“Under the Bridge” was released in February 1992, following up the hot single “Give It Away.”
Cop Killer
Body Count with Ice-T
A speed-metal band that started out as a hobby for rapper Ice-T brewed up a storm of controversy that made headlines. Generating the type of rage usually reserved for terrorists or other enemies of state, Ice-T’s band Body Count was publicly denounced by some heavyweight individuals. Even George Bush threw in his two cents, calling the record “sick.” “It makes me feel good,” Ice-T told Rolling Stone, referring to the strife surrounding his record, “like I haven’t been just standing on a street corner yelling with nobody listening all this time.” At the vortex of the storm was “Cop Killer,” a track from Body Count’s 1992 debut.
Ice-T (born Tracy Marrow) took his stage name from Iceberg Slim, a black exploitation writer. The release of a series of hard-core hip-hop records earned him notoriety for his violent, realistic renderings of ghetto life. It’s a life he understands. While rapping made him a millionaire with a mansion in Beverly Hills, he grew up on the mean streets of South Central Los Angeles. Shot twice, once during the commission of an armed robbery, his Original Gangster (the title of his 1991 release) swagger is authentic.
Body Count was born of the rapper’s longtime love of thrash-metal music. In the summer of 1992, Ice-T joined the Lollapalooza tour, bashing out a hard-driving set list that included “Cop Killer.” Audiences loved the band, so the next logical step was to make a record. Given the multiplatinum success of Ice-T’s rap recordings, a national distribution deal was quickly solidified with Time Warner Inc. The resulting record unleashed a barrage of speedy riffs, with Ice-T’s inflammatory lyrics about killing a policeman. With no hip-hop beats in sight, Body Count’s debut appealed to a whole new audience that wouldn’t normally be caught dead listening to rap.
Ice-T admits to having some problems with the police, but he swears “Cop Killer” isn’t a rallying call to gun them down in the streets. It’s a song about getting even, an eye for an eye; for every kid gunned down by police, so shall a cop die. Ice-T explains he wrote the song from the perspective of a psychopath driven to the edge of reason — an individual he can understand but whose behavior he doesn’t condone. “It’s a record about a character,” he told Alan Light in Rolling Stone. “I know the character, I’ve woken up feeling like this character. When I saw the [LA] riots on TV, I wanted to get out there, but I’ve never clicked over.” Still, he wondered why all this attention was paid to a protest record that speaks about killing the police while nobody raises an eyebrow when kids are harmed by the cops.
Time Warner sensed there might be a problem with the inflammatory nature of the song and talked Ice-T out of calling the album Cop Killer. They convinced him that such a title would hurt sales as stores might refuse to stock the record. A compromise was reached. The album was officially titled Body Count, but the cover featured “Cop Killer” tattooed on a man’s chest, gang style.
Body Count hit the stores in March 1992, debuting at Number Thirty-Two on the Billboard Top Fifty album chart. The real problems started when a policeman in Houston, Texas heard the song and alerted his collegues at the Fraternal Organization of Cops. Deciding that this song was going to get their fellow police officers mowed down in the line of duty, they launched a campaign against the piece, Ice-T and Time Warner. Other detractors surfaced almost immediately. Oliver North called for charges of sedition to be brought against Time Warner. No fewer than sixty members of the United States Congress signed a letter calling “Cop Killer” “vile” and “despicable.” The corporate office of Time Warner received bomb threats while employees of their subsidiary companies Sire and Warner Records were fending off death threats. In Texas, a group of cops under the banner CLEATS called for a national boycott of all Time Warner products. Chicago police jumped on the boycott wagon, sending thousands of copies of the following protest letter to TW executives:
We, as members of the Chicago Police Department and members of their families, are appalled and offended that you and your country are willing to promote the Ice-T song called “Cop Killer.”
We are urging you to remove this song from the record stores and the media. Until such time, we intend to boycott any and all products, movies and amusement parks, such as your Six Flags, that are owned and operated by Time Warner.
With all the turmoil in the world today, this song promotes more civil unrest.
