While not a story-telling podcast in the traditional sense, music producer Rick Rubin’s podcast “Broken Records with Rick Rubin,” often works like an audio documentary, detailing origin stories and career trajectories through discussion with musicians. According to the Broken Records website, the podcast is designed to work in the way liner notes on an album do, which depending on the artist can read like stories in their own right, explaining the nature of the show. The hosts of the podcast are Rick Rubin (legendary producer who started the music label Def Jam), Malcom Gladwell (famous author and journalist) and Bruce Headlam (journalist and the guy from the NY Times documentary “Page One” we watched in class).
One episode that really stands out for it’s storytelling is episode 36, titled “James Taylor Comes Clean.” In this episode, Malcom Gladwell talks to James Taylor about his music journey, and Taylor tells stories about his origin, his struggles with addiction, tragedy and his incredible luck. The podcast is supposed to help promote Taylor’s new audio book “Breakshot,” which further explains why this podcast is so rich in storytelling, as Taylor is trying to generate interest for the stories in the audio book.
At the beginning of the podcast, Taylor details how his family has always been a little bit cursed ever since his grandmother died from complications giving birth to his father. His great-grandfather (his grandfather’s father) had helped deliver the baby, and killed himself two months later due to grief. His grandfather became an alcoholic after this tragedy, and it started a chain of addiction in his family. His father was an alcoholic, and despite being a highly functioning one (he was a doctor at Mass General in Boston) it drove James’s parents to divorce. James was one of five children, and three of the Taylor children (including James himself) dealt with mental illness and addiction and were institutionalized at one point or another at McLean Hospital. Gladwell and Taylor talk about how the birth complication was like the “original sin” of the Taylors.
Taylor also talks about his beginning days in music. He tells stories about how him and his brother used to make “beach music,” and even got signed out of high school, but the label never really let them record anything. He goes on to discuss how he moved to New York and regularly performed at a place called the Owl Cafe where they fed him and housed him as a broke, young musician. It was during this time that Taylor got addicted to heroin. His father called him and asked him how he was doing and Taylor confessed he had gotten into drugs, and his father drove all the way to New York to pick him up.
Taylor continues the story by talking about how just a little while after he left New York, a friend of a friend of Taylor’s started working at Apple records, the music label the Beatles started (something Taylor cannot emphasize enough is a stroke of complete luck). That individual needed people to bring into the company so Taylor asked if he could get an audition. Taylor flew out to England and as just a twenty-something year old, he performed for George Harrison and Paul McCartney. He sang one song, “Something in the Way She Moves” (which Taylor said likely influenced the Beatles song “Something” that came out a year later) and the Beatles said they were alright if he was signed. So he was.
Taylor goes on to tell stories about his song-writing, and his relationships particularly with Beatle John Lennon. He discusses how he lived right by Lennon in New York, how he ran into John David Chapman (Lennon’s assassin) just days before Lennon’s murder, and how he could here the gunshots that killed Lennon from his apartment window. Taylor tells many never before heard anecdotes and stories on the podcast, ultimately saying how his life has been charmed and any bad things in his life have been more or less self-inflicted.
The podcast is unique in many ways. For starters, throughout Taylor’s stories, Taylor would periodically stop to play a song that was influenced by a certain thing happening in the story. Also, while on paper it might seem that it was set up like a typical discussion podcast, Gladwell didn’t speak much. He steered Taylor here and there but mostly just let Taylor tell stories, and –unsurprisingly to anyone who has ever heard a James Taylor song– Taylor is a great story teller. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this podcast. I felt it worked on every level, and truly wouldn’t change anything. While the story could have been told in video format, I think the fact that it was told in a audio journalism format was best. Taylor’s voice (both talking and singing) is so compelling, and the story telling was so rich that anything more than hearing his voice would have taken away from what he was saying.
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