Daron Malakian

Daron Malakian is a composer, guitarist, vocalist, and record producer, best known as a founding member of System of a Down. Introduced to heavy metal at four years old when he first heard Kiss, Malakian began playing guitar at 11, developed his own style by 15, and is now cited by Loudwire as one of the “Top 50 Hard Rock + Metal Guitarists of All Time.” Malakian also founded Scars on Broadway. Over the years, he has collaborated with bands like Metallica and Linkin Park, and he remains recognized as a distinct guitarist in modern rock and metal. Starting in the spring, Malakian and fellow System of a Down band members have announced 8 stadium shows in South America with over 350,000 tickets all sold out, in addition to sold-out shows at MetLife Stadium, Soldiers Field, and Rogers Stadium in the US. Tour dates can be found here. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: LMNT Electrolytes https://DrinkLMNT.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Athletic Nicotine https://www. AthleticNicotine.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Squarespace https://Squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Vivo Barefoot http://Vivobarefoot.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA25' ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Tetra Graham-Iton.

• 0:24Speaker 00

  It was one of my earliest recollections, like three, three and a half. But I had these older cousins that were teenagers. They had Kiss all over their walls. And I remember just looking in there and being so scared and running away. Going and being so scared and running away. But then it just stuck with me. Yeah. And anytime I saw Kiss or like Kiss played Solid Gold once. Remember the show Solid Gold? Yeah. I must have been like five years old at this time, but I made my mom wait up because Kiss was gonna play. Yeah. And so that kinda got me into rock and it just kinda, I didn't have anyone really turn me on to the music, but seeing them.

• 1:07Speaker 00

  And you think it was the image, who's the thing that got you first as a little kid? Well, it scared the shit out of me, the image, you know? Yeah. I never heard a song. Yeah. Maybe a few years later, I heard a song like, I started collecting records when I was like that age. Hmm. Really young. Seven inches or albums or CDs? Records. Yeah. There was no CDs at that time. It was still vinyl, cassettes were fairly new. Eight tracks were still around at that time, but I didn't have that. Mainly vinyl albums. Yeah. The first Kiss I ever heard was Paul Stanley's solo Kiss. Yeah, when the four solo albums came out. That was the first, but once again, I'm five or six years old at this time. I don't, I don't even know what's happening.

• 1:49Speaker 00

  But the first one that I took my mom to the store was Def Leppard Pyromania, which was huge around the time I was about seven or eight years old. Did you hear them on the radio? Is that how you got into it? It was just everywhere, yeah, probably radio. Yeah. What was the radio that you listened to growing up? You know, my mom would put on Kiss FM or something like on my way to school. Pop radio, but I was always attracted to the rock music. Even my closest older cousins were all like into dance disco music, which I grew up with as well and I love. But um, I don't know, something all by myself, it was just this music.

• 2:34Speaker 00

  And it was something that was kind of, remember the eighties, there was like a whole satanic thing. And I don't know, for some reason that even attracted me more.

• 2:44Rick Rubin?

  Was it heavy or dark or did you like that it was guitar based?

• 2:47Speaker 00

  Aggressive, it was aggressive music.

• 2:50Rick Rubin?

  Feels like young boys like aggressive music.

• 2:53Speaker 00

  But I was a child.

• 2:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:55Speaker 00

  Like maybe teenage, a lot of people get into music when they start turning teenagers. But I was like a child, so I can't really explain. Like when people are like, how did you, like music found me. I didn't really go look for it. My parents are both artists, so they.

• 3:13Rick Rubin?

  What type of artists?

• 3:14Speaker 00

  My mom, in Iraq, my mom did sculptures and she has pictures of her making like these tall sculptures, like much bigger than her. And she taught art. And my dad has been doing abstract art till this day. Since I was born, I can remember there was.

• 3:35Rick Rubin?

  Painting?

• 3:35Speaker 00

  Painting, yeah, abstract paintings. That's just always been in the house. Art has always been in the house, but no one pushed it on me. It was just there. It was just something that I was born into and it was just normal. It was there, it was normal to watch my dad paint. It was normal to watch him experiment. They didn't really listen to too much music.

• 3:58Rick Rubin?

  They were more visual artists.

• 4:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, like they, they never like, you know, put on a record at the house. It was always me as a kid putting on my records and stuff, but um. They like music, they listen to music. One of the reasons I think I'm a musician is because when my mother was pregnant, she sang a lot. And that's the only reason I could think of like, why have you always been so, you know, into music since you were like a baby?

• 4:24Rick Rubin?

  Did she always sing?

• 4:26Speaker 00

  No, but when she was pregnant, she sang a lot and she sang a lot of like Arabic. Egyptian singers like Unkuzum. I don't know if you've ever... She's huge. She's like Aretha Franklin of Arabic music.

• 4:42Rick Rubin?

  Let's listen to "One."

• 4:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:51Speaker 00

  She won't sing for a while. Which is also cool.

• 6:01Speaker 00

  This was probably composed by a guy named Mohamed Abdul Wahab.

• 6:09Speaker 00

  He did a lot of good stuff. I can't, don't... This one may not be, but I know he did a lot of.

• 6:33Speaker 00

  Did your mom grow up with this music? Yes. My whole family, they're from Iraq. So that Egyptian music was big. There was other singers like Abdul Halim, Farid Atash.

• 6:52Speaker 00

  There's a great guitar player named Omar Poshid. I think I've sent you some of his stuff before.

• 7:00Speaker 00

  He's like the king of Arab guitar, Arabic guitar. But his tone was very surf, like he had a very...

• 7:10Speaker 00

  He was influenced by surf rock. Cool.

• 7:15Speaker 00

  You'd hear it in his guitar tone. He's not necessarily playing surf rock, but like...

• 7:21Speaker 00

  He might be playing on this track, actually.

• 7:35Speaker 00

  I always say, I would have never written arials if... You didn't hear this growing up? If this wasn't part of me. Yeah.

• 7:58Speaker 00

  I told you, it's them playing for a very long time. And then sometimes, the audience... If this is live, the audience will clap and ask her to not sing and ask them to do this all over again.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  ركعونك لايام من راح

• 8:28Speaker 02

  غسلون دم على الماضو براحم

• 8:42Speaker 02

  ركعونك لايام من راح

• 8:52Speaker 02

  غسلون دم على الماضو براحم

• 9:10Speaker 00

  I don't know what she's saying. I don't speak Arabic.

• 9:18Speaker 00

  It's all about lost love and crushed because of these kinds of things. I don't know what she's singing now, but my parents always say that's the theme.

• 9:28Rick Rubin?

  Like heartbreak?

• 9:29Speaker 00

  Heartbreak, but it's deep, though. It's not corny.

• 9:34Rick Rubin?

  Doesn't sound corny.

• 9:35Speaker 00

  Because they cry when they hear it. It's like there's something going on here.

• 9:40Rick Rubin?

  How old were your parents when they moved to the United States?

• 9:43Speaker 00

  In their mid to late twenties.

• 9:46Rick Rubin?

  Around what year was that?

• 9:47Speaker 00

  Seventy-four, seventy-five. I was born in seventy-five, so they were here seventy-four. And they came straight to Hollywood, from Baghdad.

• 9:59Rick Rubin?

  Why did they decide to move to the US?

• 10:02Speaker 00

  Saddam. Things were changing in Iraq. They felt like if they were gonna do art, it was probably gonna have to be for like propaganda.

• 10:14Speaker 00

  Just things were changing. One of my uncles got detained once. It like really put a scare in him like he thought he was gonna die. Things were changing a lot in Iraq at that time, so some of my families had the guts to leave because half of my family stayed there.

• 10:29Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 10:30Speaker 00

  But um, I thank God every day, man. I mean, I, if they stayed there, I would have ended up becoming a soldier. I don't know if I would have been old enough for Iran, Iraq, but I would have definitely been old enough for the two US.

• 10:44Rick Rubin?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:44Speaker 00

  I have cousins and uncles that were all soldiers at that time, so.

• 10:50Rick Rubin?

  And probably didn't have a choice there. It was

• 10:52Speaker 00

  No, you gotta go. Yeah, you gotta go.

• 10:55Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 10:56Speaker 00

  So, I remember that all hit me once. I was on a tour bus in Baltimore. We were driving and outside was Baltimore. It was really early in the morning. I was still up all night. I never thought of it before, but I was like, wow, man, if my parents never moved, here I am on this tour bus with this band. And if the alternative, it would have been

• 11:19Rick Rubin?

  Unbelievable.

• 11:20Speaker 00

  Me as a soldier.

• 11:21Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 11:21Speaker 00

  And I cannot picture myself as a soldier, but you'd have to do it. And I never thought of that up and I, but I always remember that bus ride and that's where that hit me.

• 11:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 11:32Speaker 00

  And I'm like so thankful to my parents for it wasn't easy. They came here with nothing. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment off like Santa Monica and Vine. Pretty shady.

• 11:46Rick Rubin?

  Did they ever talk about life in Iraq before?

• 11:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was good.

• 11:52Rick Rubin?

  So, life was good up until Saddam?

• 11:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:54Rick Rubin?

  And then it changed and then they escaped, basically?

• 11:58Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, they, they escaped and my uncles that stayed there, the government would always ask them, where are your brothers? Where are your sisters? Like, where'd they go? Did they talk to you? Did they send you letters? So those people that stayed there had a kind of a tough time. Once again, they served in the military. They had bombs fall on them numerous times. They're all here now. Luckily, I made something of the music thing and I was able to bring them here. So, that was a big deal for me because ISIS and all that stuff was happening, you know?

• 12:36Rick Rubin?

  Can you play me a little bit of Aerials and tell me the connection to that Egyptian music?

• 12:42Speaker 00

  I'd have to tune it the right way.

• 13:00Speaker 00

  I don't know, just the vibe of it, just to...

• 13:13Speaker 00

  Just like the... It moves kind of in the... It's not... They're not quarter notes, but it kind of moves in that type of way. I guess that's how I interpret what I'm hearing in some way.

• 13:26Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, it shares the emotion of the Egyptian music.

• 13:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it never... It wasn't done because I wanted to do play that.

• 13:35Rick Rubin?

  No.

• 13:36Speaker 00

  It was... It's just how shit comes out of me. When people say like, you know, there's this Arabic or Armenian influence. I rarely ever try to do that.

• 13:46Rick Rubin?

  Not intentional.

• 13:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's not intentional. It's... It just kind of comes out of me that way. I think that kind of music, Eastern music, Middle Eastern music, is, to me, what I... I guess blues would be to someone with a family that's from the West.

• 14:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 14:07Speaker 00

  Because that's just those scales and that vibe is more natural.

• 14:10Rick Rubin?

  It's your folk music.

• 14:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:12Rick Rubin?

  Growing up, where would you hear folk music? Armenian folk music?

• 14:17Speaker 00

  I don't know about Armenian folk music, but going to a wedding, you'd hear a lot of like Armenian dance music and pop music.

• 14:25Rick Rubin?

  It was around.

• 14:26Speaker 00

  It was around because I was in the Armenian community. My, you know, my family, my friends were around. But for me, at that time, it wasn't necessarily what I would put on because I was just into rock.

• 14:38Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  And whatever, you know, popular music or heavy metal music.

• 14:47Speaker 00

  When did you first start playing guitar? When I was 12. The guitar, I'm not, I'm not in love with the guitar.

• 14:56Speaker 00

  I never have been. I, I, when we, when I, I said I grew up in a one-bedroom apartment and I always wanted drums. I was more into the singers, I was more into the drummers.

• 15:07Speaker 00

  The guitar came by accident because you can turn off an amplifier. When we lived in that apartment, I was like, drums, I, when we move one day and I get my own room. Cause me and my parents slept in that same room for like 11 years. So I never had my own room until I was like 12 years old. So we moved to Glendale. And I had my own room and, right, 12th birthday, going to the music store, gonna get my drum set. Always wanted it, that's always what I dreamt of doing. My parents kinda had a talk amongst each other and said, you can't really turn off the drums. And so they got me an amp about this big, it was a Gorilla amp, if you remember those. Yeah. And like a guitar was an Arbor.

• 15:53Speaker 00

  I don't even think that company is around anymore and uh.

• 15:57Speaker 00

  I still wanted drums after that. Yeah. But. I don't know, the guitar was there, the amp was there, it was in my room. And I just started fiddling with it and I started spending more time with it and the next thing you know, I'm, I'm a guitar player, never got, never got the drums.

• 16:15Speaker 00

  So, I'm, I'm happy it worked out that way, but I've just never been the guy that, there are some guys that are just in love with the guitar and that's their thing, that's what they do. For me, it's, it's a tool to write songs. I never wanted to be some technical guitar virtuoso or anything, but I was really into composing and writing my own stuff.

• 16:37Speaker 00

  And I had these friends like in high school, I never really hung out with too many musicians. My friends were all kind of, we were like trouble. We were like the guys who would be fighting at school and, you know. We weren't a gang, but it was somewhat gang-like, you could say. Cause we fought a lot, but it was these kind of guys. They weren't metal guys. They weren't artsy guys. They weren't, you know, and so I would write these songs that were kind of ballady, folky, English songs, like not, I don't really write in Armenian. You know, I would be the guy that took his acoustic to the party.

• 17:16Speaker 00

  And, you know, I'd play a little cover here and there, but I would also play my own stuff. And when I would play my own stuff, I realized like it would really touch one of my friends and you'd see the guy walk out and he'd be crying.

