The “mind-numbing” band Rick Rubin said perfected a “lost art”
Rick Rubin has listened to enough essential music for any other listener’s lifetime.
First coming onto the scene as one of the cornerstones of hip-hop with acts like Run-DMC and Public Enemy, Rubin has flexed his muscles in every genre he can get his hands on, from metal to classic rock to country music.
Unlike many other producers, Rubin’s skill is not in having a perfect ear or having a distinct range of musical instruments that he can draw on to help out the band or artist he is working with. Nope, Rubin’s unique skill is taste. Rubin is paid to have good taste, and he has had an extremely lucrative career because of it. Then again, only a few other artists can hold a candle to what Rubin saw in one rock icon.
Throughout most of his early career, Rubin had no tolerance for songs that didn’t have a specific energy. When looking through most of his catalogue, Rubin’s approach tends to be reasonably forceful, looking to capture the energy of a band or artist cutting loose, like on Licensed to Ill by The Beastie Boys.
While he wasn’t a connoisseur of any one type of music, Rubin’s attention to detail in making the most of aggression built to a peak on albums like Reign in Blood by Slayer, featuring the most forceful thrash metal ever committed to tape. Around the end of the 1980s, though, Rubin moved beyond heavy music because of one album.
Half a world away in California, Tom Petty was putting together the basis of his solo career outside of The Heartbreakers. Fresh off of making albums with The Traveling Wilburys, Petty teamed up with ELO frontman Jeff Lynne to mix a few songs for an album, which would become Full Moon Fever.
For Rubin, the album was love at first listen, recalling in Runnin’ Down a Dream: “I had been aware of Tom Petty’s music for a long time. The album that made me a fan was Full Moon Fever. I must have listened to that album a thousand times. For a little while, that was my album of choice”. Featuring the strongest songs Petty would commit to tape, Rubin wanted desperately to work with him, eventually getting a call to produce the album Wildflowers in 1994, which featured an array of what Petty could do musically with his fellow Heartbreakers.
When talking about them in Runnin’ Down a Dream, Rubin recalled how shellshocked he was at how consistent the band’s catalogue was, saying, “It’s like a lost art what they do. Great players and great band interaction. It shows when you see their concert, it’ll be two and a half hours and you can sing along to every song. It’s mind-numbing how many great songs they have”.
From the minute he picked up a guitar, Tom Petty had rock and roll coursing through his veins. Whether it was playing a take on The Byrds or quoting something out of his own heart, Petty was always born and bred on the tradition of writing classic songs for himself as much as he did for his audience. Though he came from the new wave of artists in the 1970s, a handful of his creations deserve to be among the ranks of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll songs of all time.
Even after working with Petty on numerous projects, though, Rubin isn’t sure where Petty’s ingenuity comes from, explaining, “I don’t think that if he were forcing it that it would happen. I think it just needs to be the right time when he’s sitting with his guitar. I remember he has come to me with a three-minute song—complex story and arrangement. And I’ll ask him where it comes from, and he’ll say he has no idea”.
Regardless of where it comes from, Rubin continued to work with Petty even outside the Heartbreakers, using most of the group as the backing band for Johnny Cash on his album Unchained. While Rubin might have a list of production credits that include the biggest records of the modern age, there’s still no one else who can touch the pedigree of what Petty was able to do with The Heartbreakers.
