Finding Joseph I: An Oral History of H.R. from Bad Brains
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John Joseph
Look at the lyrics to those songs. It’s prophecy, man. “FVK,” “Big Take Over,” “I,” all of these fucking songs. Never has there been a greater need for that message than right now. Everybody just hears a record, but H.R. lived every word on that fucking record. I got to see that first hand. To this day, people hear that album and just start an investigative journey. Musicians are trying to figure out what Doc and Earl are playing, and then if you have any kind of inclination toward spirituality, or consciousness, or culture, or even politics, then you are going to listen to H.R.’s words and investigate. H.R.’s message can smash the conditioning and the dumbing down that’s going on. The person who wrote these lyrics—that’s the real motherfucker you all need to be investigating.
H.R.
We met Jerry Williams and he had a little rehearsal and recording studio called 171 A. It was right near Tompkins Square Park, not too far from A7, a club we performed at. A lot of punk rock and hardcore kids would go there and they would have after-parties. That’s where the group started recording for Neil Cooper and Reachout International Records. We met Neil at CBGB. He said he was going to put out these cool cassettes and he could give us not a whole lot, but just something that would make an album worthwhile. And we said, “Yes.” The rest is just a miracle of God, because we got our first album out.
6. Destroy Babylon 1981-1983
We wanted to teach I and I to love I and I. Teach people to love Jah and stay away from negativity as tempting as it is.
-H.R.
JOhn Joseph
As my friend the late, great Adam Yauch said: “The Bad Brains ROIR cassette is the greatest punk/hardcore album of all time.” And hands down, it is. I was there for every minute of that recording with Jay Dublee, God rest his soul. I will never forget that. When that shit hit the streets . . . you know when you see those maps with something spreading all over the country? That’s what happened. It was like the litmus test for the rest of the fucking planet.
Angelo Moore
My first cassette was that Bad Brains ROIR tape. I was listening to it and I thought they were some white boys playing punk rock. Then I saw the picture and was like, “Wow! They’re black just like me.” I’ll put it to you like this: the Bad Brains were the first band that made me feel like it was okay to be black and play punk rock and be just like all the punkers I’d seen on the street. They broke a whole stereotype right there, so it made me think it’s all right to have a fuckin’ mohawk and a chain and be punk. Before that, I thought it was only for white people. They were really liberating.
Jimmy Gestapo
I was there with them when they recorded it. It still spanks anything else that is out now recorded by all you fancy-pants Pro Tools fruits. Amazing four-track, real analog. All these people’s fancy gadgets and computers, and they still can’t replicate the purity and the energy of that recording. You get simplicity in tubes. You get it warts and all.
Mark Andersen
That recording was an incredible representation of the band, but the band was in a difficult position because, on one hand, they were a revolutionary band. Anybody who saw them knew that. I remember a guy from Sick of It All talking about how going to see the Bad Brains wasn’t just some show, it was a revolution! You were being called upon to rise up and rebel. Not just metaphorically, real revolution. That is a testament to the power of the band and their commitment. On the other hand, they’re living down in Alphabet City, and it was hard.
H.R.
A young man gave us a place to stay. He had rooms available in a building down between Avenue C and D, but there were no windows in the building, so we had to put up plastic with tape. That’s what pulled us through, but we did stay at George from The Mad’s house. Mad George was a bit bizarre. He had a lot of silly, goofy toys, and he would go through his stuff, and all of a sudden, he would have like a fake hand, or a fake piece of brain, or somebody’s chest with their head missing. We stayed there for about a year. Although it was cold in the wintertime, in the summertime and springtime it was very good and we’d go see different bands perform, and the Brains would play at a place called A7. 171 A was close by. You could meet people who were artists, and drama students, and that for me was inspiring. Then, of course, we met some of the brothers from the 12 Tribes of Israel and eventually found the 12 Tribes headquarters. We got to reason with some of the bredrens about the Bible and the Scriptures, Armageddon, holocaust. Eventually, a new movement took place, and we changed our eating habits and we changed our thinking habits. For instance, we stayed away from pork and bacon and instead ate more tofu and fruit and rice. Another thing was we stayed away from was hard drugs, and we got away from alcohol. Instead, we would sip tea and drink Ital juices and roots and spring water.
Anthony Countey
I was at Roseland and Bad Brains were opening for Gang of Four. I knew the promoters for the show, so they got me in the back room. The dressing room was absolutely packed with people, and it seemed like there was nobody in charge of anything. The promoters came back and were like, “Okay, you are on in fifteen minutes.” I had just spoken to Darryl for the first time, and he had just gone to go get pizza because he was hungry. So I saw Frank the promoter, and I told him that they were not coming out in fifteen minutes, because the bass player had just gone out but would be back in fifteen minutes, so we will try to get them onstage after that. They were like, “Okay, Anthony, cool.” So Darryl came back, and they went onstage. I wasn’t necessarily looking to manage any bands, but they needed and wanted somebody to help them. They wanted somebody to really do the management thing, so that’s what I did. It was really instant what they did, which was just show up at my house sometime after that show. My friend who got me on the guest list told them where I lived on East 9th Street. There was a job to be done. I had to get them on the road, get them recorded, introduce them to the right people.