• 17:30Rick Rubin?

  Even then?

• 17:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. I was maybe fourteen, fifteen years old. And that's when I realized something where it was like, like I had this thing that I can touch people with

• 17:44Speaker 00

  these songs.

• 17:45Rick Rubin?

  At that time, would it have been guitar and vocals?

• 17:49Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's always guitar vocals for me. When I write, I always write guitar and vocals. It's, I don't write, I always tell people, I don't write riffs. A lot of guys write riffs.

• 17:59Rick Rubin?

  He writes songs.

• 18:00Speaker 00

  I want that riff to turn into a song. If it's just a riff, I'm not impressed. I could write plenty of riffs. I'm more impressed with myself and happy when I've written a song, a full song, verse, chorus. I know how it's gonna move. If I don't have the lyrics, I know how the vocals are gonna move and the melody is gonna go. And when I present a song to the band, or whether it's System, or when I do Scars, it's always me with a guitar, kind of like this, and

• 18:34Speaker 00

  you know, just showing the band the song, the whole song, not just like I got this part.

• 18:42Rick Rubin?

  And it's always been that way.

• 18:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:44Rick Rubin?

  That you pretty much write a song top to bottom. And think of it as a composition.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:50Rick Rubin?

  Not a series of parts.

• 18:52Speaker 00

  I wouldn't bring it in if it wasn't. Like, I usually feel like, okay, the song is ready to show when I have that.

• 19:00Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 19:01Speaker 00

  I've never really been like, oh, I got this one riff, but I don't know where it's going.

• 19:05Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:05Speaker 00

  You know? There's times where I'll have a composition and I'll say, I have an idea of how the vocals should move, but I'm not 100% sure.

• 19:15Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 19:16Speaker 00

  But I'm usually pretty certain of how, you know, the tempo and the music and how I want this part to be moving, how I want that part to be moving. It's all going on in my head while I'm writing it.

• 19:28Rick Rubin?

  The chords and the melodies come at the same time?

• 19:35Speaker 00

  Sometimes.

• 19:36Rick Rubin?

  Typically.

• 19:37Speaker 00

  There's no, there's no

• 19:38Rick Rubin?

  No right way.

• 19:39Speaker 00

  Right way or wrong way. What happens is I'll be sitting and playing the guitar and I'll come up with something. Maybe I'll come up with a riff, maybe the riff and something else.

• 19:55Speaker 00

  And I just record it and I leave it. And then the next time I play, I always go through my ideas. And I play with them almost like a toy. Sometimes a song will come out right away, but sometimes it takes a long time for me to piece together a song. You know?

• 20:12Rick Rubin?

  Give me an example of, in terms of it happening quickly, how long would it be quickly? And how long would it be if it took a long time?

• 20:20Speaker 00

  Like a song like BYOB probably took a long time. I wrote the middle part first.

• 20:26Rick Rubin?

  What's the middle part?

• 20:31Speaker 00

  Blast up, blast up, it's party time. We don't live in a fascist nation. That by itself was like this, why don't presidents fight the war? Why they always send for, why don't presidents fight the war? That was just kind of, it was like this punk song, kind of punky type of song that I wrote. But then time passed and I wrote.

• 21:01Speaker 00

  And I had also.

• 21:05Speaker 00

  And that was totally because I was listening to Funkadelic at the time.

• 21:08Rick Rubin?

  Wow, that's cool.

• 21:09Speaker 00

  And it was, and it's not like I'm trying to mix this and it just kind of like, one night I was playing and it, and that's what I'm saying, like, maybe I don't have that part yet, maybe. So, you know, when I pick up the guitar for that week, I'm just playing my, you know.

• 21:30Speaker 00

  And goes, you know.

• 21:31Rick Rubin?

  And then just seeing what it leads into?

• 21:33Speaker 00

  But I don't force it.

• 21:34Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 21:34Speaker 00

  And at some point, it led into that. I can't tell you exactly when, but it led into.

• 21:44Speaker 00

  And it wasn't on purpose and it wasn't because, oh, I'm listening to Funkadelic and I want to do a Funkadelic. It just kind of came out that way. And I feel like you have to have the patience to let that happen. You know?

• 21:58Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. It takes as long as it takes.

• 22:00Speaker 00

  Some people, look, everyone's got their way, but I, I don't write my songs in front of a computer. I don't record them right away. I play them. I have a list of songs that nobody's ever heard. And every time I pick up the guitar, I play through all of them. And each one of them, some of them might be more finished than the others, but each one of them has this part that I'm like, you know, that, that can be better. That can be better. But I play with it like you play with a toy. You shape it. You try, doesn't work, you know, until something comes along and you feel confident. And that's kind of how the long process is and where you, you know,

• 22:42Speaker 00

  need patience.

• 22:42Rick Rubin?

  You say you play every day?

• 22:44Speaker 00

  No.

• 22:45Rick Rubin?

  How often do you play?

• 22:46Speaker 00

  What I want.

• 22:47Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, but how often do you want to?

• 22:49Speaker 00

  Sometimes a month will go by that I don't play and sometimes I play for that whole week and sometimes, I mean, when I was growing up, I played every day.

• 22:57Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 22:58Speaker 00

  But.

• 22:58Rick Rubin?

  And how many hours a day would you play?

• 23:01Speaker 00

  Back in those days?

• 23:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 23:03Speaker 00

  The whole day would pass by like six, seven, eight. I don't know, man.

• 23:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Would you consider it practicing or it was something else?

• 23:11Speaker 00

  I never practiced.

• 23:12Rick Rubin?

  You just play? Would you play two other things or no? You play along with records? No?

• 23:17Speaker 00

  No.

• 23:18Rick Rubin?

  Just play by yourself, looking for songs?

• 23:22Speaker 00

  Just enjoying my shit that I've written and

• 23:25Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 23:26Speaker 00

  Somewhere down the line.

• 23:29Speaker 00

  It gets better. The last thing that comes to my mind whenever I write something is I can't wait for everyone to hear this.

• 23:36Rick Rubin?

  You're doing it for yourself in that moment.

• 23:39Speaker 00

  I, just like my dad, my dad paints paintings. He doesn't do exhibits or anything. He does it because he does it. It's like he doesn't know any other way to live.

• 23:49Rick Rubin?

  That's what he does.

• 23:50Speaker 00

  He doesn't even sign them. And it, it's kind of for me.

• 23:55Speaker 00

  Releasing it is kind of weird, like, because I never really listened to those songs again.

• 24:01Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 24:02Speaker 00

  I rarely put on Toxicity. I rarely put on System Records, Scars Records, anything I made once I put it out.

• 24:10Speaker 00

  It's like, almost like bye bye.

• 24:11Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, but even a song from childhood, if you haven't released it, you might still play it.

• 24:17Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 24:18Rick Rubin?

  Because it's still yours.

• 24:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:20Rick Rubin?

  Once you put it out, it's not really.

• 24:22Speaker 00

  And I enjoy it.

• 24:22Rick Rubin?

  It becomes everybody's.

• 24:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I enjoy it. That's, I'm, I don't know any other way to be, like, I would be doing this if I was not the guy from System of a Down. I would still be doing this.

• 24:34Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 24:36Speaker 00

  And it's for me.

• 24:37Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 24:39Speaker 00

  It's not even an approach, like, it's just the way it is. That's the way I know. That's the way I've watched my dad. That's the way I've seen art. You do it because you enjoy it. You love it. It's an itch and you want to impress yourself.

• 24:55Rick Rubin?

  How was it different playing by yourself versus playing with a band?

• 25:03Speaker 00

  I mean, with a band, you're rehearsing to play a song. Playing by myself is more intimate. I don't really play in front of people anymore.

• 25:13Rick Rubin?

  By yourself?

• 25:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, remember I said I used to take my guitar to?

• 25:17Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 25:17Speaker 00

  For some reason, once the band got kind of big,

• 25:23Speaker 00

  something changed in me. Every time I picked up a guitar in front of people, it became this, like, some kind of big deal or something to them.

• 25:30Rick Rubin?

  You think people had expectations or something?

• 25:34Speaker 00

  I don't know, but I kind of don't, like, I wait for my girl to go to bed. Like, she doesn't rarely ever sees me play the guitar. It's always when I'm alone.

• 25:47Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 25:49Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, and you can entertain yourself alone for a long time doing it.

• 25:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:53Rick Rubin?

  Hours and hours.

• 25:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, and not just guitar, man. Like, like I said, this is, it's not like I'm not in love with this. I'm in love with making sounds, synthesizers, you know.

• 26:04Rick Rubin?

  Making stuff.

• 26:04Speaker 00

  Anything that's, that feels right to me at that moment, that I have a craving. And my cravings change. Sometimes I, my craving is the guitar. Sometimes I only want to play in clean. Sometimes I don't want to plug it in. I just want to play it like that. And you, things change when you don't plug it in and write something as opposed to put some distortion on that amp and write something.

• 26:28Rick Rubin?

  You think it has something to do with what you're hearing?

• 26:32Rick Rubin?

  Or how it feels on your fingers?

• 26:34Speaker 00

  I think how it feels. And hearing, sure. I mean, you are, you're hearing it, but you know, you put an effect on it, makes you play a different something. Well, not putting anything is an effect all its own as well. So.

• 26:49Rick Rubin?

  Most of your songs are straightforward guitar plugged into the amp.

• 26:53Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm, not too much.

• 26:54Rick Rubin?

  Not a lot of tricks.

• 26:55Speaker 00

  But I don't count out that maybe I may do some tricks somewhere.

• 26:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, you're not against it, but just most of your songs.

• 27:02Speaker 00

  It hasn't happened that way.

• 27:03Rick Rubin?

  Hasn't happened that way. Yeah.

• 27:07Rick Rubin?

  Was System your first band or were you in a band before?

• 27:11Speaker 00

  The first band situation I ever played for was with these three guys and we used to play Metallica covers in their dad's little garage. I was probably about 13 years old around that time.

• 27:23Rick Rubin?

  Did you ever jam with other people or was more playing songs with other people?

• 27:27Speaker 00

  At that time, it was more playing songs with other people. Towards the end of high school, I met this guy at a party and he was with someone that I had gone to elementary school with who I hadn't seen for a long time. They were looking for a singer. And I was like, okay, I, I can sing. I'm a singer. They had a lead guitar player guy, but I said, for me, the guitar and the vocals, it's, it kind of comes together. I'm like a combo deal there. And so I went and tried out for their band and, um.

• 28:01Speaker 00

  They were into what I was doing. I, you know, we, we played Paranoid by Black Sabbath and, you know, we were like, it just kinda hit. Shavel was there. And Shavel is also someone I remembered from that Armenian elementary school that I went to, that I had left a while ago, but he is a year older than I am, so he was in the class, but I remember Shavel from there. So there was a few people that came to those rehearsals that were from that elementary school. And Shavel was there and Shavel was just there as a friend, not really playing anything. So he heard us and he kinda told the guys in the band that were his friends, they, he's, he's like,

• 28:44Speaker 00

  "Just get rid of the guitar player and bring this guy in. He's kind of, you know, doing the guitar and he's singing and, you know, you guys kinda sound more alive." And then I started bringing songs into that band. They were more like kinda rock. This is like, we're talking early 90s, late 80s. The glam scene was still kinda... Like hair metal? It, it was more towards that direction music, but little heavier than hair metal, but I, we didn't really have the hair. Yeah. But the style of the music was that, kinda more rock. Wasn't very metal, it was more rock. And so, yeah, Shavel told them, you know, "Keep this guy and get rid of the other guy." And that's kinda what ended up happening.

• 29:28Speaker 00

  And then, so that band shared a rehearsal studio with a band that Serge played with, but Serge didn't sing. Serge just played the keyboards at that time. He had never sang before.

• 29:42Speaker 00

  So I was the singer and at some point, that band wanted to get rid of their singer and asked me to, like Serge's band asked me to be their singer. Mm-hmm. But I was like, they sang in Armenian. I could do it. Yeah. But I, I just wasn't something that I was felt, I don't know, I felt a little bit out of my skin singing in Armenian. I always sang in English. So I never became their singer, but I started jamming with them.

• 30:08Rick Rubin?

  Did the kids in that band, were they born in the United States or were they born somewhere else? Do you know?

• 30:14Speaker 00

  Probably born in Lebanon.

• 30:16Rick Rubin?

  So born in Lebanon, which so maybe.

• 30:18Speaker 00

  Serge was born in Lebanon.

• 30:20Rick Rubin?

  You grew up here.

• 30:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:21Rick Rubin?

  Were born here.

• 30:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:23Rick Rubin?

  So English was your first language. You know, you know some Armenian.

• 30:26Speaker 00

  No, I speak, I went to Armenian school. I mean, I could, I speak Armenian. Well, I can sing Armenian.

• 30:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:32Speaker 00

  It's just not something I wanted to do at that time. I didn't, I don't know. It just didn't flow out of me the same way. English still.

• 30:41Rick Rubin?

  Did many of the kids have the same story of parents coming to the US, similar situation?

• 30:48Speaker 00

  Well, it depends what country they're coming from.

• 30:50Rick Rubin?

  Tell me some of the examples, because I don't know anything about.

• 30:53Speaker 00

  Well, it was war or one, like the Lebanese Armenians came here because there was war at that time in their country. Persian Armenians came here because the Ayatollah took over at some point, seventy nine. Iraq Armenian Saddam. So everyone was kind of coming here for a better life. Things were changing in the countries that they grew up in, which takes balls, man.

