T Bone Burnett: Perfection Is Second-Rate
Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond
Pushkin Industries
4.5 • 4.3K Ratings
🗓️ 30 April 2019
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
T Bone Burnett helped launch the careers of Los Lobos, Counting Crows, Gillian Welch; revive the careers of Roy Orbison and Robert Plant; course-correct Elvis Costello’s career in the mid-eighties and just recently produced a beautiful record by Sara Bareilles. Of course, there’s all of his film work as well. But while visiting Rick Rubin, himself a legendary producer and co-host of Broken Record, T Bone said he has stopped producing other artists. Instead he’s focusing on releasing his own music. "Invisible Light: Acoustic Space" an electronic infused song cycle was just released. T Bone says he has three double records ready to come out behind it. In this episode of Broken Record, from Shangri La Studios in Malibu, T Bone Burnett premiers two brand new songs on his acoustic guitar for us, talks about his pivot towards songwriting and chats about his famed career.
"Invisible Light: Acoustic Space" is available now wherever you get your music. To keep up to date on T Bone check out https://tboneburnett.com/.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Pushing |
| 0:07.0 | Hello, hello everyone, Gather round. |
| 0:12.0 | Malcolm Gladwell here. |
| 0:14.0 | If you're a fan of my show, Revisionist History, then you know my deep and abiding obsession |
| 0:19.0 | with American higher education. |
| 0:21.0 | How it's broken, how it can be fixed. |
| 0:24.0 | Over our next couple of episodes, we dive into this topic again. |
| 0:29.0 | And as you will hear, one story makes me really angry. |
| 0:33.0 | And the other gives me hope. |
| 0:36.0 | Listen to Revisionist History, wherever you get your podcasts, |
| 0:40.0 | and you can always get our shows early and at-free by subscribing to Pushkin Plus. |
| 0:59.0 | That's T-bone Bernat in conversation with my broken record partner, Rick Rubin. |
| 1:05.0 | We took a hilarious picture of Rick and T-bone after they taped this interview. |
| 1:09.0 | Rick is in a t-shirt in shorts, naturally. |
| 1:11.0 | T-bone towers over him, dressed impeccably in a white shirt and a black suit, |
| 1:16.0 | like some old-school blues player. |
| 1:18.0 | I think of T-bone as Rick's spiritual godfather. |
| 1:22.0 | He's a generation older in his early 70s, |
| 1:25.0 | but he's had the same kind of extraordinary behind-the-scenes influence on the music we all listen to. |
| 1:30.0 | T-bone is probably most famous for helping launch the careers of artists like Los Lobos, |
| 1:35.0 | Counting Crows, and Gillian Welch. |
| 1:38.0 | Also for producing albums by Brandy Carlisle, Elton John, |
... |
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