Saul Williams | Musician, Actor, Writer, POET
I think it’s important for an artist to choose their own path. I think it’s important for an artist to decide which route they want to take. When you’re bringing things that are original to the table, it’s hard to take advice from someone who’s sitting behind a desk trying to get you to fit into some sort of thing that already exists when you know they’re not clever enough to realize that you are the example.
Anthony Countey
It wasn’t easy from the beginning, but I’d be, like, “Okay,” and let them have it how they wanted it. In the music industry, a lot of times, management or whatever will have an idea like, Oh, this is how you should sound, or you should try this, or do a cover of that song. They really had a very clear idea. They at least believed that they knew what they were doing. They didn’t want any influence from anybody else, so that was a positive thing for me because I was not looking to contrive anything. I’m not very different from their attitude, so the idea of marketing never came into it. Sure, I tried to get labels and the people I knew in the music industry to know that the band was there. And bringing like a thousand kids in places like New York and LA, and in other places. If people knew about them, they came. They were too hot to handle, really.
At the time, they were basically squatting. It was rough. The money came at a show or whatever, but then quickly, the money was gone. The band had to play and had to do things to stay alive, so around the time they did the ROIR tape, we went on tour. That’s what you have to do. You have to go on tour. I found support, and we went across America. There was no way that people could know about them being there in most towns. They would have to have known somebody from LA or New York or DC who told them to go see this fucking band. But that was the line: “You have to see this fucking band.”
Duff McKagan | Guns N’ Roses
I saw them in 1981 or ’82 at a place called Under the Rail in Seattle. I was really into that song “Pay to Cum” and had that single on vi
nyl. I also had a single by a band called The Upstarts, and both bands were touring together. I didn’t really know what to expect from seeing the Bad Brains. I just had the vinyl to go on. We had fanzines, and that’s how we found out what was going on with bands like Black Flag and DOA and Minor Threat and so forth. The Upstarts came all the way from England, which was very exotic for us Seattle kids back in the day. So the Bad Brains and Upstarts play together. Bad Brains came on and totally blew all forty of our minds at that little club.
John Joseph
I did that first tour with them and was always like, “Wait until these motherfuckers see this shit. They are going to flip.” And they did. Sometimes heads flipped the wrong way. When they would play down South, all these club owners, these bikers and shit who run these clubs, didn’t know they were a black band. And they’d be saying shit like “Get these niggers out of my club,” pulling the plug on them, you know—crazy shit.
Mark Andersen
Up until that point, we’ve seen Joseph largely as this extraordinary stage figure. The band is getting out and playing for more people than ever, the ROIR cassette is spreading their fame, and the word-of-mouth around them is ferocious and overwhelmingly positive. People like Jello Biafra from Dead Kennedys are worshipping at the altar, as a lot of folks did, because they were just that good. However, they are on the road, and let’s just say that before they left Greenwich Village, they have some encounter with kind of this emerging, assertive gay milieu.
They are there with their religious fervor, and the Bad Brains thought they were living between Sodom and Gomorrah back in New York. The next day, they’re on their way to LA, where they do an interview with Flipside magazine and this is where the third Joseph appears. For the first time, at least in such a broad public context, he says reprehensible things about gay people. Now, this is the band of revolution, peace, love and unity, so people couldn’t quite get their heads around this. MDC, who were playing a show with them, had bisexual members and sometimes cross-dressed. They were flipping out when they heard this, because again, it’s like they’re bowing down at the altar of Bad Brains, and then this comes out.
Bad Brains would move on to Texas, which is where MDC is from, and there’s this terrible incident that happens with members of the Big Boys. They played a show with the Big Boys in Austin, and by all accounts it was an incredible show. Somehow or another, it becomes obvious that Biscuit, the lead singer of Big Boys is gay, and Joseph just totally freaks out and called him a “bloodclot faggot.” There were claims that Biscuit made a pass at H.R., but what probably happened was Biscuit gave him a hug and said he was great or whatever. Why does that cause anybody to flip out? Why was it such a big deal for him at that moment? Weren’t we all in the punk underground because we were all different, and because none of us felt like we really belonged out there? It doesn’t mean that you can’t disagree on certain things.
I’ve been really hardcore antidrug from the get-go. I still am. Most of the people that I have loved in this world and most of the people that I have worked with through Positive Force—or anything that I have been involved with through the community—are folks that use drugs. I don’t agree with it, but it doesn’t stop me from loving them. I don’t necessarily think that my way is the right way for everybody.
Of course, chaos ensues at Tim Kerr from the Big Boys’ house with a big standoff with MDC. They supposedly vandalized Tim’s house and essentially stole money because Biscuit had gotten pot for the band and was supposed to be paid back. Instead of getting the money back, there is a pile of weed ashes inside this long screed the Bad Brains left behind, telling Biscuit why he is going to burn in hell.
There’s the two Josephs. Somehow, one of them is in the world of love and light, and the other is just lost somewhere in the darkness and full of something poisonous.