• 31:20Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 31:21Speaker 00

  To get, I mean, if shit was changing here, I don't know if I would be a get up and leave and go to fucking Iraq.

• 31:26Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. No, it's radical.

• 31:28Speaker 00

  And I went to Iraq.

• 31:29Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 31:30Speaker 00

  When I was fourteen years old, my mom took me to Iraq.

• 31:32Rick Rubin?

  What was that like?

• 31:35Speaker 00

  And I, when I was fourteen, I was full on speed metal, metal kid. But I had a Motley Crue T-shirt on the whole time and I was walking around Iraq with a Motley Crue T-shirt. And it had like this chick's ass.

• 31:54Speaker 00

  And our luggage was lost. So that's all I had. And so I wear this Motley Crue T-shirt. And I think it was like Nikki Sixx on a motorcycle or something and it was this chick with her ass sticking out. So it was a culture shock. I was there for two months.

• 32:11Speaker 00

  I saw my family, I mean, people I only saw in pictures.

• 32:14Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 32:15Speaker 00

  You know, my grandmother, my aunts, my cousins, so I, it was nice to see them. But this was at like the height of Saddam, so everywhere you turned was Saddam. If we were in this room, you better have that picture of him up there because they'll question you if you don't. So business, everyone's house. You walk outside, there's a statue. You look at where there's a picture, you look over there, the building, there's no Marlboro ad, it's a Saddam ad. Two channels on the television, one of them Saddam all day, one of them Saddam half the day.

• 32:51Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 32:54Speaker 00

  And I'm from Hollywood.

• 32:56Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 32:56Speaker 00

  You know, and not used to this life, so it was like I had all these, all my cassettes with me, with my Walkman, and I took a bunch of metal magazines and I read through every single, I was a little, I was bored.

• 33:09Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 33:10Speaker 00

  But Slayer, Show No Mercy, that was, when I think of Iraq, I think of Slayer, Show No Mercy.

• 33:19Speaker 00

  Because that was the album that I had on in my head a lot. And it was just two months of, it was very educational. I mean, you know, I learned a lot about, you know, how the world is different than where I come from and, you know, if you say anything bad about Saddam, like I would be this little punk kid and I'm like, what if, what if we told Saddam to fuck off, they'd go, shh.

• 33:47Speaker 00

  Don't fucking say it.

• 33:47Rick Rubin?

  They'll take you away.

• 33:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, don't say that shit, man, you crazy?

• 33:50Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, the people live in fear.

• 33:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, the people live in fear. You don't fuck around.

• 33:56Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 33:57Speaker 00

  You don't say that kind of thing. You put the picture up.

• 33:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:01Speaker 00

  So.

• 34:03Speaker 00

  And I think I might be the first person that might have taken that kind of music to Iraq.

• 34:10Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 34:10Speaker 00

  In nineteen eighty-nine.

• 34:14Speaker 00

  When I put on for my cousins, they like Slayer.

• 34:17Rick Rubin?

  They'd never heard anything like that before.

• 34:19Speaker 00

  What the hell is this? It's like, this is music?

• 34:23Rick Rubin?

  So the music they were hearing was more like what your parents grew up on, like.

• 34:26Speaker 00

  Yes, or a pop version of that as time went on.

• 34:31Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 34:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:34Rick Rubin?

  And then were you happy to come back to Hollywood?

• 34:38Speaker 00

  Well, we were living in Glendale at that time, but I was a kid that grew up in Hollywood that, you know, we only had been living in Glendale for like two years at that point, you know, so.

• 34:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, I was happy, but during the first Iraq war, the Desert Storm.

• 34:58Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 35:00Speaker 00

  That's when I learned the media lies to you.

• 35:04Speaker 00

  I was only about fifteen years old at that time.

• 35:07Rick Rubin?

  What were the lies?

• 35:08Speaker 00

  Well, just kind of dehumanizing the people in Iraq so the people here would be more open to us throwing bombs over their heads. Both times are very tough for my family because it's my grandmother that's there, it's my aunt that's there.

• 35:24Rick Rubin?

  And you know that they're good people like you.

• 35:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I know the other people in Iraq were very nice people as well.

• 35:32Rick Rubin?

  Maybe they didn't like Saddam, but it had nothing to do with the people.

• 35:35Speaker 00

  No, it has, half the people hated Saddam, more than half the people hated Saddam. They just couldn't come out and say that they hated Saddam.

• 35:44Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 35:44Speaker 00

  But, you know, my family didn't like Saddam on the most part. I still have some aunts that like.

• 35:51Rick Rubin?

  The ones who liked him, what did they like?

• 35:54Speaker 00

  Well, in their head was like, just don't start trouble and trouble won't come to you. And that's kind of the deal.

• 36:01Rick Rubin?

  It's like if you mind your own business, everything's fine.

• 36:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, don't try to overthrow the government, don't try to conspire to do things, just, you know, live your life and you'll be fine.

• 36:12Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. So it was only if you went against the government that you'd be in trouble?

• 36:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, but his sons, you know, were fucking assholes too. They would pick on people, you would say, I mean, there was a movie about it, like, the guy would like go to a wedding and take the bride and fuck the bride and, I mean, his sons were probably bigger son of a bitches than he was. And, you know, torture and, you know, if they assume, maybe you didn't do anything and they just assumed, then your next thing you know, you're being fucking tortured and there's like, you're in a room with cigarettes going out in your fucking eyeballs or some shit, you know what I mean? I don't fucking, you know, I don't, I couldn't tell you the details as well as my family members can, who lived there, I was only there for two months, but...

• 36:58Rick Rubin?

  And they were all happy to get out?

• 37:00Speaker 00

  Some of them wished things just didn't change, because they're...

• 37:03Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, because it was their home.

• 37:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:05Rick Rubin?

  Understood.

• 37:06Speaker 00

  Like...

• 37:06Rick Rubin?

  So they missed their home, but their home changed, so...

• 37:10Speaker 00

  They had no choice, because, once again, you had ISIS that started, I got them out of there before all that shit started happening, you know, and they're Christians.

• 37:19Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 37:20Speaker 00

  So, not the safest place to be a Christian when ISIS is running around town chopping heads up.

• 37:29Speaker 00

  And they just assume that, you know, you might be doing something against them and you're screwed. That's, you know, like I said, they detained my uncle back in the day because he accidentally bumped into some guy's bike and that guy happened to be some huge official. It was total accident, they take him to this room and they made him feel like they were gonna kill him.

• 37:49Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 37:50Speaker 00

  And out in his head, he was like, fuck this, I gotta find a way out of here.

• 37:59Rick Rubin?

  You get asked to sing for the band that Serge was in.

• 38:02Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm. So I don't do that, but I ended up jamming with them a lot. You know, I'd rehearse with my band and then if they came in, I would stick around and I would play guitar with them.

• 38:16Rick Rubin?

  Were you friends with all of them?

• 38:18Speaker 00

  I got to know them through this situation, not really. I wasn't really friends with anybody, to be honest with you, it was just...

• 38:26Rick Rubin?

  People to play music with?

• 38:27Speaker 00

  The guys we shared our studio with and that's kinda how I got to know them.

• 38:30Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 38:30Speaker 00

  You know, it's not like I knew them for years. They're older than I was. Serge is eight years older than I am. But that's how Serge and I became friends through that.

• 38:40Rick Rubin?

  Were they serious about that band? Did they think...

• 38:42Speaker 00

  Not so sure. It was kinda like a weekend kind of, but guys that had other things going on, but they played like, you know. They had equipment and they enjoyed playing and jamming, but I'm not sure they were trying to take it anywhere. I mean, through my life, I was always... Like, anyone who knew me when I was a kid would tell you, he always said that this is what he wanted to do. Like, if you met me at eight years old, if you met me at 12 years old, anyone who knew me through my life knew. So as I was getting older, they even called me to the school counselor once, and I'm

• 39:25Speaker 00

  a high school dropout, and I got kicked out of my high school twice. They sent me to a continuation school. I don't know if you know what that is. It's where all the pregnant girls go.

• 39:38Speaker 00

  So, pregnant girls, gangsters, the kids that were, you know, more trouble...

• 39:46Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 39:47Speaker 00

  Go there because it ain't working out for you. You ditch all day or you get into too many fights. Or you, you know what I mean? You just, they send you away to this school. It was like a bunch of bungalows for lunch. A lunch truck would show up. Like, it was totally different. But anyway, they sent me to the counselor and they're like, you know, you're failing all your classes. You hardly show up to school. You show, you ditch, you probably go to one or two classes. Like, what do you, what do you want to do? What do you want to do with your life? And I go, I'm a musician. They're like, you're a musician.

• 40:19Rick Rubin?

  Even then, you knew it.

• 40:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:21Rick Rubin?

  You thought of yourself as that.

• 40:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, I said, I'm, I'm gonna... So they're like, what's your plan? I go, I'm gonna start a band. I'm gonna play on Sunset Strip. That's what I told my counselors. And they even had like a school psychiatrist there and everything. I was, everything good at home? And I'm like, everything's fine.

• 40:38Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 40:38Speaker 00

  But it was just something that in my head, I had convinced myself that this is gonna happen. I don't know, man. I was very confident.

• 40:48Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 40:49Speaker 00

  So they're like, alright, off to CT you go then. You know, and they sent me to CT. But so through my late teenage years, I was always looking for the band.

• 41:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 41:03Speaker 00

  This is the band that I feel like I can make it in.

• 41:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 41:06Speaker 00

  Like, I might have been in a band, but I was like, I don't think this band's gonna make it.

• 41:11Rick Rubin?

  When you say make it, the aspiration was to play on the Sunset Strip?

• 41:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, and, and become popular on the Sunset Strip, I guess.

• 41:19Rick Rubin?

  But you didn't think about playing? Like, last time I saw you play, 60,000 people came to see you play songs that you've recorded more than 15 years ago. But that was never the goal. The goal was a club band.

• 41:34Speaker 00

  Well, at that point, the goal was to just start a band that you feel confident with, and you're gonna go play the clubs. That's all I knew. I didn't, like, I, I don't really, I didn't know the business. I didn't, I was just a kid. I didn't really know what you had to do to...

• 41:49Rick Rubin?

  And how old were you at that time?

• 41:51Speaker 00

  16.

• 41:52Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. So tell me about looking for the band.

• 41:57Speaker 00

  Well, it's just, you know, we would...

• 42:01Speaker 00

  And anyone who I told that to would say to me, really? How many Armenians do you know that made it? That's from my Armenian friends.

• 42:10Rick Rubin?

  People would not be supportive, or not not be supportive.

• 42:13Speaker 00

  I had a lot of support, but obviously, it's it's.

• 42:17Rick Rubin?

  People didn't believe it was possible.

• 42:19Speaker 00

  It's it's a pretty far-fetched thing to, you know.

• 42:22Rick Rubin?

  Not realistic.

• 42:22Speaker 00

  How many, how many bands actually do get there? You know, it's very rare.

• 42:27Rick Rubin?

  Very few.

• 42:28Speaker 00

  You might probably be better off buying a lottery ticket or something. You know what I mean? Like, it's it's really rare. But I had confidence. And then one day, my guitar got stolen, so I was looking for another guitar. And I went to a guitar store. And the Tracy Guns, the guitar player from L.A. Guns, walks into the guitar store and I'm jamming, I'm playing. And he's like, you're gonna buy that guitar? He goes, I got that guitar. Come to my house. And we'll see what kind of, maybe I'll give you it for a good deal or something like that. And at this time, this guy was on MTV and you know what I mean? Like, L.A. Guns was doing okay. So me and my cousin, she drove me to the guitar store.

• 43:13Rick Rubin?

  He was originally in Guns N' Roses. Why they were called Guns N' Roses?

• 43:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:19Rick Rubin?

  Because of Tracy Guns and Axl Rose.

• 43:20Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm, I know.

• 43:21Rick Rubin?

  But now he's in L.A. Guns.

• 43:23Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm. So.

• 43:26Speaker 00

  We went to his place and. My cousin asks him, she goes, you know? My little cousin here, he's always talking about like he wants to do something in music. He wants to make it in music. She goes, aren't there like a zillion bands in L.A. that? And at this time, it was like, you know, it was, it was that.

• 43:48Speaker 00

  And he said, so he said, uh, yeah, there are, but there's only a couple of good ones. And for me, I was like, alright. I wanna be one of those good ones. No, I was like, I am one of those. Already? Wow, that's great. I was like, I'm almost there then. You know what I mean? In my head, I was that cocky. That's great. That's great. Funny, because I don't really have that in me anymore the same way. But that kid was really. Yeah. Anyway, so, you know, okay, cool. That was that experience and it gave me, you know, it was like, so it does matter if you're good or bad too. Yeah, some guys make it because they have connections, but if you're actually good, there's a chance. Yeah. You know, there's a chance. Yeah. So just be good.

• 44:32Speaker 00

  Put something together that's good. So, yeah, and then, you know, life happens and that band I was in, that was sharing the rehearsal for one reason or the other, didn't work out. Serge and I kind of became closer friends and started hanging out. And somewhere down the line, I didn't wanna be,

• 44:54Speaker 00

  I really look up to people like Pete Townsend. I really look up to the guys that are like those guys in their band. I think Jerry Cantrell is one of them. You know, they sing, but they're more of like the writer or the guy who's producing what's happening, the guy who's kind of setting the table.

