Joe Rogan Experience #1881 - Rick Rubin

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drum music) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. NANarrator0:00

      (drum music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music) Rick Rubin, ladies and gentlemen. It's a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance.

   4. RRRick Rubin0:17

      Same.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:17

      Yeah.

   6. RRRick Rubin0:17

      Happy to be here.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:18

      I'm happy to have you here, man.

   8. RRRick Rubin0:19

      Happy to be in this-

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:20

      I'm excited to talk to you.

   10. RRRick Rubin0:20

       ... beautiful place.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:21

       Thank you. And it's fun.

   12. RRRick Rubin0:23

       It's inspiring.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:23

       You see shooting stars across the ceiling, you're not tripping.

   14. RRRick Rubin0:25

       Okay.

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:25

       Every, like, 40 seconds or something.

   16. RRRick Rubin0:27

       Cool.

   17. JRJoe Rogan0:27

       A star shoots across the ceiling. So what's happening, man?

   18. RRRick Rubin0:31

       Just hanging.

   19. JRJoe Rogan0:32

       You wrote a book.

   20. RRRick Rubin0:32

       I wrote a book.

   21. JRJoe Rogan0:33

       I'm excited to read it, man.

   22. RRRick Rubin0:34

       Yeah, I'm excited for you to see it.

   23. JRJoe Rogan0:35

       You've had a wild life, brother.

   24. RRRick Rubin0:38

       It's, uh, continues to surprise me on a regular basis.

   25. JRJoe Rogan0:42

       Does it?

   26. RRRick Rubin0:43

       Every time. It, it, it's like one thing after another. So much of it's unintentional. I would say all of it's, all of it's unintentional.

   27. JRJoe Rogan0:50

       How so?

   28. RRRick Rubin0:53

       (sighs) From the beginning, I never thought any of the things that I'm doing were possible or, uh, realistic. And I just did things out of the love of them, thinking I would have real jobs and, you know, like, the thing that, that my passion would be my hobby and I'd have a job to support my hobby.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:17

       Yeah.

   30. RRRick Rubin1:18

       And it just magically turned out different than that without me knowing it was possible.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Ah. …

   1. RRRick Rubin15:00

      And the beat, you know, the intro, pst, da, pa-pum-pum-da, was already a known breakbeat in the hip-hop world.

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:10

      Ah.

   3. RRRick Rubin15:10

      They, they had never heard... Uh, th- in hip-hop club, no one had heard of Aerosmith. No one had heard of, um, Walk This Way, but they knew the Toys in the Attic break, which was just that beat, not the song.

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:24

      Wow.

   5. RRRick Rubin15:25

      Yeah. Let's listen to that.

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:26

      Yeah.

   7. RRRick Rubin15:26

      Could we play the intro, the intro to Aerosmith's Walk This Way?

   8. JRJoe Rogan15:31

      I remember when you did that. I remember that being a very polarizing song.

   9. RRRick Rubin15:37

      Absolutely.

   10. JRJoe Rogan15:37

       Because people didn't know what to think. It's like some people thought you were ruining Walk This Way by adding RUN-DMC.

   11. RRRick Rubin15:44

       Mm-hmm.

   12. JRJoe Rogan15:44

       And some people were like, "Why do you have RUN-DMC with rock and roll? It doesn't make any sense."

   13. RRRick Rubin15:49

       Mm-hmm. (instrumental music plays) Stop. Just that long. (laughs)

   14. JRJoe Rogan15:56

       That's it.

   15. RRRick Rubin15:57

       That, that piece is the Toys in the Attic break, 'cause it says Toys in the Attic on the record.

   16. JRJoe Rogan16:01

       Yeah. (instrumental music plays)

   17. RRRick Rubin16:04

       Just that.

   18. JRJoe Rogan16:05

       Wow.

   19. RRRick Rubin16:05

       So that would, that was... And so if you went to a hip-hop club, you might hear that.

