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

by Howie Abrams

  Skeeter Thompson | Scream

  I lived there with my ex-wife and the other roommates: Julie Bird and Kenny Dread, and I think Banks was there, too. I can’t remember, but, anyway, H.R. lived there, and he had the smallest room in the whole house. You could almost touch the walls extending your arms out. It had a bed in there and a little round table. I think it was one of those spools. You know, you can wrap wire on it, but it was maybe two–and–a–half–feet high, and he put a smock over it, or some sort of colorful cloth, and it was just his Bible on top of it. And it’s the strangest thing, because that’s when I really got to know the man. There were times I would walk by and hear him crying like he was going through some sort of torment. I would hear him talking to himself. I always thought he was praying out loud. He was always partaking. He was always breaking bread. It was always covert. It wasn’t, like, “Let’s go get high” or “Let’s have a session,” and we began reasoning. He started growing locks. They all started growing locks. He wanted to be called Joseph at that time. Before, H.R. stood for “Hunting Rod” because he was such a ladies’ man. At least that’s the way that I perceived it. He would go out there and just go hunting, trying to find some pussy. I remember we were having a reasoning session, and I was like, “Are you going to call your band H.R.? Doesn’t that stand for Human Rights?” He was real quiet, and about twenty minutes later, we were talking about something else, and he was like, “Yeah, man, Human Rights. That’s it. That’s what we’re going to call it.”

  Kenny Dread

  Our community was like an ashram, and H.R. was our guru. The spiritual vibe permeated the Dread House. H.R. is a shaman. H.R. was a teacher every moment there was an opportunity for a lesson. Being powerful and capable and being the best, but being humble about it was an amazing lesson.

  H.R.

  I heard that being on the self-sufficient tip and having your own record company was where it was at, because then one could control their destiny, so I decided to start Olive Tree Records. I took it upon myself to seal up the confirmation, an agreement that I made with the church and God. Up until then, this was all just a thought, but a new movement was being started, and there were a bunch of kids that knew what was going on. They understood and they felt the same way, and they wanted to be a part of the new style of living and the new approach. We believed that although money was around, one shouldn’t make it the focal point of the group, but use it as an assistant to achieve what one wants to achieve. Find a richness of one’s soul and character and personality, and once you’ve done that, you’ll have a better perspective on life, and you’ll be able to use what God has given you: your natural-born talent to succeed in life.

  Skeeter Thompson

  I remember he had the least amount of complaints out of the whole group, and he used the least amount of energy—water and food. And he was always there to help out. He actually wanted the doors to be left open. You live in DC, you don’t want to do that, but in the daytime, he wanted to leave them open. He was suggesting things like that. People were like, No. At the time, it was, you know, the murder capital, and it was just hot with drugs and sex. And 14th Street was full of hookers and strip joints. It was real dangerous, a fast and spontaneous place.

  Jimi Riley | Olive Tree Records

  He was trying to motivate us to be Jah youth. That’s what the Tree was called before it became Olive Tree; it was called Jah Youth. He was mocking Hitler Youth. He had a weird thing where he would talk about Hitler a lot and how he manipulated the crowd through his use of films and music. He would have his little ranting Bible meetings at the house, which used to crack me up because he would sit in a room, they would all smoke little joints, and he would almost be goose-stepping while he would read from the Bible. He would chastise them to be better people and tell them what they had to do to help God come to America and bring down Babylon. And they would all do the “blood clot, bumba clot” and all their little pet words. He always had his Bible with him, and his little crate with his rolling papers to roll his spliffs. I would come home to the house, and I knew he was at the house because he had this weird way of drawing in and smoking. He would chant and read from the Bible. It was very unusual.

  Jose Gonzales | Human Rights, The Mob

  All of us smoked copious amounts of herb. It was a part of our daily life. Not once a day, not twice a day, but many, many times a day. At that time, it was just based on the Rastafarian religion. We were smoking together as a group of friends: a group of people with like minded goals, ideals and religious beliefs.