• 45:15Speaker 00

  And Serge, at the same time, wanted to become a singer, but he had never really fronted a band or, remember, they asked me to sing. Yeah. So,

• 45:26Speaker 00

  it was like this transition that happened where I pulled my singing back, still sang, but pulled it back and he was trying to find himself at this time, let's just say, early Serge. Yeah. So, anyway, this happened and me and him meet, we stick with the bass player from my other band, but we meet this guy who's this Hawaiian drummer, who's some tall guy that played like a beast. His name was Domingo.

• 45:56Speaker 00

  And.

• 45:58Speaker 00

  That's when we became Soil, which was the band before System.

• 46:03Rick Rubin?

  So it's you, Serge, Domingo, and the bass player from their previous band?

• 46:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:09Rick Rubin?

  Were any of the Soil songs later System songs?

• 46:12Speaker 00

  Parts of them.

• 46:13Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 46:14Speaker 00

  Like "The End of Sugar," "I Sit in My Desolate Room."

• 46:17Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 46:19Speaker 00

  The song Soil, dun dun dun, da dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun. That was a Soil song. "Tentative," which was, came like on "Mesmerize, Hypnotize." That riff was from the Soil days. The song wasn't the same, but that riff, I wrote "Tentative" with that riff in there. So, so once again, this was very early on in Serge's vocal, in as a vocalist. So, he was doing some stuff that was kinda cool, but then he was doing some stuff that I don't think we were getting yet. I wasn't, and Domingo wasn't. So, Domingo really wasn't.

• 47:06Speaker 00

  You know, he was like, you know, what's he, you know, he does this crazy stuff and this quirky stuff. And, you know, and I was kind of real, I was like eighteen, nineteen years old at this time. This guy was much older than I was, so he was kind of more leader.

• 47:21Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 47:22Speaker 00

  Than, than I was in the situation. And so, behind Serge's back, we would try out other guys. We would like tell Serge, "We're not rehearsing today." And someone else would come in and try out. Mostly because he, he really, he wanted somebody else.

• 47:43Rick Rubin?

  Domingo wanted somebody else.

• 47:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And I was kinda, I kinda understood because Serge had not developed.

• 47:51Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. He was still green as a singer.

• 47:54Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 47:54Rick Rubin?

  He was really a keyboard player.

• 47:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:57Rick Rubin?

  Had you ever sung together yet?

• 48:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, on this track that we did called Wake O Jesus. It was about David Koresh. We sang together on that track, but that never became a Soil song. Soil was like, the songs were not really songs. They were like... The way I always see it is System of a Down is the song version of the Soil sound. I see. The sound of System of a Down was kinda there. Yeah. Not fully, but kinda there. Yeah. How long was Soil? How many years? Not even years. Maybe a year. One year. Maybe a year. We played one gig. Okay. Only one gig with Soil?

• 48:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. It was at this little cafe. The stage was so small that the first riff, I fell off and I I fell on a drum set of the other band. Like, it was like this stage was this tiny thing and I was like, wow, and I was so hungry to be on stage, you know, and and I just couldn't keep myself from just losing it and I just accidentally fell off the stage onto a drum set. But that was our only gig. Shava was there. And, you know, we were having a little pit. So Shava would come into the Soil rehearsals as a friend. As like a guy that, "I really like what you guys are doing, man." And he was just- Fan? Yeah. I wouldn't call him a fan. He was a friend and, but he, he liked, like, he dug the band and

• 49:29Speaker 00

  he was just supportive and he played some guitar. He wasn't really a bass player at the time. He was just, you know, playing guitar. Not really as long as I had been playing, but maybe for a couple of years and, you know, he was getting better. And, um, through that time, I started becoming friends with Shava. And Shava and I started hanging out more. So, anyway, we played Soil, played that one gig. Domingo was from Hawaii. He decided, I guess he had a kid or something and he moved to, back to Hawaii. Soil was gone.

• 50:05Speaker 00

  At this point, I was like, okay, Shavo and I have been really good friends and we've been talking a lot and we have a lot in common with like the heavier stuff. Like, you know, we like, both like Sepultura, we both like Pantera, we both like these heavier band, death metal bands, you know? So, I decided to bring Shavo in. And I didn't really discuss it with anybody, but we brought Shavo in and- He wasn't really a band yet, because the drummer left. Yeah, so, yeah, and after trying so many singers, I was like, none of these guys are better than Serge. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

• 50:49Speaker 00

  And I started appreciating some of the things that maybe I didn't appreciate early on. Yeah. So Serge was still there, Shavo came into the picture, and that was the beginning of System of a Down. We had the band name before we even had the, you know, it was, I would sit in the car with Shavo and we would just listen to music and talk about, you know, it'd be cool to start a band that's like, you know, kinda like this, like metal, but, you know, we just, we would, we'd talk a lot, and he even like mentioned one time, he's like, "And yeah, we'll get, one day we'll get Rick Rubin to produce our album." It's fucking crazy. It's crazy.

• 51:35Speaker 00

  Cause he- It's not, it's not even a band yet. We didn't have a drummer. You know? It's amazing. Yeah, and so,

• 51:45Speaker 00

  I was going to Valley College at the time, not really, I was just going there to show my mom like, "Oh, look, I'm doing something responsible," but I would ditch that too. But, uh, I reconnected with Andy, which was the drummer that was with the band before Soil that I was in. And we reconnected and I was like, it didn't work out last time with him, there was some personality things going on.

• 52:15Speaker 00

  But I was like, maybe things have changed. We really need a drummer. He's good. I brought Andy in. And we're like, let's jam with Andy, guys. And, you know, everyone kind of knew Andy, but we were a little hesitant because it was, we had our issues in the past. I'd known Andy since the third grade. I went to elementary school with him. But once Andy came in, that's it. We just started playing. I started, I brought in

• 52:45Speaker 00

  a song. I remember the first song I brought in was a song called Flake. We never played it, never recorded it. It was okay. But, you know, I had brought in the vocals and the arrangement and we played and, you know, the band started developing. I would bring in more songs and then I would start writing with, you know, Serge's vocals in mind. We all hung out at the studio together. We all listened to music together. We all got stoned together. Like, there's something about that that's part of the band's development when you're all listening to the same type of stuff. And once again, Serge just, Serge doesn't come from the rock

• 53:29Speaker 00

  influence world, or metal even. I mean, his brother had a big CD collection and would listen to that stuff, but Serge not so much. And so I would always be like, trying to turn Serge on to like, listen to this guy, listen to this, listen to that, and just try to open his ears to like, you know, styles and, you know. You know, believe it or not, The Doors were like a big influence. I love The Doors. I wouldn't make the connection, but that's really cool. Well, the spoken word stuff. Yeah. Like, I would, like a song like War, we will fight the heathens, we will fight the heathens. Then I, so I had the verse in the chorus, but for a bridge, you know, a lot of guys would go into a guitar solo. And for me, I was like, what if we just,

• 54:14Speaker 00

  and he talks over it. And so I would write these parts so it would give him space to have those spoken word moments. And then he would say, I wouldn't tell him what to say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, and so System started.

• 54:30Speaker 00

  Developing and, you know, we started playing in clubs. We played in clubs for a while with Andy. And then, um, the band was starting to get popular in the club scene. And I knew when, when, once, I knew that was it. I knew this was the band. This was the band.

• 54:49Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 54:49Speaker 00

  Like,

• 54:52Speaker 00

  I felt it. This is the band that

• 54:55Speaker 00

  I was looking for.

• 55:00Rick Rubin?

  Did you know how far out your songs were?

• 55:06Speaker 00

  I never saw that. It just came.

• 55:08Rick Rubin?

  Cause they just come to you naturally.

• 55:11Speaker 00

  I think there is something abstract about System of a Down.

• 55:15Rick Rubin?

  Yes. Metal music is, tends not to be an abstract form. So bringing that abstraction and Middle Eastern roots to metal changes everything. It really was. It was like nothing I ever heard before.

• 55:36Speaker 00

  I mean, I think we were trying to do something that wasn't copying other people.

• 55:43Speaker 00

  But I'm not sure how much of it was so like intentional or, you know.

• 55:48Rick Rubin?

  Cause it was, it came natural to you. It's how you heard the music.

• 55:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, and then the way he sang was the way he sang.

• 55:55Rick Rubin?

  Absolutely.

• 55:56Speaker 00

  And it just made for a good combination. Or, you know, I, I mean, I wrote a lot of vocals myself, so the, the vocal style of System of a Down is a mix between me and Serge. And then somewhere down the line, things were not working out with Andy. And this was like close to when we were starting to get some interest from labels and stuff like this and we felt like if we want to take this far.

• 56:29Speaker 00

  It's probably not gonna happen with him in the band. And it was really tough because he was a very talented guy. I'll never take that away from him. He is, he's still alive. He is a really talented drummer, keyboard player, and he ended up becoming the singer of a band called The Apex Theory.

• 56:46Rick Rubin?

  Cool.

• 56:46Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, it wasn't his talent, let's just say. And John was someone that was a guy that we shared a rehearsal studio with, so he-

• 56:58Rick Rubin?

  Was he in another band?

• 56:59Speaker 00

  He was in another band that System and that band shared a studio with. Our drum set, his drum set, we're like face to face and-

• 57:08Speaker 00

  And, um, Shavo and I were like at our pot dealer's house. And Shavo goes to me, "Hey, guess what, what? Andy broke his arm. He punched a wall and he broke all the bones in his arm." And I looked at Shavo and I was like, "Call John."

• 57:24Rick Rubin?

  And- Had you ever played with John before?

• 57:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, just jamming.

• 57:27Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 57:28Speaker 00

  I knew he was a good drummer. I knew he could handle it. He was a different drummer than Andy.

• 57:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 57:32Speaker 00

  Not as loose-

• 57:34Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 57:34Speaker 00

  As Andy, but more solid, dependable, strong.

• 57:39Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 57:40Speaker 00

  That's when I think of John's drumming, it's solid, it's strong, it doesn't wave.

• 57:46Rick Rubin?

  No.

• 57:47Speaker 00

  You know?

• 57:47Rick Rubin?

  He's super solid.

• 57:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:49Rick Rubin?

  Super solid.

• 57:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:50Rick Rubin?

  And groovy, too.

• 57:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And apparently John was like, before you guys called me, he goes, "Every single one of you had had a conversation with me saying that this might happen." Because, because things were kinda-

• 58:04Rick Rubin?

  The writing was on the wall that Andy was not gonna make it.

• 58:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was just looking that way. And, um, first rehearsal, John knew a lot of our songs already because he had been there for our rehearsals, listening to them. He'd probably been there in some times when we were like writing them, just hanging out. Because the studio for us was a place where both-

• 58:24Rick Rubin?

  Was to hang out.

• 58:25Speaker 00

  For all, both bands.

• 58:26Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:26Speaker 00

  For all the guys.

• 58:27Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 58:28Speaker 00

  So he caught on to it right away. That was kinda towards the end of The Sunset Strip, transitioning into getting signed.

• 58:40Rick Rubin?

  So the first album's called System of a Down.

• 58:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:43Rick Rubin?

  1998. Which song would be representative of this era of System?

• 58:50Speaker 00

  "Sweetie, Sugar," "War," "Pluck."

• 58:56Speaker 00

  More of the heavy stuff.

• 58:59Speaker 00

  I think the goal at that time was play the clubs and start a pit. You know what I mean? Be heavy, be unique, but be heavy, you know?

• 59:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, to get the energy, to get the response from the audience?

• 59:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:11Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. So let's see. Let's hear Sweet Pea.

• 1:00:19Speaker 00

  See, for me, that just came naturally, like...

• 1:00:24Speaker 00

  Kai, like, when that part...

• 1:00:27Speaker 00

  It was just like... It should go into this. I don't know. I can't tell you why, or it just... You're in your little trance, and it just goes that way, you know?

• 1:00:40Rick Rubin?

  And I can see a Doors-like moment. You know what I'm... It's not... It pretty sound like the Doors, but I understand the connection in that change.

• 1:00:56Rick Rubin?

  And the dynamics of the vocals also be something we might hear in the door.

• 1:01:12Rick Rubin?

  Really funny to me.

• 1:01:13Speaker 00

  You know, and you know, some people, you always tell the story of like when you first saw us, you were laughing or you were, it was... There are some guys in bands that might take offense to that.

• 1:01:27Speaker 00

  I like that there is a sense of humor in System of a Down's music.

• 1:01:32Rick Rubin?

  Me too.

• 1:01:33Speaker 00

  Because it's emotion and you're trying to cover different emotions, not just one. And sense of humor is something I think a lot of guys can't pull off. A lot of bands can't pull off sense of humor. You don't hear it too much, sense of humor in rock music. You know, Zappa maybe had, you know, a little bit of some funny...

• 1:01:53Rick Rubin?

  But it's also the combination of how hard it is and how quirky it is that makes it funny. It's so extremely hard.

• 1:02:07Rick Rubin?

  And it goes from seemingly light vocal ideas to these screaming vocal ideas right next to each other. The juxtapositions are wild. It still, it makes me laugh listening to it, just like the first time I saw you.

• 1:02:28Speaker 00

  I, I think it's just what, like I said, none of it was done to like on purpose. I think it just, the combination of my writing and whatever vocal style I have mixed with Serge's vocal style and the influences that we had and our influences were heavy bands, or like Cannibal Corpse and things like this, but we also had influences like The Beatles, The Doors and...

