Rick Rubin
Appearances
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
A lot. Because it's a world where you never really know what's true. It's a world of mystery. And great skill is involved in what they're doing. And there's a story. And it's a story sometimes of people who seem to hate each other. Do they hate each other? They might be best friends. You know, it's like, we don't know, but sometimes they really do hate each other.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
And then the matches are different when they really hate each other. But you never know when it is. So there's a sense of, and I think it's more honest than any other form of any other sport or any other form of entertainment. See, it's funny I say it's the only legitimate sport is pro wrestling because it's the most like the world. In the world, we don't really know what's true.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
Everybody has a facade. People put on, you know, airs or a performance. A mask.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
Or the politician talks and we don't really know who they are. They say these things that are often written for them. We don't know. So there's this like performative aspect of the world. that wrestling, that's what the world's really like. We say that, you know, wrestling is fake. It's like the world is fake and wrestling is real. That's what it is.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
And, you know, I started my first record company not knowing that was something you can do. It just really happened automatically. I wanted to start making records. I wanted people to hear them. I never knew that you could get signed to a label. I just thought, well, if you want to make a record, you make a record.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
It's something that I've experienced before I knew what it was. So when I say it's like... I feel like it has to do with the purity of the intention behind what you're doing. If your intention is pure and you're doing it for the right reasons, it seems like things tend to work out. And that ends up being a manifestation mindset, but it didn't start for me that way.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
It just was like, I really believe in what I'm doing. I really care about it. I want it to be the best it could be for me, and I'm excited to share it. And the results have shown me that you can manifest things. It happens. But I'll say when I do it, it's never based on the outcome. Ooh, what do you mean? I'm never asking for a result. What are you asking for?
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
I'm asking to rise to the occasion, to make the best thing that I can, for the thing that I make to be great. Great is a vague word. I don't know what great means. I came to realize recently what great means, but I didn't know. Most of my life I was aiming for great, but I didn't know what that was. And I've come to realize that great means it's a devotional kind of greatness.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
It's a gift to the universe. It's a gift to God. Wow. If you're making a gift to God, there's no greater gift. You can't put more into it than that. You know, you can't. What about the single? What about, what about what someone's going to say? Who has anything to say if we're making a gift for God? You're putting all of your purest intention into this thing for the universe. Wow.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
That's where it's at. I didn't know that. I came to realize that recently. Again, my word was greatness. Greatness. That was the word of what I was shooting for. But I've come to realize what it is.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
So I made records and, you know, print up 500 copies of a seven-inch single, for example. So I think there's always a way. You don't have to wait for permission from someone else. I think that's a big part. People are waiting for permission. To actually make their art. To make their art.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
Yes. And it's a gift of yourself to God. It's like, this is the best I can do. This is my offering. This is what I have to offer.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
I don't know. I don't, I think, um, it sounds like a shortcut and I don't think there are shortcuts. I think it's always a, A version of doing the work, of finding your way into what it is that the universe wants you to do, and then...
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
really dedicating yourself how do you know what the universe wants you to do and when to do it the right timing because you could be like i have this idea for this thing maybe it's the right time now maybe it's five ten years away from now how do how do we really tap into that knowing i think it's it's it's situational and i think the again if you're tapped into the universe it tells you it it it directs you an example i may have three different ideas that i'm i'm excited about
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
And I kind of get them all going. And then one of them just seems to take off on its own. And one of them, no matter how hard I work on it, it never seems to come together. Can't find the right collaborators, some obstacles in the way. When that happens, I feel like it's the universe saying now is not the time.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
That is part of it. I'm not saying to turn away from the obstacle, but I'm saying when the obstacles become insurmountable consistently, And there's another path that's going smoothly. And you feel the same about both of them. Go for the effortless way. Well, pay attention. See when is the universe giving you a push? When is the wind hitting your sails the right way? There's something to it.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
I would never suggest not fighting through the work. It's grueling no matter what. It's grueling no matter what. That said, sometimes it feels like now's not the time. It's like everything you throw at it gets deflected.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
Taking on its own life. Earlier you asked about what I perceive to be a shortcut. And a shortcut is... How little can I get away with doing? And I think that the real question is, how much more can I give to the thing I'm making? What else can I give to it? And thinking in terms of how much more can we do, not how much less can we do. it's not about shortcuts. It's not about getting it done.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
Someone has to say, you know, I'll hire you to do this or I'll publish your book if you write a book or set the stage to allow you to do it. But I don't think that's the way great things are made.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
You know, it's not about a four hour work week. I loved it. You know, I loved it, but that's not, it's like whatever it takes for it to be all it could be, um, commitment and total commitment and dedicating your life to making the best things you can, whatever it is. Yeah.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
Doing anything that's within our power, it doesn't have to make sense. Nothing has to make sense. You know, it could be, when I wear these purple socks, I can write a better song. Great. Doesn't matter. Don't question it. Just do whatever works. Do it.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
Combination of giving them away for free and selling enough to be able to make another one. That was always, any of the things I've made, it's always been about sustainability. As long as I can make another one, it's a success.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
I still think in those terms that I want. I feel like I want to make it where it's sustainable by itself. There's something that feels good about that, that you make something that can live on not because of an endowment. Yeah, that's interesting. I don't know why. I don't know why that is.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
I would say thinking is the least part of it. It's much more about feeling and being true to themselves, whatever that is. Feeling their truths.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
It's just a feeling. It's a feeling.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
I think it's being concerned what other people think and a feeling of the people who make great things are somehow special and that they're not special. And that's just not true. We're all, everyone has the capability to make great things and none of us are special.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
It starts with a feeling. The analysis comes in later to try to understand either the feeling, if there's a reason. Like if I'm just feeling something, I can experience it and be fine. If we have to act on the feeling, then it's like, okay, this feels like this. Is there a way to figure out why? Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
And if you can figure out why, or if you think you know why, then you can say, hmm, could it be this, this, or this? Let's try those things. See what happens.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
That's beautiful.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
I'll say when we're starting a new project, I always have anxiety. Really? Always. Because I don't know what's going to happen. You know, there's a real question mark when we walk in to start. And I know that it could go a lot of different ways. And I don't have... I'm not interested in having a playbook in advance. I'm interested in seeing where it's going to go. And it's scary because...
