Rick Rubin doesn’t need to prove his chops in the metal world.
Since his name is on records from Slayer’s Reign in Blood to Metallica’s Death Magnetic, the guy chases after a sound until he gets it.
That’s not the story that Corey Taylor remembers when Slipknot made Vol. III though.
When working on the record in the Houdini Mansion, Taylor remembered Rick with a hands-off approach saying,
“He showed up every once in a while. He crashed on the couch and stroked his beard and he was out of there. People have issues with the way he works but it’s the end result that really matters.”
Once the dust had settled, Taylor laid into Rubin’s production style saying,
“Rick showed up for 45 minutes a week. He would sit on the couch and have a microphone brought right next to his face so he wouldn’t have to move. The Rick Rubin of today is a thin shadow of the Rick Rubin that he was. He’s overrated and overpaid.”
It didn’t help that Rick was working on other albums, which became an issue for Taylor saying,
“He had six different projects going on, it felt like. It’s, like, ‘Oh, I’m working with U2 now.’ And I’m, like, ‘We’re still in the fucking studio, dude.’ Honestly, it wasn’t until we finished the vocals at his house that I saw him more than once a week.”
That wasn’t the case with Jim Root, who loved working with Rick saying,
“He was really attentive to what we needed as a band. He would listen to what we’d done, then have us retrack things that needed work. He’s kind of like the big brother up on the hill.”
After years away, Corey did have some kind words for Greg Fidelman saying,
“To me, he was the other producer… [Rick was a] nice guy, absolutely nice guy, however, Fidelman was there soup to nuts with us, man. He was there from sometimes six in the morning till four in the morning, I mean, every day, when we needed him.”
The album may have been frustrating for Corey, but it also gave us the best Slipknot songs to date.
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