The musical figure with “no technical ability” that Neil Young called a “genius”
Not everybody needs to have a superhuman gift as a songwriter or instrumentalist like Neil Young to rise to the top of the music industry.
While playing flashy guitar solos is the sexiest role in a rock band, if every member were vying to compete for the same spot, the result would be a chaotic mess. In a group, there needs to be a delicate mix of talents that acutely complement each other to enhance the greater good, which is all that ultimately matters.
The role of the producer is also a crucial element of any recording process. Similarly to a director of a movie, they need to be across everything, and ensure that the whole operation is running smoothly from a musical perspective while also managing the egos of artists who think they know best.
Many musicians reach a point where they feel ready to cut out the middleman and take care of production duties themselves. Young arrived at this stage earlier than most, co-producing his debut album in 1968, but he’s also worked with enough stellar producers to appreciate what they bring to the table.
To this day, being in the studio with a talented mind never fails to ignite Young’s creativity. He also enjoys testing himself by getting his head together with new minds, who take his artistry to uncharted destinations, and test his limits in the studio.
Typically, when one thinks of a producer, they think of an artist who can play every instrument under the sun to a virtuoso level, but Rick Rubin proved that didn’t necessarily need to be the case. In 1997, Young first teamed up with the enigmatic figure, and although the tracks didn’t see the light of day, it was an experience that long stayed in the memory of the Canadian.
Rubin, who has worked with everybody from Eminem to Black Sabbath, is a one-of-a-kind. In the studio, he’s more of a spiritual guru than a musician, yet this unconventional method has been a gift to the world.
During an interview with Anderson Cooper, Rubin claimed to “have no technical ability” and said, “I know nothing about music”. When probed about his talent, the producer replied: “Well, I know what I like and what I don’t like. And I’m decisive about what I like and what I don’t like.”
Young doesn’t need to be surrounded by somebody in the studio who knows how to play a mightier guitar riff than him; he needs a sounding board. Therefore, a quarter of a century later after their first meeting, Young headed to Malibu to work once again with Rubin on the album World Record at Shangri-La. He later described the process as “so easy” due to his collaborator.
Rubin’s lack of technical ability didn’t matter – the energy transmitted from the producer was the precise ingredient he needed to create. Looking back on the process of making World Record alongside Rubin with The New Yorker, the singer-songwriter said: “We make chronicles of things. Or I do—I make chronicles of an experience. I play the songs, and we’re doing it live, and everything happens, and then we capture it like that. Rick is a genius. It’s so easy, because he loves music. You’re not gonna find a person who loves music more than Rick.”
Rubin has worked with the biggest names in the business for the last 30 years. While many would have become jaded, his love for music, in all forms, remains as fervent as ever. If you talk about an environmentalist trying to save the Earth, then he’s a music-mentalist,” Young mused. “That’s the way he looks at music. That’s a great thing. He’s just living it. He’s made some really cool records in other genres, but they’re all the same thing to him. It’s all music”.
They both treated the process through the same lens, and came at it with a relaxed approach, which Young believed benefitted him greatly, adding, ‘We don’t work hard—we work until we’ve done something, and when we feel good about how far we’ve gotten we leave and come back. He’s into the flow of things. That’s how he likes to live his life, no matter what he’s doing. We have a lot in common in that respect.”
Although Young and Rubin have opposite skill sets, if they both specialised in the same areas, there’d be a creative clash. Instead, the duo’s differences proved to be a recipe for success.
Rubin’s job is the dream vocation for millions of obsessive music fans who don’t possess the talent to stand on stage. However, in reality, it’s significantly more complicated than it sounds, and precisely why he remains an anomaly as a producer.