   20. JRJoe Rogan16:10

       Wow.

   21. RRRick Rubin16:11

       But I grew up on Aerosmith, and I grew up on AC/DC, and I grew up on Ted Nugent. You know, I grew up on rock and roll music. And, um, when I saw this disconnect, this was the way to, like, bridge the gap.

   22. JRJoe Rogan16:27

       Bridge the gap, yeah.

   23. RRRick Rubin16:27

       Just to, just to explain what was happening.

   24. JRJoe Rogan16:30

       Wow. How was it received in the music business when you did that?

   25. RRRick Rubin16:34

       Um, I guess the first thing was radio. Like, it... I remember, uh, I guess it was WBCN in Boston-

   26. JRJoe Rogan16:41

       Yeah.

   27. RRRick Rubin16:42

       ... played it once.

   28. JRJoe Rogan16:43

       Marc Parenteau?

   29. RRRick Rubin16:44

       I can't remember if it was Marc Parenteau, or who, who else was there? Who were the other-

   30. JRJoe Rogan16:47

       Um, Charles LaCordiara.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   That's it. It's all,…

   1. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      or just like what resonates with you.

   2. RRRick Rubin30:02

      That's it. It's all, all, everything I do has to, is just personal taste, and it's what the book's about is like, really for people to trust, artists to trust in themselves, make something that speaks to themselves and hopefully someone else will like it. But you can't second guess your own taste for what someone else is gonna like. Won't be good.

   3. JRJoe Rogan30:21

      Right.

   4. RRRick Rubin30:22

      You know, we're not s- we're not smart enough to know what someone else is gonna like. You know, to make something, well, I don't really like it, but I think this group of people like it. It's a, it's a bad way to play the game of music or art. You have to-... do what's personal to you, take it as far as you could go, really push the boundaries. And, um, people, people will, will resonate with it if they're supposed to resonate with it, but you can't get there the other way, you know?

   5. JRJoe Rogan30:55

      No.

   6. RRRick Rubin30:55

      The other way is a dead-end path.

   7. JRJoe Rogan30:57

      When artists are not successful yet, though, it's very difficult to f- for them to find who they are, because they're always just trying to figure out what's the path to success, which success seems to be the carrot at the end of the stick. It's like there's always this something, you know, these guys have all this money. These guys have all this c- these cars and these big houses. How do I get that? How do I get success? How do I fill up an arena? How do I, how do I become successful?

   8. RRRick Rubin31:23

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan31:23

      And so there's this temptation towards imitation.

   10. RRRick Rubin31:26

       Yeah. It's a dan- it's a dangerous path, and if that's your g- if you're getting into this business for that, for that outcome, if that's the reason you're doing it, chances are it's not gonna work out. I don't think that-

   11. JRJoe Rogan31:38

       Most of the time.

   12. RRRick Rubin31:38

       Yeah, that's not what makes it... What makes it great is the personal.

   13. JRJoe Rogan31:44

       Yeah.

   14. RRRick Rubin31:44

       With all of its imperfections, with all of its quirkiness, that's what makes it great. The, you know, you, how you see the world that's different from how everyone else sees the world, that's why you're an artist. That's your purpose in sharing your work with the world.

   15. JRJoe Rogan32:02

       And that seems to be th- the case with everything, with literature-

   16. RRRick Rubin32:06

       Everything.

   17. JRJoe Rogan32:06

       ... it's definitely the case with standup comedy.

   18. RRRick Rubin32:08

       Everything.

   19. JRJoe Rogan32:08

       We experience that in standup comedy, where there's these kind of derivative voices, where they're kinda like finding what they think other people wanna hear, and they start saying it because they, they've heard other people say similar things-

   20. RRRick Rubin32:21

       Mm-hmm.

   21. JRJoe Rogan32:21

       ... that are now successful.

   22. RRRick Rubin32:23

       And even if they, uh, and even if they have some sort of a short-term success doing that, it's not revolutionary. It doesn't change the world. It doesn't last.

