Finding Joseph I: An Oral History of H.R. from Bad Brains
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John Stabb
I think ever since Henry Rollins did Black Flag, he definitely got a little out there and weird, and I stopped supporting Black Flag at that point. I’m just a really critical person as far as things like that. But I think that Henry, over the years, has become really repentant about a lot of that stuff and has become a more likable person because of it. I do my ups-and-downs with H.R., too, but I just keep hearing more and more stuff. If he really came out and said something about it like, “I wish I hadn’t done all those things,” then I would totally give him credit, and I would be like, “Okay.”
H.R.
At that time, it was very much about Rasta, hardcore Rasta, and what I understood from becoming a member of the 12 Tribes. It was basically very strict Christianity, but we called it Rasta. Today, I am much more live-and-let-live. I would not say those things today. I think age and experience changed me. We went from teen adults or juveniles to authentic adults, so our music changed. Our ideas changed along with our philosophy, and responding to things in a more responsible, mature and adult way. And what we thought at the time when we were young was just old-fashioned, old ideas. But now, through experience, I’ve learned that it’s better to use those laws and those teachings to make one’s efforts more reasonable.
Anthony Countey
Back then, he didn’t trust the people that he was working with. He didn’t trust me, I don’t think. We were touring the country in a vehicle that we could barely pay for and, for the most part, people weren’t showing up. Somewhere in there, Ric Ocasek saw them play and had the same reaction I did. Ric was really smart, and he was paying attention to things. He had been working with Suicide and other bands that were really phenomenal. It wasn’t like he was a fake in any way at all. He’d been involved in some of the most important underground stuff in New York.
He wanted Bad Brains to come and record an album in Boston. They were at a point where they had enough material for an album, so that became Rock for Light. Before the record was even released, H.R. wanted to know where his money was. We didn’t even have a label yet. Eventually, Rock for Light just got an indie release. PVC Records were about the only choice. There was never a million dollars, but H.R. thought that there was.
At one point, I had gotten fairly close to getting the band signed at Elektra Records. That would’ve been very good. They were really good people and were ready for something exciting, something new. H.R. blew it up. The A&R guy, Tom Zutaut, signed Metallica and a lot of great bands. We were out in LA and I had him out there with the band. H.R. basically didn’t trust him or something and kind of gave him this rough vibe about messing with Rasta. After the meeting, Tom turned to me and said, “Anthony, I’m not sure, but did I just get my life threatened for trying to sign this band?” That’s what pretty much finished that one. The thing that was so confusing to me was that H.R. thought there was money around when the deal actually didn’t get done. He knew the deal didn’t get done. He sank the deal. We never talked about what kind of money it could have meant.
H.R.
I didn’t think accepting those exclusive deals at such low advances of funds would be cost-effective, so for that reason I decided to stray away from those deals and take my time and do research first. I didn’t want to be exploited. I wanted to make sure I was doing the right thing, meaning playing the right kind of music and having the right kind of message, the proper message. It was important to be correct and upright professionally.
Ian MacKaye
I remember sitting with H.R. and Darryl on my parents’ porch and just talking, and H.R. saying, “Don’t ever sign a contract. Don’t ever put your name on a piece of paper. Don’t ever sign nothing, no contracts. Only sign one if they’re giving you a million dollars cash.” I was like, “Okay. Makes sense to me. Fuck the man! No contracts.”
7. Human Rights 1983-1985
I loved the sound of reggae music. It was beautiful to the ear, and was uplifting, and a better way to get Jah’s message across to the youth without them getting beat up in the audience.
-H.R.
Mark Andersen
Around 1983, when the rest of Bad Brains don’t want to abandon punk rock music, there are serious problems. Tom Zutaut is the guy who signed Guns N’ Roses, and he wanted to sign Bad Brains, so this war inside the band comes to a head the day Tom Zutaut comes to meet them. Zutaut knocks on the door. Joseph welcomes him in kindly, walks up to Darryl and says, “Darryl, I’d like you to meet Satan. Satan, this is Darryl.” He’s calling Tom Zutaut the devil!
For the band, this was outrageous. They’re living in Alphabet City, they’re getting married, they’re starting to have kids. It’s like, Why should we not be able to live off this? We can still make the music pure. We can make it real. We don’t want you fucking everything up! The deal never came to pass, which was a multimillion-dollar deal, according to what I was told by Anthony Countey. So H.R. splits. He and Earl returned to DC and left the other two there. I think there’s bitterness from that that has never healed, because they were at the edge of breaking through, and Joseph threw it away.
I don’t know exactly when Joseph officially joins the 12 Tribes of Israel up in New York, but it’s clear that his faith is the center of his life. It was a struggle between the church and the roadhouse basically—the struggle between God and the devil within the eyes of many in the African-American community. He takes on a new name, Joseph I, and he begins to view things as punk versus reggae: reggae being gospel music and punk being the devil’s music. I think this is the real drama of this search for Joseph I: Who is Paul Hudson? Who is H.R.? It’s partly about the extinguishing of this extraordinary artistic gift, but it’s also something much more important than that. This life of this incredible person with such kindness and generosity, who sees his life is on the line.