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
it could not go good. And sometimes some artists have an expectation that I'm going to do something. I can't do anything. It's either going to happen or it's not going to happen. But then usually within, sometimes it's the first day, sometimes it's the third day, sometimes it's the second week, where something happens like, whoa, what was that? How did that happen?
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
And then that might give us a clue. It's like, oh, this is what it wants to be. And that may change also. That may be the first inclination. It could start that way, and then it makes a left turn, turns into something completely different. The work itself tells us where it wants to go. So because we have, the reason it's so scary is because we have so little control over it. That's what's scary.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
No, because I know it's not in the interest of the work. It's like we're all on the same page. Even the people we're ignoring, the record companies, the managers, the agents, the people who are yelling, I need this, I need this now. Ultimately, for everyone involved, if the artist makes the best possible work that they can, everybody wins.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
It's just that no one involved in the process understands what it takes for that thing to happen. I had a conversation with a basketball player, a member of the Golden State Warriors, who told me there's all this pressure now to do a lot of stuff on social media. He said, and it's getting in the way of our playing.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
And I said, well, if you tell the people who are asking you to do the social media stuff, don't you want us to win? It's like, if you want us to win, let us focus on winning. And he said, they don't seem to care. They want us to do the social media stuff. They want us to distract ourselves from, From the work of the game, from the flow, from the practice, putting in the reps.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
And then I say, well, if then it's up to you, what's more important to please them or to win?
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
The first thing that comes to mind would be Johnny Cash because he had gone, you know, 25 years of not having success and he had been dropped from two labels. And when I signed him, he didn't, he didn't even know why I was interested. That really was a conversation. It's like, what, why, what do you think, why do you think working with you is going to be any different than working with anyone else?
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
Like he had given up. Um, And for him to get into it, we recorded in my living room. And he would just play me songs on an acoustic guitar. And there was an honesty in what was happening there. We didn't know that we were making a record. At that time, we were just looking for songs. So he was playing me songs. It was almost like a way for us to musically meet each other.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
He would play me the songs he loved, either from childhood or songs that he thinks he'd like to sing, or a song he wrote. And it was just a very honest experience. And then we went into the studio. We picked some of those songs. We went through hundreds of songs.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
and then picked a handful to try to record and we went when we went into the studio with the band it didn't sound it didn't have what the living room recordings had there was some intimate honesty and we'd never heard johnny cash that way before Um, so that led to the first album, which was a solo acoustic album.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
Again, we didn't set out to make a solo acoustic album, but it revealed itself as that's the most interesting thing to do. And that ended up being very successful and very successful with young people, which he had not experienced since the 1950s. Um, so that was a.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
And after that, after the success of that album, we made five more albums together and he had confidence based on the experience of the first one, which he'd expected nobody to care about really, uh, took to cold with people. And then on, I think it was on our fourth or fifth album, um, he did a cover of hurt the nine inch nail song.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
And that ended up being probably the biggest, you know, maybe the biggest hit of his life, certainly of his later life. Wow. And, um, and that was a real revelation.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
I'll say it's not as simple as that because there's a vulnerability required for the artist. that if you're confident to the point that it disguises your vulnerability, that doesn't work. So it's like a dance between being wildly open and vulnerable and commitment to do whatever it takes to get your work through. That combination, which is a difficult combination.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
That's true. There's, I'll say though, to get up in front of people and sing.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
Yes. And it's not about perfection. That's the thing. It's like, humanity breathes in the mistakes you know in the it's what it's what's not ordinary if it was if it was machine like perfect it's not so interesting it's cookie cutter all right it's all the same so it's the it's the edges it's the frayed edges that make it interesting
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
I think taking action is a really great thing and not, not setting up barriers of entry. Like, um, I can imagine a musician saying, I can't play this song because I don't have the right guitar or I don't have the right equipment to do it. And there are no barriers to entry. There's always a way. I come from a punk rock background. So in punk rock, it was a do-it-yourself mentality.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
I learned when I was 14, and it's been a big part of my life the whole time. I can't say I've done it continually, but I go through phases of five years on, two years off, or something might replace it that's another kind of a meditation, like I may go from a TM sitting meditation to learning Tai Chi and Tai Chi will be, will fill the slot of my TM time.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
I would always say just have as much fun as possible because we, um, I, I'm a workaholic by nature and I love making things and I love making good things and a great deal of time and effort goes into that. And, uh, and I'm hard on myself in that way and that I, I have high expectations. Um, And I think we can have fun too.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
I think probably quality time in nature with my family. That's probably the best. Being in a beautiful place, being close to my family, breathing fresh air, walking on the beach, laughing together, reading together, watching movies together, you know, watching wrestling. I like pro wrestling. Yeah, of course. Pro wrestling with my son's fun.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
always been pro wrestling. UFC feels like they might hurt each other.
The School of Greatness
How To Unlock Your Creativity & Access Your Visionary Mind
That's why I like wrestling. It's like it's more everybody's on the same side for it to be the best show.