Finding Joseph I: An Oral History of H.R. from Bad Brains
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Earl Hudson
We did some schooling in Jamaica, and I remember the teacher hit my ass on the hand with a ruler for some reason or another. We were little kids. So long ago. We didn’t spend that much time growing up there. Later, my father was stationed in Hawaii. We were there for four years. It was crucial. We learned to skateboard way before all these prominent cats that are big skaters now. Skateboarding and sand-surfing on the beach. That was a real cool childhood. Me and Joe both really liked to swim in Hawaii. There’s a story about my dad saving his life one time when we were kids. H.R. swam out too far and couldn’t get back. The current was taking him out, man.
H.R.
My dad was sitting on the beach, just watching his two sons having fun in the ocean. I saw a little boat that was docked maybe a hundred yards away from the shore. I was thinking I would swim all the way there, so I took off for the boat. I could swim underwater real good, but on top, I wasn’t really swimming good yet. About halfway to where the boat was docked, I had to come up for air, and there was nothing to stand on. I was yelling, “Help, help!” So my dad threw down his cigarettes from out of his pocket and jumped in the water with his clothes on to rescue me. He swam to me, grabbed me and then stood up in the water, and it was only about to his waist. But Hawaii was a beautiful place. It was an adventure every day.
Earl’s been playing drums all his life. He had a little cardboard drum set, and one day, I was playing with him and smashed it on his head. He wanted a real drum set for Christmas, but my dad could not afford it at the time. After that, he got a snare drum, and we started a group called The Thunderbirds. There was a brother named Jeff who played guitar, and another brother named Jimmy who played guitar. We’d take the boxes and set them all up. I had my little ukulele because I couldn’t afford no electric guitar, but we would do shows in the back yard for the kids in the neighborhood.
We used to play The Beatles’ “Help” and “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” and the other song we did was the Batman theme: duh na nuh na nuh na nuh na nuh na—Batman. That’s how it started for us. Then in the fifth grade, Earl got his first authentic set of drums, but still for him it was not enough. He wanted the kind he had seen on television that Ringo Starr had. My father was saying, “Come on, Earl, give me a break. You want me to buy you a $10,000 set of drums and you’re only in the fifth grade?” He stood up and looked at Earl, put his fist in the air and said, “Boy, are you crazy?!”
Earl Hudson
We came back to the mainland, and after some time in California, we moved in with my grandparents in Alabama while my dad was stationed overseas. We lived in Texas, too—in Abilene for a couple of years—and he was on the football team.
H.R.
I joined the football team in the eighth grade. Everybody was taller than me and big and strong. I had my little helmet and my pads. One day we played in a tournament in Texas, and my teammates said, “We’re going to call you ‘The Gnat’ because you seem to be able to squeeze in and out of things and you’re fast.” On defense, I would work as one of the cornerbacks. One time I had an interception and kept on running; one of them dudes hit me, and I got demolished, man. I just walked off the field and said, “That’s it. I don’t want to be no football player no more.” From there, though, we had several places we moved to. We were always on the move. I must have gone to about eleven, twelve, thirteen different schools in my life.
Earl Hudson
Joe was a serious athlete, man. He was a pole vaulter and track star in school. A serious diver too. He ran hurdles and got a letter in pole vaulting. We were in Queens, New York, for a little bit, where he was on the swim team. The coach wanted him to stay because he wanted him to try to make the Olympic team, but my mom said, “No.” Pretty sure she knew we were going to move. My dad decided to move us to the DC/Maryland area. That’s when he retired out of the Air Force. He went to work with Boeing Aviation as a mechanic ’cause that’s what he was doing in the Air Force.
H.R.
Boy, that was a trip for me because it was my first time actually being away from government children and I wasn’t around service people. I spoke differently, I looked different and I did not do what those kids did in DC. As a youngster I was withdrawn. I didn’t talk to people at all. I went to Central High School off of Addison Road, Central Avenue, around 1971 or ’72. Then in 1973, we relocated again, and I began attending my classes over at Potomac High School. I graduated from Potomac the following year. I wanted to play music, but I was encouraged to become a doctor or a lawyer, or something that would allow me to utilize my talents in a professional way, and at the same time have a consistent paying job. So staying in school was mandatory, a priority. At that time, I really didn’t understand why—but now I do.
Mark Andersen
After high school, I think it’s fair to say H.R.’s parents had concerns that he didn’t have a direction. He started drifting. He was doing security work, going out with girls—as teenagers do—dabbling in drugs. He found himself in a situation where he was getting addicted to heroin and had gotten a girl pregnant. He was a gifted person working a security job. No offense to security folks, but clearly, he had a whole lot more potential, and his father—who was an extraordinary figure in his life, a very strong affirmative and present figure—was getting pretty disgusted with him. He’s becoming a dad and working as a security guard. He was essentially plotting to go into pre-med. He was going to study to be a doctor. I think that was the hope of his family, but it just wasn’t working for him. And at the same time, he started to drift into drugs. He was on the edge of the abyss.
H.R.