Kenny Dread
I lived with H.R. the winter after he split from the Bad Brains, and I saw somebody who was resting after four years on the front lines of a war. It was like one thrash after another for four years at maximum intensity. Eventually the human body has to rest. The soul has to rest. They knocked down the walls of Babylon over those years from 1979 to 1983, constantly touring.
Saul Williams
There are so many ways to destroy Babylon. Malcolm X had a book deal through Alex Haley, where he received an advance to meet with Alex Haley on a regular basis to discuss his life and sculpt that beautiful autobiography. At the same time, the deal was with a corporate entity, so how do you navigate that? That’s what we all have been trying to figure out.
Al Anderson
Joseph was always concerned with giving off the appearance of selling out. He believed that if you sign to these major labels, they will take away your creativity and tell you what to play or how to write songs. He wanted to keep his independence. I think that was the biggest conflict; he wanted to be his own man. He didn’t want to be a yes-man to no record company or be obligated to jump through hoops or whatever, to be a revolutionary-type performer. I believe in my heart this is why people think he was throwing monkey wrenches into the plans. The other band members knew he didn’t really want to continue the punk thing. H.R. felt that the band should have outgrown that, because reggae is a much more ancient and mature form of music. He felt like, “Yeah, we were young, but we’re older now, let’s represent. We all are Rasta. Darryl is a Rasta. Dr Know is a Rasta. Earl is a Rasta. Let’s be more reflective of what we look like, or what we say and we represent.” Punk really wasn’t the avenue to reflect who he was or what he represented in terms of the Rastafari movement.
Michael Franti
Rasta has played a really important role in music over the years. You see all different types of Rasta being presented that are from a certain order or discipline or a certain tribe. Then you have some where it’s just like a style, or a hairstyle, or a name, or red, gold and green put on the cover of a record
or whatever, and that’s as deep as it goes. For a lot of us, Bob Marley was the only thing we knew about Rasta, and we had never seen an American talking about repatriation or talking about Marcus Garvey or talking about Haile Selassie. There was this empowerment of black people that was connected to Africa. Rasta was always about connecting to God. Something that was eternal. Something that was greater than yourself.
H.R.
The 12 Tribes of Israel is a religious foundation grounded and founded on the beautiful island of Jamaica. It is based on there being twelve sons in the Bible: Reuben, Naphtali, Benjamin, Simeon, Judah, Levi, Issachar, Zebulun, Dan, Gad and Asher. That’s how it goes, and in between all that, there is Joseph, which is the tribe I’m from. Bob Marley was Joseph, too. A lot of it is inspired by the Holy Bible and the Scriptures.
One day, some brothers came and shared a pamphlet with me, a little flier that was beautiful, and it had a picture of Haile Selassie on it. That’s when I started to do some research on Haile Selassie, and I said, “Yeah, man, that’s the ticket.” And that’s when I started to leave all those drugs alone.
I had heard that playing reggae music attracted decent people, and I wanted to attract those people. I had a belief that although it may not be the end of the world, it’s going to be the end of all “isms” and “schisms.” We had to have a place where we could go and lift our souls up. I asked where they were located, and one of them said, “You’ll find it bredren,” and then he just turned around and walked away. It was before my dreadlocks years when I was a bald-head youth. I eventually went to New York and located one of the homes that they would have their meetings at on a regular basis.
Yes I. Make a joyful noise unto the Lord of all the land. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before His presence with vocalizing. Know the Lord; He is God. It is He who had made them and not themselves. We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Enter unto His courts with praise, and be thankful unto Him. Come before the presence of the Lord, for He is God. He had made Himself. Be thankful and praise His name. Bless His people for the Lord is good, very good. His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures for all generations. I want to thank the Almighty One.
Julian Cambridge
Dude, he could have found Buddhism or anything else, but it was what was happening at that time in the world. It was Rasta time. At one time it was afro time, but then it was Rasta time. And we all became targets as long as we were Rasta back then. How much guns you got? Where’s the weed? Take your hat off, blah blah blah. That’s how the police dealt with us then. It happened to me a lot. It happens a lot still. It’s just America. Ain’t nothing changed.
Al Anderson
He was always talking about the street, real people in the struggle. Rasta. Poverty . . . degradation. Being looked at low because of your hairstyle or maybe your diet, but I think he transcended so much more energy beyond that. When you’re going through changes as a singer-songwriter, you start thinking and writing about the reality in your own world and what’s around you, and after a while, you come to a conclusion about your own reality.
H.R.
The Brains did a show once with Peter Tosh over in Stony Brook University, and for the first three or four songs, people said, “What are these dudes playing?” And around the fifth song, we played reggae and everybody got up and started clapping. So I knew then that in order to reach people on that level, we would have to do something that they could identify with, and that was when we authentically became the vehicle, the chariot that the masses could relate to. We decided that Bad Brains were going to take a spiritual retreat, and do a little soul-searching, and get to know ourselves, and do a little research into the religion. So we decided that Bad Brains would disband, and we would go our separate ways.