   23. JRJoe Rogan32:36

       Right.

   24. RRRick Rubin32:36

       You know, it's a, it can be a momentary thing, but it's never the thing... The th- it's the people who you first see and you might not like that you come to like, because you don't understand them at first, those are the ones that change the world.

   25. JRJoe Rogan32:51

       Yeah.

   26. RRRick Rubin32:51

       Those are the ones that you, you know, you dedicate your fandom to for life.

   27. JRJoe Rogan32:56

       Yeah. I remember when Cypress Hill came out.

   28. RRRick Rubin32:58

       Yeah.

   29. JRJoe Rogan32:59

       I f- at first, I was like, "Man, I don't know about this." You know, that, that whine, that nasally voice-

   30. RRRick Rubin33:05

       Yeah.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Wow. …

   1. RRRick Rubin45:00

      phase after being a little kid of listening to music, like, uh, British Invasion, Beatles, Monkees, that kind of music when I was a little kid. Then I stopped listening to music and only listened to comedy for years, until junior high school when I started listening to hard rock.

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:17

      Wow.

   3. RRRick Rubin45:18

      But I remember seeing Sam and being blown away, and I was already doing music at this time and had a label. And I went to find him, and then I found out he already had a record out, and I was so bummed. Well, he didn't have a record out, but he was signed to Warner Brothers, and I was bummed. And then, and then I saw Dice. And Dice blew me away. A- and, um, I saw him ... First I saw him on the Rodney HBO, you know, young comedians, whatever it was called.

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:49

      Yeah, that's what it was.

   5. RRRick Rubin45:50

      I don't know what it's called. And, um, and it was just, I don't know, he did 10 minutes or something.

   6. JRJoe Rogan45:55

      Yeah.

   7. RRRick Rubin45:55

      And it was insane.

   8. JRJoe Rogan45:57

      Amazing.

   9. RRRick Rubin45:57

      It was per-

   10. JRJoe Rogan45:58

       Yeah.

   11. RRRick Rubin45:58

       It was a perfect Dice set.

   12. JRJoe Rogan46:00

       Yeah.

   13. RRRick Rubin46:00

       And it was another one of those, like, when I first saw Sam, it's like, he's not ... It's a very different character than Sam, but it's as hard-

   14. JRJoe Rogan46:09

       Yeah.

   15. RRRick Rubin46:09

       ... and as extreme, and I just loved it. And then c- came to LA, and I saw that he was playing at, um ... What's the name of the club, the comedy club next to Greenblatt's?

   16. JRJoe Rogan46:21

       Laugh Factory.

   17. RRRick Rubin46:22

       Uh, he was playing at the Laugh Factory. I watched him at the Laugh Factory. It was incredible. After he got off the stage, he walked to Greenblatt's. I followed him to Greenblatt's, and we spoke as he w- was ordering at Greenblatt's, and started making records together.

   18. JRJoe Rogan46:35

       Wow. You guys did The Day the Laughter Died, which is one of my all-time fav- look at that.

   19. RRRick Rubin46:41

       Yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan46:41

       The Day the Laughter Died cassette one, which is one of my all-time favorite comedy CDs, specials, whatever it is, uh, recordings, because it was so crazy that he did that.

   21. RRRick Rubin46:50

       It's crazy.

   22. JRJoe Rogan46:51

       He's in the peak of his stardom-

   23. RRRick Rubin46:53

       Yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan46:53

       ... for people who don't know the story. I mean, this guy's selling out Nassau Coliseum, and nobody had ever done that as a comic.

   25. RRRick Rubin46:58

       Yeah. He sold out Madison Square Garden two nights in a row, the d- the week we recorded The Day the Laughter Died.

   26. JRJoe Rogan47:05

       (laughs)

   27. RRRick Rubin47:05

       Just to give a p- context of what was happening.