• 1:02:58Speaker 00

  Armenian and ethnic and you know, we all grew up around that kind of stuff. So there was stuff in our roots that I don't think were in the roots of other bands and it was done in an honest way. There's some bands that mix ethnic stuff with metal, but it's like, okay, we're playing metal. And then it goes into the ethnic part and it just, it's not a mutation that like it should belong, like when two people have a child and you see the characteristic of one parent and the other parent and like.

• 1:03:33Rick Rubin?

  It makes something new.

• 1:03:35Speaker 00

  But it sounds like.

• 1:03:36Rick Rubin?

  This thing combined with this thing and we do the A part for a while and then we shift to the B part for a while. It's more like.

• 1:03:44Speaker 00

  They belong together.

• 1:03:45Rick Rubin?

  Together they're making a new thing.

• 1:03:47Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:03:48Rick Rubin?

  And that new thing, we have not heard before. I've not heard it before.

• 1:03:51Speaker 00

  Yes, that's what I'm mostly proud of if I accomplish that as a writer and the band accomplishes that as a band that it sounds like we're bringing worlds together, but these worlds belong together. They weren't forced to be together so we can be the band that mixes all that stuff together. You know what I mean?

• 1:04:12Rick Rubin?

  Do you remember anything about writing Sweet Pea?

• 1:04:15Speaker 00

  Again, in my room at my parents' house, I had vocal phrasing, but I didn't have the words and the, you know, so when I brought the song into the band, it was probably like,

• 1:04:32Speaker 00

  you know, something like that.

• 1:04:33Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, you had the phrasing, but not the lyrics.

• 1:04:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, probably for the choruses and Serge kind of went off and did his thing in the verses. Yeah, that's pretty much how I brought it in, but like when I wrote the song itself, I, I can't remember exactly what. It's just trying to be drivey, trying to be heavy, trying to start a pit. You know, like in those little guitar things that I sometimes did it in those days, probably more than I would in these days, or even later on in the band, just little intros like it was almost like the tiny explodes into.

• 1:05:17Speaker 00

  You know.

• 1:05:18Rick Rubin?

  It really does.

• 1:05:19Speaker 00

  It's like it's pushing.

• 1:05:21Rick Rubin?

  The heavy part is so much heavier coming after that.

• 1:05:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:24Rick Rubin?

  If it just started after the intro.

• 1:05:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:27Rick Rubin?

  It wouldn't have the same effect at all.

• 1:05:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, it gives it some, it makes it crazy.

• 1:05:31Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 1:05:32Speaker 00

  It makes it zany.

• 1:05:33Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 1:05:34Speaker 00

  And I think that's what we were going for. You know, that's what I was at least going for. And we were that at that time. Remember what we used to look like at that time? You know, it matched the music in a way. We all were very theatrical, very, very made up. We, we looked kind of like not from this planet in a way at that time. So it all, it all kind of matched the, the way we looked, matched our music, matched the live show, matched the way we moved on stage. We were very.

• 1:06:06Rick Rubin?

  And then tell me about. The album comes out, going on tour, what was the experience like of first album comes out?

• 1:06:15Speaker 00

  I can only speak for myself. Everything that I said I wanted to happen for myself, like, cause I don't, I can't speak for Serge, I can't speak for Joe, but just for myself as where I wanted my life to go, was starting to happen. And I felt a lot of pressure, especially being the guy who's like, you know, the main writer in the situation. I was having a lot of panic attacks all of a sudden. Just being at the movie theater, one second I'm laughing, next thing in like my hands, my palms. I remember once we were playing at the whiskey. I, I just, I turned pale and they called the ambulance. My heart started beating really fast.

• 1:06:57Speaker 00

  And I was just having like, I didn't even know what a panic attack was. But I was getting them. And I'd never left home before. Things that I wanted to happen were happening and that was positive. But once again, I, I was.

• 1:07:14Speaker 00

  How old was I, like twenty-two? Twenty-three, maybe? So I was really young. I hadn't experienced the world. I was a kid. And so, yeah, I had to kind of learn how to meditate.

• 1:07:29Rick Rubin?

  What do you think the pressure was about?

• 1:07:32Speaker 00

  Here's your chance.

• 1:07:33Rick Rubin?

  I see. You didn't want to blow it.

• 1:07:35Speaker 00

  I didn't want to blow it. And and that kind of stayed through the albums, too. Like where it was just, you know. I wasn't getting the panic attacks, but I just always, I really didn't want to blow it. I knew how important the second record was. And I was already thinking about the second record when the first record was coming out, you know? We went on tour with Slayer. I mean, I had Slayer on my fucking wall. My headphones in Iraq, you know? And now I'm on the bus with Tom and Carrie and hanging out with Slayer. And then we're on the Oz Fest. And there's Ozzy. I used to have dreams where Ozzy was having dinner with me and my parents when I was like eight years old, you know, like?

• 1:08:20Speaker 00

  I was always obsessed with these people, you know? I was a big fan, you know, I had a lot of respect. And so there I am in the same room. And I have an album out the way they do. And also, it felt like, okay, now we're being looked at with the bands that have albums out, not just like the Sunset Strip bands anymore. So I never looked at it as like competitors, but the bands that you're surrounded with now are the top bands in the world.

• 1:08:53Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:54Speaker 00

  So that felt like pressure, but I didn't feel like I didn't belong. I was like, I think we're good, man. Like, play after us.

• 1:09:05Rick Rubin?

  Historically, opening for Slayer is a tough slot because Slayer audiences are probably the least open to hearing anyone but Slayer.

• 1:09:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:16Rick Rubin?

  How was the experience for you?

• 1:09:19Speaker 00

  I kind of played the heel like in wrestling.

• 1:09:21Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:22Speaker 00

  And I would like mock them if they weren't yelling Slayer. If they weren't chanting Slayer during our thing, I would start them and I would say, you're not big enough Slayer fan. You're not chanting Slayer. And that's how I played it and I, I think it worked with them because all those same places, we came back and we headlined pretty soon after that.

• 1:09:44Rick Rubin?

  Amazing. And do you feel like by the end of the set, the Slayer audience was accepting most of the time?

• 1:09:52Speaker 00

  Some of them, I mean.

• 1:09:56Speaker 00

  We didn't, cause you know, the way we looked was not.

• 1:10:00Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:01Speaker 00

  Slayer audience.

• 1:10:02Rick Rubin?

  Not necessarily Slayer friendly.

• 1:10:03Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:10:06Speaker 00

  And the way we sounded.

• 1:10:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. That's as difficult of a gig as you can possibly do.

• 1:10:12Speaker 00

  It's like heavy metal bootcamp if you were, yeah.

• 1:10:15Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:15Speaker 00

  At that time especially too.

• 1:10:18Rick Rubin?

  First time I saw Slayer was with Anthrax, Megadeth.

• 1:10:23Rick Rubin?

  I can't remember who the fourth band was. And from the beginning, before the first band went on, the crowd was chanting Slayer through all three bands until Slayer got on stage for hours. Slayer, Slayer. It was insane.

• 1:10:38Speaker 00

  No, it was stuff of legend, like those Slayer shows in the earlier, even before our time with them, like you would read about it in magazines and people get hurt in the pits and it was intimidating. Slayer was intimidating.

• 1:10:53Rick Rubin?

  The most.

• 1:10:54Speaker 00

  The audience was intimidating, the band was intimidating. Yeah.

• 1:10:59Rick Rubin?

  So wild. I'm so glad you got to do it.

• 1:11:02Speaker 00

  Well, you had a lot to do with that.

• 1:11:05Rick Rubin?

  It really makes you good, like standing up to that challenge.

• 1:11:09Speaker 00

  US and Europe.

• 1:11:10Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 1:11:12Speaker 00

  Our first tour in the US and our first tour in Europe. And the Europe was a little tougher.

• 1:11:17Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:19Speaker 00

  There was one show, I think it was in Germany, where we played the same place two nights in a row. The first, we used to open our set with no on the first record. Starts with drums and.

• 1:11:33Speaker 00

  Anyway, so we play the song, nothing.

• 1:11:38Rick Rubin?

  No response.

• 1:11:40Speaker 00

  Crickets.

• 1:11:42Speaker 00

  And we just kept playing our set. Yeah. The next day, I came to the band. And I said, if the same thing happens after No, John, start No again. And we're gonna play No until you cheer. And we're gonna play that same fucking song. Wow. We didn't have to play it more than twice, but we played it twice. Yeah. And they cheered after the second time. Yeah, you challenged them. Yeah, and that's kind of how that went with the Slayer shit. It's like, fuck you. You know, like. Amazing. It was kind of like that. You weren't intimidated by the audience. I mean, in real life, you were. There was this venue we played once in Portugal that they told us if they don't like you, they throw syringes at you.

• 1:12:27Speaker 00

  So we walk into this place and the roof has a bunch of syringes on the roof of the place. People like throwing them up there and they've stuck up there. So I wore long sleeves and you're going up there. And nobody threw syringes at us. But imagine like that's the walk. Pretty rough.

• 1:12:48Speaker 00

  And then in Poland, they hated us once. That's kind of a more historic kind of system show where we get there and there's an audience and there's dudes in the front with like SS fucking signs. And just intimidating and they weren't having it. They didn't like us very much and they started throwing things at us. Yeah, and Serge was like, turn on the lights, turn on the lights. And then they threw a bagel at Serge and it hit Serge. And they were throwing coins at me. And then I was kind of playing it where I would pick up the coins and I would like put them in my pocket.

• 1:13:32Speaker 00

  And I was blowing kisses at the SS guys. But Serge kind of like took it to No and I'm like, oh no, this isn't good. Like, you're not gonna be able to fight with thousands of people, man. So he was like, turn on the lights, who threw that, who did that? And the bagel came flying at him. And. That was the Poland show. These are all places we've gone back and now we're like headliners, but like.

• 1:13:55Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 1:13:55Speaker 00

  We had some shows that in Europe that not everybody understood us right away.

• 1:14:00Rick Rubin?

  Did you know that when you went back, it was gonna be okay? Or not until you went back?

• 1:14:05Speaker 00

  We were headlining the next time around, the smaller theaters. So it wasn't with Slayer, so.

• 1:14:12Rick Rubin?

  And then, next time we went back, people are singing along with every word?

• 1:14:17Speaker 00

  It was more of an accepting audience. Yeah, it was like the London Astoria, the first time we played with Slayer. The next time we went there, we, it was our show.

• 1:14:25Rick Rubin?

  Great.

• 1:14:26Speaker 00

  The crowd was amped. Like, you know, we started selling thousand seaters, thousand five hundred.

• 1:14:31Rick Rubin?

  Still on the first album or not?

• 1:14:32Speaker 00

  The first album.

• 1:14:33Rick Rubin?

  Still on the first album?

• 1:14:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:14:35Rick Rubin?

  So you went around two times on the first album, dealt with the Slayer audience and then went back and all good?

• 1:14:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, more accepting. We, we, we were growing.

• 1:14:46Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:47Speaker 00

  And the word was going out and we were building our fanbase.

• 1:14:54Rick Rubin?

  Who were the other bands in the scene at the time that you were coming up? Who would have been the contemporaries?

• 1:15:04Speaker 00

  I mean, Korn was doing their thing, Deftones were doing their thing. I guess it's the scene that people like to call new metal. I know a lot of people see System of a Down as new metal. We don't really see it that way. I, I like the word alternative metal maybe more. I, I think we're more, a little more experimental.

• 1:15:27Rick Rubin?

  I think so too.

• 1:15:28Speaker 00

  And we were taking things, we had songs like Spiders, Ariel's, Atwa, that had like, weren't necessarily metal influences. They were, could have been psychedelic influences and different kinds of rock influences.

• 1:15:47Speaker 00

  So bands we played with in LA, you know, some of them got signed.

• 1:15:53Speaker 00

  Static X, Cold Chamber.

• 1:15:57Speaker 00

  Again, bands that you put into the new metal, but it just, it just so happens that we were around at the same time and we came in through the same scene as they did, but I never felt like we really sounded like, I like those bands. All the bands I just mentioned, I think are really good bands.

• 1:16:12Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:13Speaker 00

  But I don't think we really sounded like them. I feel like we were doing something a little detached.

• 1:16:19Rick Rubin?

  So the second album is Toxicity 2001.

• 1:16:24Rick Rubin?

  What would you say

• 1:16:27Rick Rubin?

  was different about this album than the first album?

• 1:16:31Speaker 00

  Vocal harmonies. First album, I had a couple vocal parts. On our demos, I had, like, there was a song called "Damn" where I sang the whole song. So me singing in the band was not something foreign to the band.

• 1:16:47Speaker 00

  But

• 1:16:49Speaker 00

  like in Chop Suey and there was just more vocal, Serge and I started doing more vocal harmonies with like on "Atwa", "Ariels".

• 1:16:59Rick Rubin?

  Which one would be a good one to demonstrate?

• 1:17:07Speaker 00

  I mean, I love "Atwa".

• 1:17:08Rick Rubin?

  Great.

• 1:17:14Speaker 00

  I wrote it about Charles Manson.

• 1:17:21Speaker 00

  "Atwa" was his environmental

• 1:17:26Speaker 00

  thing.

• 1:17:28Speaker 00

  But this new metal bands were not doing this.

• 1:17:30Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:40Speaker 00

  These type of harmonies.

• 1:18:00Speaker 00

  And it felt very natural for me to go into this after that.

