Sirona and Michael: Johnny Cash recently said that one of the great things about working with Rick Rubin is that Rick took the time to get to the heart of who I am as a musician. What approach do you use in getting to the essence or heart of someone like Johnny Cash?

Rick Rubin: With any artist it's kind of search where you spend a lot time with the artist and listen to their songs, and listen what they say, and who they are. Sometimes people don't write songs that necessarily represent who they are. Certain artists have historically been able to that, and sometimes they get off the track. It happens a lot with more grown up artists who have made a lot records over a period. Their influences change as they grow up. Things they listen to change. They often sight of their musical roots and what makes them what they are.

Rick Rubin: Well, we just try to work together, and go through the experimentation of trying a lot of different songs, and helping the artist find their voice.

Rick Rubin: I can't say I intended to be any certain way. I don't exactly know what other producers do, but I know a lot of what I do is really experimentation, and there's no pressure ever to actually work.

Rick Rubin: Yeah, we're just experimenting and having fun, and seeing what comes out. We do this over a long enough period of time where we have enough things to choose from to really see what the best. We don't say, "go write ten songs, and that'll be your album." It is more of a search.

Rick Rubin: It happens often, and I do things like meditating a lot to stay open, and really listen. I know in the production process often, I feel like I don't really know what I'm saying, but when I hear it, it sounds right. We were working on a song a few weeks ago for the Johnny Cash album, and there seemed to be something missing. I said to one of the musicians, "Why don't we try a twelve string guitar through the Leslie for this part." Now, I don't know what that sounds like. I've never heard that before. But something in me said that's what it's supposed to be, and we tried it and it sounded really good. It doesn't always work that way.

Rick Rubin: Yes, I understand it fairly well--what it is and how it works because that's really my main job as a producer. In terms of getting a performance from an artist, if they play a song fifty times, it is waiting until that one to happen. You can have the same person sing the same song over and over again, but one time it's magic, and everything is in it. All the emotion is behind it, and you don't why that happens, but you just know it. And it happens with pretty much every artist I work with. You play along and wait, while fishing for those moments of when that magic happens. And we look at each other like, there it is. It depends on the song, but sometimes because of the nature of the song you want to hear more of the melody than you do the person singing it. In that case, we double the vocals accordingly. It seems when you double vocals it takes some of the personality out of it, but injects more melody into the song. So sometimes, depending on the song, where you really want to get the melody across, but for whatever reason you're willing to let go of the personality, that's something we do. Some songs aren't supposed to be that personal.

Rick Rubin: It's odd, I really try to be personal about the stuff I do, and it is really an intuitive process. I can't say following any plan other that I'm doing things that touch me personally, and that I feel, and am moved by. I've been lucky in my career that things that have moved me have luckily moved other people too. But it hasn't been any planning or trying to imagine what someone else is going to like, or what's going to be successful. It's really natural and pure. I try to be as pure as I can and just feel what I feel, and like what I like, and be true to that.

Rick Rubin: That's true. Often I have historically made a lot of different kinds of records for exactly that reason. Almost anytime I've had success doing a particular kind of music, I end doing something else next, as opposed to staying with what I've had success in. I've had complaints from people I've worked with, who say, "Why change? You had so much success doing Rap records. Why aren't you making Rap records?" I'm not feeling Rap records where at the time I was doing them it was really a different time. It was an exciting movement for me at that time. It was a new exciting community that I was a part of. I don't feel Rap now. I still like it, but I don't have the same relationship to it that I did before. And the same is true as time goes on, with always trying to do new things, and really trying not to get stuck with, "Well, you do this." I 've never had that tag. I've broken through enough times of what I'm supposed to do that people now luckily let me do what I want to do, and leave me alone.

Rick Rubin: I just have always been in touch with that part of myself, and I really know what I like. My goal is to keep finding things that move me.

Rick Rubin: I think it's always something I had.

Rick Rubin: I think it goes together, and I often see trends happen where I see someone write a song, and while we're working on it, someone on the other side of the country or world, writes a very similar song. At one time I would of thought someone's stealing our idea. But I see more and more as time goes on that ideas just exist. The best artists seem to be the ones who can tap into these ideas that are of the moment. There's a sphere of influence almost that great artists can just tap into. For example, in working with Tom Petty, he tells me that sometimes he'll be sitting there with his guitar, and a whole song will just come out; beginning to end, lyrics, the whole thing. Tom will just sit down and play a song that he's never heard before, thought about, or written. Three minutes later, there's a whole song, with all the lyrics, and about something he doesn't know anything about.

Rick Rubin: Yes, he's tapping in. I also think that "tapping in" is one of the reasons we see so many artists taking drugs. I think some of them really don't understand this tapping in, and are getting all this information that they don't know how to process, and it scares them. I think they do things to try to blot it out. In reality they should be thankful that they're open to it, and really learn how to channel it and use it.

Rick Rubin: Yeah. Did you read the book "Second Sight" by Judith Orloff? It's really interesting. It's about this woman who's a psychotherapist and she's a psychic as well. Growing up psychic she was really afraid of her abilities. She didn't know what this power that she had was, and really beat herself up about it. She felt different and uncomfortable, and then went to medical school, and got herself together, but still really put down the whole psychic side of her life. She built up this straight doctor side of her life, and then in her practice an incidence occurred where something she felt psychically really went against her medical training, and she went with her medical training. Her patient tried to commit suicide, which was the something that she felt was going to happen, but because of everything she had learned in the Western Way told her this wasn't going to happen. So the patient does try to commit suicide, and the woman rethinks her whole relationship with the psychic, and decides to develop it and make it part of her practice, and it really works.

