genius. No, No, you're talking
about in the moment here and that look around and
you can find kind of solutions clues, what have you
just in the kind of most prosaic details of your
existence at that moment, like in the room where you.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Are, yes now I can't say it works one hundred
percent of the time. It's not saying that, it's saying
that if you live in a way where you're really
open and paying attention to everything around you, the answers
you're looking for are knocking on the door all the time.
They don't come when you're searching for them. They come
(11:02):
when you're open and allow them to come. One of
the things that I talk about in the book is
if you have a problem them to solve, instead of
thinking about it, hold the question in your awareness and
go for a walk or swim or do something that
takes your mind off of what you're trying to solve
(11:23):
and engages you in something else. Yeah, and most often
when you're engaged in something else, the part of you
that's in the way of solving the problem loses its
control over you, and you through whatever it is. You
can find a way to go for a drive something
where you have to you have to pay attention enough.
(11:45):
If you're driving, you can sort of drive on autopilot
in you know, without really paying attention. But if you're
really not paying attention, you'll crash. You mean, you can
you can tune out that much. So there is some
part of you that's occupied when you're driving with the
work at hand.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
The reason I thought that was interesting was I wondered,
I mean that one thing that struck me, And I
could be totally wrong, but my sense is that increasingly,
in a lot of creative fields, creativity is defined as
something that is internal and deliberate. You look within yourself
and your own experience and you mind them for and
you're talking about something that is in part external and unconscious.
(12:28):
And I have a good friend who's a screenwriter, and
I think by virtue of being my friend and watching,
I'm a reporter, a journalist, you know, I call people
up and interview them and record what they say. He's
changed the way he writes screenplays. Now he does as
much reporting as he does as much as someone who's
writing a nonfiction book. And he's doing it not because
(12:51):
he's just cutting and pasting what he hears in the world.
To do is but he's doing a version of what
you're talking about, which is he's opening himself up to
the if he wants to talk about, you know, scientists,
he goes and talks to lots and lots of scientists,
and it opens him up to the way they think
and feel, and that kind of approach to creativity strikes
(13:11):
me as being one that seems out of vogue in
a certain way. I mean, it's not what they're teaching
in writing schools.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
No, it's not what they're teaching. And there was a line,
there's a line in the book and I only know
it because I was working on the audiobook yesterday and
I read it yesterday, and it's against funny, counterintuitive line
that self expression is not about you and it's just
such a and when I read it, you know, it's
(13:37):
stopped me in my tracks, even though it's an idea
from several years ago, but it hit me hard again,
you know, recognizing it. So everything we are comes from
outside of us. The data that we take in from
which we make, whatever it is that we make comes
from outside of us, all of it. None of it
starts with us. Everything starts outside of us. So we
(14:01):
have a storehouse of all of the stuff that we've
experienced over the course of our lives. And then we
can find connect between those things, and we can find
connections between those things from the past and these things
happening now, whatever it may be. And when you're looking
for it. It's surprising how often the answers are right there. Yeah,
(14:25):
this is.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Read another one of my favorite lines. Distraction is not procrastination.
Procrastination can consistently undermines our ability to make things. Distraction
is a strategy in service of the work, which is
to your point. So a lot of what this exposure
to the world outside of us is about is a
kind of productive distraction, right, That's what you're saying.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
With that, it's a combination. There's a productive distraction and
an inspiration. The connection with the outside world also can
be really inspiring. It can be inspiring if you pick
places that are inspiring. I try to pick places to
be where I find inspiration on a daily basis.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
You have a little moment where you're talking about how
different all of us have different strategies, or that kind
of inspirational place, and you said Andy Warhol was said
to create with a television, radio, and record player all
on simultaneously. For eminem the noise of a single TV
set is his preferred backdrop. Marcel Bruce lined his walls
with soundless absorbing cork clothes, the drapes and warrior plugs.
(15:27):
And I was curious what's yours. Do you have a
kind of mode like that.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
I would say I like to be in a quiet place,
big beautiful nature, less people. Yeah, i'd say natural beauty
and less people. It's funny.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
I'm exactly the opposite.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
I was right.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
I had a very productive morning in a coffee shop.
It was crowded and I was seating it like literally
right up against this six foot four kid, I think
it was like twenty two years old, sitting next to
his parents, and the kid was super interesting, and he
was talking about the PLO in the nineteen seventies and
(16:05):
wow yair Arafat and there was something about like, I
don't know, I can't put my finger on what. That
kind of triggered. After a while, I kind of he
became my background noise. But it was such a different
voice that I was fixing a chapter of something I
was working on, and I just saw suddenly sound a solution,
And I think it was what we were talking about.
(16:26):
It was some combination of there's something about that being
surrounded by unusual voices that really wakes me up to
the range of solutions. Right, I'm a reminder. Oh, there's
like there's this kid who's thinking about something I don't
think about in a context I'm not in. Who's super interesting, Like, wow,
so you know there's a solution out there.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
It was that.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
It was funny because I had just read your chapter
which talks about that, and I was in that situation.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Is is that a place that you go to every day?
