Electric
sculpted a record that showcased The Cult’s true sound, revealing a classic hard rock band in the tradition of ac/dc, Aerosmith, and the Rolling Stones.
Before meeting with Rubin, The Cult had already tracked Electric’s basic instrumentals with Love producer Steve Brown. Lead singer Ian Astbury recalled, “The initial Electric album was recorded in more of that psychedelic fashion, the atmosphere was more like what was going on when we recorded Love. I mean, the Electric album still had those ‘fairy realm’ aspects to it.” These “Manor Sessions” recordings were scrapped, but nine eventually showed up as B-sides and on Rare
Cult. In an interview with Kerrang in 1987, Astbury explained how the
switch in producers was made: “We were going to stick with Steve’s stuff because we were happy with the performances, but what ended up happening was when we got to New York and set up to re-record ‘Love Removal Machine,’ we actually started jamming ‘Peace Dog.’ And we ended up recording it. It sounded incredible.” Lead guitarist Billy Duffy felt a shift when the band began working with Rubin. “When we were sitting in New York City with Rick, in America, the ultimate rock nation, the change in scenery certainly played its part that our musical direction has changed.”
After his initial session re-recording “Love Removal Machine,” Rubin and The Cult realized a common aspiration for the band’s next lp — to strip down the sound to something straightforward but powerful. Astbury described the creative direction of the recording sessions: “Electric was really our garage album. It was our way of exorcising the peer pressure that existed in the U.K., the subconscious pandering that everybody is prone to. We had to go to New York City with Rick Rubin to blow away the cobwebs. There was a blatant rock side to us and we wanted to exploit it to the hilt. It was a good exercise because it made us realize the strength of what we do, which is Billy’s guitar playing and my vocals. We did it naked, we said, ‘This is it.’ . . . It was very much plug in and go. We wanted a noisy ‘in your face’ record . . . We enjoyed it. . . . It sounded incredible and was what we really wanted to be like. It taught us a lot about attitude, and not get- ting too hung up on the art. We just wanted to rock out and rage, and
the three singles taken from the record [‘Love Removal Machine,’ ‘Lil’ Devil,’ and ‘Wild Flower’] sum it up.”
Duffy explained to Kerrang in 1989, “It was brilliant to work in an environment where it’s perfectly normal and acceptable to make a loud, obnoxious, ballsy rock record, where if it’s good enough it will sell. In Britain, producers would always be saying things like, ‘Isn’t this a bit too heavy for radio?’ Well, I’m sorry, but that’s rather an irrele- vant issue. To us, because of the experience we had with that album, it’s given us a whole new depth to our career.” The guitarist felt the album marked a distinct shift in the band’s direction: “Electric was a complete exorcism from the Positive Punk movement. Electric left no doubt that we were a rock band. . . . We made an album that sounded like it was made in 1971. It was very abrasive and Spartan, which was what Rick Rubin was totally into.”
Recording began at Chung King, the same studio that spawned the Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill and Run-DMC’s Raising Hell, before mov - ing to more posh digs. Assistant producer George Drakoulias remem- bered Rubin was relying on raw instinct over experience, being new to recording a band like The Cult. “We learned to set up for the first time with a live drummer with The Cult; it was a mystery. The whole thing was so new. That happened sort of by accident too. They came to Rick to do a remix, and he told them it was no good and they needed to re- record the whole thing. So they were supposed to be there for a week, and ended up staying, like, four months and re-cut the record. Rick had never done a rock record, and he was a little nervous, but he had the lexicon of ac/dc down, and Led Zeppelin was more of the touch- stone for me, so we combined some of those things to try to make the record better.
“We recorded the drum tracks at Electric Ladyland, Jimi Hendrix’s studio, which was decent sized, but wasn’t huge. We got the drum sounds for that record pretty fast and pretty easy. There was nothing too tricky on that. The kick drum was miked with 47/87 overhead mics, an sm-7 on the snare drum, and 421s on the toms. We did trigger a sample, an early version, which was really fantastic. And one time Rick gated a tom-tom, and got this very bizarre effect that I was very
impressed with. When we were tracking, no one really got too obses- sive about things. We cut everything live, and overdubbed the guitars, but once we got a good drum track, we’d cut the tape together, make the best pieces, and it was pretty easygoing. Our routine with The Cult was usually that the band came, tracked the song, then we took it apart, put it into the ac/dc rock mold, then tried to make it a little more interesting. That was most of my function — suggesting dif- ferent things. For instance, I remember working with Billy Duffy a lot on the guitar solos, even though they are out of tune on the record, trying to get him to abandon his older style that he was used to from the Love album, and turn off the effects. He had some kind of crazy pedal board, and I was like, ‘Let’s just bypass it, and play the solo,’ and I remember that was a big step for him. He took encouragement, he was great. He had a couple Marshalls and a Les Paul, and I brought in my Les Paul that he used on a couple tracks. We miked Billy’s rig with an 87 or 57 on the cabinet.”
