Marcus King Talks About Writing With Rick Rubin and “Stripping It Down to the Copper”

Marcus King has been through it. His new album, Mood Swings, opens with the title track, which begins with a sample that goes like this: “And I think that is the part of hell that a person in depression really tastes. The hopelessness, the terrible hopelessness.” Then “terrible hopelessness” loops into infinity, threatening to cave in and suffocate the song before it even begins. “Mood Swings” turns into a swinging soul-pop number—but that sample is a brutal way to start an album, and an intriguing stylistic shift from an artist who’s been a modern-day blues-rock god up until now.

Mood Swings’ edges are softer than on earlier albums like 2020’s El Dorado and 2018’s Carolina Confessions, the admissions more guilt-ridden than defiant. Marcus King is working on being alive, and things are getting better, but every slip-up hits like a knife in the gut. On that aforementioned title track, King begins: “Let's take another one, I swear, I'm havin' fun, but I look miserable/ 'Cause time don't heal no pain, I still feel just the same/ 'Cause time is standin' still.” The chorus is a miracle, a reflection of the work King has been putting in — to move away from the indulgences of the rock and roll lifestyle and something more towards the peaceful repetition of domestic bliss. “Feel Iike I can really be myself around you,” he sings. See, King is married now. More on that in a bit.

Maybe things are getting better. According to King, they are. The clouds cleared all at once. When he thought summer had arrived, thunder came rolling through, and depression set back in. But he also found the tools to work through it, very slowly and then all at once.

Marcus got married in 2023. They’d just met when he started work on Mood Swings, back when he was tracking demos with Rick Rubin at his Shangri-La retreat-cum-studio in Malibu. He hadn’t seen his new fling in a while, so he flew her out to LA. Real rockstar shit. She was a VP at Bank of America, her life was together. The rock and roll lifestyle looked far less glamorous when she would take care of him after long nights or a bit of excess. Rubin’s devotion to mindfulness and mental health didn’t work as well when King would drink. So, like so many who spend some time in LA, he made a concerted effort to get better. The album tells the story of this journey, a struggle he still deals with every day.

As he tells GQ, “I may get off the phone and feel the depths of hell that I've felt before, but I just have to stay confident that it'll pass.”

GQ: I know y’all are touring with Chris Stapleton. What’s something you’ve learned from him over the years?

MARCUS KING: I really love the subtle approach that Chris takes to his show. He allows his abilities as a writer and a singer and a guitar player to shine through without any smoke and without any mirrors. I really admire the quality of putting on a stadium show without the use of all these tricks of the trade. Some people rely solely on that, whereas he doesn't use 'em at all and his voice can carry that stadium. It's really impactful to see as a young artist.

You've always had a certain vulnerability that you're able to tap into, but you get pretty open and pretty raw on this record. Did that take some growing into on your part?

It took a little trial and error and once we got there I realized what Rick [Rubin] was pushing me towards in the writing process for this album. It was a year of just writing and tracking demos at Shangri-La. None of them were really sticking and I was getting a little discouraged. Once I kind of ripped all the metaphors away and just started speaking directly and without the use of metaphor or any hyperbole or whatever, it was just raw and true.

Rick's favorite demo was “Bipolar Love,” and his idea on the record was to allow this modern component to an otherwise throwback sound. I don't like that phrase or that term, but I think it's befitting because everything on the record uses technology that you would've had access to in the sixties, but you would've also had access to it today, obviously.

I think throwback is the same as timeless, anyway. I say that to say his idea was to allow the lyrical content to be the modern component that we paired with this timeless or throwback sound, and he was right with that.

Working with someone like Rick is amazing, but were you able to honor your own voice in a collaborative way or were you deferring to him?

Oh man, it was all my voice. That's all his production style really is. He makes you go so deep within yourself that you never realize that those parts were there. It was just really healing in a mindful way and a therapeutic way to write these songs. I also went to talk therapy and utilized all these other strategies to improve my mental health. It was all happening at the right time.

The press release for this record notes that you thought you might not be here if these songs didn’t exist. Are you comfortable talking about some of the struggles you've gone through over the past few years?

Absolutely. It's easier for me to talk about now that I've been able to separate myself from it and I look at it more as an opportunity to advise others against that and just as an opportunity to advocate for creativity over loss of life, obviously, but creativity over that dark place, too. It's a writing partner and whenever it comes around I know it's time to get to work and the dark thoughts usually leave after I write through it.

Substance wise, were you dabbling in drugs or drinking? What was your vice?