   28. JRJoe Rogan47:09

       So, uh, for people who don't know, when you see Dice perform in HBO and you see his specials, it's polished material, it's sharp punchlines, he's killing, he's, "Oh! Oh! What's in the bowl, bitch?" It's powerful shit. So then he goes to Dangerfield's with basically no material.

   29. RRRick Rubin47:32

       Yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan47:33

       And just fucks around. And just fucks around for two hours.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   Yeah. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:00:00

      uh, all the, the YouTube people would love him. You know? Or a lot of them would. It would ... He would find his voice. He'd find his audience. And I, I don't think that Arsenio Hall moment would happen today. He'd probably push back against it. But back then, the only reviews you heard of him were negative.

   2. RRRick Rubin1:00:16

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:00:16

      It was all negative.

   4. RRRick Rubin1:00:17

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:00:18

      And you had to like be a quiet Dice fan. Like, you had to like almost not tell people you were a Dice fan. I equate it to like how it was to be a KISS fan-

   6. RRRick Rubin1:00:28

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:00:28

      ... at one point in time.

   8. RRRick Rubin1:00:29

      Or hip-hop. Hip-hop music was the same.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:00:31

      Yeah.

   10. RRRick Rubin1:00:31

       Hip-hop was like villainous music.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:00:32

       Mm-hmm.

   12. RRRick Rubin1:00:33

       Hip-hop was like the original, uh ... In the mid '80s, hip-hop was the, uh, first populist uprising in New York City.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:00:42

       Mm.

   14. RRRick Rubin1:00:43

       You know? It was like taking music out of the conservatory and bringing it back to the street.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:00:47

       Yeah.

   16. RRRick Rubin1:00:48

       And the powers that be did not like that and wanted to cancel it, and tried to cancel it. That's when the whole PMRC thing happened, and ...

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:00:55

       Mm-hmm.

   18. RRRick Rubin1:00:56

       Th- they were trying to ban rap music.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:00:58

       Yeah. It was Al Gore's wife. Remember Tipper Gore?

   20. RRRick Rubin1:01:02

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:01:02

       Al Gore's wife, Tipper Gore, at the time was the one who was like leading this fight against these lyrics. Because to a lot of these, like, you know, house moms and shit, like they would, they would hear that, those lyrics coming out of their son's bedroom and they're like, "What the fuck is this?"

   22. RRRick Rubin1:01:17

       Yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:01:17

       Like, "What is going on?"

   24. RRRick Rubin1:01:18

       But also, they wanted to-... negate Prince. They wanted to cancel-

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:01:22

       Yeah.

   26. RRRick Rubin1:01:22

       ... Madonna. They wanted to cancel a lot of stuff. It's been going on for a long time, this, this, um, this pushing back against art that you don't understand, you know?

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:01:35

       Yeah.

   28. RRRick Rubin1:01:35

       That you're too old to understand.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:01:36

       Well, it's not, it was just, you know, the non-accepting of other people's interests or other people's, what, what other people enjoy. You know? There's, there's always going, like, there's a lot of stuff that people really love that I don't get. It just, I don't have the Grateful Dead gene.

   30. RRRick Rubin1:01:53

       Mm-hmm.
6. 1:15:00 – 1:21:46

   Yeah. …

   1. RRRick Rubin1:15:00

      or rappers to hear something and immediately start, like automatic writing, where they'll just start saying nonsense words.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:15:08

      Yeah.

   3. RRRick Rubin1:15:08

      The first thing that comes to mind over the, over the beat. Where you can feel a shape of what it can be.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:15:16

      Yeah.