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Many days? I like, I need I need so, I
need voices, I need noise and voices and activity in
order to be able to create. During the pandemic, I
had one Stirgle Simpson album that I played over and
over and over again.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
He was my voice?
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Was it meta? Modern?
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Meta?
Speaker 2 (17:16):
What is that album? Fantastic album?
Speaker 4 (17:17):
Whatever?
Speaker 2 (17:20):
He's great. I don't know if he's out there. He
helped me through is that many many lean times during
the pandemic. But that idea, I almost feel like you're
describing the things you have learned by working with elite
practitioners of the art of creativity. But I was struck
by the gap between what you've learned from the top
(17:43):
performers and what we're teaching to people at the outset,
and that it concerned me. I almost feel like there's
a gap between what we're telling people and what the
truly creative.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Are doing Yes, yes, that's true.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
On the same point on this gap. There's a moment
when you're talking about it's actually my favorite part of
the book, when you're talking about strategies for unblocking yourself
into all the different ways that you think about that
or approach that. When you're working with people and one
of them was right, writ in the voice of someone else,
that's right, that's what we said, and Rick, once again,
(18:21):
in the world we live in, that is an incendiary thought.
That's called appropriation. And you have this beautiful I want
to quote in a similar vein you say there are
countless examples of imitation turning into legitimate innovation. Having a
romanticized vision of an artist, genre, or tradition may allow
(18:43):
you to create something new because you see it from
a different perspective than those closer to it. So not
only are you saying that it can be really useful
to inhabit someone else's voice or tradition, you're also saying
that that can spark a whole new, more beautiful, greater
kind of innovation because you're approaching it from your own perspective.
(19:04):
You talk about Sergio Leoni spaghetti westerns, being a good
example of that that they transform understanding of what a
what a question is. I thought a lot about the
audiobook we did with Paul Simon when he's talking about Graceland,
which is that right, yes?
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Or or talking heads you know, remain in light or
fear of music. Those were inspired by African rhythms. Yeah,
there's a great tradition in doing this. I mean pretty
much the best of everything was based on something else always,
and then it's the it's through the new interpretations. Like
(19:41):
the Beatles were doing American motown music, but because they
were English and because of the distance, they weren't trying
to do it different. They did it different because they
were different, and that was the beauty of it. And
that's how the Beatles became the Beatles. You know. Yeah,
they became the Beatles because they are the Beatles. But
the music they were doing was they were trying to
(20:03):
do motown.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Or as you point out, the Ramones were trying to
be the Bay City Rollers, yes.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Which is a true.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Johnny Ramone told me that himself, so I know that
to be true.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
It is so for those of you who don't know
the basy De Rollers, they were just about the dumbest
bubble bubble gum band of the they were't like the
boy band of the early seventies, and the Ramones think that.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Well, they had that song s A t U r
d A y s A t u y. And then
if you listen to the Ramones, they have those type
of gabba gabba we accept, you know, similar types of chance.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Yes, that's right, Yeah, they take it and they twist
it in this brilliant, beautiful, revolutionary way. But so we
walk about it was sort of harp on this, but
how do we get away from that notion? So it
is legitimately the case. And I know this because I
are examples of people who I know who are legitimately
terrified of even so much as dipping their toe in
(21:03):
another traditionary voice for fear of being criticized. It's almost
like we're terrified of the sources of creativity. We're terrified
to admit to ourselves what we're doing in the name
of creativity.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
The reason someone imitates someone else is because they love
someone else. That's why it's only flattery when someone is
inspired by someone else. If you if you decided to
write because someone else wrote and you like their writing,
and you decide to become a writer that's not against them,
that doesn't take anything away from them. That's a tribute
(21:40):
to them. Yeah, and all of the music that gets
made based on loving someone else's music is a tribute
to them, whether it be people of the same color
or different color. It doesn't matter that it has nothing
to do with that. That's not what it's about. Yeah,
it's a current misread of the situation.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Yes, you know what it is. And it goes to
something else. You talk a little bit. You talk about
the abundance mindset. In getting to that part of the book.
You talk about the importance of understanding that number of ideas,
essentially the number of ideas out there is infinite, not finite. Yes,
when you understand it's infinite, then you're not scared of
imitating someone because you're like, there's a million things out there.
(22:22):
We don't we don't have to hold tightly to what
we've done and be react in a hostile manner if
someone tries to imitate us because there's a million efficiency,
you know, it's fine. I think the idea that the
number of new ideas is infinite has kind of fallen
out of favor somehow.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Yeah, it's it's just odd. It's I mean, people can
be wrong and it's okay, you know, like that's fine.
In some ways, the fact that it's falling out of
favor means the people who embrace the tried and true
methods that have worked will find greater success and they'll
be less stuff in between.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Yeah, is your understanding of this notion of abundance? Is
it a product of having worked for I don't know
how many years you've been in the industry, many decades.
Did you feel the same way when you were twenty one?