• 1:18:05Speaker 00

  There was nothing weird about it to me.

• 1:18:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:09Speaker 00

  Or to us as a band.

• 1:18:13Speaker 00

  That's like Simon and Garfunkel, na na na na, you know?

• 1:18:58Speaker 00

  Totally normal, nothing to see here.

• 1:19:06Rick Rubin?

  It's so funny, man.

• 1:19:07Speaker 00

  And we would do interviews and people would be like, you know, your time signature, this, and none of us are like really schooled musicians, so we're not like...

• 1:19:16Rick Rubin?

  Just feel it.

• 1:19:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, we just feel that time signature or that, whatever it's going into.

• 1:19:25Speaker 00

  And it's just, to me, it's just an emotional, nice song.

• 1:19:31Speaker 00

  All the world I've seen before me passing by, it's just...

• 1:19:55Speaker 00

  I knew that I was gonna start singing more as time went on. I, I, I didn't wanna overdo it, so there was room...

• 1:20:09Speaker 00

  For growth.

• 1:20:10Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, the band developed over time and one of the developments was you got to sing more. You got to sing harmony. If you listen to the first System album, the idea of the next album having vocal harmony, you wouldn't imagine it. Do you know what I'm saying? Because it's so.

• 1:20:28Speaker 00

  Heavy.

• 1:20:29Rick Rubin?

  Heavy.

• 1:20:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:30Rick Rubin?

  That you don't associate harmony in that kind of music.

• 1:20:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:34Rick Rubin?

  I don't know if there's any super heavy music that has harmony. I don't know.

• 1:20:40Speaker 00

  Or that kind of harmony.

• 1:20:41Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:42Speaker 00

  Garfunkel, Simon and Garfunkel type of harmony.

• 1:20:45Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:46Speaker 00

  It's just, you know, it's what I like to listen to. And it just kind of comes out naturally out of the writing when, when you don't put limitations and walls and say, well, this, this has to be heavier. We just gotta be hard.

• 1:21:03Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:04Speaker 00

  It all complements each other. And I think.

• 1:21:07Rick Rubin?

  Even more, they amplify each other. It's like the hard sections seem insane coming after the Simon and Garfunkel-y part. Simon and Garfunkel-y part's nice, nice song going along, maybe moody, but then the.

• 1:21:23Speaker 00

  But it gives, and it gives you a break from the hard too, you know?

• 1:21:26Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, but then the hard comes in and it's wild. And then we go back to Simon and Garfunkel and then it gets hard again, but then it gets really hard where it already seemed too hard for what came before it. Now it goes to the next extreme. It's exciting because I don't know any other music that works like this. It's so, the dynamics are so extreme. And in a way, it almost seems like it shouldn't work, but it does.

• 1:21:59Speaker 00

  And everybody in the band has to be versatile. John can't just be a heavy metal drummer. John is a very versatile drummer.

• 1:22:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:06Speaker 00

  Serge Ches can't be a heavy metal singer.

• 1:22:08Rick Rubin?

  Uh-uh.

• 1:22:09Speaker 00

  I can't just be a heavy metal writer. Everyone in the band has to have broad taste and open mind.

• 1:22:19Speaker 00

  For it to come off and be played as musicians. Yeah. Where it works, you know, where the style works. I know a lot of great heavy metal drummers, but they're one trick pony. And they play that stuff really great, but probably wouldn't work on songs that I write. Because I need you to go from place to place. Yeah. And sometimes very quickly. Yeah. Okay, so tell me about the experience of this album coming out and going on tour for. Well, we were bigger. Chop Suey comes out. Next thing you know, we're walking in the malls and kids recognize us.

• 1:23:06Speaker 00

  That, that life changed after that. I guess you can say. You know, MTV was still playing videos at that time and they were, have your rotation of Chop Suey. Do you remember anything about writing Chop Suey? Yeah, I was in the, either we were still in an RV or I was in the back of the bus. And I had a guitar and that's pretty much where the main. Can you grab the guitar and tell me what came first? Two parts, the, the intro came first.

• 1:23:40Speaker 00

  The.

• 1:23:42Speaker 00

  Once again, this is probably not tuned correctly, but I'm just.

• 1:23:51Speaker 00

  That came first.

• 1:23:59Speaker 00

  Now, I can't remember if I did the, or if I just went into.

• 1:24:06Speaker 00

  I don't remember what. What came first? First after that, but those parts pretty much came together. The vocal came very natural. Well, the vocal pretty much walks with the.

• 1:24:23Speaker 00

  My lyrics were different. It was. Wake up, tell me what you think about tomorrow. Is it gonna be a pain in sorrow? Tell me what you think about the people. Is it gonna be another sequel? That was my original lyrics, but I wasn't married to him. Yeah. Serge pretty much sang, he didn't change the song. So I was like, you know, so he sang that and. And then Serge put in the repeat vocals. You wanted to, that? Well.

• 1:24:47Rick Rubin?

  Wake up, wake up.

• 1:24:48Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah. No, Serge, Serge took it to that other place.

• 1:24:52Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:53Speaker 00

  And I loved it. It was, you know.

• 1:24:55Rick Rubin?

  It was, I'd never heard anything like that either. It was so unusual. I remember not even knowing what to make of it. It was so unusual.

• 1:25:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. I didn't think it was gonna be the song that it was gonna be. I mean, it's our most popular song. It's the song that introduced the world to us, I guess you could say.

• 1:25:17Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:17Speaker 00

  But that whole.

• 1:25:23Speaker 00

  That, that kinda just flowed out of me. The lyrics just flowed out of me. The lyrics' meaning for me was how, uh, see, I'm not sure the verse matches what my lyrics are saying. But the lyrics for me was how, you know, people judge people on how they die. Like, for example, if you died of cancer, poor guy. If you died of a drug overdose, oh, you know, you had it coming. It's like how people are judgmental. I cry when angels deserve to die. It's like how people are judgmental even in someone's death, you know? So that's what my lyrics meant. Wake up, grab a brush, pull a little makeup. Till this day, I'm not sure where that comes from and what that really means, but it

• 1:26:08Speaker 00

  fit really well and, you know, it is what it is. It was, it's, it's what became the song. And then this middle part, I think you have the story of where you guys, I wasn't there, but.

• 1:26:21Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, in the library, pulling down.

• 1:26:23Speaker 00

  Well, there was no vocals there because all I had was.

• 1:26:29Speaker 00

  That's all I had. I didn't have the whole. I think you and Serge put that together with the Bible and.

• 1:26:36Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, whatever, I don't even know if it was a Bible. Whatever book it was, he pulled down and just randomly picked it, but that did happen.

• 1:26:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so that's how that part came about and there you have it. You have Chop Suey and it's our most famous song, the one that people recognize the most from System of a Down and it came to me all in, uh, back when we were, I don't know where we were driving through, but we were on tour and then I was just sitting in the back playing guitar and that's where it came from.

• 1:27:05Rick Rubin?

  Let's hear it.

• 1:27:10Speaker 00

  Oh, and it was called "Suicide" before.

• 1:27:32Rick Rubin?

  Some interesting chords going on at Adlike Orchestration. It makes the part much bigger.

• 1:27:39Speaker 00

  I was doing a lot of layering and experimenting with layering during "Toxicity" recording.

• 1:28:05Speaker 00

  I think you might have been the... you wanted to, though.

• 1:28:08Rick Rubin?

  Really? I remember.

• 1:28:09Speaker 00

  Really?

• 1:28:09Rick Rubin?

  I remember.

• 1:28:10Speaker 00

  Because you would make suggestions like that.

• 1:28:39Speaker 00

  I mean, like I said, I would have never thought that this was gonna be the single, or...

• 1:28:45Rick Rubin?

  I remember I played this for Tom Morello, and he's like, "That's crazy person, me."

• 1:28:59Speaker 00

  Again, the vocal harmonies.

• 1:29:08Rick Rubin?

  Harmony is so good.

• 1:29:11Speaker 00

  Serge and I have very different voices.

• 1:29:13Rick Rubin?

  They work so good together.

• 1:29:15Speaker 00

  It's a hot and cold type of thing, I think.

• 1:29:25Rick Rubin?

  It's so hot.

• 1:29:39Speaker 00

  And that riff underneath?

• 1:29:41Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:41Speaker 00

  Every time I hear it, it's very... There's a death metal band called Obituary.

• 1:29:45Rick Rubin?

  Do you remember that?

• 1:29:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm like, that's where you did that. That's why you played that. You love Obituary.

• 1:29:52Rick Rubin?

  This part's incredible, too. Incredible.

• 1:30:01Speaker 00

  But see, these are your ideas, though.

• 1:30:03Rick Rubin?

  Really?

• 1:30:04Speaker 00

  I think so, because you would always kind of tell us, "It has to end off like big and dramatic, and this does." This like... And so you would kind of lead us into these kinds of big outro emotional things.

• 1:30:24Rick Rubin?

  It worked. Whatever it is, it worked. I don't remember any details, but I just remember like...

• 1:30:30Speaker 00

  I don't remember...

• 1:30:31Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:30:32Speaker 00

  I don't remember details either, but I remember the kind of suggestions that you would make to us and how they would change the songs.

• 1:30:38Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:38Speaker 00

  And that was one of them, how the endings would be this grand... Instead of just singing the chorus all over again, like, "Let's sing it."

• 1:30:48Rick Rubin?

  Giving a reason to have another chorus at the end.

• 1:30:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, and sing it in a more dramatic and bigger...

• 1:30:52Rick Rubin?

  Finale.

• 1:30:53Speaker 00

  Yes. Yes.

• 1:30:55Rick Rubin?

  Any other developments during that period of the band, between Albums Two and Three?

• 1:31:02Speaker 00

  I think as a writer, I was starting to get into more... Not necessarily starting pits, but trying to be heavy in different ways.

• 1:31:14Rick Rubin?

  I thought?

• 1:31:17Speaker 00

  So, for me as a writer, I think I was transitioning into that. And I also felt like, as we were going along, Serge wanted to sing more. And you pushed him more into that direction as well.

• 1:31:32Rick Rubin?

  He got to be a really good singer.

• 1:31:33Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:31:33Rick Rubin?

  I remember on the first album, it was hard for him to sing the songs. And I remember live seeing the band in those days. His performance was great, but his singing wasn't yet great. But by being on the road so much, he turned into a great singer.

• 1:31:48Speaker 00

  And great performer.

• 1:31:49Rick Rubin?

  Absolutely. But the voice like really took on this like operatic quality that wasn't really there in the beginning. In the beginning, it was more quirky and yelling.

• 1:31:59Speaker 00

  Yes, and growling and yeah.

• 1:32:01Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Couldn't have predicted it in advance. I wouldn't know that it was gonna happen.

• 1:32:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I was aware of that. And he never told me, like, you know, I don't wanna growl or anything, but I could feel like he was going more into singing than screaming and it wasn't, he wasn't as aggro and angry. It was, the third album was, the thing is, I would write so many songs for all these albums that we'd ended up having either a third album or the double album. Like, if I didn't, if I didn't bring in that many songs, we probably only had three records.

• 1:32:41Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:41Speaker 00

  Cause we only had three recording sessions.

• 1:32:43Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:44Speaker 00

  First, Toxicity and Mesmerize, Hypnotize.

• 1:32:47Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:48Speaker 00

  So, third album was Steal This Album. So that was stuff that we didn't put on Toxicity that we thought was still good, but then remember somebody had leaked it?

• 1:33:00Rick Rubin?

  Oh yeah.

• 1:33:01Speaker 00

  And that's why we called it Steal This Album.

• 1:33:03Rick Rubin?

  What's a good song representative of this?

• 1:33:06Speaker 00

  Oh, there's so much stuff here. I mean, I wouldn't say it's representative of the album, but this song right here.

• 1:33:17Speaker 00

  Who was doing, I don't know, like, the power bands around us and we're doing this. I mean, this doesn't show you what the album is, but this tune.

• 1:33:35Speaker 00

  It's not heavy metal. It never gets heavy at all.

• 1:33:40Speaker 00

  So, like I said, trying to be heavy in different ways.

• 1:34:06Speaker 00

  Mellotron. I think that's in Europe.

• 1:34:10Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful apartment.

• 1:34:18Speaker 00

  Now, this is a song that I wrote and could have sang myself, but I was, I was still in a place where I was like,

• 1:34:29Speaker 00

  not, didn't want to go full on yet.

• 1:34:31Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:32Speaker 00

  You know?

• 1:34:36Speaker 00

  And Sarah's changed the lyrics to this song from what I originally had, but once again, if I'm not married to it.

• 1:34:41Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:43Speaker 00

  Not changing or hurting the song.

• 1:34:45Rick Rubin?

  No. And if the person who's singing the song isn't connected to the words, it won't be good.

• 1:34:51Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:35:05Speaker 00

  I forgot that I had a solo part in this song. I haven't, I don't, I haven't listened to this for years. I forgot that that was there.

• 1:35:12Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful. The phrases are in Middle Eastern.

• 1:35:16Speaker 00

  Greek.

• 1:35:17Rick Rubin?

  Greek.

• 1:35:17Speaker 00

  Very Greek-like.

• 1:35:21Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:24Speaker 00

  Bazooki-like.

• 1:35:25Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:34Speaker 00

  But, you know, there was more heavier stuff on this. Like a song like "Inner Vision",

• 1:35:40Speaker 00

  could have been on "Toxicity", but just didn't want to make "Toxicity" that long.