Rick Rubin: I read that, and I see it more and more. The more artists I work with, the more I see whether they understand it like Donovan, who really understands his spirituality, or Johnny Cash, who's a very religious person. There some artists who don't know where it comes from, but it comes.

Rick Rubin: I had a dream two nights ago, and someone sang me a song in the dream. It's not a song I'd ever heard before, and it was great. And had I done more practice in being able to retrieve what happens in my dreams, I would have a really good song now. I remember how beautiful the song was. I have been reading some things about dreams, and using that information, but unfortunately I'm not skilled to the point where I could remember a whole song that happened in my dreams, or take it with me when I woke up.

Things I've read talk about not moving when you first wake up, to not move at all, if you want to go back into the dream because when you move your head, the chemicals shift in your head, and you kind of lose it. Or the converse, if you're having a dream you're not liking, and you want to wake up and go back to sleep. If you're having a nightmare let's say, if shake your head around and turn over to the other side, the chances of that dream continuing are not very good.

Rick Rubin: I remember when I was waking up. I remembered a little piece of the song, and tried to remember it the point where--I'm really going to remember this. I know what this is, but within ten minutes it was gone.

Rick Rubin: I often get artists those little cassette recorders that you can carry around with you--the little tiny ones. I tell them to keep the recorder in the car and in case something comes to mind because ideas do go away quickly.

Rick Rubin: That's true. I'm really open to a lot of different kinds of music, and I like the challenge of having new experiences in the studio.

Rick Rubin: I would completely agree. I started into minimalist. When I started producing that was my thing. My first record actually says instead of produced by Rick Rubin, it says, "reduced by Rick Rubin." I always wanted to take music down to its most basic and purest form. I've gotten off that track a little bit, but it's still a natural part of me not to have an lot of extra stuff involved that doesn't add to the production, and getting to the essence of what the music is. really feel like you want to feel like you have a relationship with the artist when you're done listening to their record.

Rick Rubin: Do you like it?

Rick Rubin: I'm really pleased with it. The whole album's really good. Donovan really found his voice, and it's a kind of grown-up, deep spiritual recording. I'm proud of it.

Rick Rubin: That's exactly how I feel about it. I think if you were ever a fan of Donovan, you'll relate to the recent album, "Sutras," but at the same time, he's not rehashing what he did before.

Rick Rubin: I try not to work on any serious time schedules. I like to experiment a lot and try a lot of things, and kind of see what really works and doesn't. You can't really tell until you go through the process.

Rick Rubin: No, especially after the last record we made which was just the solo acoustic record. This is a very different record. I think it's cool.

Rick Rubin: Probably The Beatles. I guess my two favorite producers are George Martin, who's probably my favorite, and this guy Mutt Lang, who produced what I think are the best AC/DC Records, which are very pure rock'n'roll records. I really like the way he gets a very pure sound. I think I like his older records more than his newer records, but I'm a fan of his. There's another guy now named Flood. He's a really great producer. He makes interesting sounding records. Those are probably my favorite guys.

Rick Rubin: He did "Highway To Hell,"and those records.

Rick Rubin: Yeah, it was really pure live experience, and I think he really captured the spirit of what that group was about.

Rick Rubin: Yeah, it's difficult. Different people react to the studio in different ways. The first album I did with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It's called "Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic." Because they had made either four or five albums before that in their career, and just to take away the feeling that, oh, we're making another album, going into the studio doing the same thing we've done every other time, we rented this big old house, that was empty, kind of like a haunted house type of thing. We set up everything there, and had the band live there. It was an adventure just making the record. It was different than all of their previous experiences recording. I think there's an energy to it that we wouldn't have gotten had we just gone into a studio the way they had in the past. So sometimes just setting up another environment makes for a more interesting session.

Rick Rubin: I just don't really pay attention to much to the industry. I just make my records and do my own thing. I'm not really part of the Hollywood scene that much.

Rick Rubin: Yeah, and I have a lot of friends who are interested in music for the right reasons. It's not that hard. You just be true to the things you love. If you're really a fan of music, it's easy.

Rick Rubin: Definitely. A couple years ago I was driving in my car listening to a Neil Young CD, and a song came on, "I Believe In You" on the album "After The GoldRush," and I had this very strange experience. I don't know if I can describe it that well. A blissful feeling came over me, and I had to actually pull over my car onto the side of the road because I couldn't drive while experiencing this. Just from the effect the music had on me--it was somehow related to the sensation of dying. It felt like my heart stopped. It wasn't a bad feeling. I don't know if it was going out of my body, but I didn't feel myself leaving my body. I don't how to explain it other than a real feeling of bliss. It was really a great magical feeling. I don't know why I'm somehow relating it to death, but it had some kind of death overtone in it. It was a really positive feeling.

Rick Rubin: I know the things that sound really interesting to me now, such as much more, sparse acoustical music, but also things like Windham Hill Records and Classical records and Indian folk music. It seems that alternative music is no longer alternative. Classical music is probably the most alternative thing around right now.

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