RICK RUBIN On Producing Reign In Blood - "The Right Way To Record Rock Drums Is The Way LED ZEPPELIN Did It... But In My Mind, Not If You're SLAYER"; Video
January 16, 2023, a year ago
Rick Rubin is the legendary music producer who founded Def Jam records, one of the most important hip hop labels of the '80s. He has won nine Grammy awards and worked with some of the biggest artists of our time, to name but a few - Jay Z, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, The Strokes, Adele, Run-DMC and Slayer.
In the video below from Channel 4 News, he joins Krishnan Guru-Murthy to talk about his incredible career, as well as the launch of his new book, The Creative Act.
In regards to working with Slayer, Rubin reveals: "When you treat everything the same, it waters down what it is. Speed metal was a new thing. The people who were recording speed metal up until Reign In Blood - the first Slayer album I made - recorded speed metal more like other hard rock or heavy metal. And it's different. It's all different. Everything we make is different. If you look at it in hip hop, if you make it like it's an R&B record, it's an R&B record with somebody rapping. If you make it like going to the hip hop club, It's hip hop.
"With speed metal, if you treat it like Black Sabbath, it won't do what Slayer does, in that case Slayer play super fast. And the nature of things that are fast is, they come very close together, like the kick drums are super fast. When you listen to Led Zeppelin records, the drum goes (slower). So if you have someone playing (faster), and you treat it like Led Zeppelin, it's just going to be a blur and noise, you won't hear any of it, and that's what was happening up until Reign In Blood. In each case, it comes from my lack of experience, lack of the right way to do it. The right way to record rock drums is the way Led Zeppelin did it. But in my mind, not if you're Slayer. So in some ways, because I don't know... I wasn't experienced enough to know this is how you do it, I'm listening to it for what it is, and for what it is is this very precise type of thing. And you want to hear the precise tightness of it. And up until that point, no one had recorded it that way, because that's just not the way you record things."