In other words, is it natural for the very for
the very young to be much more jealous, much more
jealousy guard their ideas because they haven't had years and
(23:23):
years of experience in seeing the kind of waterfall of
ideas that's out there. Is that fair?
Speaker 1 (23:28):
No, it's fair. I've always felt this way because I
see it, you know, I see all of the ideas
I see. I want to learn everything. There's no time.
There's no time to learn all the things I want
to learn. I'm endlessly curious, and I'm always looking I'm
thinking back to It's really more about what we were
just talking about But the reason I learned about reggae
(23:50):
music was because of the Clash. If it weren't for
the Clash, I don't know if I would have ever
come in contact with reggae music. So is it bad
that the Clash did reggae music? Yeah, because they turned
on a whole generation of people who otherwise may not
have ever heard about it. Do you know? It's like,
it's a crazy idea to think that, not to be
(24:15):
inspired by the things that are inspiring us and to
show it and to own it and to fly the
flag of these great trends or genres is nothing more beautiful. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
I'm gonna pause for a quick break, and then we'll
be back with more from Rick Rubin and Malcolm Gladwell.
We're back with more from Rick Rubin and Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
I remember pretty early in my writing career when I
was unhappy. I thought I was limited as a writer.
And I remember sitting down with I've forgotten which book
it was, one of Michael Lewis's books and one of
Janet Malcolm's books, two narrative nonfiction writers who are extraordinarily
good at the one thing I thought I was weak at,
(25:03):
which is character literally sitting down and studying them like
they were with a talmud, Like, what's he doing here?
How much time does he spend literally measuring how much
time does he spend describing someone? I was getting itchy feet.
I would I did introduce a character and I think, oh,
you must be bored of the character list.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
And then I would.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Then it would Michael Lewis and is like, he has
the same character the whole book and we're not bored
of him. How does he do that?
Speaker 4 (25:27):
Right?
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Or Jed and Malcolm would like peel one layer after
another off the onion. You'd be like, there can't be
any onion left. There was always onion left. I was like,
how does she do that? To your point about you
got that lovely thing about the back and forth between
the Beatles and the Beach Boys. Brian Wilson sees White
Album and says, is it White album that inspired always?
Speaker 1 (25:48):
It starts with it starts with rubber Soul. It starts
with rubber soul. Yeah, And then based on Brian Wilson
hearing Rubber Soul, he makes pet sounds based on the
song God only Knows. Paul has the idea for Sergeant pepper. Yeah,
And the point that I make there is not they
(26:09):
weren't doing that at a competition. It was out of
love and inspiration, and it was an upward spiral between
them of inspire a reaction, inspire a reaction, inspire, lifting
the level, lifting the level. It was they made each
other better. They weren't trying to beat each other. It
(26:30):
was different than that they loved each other.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Yeah, explain to me. It's sort of obvious, but I'd
love for you to talk about it. Why is it
important that it comes out of love and not competition.
What is it about a competitive drive that is more
limiting than a drive of love.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Well, first of all, we're talking about. Majority of what
we're talking about is art, and the way that I
see art is it really is about our own self expression.
So I'll give you an example. I just wrote a book.
You write a lot of books. The idea of Rick's
book competing with Malcolm's book is an insane idea. You
(27:07):
write a Malcolm book, I write a Rick book. No
one but Malcolm can write a Malcolm book. No one
but Rick can write a Rick book. They're mutually exclusive things.
Everything is like that. So if you're focused on beating
someone else. It makes me think you're not actually playing
(27:28):
the same game that I'm playing. The game that I'm
playing is I want to make the best thing that
I can make for me, that's all, and if someone
else likes it, it's great. There's a chapter in the
book about success, which is success is when you feel
good enough about it a piece of work you've made
to share it in the world. That's the moment of success.
(27:49):
Whatever happens after that's completely out of our control. But
the moment that you sign off, it's like you're okay,
here we go, and then move on to your next project.
That's where success lies. So to work on a vibration
of competition. It's one thing. If it's about running a race,
this is not running a race. This really is always
(28:11):
apples and oranges.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Yeah, although you know it's funny, I think you're selling
your idea a little short. I was thinking about this
when I read that part. I'm a big fan of cars,
and there's a very particular moment in the early aughts
when car design goes through a stage that I think
(28:33):
everyone in the who loves cars thinks was one of
a kind of extraordinary moment of it was a kind
of when cars started to look very kind of bowhusy.
I don't know if you know cars, but there was
a very beautiful E Class that Mercedes put out in
the early aughts, which is veryy, clean lines, round headlights.
At the same time, Audi put out the first iteration
(28:54):
of Estyle. They're still in but it was very clean
and very They all were doing this a very similar aesthetic,
which was a rejection of a lot of the kind
of clutter and complication that had gone on in the
in the previous generation of car design. And you could
see it across all the kind of elite car makers.