  Kenny Dread

  Julie Bird came from this incredibly illustrious family, and yet she had a real iconoclastic streak of her own. She had followed the Grateful Dead. She had watched her father sit there and communicate with Russian paranormal scientists before the Cold War was over. She was a rebel in her own way. She was a bit older than us, and she came from money. It was a situation where we needed the partner in our record company to help us pay the bills and help us press these records. She was also just completely addicted to the music. So in short order, we became a family and she became like our sugar mama—but also like a sister and a real friend.

  Al “Judah” Walker

  She’s the cofounder of Olive Tree Records, and she produced the first Zion Train LP. She also resided at the Dread House. She was instrumental financially in producing the first few H.R. projects and getting them off the ground.

  Julie Bird | Olive Tree Records

  The 17th and U house, the Dread House, became Olive Tree House, because Olive Tree Records was developed there. At the time, we were doing a lot of productions. We had very deep negations with the 12 Tribes and musicians in the reggae scene in DC at the time, and it was a very suspicious time. We were a group with a productive purpose, and yet I think a model of collective living most people did not trust. We were able to produce and publish and distribute and pay bills.

  H.R.

  A lot of it was inspired by the Holy Bible and the Scriptures and also by authentic Rastafarians and other good-hearted people who are not really Rasta, but from their hearts, they are delivered from the spirit of God within. And their support to me was overwhelming and a big, big blessing. The same way the spirit works, you plant a seed in the fertile soil, and it’s just a matter of time before it blossoms and becomes a fruit, and we’re getting paid from the fruit of our labor.

  It was a complete universal objective where we would read our Bibles and still use the same techniques in our music.

  I didn’t want anybody to be misled. I was still working on whether or not I should be a supporter of that punk style of music. I thought, Don’t worry ’bout a thing. As long as you’re being yourself and you’re being honest, the truth will shine like a light. And I said to myself, “I don’t really know if I’m going to be ready for that kind of changeover, but I will give it a try.” And much to my surprise, it was received well by the audience. It really didn’t matter, punk versus reggae, as long as we got onstage and jammed.

  Jimi Riley

  I met H.R. because I was at the Dread House, as they called it, at 17th and U and started buying weed from H.R. one day. I said, “Hey, I’ve always been a fan and I love ‘Pay to Cum,’ and I’d love to do some artwork for you.” That’s when he opened the door and let me come in. He gave me this stick drawing of the H.R. logo and said, “I want you to turn it into something. I want people to be reminded of a classic rock band logo like AC/DC and KISS.” We started hanging, and we would talk about religion and God, and we’d smoke ganja and just talk. I wanted to move downtown because I was living with my parents and going to Northern Virginia Community College studying graphic art. They wanted me to move in there, and the rent was only like $900 a month, so I figured, divided by a bunch of people, we would have really cheap rent. It became the headquarters for Olive Tree Records. Anyway, H.R. figured out I was gay. He asked me, and I said, “Yes.” He said, “Yo
u are a faggot! God does not want you,” and he just slammed the door and stormed off. I thought Rastafarian meant more than that, and you didn’t get grounded down in these petty things. H.R. just shut down and wouldn’t even look at me and wouldn’t talk to me anymore. We had gotten along great and did all this stuff. I was their roadie, and we hung out. Suddenly, he couldn’t be my friend even though we were good friends up until then. I was heartbroken.

  Ian MacKaye

  There were some good moments, but it seemed like it largely centered on getting high. There was a whole part of the scene that was just caught up in that Olive Tree world, which was a different clique altogether. I think they thought we at Dischord were too straight. They thought, You guys aren’t doing it right. You’re not doing publishing, you’re not doing contracts and managers. But that just wasn’t our thing. We were never interested in any of that. The impression I got from the Olive Tree people was that they were going to operate it like a “real” label, whatever that means. They had some cool releases. I thought the first H.R. record was all right and the Beefeater Need a Job EP was great, but ultimately I don’t think anybody was really minding the store. All of this was happening at a time that there were lot of people who seemed like lost kids gravitating around H.R. I’m not sure what they were looking for, maybe it was mostly about getting high, but in any event I think it lent to his sense of being a shepherd.