• 1:35:45Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, let's listen to "Inner Vision".

• 1:35:47Speaker 00

  Second song.

• 1:35:53Speaker 00

  Very Middle Eastern as well.

• 1:35:57Speaker 00

  This riff.

• 1:36:11Speaker 00

  But see, we're moving into directions that are not,

• 1:36:16Speaker 00

  you know what I mean? We're going into different places now.

• 1:36:19Rick Rubin?

  More melodic and more experimental.

• 1:36:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:36:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, I like this song a lot.

• 1:36:42Speaker 00

  Another one is, there's Highway Song that's on this album, that's another good one.

• 1:36:52Speaker 00

  Mr. Jack.

• 1:37:19Speaker 00

  That's rad.

• 1:38:26Rick Rubin?

  They come quick. Let's hear a little of the Highway Song.

• 1:38:46Speaker 03

  Another song, like I said, in a more emotional, heavy direction. Although the chugging is there, the heavy is there. But still more like dancy chugging, it's not metal-y. Yeah. More bouncy, dancy. I remember when I wrote this song, I had Depeche Mode in mind. Depeche Mode? Yeah. It was like, I don't know, that.

• 1:39:17Speaker 03

  Pick up the guitar and show me the... Well, I mean...

• 1:39:24Speaker 03

  Show me the Depeche Mode version.

• 1:39:27Speaker 03

  Like, I just, in my head, I was thinking like if, if the guy from Depeche Mode was singing like...

• 1:39:34Speaker 03

  I don't know, it might not be Depeche Mode to everyone else, but in my head, that's kind of what... Yeah, yeah, yeah, you visualized it. That's, that's kind of what brought the...

• 1:39:44Speaker 03

  The kind of dark...

• 1:39:49Speaker 00

  Another song, like I said, in a more emotional, heavy direction. Although the chugging is there, the heavy is there, but...

• 1:39:58Rick Rubin?

  But still more like dancy chugging, it's not metal-y.

• 1:40:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:40:04Rick Rubin?

  More bouncy, dancy.

• 1:40:05Speaker 00

  I remember when I wrote this song, I had Depeche Mode in mind.

• 1:40:10Rick Rubin?

  Depeche Mode?

• 1:40:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. It was like, I don't know, that...

• 1:40:17Rick Rubin?

  Pick up the guitar and show me the...

• 1:40:19Speaker 00

  Well, I mean...

• 1:40:24Rick Rubin?

  Show me the Depeche Mode version.

• 1:40:27Speaker 00

  Like, I just, in my head, I was thinking like if, if the guy from Depeche Mode was singing like...

• 1:40:34Speaker 00

  I don't know, it might not be Depeche Mode to everyone else, but in my head, that kind of what...

• 1:40:38Rick Rubin?

  You visualized it.

• 1:40:39Speaker 00

  That's, that's kind of what brought the...

• 1:40:44Speaker 00

  The kind of dark...

• 1:40:48Speaker 00

  If you had like synthesizer.

• 1:40:52Speaker 00

  I don't know, I could hear, I could hear it. Maybe, I don't know if you can, but I can hear.

• 1:40:59Speaker 00

  You know, thinking, the way he sings, I don't want to sing like the guy from Depeche Mode, but just these chords kind of took me there. And then there's this part where it goes.

• 1:41:24Speaker 00

  That part came from, remember there used to be like freestyle music, dance music, like Timmy T and.

• 1:41:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:33Speaker 00

  In my head, there was a lot of synth going on, on that song. But there is no synth at all in the recording, but when I was writing it.

• 1:41:42Rick Rubin?

  You wrote it, you were envisioning synths?

• 1:41:44Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:41:44Rick Rubin?

  Cool. The groovy part, the dancey part, is that the same?

• 1:41:52Speaker 00

  It's just the same chords that changes the way I play it.

• 1:41:57Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:42:09Speaker 00

  You like.

• 1:42:17Speaker 00

  You know, if you had like a 909 or some kind of kick like that going like that. In my head, that's what was happening when I wrote that. But then, you know, you play it with a rock band, you play it with a guitar and.

• 1:42:29Rick Rubin?

  But it's cool because envisioning those sounds inspired you to write a different song than you would write if you were writing a song for a metal band.

• 1:42:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:40Rick Rubin?

  So it becomes new music.

• 1:42:41Speaker 00

  Different inspirations, different colors.

• 1:42:44Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:44Speaker 00

  You know?

• 1:42:46Rick Rubin?

  And then have you guys toured this album?

• 1:42:48Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:42:49Rick Rubin?

  It just came out?

• 1:42:50Speaker 00

  No, yeah, we just put it out and. Like I said, we put it out because someone leaked.

• 1:42:58Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:59Speaker 00

  Those songs and they put out versions that we didn't necessarily like. So we went to your place, remember, and we kind of redid some of them, rearranged some of them.

• 1:43:09Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:09Speaker 00

  Did new vocals on some of them.

• 1:43:12Rick Rubin?

  We recorded all the songs. For Toxicity, we recorded them all. And then kind of narrowed down the ones that were gonna be on the album or maybe the ones that were most likely gonna be on the album, still probably more than were actually on the album.

• 1:43:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:43:26Rick Rubin?

  And then we would refine those. So the songs from Steal This album weren't completed. Certainly not to the mix stage.

• 1:43:35Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:43:36Rick Rubin?

  But they were tracked.

• 1:43:38Speaker 00

  They were born during that time.

• 1:43:41Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, because they hadn't done all the overdubs or probably all the singing.

• 1:43:44Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm. Or even like Mellotrons and different.

• 1:43:48Rick Rubin?

  The overdubs.

• 1:43:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:43:50Rick Rubin?

  Then, next is Mesmerize and Hypnotize. Any memories of that time in the band?

• 1:43:59Speaker 00

  Well, I had just moved into a new house because Toxicity was so, I still live there, actually. I've been living there for 23 years. That's where I did a lot, you know, I wrote a lot of that stuff in the living room.

• 1:44:15Speaker 00

  But it was, you know, an interesting time because, uh, just the dynamic in the band had changed.

• 1:44:22Rick Rubin?

  Do you think just because of success? Or something else?

• 1:44:27Speaker 00

  I don't know. Yeah, maybe success had something to do with it, uh.

• 1:44:34Speaker 00

  Well, Serge's heart wasn't into it the same way.

• 1:44:39Rick Rubin?

  Why do you think that was?

• 1:44:43Speaker 00

  I think the way we picked System's songs to be on the record is everyone, we had a list of songs. It was very democratic, to be honest with you.

• 1:44:50Rick Rubin?

  Absolutely. The best songs won, always.

• 1:44:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, I can't tell you which one to pick. I can't tell John which one to pick, but it just so happens that a lot of the ones that were picked were songs that I brought in. And nothing was ever done in like no one was trying to hurt anybody. It was just we were in my head, I don't care who wrote what song. I would just wanted the best songs and the songs that worked together and made that album. You know, I I just wanted the best for the band, best for the album. And, you know, we were just in a in in just in a weird place where we had a member that was just kind of not

• 1:45:36Speaker 00

  along with it the same way that he was before, you know, like I I don't want to say the wrong thing because you say something and then all of a sudden it becomes this Darren said this, you know what I mean? But trying to be really careful with with my words.

• 1:45:51Speaker 00

  But I felt pressure because I was like

• 1:45:57Speaker 00

  I I it's a very tough time to explain for me.

• 1:46:01Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about what you remember about the recording.

• 1:46:05Speaker 00

  That was fine. We were at your house on Laurel Canyon House.

• 1:46:09Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:46:10Rick Rubin?

  Red Blood Sugar Sex Magic was me.

• 1:46:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:46:13Rick Rubin?

  I remember you had an idea to fill

• 1:46:19Rick Rubin?

  the room that was going to have your guitar amp and the acoustic guitar work done. We put

• 1:46:25Speaker 00

  Like a wall of acoustic guitars.

• 1:46:27Rick Rubin?

  Acoustic guitars.

• 1:46:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, I just was experimenting because

• 1:46:30Rick Rubin?

  What was the thought?

• 1:46:32Speaker 00

  Well, I I would go to the Guitar Center and when I play an amp through in their vintage room. Everything sounded so good in there and and I saw this, they had this wall of acoustic guitars. And I would be thinking, there's got to be something about the sound going through those guitars.

• 1:46:50Rick Rubin?

  Like a resonance or something.

• 1:46:51Speaker 00

  Kind of resonance and that's what I got, kind of like this kind of twangy resonance out of my guitar. So I wanted to try that in with the guitars.

• 1:46:59Rick Rubin?

  It was a really cool idea. I never had experimented with anything like that before.

• 1:47:03Speaker 00

  Very subtle thing that happened with it with the guitars, but it gave me a little bit more twang, a little bit more cut out of the guitars.

• 1:47:11Rick Rubin?

  Cool idea.

• 1:47:12Speaker 00

  Thanks. Yeah, I was just trying to experiment with stuff based on that.

• 1:47:17Rick Rubin?

  Anything in terms of the writing process that was different or next level?

• 1:47:26Speaker 00

  Well, you were really pushing us to not repeat ourselves. I remember during Mesmerize and Hypnotize. When we showed you something that kinda sounded like something that would belong on Toxicity.

• 1:47:36Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:36Speaker 00

  You would look at us and say, "We did that already."

• 1:47:40Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:41Speaker 00

  So I was trying to take my writing to a place where

• 1:47:48Speaker 00

  we were just trying new things, not even necessarily metal. You had songs like violent pornography, radio video, that were very much system songs. Sounds like system, but something the system never did before. And that's why those two records, Mesmerize and Hypnotize, sound a bit different than the others, because it was really you pushing us to go to other places and not be afraid to go to other places, you know?

• 1:48:21Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, not be limited by paths.

• 1:48:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, not be limited by whatever we did before and... You know, a song like BYOB, like I showed you earlier, when from like metal to this fucking P-Funk chorus, back to metal into punk rock, like they're very experimental songs that still fit in the world of System of a Down, but they're just done in kind of a different way.

• 1:48:49Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Should we listen to Radio Video?

• 1:48:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:48:52Rick Rubin?

  Is that a good one?

• 1:48:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:48:56Speaker 00

  I love playing this song live, too. This song always comes off live. And it's just, it's dancy, it's quirky, it's happy.

• 1:49:07Speaker 00

  I can't compare it to any other song I have ever written, or I can't compare it to anyone else's song either.

• 1:49:55Speaker 00

  Not metal at all.

• 1:49:59Speaker 00

  I think I was also going into less of a metal and more into a rock direction with the band. And even with Scars, Scars even went even farther into a rock.

• 1:50:13Speaker 00

  And so as my writing has gone along, I've gone more into a rock direction with my writing through the years.

• 1:50:32Rick Rubin?

  Really Danny and Lisa?

• 1:50:34Speaker 00

  They were my friends, my neighbors growing up in Hollywood. They lived across from me. Random. It was almost like, "Look, can you see me now? Like, look, like I'm in this fucking band." Like, "Look where I..." I don't even, I don't know where they are, but they were just somebody I remember from my childhood. And it's almost like if they could only see me now, you know, like, "I'm on the radio, I'm on the video."

• 1:51:03Speaker 00

  Gotta have that.

• 1:51:26Rick Rubin?

  The only reggae group in the history of System of a Down.

• 1:51:31Speaker 00

  I'd have to, is it?

• 1:51:33Rick Rubin?

  I think so.

• 1:51:41Rick Rubin?

  Memorable solo, simple, memorable, melodic.

• 1:51:46Speaker 00

  That's the way I like to solo, if I'm gonna solo, as a guitar boy.

• 1:51:54Speaker 00

  Another thing about it gets faster and faster and faster. That's another thing we used to, like with "Sugar", it gets faster and faster. So tempo, fucking with tempo.

• 1:52:14Rick Rubin?

  It could also be something in folk music, where the songs would kind of build, and people would dance and spin.

• 1:52:22Speaker 00

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:52:37Speaker 00

  But, once again, you were pushing us to go into different places, and I was trying to do that without losing our identity.

• 1:52:45Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, and it still sounds like, doesn't sound like anybody but system.

• 1:52:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, and, and I had a guy who was, really, didn't really want to be there, to be honest with you. So, there was a lot of shit going on. I can't say he didn't want to be there, but his heart wasn't into it the same way, you know?

• 1:53:03Rick Rubin?

  That's great. So we recorded "Mesmerized" and "Hypnotized" at the same time. How did we release them? Same time, or?

• 1:53:11Speaker 00

  No, they were, I don't even know if we wa, the double album was planned or anything at first, but we, there were, they were released like months apart.

• 1:53:25Speaker 00

  And then the "Soldier's Side" intro, that's one thing I love about this record, or those two records, is where it starts with the "Soldier's Side" intro into "BYOB", and then the second record ends with the "Soldier's Side" complete.

• 1:53:38Rick Rubin?

  Cool song.

• 1:53:39Speaker 00

  And it bookends.

• 1:53:40Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:41Speaker 00

  And that wasn't something that was really planned, that kind of came when it was like, "Oh, we're gonna do a double album", and it kind of came to me where it was like, "That'd be a really cool way to bring them both together",

• 1:53:53Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, let's listen to "Soldier's Side".

• 1:54:02Speaker 00

  My uncle is in this song a lot because he was a soldier in Iraq.