If you continue to promote this song, rest assured that you will be held liable and accountable for officers that are killed as a result of subjects using this song as a plea in their defense.
In the midst of this external pressure, Time Warner, which had always promoted the artistic freedom of its performers, was suddenly being attacked from within. Archconservative Charlton Heston showed up at a shareholder’s meeting disputing Ice-T’s constitutional right to compose and perform songs such as “Cop Killer.” Other TW insiders agreed, fearing that a national boycott would damage their company’s reputation. Opera singer and TW chairperson Beverly Sills bowed to the external pressure and with Ice-T’s blessing, stopped production on Body Count’s album. The record had already gone gold, and Ice-T reasoned that “all the new people who are buying the record are snooping assholes. That’s not why we want to sell records.” The death threats ceased and the record became an instant collector’s item.
Did “Cop Killer” contribute to violence against police? No. In 1992, cop killings were down 20 percent.
Film director Quentin Tarantino wasn’t known as a songwriter, but according to his résumé, he has cowritten at least one tune. The song “Scooby Snacks” by Fun Loving Criminals borrows so heavily on samples from Tarantino-directed films Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction that he sued and had his name added to the song’s credits.
Informer
Snow
Maybe it’s in the genes. The grandson of fabled Toronto outlaw Paddy McCarren, Darren O’Brien (aka Snow) had been in trouble with the law several times — twenty-three times to be specific. Breaking and entering, assault causing bodily harm, aggravated assault, the list goes on. In fact, when “Informer,” his catchy, Jamaican dance-hall-influenced hit, was starting its long climb to the top of the charts, the Irish Catholic rapper was doing time.
O’Brien grew up in the mean streets of Toronto’s Allenbury public-housing project. Multicultural in the extreme, O’Brien’s old “hood” saw families from all over the globe living side by side. “White, black, it don’t matter,” O’Brien told Rolling Stone. “We were all brought up together.” This cross-pollinization was at the root of the rapper’s musical education. In his early teens, he used to dress up like Kiss, miming to their records. It wasn’t until a neighbor played him tapes from a Jamaican DJ called Barry Gee that O’Brien (or Snow, as his Rasta friends nicknamed him) found a different musical path — rap.
A stint in Ontario’s East Detention Center for two counts of aggravated assault in 1989 (he was consequently acquitted and freed) gave Snow the determination to pursue a career in music. Upon release from jail, he made his way to New York in search of a record deal. For once, luck seemed to be on his side. He was discovered and signed to a record label. Snow produced both the album and video for “Informer” before heading back to Canada to face charges on an old assault rap.
The nine-month sentence he received in that court action seemed to stymie his burgeoning career. Behind bars, he didn’t know that “Informer” had been released and was being played on MuchMusic, the Great White North’s MTV equivalent. None of his fellow inmates believed him when he told them of his New York adventure. “Yeah, right,” they would say sarcastically. His reputation was tarnished on the inside, but his legacy of criminal action kept him safe from his disbelieving peers.
Everything changed one night early in 1992. A fellow con who had been released phoned Snow in jail with some exciting news. “I just saw your video on MuchMusic,” he said. “No, you couldn’t ha
ve seen it. It’s not out yet,” was Snow’s skeptical reply.
He told one or two people, not wanting the word to get around just in case it wasn’t him or worse yet, in case his friend had mistaken lightweight rapper Marky Mark for him. On Friday and Saturday nights, the inmates were allowed to watch movies and then half an hour of MuchMusic before lights out. Snow knew that MuchMusic worked on a four-hour rotation, so he would have a chance to watch later that night. “Damn, I hope it’s me,” he thought. “Not Marky Mark.”
After the movie, he paced up and down the adjoining hallway by the TV room. He was nervous. All of his jailhouse friends were inside, watching and waiting. Just minutes before lights out, he heard a familiar sound. “Bana bana bana …” — the new stylee opening of his song. Running into the TV room, he stood by the television, rapping along with the video in perfect patois. The inmates cheered as he sang and his stock rose in jail. “I was alright because it wasn’t Marky Mark,” he told a reporter years later.