My brother was more into the scholastics. A lot of my focus was on girls at that time. I was heavy into the babe scene. I had met a sister named Joanne and another sister by the name of Karen. They used to talk to me about their experiences in school with the teachers and other boys. I would run up the phone bill, and my dad would say, “Put that phone down! What are you doing? Where are you going?” I would be off looking for those girls.
3. Make A Joyful Noise 1971-1977
By the second grade I had a knack for writing poems and songs. It’s an amazing gift that God gave me.
-H.R.
Alvarez Tolsen | Childhood Friend
I first met Earl when I was a junior in high school. We moved from Northeast DC to Maryland in ’71. I’d never been on a school bus in my life, and when I came out of school the first day, I saw the buses but didn’t know which one was mine. I heard somebody say, “This one over here,” and it was Earl. We became buddies. One night H.R. and Earl’s mother and father were going out, so they had a party. Earl said, “My brother’s having a party, so come on over.” We started hanging out, and I saw H.R. with a couple girls. He started playing Earth, Wind & Fire, and I was like, “I didn’t know your brother was into Earth, Wind & Fire.” They were a big group back then, and we used to go see them at the Capital Centre. Back then I was like a bootlegger. I had a lot of wine; so when I came, the word spread throughout the apartments. H.R. caught wind of it and said, “Hey man, I heard you got some of this wine.” I said, “Yeah.” So I go and get a bottle and brought that over, and it was a great party. H.R. was no different than the next person as far as I was concerned. He was just Earl’s brother.
Marlando Tolsen | Childhood Friend
We would go swimming at night, and that guy . . . his mind was beyond the time. We would take LSD, and I’m tripping, watching this guy on a diving board and he goes up in the air about fifteen feet and does a triple somersault off a diving board into an eight–and–a–half–foot pool. I’m thinking, This guy is unbelievable!
Earl Hudson
Alvarez was one of my best friends. I’d go over his house, and we’d listen to music a lot. We were always messing around with different instruments, but Gary (Miller) used to be in junior high school with me and we used to be in the same classes. Gary was a
lways in a band playing bass, and I introduced him to H.R. We were always going to some of Gary’s gigs and then just hanging out or whatever. I think Joe wanted to learn an instrument, so Gary started to teach him a little bit about the guitar. We were determined. We wanted to try to start a band.
H.R.
Addison Road, that’s where I first met Gary and Darryl. I heard them jamming out over at our friends Marlando and Alvarez’s house. One day I heard them playing some music in this basement, and I said, “Oh, are you all going to be in a band together?” They said, “Yeah. That’s right, man.” We just started to play all kinds of music all day long. I didn’t really know if the music we were playing was going to be popular or not, but it didn’t matter because we were just having fun imitating the guys that we would see on television like Jimi Hendrix, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and the Rolling Stones.
Alvarez Tolsen
My mother would go out, and Earl would come over with his drums. You couldn’t play music in the apartments because the apartment people would complain, so they would come over to our house because nobody could hear us. I would play guitar, and then H.R. started playing the kalimba.5 This became a weekend thing. Then summer broke, and things started forming into a group. Earl would come over and play the drums. H.R. with the kalimba, and some other guy—I can’t think of his name—would play congas. And then you’d see other musicians start to come. H.R. would bring people he knew, and all of a sudden, there’s Gary Miller. I knew Darryl. He did not know them back then. Darryl would come along with his guitar to collaborate. To make a long story short, H and Earl moved out to Oxon Hill. Their mother and father got a house over there, and they started having parties and inviting us over. That’s when the music really started flowing. We were doing Friday parties and charging people fifty cents to get in. It was just a jam session. One night it was me, H.R. and Gary, and we didn’t go over so great with the crowd, because we were charging fifty cents and we were not together. H.R. didn’t play the bass real good, and people started to get annoyed. They would say, “This motherfucker can’t play bass worth a shit.” So Darryl happened to be outside. I go find him, and he wouldn’t come in and play that bass for some reason. The next day—I don’t know how it happened, he called them or H.R. called him—but they started doing the Mind Power group. That was progressive jazz: Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke and all them seems to be . . . Return to Forever. They started doing covers, but I don’t think that lasted too long because the neighborhood didn’t like that kind of music. RTF was way before its time, and they didn’t understand Stanley Clarke and them back then. Around here, we were with Parliament Funkadelic, Graham Central Station types, you know . . . Motown. People were just scratching their heads like, What’s goin’ on?
H.R.
Another group I was bumping into in those days was Mandrill. We decided to go check them out when they were doing a concert over at the Capital Centre. They were so colorful and original in their style and techniques—their clothing and conscious level of speaking. We drove home that night, and the next day we were trying to play some of their songs. It was pretty cool but kind of comical, though. Darryl and Gary couldn’t make up their minds what instruments to play. Sometimes Darryl would want to play the bass, so he gave his guitar to Gary, and Gary gave Darryl the bass. To our surprise, word got out that we were playing, so we were requested by some of the kids in school to do shows. We wanted to practice first and perfect our ideas. Everything just had to be perfect. We tried the same song about one hundred times and finally it started making sense.
