Alison Stewart: Let's get this started with record producer, Rick Rubin.

[music] It's Tricky, song by Run-D.M.C

This speech is my recital, I think it's very vital

To rock (a rhyme), that's right (on time)

It's Tricky is the title, here we go...It's Tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that's right on time

It's Tricky... it's Tricky (Tricky) Tricky (Tricky)

It's Tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that's right on time

It's Tricky... Tr-tr-tr-tricky (Tricky) Trrrrrrrrrrricky

Alison Stewart: Chances are Rick Rubin had a hand in some of your favorite music, like that song we just heard from Run-D.M.C. He also produced Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers.

[music] Wildflowers, song by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

You belong among the wildflowers

You belong in a boat out at sea

Alison Stewart: Rick Rubin produced The Strokes, Adele, and, of course, Johnny Cash.

[music] Hurt, song by Johnny Cash

Everyone I know goes away

In the end

And you could have it all

My empire of dirt

I will let you down

Alison Stewart: He also produced Rage Against the Machine, LL Cool J. He's the person who guided Jay-Z on just how to say, I got 99 problems, and you know the rest. Rick Rubin was obviously always thinking big. He founded Def Jam records in his NYU dorm room. He moved across the country to settle in Malibu where he founded American Recordings and set up the famous Shangri-La Studios. On more than one occasion, an artist or a record company would say, "Get me Rick Rubin."

Now, Rubin is not some slick fast-talking scenester. He is very into meditation. He listens to classical music every day on the WQXR app, by the way. He has a long white beard and looks like your favorite yoga instructor. It's gotten to the point where Rubin and his creative process have a certain mystique. How does he get artists to dig deeper and express a side of themselves they hadn't yet reached? What are his secrets to success in the studio? Rick Rubin gives a little insight to those questions with his new book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being, an almost spiritual guide for those interested in creativity and a way of being that Rubin has mastered over his years. The book is out now.

Let's get into my interview with Rick Rubin who was in Costa Rica when I talked with him yesterday afternoon. We started with a bit about the book's cover design. It's a gray fabric with a big shiny black circle and a small shiny black dot in the center.

[theme music]

Alison Stewart: Rick, I love the cover of this book. I like the feel, the fabric, and it's a large circle with a dot in the center. Why is this the cover?

Rick Rubin: It's an image that speaks to me, has spoken to me over a period of time and it's an image that's open to interpretation. The reason I chose it is it's the alchemical symbol of the sun, but you don't need to know that to experience it for what it is. I've showed it to different people who've looked at it and said, "Oh, why is there a target on the cover of the book?" An eye doctor asked, "Why is there an eye on the cover of the book?" A computer programmer's like, "Oh, why is there a binary on the cover of the book?" I've had a handful of different interpretations that-- and it's funny because the people who interpret it don't interpret it as if it might be those things. They know exactly what it is. It's fascinating that we put our story onto things that we see.

Alison Stewart: Then when you turn the book over, it's just the circle without the dot in the middle.

Rick Rubin: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Is that so we can think about what we might want to put in that circle?

Rick Rubin: It could be that. It could be that. That started as an artistic accident and it was given to me, somebody printed one, it wasn't a book, it was just a pamphlet, and it had the symbol on the front and it had a circle on the back and it was a mistake. I saw it and I felt like, "Oh, this invites me to participate more than if it's a repeat." It's an invitation to step in. Again, happy accident and led to an interesting detail in the design of the book.

Alison Stewart: Have you had that happen in your career, a happy accident which led you down a completely different path than the one you planned?

Rick Rubin: It happens all the time, I would say on a daily basis, where we'll go in, we'll either go in completely open without any ideas or if we go in with an idea, very quickly we learn that there are other possibilities beyond what we had in mind. I'm very open to following the threads in whatever directions they take us. I think if we hold our version too tightly, it limits what it can be.

Alison Stewart: It's like the old saying if you hold a fist, nothing gets in your hand.

Rick Rubin: It's true.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Rick Rubin, the name of the book is The Creative Act: A Way of Being. How did actually sitting down and putting your thoughts about creativity to paper although I don't know if you hand-wrote it or you typed it? How did getting it down in this form, in the written word, affect how you think about creativity, if at all?

Rick Rubin: Yes, I learned a tremendous amount through the process. One of the things that I would say is my biggest takeaway for me was I came to learn through writing the book that creativity happens in different phases. The phases in the book are called the seed phase, the experimentation phase, the craft phase, and then the completion phase, or could be the editing phase depending on what you want to call it. I am not a deadline-oriented person. I do my best work with a sense of freedom, not feeling like it has to be done at a certain time because my goal is for it to be the best it could be, not the best it could be by that date.