The amount that we work and the amount that we try to emote and the amount of ourselves that we leave on stage every night because that's the only way we know how to do it, is intense. I leave it all out there, because otherwise I feel like I did a disservice to the audience — if I don't walk away feeling like I left something up there. That can be really depleting if you're not doing a supplemental routine and a workout routine. Now, everything is pretty extensive just to try to keep myself healthy and have some drive left over. I used to try to supplement it in other ways and try to play as hard as I worked and it's just detrimental at the end of the day. There are certain things that can be done in moderation. I just lack the ability to do so.

You can maybe go some time without drinking or doing drugs, but once you start doing 'em, it's kind of hard to stop. Is that how you would describe it?

That's a fair way to describe it. It's kind of a binge mentality, but I approach everything in my life like that. That's why I know alcohol is just—and drugs for that matter—not great. It depends on the drugs. I'm obviously on a campaign right now, I just released a strain of marijuana and I think that's great and I'm really thrilled about that. Lemme try to rephrase this. I guess everything I do in my life is similar to intermittent fasting. I get to eat what I want, but I only do it within a small window. If I were ever to think about having a drink again, it would be under these really strict windows of time the same way that I approach my diet. But for right now, I'm okay without it. I'm just sticking with my pot.

I know you’re married. Did finding someone who cares about you almost more than you do kick you into gear in a way?

That was a really big push that I needed. All these things happened right as they were supposed to. Meeting my wife the second night out on tour I decided I was going to do all the things I loved in excess and I got to play music too, which to me, I thought that was a pretty good exit strategy. My extracurriculars started to affect my real love, which was music. I wasn't able to put on the best show that I could, which hurt me. But I met her the second night out, which was thrilling. She had a really good job and she definitely didn't need me and I could see that she saw what a fuckup I was and I think she felt a little bit of a need to protect me and to help me rescue me from myself in a lot of ways. Between her being nurturing and also me having a light shined on me because of how together she was and how much I was not, it was really a push in the right direction.

You're not necessarily feeling the things that you sing about on the album. Some of the songs are old. Do you have to reconcile something and get back to that place in a way?

Well, man, it's a day-to-day thing. It's almost like depression is something I feel I'm always in remission of because it's an imbalance thing and it's really threatening trying to walk that line. I never know from day to day. I may get off the phone and feel the depths of hell that I've felt before, but I just have to stay confident that it'll pass. Playing music and being able to do it, I feel like I bank a lot of dopamine and when I need to tap into it, that extra resource is there.

You've put in the work and you have to trust that the work is doing its job.

That's why they call it exercise, because I just got out of the gym, and I gotta do that all the time. Now, I got to go do some mindfulness exercises. It's something that you have to do every day and it is rare, but there's some people out there who have mindfulness without having to exercise it. It's rare. There are people I know who don't have to exercise in the gym and they eat whatever they want to, but I just know that I'm neither one of those people, so I have to exercise both of them.

You really expand into new sonic territory on this album. Was that something you decided on early on, was it a decision made with Rick, or something else entirely?

I think after Rick and my first meeting, we started putting together which demos we wanted to go after first. The two musicians he brought in, the only way I could put it is that they were born to do what they do. It's like something that's innate in them, it's effortless, it just kind of flows out of them. I played with Chris Dave on drums and Corey Henry on organ and myself. That was really moving, to be in a room with those guys. When we first started recording, it was also my wife and my third date. I flew her to LA because I had only taken her on a date or two and I wanted to see her.

I was going to be out there a while, so I flew her out and she spent time with me. It was just inspiration around me at every turn. It was hard not to be inspired. Those two guys, just what you hear on the record is just what kind of flowed out and what they felt inspired to play based off the raw demos of songs that I had. They just kind of grew from there.

As far as the sound of the record, there's a sparseness to it that I love and that I could only compare to Rick's interior design capabilities. If you look up the way that Rick designed the inside of his home or the inside of Shangri-La, it's all based off of minimalism, and it's based off of attracting the eye to the natural and attracting the eye to what mother nature is providing you, instead of trying to fabricate it within this environment. That's a similar approach we took to this as far as we stripped everything away during the mixing process and we'd sit and listen and we wanted the music to stand almost on its own, just like the essence of a song. We wanted the work to be able to stand alone without the support of bass or without the structure of drums and without the garnish of keys or guitar and all that stuff we did after the fact.

Is it mostly Chris and Corey on the final version of the album?

