American writer Jake Brown must have found this project frustrating. Writing a book about über-producer Rick Rubin is a good idea: he’s done so much over the last two decades and worked with the world’s biggest bands. There are two major problems, though: Rubin doesn’t do many interviews and he only has one basic modus operandi. Basically, he’s famous for not doing much actual technical trickery, leaving that to the engineers and mixers. What he does is get bands into the right mental songwriting zone – and that’s that.
Without much material on faders, DATs, sequencers and the other studio tech to fall back on, Brown is obliged to rely on quotes from various members of the bands featured here, few of which mention Rubin. This gives In The Studio a lightweight feel. He also lacks a critical perspective on some of the albums, failing to recognise that the Rubin-recorded albums by Linkin Park, AC/DC, Metallica and others were average at best, while skimming over classics such as the first two System Of A Down records. Johnny Cash gets deserved space, as do Beastie Boys and the Chili Peppers, but the overall impression is of a workaday biog that merely skims the surface of a pioneering body of work.