I wanted to come up with a nice, clear message and a way to present our tunes in a more professional and proper way. I began to research my Scriptures and the beautiful brothers and sisters of the 12 Tribes hipped me to what was really going on in the world. It was something to think about, because while a lot of people were sleeping, it was time to wake up. I could either sleep my life away or go out there and do something about it, and that’s what I did.
Jimmy Gestapo
When he got deep into the Rasta thing, he used to stroll down St. Mark’s Place with a staff. He was cocksure and positive and focused. When he talked to you, he was engaging and he’d look you in the eye when you were talking to him. H.R. was strong, powerful, healthy and just badass. It was like, Holy shit, Jah is coming down the block. Look out! He was going through a very powerful time, and a lot of people got into it, including myself. Everybody was trying to grow dreadlocks. Everybody was saying “boss” and talking the way Rastas talk. It definitely became—I don’t know about it being a trendy thing—but an influence thing. Hipsters are trendy; reggae is spiritual. It doesn’t have to be a thing of color. It definitely taught people about Ital food. I think a lot of good came from it. And reggae definitely chilled a lot of crazy kids out at a time when we were listening to some pretty aggro music. It was nice to have reggae to cool out to. It saved a lot of people’s heads from getting cracked.
H.R.
I found a reason to record and jam again. Reggae music sounded much more pleasant and I love that sound. That’s one thing about Bob Marley: he could play some good music, and his sound was so massive and harmonious, and that attracted me. I decided to start my own group, Zion Train.
Anthony Countey
H.R. had different ideas. He wanted to end Bad Brains and launch Zion Train. Since there had been another band called Zion Train, they were only Zion Train for maybe a moment, maybe one show. He would do things like that. He would announce something from the stage, and I would be, like, “You’re kidding, right? This is your last show?” Some things I couldn’t take him seriously. I was trying to function in their interest and not let them hurt themselves.
Kenny Dread
In the early days, H.R. and Bad Brains’ embrace of Rastafari became a divisive situation in the punk rock community. The entire audience would sometimes leave the club when they would break into the reggae songs, and it took a long time for this spirituality to permeate and be respected. It was disturbing to me personally. I was first attracted to H.R. not through the thrash, I was attracted to the reggae and H.R.’s singing.
Ras Michael | SONS OF NEGUS
When me and H.R. met, me say, “Bad Brains: what ya’ talk about Bad Brains? Good Brains! Jah Brains! That is the brain you have to deal with now. Good Brains, God Brains, not Bad Brains. You jump on the crowd of people, and what if people jump out of the way? You jump on the asphalt or the concrete and hurt yourself.” I talk direct to him, and him dissect the words and see the trueness in that. We don’t want nothing bad, man. Everything for good. What is badness? Badness brings sadness. Love brings happiness. Love and happiness—that’s what you have to deal with. Look upon yourself. Look how Jah make you: handsome, nice. Give Him a good voice so that you can sing of His praises.
Corey Glover
You can hear it in the lyrics that he’s trying to get an understanding of God and how God works. Some people get very close, and I think he’s one person who has gotten very close to understanding what God is. When H.R.’s able to express himself and you hear him and it comes through him and he throws it back up as a praise to his higher power, it’s a powerful thing. It’s amazing to watch and amazing to aspire to.
Mark Andersen
H.R. the performer is still obviously extraordinary. He started the H.R. Band and Human Rights, which were actually pretty accomplished and did pretty well within the reggae world. He got the right people around him and, you know, they’re trying to be Bob Marley and the Wailers. Human Rights is walking in the shadows of giants, but they’re doing okay. As an artist, he’s still got that spark.
Earl Hudson
Darryl and Doc, those cats became nailed in
to New York by that time. They started having kids and they were cemented into New York and weren’t leaving, and that’s when H left. I stayed up there for a little while to see if we could get the shit back together with Bad Brains, and it didn’t happen. So I was, like, “I got to head on back home.” And so me and Joe started Human Rights and started playing reggae. We got some cats together and started to get that music together.
H.R.
I was kind of versatile and universal, and although the Brains did exist, Human Rights was brand new. It was a new style a new technique. I wanted to venture off and just give it a try, and be able to use the styles and techniques I learned from reggae and apply it to my music. That’s what I did.
Mark Andersen
It began as a little more rock than punk, and there is certainly reggae, but it’s not that far from Bad Brains. It’s the Joseph who’s in military fatigues. He’s ready for the revolution. Bad Brains won’t do it, so this is the band that’s going to do it. The title of one of the songs he wrote upon his return to DC is “Let’s Have a Revolution.”
Al “Judah” Walker
It was late 1983, early 1984: The “Dread House,” as it was called, was at 1700 17th Street, right across from the Third District police department. H.R. moved into this three-level house, and basically all the roommates were musicians. Kenny Dread had a go-go group called Outrage. There were a few other people who were basically punk rock kids just camping out to have somewhere to live, and then there was me. I think Joe was at his heights at the Dread House. He dressed in camouflage almost every day. Basically, we just lived and rehearsed music there and talked about politics and the Bible, ate Ital food and smoked ganja, and gave thanks to Jah. It was a good atmosphere. Joe felt pretty much at home and comfortable there. When I think back, those were pretty much the best days.