Yeah, the majority of it, with the exception of three songs. One of the original concepts was for me and Corey and Chris to play general ideas of the songs that I'd written and then to sample ourselves. I guess that's a studio trick. Rick was borrowing from the hip-hop side of his brain, but we ended up not doing that as much as we planned. “Delilah” is a first take.

“This Far Gone” features a drum track that we sampled from another song that didn't make the record and we recorded around that. I did the same thing with “Fuck My Life Up Again,” because there were no drums at the studio. I really fell in love with the groove and I wrote to it and I just really dug it. “Cadillac” is one that I brought with me to Italy that I tracked out there. Otherwise it was all tracked in Malibu as the three of us.

Do you hope fans take anything specific from this record?

Well, I hope they're pleased with the sound quality of it, obviously, but I hope it's also an opportunity for a listener to feel heard while they're hearing the music that I'm offering. I hope that they feel heard because of the things I've gone through, and maybe it's something that they go through and at the very least, maybe. I guess I just want someone to feel some form of resolution the same way that I did. I hope someone can feel as lucky as I do.

What are some of your tools for dealing with anxiety or depression?

Just create however you can. Just start writing until it takes a shape, until it takes a form. Start drawing or start playing an instrument. What are you most attracted to? I exercise a lot when I'm feeling anxious, or I try to exercise my mind. Also, man, I just go out and play fetch with my dog. We've all been led to this idea that mindfulness is a luxury, but it's something that we can do for free. Time is valuable for sure, but I think you make it up in dividends. Do some breathing exercises while you're standing in line at the bank or while you're sitting in traffic. Do some mindfulness practices.

Is this stuff that you mostly took from Rick, or is this stuff you were working on before working with him?

It's strange, man. It all just kind of happened before knowing him. I definitely dabbled in mindfulness practices and always kind of reverted back to my usual habits. He's never given me any practices to go over or anything like that. He's inspiring to be around because he has a peacefulness and a calm about him that makes you want to approach things the same way he does.

I've learned music my whole life through osmosis, just from hearing stuff on the radio, then it comes reinterpreted later out of you. That's how musicians who play by ear usually learn a lot of stuff. If you hear something on the radio over and over and over again, at some point it's going to come out regurgitated in your style. With Rick—he's the only person I've ever learned or garnered any mindfulness from through osmosis. It's really bizarre and a heavy concept, but Rick's not the kind of guy to preach his philosophies on anybody.

What was it like being in Italy with him?

It was really incredible. We just spent a few hours every day unpacking the material, listening to it and stripping it down to the copper and trying to see the essence of the song. We were just trying to make them stand on their own. We would do that every day, but in that practice, we would try to do different vocal approaches. To my understanding, it's the most intimately Rick's been involved in a project in some time, and that means a great deal to me. We even did things such as listening to Chris Cornell vocals that he had done, to reference the way that Chris would approach some things vocally. It helped me get out of a box that I might have been stuck in.

We were inspired to listen to recordings from some gospel services that Rick had attended. I had spent time trying to find samples and the opening of the record is a good example of that. I spent a long time trying to find intake patient interviews, because the epiphany I had was that I am a mental patient because I go to a psychiatrist and they prescribe me medication. So in the broad scheme of things, I am a mental patient and I think a lot of us are, but I wanted to find a clip that reflected this. When I did, it really resonated with me.

I'd never had to have samples cleared before. The only one we couldn't get cleared was the opening sequence from “Faces of Depression.” I wrote a letter to a man who was the son of the man that did this research. He controlled the estate. He said that it was all done to educate and not to entertain, so he didn't want it used for entertainment purposes. I wrote a letter to him explaining that this record was just as much for mental health advocacy and awareness as it was for entertainment. And he graced us with the usage of that. I was really pleased by that. It really was a nice subtle nod from the universe to let me know I was doing something right.

I bet it made you want to continue as an advocate.

I want people to come and have a good time at my shows. That's what it's about. It's about a release. I just want people to come and I want to see all sorts of folks out having a good time, however they feel comfortable having a good time. I'm not preaching anything to anybody. I just want you to come out and listen.

I try to be mindful of the idea because I have a lot of evangelicals in my family, and I grew up in church. I'm thankful for that structure I had growing up, but a lot of people are really turned off by people trying to preach their philosophies at you. It makes them feel so good, why wouldn't they want to share it? I try to be mindful of that too, though this feels a little bit more widely accepted than some other things. So, come on out and hear the gospel.

Originally Appeared on GQ