BLOOD, SUGAR, BREATH AND COSMOS MAGIK

Rock history is awash in tales of wild music producers, adding to the manic energy of studio sessions.

- SCOTT GARCEAU

Accounts have it that Phil Spector would show up at Ramones or Leonard Cohen recording sessions, gun in hand, waving it around like a menacing baton. Brian Wilson would instruct a whole room of Wrecking Crew musicians and string players to wear fireman hats while recording the manic Mrs. O'Leary's Cow for "Smile." Sly Stone, producing one of his own albums, had a nitrous oxide tank installed in his recording booth for inspiration.

Then there's Rick Rubin. The Def Jam founder is known for producing wild albums, fueled with rage or dripping with emotional angst—from the Beastie Boys to Red Hot Chili Peppers to Slayer—yet he comes on like a Buddha. All meditation and chill questions when inviting Paul McCartney to explore his own writing secrets in the TV series 3,2,1.

I landed on Rubin's sand-colored, Zen-covered A Creative Act: A Way of Being and thought at first it was going to be a paper version of the "Calm" meditation app. It's not. Rubin invites us—all of us—to look at ourselves as infinitely open creators. We all have similar tools available to us—senses, memories, experiences—but the artist finds a way to make creativity a practice. Whether commercially successful or not, there's a yen for putting those practices into action, and bringing things to life.

Rubin is a guru of sorts, and it's helpful to leave all your preconceptions behind while absorbing the short, punchy chapters here. Yes, he resurrected artists like Johnny Cash, stripped them to the essence and hooked them up with songs by Nine Inch Nails. The results—on tracks like