Rick Rubin: belief

Transcript context

…Do you feel that growing up in Long Island rather than, say, Manhattan has helped you understand the music of the rest of America better? If so, how? I would say growing up where I grew up was a miracle. It plays such an important role in my understanding of or relationship to culture. Not growing up in Manhattan was more of an experience like the rest of the United States, but I was close enough to Manhattan to be able to get there. I could go to a museum, I could go to a Broadway show, I could go to the theater. I could do things that, if I was growing up in a truly rural place, I couldn’t do. In some ways, I had the best of both worlds. I was close enough to get to the city and understand what was going on in fine art and live in the suburbs and experience what Americans like. It was, again, pure luck. Luckily, my tastes share those two. I got to experience both of those lives growing up, and either one of them without the other would be out of balance for me. Having grown up in New Jersey, I feel very much the same way. Now, you once said—I’m not sure if this was ironic or serious—but that for you, the ideal act of musical production would be never to even meet the artist. Did you mean that literally? Or how should I interpret that?…

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