Rick Rubin has been called “the most important [music] producer of the last 20 years” by MTV. Rick’s résumé includes everyone from Johnny Cash to Jay Z. His metal artists include groups like Black Sabbath, Slayer, System of a Down, Metallica, Rage Against the Machine, and Linkin Park. He’s worked with pop artists like Shakira, Adele, Sheryl Crow, Lana Del Rey, and Lady Gaga. He’s also been credited with helping to popularize hip-hop with artists like LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys, Eminem, Jay Z, and Kanye West. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Spirit animal: Polar bear
“Often, exercise will make me feel better, meditating will make me feel better, but the ice bath is the greatest of all. It’s just magic—sauna, ice, back and forth. By the end of the fourth, or fifth, or sixth round of being in an ice tub, there is nothing in the world that bothers you.”
Rick has lost more than 100 pounds since his peak weight. He has completely physically remodeled himself, can kick my ass in paddleboarding, and credits Dr. Phil Maffetone with many critical changes, including improving his circadian rhythm. Rick now typically wakes between 7:30 and 8:30 a.m., reversing a lifetime of nocturnal living. What did it? “When I was in college [at NYU], I never took a class before 3 p.m., because I knew I wouldn’t go…. [Before meeting Dr. Maffetone] I slept with blackout blinds, and I usually didn’t leave the house until the sun was setting. He said, ‘From now on, when you wake up, I want you to go outside. As soon as you wake up, open the blinds, and go outside, naked if possible, and be in the sun for 20 minutes.’”
TF: I now do my morning meditation outside and shirtless whenever possible. I tried naked but nearly got kicked out of a Parisian hotel, as my “private” courtyard turned out to be shared. Bonjour!
I first saw Rick’s name in a cassette insert for the very first heavy metal album I bought: Slayer’s Reign in Blood. I asked him about signing them:
“When we signed [Slayer], there was this terrible fear…. They were doing their first album for a major label, [and the fear was that] they were going to sell out…. I always liked extreme things, and they were extreme, and I wanted to maximize it. I didn’t want to water it down—the idea of watering things down for a mainstream audience, I don’t think it applies. I think people want things that are really passionate, and often, the best version they could be is not for everybody…. The best art divides the audience. If you put out a record, and half the people who hear it absolutely love it, and half the people who hear it absolutely hate it, you’ve done well, because it’s pushing that boundary.”
• Advice to your younger self?
“To be kinder to myself, because I think I’ve beaten myself up a lot. I expect a lot from myself, I’ll be hard on myself, and I don’t know that I’m doing anyone any good by doing that.”
TIM: “Something that I struggle with is—on one hand—I don’t want to beat myself up, but on the other hand, I feel like the perfectionism that I have has enabled me to achieve whatever modicum of success I’ve had. I’ve heard stories about ZZ Top and La Futura, and how they worked on it with you from 2008 to 2012, and they realized the value of your wanting the art to be as perfect as it could be, or the best it could be, and taking whatever time and pains necessary to make that possible. I want to be easier on myself, but I worry that if I do that, I will lose whatever magic, if there is such a thing, that enables me to do what I do.”
RICK: “I think, ultimately, that’s a myth. I think that your take on things is specific to you [and not dependent on perfectionism]—it’s almost like you’ve won the war, and to accept the fact that you’ve won the war: You have an audience. People are willing to hear what you are interested in, what you’re interested in learning about, and what you want to share. You can do that without killing yourself. And killing yourself won’t be of service, neither to you nor your audience.”
How does Rick help artists who feel stuck? “Usually, I’ll give them homework—a small, doable task. I’ll give you an example. There was an artist I was working with recently who hadn’t made an album in a long time, and he was struggling with finishing anything. He just had this version of a writer’s block. But I would give him very doable homework assignments that almost seemed like a joke. ‘Tonight, I want you to write one word in this song that needs five lines, that you can’t finish. I just want one word that you like by tomorrow. Do you think that you could come up with one word?’”
“So much of the job is more emotion and ‘heart work’ than it is ‘head work.’ The head comes in after, to look at what the heart has presented and to organize it. But the initial inspiration comes from a different place, and it’s not the head, and it’s not an intellectual activity.”
“Going to museums and looking at great art can help you write better songs. Reading great novels … seeing a great movie … reading poetry…. The only way to use the inspiration of other artists is if you submerge yourself in the greatest works of all time…. If you listen to the greatest songs ever made, that would be a better way to work through [finding] your own voice today, [rather] than listening to what’s on the radio now and thinking, ‘I want to compete with this.’ … [For music,] search online for MOJO’s 100 Greatest Albums Ever Made, or Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, or any trusted source’s top 100 albums, and start listening to what are considered the greats.”
• Who do you think of when you hear the word “successful”?
Don Wildman. “He’s 82 years old, and he did 23 pull-ups on the beach the other day. He’s in the Senior Olympics. He retired … because he wanted to spend his days enjoying life and exercising. He’s one of the most inspiring, uplifting, great, successful people on so many levels.”
TF: Laird Hamilton, Gabby Reece, and Brian MacKenzie also bring Don up constantly (see here). I highly recommend reading an Esquire profile of him from a few years ago titled “The World’s Healthiest 75-Year-Old Man.” From that piece: “Wildman officially retired in 1994, at age 61 [after selling his company to what became Bally Total Fitness], not because he’d lost his passion for the business but because having a job—even one in the fitness industry—made it difficult to snowboard 100 days a year.”
As mentioned before, more than 80% of the world-class performers I’ve interviewed meditate in the mornings in some fashion.
But what of the remaining 20%? Nearly all of them have meditation-like activities. One frequent pattern is listening to a single track or album on repeat, which can act as an external mantra for aiding focus and present-state awareness.
Here are just a few examples:
Personally, I take this repetitive Monk-ish behavior a step further.
On a book deadline, I pick 1 or 2 albums and 1 or 2 movies for late-night writing sessions, as I do my best work between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. Polling the most prolific authors I know, more than 90% do their best work when others are sleeping, whether they start after 10 p.m. or wake up well before 6 a.m. Personally, I’ll play a movie on mute in the background to avoid feeling isolated, and listen to 1 or 2 albums per session, repeating both the movie and the music over and over. This means that I’ve “seen” some movies literally 100-plus times, as I might play a single film 3 to 6 times per night. Toward the end of a session, when I’m getting tired, I’ll also switch from default “flow” music to default “wake-up” music. Here is my filmography and discography for all of my books:
The 4-Hour Workweek
Films: The Bourne Identity, Shaun of the Dead
“Flow” album: Gran Hotel Buenos Aires by Federico Aubele
“Wake-up” album: One-X by Three Days Grace
The 4-Hour Body
Films: Casino Royale, Snatch
“Flow” album: Luciano Essential Mix (2009, Ibiza) featuring DeadMau5
“Wake-up” album: Cold Day Memory by Sevendust
The 4-Hour Chef
Films: Babe (Yes, the pig movie. It was the first thing that popped up for free under Amazon Prime. I watched it once as a joke and it stuck. “That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.” Gets me every time.)
“Flow” album: “Just Jammin’” extended single track by Gramatik
“Wake-up” album: Dear Agony by Breaking Benjamin
Tools of Titans
Films: None! I was traveling and used people-watching at late-night cafés in Paris and elsewhere as my “movie.”
“Flow” album: I Choose Noise by Hybrid
“Wake-up” album: Over the Under by Down