Manifesting The Muse -- Dan Carlin and Rick Rubin On Human Creativity

April 6, 2023 1:39 AM

Rick Rubin joins Dan to discuss human creativity. This unusual show evolves as it goes though and by the end covers a wide array of subjects and topics. By the end it isn't even clear who is asking questions and who is answering them. Carlin pulls a rabbit out of his hat, his work is history yet here is a great show on Creativity, interviewing a man who lives Creativity, Rick Rubin. Aside from his Johnny Cash albums I knew very little about Rubin, who I can now report is an outstanding human being. Rubin, when he is asking questions, is not afraid to put Carlin on the spot. It's really a great interview, both ways.
posted by dancestoblue (13 comments total)

Thank you, that was a very interesting discussion.
posted by Meatbomb at 6:50 AM on April 6, 2023

Aside from his Johnny Cash albums I knew very little about Rubin, who I can now report is an outstanding human being.

You'd have a hard time finding anyone with a more impressive CV in modern music. Collaborating with Hüsker Dü, Minor Threat, and Fugazi before co-founding Def Jam, getting LL Cool J's career off the ground, signing Public Enemy, the Beastie Boys and Run-DMC (creating the latter's career-resuscitating and collaboration with Aerosmith), a long-running collaboration with Slayer, producing The Cult's best album, going on to put the capstone on Johnny Cash's career and producing Joe Strummer's last songs, and... that's not even most of it?

I mean, damn, what a career.
posted by mhoye at 7:25 AM on April 6, 2023 [5 favorites]

This should be good. Dan Carlin has hit a new level of fame with a Rick Rubin talk.
posted by Liquidwolf at 7:34 AM on April 6, 2023

Krista Tippet had a nice Interview with Rubin on her On Being Podcast several weeks ago on the same topic.
posted by KingEdRa at 8:16 AM on April 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

Dan Carlin has hit a new level of fame with a Rick Rubin talk.

From their talk it seems they are buddies.
posted by Meatbomb at 8:38 AM on April 6, 2023

I think the Paul McCartney 3,2,1 doc series the other year (on Hulu?) really made me appreciate Rick Rubin even more. He just lives for this in a way I don't think I've ever lived for anything.
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:34 AM on April 6, 2023

On the flip side, Rubin is also responsible for a lot of shitty-sounding albums.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 9:35 AM on April 6, 2023

his work is history yet...

No "yet" about it. History is in large part creative, in a collage sort of way. Nice to think it isn't, but the historian is working with a greater or lesser amount of reportage from individuals and groups doing what they do, and it's up to the historian to decide on credibility, motive, objectivity, intelligence, honesty of what remains, and to consider what material either never existed or never came down to us. Unreliable narrators are hardly confined to novels.

Then there are the historian's own biases to contend with. You do your best, but at the end of the day....

Same can be said of journalism.
posted by BWA at 10:11 AM on April 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

On the flip side, Rubin is also responsible for a lot of shitty-sounding albums.

but this links to a reddit discussion of Rubin's predilection for loudness in the albums he produces.. some people don't like that quality, but is there a list of Rubin-produced albums where there's some consensus on how much they suck? I'd expect a person with his career to put out a few duds but I don't really have strong opinions either way tbh

very cool conversation between two interesting people, at any rate. Thanks, dancestoblue
posted by elkevelvet at 10:48 AM on April 6, 2023

I listened to the audiobook of Rubin's new book on creativity. It was certainly very interesting, but I found nothing new in it. For those who enjoyed it and did find something new, I'd recommend listening to some David Milch, Stephen Nachmanovitch's work (Free Play in particular), Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic, and some of David Whyte's work and Stephen Pressfield's.

Rubin is certainly an interesting fellow and I hope the ideas he espouses regarding creativity get a much wider audience due to his celebrity.
posted by dobbs at 11:23 AM on April 6, 2023

This clip of Rick Rubin has been circulating on YouTube summarizes a lot of his feelings on creativity.

I like this line:

"You can't second guess your own taste for what someone else is going to like; it won't be good. We're
not smart enough to know what someone else is going to like. It's a bad way to play. In the game of music or art you have to do what's personal to you and take it as far as you can go. Really push the boundaries and people will resonate with it if they're supposed to resonate with it."

posted by mijustin at 12:26 PM on April 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

I really wanted to listen to this, but reflexively deleted it from my phone when, after fifteen minutes, Rubin started speculating about the "reality" of history - "I wasn't at the JFK assassination... who knows what actually happened there?" and received barely any pushback from Carlin. (I'm paraphrasing, obviously, since I no longer have the episode.) For me, it was one step removed from "We don't know what dinosaurs were. God could have buried the bones to test our faith."
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 6:27 PM on April 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

As an amateur epistemology enthusiast, I am dead. “I came in on Hume’s wrecking balllll…”
posted by Slap*Happy at 9:53 AM on April 7, 2023