by Scott Ian
It felt like we had been around long enough and this should have been the record that broke everything open, except some people didn’t seem to get that we had changed musically as a band and mentally we had grown up. We were darker, the smiles onstage were gone, along with the jams and goofy T-shirts. Anthrax definitely had a darker, deeper vibe. Live, we still played the best songs from Spreading the Disease and Among the Living, but people shouted out, “Play ‘I’m The Man,’” and we didn’t want to do that anymore. We did that in 1987, and we felt like we milked it for all it was worth. Fortunately, we had another rap-metal song to play, and it fit our new, dark image. It wasn’t a joke. “Bring the Noise” was a cover of a song by my favorite rap group, Public Enemy, and it was heavy as fuck and serious as an IRS audit.
Chapter 18
Bring the Noise
One day I was fucking around with a riff and I thought it sounded like the horn part in the PE song “Bring the Noise,” which was originally on the Less Than Zero soundtrack and also included on the group’s 1988 album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. It was a very political song and somewhat controversial since it referred to Nation of Islam president Minister Louis Farrakhan as “a prophet that I think you oughta listen to.” I didn’t care about Farrakhan; all I wanted to do was work with Public Enemy.
My friends Georges Sulmers and Scott Koenig used to work at Def Jam, and they introduced me to Rick Rubin. I was so into rap, I used to hang out at their funky little office on Elizabeth Street in Greenwich Village. They gave me T-shirts and Def Jam stuff. I still have one of the original Def Jam baseball jackets with my name on it. I spent a lot of time down there picking up rap records and hanging out because the place had such a cool vibe and it really felt like something was happening.
The first song I heard from Public Enemy was “Miuzi Weighs a Ton,” and it was like the first time I heard “Rock and Roll All Nite,” the first Iron Maiden album, or Metallica’s No Life ’til Leather. It made me want to run down the fucking street and punch people in the face as hard as I could!
I got an advance copy of It Takes a Nation of Millions, and I met Chuck D in the office soon after. We shook hands and he said to me, “Everyone tells me you guys are big fans. Thank you so much. I see pictures of you wearing Public Enemy T-shirts in magazines. That’s so cool, thank you.”
I was like, “No, thank you! You guys are awesome!” And we became friends. He came to see us play for the first time in ’87 at the Beacon Theater when Metal Church and the Cro-Mags opened for us. When I found out he was there, I turned into that giddy eleven-year-old again. We actually had a lot in common. He’s from Roosevelt, Long Island, I spent a lot of time in Merrick, which is the next town over, and we were into the same shit growing up. Chuck has always said classic rock was just as important an influence on him as soul and funk. I loved Public Enemy. PE were a rap group like no other at the time: they layered their tracks with beats, bass, guitars, horns, noise, and bits of speeches from black leaders like Malcolm X, Thomas “TNT” Todd, and Jesse Jackson, creating a ferocious sonic landscape. Their live show was equally aggressive—much more akin to a metal concert than to a performance by any other rap group of the ’80s.
Fast forward to early 1990. I had this riff, and I started playing it along with the “Bring the Noise” track. I thought it sounded really awesome and made me wish Public Enemy had put the part on their song. From there it was a natural leap to writing an arrangement of the song for Anthrax. When Charlie was done with all his drum tracks for the Persistence album, I said, “Don’t break the drums down yet, I have this idea for a cover.” He loved the riff, so we arranged the song and recorded the drums and guitars in about ten minutes. Frankie added the bass, and we had ourselves a monster of a track. I got Chuck’s number from Georges at Def Jam, so I called and told him that we recorded a metal version of “Bring the Noise.” We wanted to send it to him because we thought it would be great if he and Flavor Flav did the vocals.
“Wow, Scotty,” said Chuck. “That sounds really cool, but it just seems maybe kind of redundant, because we’ve already done ‘Bring the Noise.’ Why don’t we do something together from scratch—something new?”
I said, “Well, we should do that, too, but you just have to hear this.”
