Raising Hell

by Ronin Ro

  At this point, Russell and Rick Rubin sat near suit-clad Andre Harrell at a table. Jay ushered a woman out of the room after her audition. L.L. and his DJ, Cut Creator, wanted in, but Jay said, “No more auditions.” L.L. wouldn’t leave, so Jay shoved his hand into the front of his athletic warm-up jacket as if going for a piece. “I said no more auditions!” The others said it was all right. L.L. and Cut then entered. L.L. growled, “Box,” and Cut pressed Play on a huge portable radio. L.L. then stole the show with a lively performance of his new Rubin-produced single, “I Can’t Live Without My Radio.”

  In the middle of all this, Run had to compete with the Russell character for Sheila E. at Danceteria. Since no one wanted her Prince-like sound, Run and D tried to teach her how to rap by saying a few lines from “Slow and Low.” At Manhattan Center, they rocked “It’s Like That,” then saw her sing “Holly Rock.” Then jheri-curled Kurt performed his go-go inflected “If I Ruled the World” with Mel-styled grunts, a tuxedo jacket, a cane, two DJs, and a revue of dancers.

  As Krush Groove continued, Run had to look angry and disaffected when Sheila chose sweater-wearing Russell over him. He left the Krush Groove label and recorded the angrier “Can You Rock It Like This” for a rival company. Then he rode to Danceteria in a limousine, ignored his brother, and left with his new white manager and white girls. Then he met Russell backstage at a concert and mouthed off about Sheila. Russell Walker slugged his brother so hard, Run and Russell fell to the floor fighting, lying on top of each other and sliding across the floor of the room.

  Run and D got to sit out the parts where loan sharks beat the shit out of Russell Walker, but Run had to go to a rooftop and hear Kurtis Blow lecture him about how his ego was out of hand. Then Run told Sheila’s character he accepted her decision (choosing Russell Walker over him), and hurried to the Fever to hand Russell money to pay the loan shark back. Then Run and D watched the Disco 3—the Fat Boys’ name before the Brooklyn trio was discovered in a talent contest—finally get their big break by winning Krush Groove’s big talent show at the Fever. After their victory, Run-D.M.C., Kurt, Sheila—everyone in the film—got together to sing the theme song. And while credits rolled, the Fat Boys and L.L. started a Soul Train line.

  With Schultz directing, filming Krush Groove was a pleasant experience for Run, D, and Jay (who had just purchased a shiny black Lincoln Continental), but Run didn’t like the part where he had to betray Russell’s character. Jam Master Jay disliked when Schultz had Sheila E. slap Run, thinking it made Run look soft.

  Russell Simmons didn’t like that Schultz went with Blair Underwood to play Russell Walker, over Fab Five Freddy, or the soft dialogue, either. He kept pushing to add slang. Michael Schultz meanwhile didn’t like Russell saying “motherfucker” every twenty seconds: “Look, let’s put a little English now and then, so the uninitiated will know what we’re saying.” He also didn’t like young, bearded Rick Rubin trying to tell him how to shoot a film. At one point, about to film a scene with Run and Underwood, he heard Rubin cry, “No! That’s not how it goes! This is how it goes!” Rubin launched into a speech, but Schultz said, “Excuse me, Rick. Come with me for a minute.” With an arm around Rick, he led him across the theater, stopped walking, then said, “Rick, I appreciate your enthusiasm. But there can be only one director. And I’m the director, so don’t ever do that again.”

  Rick gushed, “I’m really sorry, but it was really making me mad because once you put it on film that’s the way it’s gonna be and it’s gonna be wrong.”

  Schultz returned to his post by the camera. Someone asked, “What should we do?”

  Schultz almost sighed. “Do what Rick said.”

  There were other tensions on the set, one source claimed, because Run-D.M.C’s management kept trying to pressure the filmmakers into firing Kurtis Blow, who was producing much of the film’s sound track. Sheila E. reportedly avoided mixing with the rest of the cast, while Prince, riding high off the Purple Rain movie and sound track, sat in a mostly empty balcony, watching production of Krush Groove. And L.L. Cool J didn’t like his attitude: “Prince and his boys thought that we were making ‘Sheila E. Goes to Hollywood’ when the film was really about my homeboys Run-D.M.C. and Kurtis Blow.”