Earl Hudson
Joe would be in our room adamantly studying, rehearsing, practicing until he got it right. Him and Gary were actually going to go to college. They were pre-med and were gonna try and be doctors, but we were always listening to music and going to concerts, so we decided we wanted to go the musical route—and that’s what we did.
Alvarez Tolsen
H.R. was the kind of guy who was never satisfied with himself. He had something inside of him that he wanted to do when he came up with the music. That’s when he found himself. I could see a light in him. He became a whole different person. There was always something on his mind: I’m not using my full potential. I don’t wanna be a pawn for anybody. I wanna be myself and go out and make my own name. And he did that writing songs.
Marlando Tolsen
He had this job at a hospital. He was a security guard, and he was really depressed. I said, “Hey, man, you’re depressed?” He had a brand-new Camaro, a fast car, and he’s depressed? It just wasn’t enough for him. He said, “I got something in me that I can’t explain.” You could see he was really depressed at work. He said, “We’re gonna form a group,” so they formed Mind Power. They had a gig over at the house off Southern Ave. The band didn’t play well that night. They flopped. I came outside afterward. He’s holding onto this lamppost and I’m like, “Darryl, what’s up?” He said, “I can’t believe we failed.” I said, “No, that’s just the beginning. Everybody bombs. Just got to keep at it.”
Mark Andersen
Paul Hudson was a really gifted kid. It was obvious he was a very good athlete, too. He was very sharp but not always willing to put in the effort to do as well academically as he could. As I recall, his father came home one day and found his gifted son lying on the couch when there were clearly many things to do. One thing led to another, and they were sitting there in an argument. All of a sudden, his dad basically says, “Why don’t you go do something with your life? Just do something like read a book.” And as people do in these kinds of arguments, Paul jumped up and said, “I will. I will read a book,” and he goes over and just grabs a book off the shelf without even looking. They’re his father’s books, and he pulls out Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, which is arguably the fountainhead where all of the self-help, positive thinking books come from. It predates Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking and was followed up by Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude.
H.R.
Positive Mental Attitude: no matter what you’ve got to do in life, be positive. Keep a burning desire. Keep the truth going. It was possible, but one would have to be patient and determined and also love what he did. I saw that a lot of things discussed in the book I was going through. I decided to apply those teachings and instructions to my everyday living.
Earl Hudson
“Whatever your mind can conceive and believe, your mind can achieve.” The philosophy in essence was really about God, but there was also this thing where you have to make a plan and visualize the plan. But if you don’t stick to this plan, within five years you can pretty much fuck yourself. It was all about keeping a Positive Mental Attitude. You have to focus on your plan and try not to differ from that. Be focused and no other thing can interrupt that, or should interrupt that.
Mark Andersen
Joseph read the book, and by all accounts, it absolutely altered the direction of his life. Think and Grow Rich . . . you think, Oh well, it’s some sort of goofy get-rich thing. Well, yeah, but it’s also a spiritual book, talking about how people live their lives. Not so much different than something like The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren now. The idea being you have to have a reason to be here and without that purpose to focus on, you’re gonna be lost. And whether you want a revolution, or you just want to make a good living, it all starts with that can-do attitude. That hit Joseph so hard that he actually started becoming kind of an ambassador for it. He took it around. First his brother read the book, and then some of his friends, including Sid McCray and Gary Miller and Darryl Jenifer. They all read the book. They all started messing around in a little band that turned into something called Mind Power, the name coming straight out of the book. They were essentially a jazz/fusion group inspired by Return to Forever. They began to use the concepts from Napoleon Hill’s book in their music in the same way that Return to Forever used spiritual concepts from oth
er sources.
4. Rock For Light 1977-1979
I think the philosophy was to have something positive to say—have some kind of prophetic message that would prove to people that we could do something better.
-H.R.
Mark Andersen
Mind Power didn’t really take off. They were trying to do a jazz fusion thing with a few other things thrown in. Everybody seems to remember the first and only Mind Power gig as pretty much a disaster. After that, Paul kind of withdrew and was questioning his path like, Is this really going to work out? He’s feeling like, Oh, my God, I have another thing I’m failing at. One day, Darryl brought the band over to see their friend Sid McCray. The Sid Paul had known previously as just an average kid from PG County was gone. He had become this crazy punk rocker, all dressed up in chains and spikes and leather jackets and torn jeans and all of that.
Sid McCray | Friend
When I first met H.R., he was trying to find something, just like I was trying to find something when I found punk rock. I was watching a documentary on PBS, and they were showcasing the Sex Pistols and The Damned and all that. Me and Darryl, we had been messing around with some funk and go-go and all kinds of stuff back in that era. This shit comes on the TV with all this energy, and I just tore my room up! I heard this one song and just ripped the whole house apart. I told H.R., “You’ve got to check this shit out, man.” And he was like, “Man, fuck you. What the fuck is this shit?” So the Mind Power guys come over. They needed a new direction. I guess the jazz thing wasn’t happening. So I’m looking out the window, and they come walking up looking like the Beatles on the Abbey Road album. There’s H.R. with his big KISS boots, Earl with his little outfit on and Doc was like the conservative ’hood guy and shit, at least for back in the day.