He agreed to give it a listen and told me to send him a tape. He said he’d talk to Rick Rubin in the meantime and see what he thought. We made him a cassette and mailed it to him, and I called him the next day. He told me he spoke to Rick about my idea, and he felt the same way. The song was already done and on a record. It didn’t need to be done again. I convinced him not to make a final decision until he listened to the cassette I sent.
It was already in the mail. We sent it from Los Angeles regular postage, so we figured it would take four or five days to get to him in Long Island. The wait was interminable. About four days later he called.
“Yo, I got the tape,” he said. “This is fucking slamming. Let’s go! When and where?”
This was way before the Internet. You couldn’t just e-mail MP3 files back and forth. We were still in Los Angeles and he was in New York, so there were logistical problems. For almost the past twenty-five years, we’ve told people that Chuck and Flavor came and did their vocal parts while we were in Los Angeles recording Persistence of Time, and then I did my parts for the third and fourth verses. That’s not really what happened. We couldn’t coordinate our schedules so they couldn’t come to LA to do their vocals. We felt like a mouse on a glue trap until we realized we had an a cappella version of the song, which is a track composed only of vocals, with all the instruments and samples edited out. We told Chuck we could use those original tracks and sample them into our version. I asked him if he was cool with it and he said, “Yeah, who cares? We’ll just tell people we did it. It’s hip-hop. Everybody samples everybody else, anyway. Just send us the track when you’re done and we’ll make sure it lines up and doesn’t sound weird.”
Charlie and I went into the studio in New York and line by line, sometimes word by word, we edited the vocals to fit into our track. This was before ProTools, so making everything fit perfectly was, to put it lightly, a grueling exercise in editing technique.
We put the song under a microscope to make sure there was nothing out of place. I can’t even say how many times we went back and moved a single word a fucking millisecond forward or backward. It was painstaking and agonizing because the last thing we wanted was anyone figuring out we used a prerecorded track. We had so much respect for those guys, and it meant so much to be able to lie to people and tell them, “Yeah, Chuck and Flav did the vocals.” In a sense, they did, and the only people who knew the whole thing was done by us were Chuck, Flav, and I think Rick Rubin. Island Records didn’t even have a clue.
We finished all this vocal placement and it turned out great. We sent it to Chuck, and he called me back and said, “It sounds like we did it! It’s fucking perfect! I’ve been rapping along to this for about an hour now and it’s as if I did it!”
“You did do it. It’s your vocals,” I said.
“Yeah, but you know what I mean. It really sounds like I came in the studio with you guys and recorded it. Go for it. Put it out. It’s all yours. It’s incredible and we’re going to change the world with this. People are going to lose their minds.”
To a certain extent they did. The song influenced a new generation of kids who were listening to hip-hop and metal and showed them how it could be done right. I know it really inspired Limp Bizkit guitarist Wes Borland and Linkin Park as well as a bunch of other bands. But I give Rage Against the Machine full credit for pioneering rap-metal. We were a metal band that loved rap and collaborated with Public Enemy. We stayed a metal band and Public Enemy remained a rap group. Rage created this whole new thing that was absolutely groundbreaking.
As influential as “Bring the Noise” might have been, not everyone understood what we were do
ing with it at first. When we finished it, we were out of our minds about how good it sounded. After we played it for the new regime at Island Records, there were a few long seconds of silence before someone finally spoke.
“How do we market this?” said an A&R guy. “What do we do with it?”
“What do you mean what do you do?!?” I blurted. “You fucking get it out there. Do whatever it takes to get it on the radio. People are going to love it. It’s like Run DMC and Aerosmith but backward. This is a metal band covering a rap song. And it’s got Public Enemy on it!”
Public Enemy were at their peak at the time, and we were doing great. We saw no reason “Bring the Noise” couldn’t be as big as “Walk This Way.” As emotional as I was in that meeting, Jonny Z was going nuts, waving his arms, eyebrows flapping like Groucho Marx. He was in full Peter Grant mode, saying how this was going to be the biggest song of all time.
