Book review: Rick Rubin In The Studio by Jake Brown

• Rick Rubin In The Studio by Jake Brown
• Published by ECW Press, 10 September 2009; ISBN-13: 978-1550228755

So someone asked me if I fancied checking out a book about the life and career of Rick Rubin, and I was all over that like a rash. A Rick Rubin biography? For sure – that’s a man I’d like to know more about!

I guess I’m a victim of my own inflated hopes here, then – because Rick Rubin In The Studio isn’t a biography, or at least not in the sense that I’d use the word. It’s a pretty interesting book in its own right, mind you, but if you’re looking to truly get under the skin of this incredibly influential but notoriously private producer, this book isn’t going to do give you the fix you’re looking for. It’s strictly career-focussed, better treated as a source-book for charting that developing influence than a guide to where it might have sprung from.

The writing industry term for the sort of book that Rick Rubin In The Studio is would be a “clip job”… which probably explains itself, but just in case: a clip job is an article (or longer piece of work) predominantly compiled from excerpted facts or paragraphs from other works. That’s not to demean Jake Brown at all, because the bulk of what he’s clipping from here is his own interview material compiled during a long career in the trenches of glossy print-era music journalism. The guy went out, interviewed the bands, got the quotes and soundbites. A few decades of that, and you’ve got enough bits to fill a book on an influential figure like Rubin, even if you’ve never ended up quizzing him about anything other than his current and recent projects and business ventures.

And so there’s 200-odd pages of quotes from Rubin himself and people he’s worked with, and you’ll get something of an insight into what he’s like to be around in the contexts of a business relationship; he’s quietly helpful, politely firm, and seems to inspire genuine admiration and empathy from a wide variety of characters. That said, Brown’s style doesn’t suggest he’s the type to expose dirty laundry (or even look for it), which is a sensible move… but it means that we’re unlikely to see the potentially negative comments that others (or the same people at different times, perhaps) may have made along the way. This is a polite celebration of a respectable career; Perez Hilton wouldn’t even take it out of the envelope.

Again, I feel like I’m doing the book a disservice, so let me be clear – I read the whole thing. It was interesting; I’m a sucker for cultural history at all levels, and this material’s like sugar sticks – horrifically addictive, even if not very nutritious. If you used to scour music and/or guitar mags for minute insights into the musical processes of your idols, you’ll love it; plenty of “and then we, like, put the kick drum in the mansion hallway, and Rick suggested we maybe put the snare in the loft and try playing the whole riff in triplets… but only if we, y’know, felt like it” stories to recount in satisfyingly credulous fanboy bluster at your next music-fan beef-session. The lack of a central voice is a bit tricky for me, but that’s probably a writer thing. There’s none of Brown himself here, y’see; it’s like a collage of samples, a cut-up record, a temporally-linear soundbite megamix.

And, thanks to Rubin’s career path as much as Brown’s patterns of interview subjects, certain of the fragmented chorus of other voices that make up the book are a little louder than others – Rick Rubin In The Studio is quite possibly the only place beyond his own autobiography that you’ll find quite so many examples of Anthony Keidis and the other Chili Peppers wanking on about their spiritual connections to everything (starting from each other and no doubt ending with the bar billiards table of some obscure Californian taco joint, at least for this week), and how Rick, like, totally brought out the natural love harmonics that exist between them as soul-mates and best friends. Committed students of rock history will find this all greatly amusing, of course, because with hindsight we know exactly when the bigger bands were confused, fucked up, bitter, wasted or whatever… and with the Chilis in particular, it’s amusing to read quotes that would sound shameful coming from a teenager taking Ecstacy for the first time oozing from the mouths of people who were (allegedly) gasping for a fix of smack and wanting nothing more than to throttle everyone else in the band…

… but I digress, so back to business. Rick Rubin In The Studio does what it says in the tin: it compiles anecdotes about one of the most important producers in the history of rock music. It may well introduce you to bands you never knew he worked with, and you’re bound to get a few good stories to share with your buddies out of it.

Just don’t buy it in the hope of finding out much about the man behind the beard and the baggy woollens.