And you know, normally you would say, these are guys
who really are in competition with each other. They are
(29:16):
battling over a finite marketplace. They're making the same thing
cars that people drive. But they weren't all pursuing this
Bauhaus design strategy. It was out of love.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
The guy at Audi saw the E Class and it's like,
oh my god, that's a gorgeous car. I want to
do my version of it. I mean it was no,
it wasn't like let's take market share from you know,
at that level. I mean, maybe it was in the
marketing group, but at the level of the designer it
was clearly they all fell in love, yes, with this
(29:49):
particular So I think it goes beyond what we think
of as the as the art narrowly as the arts.
I think you see it everywhere that fundamentally, in a
million different ways. Even people who are locked in competition
with each other sometimes push that aside and do things
out of a genuine affection for what they were just
(30:11):
they're just blown away by something they see and know, like,
oh my god.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Here's an even more metaphysical version of that, where the
same thing happens, but it's not a reaction. So in
the example you gave, Mercedes came out with a beautiful
new design, and Audi, inspired by that design, made something new.
(30:35):
They're also throughout history examples of two or three similar
novel approaches entering at the same time, not based on
seeing each other, yeah, just based on it's time for this. Yeah.
(30:56):
And maybe it's possible that the thing that inspired Mercedes
to want to do it is the thing that inspired
Audi to want to do it. But that's different than
Audi wanting to copy what Mercedes did, And that's a
fascinating thing when there are these movements of art where
it just springs up all over the planet at the
same time, not because they saw it and wanted to
(31:18):
do it, but because now is the time for this
new thing, whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
But at its root, it's the same thing, because they're
falling in love with the same idea in the world simultaneously.
You can d of fall in love with what Joe
across the pond is doing, or me and Joe can
fall in love with something you know in the world
of ideas that's really beautiful and novel. But I think
the engine is the same, which is it's love.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Yes, it seems more magical when there isn't when you
don't see one like it first. There's something about it
when I don't know if it's ever happened to you,
it has happened to me where I'll have an idea
for something and I don't act on that right away,
and then within six months or a year someone else
does it. They didn't steal my idea. It was time
(32:07):
for that to happen.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Let's keep going to so much wonderful stuff here. I
want to give listeners more of a taste of it.
Was several moments when I was out of surprise and
in one case really genuinely wanted more of a explanation,
and that was when the work has five mistakes, it's
not yet completed. When it has eight mistakes, it might
(32:29):
be yes, Rick, what does that mean?
Speaker 1 (32:32):
We get hung up on the idea of perfection, and
we think perfection is what we're looking for, when really
what we're looking for is something with emotion in it,
something with humanity in it, and humanity has flaws. So
we can use the example of the leaning Tower of Pisa.
(32:53):
At the time that it was made, it was a mistake,
and now it's one of the most visited buildings in
the world, and it's visited purely because of the mistake.
You know, we collect old Persian rugs that were handmade
and that had been lived in whereas you can buy
a new machine made rug. Now that's more perfect than that,
(33:15):
but it doesn't have the same humanity in it. And
the reason I use the example of five and eight
are their random choices. Those are not specific. Those are
not if you have five, you got to get to
eight for it to work. But it's a way of
thinking where we're not looking to make it perfect. We're
(33:36):
looking for the soulful version that could either be going
further towards perfection or backwards away from it, and it
might just as well be backwards away from it for
it to feel good.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
When we're making art, can you think about a project
you've worked on that you think is beautiful and authentic
in precisely this imperfect way, that has mistakes that you
think it benefited from.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
I can give you an example close to both of
our hearts, which is interesting. When we had the Broken
Record logo designed, it was originally done. It was designed
on a computer, and it was a very formal design,
graphic design, and a friend of mine suggested, you don't
(34:23):
have tried doing that by hand? Yeah, And then we
suggested to the design and try it by hand. And
the one that we ended up picking was the one
done by hand. It was less perfect, yeah, than the
original version, but it had more personality. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
It's very clarifying because I think it's very easy to
lose sight of what the audience for a work of
art wants. They want the creator, they want it. It's
a way of looking into the mind or heart of
the creator. They want, don't want some abstract thing that
fits every criteria of perfection, right we're looking for, you know,
(34:59):
to give the example back of when I was went
through my period where I was obsessively reading Michael Lewis
and Janet Malcolm. Jenna Malcolm is a good eample.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
This or both.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
When you read them, you feel like you know the
two of those writers. When you read their writing, at
the end of a Michael Lewis book, you feel like
you've been hanging out with him and have a window
into his world. Jenna Malcolm's books are weird and quirky
and sometimes disturbing, but you love that because you're like, oh,
she's such a kind of fascinating character. And my worry
(35:32):
when I was reading them was that people weren't having that.
That was not the experience my readers were having. That
they were getting something that was too abstract. They were
getting information, but not that kind of they were really
getting me. You know, it took a long time. We're
talking about. That thing I've describing was twenty years into
(35:54):
my writing career.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
And what you're talking about is really moving away from
classical journalism. Yeah, because my understanding of journalism is the
writer is invisible it's only the story, and it's just
you know, just facts, that's all it is. Yeah. So,
in a way, this would be a bastardization of journalism.