I tend to have pretty open-ended projects over the course of my life, that's the way I've worked. When I came to realize when I broke down the steps of the process that, for the seed phase, that's wide open and that takes as long as it takes, and for the experimentation phase, that's wide open and it takes as long as it takes, but by the time you're in the craft phase, you have a good idea of the thing you're making. It's no longer wide open. The idea of setting a deadline, even for oneself, to get through the craft phase and the completion phase could actually be a help, not a hindrance.

Whereas up until the time I worked on the book, I would've only thought of it as a hindrance. I realized once the code is cracked, and once you know the thing you're making, if you are open-ended in the time that you have, you may never finish. You may spin around and spend a long time in the 98%, 99%, 100% range that no one other than you would ever notice the difference. That could be for years and I've done that so this is speaking from experience.

I've spent years working on things that were done years before, so it was helpful to me, and now in the projects I work on, I'm completely open until I really know what it is. Once I really know what it is, then I can say, "Okay, I'm going to try to finish it by this time and just for myself just to help. If I don't, I'm aware." I have a sense of-- Creatively I'm behind schedule because all of the magic part of the creation has already happened and now I'm only at the more physical process of getting it to stay together, whatever it is, and that's not a forever endeavor.

Alison Stewart: You write about the experimenter and the finisher. In their nature, many artists lean towards one of two char categories; experimenters and finishers. Experimenters are partial to dreaming and play, finding it more difficult to complete and release their work. Finishers are the mirror image, a backward reflection. They move quickly to the endpoint with immediate clarity. They're less interested in exploring the possibilities and alternatives that the experimentation and craft phases can suggest, each might find it helpful to borrow from the other.

Rick Rubin: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What can that experimenter borrow from the finisher and vice versa?

Rick Rubin: The example that I gave, I'm an experimenter and learning that once the code is cracked, I can finish it and I can give myself a deadline to finish it, and that could be a good thing, not a bad thing, that was my version. Then an example of an artist I've worked with who I would say was a finisher would be Ed Sheeran, who would come into the studio, he'd play a song once, it'd be great and in his mind, it's like, okay, what's next? He would never at the time that I got to work with him, stop and see is there more. Is there a way to do more? Is there a better version? Is there an alternative version?

Through our working together, it opened the possibility of trying new things, and many artists, again, there are no rules. For an artist to be able to play something and think it's good right off the bat, be good and think, okay, I'm done with my work, it's astounding and beautiful to see. I wish I had more of that. I have less of that. I have more of the, "Hmm, how about if we try it like this? How about if we try it like this?"

Alison Stewart: My guest is Rick Rubin. The name of his book is The Creative Act: A Way of Being. It is out now. The epigraph in this book is a quote from American Painter Robert Henri. It reads, "The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable." What are some ways that we can get into that state where one is receptive to creative impulses or thoughts?

Rick Rubin: Well, one of them is not holding our ideas too tightly, being open to letting the process dictate where we go. It's fine to have an idea to get started, but once you're started, if it finds a new direction, an unexpected direction, a direction opposite of what you set out to do, but has some momentum to it and you see something interesting happen, allow that to happen.

Another is to live in the world in an aware state where we're always looking for clues, we're always looking for inspiration everywhere. What's the thing that we notice that no one else notices? What's the thing that in the ordinary-- There's a great podcast called 99% Invisible, and the whole premise of it is there's this invisible world of information that none of us pay attention to but if you focus on it, it's really interesting and you learn cool stuff.

That's a great example of living with an awareness that most people let go by. That extends beyond just the symbols of where the gas lines are, which is something that you'd learn from 99% Invisible but out into the natural world. What are the things that speak to you and why? How does the light change over the course of the day? Where are the shadows at 10:00 AM versus 2:00 PM? How does the color change as light changes?

Being open to the subtle changes that are always going on around us and allowing our breath to be taken away because when you pay attention, you realize there's so much magnificence going on around us at all times, we're just blind to it because we're focused on the thing we're focused on and we're going to our next appointment, or we're looking at our phones, but if we're really taking in our surroundings, really listening to what our friends have to say to us or overhearing something in a coffee shop, if you're just paying attention to what's going on around you, there's so much interesting information out there that we're missing.