Ian MacKaye
That situation with the Big Boys and all that in Austin was just fucked up, a mess. We were friends with the Big Boys, and thought they were a great band and great people. The fact that they got ripped off sucked. But it was especially terrible for me ’cause it was the Bad Brains going across the country. We were all excited that people would finally get to see the Bad Brains, and then we get the news that they ripped off the Big Boys. It was just madness at that time. They were on a different tip. Some of the people they were hanging with were scary dudes. There was probably some kind of commerce. Somebody was selling something, and there were definitely weapons involved. I had some very weird experiences with the people hanging around the band. I didn’t always feel safe around those guys. They weren’t interested in being friends with me, as much as they were interested in what I could provide perhaps. They would put up with me.
John Stabb
This stuff was negative and ignorant. It was hypocritical for H.R. to be doing these things. He would hang out and talk to us punk rock kids in his normal tone, and then he would totally change over to this Rastafarian thing with his Rasta friends, and he would just dismiss us. I had friends who were just like, “Get the fuck away from me,” when he was around his Rastafarian friends. I thought it was kind of fake at the time. I thought he put on two different faces: one for the punk rock side of the population, and then he put on the other face for the Rastafarians. It really bothered me.
Anthony Countey
It was problematic from the beginning with me and the band because of some of the Rasta influence. There were a lot of different influences. I didn’t get to know the New York Rastas, really. They were not interested in knowing me, so I did not know them. There were influences that H.R. was under that I did not have direct contact with. I don’t know what it was that they thought they needed to do, or what influence they had.
Mark Andersen
The conviction that H.R. had—and I don’t mean conviction like, oh, this is the right way—no, he meant revolution is coming. Babylon will fall. Ronald Wilson Reagan had just been elected president. What were the whispers in the Rasta community about Ronald Wilson Reagan? 666! Ronald Wilson Reagan: that’s the full name of the president elected in the fall of 1980 and inaugurated in 1981. Ronald Wilson Reagan: six-letter first name, six letters in the middle name and six letters in the last name. 6-6-6. The antichrist, the beast in the Book of Revelations, which is a tremendously important book in Rasta theology. If you look at interviews at the time, H.R. absolutely believed revolution was coming and that they were part of it. It was going to be carried out by the youth. Somehow or another, they were in this place where they were helping to bring about this cosmic transformation, not just a political thing or spiritual thing. It’s the righteous struggle of the oppressed against the oppressive. Scholars will tell you it’s code for Nero. The emperor of Rome at the time was fiercely persecuting Christians. It was their coded way of saying Nero is going to fall, Rome is going to fall. Babylon as they knew it was going to fall. It’s been used and reused and reinterpreted through centuries by many different oppressed groups who are hoping for the times when the first will be last and the last will be first. A cosmic reversal of the tables. At that moment, that’s what H.R. believed was going to happen.
So you had this tremendous sense of mission and focus, and then it runs into messy reality in the form of the Castro in San Francisco, and the San Francisco punk scene’s comfort with gays and lesbians. Then on top of that, what happens in Austin with the Big Boys. H.R. said in interviews at the time: “In order to be hardcore, it seemed like you had to be gay.” That’s what he took away from it. Whatever else you say about that, and I will say many critical things, that tour fundamentally changed H.R.’s attitude towards the punk community, and he didn’t want to be part of it anymore. I believe he said, “Punk music is the devil’s music,” and he started announcing in interviews across the country that Bad Brains are going to disband at of the end of 1982, and an entity called Zion Train is going to take its place. It’s the same people according to H.R., but th
e difference is they’re going to play only reggae music. They have been mixing reggae and punk, but it was going to become all reggae. What’s missing in this scenario? No one else in Bad Brains had agreed to this.
H.R.
At that time, it was requested of us to play more punk rock songs. We wanted to play more reggae songs. By playing more reggae songs, I was able to express myself in a nicer and more humble way and be received that way. But the kids said, “No, man, we’d like you guys to play everything. It makes your shows more thrilling and more exciting, and it’s not a bore.” A lot of the kids had already seen reggae bands, but they never saw four black dudes playing a kind of music that was mostly introduced and delivered by Europeans, so they wanted to see us mainly for that reason. That’s what led us eventually to, quote-unquote, fortune and fame.
Mark Andersen
Darryl and Gary took pride in the hybrid they had created. They didn’t want to be just a reggae band. They love doing reggae, but they were Bad Brains. They were something that blew these boundaries apart, and they would lose all of that if they just went reggae. They had built an audience as Bad Brains, and you could say there’s a principle. The tour had gone badly in certain ways, and there would be this continuing recrimination against them for some of the stuff that happened on the tour. Fundamentally, though, even the people who disliked Bad Brains as people, who didn’t agree with their politics, could not deny that they were about the best band that anyone had ever seen in that genre. If you go back there, you start to see not only the disintegration in the unity of the band, but I also think H.R.’s reaction seems more than simple homophobia. It seems like a symptom of something deeper and more worrisome. Like something is not quite solid in his psyche.