(36:19):
But that's why it's engaging, and that's why it's interesting,
and that's why it's popular. It's not regular journalism. It's
journalism through your filter, the personal filter. There's a documentarian
named Nick Broomfield who I love, who makes these crazy movies.
He tends to pick outrageous characters to focus on, but
(36:41):
he always ends up part of the movie. And usually
when documentarians make a movie, you just see the subject,
but he ensconces himself into the finds a way to
insinuate himself into the story. And it's wild and bizarre,
and it's unusual for the director of a documentary to
become a main character in every one of the documentaries
(37:03):
he makes about different people. Fascinating. Yeah, so I love it.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Wait, couple of other things I wanted. I want to
make sure we you you had a little section that
I loved. When you're talking about Alpha Go, the AI
software system that was designed to master the game of
the Japanese game of Go, and how there's this famous
showdown between the computer and a Go grand master, and
(37:30):
the computer wins by making a move that had never
occurred to any Go player. You know, they had you say,
you say it was most Go players would have considered
A or B choice, and the computer went to C
and it blew everyone's mind. And you said, when you
read about that that you cried.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
I did, and it was it wasn't. I didn't read
about it. I watched the documentary, But you watched the documentary. Yeah,
I was watching a documentary about it and it made
me cry. And when I cried, I didn't understand it
at first. It took it took a while. I thought
about it more. My reaction forced me to think about
(38:08):
it more. It's like, why am I crying? I'm not investing.
I don't play Go, I'm not invested in this story
at all. Yet I'm crying. And originally my first thought was,
am I crying because machines are beating humans? No, that's
not what it is. I'm crying because the way that
(38:32):
the computer won wasn't by knowing more than the grand master.
The computer one because it knew less than the grand master.
And that's what made me cry. It's that the computer
didn't have all of the baggage and cultural dogma of
(38:53):
how you're supposed to play Go. It only knew these
are the rules of the game. I'm playing the rules
of the game. And it was fascinating to me because
it made me realize, if we can let go of
the beliefs of what we're how we're supposed to do things,
anything maybe possible. It's the tip of the iceberg for
(39:15):
the game Go, for sure, but maybe it's the tip
of the iceberg for everything. And if we can get
back to that beginner's mind of not knowing, of accepting
that we don't know, we can break through in ways
never understood before. Yeah, never thought possible before.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
It's funny because I didn't see this documentary, and when
I read about your description of how much you were
moved by that moment, I was also moved, but not
for the reasons you were. I was moved because what
that told me was that when human beings play Go,
they're not playing Go. In other words, the computer saw
(39:59):
Go in its entirety, in a technical sense, saw every
conceivable move you could make, made one that would never
have occurred to us. When human beings played We're playing
this very small parochial version, governed not just by the
rules and potentials of the board, but by our own assumptions, habits, practices, culturals.
(40:26):
And I actually kind of love that about us, in
other words, that we've colonized and humanized and brought all
of our kind of heartrending limitations even to something like
a board game. That's very moving to me. That was like,
the computer has the chile impersonal version of Go, and
(40:48):
this reminds us we're not playing the chile impersonal version.
Our Go bears the imprint of our own limitations and
cultural specificities. And I find that really endearing, you know, Like,
but it's funny we both see the same thing and
are moved by it. I don't think what I'm saying
what you're saying incompatible. I think they're actually competiven.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Know, I think they're almost opposites, and the fact that
they are both something to fall in love with about
the story is amazing. I love that.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Yeah, but this is actually something that you What I've
just described is something you do a lot in this book,
which is there are a lot of moments where it
appears that you're making points that contradict each other, but
you're not. This is the furthest from Black and White.
This book, there is a lot of this kind of
yinging and yanging in it. I thought was really very
(41:42):
very you. It's very like it's not like you do
it this way, not this way, like the necessity of
being both inwardly sensitive and outwardly sensitive. It's not one
or the other. It's like just there's a balance that
you have to kind of observe.
Speaker 4 (42:00):
We'll be right back with the rest of Malcolm Gladwell
and Rick Rubin's conversation. After a quick break, we're back
with more from Rick Rubin and Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
There's a passage there that I really love. Were you
talking about Sometimes there is a musician who you'll listen
to when they're trying something radically new. Do you remember
this and you're baffled by it the first time you listen,
and baffle the second time, and you keep listening and
keep listening, and then finally become something you can't live without.
And I was wondering, was there someone in mind?
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Would you several the first my first experience of that
was a group called Trouble Funk in the early days
of hip hop. When I was in high school, the
only place you could hear hip hop was once a week,
one hour show on WHBI called Mister Magic's Rap Attack,
(42:54):
and that was the only and I recorded it. I
Cassette recorded it every week, as did all the other
hip hop heads in my high school and you know,
maybe the six of us, and we would record that
every week and then that would be all we would
listen to all week because there were at this point
in time, there really were no hip hop records available
to buy. There may have been the Sugar Hill Gang's
(43:16):
Rappers Delight, but that was the only one. Yet on
this radio show, he played all these songs. It's like,
I don't even know where they came from, and they
were all like twelve inch you know, DJ living where
I live, it didn't exist. So listen to that every
week and hear whatever was going on in rap music.