  The audience of extras at the Manhattan Center meanwhile didn’t like Sheila E.’s “Holly Rock” song. While Run did all the acting, D hung with pals, ate that wonderful food they had lying out, and enjoyed receiving new Adidas suits, Kangols, and Lee jeans every day. “It was cool to me,” he said of those twenty-six days. “I didn’t have to say shit. I just had to be D. During the movie I’m really writing rhymes that whole time.”

  Chapter 14

  The Kid with the Hat

  May 31, 1985, days after Krush Groove wrapped, they were back on the road, headlining the “second annual” Fresh Festival barely five months after the original had ended. Once again, Whodini and the Fat Boys joined them. So did Shabba Doo and Boogaloo Shrimp, dancers in the two Breakin’ movies, the Double Dutch Girls (who skipped rope to Prince songs), the Dynamic Breakers, young singer Chad from Krush Groove, and the tour production manager’s son, Jermaine Dupri, who breakdanced and moonwalked. Kurt was supposed to be on the tour but reportedly complained about not headlining, so Rush Productions yanked him from the lineup and replaced him with Grandmaster Flash, whose instrumental single “Larry’s Dance” and its sampled voice chanting “L-L-Larry” kept crowds happy.

  Though the film would not be released to theaters until October, the Krush Groove sound track was in stores and L.L.’s hard-core single, “I Can’t Live Without My Radio,” was receiving heavy radio airplay. Now, when Run walked toward the stage and passed L.L., who was leaving it, there were a few tense seconds while they smirked at each other. L.L. now wore a Run-like hat and tried to grow sideburns like Run, but kept alternating between being a fan and wanting to take Run out.

  Thus, more backstage battles. They’d compete for hours. But their competition was escalating; battles moved onstage. “I heard that one time Run and L.L. were doing that ‘Anything you can do I can do better’ and going back and forth at some arena,” said Chuck D, then of WBAU. “So Run took off his hat and threw it across the stage and L.L. couldn’t do that. ’Cause L. wasn’t taking off his hat.” L.L. wore his hat so much that people wondered if he was self-conscious about the size of his head. “And that’s how Run beat him!” Chuck continued. “That shit was incredible.”

  When they stood before the audience on this second tour, Run, D, and Jay saw a sea of white faces. “It was maybe 80 percent white,” said D. Many white fans in the audience were attracted to Run-D.M.C. concerts because they had seen Run-D.M.C.’s rock-driven videos “Rock Box” and “King of Rock” on MTV and had enjoyed Run-D.M.C.’s fusion of rock and heavy metal. Run-D.M.C. left the tour about a week after it began. MTV invited them to film another special, but this one on their own. On Wednesday, June 12, they took a day off from the tour, traveled to New York, and performed a few guitar-heavy numbers for cameras in the rock club the Ritz. Run-D.M.C.: Live at the Ritz aired on June 30. Then they were back on the network as part of what many considered the biggest rock concert in history.

  One night in July, they were exhausted after a show and an after-party in Savannah, Georgia, but Rush Productions called to say they had to fly to Philly first thing in the morning to play Live Aid, a festival Boomtown Rat member Bob Geldof hoped would raise money for starving people in Ethiopia. In newspapers, a controversy played out about promoters not inviting Run-D.M.C. or many other black performers (out of sixty acts, only three were black), but rock promoter Bill Graham, also involved with booking acts for Live Aid, called Rush to invite the rap group onto the bill. Traveling to the show, Run-D.M.C. heard everyone talk about how the entire world would be watching.

  At JFK Stadium in Philly they saw Tina Turner, Sade, Madonna, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Paul McCartney, the Who, the Beach Boys, Elton John—the list went on. Bill Graham—a big burly white guy—
led them to a dressing room with their name on it and thanked them for coming. A few rock stars came to ask for autographs for their children. They signed a few and then went onstage. It was hot that day, over a hundred degrees, and people in the crowd were fainting. They would have only twenty minutes to set up Jay’s turntables and perform three songs. And they were playing for a white crowd that didn’t know or care about rap (which explained why promoters had Run-D.M.C. open the show when their album was selling better than those of a lot of the rock legends).

  The edge of the stage was far from the crowd, so Run and D couldn’t make eye contact with audience members. They had to squint while performing and only had time to perform “King of Rock” and another song—not the three they had hoped to play— for one hundred thousand people in the crowd and millions watching the show on their television sets. After the show, they left town to rejoin the fifty-five-city Fresh Fest tour.

