The one album Rick Rubin listened to at least “10,000 times”
Rick Rubin has never been considered a gifted musician. In fact, he has spent the majority of his career telling anyone who would listen that he had no particular musical talent. He had only one commodity: taste.
Throughout his time as a producer, Rubin had to sit with the artists to dissect which songs would speak to the masses, carefully going through every track to see what would make the song better. His ability to sit back, observe, and then offer help made him an invaluable source on so many hit records that his word is now heavier than most.
Even though Rubin doesn’t claim to know how to play one chord on any instrument, he was always entranced by the power of music. Across his career, he has shared his appreciation for countless artists and their LPs, but one feature-length album had him stop in his tracks.
When working as a producer, everyone always looks at the big picture. While nothing gets in the way of a good song, no matter the production value, the craft of building a record to create different magical moments is what Rubin specialises in, being able to pick out the magic that an artist has and push them to amplify them as much as possible.
Before he started working with legends like Johnny Cash, Rubin’s tastes were firmly rooted in heavier music. After becoming a fan of the emerging punk movement out of New York, Rubin quickly became engrained in the hip-hop world, responsible for kickstarting Def Jam Records out of his college dorm room.
Although Rubin would be instrumental in making albums by Beastie Boys and Run-DMC, he never lost his love for rock and roll, either. Aside from the samples he would steal from various AC/DC and Led Zeppelin records, Rubin would also become a major power player in the emerging thrash metal movement, creating the basis for Slayer’s blood-curdling masterpiece, Reign in Blood.
Right around the time Rubin found his voice, he became more open to music when listening to Tom Petty for the first time. While Rubin had been familiar with some of the heartland rocker’s hits from the days of AM radio, he would later devour most of his content when listening to Full Moon Fever for the first time.
Being the first proper Petty solo outing, his collaboration with Jeff Lynne resulted in a sonic brightness few records can duplicate, like the sunshine of ‘Free Fallin’ or the conviction of ‘I Won’t Back Down’. Even though Rubin was sucked in by the rock and roll bombast of ‘Runnin’ Down a Dream’, he started to slowly become obsessed with the rest of the record.
When talking about working with Petty, Rubin recalled that Full Moon Fever never left his stereo, saying in Somewhere You Feel Free, “I was never really a Tom Petty fan growing up. I was into more aggressive music like punk rock. It was just too melodic for me. Then Full Moon Fever came out. I bought it after hearing the third or fourth single.”
It was a seimsic album for all involved, and it was a huge moment for Petty. As The Heartbreakers approached another decade, with their esteem only gaining more and more driving force, Tom Petty cut them from his upcoming project. Instead, he unleashed his first solo project to prove that he alone was worth his weight in gold. Full Moon Fever is arguably one of the defining rock albums of the decade. The album made Petty a pop star.
It completely captivated Rubin, as he shared, “I listened to it, I would say, 10,000 times driving in my car. I had moved to Los Angeles from New York, and I would listen to that album over and over again”. Some of Rubin’s engineers would also recall his fixation with the album, including him miming the different guitar parts to the album cut ‘Yer So Bad’.
While Rubin eventually got a cold rejection when asked if he could produce Petty, guitarist Mike Campbell would eventually suggest working with him on the album Wildflowers. Taking the band back to their roots, Rubin captured performances unlike anything the band had ever made, so much so that Petty was taken aback by how good the songs were. Rubin could have stayed in the realm of heavy music until the end of time, but his collaboration with Petty led him to open doors to all kinds of music.