Billy Duffy had to adapt quickly to the Rubin method. “On Love, I was using this Gretsch [guitar], I had a lot of delays and chorus. The songs were more melody-oriented: there wasn’t a lot of rhythm guitar, which was clear in focus on Electric. It was a bit of a shock to learn Rick’s method. Right on the spot, he’d say, ‘Play it clean, man; use a Les Paul, no effects.’ . . . There are no effects on Electric. I used the wah-wah sound on one song. I switched between the rhythm pickup and the treble pickup, and that’s it. It went straight into an amp, out of the speaker, and onto tape.” Getting back to playing in a style he hadn’t used in years, Duffy explained, “I had to get rid of the Gretsch, the chorus pedal, the delay, and just go back to a totally dry sound. . . . I wish I’d had six months to work on it before I did Electric, but I had to learn on the run.”
When tracking the album’s vocals, Rubin dealt exclusively with notoriously moody frontman Ian Astbury. Drakoulias explained, “Ian and Billy are two of the most opposite people you’re ever gonna meet, because Ian is from outer space. He just lives in a parallel universe, and Rick dealt with Ian a lot more than I did on that record.” Astbury, for his part, felt satisfied with the results he and Rubin achieved: “What
was in our hearts came out on Electric and we’ve never looked back since.” While the sessions were focused, Drakoulias also recalled, “We were having a lot of fun. It was really fun being in this really pro recording studio, which we didn’t get to do much since we usually worked downtown out of Chung King. And The Cult had this really huge food budget, so every other band on Def Jam ate off our catering budget. The Beasties would come down, and we’d say, ‘Hey we’re or - der ing dinner. What do you want?’ And at one point, we were spend - ing $500 or $600 a day on food.”
Once recording and mixing were completed, both the group and the producer felt satisfied they had achieved the stylistic goals they set for the album. Bassist Jamie Stewart summed up the experience: “On
Electric, we stripped off all the surface clutter and got down to what
we’re really all about. . . . That lp taught us the reality of what we were built on.” Ian Astbury was equally pleased. “Rick concentrated on the hard rock elements — we call them the sonic side — and he did a good job of portraying that sound on the Electric album, and producing a minimalist sound accordingly. . . . Electric was the first album state- ment that this band made that I felt satisfied with.”
Critics responded well to The Cult’s successful reinvention, hailing them as one of the first credible purist rock bands of the ’80s, with high caliber songwriting and performances. Consider Rolling Stone’s observation that “[Electric] swaggers, crunches and howls, all right, but it does so with irreverence (not surprising with raunch expert Rick Rubin behind the board). . . . This record could have been unbearably heavy-handed . . . but this album isn’t The Cult raising ghosts; it’s just The Cult raising a little Cain.” By April 1987, when the lp was released, Rubin had clearly moved on from rap to rock. The stylistic shift was an indication of the growing distance between partners Rubin and Russell Simmons.
with The Cult’s Electric lp, Rubin turned his attention to Slayer and Danzig, projects which had been put on hold while Rubin completed his other production commitments. Rubin’s work with both groups would cement his reputation as one of rock/metal’s most sought-after producers.
Long before Rolling Stone had placed Slayer “on the shortlist of the most crucial metal bands ever,” no mainstream label would go near the speed/thrash metal group. When Rubin first discovered them, it was arguably the first time anyone in the industry had questioned his A&R instincts. The group had been signed to independent Metal Blade Records when Rubin first took note of the band in 1985 and “thought their stuff was incredible.” Seeing the band live, he was blown away. “The first time I saw them, I’d never heard of them. This was at the time they were playing so fast you couldn’t even tell what they were playing, it was just a blur . . . The command they had of the audience, I’d never seen anything like it. [There was] something there I’d never heard of! They had such an arrogant presence on stage, and they had