Island remained on the fence and acted pretty nonchalant. That was a huge bummer. Worse yet, Def Jam owned half the track and had the right to release it as well. Since Island didn’t own it outright, they didn’t care what happened with it. We were literally shouting that this was the best thing we had ever done and they were idiots for not recognizing that. Jonny Z threatened to release it through Megaforce and tell everyone that Island wanted no part of it. Since Island didn’t want one of their main bands badmouthing them, they agreed to release the song on our Attack of the Killer B’s record, which was mostly covers and live tracks. Public Enemy put the song on their Apocalypse 91 album. Killer B’s did great and sold a ton of records, making an otherwise throwaway B-sides disc into a gold record. We wanted to hit the road with Public Enemy, but first we had to prepare for a giant Iron Maiden tour that started in Barcelona, Spain, on October 21, 1990.
In the beginning, it couldn’t have been better. We were playing arenas all over the world with Maiden, and rabid metal fans were loving us. Then five weeks in, Bruce got sick and lost his voice, and Maiden had to cancel ten shows. We couldn’t do the concerts without them, and all our gear was in Maiden’s trucks, so we couldn’t play our own club shows. We were stuck and bleeding money. It would have cost us more to fly home and then fly back for the rest of the tour than to stay in Europe. So we decided to find a place with snow and go skiing.
We drove to Innsbruck, Austria, which was beautiful but expensive. Everyone in the crew was on salary. We had hotels booked in every major city that we were losing money on. We hit the slopes every day, which was great. We knew we were fucked, so we figured why not have fun and make the best of it? One day I got back to my room and there was a phone call from Jonny telling me I would have to write a check for $16,000 at the end of the tour. I hadn’t made a dime in Anthrax at that point, other than album and merch advances, and those went pretty quickly. We thought we’d actually come home with a little bit of cash from the Maiden dates, and suddenly I was being told we were in the red because of the shows Maiden canceled. We should have made money on that tour, but by the time we headed back on the road with Maiden, we were $80,000 in the hole, and we didn’t have concert insurance because we weren’t the headliner.
We were flipping the fuck out. We couldn’t afford to lose $80,000. Shit, we didn’t have that much money between the five of us. Jonny went back to our agent, John Jackson, and Maiden’s manager, Rod Smallwood, and tried to figure out a way to minimize or eliminate the damage. He asked if Maiden could add one dollar to the ticket price for the rest of the shows and we could use the money to recoup. Maiden’s people said it was impossible at that point to do that.
Basically, we were screwed. For the rest of that tour, as fun as it was playing to Maiden’s audience, we were freaking the fuck out. Jonny figured out that we could pay off the $80,000 with merch money, so it wouldn’t have to come from our personal bank accounts, but that was supposed to be money we would have made. We resigned ourselves to having to pay the money. Then at the end of the tour when we went to settle our debt, it didn’t exist anymore.
We thought there might have been a clerical or computer error and a bill would arrive soon enough. Then we found out that Smallwood and Maiden made up the loss for us. We didn’t lose a dime. That proved to us what kind of people Maiden are and what kind of folks they surround themselves with. They understood that it wasn’t fair for us to lose money because they took time off, so they made our debt go away. Not only are they one of the greatest bands ever, they’re some of the best guys you could ever hope to meet.
In the end, we made okay money on that tour, but most of it went right back into the band. We built these elaborate stages with walkways and ramps, and for the Persistence tour we had the giant clock from the album reconstructed in minute detail sitting on top of a platform on stage right; that cost a small fortune. We wanted to look like Maiden even when we weren’t on tour with them. Jonny Z said to us, “You realize you could make two hundred grand at the end of this tour, or you could not make any money because you want to ship your stage everywhere around the world.”
We were stubborn: “We can’t play without our stage. Iron Maiden has their stage.”