  Jose Gonzales

  To my understanding, the H.R. project started in New York. The very first incarnation of the H.R. band came about because the Bad Brains were having issues amongst themselves and they weren’t getting along at the time. The first incarnation didn’t get out of the rehearsal studio in New York City. It was myself on bass; Gary Miller on guitar; David Hahn, who had been Bad Brains’ manager for a short amount of time on drums; and H.R. on vocals. We rehearsed with the idea of doing a couple of one-off gigs in California. That didn’t work out for whatever reason. We couldn’t get it together. H.R. decided to bring the entire project to Washington, DC. He wanted to get together with local musicians that he knew. David Byers specifically was a key factor, and he was one of the first names mentioned by H.R. He wanted to work with David, who was an incredibly talented guitar player and songwriter. On second guitar was David Jordan, another very talented guitar player, and Earl on drums. He asked me if I would be interested in relocating from New York to DC to work on this project. That is like asking a young Metallica fan if they want to come and join Metallica. So I thought about it for three quarters of a second and said, “Yes.” I left everything in New York that I was doing, relocated to DC, and started rehearsing with them. We took a working-class approach to it. We rehearsed four to five times a week with the intention of doing something different. Not necessarily hardcore Bad Brains style, but he wanted to embrace different styles of music that were in his heart and in his brain. Consequently, we got together that first H.R. album, It’s About Luv.

  Kenny Dread

  The minute Earl showed up from New York, everything changed. H.R. was suddenly jumping up and operating, getting rehearsal spaces, organizing guitarists. Then Jose came down to play the bass; that’s Jose Gonzalez, who was the bass player from the New York hardcore band The Mob. So now you have your rhythm section, and then H.R. added David Byers on the guitar and David Jordan, so the group began rehearsing at David Jordan’s house. I began booking some gigs up and down the East Coast, and that was the first version of the H.R. band, Human Rights. Dave Byers was one of the first African-American punk rockers in the DC scene. Same generation as Bad Brains, and same generation as Skeeter Thompson from Scream. We weren’t just a band; we were a posse. We lived together, rocked together, conquered together. Our performances sometimes became like a basketball game, keeping score. Who had ’em dancing the most, who had ’em thrashing the most, who had ’em freakin’ out the most. And we went out there to win every time. It was an incredible experience to play music with someone who lived it—one hundred percent rocker.

  David Jordan | H.R. Band

  The only reason he hired me was because I had a place to rehearse. I charged him by the hour anyway. Gotta rehearse somewhere. And I played music twenty-four hours a day. Me and David Byers basically wrote all the music, then we had to show it to Jose from The Mob and Earl, and we’d just try to get it with no mistakes. Joe was just sitting down there writing with a pad, and he’d write the lyrics while we rehearsed the music, and by the time we could play the music without making too many mistakes, he’d written the lyrics. Then he started rehearsing It’s About Luv with us. We wrote it and rehearsed it in about three weeks, I’d say, or less, and then we went and recorded it. Me and Earl did all of our tracks live, and Byers kept going in and erasing his parts and doing them over again. I used to smoke weed, and when I got to the studio, nobody’s got pot except me. They supposed to be Rastamen and shit.

  Jose Gonzales

  At the same time, he wanted to do an all-reggae project, which became the Zion Train band, and that was many musicians from different parts of the country and some locals. He knew some dreads there that were interested in playing with him. So Human Rights and Zion Train were actually two separate things. There was Human Rights, which was a little bit of hardcore, some reggae, some jazz/pop and some regular pop. And then there was the all-reggae Zion Train with Al Judah on vocals. He was the main vocalist, H.R. was playing guitar, Earl was playing drums and we had a horn section. God, I think maybe we had nine people on stage. Initially, his intention was just to focus on the reggae band, but he also didn’t want to alienate his fan base. I think he wanted to give them a little something, so he came up with the two-band concept. We’re talking 1983–84. He was just writing songs daily with David Byers’s help. Earl, of course, was also contributing to the songwriting process, and it was amazing to watch him work.