His newfound fame spread through the facility, all the way up to the warden. One day, after Snow had been released on a day pass, the warden requested a meeting. “I saw you on ‘Electric Circus,’ ” said the warden, referring to a MuchMusic dance show. “My son was watching too. He thinks your music is garbage. And, I saw a bar in the back of the set. You’re not permitted to drink. I have to give you thirty days and no more passes.”
Snow was crushed. How could he promote his record if he was denied passes? “No way,” he said, denying that he had been drinking at MuchMusic. He was desperate. This was his chance at a better life.
“I’m just kidding,” the warden said, revealing his cruel joke. “My son actually loves your stuff.” From that point on, everything changed. In keeping with his newfound star status, he was accorded better treatment in jail. “They started saying, ‘Okay. This kid has something going for his life,’ ” said Snow. “They started treating me a little different.”
Snow was released after serving nine months — just in time to see “Informer,” the rap about a police snitch become hotter than jerk chicken, hitting the top of the charts. Even as the tune sat at Number One for seven weeks, he was on parole, sworn to stay sober and attend anger management classes. The success of the song turned the twenty-three-year-old rapper’s life upside down. He went to jail in a paddy wagon and left in a limousine. On the inside, he was a punk with a long record. Now he was a star with a hit record.
Creep
Radiohead
The members of the Oxford, England-based Radiohead hated the song “Creep.” They wouldn’t even perform it live, assigning it to the status of a warm-up number for sound checks and studio sessions. Guitarist Jon Greenwood particularly abhorred the tune and always sought new ways to undermine its effectiveness whenever the band played it. Even songwriter Thom Yorke (a dead ringer for comedian Martin Short) thought his own lyrics were “crap.” So the Brits were surprised when an accidentally recorded take of “Creep” became their breakout single in the United States.
Thom Yorke was cagey about the origins of “Creep” — a song so swollen with sexual frustration and unhealthy thoughts, it seemed ready to burst at the drop of a guitar riff. Was it a true-to-life story of carnal obsession and self-loathing? Yorke was tight-lipped. “I wrote it in college,” is all he would say.
In early Radiohead rehearsals, “Creep” was presented to the band and immediately rejected. Its whispered introduction — words of love to a woman, the beauty of whose skin makes the singer cry — was deemed too wimpy. The tune’s middle section, with the menacing proclamation “But I’m a CREEP!,” was too psychotic, too strange even for this group of British punk popsters. The band wrote and fine-tuned other tracks for their Capitol/EMI CD debut Pablo Honey.
Signed on the strength of aggressive guitar pop songs like “Vegetable” and “Prove Yourself,” Radiohead’s sound has been described as “The Who by way of the early Jam,” with substantial melodies and hummable choruses. The play list for the album did not include “Creep.”
During one recording session, the band played “Creep” as the warm-up for another number. Guitarist Greenwood was upset. He loathed the song and wanted the band to drop it permanently from their repertoire. Unable to convince the lads to forget about it, he took matters into his own hands. Playing the musical saboteur, he waited until the band was about to play the chorus, then cranked his amplifiers up to ten. To ensure it was loud enough, he quickly strummed the guitar several times. On the chorus, all hell broke loose. Greenwood unleashed a wall of sound — all feedback fury and distortion — that he hoped would ruin the tune, making it unbearable to listen to.
What Greenwood didn’t know was that the studio engineer had switched on the recording console, committing the guitar assault to tape. During the tune’s playback, everyone agreed something was different. Greenwood’s renegade playing brought the song to life. The song rocked. “Hey, what the fuck was that?” Yorke excitedly said to Greenwood. “Keep that! Do that!”
The guitarist’s plan had backfired. “Creep” abruptly went from the slush pile to the Top Forty. “If that guitar hadn’t exploded where it exploded,” said Yorke in 1997, “there’s no way it would have got on alternative radio. And we wouldn’t be anywhere.” Included on Pablo Honey, “Creep” hit the charts with a vengeance in Britain and drew considerable critical response in North America. “ ‘Creep’ … has to be the most audacious pop move since the Police scored a Number One single with a song more or less about stalking [‘Every Breath You Take’] in 1983,” wrote Glenn Kenny in the September 16, 1993 issue of Rolling Stone.
