Rick Rubin

But you don't know that until you've maybe...

banged your head against the wall for six months working on it, and then you realize, you know what, that first five minutes was the best.

That was it.

You can't know that until you go past, you know, you have to work past it to see...

How often is it the first version is usually the best for you?

I'll say the first version is often, if it's not the best, it's very instructive and holds a magic in it that is to be retained no matter what else changes.

You know, a big part of it is just not screwing up what's good.

I'm messing it up.

No, there are all these stories of the demos being better than the album.

It's easy to not know why something is good.

You make a demo and you think, okay, now when I get the professional musicians to play it, it's going to be great.

It's going to be that much better.

Maybe yes, maybe no.

We don't know.

We never know.

We never know what's gonna happen when we do anything.

So to stay neutral and to keep every iteration along the way and be willing to look back after you just spent months refining something to then say, you know what?

It was better three months ago.

Throw that all away.

Wow.