“A place of dreams”: the band Rick Rubin considered the modern Beach Boys
Rick Rubin never claimed to want to make music that was considered safe. During his prime, he made his living out of producing the kind of music that could scare off anyone who wasn’t used to something heavier in their music, and even when he mellowed out, he took everything as seriously as he would if he were working with people like Slayer or Public Enemy. Although the idealism of the 1960s may have been a bit far off by the time Rubin started, he felt some people were carrying on those same values of the Woodstock generation.
Granted, a lot of the punk squats that Rubin grew up in would have gladly spat in the face of anyone still wearing wire-rimmed glasses and talking about peace and love. His stomping grounds were about waking people up from their usual rock and roll dreams, and by the time he got to work with Public Enemy, he knew he had the power to make something that could crush anything in the mainstream.
But Rubin’s flair for rock and roll never truly left. He was far more interested in what was going on in the world of hip-hop and metal, but there was always the occasional band that would stick out as mandatory listening for him. And since his two favourite styles were hip-hop and rock, it was only a matter of time before someone started combining the two.
Then again, that turned into an extremely mixed blessing. The entire rise of nu-metal bands in the late 1990s, like Limp Bizkit, seemed to be making a mockery of what both of their respective genres were supposed to stand for. It was far from the jock-jam levels of dopey that they were sporting, and while Red Hot Chili Peppers weren’t musically sophisticated by any means in their early days, they still had their own unique identity.
“My job was to break down boundaries.”
rick rubin
They had a rock edge, but plenty of their early tunes felt like funk songs played with a lot more energy. There were influences from Parliament Funkadelic and Sly and the Family Stone, but every now and again, a tune like ‘Knock Me Down’ saw them take on something far more heavy than usual. And while it took a long time for Rubin to see himself working in the band, he felt they had the kind of attitude that made California so beautiful.
Despite everyone having mixed feelings on how to take their music these days, Rubin felt that working with Red Hot Chili Peppers was like getting transported to a modern-day version of what Brian Wilson had sung about, saying, “My job was to break down boundaries. No band has to fit into a little box. I saw the Chili Peppers as being like the Beach Boys in some ways. They represented Los Angeles, a place of dreams.”
It’s hard to think that from the same people who gave the world ‘Give It Away’ and gave us such poetic lines like ‘ding-dang-dong-dong-ding-dang’ from ‘Around the World’, but their later career does deliver on those promises. A lot of what John Frusciante brought to the table had to do with melody, and compared to their heavier side, By the Way is one of the breeziest records they ever made, complete with beautiful choruses on every track.
Even though people don’t need to see Anthony Kiedis or Flea as a one-to-one copy of Mike Love and Brian Wilson, what they represent is a modern update on that sound. It used to be about writing odes to girls, cars, and surfing, but this is what happens when the music goes a bit deeper than the Santa Monica beach.