And again it was a very tight time because all
(43:37):
there was was an hour and with you know, plus
it had commercials in it for places like Brad's Record
Den in the Bronx, which is I guess where you
could have bought some of those other songs that I
had never gone at that time. I have gone since.
And one week, in the middle of these all rap songs,
he played a Troublefunk song, which is not rap music.
(44:00):
It's go go music, and it's long. And the song
was maybe seven or nine minutes long. So a seven
or nine nine rap song took up seven to nine
minutes of my sixty minutes plus commercials removed my little
bit of rap music for the week, and I was
(44:20):
so angry, and I would every time I would listen
to the cassette, I would forward through the Troublefunk song
to get to the rap music. And I did this,
and then one time I listened to the Troublefunk song.
And then it took time, but eventually, within a couple
of weeks, the only thing I was listening to on
that tape was the Troublefunk song. Yeah, so that's one example,
(44:43):
but I'm sure there are many more. When the first
I first I remember the first time I heard nine
inch Nails. I didn't like any of the industrial music
I had heard up until the point of nine inch Nails,
and when I heard nine inch Nails, my initial reaction
to it was, this is that kind of music I
don't like. I don't like the production. I don't like
(45:03):
those sounds. And then eventually took probably a year, Nine
Inch Nails became my favorite group. But the things that
I didn't like about it weren't the things that were
good about it in the case of Nine Inch Nails,
case in Nine Nails case, Trent's songwriting was so far
(45:24):
superior to anyone else making that kind of music that
once I could hear his songs, it didn't matter whether
or not I liked the style. And then when I
liked the songs, eventually I grew to even like the
style because his songs made me like the style. Oh,
I see.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
It's this interesting thing about for different kinds of experience
and creative experiences, there are different thresholds. The familiar has
a very low threshold. The unfamiliar has a much longer threshold.
But what's interesting with that story that is, and it's
very particular to you, is that you had the patience
to wait long enough so you could reach the threshold
(46:04):
of understanding what was what Troublefunk was doing or what
Trent Resident was doing. That's unusual. So a lot of
what you're talking about in this book really does seem
to be things that can be taught and understood. And
the shift you're this, what you're describing now is something
very not impossible to teach, but very hard to teach.
(46:25):
To persist with something you didn't like, the Troublefunk, and
yet somehow you kept coming back in one way, you
didn't dismiss it. You disliked it without dismissing it. That's
I guess what I'm trying to say. That ninety nine
percent of people when they disliked, they dismiss, but you didn't.
I want to understand why didn't you.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
I may have back then, I may have dismissed it,
but for whatever reason, because it was on a cassette,
and because I had to keep coming back and forward
when it would come on and I might be doing
something else in my room, it was able to get
through to me. And this again we get to the
metaphysical aspect of it. The universe wanted me to hear Troublefunk.
That's why I was able to hear it. If it
(47:08):
wouldn't have resented itself over and over to me, I
wouldn't have. So yes, I allowed it in, but it
wasn't all me. I'll give you another example. It's not
uncommon when I'm out and about to have someone recommend
something that they think I'll like, and when they recommend
(47:29):
it to me, I listen and it sounds like a
terrible thing, something that I don't like, the kind of
thing I don't like. Whatever it is. An example would
be it's not a real example. A hypothetical example is, oh,
you love this new horror movie. I don't like horror movies.
There's no chance I'm going to watch a horror movie.
That wouldn't work. If three different people who don't know
each other all suggests to me to watch that horror movie,
(47:54):
I will watch that horror movie, even though I know
it's something I don't like. And the reason is the
universe really wants me to be aware of this. People
are telling me. Why are people telling me this is
not for me? So that's an example of a and
paying attention to the signs around you. If several of
your friends tell you the same thing that you initially discounted,
(48:18):
it might be worth a look.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
This is funny because this goes into one of my
It's similar to one of my little I have a rule.
I have these implicit rules I carry around in my
head and one of my rules is never say some
things that you consume or see or whatever is bad,
only say I think it's bad right now.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
Yes? Great.
Speaker 2 (48:43):
And by the way, the whole world social media particularly
would be so greatly improved by that rule. Right, I
don't like what you I don't like what you said
right now?
Speaker 1 (48:57):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (48:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
It's very different from saying what you said is wrong,
right it's absolutely whole or opposite. And but adopting that
with art, I wonder about how many I'm talking about
some of the critical community, how much criticism, how much
it would change our understanding of art if critics universally
followed that rule, and it was if they always acknowledged
(49:21):
that they may be in a situation that you were
in with trouble Funk, that the universe wasn't there yet,
You weren't there yet. And also that story about Troublefunk
is that you weren't looking for trouble Funk, you were
looking for hip hop. So like it was an intrusion
in the beginning, It wasn't a treasure. It was something
that didn't belong, yes, and.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
It was something that didn't belong and was taking up valuable.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
Time, valuable cassette tech cassette deck space. Yes, because it
was only sixty minutes. Did you have the nineties back
then or just the sixties?