• 1:54:08Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:54:09Speaker 00

  And so when I wrote this song, he was still in Iraq. And the second time America bombed them. A lot of this stuff I wrote around that time. BYOB.

• 1:55:18Speaker 00

  And so we went from the first record to this. It's a long ways away.

• 1:55:25Rick Rubin?

  Wild evolution. In three recording sessions, really.

• 1:56:12Rick Rubin?

  Really cinematic. It's like watching a movie.

• 1:56:26Speaker 00

  I just, I just think as the time went along, the songwriter in me came out more in these records than

• 1:56:36Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:37Speaker 00

  writing metal songs, but just like, just more like singer-songwriter kind of song.

• 1:57:23Speaker 00

  I remember when I wrote "Lost in Hollywood."

• 1:57:25Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:26Speaker 00

  And I brought in the song. And you told me, "It's not finished." And I'm like, "What does he mean, it's not finished?" Like, you know, so it was just the beginning. But just you saying that, and I still tell this story is, you just had to say that to me, and then I went home that night, and I wrote the whole second part of the song, which made it, like, this whole, became more epic. And you just made that one suggestion of saying, "It just sounds like it's not finished yet."

• 1:58:04Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:05Speaker 00

  And I really appreciated that, though, man. Like, you would pull, you would pull things out that I didn't know were there.

• 1:58:13Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. We all were working together to make the best thing it could possibly be, whatever that was. Through loving it and honestly talking about it, whatever came up.

• 1:58:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:58:28Rick Rubin?

  I saw some of that.

• 1:58:38Speaker 00

  There is like heavier stuff on this record, but for me, these songs

• 1:58:44Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:45Speaker 00

  are the ones that I like the most because it was going into different places. If I'm sad about anything about not making more records with System, it's that we never got the chance to evolve even more.

• 1:59:00Rick Rubin?

  To see what would be there.

• 1:59:01Speaker 00

  To go farther.

• 1:59:01Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:36Rick Rubin?

  The harmony is so cool, the notes.

• 1:59:40Speaker 00

  So I only had this

• 1:59:42Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:42Speaker 00

  when I first brought it in.

• 2:00:28Speaker 00

  This is the part that I went home and wrote after you told me it wasn't finished.

• 2:00:41Speaker 03

  I was standing on the wall, feeling ten feet tall. All you maggots smoking fags on Santa Monica Boulevard.

• 2:00:54Speaker 03

  This is my front page, this is my new rage. All you bitches put your hands in the air and wave them like you just don't care.

• 2:01:14Speaker 00

  It kind of gives me this vibe of...

• 2:01:18Speaker 00

  All the young dudes...

• 2:01:20Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:21Speaker 00

  Like it has this like, open...

• 2:01:25Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:28Rick Rubin?

  Don't stand there.

• 2:01:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:01:34Speaker 00

  To me, this is heavy. It was very heavy in emotion.

• 2:01:38Rick Rubin?

  Absolutely.

• 2:01:40Speaker 00

  And I... As the band went along, I think we would have gone more into this place. And maybe not as metal and not as, you know? Chili Peppers kind of started with the funk, but as they went along, they changed into a different direction.

• 2:02:02Rick Rubin?

  So cool.

• 2:02:04Speaker 00

  I think we were capable of doing that. I'm not sure a lot of bands are capable of letting...

• 2:02:11Rick Rubin?

  You already made the transition from metal to experimental music and didn't lose System of a Down.

• 2:02:20Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:02:21Rick Rubin?

  And that's the hardest part.

• 2:02:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:02:23Rick Rubin?

  And within the realm of experimental music, there's a lot of places to that.

• 2:02:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:02:36Rick Rubin?

  Really anthemic, beautiful part.

• 2:02:50Speaker 00

  It's just the songs about like when I was a kid, I ride my bike and you'd see,

• 2:02:56Speaker 00

  you'd see people sitting at the bus stop. Or there was a lot of prostitution where I grew up. I mean, right in front of my apartment, there was a motel and it was all prostitution going on. And all those pictures are in my head when I sing this song or when I wrote this song was just all the people that I grew up seeing, didn't know them, but just grew up seeing in the streets of Hollywood that either came here with a dream or, you know. But it was, a lot of my childhood is in this song.

• 2:03:38Speaker 00

  And I was born in Hollywood, you know, so like it comes.

• 2:03:42Rick Rubin?

  So you got to see these sad stories.

• 2:03:45Speaker 00

  Just some sad, some not sad, I don't know, but just the, how did that person end up in this place?

• 2:03:55Speaker 00

  You know, I would be riding my bike around the block and how do these people end up here? You know?

• 2:04:03Rick Rubin?

  Two interesting stats that I'd never made the connection before. So I never thought of it as five albums, even though it is five albums. And you mentioned The Doors, The Doors only made five albums.

• 2:04:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:04:16Rick Rubin?

  And System only made five albums. And then the other one is, is System's entire recording career was over seven years. And The Beatles' entire recording career was only seven years. They made 13 albums in the seven years, but it's still seven years.

• 2:04:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:04:33Rick Rubin?

  It's just interesting.

• 2:04:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, look, I'm proud of the records. Like I said, I don't live with any regret or anything like that, but it would have been nice to see where the band would have evolved if we kept putting music out. If we put out an album now, it's just so far away from when we did this. It doesn't continue the story to me.

• 2:04:58Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, it feels like starting a new story, really.

• 2:05:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, and I don't know, like, there was a time that that might have been something I wanted.

• 2:05:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:08Speaker 00

  I'm not sure how much I want that.

• 2:05:10Rick Rubin?

  Understood.

• 2:05:11Speaker 00

  Anymore. I don't, I'm sure people won't be too happy to hear that from me, but... Yeah, I'm not at the same place where I was.

• 2:05:18Rick Rubin?

  Understood.

• 2:05:18Speaker 00

  Maybe 10 years ago.

• 2:05:19Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, but then again, maybe that's the place to be that allows it to happen.

• 2:05:24Speaker 00

  You can't predict where you're gonna be and how you're gonna feel.

• 2:05:28Rick Rubin?

  Impossible.

• 2:05:30Speaker 00

  But, yeah, man, I mean, I think we, for a short period of time, that we had in a few recording sessions, we did evolve quite a bit.

• 2:05:41Rick Rubin?

  Quite a bit. Quite a bit.

• 2:05:44Speaker 00

  So...

• 2:05:44Rick Rubin?

  Lot of growth and a lot of material in a short period of time. Loads of songs.

• 2:05:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, and we actually had even more left over from those sessions.

• 2:05:57Rick Rubin?

  Maybe someday.

• 2:05:59Speaker 00

  If that did ever happen, I might wanna go back and look at them again and maybe...

• 2:06:05Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, but the same thing happened with, um, "Steal This Album."

• 2:06:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, it would be that kind of thing.

• 2:06:10Rick Rubin?

  Finishing them, essentially.

• 2:06:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's a reason why they weren't on.

• 2:06:13Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:13Speaker 00

  The record. They, they just weren't as good.

• 2:06:15Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:16Speaker 00

  In some way. They, they had good parts, but maybe not good completely.

• 2:06:20Rick Rubin?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:06:21Speaker 00

  You know? So, you know, in everything.

• 2:06:24Rick Rubin?

  How would you say your relationship to music has changed over the course of your life?

• 2:06:34Speaker 00

  You know, I was writing albums at this time. Now, I still, I released stuff with Scars, but Scars has two records out. And I have a new one coming next year. But I write kind of at my pace now. And I write for me and then I choose to put it out when I want to put it out. There's no like, there isn't as much pressure.

• 2:07:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, but you still continue writing.

• 2:07:04Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:07:05Rick Rubin?

  That's what you do.

• 2:07:06Speaker 00

  No, I have tons of songs that nobody's ever heard.

• 2:07:10Rick Rubin?

  And you continue adding to that list?

• 2:07:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I do have quite a bit of material that no one's heard. What, some will work with System, some will work with Scars. But at this point, they're probably all gonna end up going to Scars at some point. I mean, there was a time where I held on to them.

• 2:07:30Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:30Speaker 00

  Because I was like, okay, we might get back into, we might need these songs. And I've just kind of held on to songs through the years. Because thinking, maybe, and when that time comes, we're gonna need these songs, you know? And so, you know, I've just kind of held on to music and enjoyed it myself. And like I said, I would be doing it if, if there wasn't a fan base or, you know, there'd be something missing in my life.

• 2:08:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:02Speaker 00

  I wasn't still writing and playing and...

• 2:08:05Rick Rubin?

  What's your experience of playing live now?

• 2:08:09Speaker 00

  With System or Scars?

• 2:08:10Rick Rubin?

  Both.

• 2:08:12Speaker 00

  It's a totally different experience. With System, we're playing, I know what to expect. The band is big, you just said, you know, you came to our show, there was 60,000 people there.

• 2:08:22Rick Rubin?

  Everybody singing along.

• 2:08:23Speaker 00

  Everyone singing along. But man, I just played two shows with Scars a couple of weeks ago. One at Aftershock and one at the, used to be Bank of California.

• 2:08:34Speaker 00

  I mean, there was people singing Scar songs and there for Scarz and I was kind of like, I expected a lot less.

• 2:08:43Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:43Speaker 00

  And, and it seems like a lot of people, I don't promote the band very much. I don't put the band out too much, but there are people there that really enjoy those records and enjoy my writing and show up for those gigs, but it's different because there's a different vibe because like you're, you're working for it again.

• 2:09:05Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:06Speaker 00

  It seems like you work for it with System, but when the, the people are there to see you and adore you and all.

• 2:09:13Rick Rubin?

  Singing along with songs, a lot of the work is done.

• 2:09:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know what to expect. With Scarz, I never know what's gonna come in front of me and so there's like this,

• 2:09:23Speaker 00

  it's a little bit more stressful for me because I don't know what to expect. There's gonna be thousand people there, two thousand people there. I mean, or there're gonna be like two hundred people there. I don't know, you know? But these last shows, man, were really great with Scarz and I'm excited to put out this new record that I've actually been holding on to this record for a couple of years, so.

• 2:09:49Rick Rubin?

  It's a good sign that you can write songs, like even talking about System songs, you would talk about songs from different albums that might have been written in your parents' house. There's a timeless feeling about your songs where they don't sound like they're now or that they get old, that they're just sort of good songs and good songs seem to always be good songs.

• 2:10:16Speaker 00

  I think some people are like, hey, when I hear you play the guitar, I know it's you. And I'm like, I don't think it's so much the guitar. It's just the way I arrange songs, the way I write songs is, I think if I had a signature to what I did.

• 2:10:30Rick Rubin?

  It's the songs.

• 2:10:31Speaker 00

  It's the songs. It's not necessarily the instrument that I'm playing. It's how I organize and how I compose.

• 2:10:40Speaker 00

  And put things together that work in a way that it ends up sounding like one of my pieces.

• 2:10:46Rick Rubin?

  Cause you put together pieces that don't obviously go together.

• 2:10:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:10:51Rick Rubin?

  But they flow very naturally in your songs.

• 2:10:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I have a really broad taste in music. There's so many different kinds of genres, so many different kinds of music that I love. And, you know, you don't feel one way all the time either, you know. So I feel very fortunate to be an artist that... I love death metal, but I couldn't just play in a death metal band.

• 2:11:16Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:17Speaker 00

  I love-

• 2:11:17Rick Rubin?

  That would get old and it would be limiting.

• 2:11:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I've kind of built myself in a way where fans aren't necessarily surprised when I do something different.

• 2:11:31Rick Rubin?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:11:32Speaker 00

  And I feel like I... I would do it regardless, whether I can get away with it or not. It's just, it's honest to me. You know, it's cool to be able to have that room and not be just, you know, I have to use these heavy riffs and this vocal style all the time, like... I feel very free as a songwriter to be able to kind of do what I want and it kind of comes out sounding like me. Whether it's a song like Lonely Day or a song like BYOB or, you know, there's some... Look, I know Scars isn't as big a system, but some of my songs that I'm really proud of,

• 2:12:13Speaker 00

  I wrote their song called Insane Babylon that are Scars songs, that Guns Are Loaded. There's some songs that I'm very, very proud of in the Scars catalog as well, you know, and so... I think I'm fortunate to have that outlet as well too, because some people have that one band.

• 2:12:33Rick Rubin?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:12:34Speaker 00

  I do have another band that it seems like people care about and come to see.

• 2:12:39Rick Rubin?

  Great.

• 2:12:40Speaker 00

  So I feel very fortunate with that.

• 2:13:10Speaker 04

  Tetragrammatin is a podcast. Tetragrammatin is a website. Tetragrammatin is a whole world of knowledge.

• 2:13:25Speaker 05

  What may fall within the sphere of Tetragrammatin? Counterculture? Tetragrammatin. Sacred geometry? Tetragrammatin. The avant-garde? Tetragrammatin. Generative art? Tetragrammatin. The tarot? Tetragrammatin. Out-of-print music? Tetragrammatin. Biodynamic? Tetragrammatin. Graphic design? Tetragrammatin. Mythology and magic? Tetragrammatin. Obscure film? Tetragrammatin. Beach culture? Tetragrammatin. Esoteric lectures? Tetragrammatin. Off-the-grid living? Tetragrammatin. Alt spirituality? Tetragrammatin. The canon of fine objects? Tetragrammatin. Muscle cars? Tetragrammatin. Ancient wisdom for a new age.

• 2:14:12Speaker 05

  Upon entering, experience the artwork of the day. Take a breath, and see where you are drawn.