Rick Rubin, Neil Diamond, and a 6'x8' Spare Bedroom
Published about 5 hours ago • 1 min read
"Wherever you mixed the last one."
That was Rick Rubin's reply to me. And I'll never forget it.
The year was 2007. The cell phone was my state-of-the-art BlackBerry. The heads-up from Rick's office was: Rick will be calling you soon from a blocked number. Pick up.
About a year earlier, Rick had given me my first major label mixing job: a special stripped-down version of Neil Diamond's album 12 Songs, called 12 Songs: Artist's Cut.
My BlackBerry lit up on cue: Blocked Number. Holy crap...
To my enormous surprise, Rick was calling to ask if I'd mix Neil Diamond's follow-up album, Home Before Dark.
What?!? Me????!! I was ecstatic. And YES, of course, I would love to!
When I asked, "Do you have a particular studio you'd like me to work in?" Rick replied, without pause or reservation:
"Wherever you mixed the last one."
Thing is, I mixed "the last one" in a cruddy carpeted 6'x8' spare bedroom, completely "in the box," using 5" Yamaha speakers hooked up to a Presonus Central Station monitor controller.
My wife, Charissa, in the spare bedroom where I mixed two Neil Diamond albums.
Did any of this matter to Rick? Nope. Not even a little.
And it's still true today. Every record I've mixed, including the multi-platinum ones and the Grammy winners, came out of a room in my house.
Like yours.
"Home Before Dark," mixed in that bedroom, on my studio wall today. It debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200.
I'm telling you this because I know the story a lot of you are running in your head.
"If I just had a better room..." "If I just had that one plugin..." "If I just had the gear the pros use..."
Then the song would finally come together.
It won't.
Gear isn't what gets a song finished. Decisions are.
Knowing what the song is built around. What to strip away. When to stop.
Rick knew that. It's why he didn't care what room I was in.
And it's exactly what I'll show you on Friday, October 16 at 12pm Pacific.
You're already in, Reader, so your seat's saved.
One thing to do before then: upload the song you're stuck on. Two get pulled from the hat for a live rescue, and yours could be one of them.