Tales from the Studio: Inside the mind of Nick Raskulinecz
In the world of rock and roll, the role of the producer is what everyone forgets about.
The artists are up there playing to millions of people for a damn good reason, but when someone is up on that high a pedestal, there comes a point where they need someone to see the entire picture whenever they are making their records. And while Nick Raskulinecz got into the business to record his own bands, he has turned himself into one of the go-to producers for some of the biggest names in the world.
But when he started out, the main focus was trying to find the right sound for whatever his band needed. He was into the heaviest kinds of music that he could find, and his first awakening was hearing what was coming out of an album like Reign in Blood by Slayer. The thrash masterpiece is enough to knock anyone on their ass the first time they hear it, and by the time that the final thunderclap of ‘Raining Blood’ was finished, Raskulinecz already had a good idea of what he likes when listening to any album’s production.
Having done a lot of recording on his own, he was already drawn to the kind of energy that Rick Rubin was getting out of a lot of his favourite artists, telling Far Out, “It was noticing that Rick Rubin had produced a lot of records that I really liked the way they sounded. The Slayer record being one of them. I just love the energy and the brightness and the dynamics of that record. That was probably one of the first records where I paid attention to where the producer was.”
Trying to get the most out of his own band already gave him a template for what he wanted out of his own music, but he got the perfect kind of training working at Sound City Studios. The studio is practically instilled in music legend at this point, and even if Raskulinecz started off as a runner on a lot of sessions, there came a point where it was the norm to see someone like Tom Petty walk through the door every time he got to the front desk.
The insanity of making a cheeseburger for Carl Perkins wasn’t lost on him, but he wasn’t in the business of trying to geek out every single time that he looked at one of those projects. He was there because he had a job to do, and once he got underway working on records for Foo Fighters, he was there to prove that he had the ears to work on anything. Dave Grohl already had the basis of what any Foo Fighters record sounded like in his head, but getting to work on the drums on One by One was a completely different trip.
Any great producer knows to start with the drums first, and then they can add more shit onto everything, and hearing Taylor Hawkins bash out ‘All My Life’ is the kind of moment he would never forget, explaining, “Drummers love me because they know I’ve got the reputation of playing cooler shit than they’ve ever done. I love Taylor’s drum track in ‘All My Life’. Every time I hear that song to this day, I think about Taylor and recording that drum track. I can still feel it to this day.”
That’s half the reason why records like Diamond Eyes by Deftones sound the way they do as well. Raskulinecz is always looking for something new that he had never heard before, and for someone who specialises in drum tracks above everything else, he knew that he could definitely handle working with one of the greatest drummers of all time when he started working with Rush on their final albums.
But a lot of what Raskulinecz sees as his role is more about trying to get the best out of the artists, and that means pushing them a little bit more than they’re used to being pushed. Anyone else would have been too scared to say a word to Peart about what Rush’s drums should sound like, but Raskulinecz was never going to sit there like a deer in headlights watching Peart struggle over a part.
He knew what made Permanent Waves sound so awesome back in the day, and he could be just as critical whether he was working with Rush or working with bands like Evanescence, “[I can say] ‘This is great. This is good. That’s no good. This could be good. That verse needs to be rewritten. That sucks. We need a guitar solo. That drum solo stuck.’ Artists want that, believe it or not, and they want someone they can trust.”
It can be a little tricky working on some of those moments, but the records speak for themselves half the time. Peart, for example, didn’t really need to switch up his style too much from what he had already been doing, but when listening to Snakes and Arrows and especially Clockwork Angels, the band had gone back to their roots and reminded everyone of what they could do when they really went for it back in the day.
That’s half the reason why Raskulinecz felt that ‘Headlong Flight’ was one of his greatest success stories, telling Far Out, “Neil’s drum track on ‘Headlong Flight’ I think is pretty awesome. It’s one of my favourites that we ever did together. That encompasses everything he ever did in one drum track. Which was kind of the point of it.”
But being a producer like that is also a heavy burden to carry when working with some of the best musicians in the world. It was going to take a small miracle for Alice in Chains to come back after Layne Staley passed away, but by getting Raskulinecz into the studio to work on Black Gives Way to Blue, it was as if nothing had changed. William DuVall always was going to have a different timbre than Staley did, but the producer was the one responsible for making that record the best of both worlds.
Cantrell had clearly come into his own as the unofficial frontman of the group at that stage, and Raskulinecz was the one who could really get the raw smack out of the band, just like they did on Dirt. ‘Check My Brain’ and ‘All Secrets Known’ have some of the grittiest guitars that ever turned up on any Seattle album, grunge or otherwise, but there were a few stumbling blocks here and there as well.
Bringing in Elton John on the final track was one of the greatest left turns that anyone would have thought of, but Raskulinecz remembered being the one who had to correct the piano icon when his part wasn’t fitting with the track, saying, “The first time he played the show, it sounded like a Broadway showtune. And I had to say, ‘This is one of the saddest songs he’s ever written about his best friend dying. It needs to sound more sad.’ He played it again, and it was perfect. It was very stressful, though.”
And even as he continues to make records to this day, Raskulinecz is not looking to be the one who leaves the artist to their own devices. His style always revolves around getting the sound that he wants to hear out of his favourite bands, and after doing research on every single group that he’s worked on, he usually has a pretty good idea of what they need to sound like and also what he can bring out of them if he has the opportunity.
No band is the same, but that’s what makes his job such an adventure at the end of the day. He can crack the whip sometimes when he wants to, and there are more than a few times where he has to try and save a song before it goes in the wrong direction, but it’s all done in service to making something that lasts decades after he walks out of those studio doors every single day of production.
Because when all is said and done, he wants to make the kind of records that could have a real effect on someone, the same way that he was affected by listening to a record like Permanent Waves back in the day. That’s what makes the recording industry so magical, and Raskulinecz is the kind of person who can carry on the tradition of making some of the finest records that the rock world has ever seen, just like the other production giants before him.
