“It really makes me feel good”: The one album that Rick Rubin will always return to
Every producer should be thinking about being one step ahead of everyone else. Most people are only as good as their last project, so it makes no sense for any producer to bask in the glory of their success stories when their audience is wondering what the next record is going to sound like. While Rick Rubin has always been about forward momentum, that’s not to say that he couldn’t get nostalgic when looking back on some of his previous watershed moments.
But part of the beauty behind Rubin’s production comes from the fact that he never truly stops. Some of his best moments have come from him working to get bands back down to their essential pieces, and that normally means making records that are either incredibly dry or having every musician embrace their most authentic self whenever they play.
And listening to the first hip-hop records he produced, there’s no doubt that the bands weren’t lacking in character. Whether that was Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill or Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back, every song is packed to the brim with charisma, whether that’s playing up the high school wise guy persona of the former or getting everyone to pay attention at the real problems going on in America at the expense of black people on the latter.
While Rubin was always looking to make songs that broke artists down to their raw essence, there was never such a problem when working with Tom Petty. The whole process behind heartland rock was to get things back down to their essence, and even if Petty did have some moments where synthesisers became a major part of his sound, there was never any doubt that he meant every word he said.
That didn’t mean there wasn’t still room for improvement. Full Moon Fever is justifiably a masterpiece, but listening to the album’s production style, it’s easy to see it being a bit too glossy nowadays, especially with some of the synth pads by Jeff Lynne timestamping everything a touch. Petty needed to get back to being a bandleader again, and listening to Wildflowers, Rubin helped him find the earnest songwriter who grew up back in Gainsville years before.
Even though Rubin has his hands in many different classic albums, there was something special about listening to this record every time he heard it, saying, “[Tom] really knows what he’s doing. He’s another person I learned a tremendous amount from being around. That was a really gratifying album. I rarely listen to anything that I’ve worked on, but that’s one that I listen to on occasion, and it really makes me feel good.”
And it’s not hard to see why it’s so entertaining. The songs might not have the same punch as Slayer’s Reign in Blood or The Cult’s Electric, but listening to every single track feels like a scene in some grand musical movie, whether that’s watching the title track unfold before your ears, the pure rock and roll of ‘Honey Bee’ or the orchestral finale at the end of ‘Wake Up Time.’
Although Petty himself would have to face emotional hell when working on the next album Echo, this feels like him rediscovering his joy of writing songs. The magic of songwriting was never lost on him, but after being the new kid in The Traveling Wilburys, this was the album that proved to any doubters why he deserved to be in the same company as George Harrison and Bob Dylan.