  On August 3, 1985, two months into the second Fresh Fest tour, Run-D.M.C. traveled to California to become the first rap group to tape a performance for the rock-oriented American Bandstand show. By now they had two gold albums and had placed five singles in the Black Top 20. In California, Russell and Rick introduced them to photographer Glen Friedman, an intense young white guy who came from the world of punk and had recently impressed Russell and Rick with photos of the Beastie Boys. “We just all got along; we just clicked immediately,” said Friedman.

  Before heading to the Bandstand set, Run, D, and Jay followed Friedman out of the downtown hotel Le Mondrian. It was early in the morning and Run-D.M.C. and Jam Master Jay agreed to pose for pictures in front of a church across the street. Run wore a Run-D.M.C. shirt, D wore his white Izod shirt, and Jam Master Jay wore Fila, still in style at the time. “What I wanted to capture was the way I perceived them,” said Friedman. “From the way I heard their music.” He placed them very specifically so the composition was right, told them which direction to face, asked them to lift their chins a little, and used a wide-angle lens he had brought over from his days shooting skateboarders. But soon Friedman looked a bit frustrated. “As you can see in almost every photo of Joe, like usual, he’s always running his mouth. He’s always talking. Even when we’re trying to take photos, it’s whatever he wants to say. That’s what’s important.”

  On the Bandstand set later that day, Run-D.M.C. walked out and saw a white audience go crazy. Dick Clark introduced them then they played “King of Rock” and the recently released Rick Rubin version of “Jam Master Jammin’.” Backstage after the show, everyone wanted Clark to pose for pictures with the group. Clark smiled a few times, but everyone wanted Clark to cross his arms in a b-boy stance. Clark agreed to try it. Run, D, and Jay beamed in the photo with him, copies of which their publicists quickly mailed to every newspaper they could.

  Run-D.M.C. returned to the second Fresh Fest tour in August 1985 but left again, to spend one day performing for another wholesome project—a song called “Sun City.” Producer Arthur Baker and guitarist Steven van Zandt (who played guitar for Bruce Springsteen’s legendary E Street Band) wanted to denounce the South African resort Sun City’s policy of not letting black citizens attend concerts. Van Zandt also wanted to name the performers the guitarist alleged still played there despite the abhorrent policy, a list that included some of rock’s biggest acts.

  By late August 1985, the Fresh Fest tour was winding down. Run and D thought their boys the Hollis Crew—Butter Love and Cool T—would see their August 1985 single “It’s the Beat” put them in the big time. The single, Def Jam artist DJ Doctor Dre added, was also “how Run-D.M.C. was gonna be on Def Jam, through the Hollis Crew record. But Rick and them said you couldn’t market and sell Hollis Crew.” The Crew had talent but some Def Jam executives felt they lacked a hook for the media. “I mean there’s nothing ‘rock’ about them,” and everyone was changing their focus: if a record sounded good didn’t matter as much as whether white people would like it. “Run-D.M.C. had now become a television thing on MTV and was starting to build that little bridge across the water, to becoming a pop group,” Dre explained.

  Run was frustrated. He felt Def Jam wasn’t promoting the Hollis Crew single enough. D also felt Def Jam “put it out and forgot about it.” Cool T and Butter meanwhile looked forward to recording an album. “They were writing every day,” said Ray. “But Russell was fronting on them. Just let them do that one shit and that was it.”

  Russell then asked Run and D for help with the Beastie Boys. Madonna’s manager had called Rush Productions to ask for a group Russell didn’t manage to accompany her on tour. “And he was like, ‘Well they’re busy right now,’” Ad Rock recalled. He offered Run-D.M.C. but “wanted like $100,000 a show or something crazy and they were like, ‘No,’ so he’s like, ‘Well the Beastie Boys will do it for $500!’” Once Russell landed the Beasties a spot on Madonna’s national Like a Virgin tour, he felt the white trio needed more material. That’s when he contacted Run-D.M.C. “They just said, ‘We need to give the Beasties something,’” D.M.C. remembered. “Like, write a record. We were gonna write something but the Beasties said, ‘You’re not gonna use “Slow and Low”?’ We said ‘No.’ They said, ‘We’ll take that one!’ They liked it.” Run-D.M.C. offered to write something new, but “They were like, ‘No, we want that one!’”

  In Chung King Studios—“the House of Metal,” an inconspicuous facility on the sixth floor of a building near Chinatown and Little Italy that had graffiti on the walls—Rick Rubin replaced Run-D.M.C.’s Roland 808 track with a huge guitar chord and bells that evoked “Rock Box.” The Beasties substituted Run and D’s names with their own and changed a line that said “D sees real well ’cause he has four eyes” to “White Castle fries only come in one size.”

