Rick Rubin: In the Studio
By Jake Brown

ECW Press

ECW Press.com

$17.95 US

Reviewed by Joe Babinsack

The peculiarities of life as a reviewer come to roost in this review.

Over the past five years, I’ve written at least five hundred columns on professional wrestling, often reviewing DVDs and books, and one of the leading publishers of professional wrestling books is, of course, ECW Press out of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

The synergy of the letters ECW were never lost on me. With the book publisher, it’s Entertainment, Culture, Wrestling. With a current remake of a classic 1990’s wrestling promotion name, it’s Extreme Championship Wrestling.

As in, the ECW once run by Paul Heyman, the ECW that put out a wrestler’s theme music with a cover adorned by The Sandman, wrapped in barbed wire. As in, the promotion that sued musician Rihanna for copying that image.

A professional wrestling company suing for gimmick infringement?

My friends, you don’t know half the depth of the irony of that, as I do.

Getting back to Rick Rubin: In the Studio, my wife asked me, why are you reading about some yoga master? I flipped, and in an irony of ironies, and another peculiarity of the crossroads of this review, I pointed to the following:

“My Production Style involves being in tune with everything. You can’t do it by listening to music. Pro-wrestling is really important. Movies. You know, everything. You have to make records the way you live your life.”

I am, as it were, attuned to the words professional wrestling.

More so, I knew that Rick Rubin once was the sponsor of an interesting Southern Style wrestling promotion out of the Tennessee/Kentucky/West Virginia area by the name of SMW, Smokey Mountain Wrestling, a company lead by one James E. Cornette, who, along with the man once called Paul E. Dangerously, happen to be two of my most favorite pro wrestling promoters of all time

That aren’t named Bruno Sammartino.

But that’s another story, for another site, or another book by ECW Press, if ironies continue to pile up.

Rick Rubin has proven to be the master of masters of all producers. From Rap and Hip-Hop to rock and thrash metal, from pop divas to The Man in Black, from Tom Petty and Neil Diamond to modern agitators like the Dixie Chicks and the System of a Down, from the alternative iconic Red Hot Chili Pepers to the heavy metal gods known as Metallica; from country to rap to rock to metal to the depths of hell populated by Slayer and Danzig, Rick Rubin has traveled with the artistic souls of the gifted, the tortured and the amazing,

Greatness, in many industries, is something that can be observed, calculated and recognized, but seldom explained.

How can one explain the brilliance of the simplistic approach of Rick Rubin?

Here’s a man who becomes so in tune with an artistic output, that he can merely separate out the noise, and sit back and watch the artistic integrity emerge. Does he make his charges better by ordering, by fine-tuning, by hiding or by overproducing? Absolutely not. He simply removes the distractions, gets the artists back into their own thing, and let’s them rock.

Or Rap.

Or bare their souls.

Preparation is the key, from learning from this book. Once the music is crafted, once the riffs are played out, the lyrics established and the synchronization set, then it is time to create. Getting it done right isn’t about perfection or about learning on the fly or about forcing musicians to toe the line of modern sensibilities.

It’s all about unleashing the talent, and letting it breathe.

There are aspects to this book that may or may not appeal to you, the reader. There are insights into equipment, usage of various technical approaches, and insights into the performance lives of the bands involved. These may or may not be of appeal, but they help to pain the picture of success.

The writing of the book is another questionable approach. The book is comprised of quotes attributed to magazine articles, interviews and various other sources. There is no true voice here, but a cacophony of voices that all magnetize into a coherent whole.

(Give the book a chapter or two – once you’re in the groove, you won’t notice what may be jarring at first.)

But any semblance of hassle is completely overcome by the pure insight into a genius mind.

Once again, genius is hard to define, but the accolades of the man, the projects he has produced, and the sheer volume, sheer range and sheer power of his output cannot be denied.

Nothing bespeaks the impact as does Johnny Cash, in saying “Rick made me have faith in myself again. He made me believe in myself and my music, which I thought was gone forever.”

Now, if you’re not into the Man in Black, then you’re not into music, but furthermore, if you will, read that quote again and realize what happened to the man, Johnny Cash, after many decades in the Music Industry (and notably the Nashville branch) and what impact the churning out of music did to his soul.

Entertainment industries – from music to Hollywood to Stamford Connecticut’s stranglehold on the professional wrestling industry – all have isolated the artist, and have codified an approach that focuses on the product itself, the calculated and modified efforts of technical aspects over artistic sensibility, the pushing out of something over something well done.

How better to refute these processes than to read how Rick Rubin stripped away all the nonsense, and revitalized the careers of a dozen artists, launched the careers of a score of new artists, and has become the most sought-after men in the business of artistic creation?

But refutation is not the sole purpose of the book.

IF you are a fan of any genre of music, I’ll be that Rick Rubin has touched that artistic style, and produced wonders with it.

If you are a musician, look inside for various trade secrets that you won’t hear elsewhere, unless of course you read every magazine that quoted Rick Rubin, but how long and how expensive would that undertaking be?

If you are someone who followed the Chili Peppers, Cash, Audioslave, Petty, Metallica, Danzig, Slayer, The Cult, Weezer, the Chicks, Linkin Park, System of a Down or even Neil Diamond, here’s a great place to glean great insight into their studio approaches.

If you are someone who wishes that your industry followed a cleaner, more simplistic approach, and want to wishfully think that Rick Rubin would buy another professional wrestling company, well, get a glimpse of what he may do with your favorite talents to revitalize their careers.

And, if you are someone interested in studying the works of a genius, well, here it is.

Joe Babinsack can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . My pieces appear in www.wrestlingobserver.com, www.pop-damage.com, and weekly in the Allied News out of Grove City PA. More reviews as they arrive in my mailbox.