The single greatest performance in rock and roll, according to Rick Rubin
Rick Rubin has always prided himself on being a fan before a producer. Although he may have production credits on some of the greatest albums of the past century, Rubin has always approached his job as a producer from a fan’s perspective, looking to capture the sounds that he wanted to hear when he worked with any given act. While Rubin is a child of the studio, he still thinks that one of the finest moments in rock and roll came to life on the live stage.
When first working with the upstarts at Def Jam, though, Rubin was far away from the sounds of rock. Working in the beginnings of hip-hop with Run-DMC and Beastie Boys, much of the flavouring put into the records came from samples, with artists like Led Zeppelin becoming a foundational part of early rap.
On the other hand, Rubin was also a significant fan of punk rock music, stemming from when he saw Ramones for the first time in New York. Compared to the soft sounds of singer-songwriters going on at the time, Rubin was looking for something that moved the listener in their gut before they even knew what the song was about.
For Rubin, the idea of performance has always been inseparable from truth. Long before studio trickery and endless overdubs became the norm, the great artists lived or died by what they could do in front of an audience. That immediacy, the sense that anything could fall apart or combust at any second, was something Rubin felt modern music was slowly losing, and it shaped the way he evaluated greatness. Technical perfection mattered far less than conviction, presence, and the ability to command a room without hiding behind production.
That belief also fed into Rubin’s fascination with performers who treated the stage like a battlefield. Whether it was punk’s confrontational minimalism or funk’s physical intensity, the artists he admired most understood that music was as much a physical act as it was an emotional one. They weren’t simply playing songs, they were testing their limits, dragging the audience along with them, and leaving nothing behind when the lights went down.
While the punk revolution was about bringing rock and roll back to its stone age, the real genesis of the wild man went back much further. Before Elvis Presley, James Brown was already known as one of the craziest performers ever to grace the stage. Known as one of the hardest working men in show business, Brown gave every ounce of his body for his performance, from the massive dance moves to getting so winded that a man would come onstage with a coat to put over him.
When looking back on the most incredible shows that he had ever seen, Rubin singled out Brown’s performances as one of the best examples of the genre at its finest, telling Rolling Stone, “I remember going to Minneapolis to visit Prince, and there was an endless loop of James Brown’s performance in the 1964 film The T.A.M.I. Show running. That may be the single greatest rock and roll performance ever captured on film.”
Even though other veterans like The Rolling Stones were on the same bill, Rubin said that no one else on the stage that day came close, explaining, “You have all the important rock stars of the day – and James Brown comes out and just destroys them. It’s unbelievable how much he outclasses everyone else in the film.”
Though Rubin never got the chance to work alongside Brown during his prime, he did get the next best thing when he began incorporating Brown’s music into the sounds of hip-hop. Although Brown may not have been as well-versed in hip-hop, the drum break in the middle of his classic hit ‘Funky Drummer’ would become the foundation for millions of early rap tunes, being used by everyone from Beastie Boys to Public Enemy.
Rubin would even inject some of that James Brown flair into his rock productions as well. When working with Red Hot Chili Peppers on Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Rubin paired everything down to make sure the audience would have something to connect to you, just like Brown’s early recordings. Even though Rubin has worked with artists who can play circles around everyone in their field, the most significant lesson Brown taught him was the power of groove.
