Music legend Rick Rubin was a recent guest on Marc Maron’s “WTF Podcast” and discussed his love for pro wrestling. For those unaware, Rubin cofounded “Def Jam” records and was instrumental in bringing hip-hop to the mainstream back in the late 1980s/early 1990s. You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On still being a big fan today: “I absolutely love it. I watch more than eight hours every week. There’s a tremendous amount of pro wrestling on TV. It’s a really beautiful, fine art form. It’s storytelling taken to the next level. It’s beautiful. It’s American Opera.”
On what he loves about wrestling: “It’s definitely DIY crazy. The stories they tell are reckless in a way that you don’t get to see in the mainstream. There’d be violence towards people in a completely inappropriate way on a regular basis, but it makes sense because you’re setting up bad guys and good guys, so the bad guy has to do something really despicable to be a bad guy, so they do some things that are really despicable. It’s like this hyperreal/not real. It’s like that line, and the fact that they work reality into it — if a guy gets hurt, that becomes part of the storyline but then sometimes, they say a guy gets hurt and he didn’t get hurt, it’s only in the storyline. Sometimes one of the characters gets divorced and then, he might be getting a divorce but maybe it’s just a story, and you never know! It’s like this parallel reality always going on and it never ends. It goes on forever. It’s amazing.”
On wrestling being a deep art form: “I would say it’s closer [than a reflection of life]. It is more honest. If the most honest form of information in our society. Pro wrestling is the most accurate representation of life, dude.”
(h/t – Fightful)