Alison Stewart: It also sends you down rabbit holes or lets you realize it's been around you the whole time. Let's say you suddenly get into crocheting and you realize you've been walking by a yarn store for 10 years but you never paid attention because you weren't clued into, wow, there's all these different colors of yarn in there. There's all these different textures of yarn. Who knew you get your yarn from a goat versus a whatever animal?

Rick Rubin: Yes, and it was always there and we walked by blindly. It's so funny how whatever it takes to get us in to check this thing out, if it's something that takes hold in us could completely change our lives, and for the better. Really find new passions, find new things to be excited about. There's so much to be excited about in this world.

Alison Stewart: I wonder if that's why people like to take pictures of sunsets. Have you noticed that? People love to take pictures of water and sunsets, and on the surface, it's just water and it's another sunset, but when you really start looking at them, they change you.

Rick Rubin: They're all different. It's different every day, and honestly, pictures don't do it justice. That's one of the things that you learn when you start really paying attention in nature, you get excited. It's like, "Okay, I'm going to capture this," and you take a picture of it and it's nowhere near the beauty or wonder captured in the photo as what you get to take in.

I used to be a photographer when I was young and I had a dark room and was really into photography. At some point, I decided to stop taking pictures because I felt like in trying to capture the moment, I was missing the moment, and I went many years without taking pictures. I probably take some now because just the nature of having the camera in my phone in my pocket so I may use it more to take notes of something that inspires me, but to get that energy of the sunset or the colors when there's a dramatic scene in nature, pictures do not do it justice.

The work of the artist is to experience that and then see what can I make that can give someone else that feeling. How can I participate in this active creation in the same way that there's this magnificent sunset and I can take a picture of it but it doesn't do it justice? What can I make that does justice to that feeling?

Alison Stewart: My guest is Rick Rubin. Of course, you know him as a record producer. He's also written a book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being. You make a point in the book that you should read, you should consume art, you should put yourself in situations where you can be on the receiving end of creativity, but you really have to be careful about what you let in as well.

Rick Rubin: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What advice would you give to someone on how to curate the incoming stimuli?

Rick Rubin: Okay. There's an infinite number of choices in what we consume, and we have a tiny, tiny bandwidth of what we can actually take in. If we're choosing, why would we read the news with the horrors of the day when we could read an illuminated work of beauty from 100 years ago that stood the test of time from 100 years ago till today, from 300 years ago to today? Why look at Instagram scrolling through pictures on Instagram when you can go to a museum and see beautiful works of art that have decades of appreciation?

Now, I'm not arguing against seeing new things as well. That's not the point, the point is to calibrate yourself with the great works of all time, the greatest films ever made. The cannon's always changing, it's not in stone what that is. If there's a director that you love, let's say you love Alfred Hitchcock and you learn that Alfred Hitchcock loved Louis Bunuel, watch Luis Bunuel movies for inspiration. You know what, find who your creative heroes were inspired by.

Alison Stewart: Except that one where they cut the eyeball, I can't watch that one.

Rick Rubin: Yes. That's a rough one. Un Chien Andalou, that's a rough one.

Alison Stewart: It's a rough one.

Rick Rubin: Brutal.

Alison Stewart: What have you read lately that you would put in this category of incoming information that has helped you feel creative?

Rick Rubin: Well, currently this morning I was reading Quentin Tarantino's new book, it's called Cinema Speculation, and it's just making me fall in love with movies again. I watched lots of old movies growing up and it seems like as our culture has moved forward, long-form films have fallen by the wayside in what I watch. I still watch documentaries, but I've almost never watch movies anymore. Listening to Quentin talk about the great movies of the '50s, '60s, '70s, some of which I've seen, many of which I haven't, it's reinvigorating me and exciting me about watching movies again in a way that I haven't felt in a while.

Alison Stewart: We'll be back with more of my conversation with Rick Rubin, including his thoughts on the creative power of New York City. That's after the break.

[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart. We're back with more of my interview with Rick Rubin. I spoke to him yesterday afternoon, he's in Costa Rica, about his new book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being. Let's listen to a clip of Rick reading the first page of his new book for the audio version of this project.

Rick Rubin: Nothing in this book is known to be true. It's a reflection on what I've noticed. Not facts so much as thoughts. Some ideas may resonate, and others may not. A few may awaken an inner knowing you forgot you had. Use what's helpful, let go of the rest. Each of these moments is an invitation to further inquiry, looking deeper, zooming out or in, opening possibilities for a new way of being.

Alison Stewart: That was Rick Rubin reading from his audiobook, and I asked Rick if he thought creativity could be taught.

