Finding Joseph I: An Oral History of H.R. from Bad Brains

by Howie Abrams

  9. With The Quickness 1987-1990

  I had moved toward Jah, but I wished I could have gotten better professional advice about the situation, and taken a more responsible and professional approach to what was going on in my life, and in my career at that time.

  -H.R.

  Anthony Countey

  We’re doing some gigs around the time of I Against I around 1987, and Chris Blackwell wanted to sign the band to Island Records. There may have even been a discussion with Chris about H.R. portraying Bob Marley in a movie as well, but I’m not a hundred percent sure.

  Earl Hudson

  I think there was a bidding war going around, trying to get the Brains signed, and I even heard that Chris Blackwell wanted H.R. to play Bob in a movie, but it never came to be. I think Island and Chrysalis wanted to sign us, and Joe didn’t want to sign. It had a lot to do with the management, too. ’Cause the manager dude was kind of, you know, we love him, but dude is still kinda shady from our perspective and not being up front about a lot of things and not accounting for a lot of things. That’s why it’s always hard for us to try and get back together and have him be the manager.

  Anthony Countey

  We played a show at 1018, which was the old Roxy roller rink. It was the big show for the New Music Seminar that year in 1987. 1018 had 3,500–4,000 people there. It was packed. They played a great set and Chris was there to meet the band. We weren’t going to get anything done there necessarily, but it would have been good to at least have gotten to introduce H.R. to Chris Blackwell. H.R. was like, “I’ve got to go to the bathroom.” It was right after the show and the place was emptying out, so there were crowds going out of this big club. He walked right out the door. He was gone—just gone. We were going to open up for U2. They had just released The Joshua Tree, and that was on Island, so it was going to be the U2 Joshua Tree Tour with Bad Brains. The record would have been Quickness, I guess, but it didn’t happen. H.R. wouldn’t sign. He didn’t trust Chris Blackwell at all.

  Earl Hudson

  It could have been a big band at that time. We was trying to see if Gary and Darryl wanted to do some reggae stuff and they didn’t want to do it. They wanted to stick primarily to rock, and that’s where the next tussle came around.

  ILL BILL

  I was way into his H.R. solo stuff. Singin’ in the Heart was a dope album. Human Rights . . . he killed it, and the musicians he was working with were top-notch. There were joints that I feel, if they were marketed and pushed on a pop level, he could have had that Eddy Grant, “Electric Avenue” kind of hit.

  Kenny Dread

  After that first album, H.R. had gone back to Bad Brains for a couple of years. When he left them again around 1987, we had some lineup shuffles, and another H.R. album came out, which was the Human Rights album on SST. There was sort of a pool of musicians that moved in and out of the group, kind of swapping and switching for various tours and albums. There was also Zion Train.

  Julie Bird

  Zion Train is the passage to paradise and might just be a shift of consciousness, if you will. It was a roots, rock, reggae band, and a lot of the players in Zion Train joined H.R. on other recordings. Ras Michael was always a teacher. He felt the Nyabinghi,7 and the soulful, spiritual songs that they used to go down to the river and sing. Ras Michael is like a prophet for many people. He remembers the history, and he could bring the old into the new.

  H.R.

  He was introduced to me through Kenny Dread, and he said he’d be interested in playing some songs together, doing some recordings and playing some live performances. It was a spiritual and educational experience. I learned a lot from him, and I am still learning a lot from him til this day.

  Al “Judah” Walker

  We went to Jamaica to record the Zion Train album at Dynamic Studios in Kingston, which is right around the corner from Bob Marley’s studio, Tuff Gong. We stayed in Ocho Rios in a huge place that used to be a skating rink, so we had plenty of space to rehearse. We recorded all the tracks in one night and Joe took the tracks to Ras Michael for him to put his vocals on the songs.

  Ras Michael

  Yes, that album was a mystical album. We did it through love for Joseph. We did live shows either once or twice. Him open for me [with Human Rights], and then me come on and play, but H.R. want me to play with him, too. Me and H.R. go to Europe, too. Through the most high, H.R. flow with love.

  Kenny Dread

  It was our 1989 tour of Europe. This was a pretty low-key tour—all reggae, not a rock tour, and he still did a standing backflip during every show throughout Europe. Every gig. It was unbelievable.

  Ron St. Germain

  After I Against I, I worked on the Quickness album for Caroline Records, which was a great record, but H.R. was gone. I worked on that with a couple of other vocalists and also mixed a live record called The Youth Are Getting Restless. H.R. kept being like, “I’m going solo.” I said, “What do you mean you’re going solo? Your record just came out. You’re not Mick Jagger. You haven’t been in the Rolling Stones for twenty years and had all these amazing hits and played all around the world. Work this thing. You gotta work this thing for a while, ’cause you’re just becoming known.” He says, “Yeah, I’m going solo. I’ve got to sing for my people.” It’s always a struggle. You struggle with him because of who he is. We tried like eight songs with this guy Chuck Mosley first and then Taj Singleton. At that point, I went to the label and I said, “Listen, I’ve got some blazing tracks here. I tried it with this guy, I tried it with this other guy. We don’t have a singer.”

