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Job Offer Affirms Value of a Hit-Making Producer
LOS ANGELES, Feb. 4 — Rick Rubin, the star music producer who had a hand in three of the five albums up for album of the year honors at the Grammy Awards next Sunday, has rarely found his services more in demand than right now.
Mr. Rubin, acclaimed for his work with artists as disparate as Jay-Z and Johnny Cash, has been offered a job as co-chairman of Columbia Records, associates said.
But whether he can take the post, which would be his first in a senior executive role, hinges largely on his effort to negotiate an exit from an existing pact with a rival label, Warner Brothers Records. Warner has Mr. Rubin’s own boutique label under contract for about three more years, said the associates, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks.
All the principals involved are trying to avoid a public showdown, and representatives for Warner, Columbia and Mr. Rubin declined to comment.
As it stands, Mr. Rubin’s associates said, any arrangement would still allow him to produce recordings for Warner artists. After initially displaying resistance to releasing Mr. Rubin, Warner appears prepared to negotiate an early end to its label deal with him, they said. Mr. Rubin holds certain bargaining chips too: in addition to future production projects, he has work under way for two of the label’s biggest rock acts, Linkin Park and Metallica.
This kind of tussle over talent, while nothing new in the music business, is now a measure of how prized relationships with proven maestros like Mr. Rubin have become as sales plunge and uncertainty reigns.
When it comes to scouting and signing new artists, producer-run labels have a spotty history. Mr. Rubin’s label, American Recordings, has a handful of discoveries to its credit over two decades, including the Black Crowes and System of a Down. But it has delivered few releases for Warner since he set up shop there in 2005.
As a producer, though, Mr. Rubin has proven a winner. With a style that many liken to that of a Zen teacher, he has conceived critical and commercial hits, and shown a particular talent for reviving venerable acts.
For Warner, Mr. Rubin produced the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Stadium Arcadium,” a blockbuster that has sold more than 1.8 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan data. The band has drawn six Grammy nominations this year, including one for album of the year.
He produced an album of the year contender for Columbia too: the Dixie Chicks’ “Taking the Long Way,” which has sold almost 1.9 million copies. That trio has four other nominations as well. (Mr. Rubin did some work for a third album of the year nominee, Justin Timberlake’s “FutureSex/LoveSounds.”)
Mr. Rubin is himself nominated for producer of the year. In recent years he has also overseen Billboard Top 10 entries by System of a Down, Shakira, Neil Diamond and Audioslave while collaborating on a critically cheered series of late-career releases by Mr. Cash. Mr. Rubin has been racking up hits since the mid-1980s, when he co-founded the pioneering rap label Def Jam.
But unlike many music producers, Mr. Rubin is not known for his technical prowess in the recording studio. “I don’t even know what a traditional producer is or does,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post last year. “I feel like the job is like being a coach, building good work habits and building trust.”
Mr. Rubin may not know what a traditional label chairman does either. But people briefed on Columbia’s offer to Mr. Rubin said he would be expected to have a hand in everything from signing artists to creating marketing campaigns. He would work closely with Columbia’s chairman, Steve Barnett, a low-key former talent manager who was named to the job in December 2005.
Under Mr. Barnett, Columbia was ranked as the No. 1 label in the industry last year in sales of new releases, among individual labels tracked by Nielsen SoundScan. But its biggest sellers came from performers who have been on its roster for several years, like Beyoncé. Mr. Barnett is said to be keen on bringing Mr. Rubin aboard to help attract new artists and to forge a more creative spirit for the label, executives briefed on his plans said.
All of that depends on Mr. Rubin’s talks with his current business partner of course. A more pressing question for Mr. Rubin, however, may be: Which label’s Grammy after-party should he attend?