Speaker 1 (49:54):
We had sixties and nineties and eventually one twenties.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
I remember that when twenties were huge. But that idea
of building into our critical assessments some notion about probability,
that my judgment is conditioned on two things. It do
seem credic to me, and it is at this moment,
and both of those things may not be true in
some future date. I just that just is so insanely
(50:19):
liberating to me, Like, and I don't understand. Can we
pass this law that says you're only allowed you must
always use I think and right now in any creative judgment.
Speaker 1 (50:31):
Yeah. It's also related to another thing mentioned in the book,
the idea of I can't do that. Yes, we never
say I can't do that. You can say I haven't
done that yet.
Speaker 3 (50:42):
Yes, that's yes.
Speaker 2 (50:43):
That is the same that functions the same way. The
reason I think a book like this is so important
is this is a little bit of a tangent. But
I went to give a talk at a university two
weeks ago and I was to the psychology department and
I was talking to these psychologists and they were talking
about mental health, and they were talking about a lot
of really lovely research right now about how the language
(51:05):
that you use to describe your feelings in emotions and
traumas and things is enormously important. You know, to describe
something this way or that way is not a difference
in style. It is actually a difference in the way
that you are processing, understanding, recovering all those kinds of things.
And one of the things this book did to me was,
(51:27):
I think this one way of understanding your book is
it is in that spirit the categories that we use
and the language that we bring to our understanding of
creativity really really matters. Like in that section I love
this that I love so much about when you're talking
about all the ways you can jog someone out of
being stuck. When you're stuck, you don't think you don't
(51:49):
think you can be jogged out by some change in
your setting or some but in truth, you can. You
remain acutely sensitive to the influences of your environment. And
it's so hard for us to understand that those kinds
the influence and impact of those kinds of framing devices
and settings. Language are framing devices, right, that is often
(52:13):
what causes us to suffer unnecessarily.
Speaker 1 (52:17):
Absolutely. There's a teacher named Marshall Rosenberg who wrote a
book which is not a great book, called Nonviolent Communication,
and he's a great teacher, but he's not a great writer,
and he passed recently unfortunately. But I would suggest people
if they're interested in Marshall Rosenberg, there is an audio
called speaking Piece that is better than the book, and
(52:42):
then watch videos of him on YouTube, just because the book.
I found the book hard to understand, but it's basically
all about this. The language of our culture is violent,
and it's not just violent towards each other, it's violent
towards ourselves. Every time we say I should have done that,
(53:03):
When you say I should, it's called a make wrong.
So by saying I should have done it means I
was wrong. This is the right way to do it
when at the time you were doing the best you could.
So when at the time you're doing the best you can,
to make yourself wrong isn't helpful. Yeah, And there's a
whole list of trigger words and ways of sharing a
(53:28):
vocabulary of feeling that helps us better communicate, and when
we communicate better, we tend to get along better. It's beautiful,
beautiful teaching.
Speaker 2 (53:38):
Yeah, a couple other smaller things. There's a couple of
bones in this book where I scribbled in the in
the margins who is Rick talking about? But there was
one that I wanted you to if you don't mind.
You talked about how you were working with an artist
on a song which was a love song, and you
were trying to solve the problem, and you finally solve
(54:00):
the problem by telling the artists don't think of a
romantic partner, think of it as a devotional to God.
Who is the song and who was the artist?
Speaker 1 (54:09):
Can you tell me? That was Johnny Cash? And the
song was the first time ever I saw your face.
Speaker 2 (54:15):
Oh my goodness. Oh that's so interesting. I know that
version so well. That's totally blowing my mind because that's
what it listens like. Yeah, oh my god, it's genius, Rick,
that is genius.
Speaker 1 (54:29):
And it was also Oh and I interviewed Roger mcgwinny
the other day and he talked about the first Bird
single was Mister Tambourine Man and out of the blue.
He said, yeah, when I sang it in the studio,
no one knows this, but I sang it as a
devotional to God. I said, but the lyrics aren't about that.
(54:50):
I was like, yeah, I know, but that's how I
was able to sing it and feel it, and it
blew my mind.
Speaker 2 (54:57):
Oh that's really interesting. This is why I missed liner
notes so much. I feel like this is the functional
but ray those two facts about the first time I
saw your face and mister Tamery Man, those both changed
radically change the way you hear those songs. Yes, the
Cash song makes way more sense. I've almost not understood
(55:20):
why I found that song so powerful. Yes, it really
in the context of all those ones, it's one of
the ones that it pops in this kind of strange
way and it's haunting in a way you don't And
now I understand why he's singing it with a completely
different intention than I imagined.
Speaker 1 (55:37):
Yeah, it's and if you listen to the original song,
it's unbelievable. Or when I say the original the popular version,
because the popular version is not the original either. You
know it was written by Iwan McCall and it's an
Irish folk song. And if you've ever heard the Irish
folk song version of it, it's almost like a yodel,
you know, it's very unlike all the versions that we're
(56:00):
familiar with.