Rick Rubin: Yes. Yes, and it can be let's say acquired because I don't know that you necessarily need to be taught it. Or maybe you could teach it to yourself. In some ways, the book is a manual on how to teach yourself how to do it. The reason I'm saying that is so much of what creativity's about is finding your way to do it. When we get taught something, we usually get taught someone else's way.

I'm wary of using the word taught for creativity. You can learn methods, but the real work is getting in touch with yourself and your own taste and what excites you and what moves you and what makes you lean forward, and what takes your breath away, and then finding ways to share that. But it's something that we all can do. It's something we all do, do.

Every single person, every single person we're talking to is a creative being. It's the nature of you can't be alive as a human being without being creative. It's part of the deal. We make creative decisions all day long, all day long. What the artist does is puts more into the choices being made and anyone can do that. It's just an example of the yarn store. It's like you have to notice it first, notice it, and then once you notice it, dive in.

Alison Stewart: We're thinking as we're talking about this, we don't have to think about creativity on the grand scale of I'm going to produce the biggest record act in the world. You could be creative in your kitchen tonight.

Rick Rubin: Absolutely.

Alison Stewart: You could be creative in the way, you get dressed this morning if you're a bus driver with the socks you wear.

Rick Rubin: Absolutely.

Alison Stewart: It can really be applied across the board I think.

Rick Rubin: It's for everyone. It's finding a better route home. It's all of those. We're doing it all the time, it's just doing it with more of a sense of not always going with the default and making considered choices.

Alison Stewart: Why is that important? Why is that important to us as a culture?

Rick Rubin: Well, it's not important but it's what makes it art. It's the difference. What makes it an artistic choice is, real-world example, I need a new sink. I can go to the hardware store, and the first sink that'll fit the hole that it goes into, I could say, "Okay, that one will fit. Let's get that," or I could look at every sink I could find anywhere in the world and decide, how do I really want to interact with a sink? What are my options? What could the sink be like? That's my today's example because right before I got on this with you, I was looking for a sink.

Many people would just say, oh, it just has to fit in this hole, that's it. The more creative decision or considered decision, again, we don't have to do it, but if we are privileged enough to do it, it does improve our quality of life.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Rick Rubin. The name of the book is The Creative Act: A Way of Being. You and I are about the same vintage. Do you think is it harder to be creative now because of distraction, or do all the tools available to us make it easier?

Rick Rubin: I think it's just, they're just differences, but I wouldn't say harder or easier. I think it's always hard and it's always easy. It is both of those things at all times. It changes, but I wouldn't say harder or easier.

Alison Stewart: What's been a change that you have embraced? Is it technology? People like to talk about social media in a bad way, but boy, there are some really creative people on Instagram doing some really creative things.

Rick Rubin: Absolutely. Absolutely. Hmm, let me think of what I've embraced lately that's creative. I suppose I spent most of my life making music and I've started working on other things, like the book, like I made this TV thing with Paul McCartney called McCartney 321. I don't know if you'd call it a documentary, it's different. It's a different thing but I'm interested in finding other ways of expressing my creative spirit because of fun. I like the idea of looking at different modes of creativity.

Alison Stewart: How do you help people get over doubt and doubts about their own creativity?

Rick Rubin: It depends on the case. I would start by saying I listen to their work closely and I give them very honest feedback. In giving honest feedback, the key to giving honest feedback is it's never about the person, it's always about the work. That we are, in fact, a team working together for this thing outside of either of us to be the best that it could be.

This thing outside of either of us may have originated with the maker of it, but now it's this thing, and now we're working together to say what's the best version of this thing, and we talk it through.

That's one way. Another is to lower the stakes, is to say what we're making isn't really important. Most people, most artists who make things think, I am making this is the most important work of my life. This is the thing that's going to define my entire life, and it makes it an unrealistic task. In reality, the things that we make are diary entries. They're true. They're true examples or reflections of where we are in that moment, that's all. It's only until you do the next diary entry tomorrow, that's all that the diary entry is.

I would say the way to know it's time to share a work of art with the world is when you're excited to share it with one friend. If you make something and you're excited enough to show it to your friend, chances are it's ready to be released to the world, and very few of us do that. Very few of us, at the time that we're showing it to our friends, it may be years away before we think it's ready to show to the world, but in reality, if you're willing to show it to your friend, that's the best barometer of it's ready.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Rick Rubin, we're talking about his new book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being. It's interesting 'cause I read the book and I've read it as a book, and now I want to go back and just read one entry a day. I feel like that's my next experience with this book because it's not only, it's spiritual. We've been talking about spirituality and all of the internal work. There's a lot of practical information in this book. There's really, it is a manual in many ways. Why was that important to you to really give people things that they can do?

