Rick Rubin is often credited as the producer for Slipknot’s 2004 album Volume 3: The Subliminal Verses while Greg Fidelman is credited as the engineer and as mixing in the record.
Corey Taylor Criticizes Rick Rubin
Slipknot’s Corey Taylor has often criticized Rick Rubin in the press and praised producer Greg Fidelman. Even following the album Volume 3, Corey Taylor didn’t hide his dislike of working with Rubin when interviewed by Headbangers Ball.
“Welcome back to Headbangers Ball… Now, you guys worked with Rick Rubin on this one, who’s obviously worked with Slayer, Beastie Boys, a ton of amazing bands. How was it working with him? Did he actually show up?”
“Once in a while.” “Yeah, he kicked it on the couch, stroked his beard, nodded and then he was out, you know.” “…A lot of people have issues with the way he works.. which you know, it’s fine… it’s it’s the end result that really matters and I think the album will speak for itself.”
“Did he take you to a new place?”
“We were thinking about going there anyway but I mean he definitely encouraged us, you know. I mean on this album we really wanted to break out of sort of the wall, the closed in space we kind of painted for ourselves and really show, everybody in the band showed that there was more to this band than just what everybody had seen previously, so we really get to shine on this one.”
“…We got the first video, the concept video, not the live version of ‘Wait and Bleed’. There was some controversy with it or was it just in line?
“What was the problem with this video?” “It sucked.”
“…The Rick Rubin of today is a thin thin thin shadow of the Rick Rubin that he was.” – Corey Taylor
Corey Taylor really took it up a notch in 2011 when he spoke about his experience with Ruben during a fan Q&A, “Rick Rubin showed up for 45 minutes a week… lay on the couch, have a mic brought right to his face so he wouldn’t have to effin move. I swear to God, and then he would be like, ‘Play it for me’.”
“I will say this, I respect Rick Rubin, what he has done. I respect the work he has done in the past to get where he is now but the Rick Rubin of today is a thin thin thin shadow of the Rick Rubin that he was. He’s overrated, he’s overpaid and I will never work for him again as long as I effin live.”
“I was also freshly sober and being a singer and being sober, I need your attention Rick.” – Corey Taylor
Five years later in 2016, Corey Taylor seemed to strike a more positive tone wanting to make amends with him. In an interview with Beats 1 Radio DJ Zane Lowe, Taylor explained where his anger toward Ruben came from, “You know I was a young guy. I was also freshly sober and being a singer and being sober, I need your attention, Rick. I need it, you know. So that was just me being young, unsure of myself and needing guidance, which I got from Engineer Greg Fidelman.”
He went on to say, “For me though, being selfish, being a singer, like I said, I was unsure. I was basically an open wound at that point that just needed to heal and I didn’t have anybody there to kind of help me so I blamed him a lot. In retrospect, probably more than I really should have and you know I feel bad about it and hopefully, someday I’ll make amends with him.”
“When it came time to work with Rick, he just wasn’t there.” – Corey Taylor
Three years later in 2019, Taylor was being interviewed on the Dean Delray podcast and Taylor once again took aim at Ruben’s long absence from the studio for his other work commitments and described Fidelman as the unsung hero of the record saying, “When it came time to work with Rick, he just wasn’t there. He had six different projects going on. It felt like, ‘Oh I’m working with U2 now’ and I’m like, ‘We’re still in the studio dude.’ Honestly, it wasn’t until we finished the vocals at his house that I saw him more than once a week and praised Fidelman.”
Meanwhile, Taylor said, “To me, he was another producer. Rick was a nice guy, absolutely a nice guy, however, Fidelman was the soup to the nuts with us. He was there from sometimes 6:00 in the morning till 4:00 in the morning. I mean every day when we needed him.”
Not everybody echoed Corey Taylor’s comments. In fact, some other people in the band including guitarist Jim Root praised Ruben for how attentive he was.
Jim Root and Clown Praise Rick Ruben
“Before the band started writing material for the record, they were literally falling apart and they weren’t talking to one another and at some points looked like the album wasn’t even gonna be made.”
Root will go on to say, “As dark as the time as it was for me, it was really amazing how attentive Rick Rubin was to us as a band. He knew I was going through a hard time. I never told him but I got a knock on my bedroom door and his assistant came up and he had this herbal calming drop that you put on your tongue to mellow out. A lot of guys in the band say Rick was unavailable and yeah, he takes a lot of projects on at one time but he also does things that are beneficial. He was listening and having us re-track things that needed work.”
Jim Root wasn’t the only member of Slipknot who sang Rick Rubin’s praises. Even Clown brought up Rick Rubin’s name in an interview, “He really sat us down and helped us talk things out. He helped mediate some of the problems that were going on at the band at the time so the band could even get into the studio and record Volume 3.”
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