Speaker 2 (56:01):
I realized when I read that as well, that I
have a version of that, which is years and years ago.
I sat down on an airplane next to a guy
who happened to be reading one of my books, and
I had this very very long conversation with him, and
he was I s don't know what he did.
Speaker 3 (56:16):
He opened.
Speaker 2 (56:18):
His job was to go around the country opening Trader Joe's.
He was coming from New York. They were opening a
store like in Brooklyn or something. And he'd just been
in Brooklyn for a month, lived in Atlanta, had two kids,
was about thirty, you know, eight years old, business school degree.
I think maybe not. Anyway, I had a lovely chat
with him, and I realized, oh, that's my reader. And
(56:40):
every time I'm stuck I think about him. Beautiful, it's
for him. He was beautiful and he said because he
only read. He told me. He said, I'm very very busy.
I teach Sunday school, like I'm a coach in my
kids little league, and I have this job which is
very demanding. I have time to read three books a year.
And I realized, oh, and he's chosen one of mine.
I'm one of his three, which is like phenomenally flattering thing.
(57:05):
And I realized, Oh, if I can keep being one
of his three books every year, then I I will succeed.
Beautiful and that beautiful about them all the time it
was like.
Speaker 1 (57:15):
A let's love great.
Speaker 2 (57:16):
Yeah really really but it is. It's insanely liberating to
know that's what it's for, right, Yes.
Speaker 1 (57:23):
On the fact that you randomly got assigned that seat
he happened to be reading your book on that particular flight. Yeah,
it could be it's all a coincidence. Yet it's what
you needed to hear to be able to keep doing
what you've been doing for all these years since then
maybe it's accidental. Who knows. That's that's that's the points,
(57:47):
Like these things happen all the time. Yeah, maybe they're
all accidents. It's fine, it doesn't matter if they are
or not. Yeah, but if they happen, and if you
can use that information like you do, we all win.
Speaker 2 (58:04):
Yeah, all to the better or one last thing, the
last the underlines in your book, Page three sixty five,
and I was like, wait, I didn't expect this. Rich
was hold on, let me just go there. Also, I
don't know why in retrospect I found this so surprising,
but you say, when I work with artists, we make
(58:26):
an agreement, we continue the process until reaching the point
where we are all happy with the work. All in
is italicized in that. And I was like, I realize,
and maybe this is because how badly I needed your book.
It never occurred to me that there would be art
on the level that you have been a part of
(58:48):
creating without dissent. I just I was just shocked by
I was like, wait, You've done all this for so
many years, with so many different people under an explicit
promise of unanimity. That blew my mind.
Speaker 1 (59:04):
They'll be descent along the way. Yeah, but that just
means we haven't gone are enough. It just means if
you like it and I don't, it's not good enough.
And if I like it and you don't, it's not
good enough. And if we can get to the point
where we both love it, it's probably better than the
one that one of us loved and the other didn't.
(59:25):
And if there are five people in a band, and
if three of them like it and two of them don't,
and you get to the point where all five of
them like it, chances are it's better and not.
Speaker 2 (59:37):
Just that you're done. Yes, yeah, No, it was just
like such a kind of I just thought of that.
That idea that what you're building in the end is
a kind of harmony among all the all of the voices,
is a beautiful way to end a very very beautiful book.
Speaker 1 (59:54):
There's there's a part in the book where we talk
about cooperation, which is exactly this working with other people. Historically,
I'll say most times that people work together, there's a
rivalry of ideas. Each person is arguing to win the
debate to have their idea be the one that's chosen.
(01:00:15):
And I'm saying that's not productive, and the best way
to do it is for everyone to demonstrate their ideas.
It's even better if they're demonstrated in a blind way
where we don't even know whose idea is what. We
just hear the ideas and then everybody picks and usually
it's pretty obvious, and it really does happen naturally, and
(01:00:38):
it's only through the ego of wanting it to be
my way. That they are these conflicts, but if everyone
is working together for it to be the best that
it can be, and if we respect each other enough
to know, if I think it's the best it can
be and you think it can be better, I'll go
on that ride and same the other way. Ultimately we
(01:01:02):
get to a beautiful place Rick. That is lovely.
Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
And thank you for writing such a beautiful book. Any
many many people enjoy it as much as I have.
Speaker 1 (01:01:11):
Thank you so much. I really appreciate you reading it.
It's fantastic. It makes me happy.
Speaker 4 (01:01:19):
I want to thank Rick on the Record for taking
the time to put his philosophies around creativity and a book.
The Creative Act, A Way of Being is out now.
Be sure to check it out. You can subscribe to
our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast.
We can find all of our new episodes. You can
follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is
(01:01:40):
produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrel, Ben Talliday,
and Eric Sandler. Our editor is Sophie Crane. Broken Record
is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this
show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin plus
Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content
an uninterrupted ad free listening for four ninety nine a month.
(01:02:02):
Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if
you like the show, please remember to share, rate, and
review us on your podcast app. I Think Music, Expectkenny Beats.
I'm Justin Richmond
Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
M HM.
Host
Malcolm Gladwell
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