  Chuck Treece

  At the time, I was in a hardcore group out of New York called Underdog that was on Caroline Records, and Bad Brains, at the time, was on Caroline, too, about to release Quickness. There was a lot of controversy about whether H.R. was going to be involved in it and how long he’d be around. They started writing again with Mackie Jayson from the Cro-Mags as the drummer, and they decided they wanted to do something different. So they got Taj Singleton to sing, but Taj wasn’t aggressive enough and didn’t work out. Darryl and Mackie came to see me play with Underdog in New York, and they approached me and said, “We’re looking for a lead singer. Would you mind auditioning?” So I went to Woodstock, and I started hearing the Quickness instrumentals. They wouldn’t play me anything Taj did. They were like, “You’re gonna have to sit in this room with kids running around like crazy,” all of them jumping off the steps, and I’m there with a four-track and microphones and monitors. Doc’s like, “You have to write all this music here in my house. You don’t get a room to go into and close the door.” I had to become a family member before I knew if I was ever going to be in the group. You’re trying to write like one of your heroes in the guitar player’s house, and there are kids running around ’cause that’s what kids want to do. I’m just self-absorbed and want to go into a hole, but it made me realize that you can’t judge any situation when you’re asked to do something intense. And that was an intense chore for me, to audition for the Bad Brains. I wrote like four or five songs and rehearsed with them once, but they wanted H.R. and I can’t compare to H.R.

  Ron St. Germain

  I said, “If you can’t find a singer, maybe we can get H.R. back. Maybe we just have to wait until H.R. can come back, but I can’t waste any more time with this.” It was at that point that we started planning how to get H.R. into the studio. There were a lot of phone calls to his mom. I said to H.R., “I’ll come down and get you, man.” I got him and we went into RPM Studios on 12th Street in the Village. I had instrumental mixes that I gave him, and he did the whole thing in, I think, one or two days. He just whacked it out. I had what lyrics he had written out, and we’d change and add and write on the fly, and that’s how we did that one. The vocals really brought that album together. It’s one of my favorite records.

  Earl Hudson

  Without H.R.,
there is no Bad Brains, because we’ve built a solid rock where the fans only want to see the original band. They’re not gonna come to the show if we go out there fake, calling it the Bad Brains. God doesn’t want it to happen like that because this is H’s band. The Bad Brains is H.R.’s band. Without the lead singer, what the hell? We can call it The Brains or whatever, and have me, Darryl and Gary go out there and play without a lead singer and have one of us try and sing. But what sense does it make to put someone else in there? Look at all the other bands that tried to do that. It doesn’t happen.

  Quickness featured what turned out to be the most controversial song of the Bad Brains’ career, “Don’t Blow Bubbles.” The album’s sixth song, with lyrics composed by H.R., appeared to most to be a rail against homosexuality, although when asked over the years, H.R. claimed it was about everything from a simple warning concerning health consciousness, to a tune about Michael Jackson’s pet chimpanzee.

  The following excerpt is taken from a discussion that took place between Howie Abrams and H.R. in the spring of 2016:

  Howie Abrams: Was the song “Don’t Blow Bubbles” actually about homosexuality?” You’ve claimed that it was not in the past.

  H.R.: Yes, it is. At the time, I wanted people to be aware of certain health risks.

  Howie Abrams: Would you write a song like that today if you had the opportunity to do it again?

  H.R. No, I wouldn’t. I had no idea how much trouble it would cause. I still consider myself a religious person, and I very much believe in God, but God loves everybody. I feel strongly that we need to live and let live. I really never meant to hurt or upset anyone with the lyrics to that song.

  Anthony Countey

  After we finished the Quickness sessions, we went on a tour of America and then we went to Europe. Europe wasn’t that many shows, maybe twenty-five to thirty. And after the European tour, he was just done—toast. We did no more touring. They started fighting on the road. H.R. was beginning to be somewhat delusional.

  Mark Andersen

  They’re on tour, driving through East Germany, and a huge fight breaks out. Essentially, from Darryl’s point of view, Joseph just flips out suddenly and attacks him—physically attacks him—and they’re fist-fighting as they’re driving down the road. You know, like, they’re driving through East Germany and H.R. is fighting Darryl Jenifer. Finally, they stop the bus. H.R. jumps off and starts walking. To his credit, Darryl got off and walked with him and tried to talk him out of stuff. As fate would have it, the band made it to the show and played their show, but it was clear Bad Brains was coming to an end again. This time, however, Darryl did the single thing that he knew would most affect Joseph: he cut off his dreadlocks. In Rasta circles that’s a very powerful symbol. The dreadlocks Darryl had were very long and suddenly they’re just gone. It was his rebuke to Joseph. Basically he was saying, “You talk about brotherhood, but you’re all about yourself. Fuck your version of Rasta!” It is heartbreaking, and you feel for the guys ’cause these guys have kids now. It’s not just hypothetical. They’ve got to make ends meet or their families will go hungry, and they’re depending on Joseph—who can’t be depended on.