“Yeah, but Iron Maiden is selling out arenas,” Jonny sighed, explaining the obvious. “They can afford to travel with that production. You guys are not able to really afford it. You can do it, but you’re not going to see a penny.”
We didn’t care. We were just going for it and doing it. We weren’t worried about mortgages or college funds. We figured the success and production would keep getting bigger, so, hey, let’s load the giant clock onto the truck and think about what else we could build.
After the European dates with Iron Maiden, we came home for two weeks over Christmas and New Year’s and then went out again with them in the States from January through March. Most of the shows went off without a hitch. Then we played Irvine Meadows in Laguna Hills, California, and there was a dude in the front of the stage who kept throwing firecrackers at us. I couldn’t see who it was, so I got on the mike between songs and said, “Hey man, whoever’s doing that, you’d better stop, because we’re going to leave, and there’s 15,000 people here that’ll be pretty pissed at you.”
Then I said to the crowd, “If you see who’s doing it, point them out to security, or police that shit yourself.” The firecrackers continued to fly, and sure enough when we finished the next song, all these kids started pointing at this one guy about eight rows back on the left side of the stage. They were holding him so he couldn’t get away. Security went running over, and I said, “Let’s get him out of here so we can finish the show.” I was trying to contain my fury and be professional. But when security brought him down the aisle and started walking him past the front of the stage to escort him out I lost it. I jumped off the stage, the security guy let go of him, and I plowed into this dude and started punching him in the face. As I was hitting him, I saw something fly past my head and land on the guy. It was Frankie. He had done a flying dropkick through the air and nailed this kid in the face, like something from a kung-fu movie. Security pulled Frankie off the guy and we climbed back onstage.
After the show, the head of security came into our dressing room and said, “We have the guy backstage.”
My heart sank. “Does he want to press charges?” I asked, expecting the worst.
“No,” the guard said. “We wanted to know if you wanted to call the cops and press charges. What you guys did was awesome. If you want, we’ll have him arrested.”
“No, let him go. I think he learned his lesson,” I said.
It was the first in a series of weird occurrences on that tour. In March 1991 we played in the MTV Rock N’ Jock softball game, where a bunch of musicians play ball with a bunch of veejays and producers and everyone drinks too much. We were outside all day in the sun, and then that night we played LA with Maiden. Even though we were pretty wiped from our long day, a bunch of us went to a club on Sunset after the show. It wasn’t an official af
ter-party, just a bunch of guys going to a bar. At about midnight I was having drinks with Debbie, Charlie, and some guys in the crew. One of them pulled out a joint. I was already buzzed and feeling good, so I took a hit. Within twenty-five minutes I started feeling like I did that night I ate the shrimp. The club was packed, so I figured I was dehydrated and exhausted and needed to go home. Next thing I knew, people were standing around me outside trying to revive me. I had passed out in the club, and Charlie and Frankie had to carry me out to the street. My butt was wet so I turned to Debbie and said, “Why did you sit me in a puddle?”
“We didn’t sit you in a puddle,” she said, almost frantic. “You peed your pants, passed out, and started shaking. We thought something was really wrong!”
We went home, went to bed, and the next day I felt fine, so I didn’t think about what happened again until years later.
Chapter 19
Tour Highs and
Lineup Lows
After the shows with Iron Maiden, we toured the US leg of Clash of the Titans with Slayer, Megadeth, and Alice in Chains. It was three of the Big 4 thrash groups and one of the best of the new batch of Seattle bands that were about to take over the world. We started to see our first ever tour income—after we were charged with the single most expensive episode of damage in our career. I can’t remember who started it, but on days off from the tour, we always stayed at the same hotel as Slayer, which is asking for trouble right there. Megadeth never stayed in the hotel with us. The other guys in Megadeth and their crew wanted to, and they would hang out with us at the hotel, but Dave Mustaine wouldn’t allow them to stay there, because he was angry with Slayer at the time. He was angry with everyone at the time except us, pretty much.