  Run and D.M.C. didn’t mind helping Def Jam but put their foot down when they heard what L.L. planned for his debut album. Already, L.L. patterned much of his album after Run and D’s recent “You Talk Too Much.” Song titles included “You Can’t Dance” and “That’s a Lie.” He also included Russell ad-libbing on “That’s a Lie” (something Russell had done on a Def Jam single by producer Jazzy Jay—not Jam Master Jay—called “Def Jam,” which had become a hit on New York rap radio shows, but hadn’t done on any Run-D.M.C. songs or albums). But L.L. reportedly heard a brand-new, unreleased track Run-D.M.C. planned to include on their next album. Jam Master Jay had decided to abandon the group’s earlier sounds—the slick live music feel of Russell and Larry Smith productions and the slow, bass-heavy, sparse sound Rick Rubin had brought the group. Jam Master Jay instead programmed a brand-new beat—the one that drives Bob James’s classic song “Take Me to the Mardi Gras”—into his drum machine, then mixed the actual record over the pattern. Jay kept mixing the record on his turntable until the entire drum machine track featured the dreamlike chimes.

  L.L. wanted Rick Rubin to use the same Bob James record on his own song “Rock the Bells.”

  When Run heard the title, he immediately became suspicious. “The Bells” was the nickname many DJs had given the Bob James record. When he was DJing in his attic and wanted his assistant Runny Ray to pass him that record, Run, like many other DJs, would say, “Yo, give me ‘The Bells.’ Let’s rock ‘The Bells.’ You got ‘The Bells’?”

  Run confronted L.L. and reportedly yelled in his face. Then, D said, Run told his brother, “Russell, if you let that happen you’re fucking up!” At the last minute, Rick removed the Bob James break from L.L.’s song. “That’s why it’s called ‘Rock the Bells’ but didn’t have any bells on it,” D said happily. “L.L. was gonna have Rick put ‘Mardi Gras’ in and Russell was torn between two lovers.”

  Run, D, and Jay continued to write new material while on the road. On the tour bus, they kept playing and enjoying Doug E. Fresh and the Get Fresh Crew’s 1985 single “The Show/La-Di-Da-Di,” which had come from nowhere to redefine the sound of rap, making it more lively and energetic. On the A-side, vocalist Slick Rick and Doug used a tag-team app
roach that evoked old-time comedy teams, and Doug also re-created famous beats with his mouth. Their B-side, meanwhile, had Slick Rick rhyme with a Cockney accent over Doug performing the beat from James Brown’s “Impeach the President.” Run, D, and Jay loved both songs, said D. “And we tried to be like that in our way.”

  It started with Jam Master Jay. Onstage one night, he leaned into the mike over his turntables and started doing the human beat box. Then Run started doing it. Finally, during another show, D rapped, and Run exploded with the beat box. Backstage, Run said, “We gonna do that shit again tomorrow night, D.” And soon, “We’re gonna make a beat box record!”

  Run was also inspired by Prince’s single “Raspberry Beret,” a psychedelic song in which Prince described meeting a woman at his dead-end job in a five-and-dime store, and screwing her in a barn during a thunderstorm. On the tour bus, Run decided to say his new rap “You Be Illin’” in a similarly conversational tone. “Just the whole feeling,” he explained. “The way he was speaking on that record was very sassy and ‘groovy.’”

  By fall 1985, Run-D.M.C’s third album took shape, one they wanted to produce themselves: “ ’Cause we were getting better,” said Run, and because they were tired of other people programming some of their beats and taking full production credit. They were also tired of following orders, recording other writers’ songs, throwing in rock guitars, and being told to promote a wholesome image while Slick Rick and L.L. were allowed to be profane or more aggressive. They were also confident in the material they improvised onstage each night, which represented, D said, “what we were doing. It was coming from the heart.” No one could say, “Let’s do it over,” in front of a crowd, he added.

  While they toured and wrote songs, Russell and Rick made the rounds at major labels. Seven Def Jam singles (two by L.L., two by the Beasties, and one each by Jazzy Jay, Jimmy Spicer, and the Hollis Crew) had sold over 250,000 copies. Every major turned them down, but then Al Teller, head of Columbia, expressed interest. Said Doctor Dre, then with the Def Jam act Original Concept, “The Def Jam deal with CBS all happened based on the fact that the Beasties were signing to Def Jam and opened for Madonna, so CBS smelled something. And Russell promised them Run-D.M.C.”