The unexpected single established the band worldwide, becoming their first chart entry. Even though “Creep” struck a chord with many listeners, the band was taken aback at its popularity. Yorke called it a “freak” success, while Greenwood still seemed keen to disassociate himself from the song. “It’s not like our song anymore,” he told Rolling Stone. “When we play it, it feels like we’re doing a cover.”
Trent Reznor, the evil genius behind Nine Inch Nails, wrote the electronic sound track for the popular computer game Quake.
Spoonman
Soundgarden
Like many of Seattle’s Sub Pop Records alumni, Soundgarden were noted for their raw heavy-metal sound. Longtime fans were surprised with the release of “Spoonman,” a largely acoustic track featuring the spoons as a lead instrument.
Soundgarden entered Seattle’s famous Bad Animals Studios with enough material for two full-length albums. Following up the critical and commercial success of 1991’s Badmotorfinger wouldn’t be easy, and the band was determined to be prepared. The band honed their chops on the road while songwriter Chris Cornell practiced his craft, writing lyrics for Alice Cooper and Flotsam and Jetsam.
Working with producer Michael Beinhorn, the heavy metalists trimmed down their tunes to fifteen, picking a diverse group of songs geared to expand the band’s sound. The selection process was a democratic one. The four band members would vote for each song, and only those unanimously agreed upon were deemed good enough to be included on the record. Guitarist Kim Thayil told a reporter, “There were some songs that maybe one of us liked, but that wasn’t enough to justify the band doing them.”
Some of the choices were painful for the individual members. Bassist Ben Shepherd loved a song called “Cold Bitch,” fighting for its inclusion. He was vetoed by the others, and while the song has turned up as a B-side on several singles, he is philosophical about the tune. “It feels like an alienated child from the family or the one that was left behind.”
During the recording of the as-yet-untitled album, Cornell took a night off to watch a video called Superclown. He misread the title as Superunknown, and thought it was a cool term. Although it is a nonsense name for a record, the rest of the band liked it and adopted it as the album’s working title.
The completed tracks were a disparate lot — aggressive, intelligent and experimental. Cornell called the album unfocu
sed, “… but in a good way.” He likened the record to a movie sound track where each tune offered a different feel, adding up to one atmospheric whole. “Let Me Down” was a blues-based rocker, while “My Wave” recalled California’s surf-punk sound. The tracks that followed mixed it up even farther, blending psychedelic ballads with the title tune’s almost Motown feel. Many reviewers noted the band’s growth, pointing out that “Spoonman,” Superunknown’s first single, appeared to pay homage to The Who. The band admitted the debt to the British supergroup, allowing that the tune’s percussion was reminiscent of “Magic Bus,” a 1968 hit.
The quirky percussion on “Spoonman” was supplied by one of Soundgarden’s Seattle heroes. Street musician Artis the Spoonman, who began playing the spoons in 1974, was a familiar face in Pike Place Market. When Soundgarden was first starting out, they would often head down to the market to listen to the mohawked busker play his spoons. Years after their first meeting, Cornell immortalized Artis in Superunknown’s strongest track. Since busking was his only source of income, Artis was hired to play on the record and appear in the video, becoming a local legend.
Released in the spring of 1994, Superunknown wasted no time in declaring its arrival. Debuting at the top slot on the Billboard charts, the album ultimately outsold the hot acts of the day including Candlebox and fellow Pacific Northwesterners Nirvana. Reviews were kind, with one critic throwing a backhanded compliment in the band’s direction: “Soundgarden have come through with the great Led Zeppelin album they have been threatening to put out since 1988.”
“Spoonman” was the record’s lead release, spawning a video (the first of seven culled from the album) and no less than six different single versions including one on clear vinyl, a cassette single and a seven-inch picture disc.
Who Wrote the Book of Love? Page 19