Walk This Way

The best book I’ve read on creativity is Jeff Tweedy’s “How to Write One Song.” I’ve been writing songs for 30 years, but I don’t write songs nearly as well as Jeff Tweedy does, so I still learned quite a bit from checking it out. Indeed, I’ve not read a better book about how to access, stimulate, and use your inherent creativity. It doesn’t tell you how to play an instrument, but it’s an immensely readable and practical guide to writing songs that can help anyone be more creative. Even if you don’t play an instrument.

My second favorite book about creativity isn’t like that at all. Rick Rubin’s “The Creative Act: A Way Of Being” is a collection of bite-sized koans and deep thoughts about being creative. It’s his accumulated wisdom and advice earned over five decades as a legendary music producer. Most of it seems to have been re-purposed from his Instagram.

There’s actually a lot of overlap between the two books. But what I love about Rubin’s book isn’t only what he says. It’s how he says it. I can’t overstate this enough: get the audio book. Hearing Rubin read his book is a guided meditation in itself. It’s very short, and I’ve been through it twice now just because I love the headspace his voice puts me in. Don’t get me wrong, Rubin’s book has a decent amount of substance and good advice, but the audio book improves the experience significantly.

Rubin is famous because he’s produced or had a hand in a ton of classic albums, including some of my favorite albums of all time. His main skill seems to be having good taste. He claims to have no musical ability or technical knowledge. And while that’s probably exaggerating things a bit, it’s true that the artists who swear by him are mainly interested in his ears and his guidance and feedback. They don’t hire Rubin to mix or engineer. He’s basically a coach for musicians.

I’d argue Rubin is most famous for masterminding two ingenious cross-genre covers: Johnny Cash’s devastating cover of Nine Inch Nails’s “Hurt” and Run-DMC’s collaboration with Aerosmith, “Walk This Way.”

Johnny Cash - Hurt

Watching that video in MTV at my grandparents’ house in the summer of ‘86, it was the first time I’d ever heard of either artist, and it was the first rap song I ever heard. I think that’s probably true for a lot of Gen X white kids who grew up in the suburbs. It didn’t immediately turn me into a huge fan of hip hop, but (just like in the video) it definitely broke down walls in my understanding of what music was and could be.

That song broke down a lot of barriers. It opened the door for rap on MTV. It revived Aerosmith’s moribund career. And it made Run-DMC into superstars.

I still love listening to it years later, and I like it WAY better than Aerosmith’s original version. Not just because of Run-DMC. I actually think Tyler’s vocals and Perry’s guitar, and the re-worked chorus, improve on the original. But that could just be because it’s the version I heard first.