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The Who’s Pete Townshend has taken a jab at Rick Rubin, saying “someone needs to occasionally slap” the producer over his creative methods.
Townshend’s comment came during an appearance with his wife Rachel Fuller on the Rockonteurs with Gary Kemp and Guy Pratt podcast.
While discussing the idea of creativity, Townshend remarked (as transcribed by Ultimate Guitar), “You see a lot of stuff on YouTube and Instagram, people nagging you about the way that you have to be creative. Somebody needs to occasionally slap Rick Rubin, because, one minute he’s telling us that we need to do whatever we like, and then, on the other hand, he’s telling us that we mustn’t do this, and we mustn’t do that.”
Bringing up Rubin seemed a little random, as the guitarist is not known to have worked with the producer, who has helmed such iconic albums as Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill, Slayer’s Reign in Blood, and System of a Down’s Toxicity, among others. However, The Who guitarist may have been referring to Rubin’s 2023 book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being, in which the producer claims that art is at its most “pure” when the artist creates it for oneself and not for an audience.
The Who legend continued, “The book of rules for me is… I’ve dabbled with all of those methods. I’ve carried complete big, recording studios on the road with me sometimes, and then sometimes I’ve used little cassette machines. I’ve recorded in all kinds of different ways. And if I fancy going into a studio with a huge orchestra, I’ve done that too. But what’s most interesting is the paper. The paper, the photograph, the writing.”
Townshend is not the only musician to have criticized Rubin, as several artists who have worked directly with the producer have questioned his methods.
Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler, who worked with Rubin on the metal band’s final album, 13, was highly critical of the producer’s hands-off approach, saying in a 2022 interview, “I still don’t know what he did [for that album].” Butler’s Sabbath bandmate Tony Iommi also took a shot at Rubin, saying the only thing he learned from him was “how to lie on the couch with a mic in my hand and say ‘Next!’”
Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor was even more harsh in his comments, following Rubin’s work on the band’s 2004 LP Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses), once telling an audience, “I respect what Rick Rubin has done. But the Rick Rubin of today is a thin shadow of the Rick Rubin that he was. He is overrated, he is overpaid, and I will never work with him again as long as I fucking live.”
That all said, Townshend did have something positive to say about Rubin during the aforementioned podcast, “As Rick Rubin so rightly says, and many other pundits about creativity, it has to be fun. It has to it has to be enjoyable. It has to be something that you love to do, and it also has to be something that you like what you do. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that anybody else will like it.”
In other news, Townshend recently said that The Who plan to reconvene in 2025, telling the London Standard of himself and singer Roger Daltrey, “We’re both getting a bit creaky, but we will definitely do something next year.”
Check out Pete Townshend’s comments on Rick Rubin on the Rockonteurs with Gary Kemp and Guy Pratt podcast below.