Rick Rubin’s book gets a bad review, but we get cool excerpts!
Not the first time a sharp review of something has come from PopMatters. In case some of you don’t remember, one of its staffers reviewed The Empyrean earlier this year, called Unreachable “Unbearable” and faced quite a lot of flaming in comments. This time, however, it’s not directly about John and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, it’s about theRick Rubin: In The Studio book by Jake Brown. I get it they’re really big fans of the whole bunch?
However, despite the book getting a low grade, 3 out of 10, it sounds like people who visit this website could enjoy it even more than what was previously thought!
You really have to like the Red Hot Chili Peppers to invest in this book. And I mean really like them. Rubin has collaborated with the Chili Peppers on five albums, and Brown extensively sites sources about each and every one (yes, even One Hot Minute). Pages about the Chili Peppers account for just over 20 percent of the book’s total. This is great if you’re a fan, but if you lean toward “eh†when it comes to Anthony, Flea, and the Boys, it’s hard to get all jacked up for a chapter about By the Way, especially when it includes such scintillating detail as this: “Using various Taylor acoustic guitars for the album, [Chili Pepper guitarist John] Frusciante’s amplifier rig included a 200-watt Marshall Major and a 100-watt Marshall Super Bass, one of which he usually ran in a stereo setup with a Fender Showman Blackface guitar amp pushing the Marshallâ€.
And if I had to read one more time about Anthony Kiedis advocating for “good energy in the universe†I was going to chuck the book across the room. What does any of this have to do with Rick Rubin? That’s an excellent question.
For the whole review, click here.
For the old news item on this book, click here.
You can order the book here if you live in Europe and here if you’re elsewhere in the world. On the second site, you can peek into some of the books’s pages.
