The song Rick Rubin wil never be tired of hearing: “It defies classification”
Rick Rubin has never been a snob when it comes to any music.
Though he may have started creating different hip-hop beats out of his dorm room at NYU, his impact on the music industry has extended far beyond the sounds of underground rap, working with such luminaries as System of a Down, Tom Petty, and Johnny Cash, all while bringing out the best of them whenever he works. While Rubin has never been satisfied staying in one creative lane, he always returns to one song as a core part of his musical identity.
Throughout Rubin’s musical upbringing, he is known for being rooted in the sounds of heavier music. Despite being turned on to The Beatles at an early age, Rubin would be drawn to the kind of music that moved something in his gut when he heard it, famously saying that he loved listening to Ramones when punk first began gaining traction.
By the time Rubin was coming up in New York City, a new musical revolution called hip-hop was rearing its head, with acts like Run-DMC and Beastie Boys being a part of the inaugural class on Rubin’s label, Def Jam. On the other hand, Rubin was known for working on more aggressive bands, famously working with thrash icons Slayer to create their metal masterpiece, Reign in Blood.
When talking about the music that inspired him, though, one classic rock staple shared Rubin’s taste for moving in different directions. As the 1970s were dawning, Jimmy Page made it his mission to take the genre into different sonic spaces with Led Zeppelin. Though the group may have started as a standard blues outfit, their albums showed the band constantly evolving their sound, working with different world music influences and experimenting with different instruments.
By the time the band had made their untitled fourth album, they were comfortable to reach for even stranger sonic directions on Houses of The Holy. Containing some of the most eclectic tracks of the band’s catalogue, the album would feature twists and turns into funk music and a flirtation with reggae on the track ‘D’yer Mak’er’.
Amid the uptempo material, Page also created a plaintive ballad for ‘The Rain Song’, stumbling across the signature guitar tuning before experimenting with chord voicings until he got a tune out. While the track may have worked just fine as a ballad, Rubin was more impressed by how many musical movements the piece goes through.
When speaking to Rolling Stone, Rubin said he could easily listen to the track for hours and never get bored with it, saying, “I don’t even know what kind of music this is. It defies classification. There’s such tasteful, beautiful detail in the guitar and a triumphant feel when the drums come in – it’s sad and moody and strong, all at the same time. I could listen to this song all day. That would be a good day.”
Considering where Rubin would go later, it’s no secret how those eclectic musical movements resonated with him, most likely inspiring him to branch out into genres of music that were more mellow than heavy, like Tom Petty and Johnny Cash. For as many songs may try to move something in one’s gut, ‘The Rain Song’ was a lesson in how to move something in the listener’s heart.
It might be the weirdest song the band ever wrote
There had been flirtations with tunings like open-D and open-C before, but you aren’t going to find this tuning in any other song in the band’s catalogue. Considering the weird shapes that Page made to get the chords, chances are he stumbled upon the tuning and stuck with it for long enough until this tune fell out, which led to many notes creating suspensions in the same way that Joni Mitchell’s greatest guitar songs did.
Even when a ballad is supposed to have an emotional release, the chords sound like they are crying out in pain half the time. And once everything breaks down towards the end of the tune, it’s among one of the darkest sections in their catalogue, almost sounding like the music that takes place in some thriller when a lunatic finally snaps and realises that he’s going to kill everyone in his path.
Like all of Zeppelin’s output, ‘The Rain Song’ was about doing something more than writing on commission from one of The Beatles. When listening to everyone play off each other, they are playing as if some spiritual force is driving it out of them.
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