  Al “Judah” Walker

  It was my idea to have a group called Zion Train with me and Joe as the front men. The other guys wanted to play reggae, but they just wanted to do both—punk, too—so it was kind of pulling Joe. He did it to keep the band going and to keep everybody’s livelihood, but you could tell in his heart that he always wanted to play roots music. My inspiration for Zion Train came from a Bob Marley song called “Zion Train.” In the Rastafari faith, Zion is what people would call heaven, so he related to that very strongly. He didn’t want to play punk anymore because the more he read his Bible and kept company around other Rastas, he just felt the need to only play Jah music. He didn’t really consider punk Jah music.

  Steven Hanner | Olive Tree Records Photographer

  Zion Train was a combo of a couple different bands but came out of these reasoning sessions at the Olive Tree House. The reasoning sessions were always about purpose. We were there to work together and to get on the right page. A bunch of us were dreading up and serious about it. The sessions were meetings of minds and spirits. Gigs got worked out, and calendars were organized along the way. We passed the Coptic Bible around, reading passages. That was the direction towards Zion Train. H.R. was becoming this guru, and there were a lot of followers showing up at the Dread House. A lot of friends and musicians attracted to him, and all of a sudden there was this very big band. David Byers might be playing guitar one time, and then there might be two or three other guitarists or a different bass player or different drummers. It was strictly Ital reggae.

  Jose Gonzales

  Before each show there was always a prayer. We would huddle up and ask God for guidance to give us the strength and the will to play our instruments well, so that we could deliver this message in the proper fashion. That was very important in our daily life, not just onstage. Everything was focused on being together as human beings with one goal, which was Rastafari. Simple, that’s what it was.

  Al “Judah” Walker

  We did a big show at CBGB. It was Zion Train, and the other half of the show was H.R. Me and Joe were the front men. We did the
Zion Train set first. The next set was H.R. It was a good mixture of music, about three or four punk jams, a few R & B-type songs and a nice tribute to his son: a happy birthday song, which is a nice reggae dub. “Happy Birthday My Son,” like the beginning lyrics of the song: “May 23rd, 1984, I was on the corner looking for more, out comes Babylon to lock I up and throw away the key, I was only looking for some money to buy my son some pants, shirts and some shoes.” He got caught selling herb that same day. That was in Adams Morgan. It happened to be his son P.J.’s birthday, so while he was in lockup, he composed that song, so when he came out, we all rehearsed it and he recorded it on the first H.R. album, It’s About Luv.

  Mark Andersen

  He’s living in a communal house on 17th and U. And, you know, they’re running a huge pot operation. Of course, H.R. gets himself arrested up on Columbia Road for dealing.

  Kenny Dread

  Someone ran in and told us Joseph got arrested. I used to go buy weed from H.R. on the corner up on Columbia Road, near the Ontario Theatre. It was a way for someone in a band to make money, and it’s all documented beautifully in “Happy Birthday My Son.” Something that always amazed me was that you might have a really big gig one night, but you’ve still got to make money the next day selling marijuana. I made a part of my living this way back in the day. A lot of us did. It was sort of flexible income for a musician.

  Jimi Riley

  I told him not to go on the street that day, “Just don’t go. I think something’s going to happen, plus you have a show tonight.” He said, “I have to go. I need some money for one of my kids.” I just knew something was going to happen that day, and then he went up on the block. I think within ten minutes of him being on the corner, they got him. And we didn’t do the gig that night. We tried to do several benefits for him. We did a lot of shows at The Hung Jury and always put “Free H.R.” on the fliers.