The punk icons Rick Rubin called terrible: “[I] was never a fan”
Rick Rubin has always prided himself on having eclectic music taste. There aren’t many producers in the world right now that can go through some of the heaviest music imaginable and then suddenly transition into producing people like Tom Petty and Johnny Cash on a whim. That comes from knowing artists on a more intimate level, but even Rubin admitted that he never understood the appeal when he heard Misfits for the first time.
Then again, anyone listening to Misfits for the first time will need to go through a certain adjustment period. The band may have been indebted to the sounds of old-school rock and roll, but the facepaint and the macabre nature of the lyrics were practically Kiss if every band member actually took their gimmick seriously.
For a band that sang about nothing but demons and the plotlines of horror movies that don’t exist yet, they should be right up Rubin’s alley. This is the same man who helped bring thrash to the mainstream with Slayer’s album Reign in Blood, so he wasn’t exactly a prude when it came time to make heavy music.
As far as Rubin was concerned, he was only interested in what Glenn Danzig could do more than anything else, saying, “[I] was never a Misfits fan. I didn’t like them and I actually thought they were terrible. But I always knew that Glenn was a great singer and that he had great songwriting potential that hadn’t been fully realised”.
As much as all of Misfits’ material works great for its genre, it’s not that hard to see why it wouldn’t appeal to someone like Rubin. Given how Danzig used to write melodies on songs like ‘Teenagers from Mars’, the main hook of the song doesn’t feel like it’s all there, especially with sections that feel like they’re absent-mindedly shoved together half the time.
Also, even by punk standards, some of their first albums could have used a little bit of work in terms of production. While the ethos of punk is about working with what you have, a lot of their best material is getting heard under the worst circumstances half the time, sounding like it was recorded with a pillow over the mic half the time.
Once Danzig went solo, Rubin knew that he could turn him into the kind of rock song he was meant to be. Since his delivery is already in line with the sounds of crooners like Elvis Presley, Danzig was a reintroduction to the man that gave us ‘Hybrid Moments’, cutting out all of the muddy parts of the mix and putting his voice right in the centre of the mix on ‘Mother’.
Rubin was also responsible for the absolutely wild collaboration of putting Danzig and rock legend Roy Orbison in the same room together to write a song. Even though that combination definitely has the spirit of toothpaste and orange juice at first glance, the tune ‘Life Fades Away’ is actually surprisingly decent.
That’s because Rubin never saw any set genres when working with every one of the artists he produced. As far as music goes, there were just two kinds: good music and bad music, and Rubin preferred to turn any potential superstar into a rock god if he could.