   5. RRRick Rubin1:15:16

      And like, um, we just made two new albums with, uh, the Chili Peppers. The w- the second one has just came, just coming out now I think, but w- first one came out like six months ago, but two double albums. And the way Anthony works is he'll hear the music and he'll sing along, but he'll sing along with a, an idea of a melody, but he doesn't yet have words, and just sing nonsense words, and just sing along making up nonsense words, automatically, real-time, and then listens back and says, "Oh, okay. This phrase in this spot sounds good, and this phrase in this spot sounds good. What else goes with that?" And then it's like a puzzle where you fill in the rest. It's like you d- you don't necessarily have an idea of what the song's gonna be about, or you might not even know what the song's about until you finish. You might not even know after the song's finished what it's about. You might not know for years what it's about, because it's like a dream, you know? It comes from the subconscious.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:16:10

      Yeah. Yeah.

   7. RRRick Rubin1:16:12

      It's a great way to work. It's a great way to write, to, um, just like participate with what's going on in a free way, and then listen back to what you did, and look for clues, look for where, where is the connective tissue here? Are there any things here that, that sound like they belong there?

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:16:32

      Dan Auerbach from The, uh, Black Keys.

   9. RRRick Rubin1:16:34

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:16:35

       He does that. He says he gets really high.

   11. RRRick Rubin1:16:38

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:16:38

       And he just start, he makes up words.

   13. RRRick Rubin1:16:40

       Yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:16:40

       Like, he'll, he'll like make up words to the music, just, and just try to find how it works. And he's not, you know, he's just trying to figure it out as he's doing it. And there's like, there's parallels to comedy, I think, because in comedy, you can write things, and I do, I write a lot of things, but sometimes when you're on stage, there's like a m- a, there's a path that just like opens up and you know that this is the way to do it. It's different than the way you wrote it.

   15. RRRick Rubin1:17:09

       Yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:17:10

       Because the audience is there, and you feel it-

   17. RRRick Rubin1:17:12

       Yeah.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:17:12

       ... 'cause you, you only feel it when you're performing. But with comedy, the, the thing that's so different is the only way we ever know it's any good, the only way we really can create... You can't create in a va- I mean, maybe someone can. I heard Cosby used to do that. Cosby used to just write it all out, and then he would go on stage, or have it out and then not even need to rehearse it, not need to work it out in front of clubs. He would just do it in front of giant audiences, and it would be done. But most people, they're creating with the audience. And until you have an audience, you don't have any idea how the bit really comes together. There might be a setup that you thought was just a setup, and it gets the biggest laugh of the bit, and you're like, "What? What, I didn't expect that."

   19. RRRick Rubin1:17:58

       Does it change from night to night as well?

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:17:59

       100%. It changes from night to night. Ch- changes depending upon your opening act. Changes depending upon the mood of the club. Tuesdays are different than Wednesdays. Everything's different, you know? It's like, it's one of the reasons why it's important to do, I always call it cross-training. I'm like, you can't just do arenas. You gotta do little clubs. You gotta do theaters. You gotta do everything. You gotta do clubs where they don't expect you to go up. You gotta do clubs where they know you're gonna work on new material. You gotta do clubs where this is a fucking recording. This is a big one, you know? Ready, polished, set, go. It's all different, and it all comes alive while you're performing, which I guess parallels with music, but the benefit of music is you can create it in the studio. You could put it together in the st- and you can make fucking incredible music almost in a vacuum because you're, you don't need the audience. It's, it's you. You're, it's you and the people you're working with, and you put it together. But we need people. It's like we, we have to ... They, they, they are an integral part of the process. The audience has to be there.

   21. RRRick Rubin1:19:07

       How does it work for television? If you're doing it like, if there's n- if you're doing comedy for television and there's no audience, how does that work?

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:19:14

       In what way? What, what form?

   23. RRRick Rubin1:19:16

       Like...

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:19:16

       (clears throat) Comedy for television?

   25. RRRick Rubin1:19:19

       It's a s- a sitcom or whatever it is-

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:19:21

       Well-

   27. RRRick Rubin1:19:21

       ... where w- where there's a joke-

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:19:23

       Yeah.

   29. RRRick Rubin1:19:23

       ... and there's no response coming back, or in a movie-

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:19:28

       Yeah.

Episode duration: 3:02:19