Rick Rubin: The hope for the book was that somebody would read it and want to stop reading to make something, to get, to get inspired, to make something beautiful and that maybe you and I would get to see that beautiful thing that someone who read the book made. Its reason for existing is to inspire people to make things. It takes both the more philosophical side and the practical side to accomplish that task. That's why it has both sides.

I love your idea of reading a section a day. I love the idea of reading a section randomly a day instead of in order. I love the idea of opening it randomly and seeing what message is there for you. So many books that I read today, I read a lot of self-help books, many of them, 90% of the ones that I read seem like they have a thesis and the whole book is an argument arguing one thesis. Usually, within 30 pages, I have a pretty clear idea of what the book is.

This book is not like that. The goal was for you to be able to read any sentence in the book and get a useful piece of information, and chances are you could find something somewhere else in the book and get maybe even the exact opposite information that might be just as useful. It's one of the reasons it took so long. I had been working on the book for about eight years.

Alison Stewart: You know what would be great, to have some art show or installation of things people made after reading the book.

Rick Rubin: Wow. I love that.

Alison Stewart: That would be really cool.

Rick Rubin: I love that.

Alison Stewart: We'll be in touch. Before we let you go, obviously, we're in Soho, we're in New York City. This is where you got your start in college. What is something that is uniquely creative about New York City?

Rick Rubin: I think the volume of information is really good. You can see from the most obscure to the most mainstream, everything's available in New York. In terms of filling up your data stores, New York is a great place to do it. New York is a great place to be young and experience-- I had a very lucky upbringing in that I was brought up an hour outside of Manhattan on the beach so I got to experience nature from a young age.

I got to want to be in New York City and not be in New York City, and that was really a good thing because many of my friends who grew up in New York City had a more narrow view of the world than mine because in New York City, you know what's cool, and where I came from, nobody knew what was cool. People just liked what they liked so I got to see what regular people liked and then I got to see what the people in New York liked, and they were two different things and I got to experience both of those. I wasn't too bound by being in Manhattan but I was close enough to get all of the benefit; the museums, the theater, the classical radio station that I listened to with my Aunt Carol. Beautiful, beautiful experience.

My dream was to live in New York City and I went to school in New York City and then assumed I would live there my whole life. Then for whatever reason, after college, I ended up moving to California, which was an odd choice because I never liked California. I don't even really know how it happened. I didn't move there but I went there and I didn't leave. After five years, I realized, I guess I live here now.

Every time I've moved in my life, it has always been like that where I moved from in Los Angeles to Malibu, but I didn't really do that. I bought a house to go to on weekends, and then I went there the first weekend, then I never left. Then after several years, it's like, "I guess I live here now." It reveals itself. I'm not sure why I told you that story.

Alison Stewart: I know you have to go soon. How do you choose a project at this point in your career?

Rick Rubin: I would say it's like falling in love. You feel a connection to it. You can see a potential that you're excited to be part of and you can see that there's something here and I can help this thing be the best it could be. I like what this thing is. It doesn't even have to be something that I like. Sometimes I get called in where someone will come to me and they'll present something to me as, "We need help," and if I feel like I can be helpful, I want to be helpful. If someone chooses to come to me and I feel like I can be helpful, I trust that they're coming to me for the right reason.

Alison Stewart: The name of the book is The Creative Act: A Way of Being. It is by Rick Rubin. Rick, thank you so much for your time today.

Rick Rubin: My pleasure. Thank you so much for reading the book.

Alison Stewart: We just heard from Rick Rubin talk about creativity. Now, you can unlock yours and submit to All Of It's Public Radio Song Project. Excuse me. We're inviting anyone 18 or older to descend us an original recording of a song based on a work in the public domain. At the beginning of every year, certain creative works, songs, books, movies, enter the US public domain, meaning they can be freely shared, copied, adapted, and recorded by anyone, including you. You don't have to be a pro to submit. Your song could be a straightforward cover, an original twist on an old composition, even public-domain literature and poetry set to original music, that's fair game too.

Submit to us by February 13th and we'll pick at least three of our favorite tunes. If yours is one of them, you'll get a chance to talk about it on the air. For more information, go to wnyc.org/publicsongproject. That's wnyc.org/publicsongproject. Get creative, everybody. We look forward to hearing from you.

 

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