  Jimmy Gestapo

  When you’re on fucking tour, man, you’re living with the same people twenty-four hours a day, every day for thirty or forty days. People that have nine–to–five jobs like to ask, “Why do you fight so much with the band?” I was like, “When have you ever lived with anyone in your family or your coworkers twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for a month at a time without a break?” You go to work every day, and you get to go home. You’re on fucking tour, you are in a vehicle, you’re in a club, you’re in some shitty little hotel with everybody farting, and everyone’s fucking problems pop out. People bug out.

  10. Let Luv Lead (The Way) 1990-1994

  I’m playing the music I love, so because of that love, it doesn’t become a labor, but more like a fulfillment of something you’re thirsting for.

  -H.R.

  Earl Hudson

  H.R. wanted to focus more on just playing reggae music. I think he was done with the aggressive violent punk rock stuff. I think that phase of his life was over. It’s something that is a part of us, punk rock music, and then you have reggae music, too. That’s why we always tried to blend that stuff. It depends what you want to do in life. If you don’t want to do it no more, you don’t have to do it. We’re not seventy or eighty years old, so we are still healthy enough to play rock music, so I don’t think there would be a problem doing that, but he’s the lead singer, and if he doesn’t want to do that, then we can’t really do that anymore. If he wants to play reggae and if everybody in the band wants to back him doing that, then so be it, but if not, go do what you want to do. Go do your own thing.

  Englishman | HUMAN RIGHTS

  We got into the studio and did the Charge album after H.R. quit Bad Brains again, when they were touring after Quickness came out. It was a real nice vibe—positives vibes. H.R. just came in and sang a melody, or he’d bang it out on the piano. Me and Earl would rub it down a l’il bit. Then he’d say, “That’s it. Yes, Rasta, that’s it.” We just went from track to track nonstop like that. You can see when you listen to Charge, it’s free-flowing.

  Nick Hexum

  Charge: that’s just packed with great songs and great reggae performances. I thought it was amazing, rootsy reggae. We had the album in heavy, heavy rotation when we were making our 311 debut; that was definitely a big influence, and I think the H.R. influence had a lot to do with that.

  Chino Moreno

  When I heard the Charge record and when I saw him on that tour, I was blown away. It was him lost in the music, and every word coming out of his mouth, every feeling, was completely honest. You could just tell that’s what he wanted to do and that’s where his heart was. I was probably more blown away by that album than the Bad Brains’ Quickness. It was almost like another Bad Brains record, even though it wasn’t hardcore in any way. It had that same passion that Quickness had for me, and if I am correct, it came out shortly after Quickness, so it was like another Brains record, full of passion and great songs, and his voice, and his melodies—everything was tip-top.

  H.R.

  I wound up moving into a neighborhood not too far from Maggie Walker Elementary School in Richmond, Virginia. There were original buildings there built by slaves during the 1800s. The neighborhood was slightly underdeveloped and not around anybody who liked our kind of music. I’d wake up penniless and not knowing where I was going to get some food to eat. There was a horrible, horrible winter storm and I called up my friend Larry Dread. He was a young kid from Korea. He had often asked me if I wanted to come to California, and in the event that I did, he would be able to provide the money for a plane ticket. There was about two to three feet of snow everywhere, so I called him up on the phone and said, “Please help get me out of here,” and he said, “Okay, everything cool Rasta, everything cool.” Eventually he came up with the money. For me it was an incredible dream come true. I hopped on that plane so fast and flew my sweet little self out to California.

  Allan Aguirre | Scaterd Few

  In 1990, Joseph called me and said that he was coming to the West Coast without his band to do a series of shows in support of Charge and asked if my band would be the backup band. I was honored by that request. He could have called pretty much anyone. This is right after Quickness. Bad Brains were doing really well, and Charge is an excellent album, so I spent the next three to four weeks whipping my boys into shape and learning it. If you can replicate your album live, I always think that’s gonna make for a better show, so it was my goal that we replicate Charge. Scaterd Few consisted of my brother, Omar, on bass; Samuel on drums; Jamie Mitchell on electric guitar; I was the vocalist; and my brother on keyboards. We flushed out the whole album, then went straight into the studio and started rehearsing with H.R. He might have be
en surprised at how easy it was. He just needed to sing. Then we jumped in the van and went up and down the West Coast. We did about a month’s worth of shows. H.R. did a radio interview in San Francisco, where he said something like, “I’m doing this now. I’m not really focusing on the Bad Brains.” He basically hands off the mantle of Bad Brains to Scaterd Few. It was quite the compliment.