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

by Howie Abrams

  Larry Dread | FRIEND, MUSICIAN

  H.R. came up with the Rock of Enoch songs so we started recording that with him and the band Scaterd Few. Then we were traveling up and down, spreading Jah love. Spreading the music of universal peace, love and unity. What the bible teaches us: Love God, love your neighbors.

  Allan Aguirre

  He wrote Rock of Enoch in our backyard when he stayed with us in Burbank. We went to this studio—I think it was called The Kitchen Sink in Los Angeles—and Scaterd Few did all the music for it. His wife, or common-law girlfriend at the time, was named Mary—a wonderful, beautiful woman, very elegant. If you think of a Nubian queen, she represented this whole deal. A very nice lady. We really liked her. She came out probably a month after he was at our house. We said, “Yeah, sure, you can bring her out,” and they had a little girl named Shashamane. So Mary and the baby came out, and they stayed with us for close to a month. I was watching H.R. play the role of father and husband. Very sweet to her, very kind. It was interesting to see that side of it. He asked me once a long time ago, “How do you do it? How do you stay married to your wife?” I said, “You accept the fact that this is the only human being on the planet that you’re gonna take crap from, and you’re gonna submit and let them do that. I have a covenant relationship with this woman and would do anything to keep it going.” I’m watching his family dynamic, and he’s watching mine, ’cause I have a four-year-old kid and a two-year-old. Anyway, Rock of Enoch gets recorded, and he leaves.

  JAMEKEE | D.I.A. Records

  When Skitch, Englishman, Al Anderson, Randy Choice and Earl Hudson were backing H.R. as Human Rights, those were his best players, and no one else came close, with the exception of Doc, Darryl and Earl as Bad Brains.

  Al Anderson

  That band was really heavy. Skitchy was the lead guitarist at that time, and I was playing rhythm. We started a tour in Detroit. I was on Skitchy’s side, and I was asking him where the chords were going, where the verses were, and he was hipping me on how to play the music. So for the first couple weeks, I just sat in and played rhythm guitar and let him do his thing. Skitchy’s amazing. Him and Dave Byers were the scariest guys in the world. When I had to play in the same place as Dave Byers, I was scared, man. This guy had the gnarliest guitar sound I ever heard. He would descend and ascend and not stop grinding. He’d always land on his feet.

  Randy Choice | H.R. Band

  We were playing at the Bayou here in Washington, DC, and there’s a break in the song where everything stops, and at that break, Joe did a backflip and one of his dreads hits Earl’s cymbal right on the downbeat. It wasn’t just a performance for performance sake; it all meant something. The movements, the interaction with the audience; it was a lyric in and of itself.

  Al Anderson

  He probably had the strongest pipes I’ve ever heard, and he could hold a note longer than anybody. He had that circular breathing down. He was doing this while holding notes, and harmonizing. Nobody has the strength he has. I mean, Ronnie James Dio had that power, but H has a falsetto nobody has. He has the ability to throw it and bring it back like few singers I have performed with. The amazing thing is that he could go on for hours, and keep his voice at a decibel that for me was above normal.

  Poor Davey Byers passed. I heard before he passed away that he gave up guitar playing, but these are the guys who pretty much introduced me to how to play with H.R. Skitchy was an outstanding lead guitarist, and unfortunately he’s passed as well—got into a bad car crash. We had all these bad things going against us. We overworked. We did two sets a night sometimes and had to drive like five hundred miles in between shows, so it was wearing on all the guys in the band. We did it for two years straight, and then H.R. went back to Bad Brains. They couldn’t find anyone who could replace him. How could they?

  Eric Wilson | Sublime, Long Beach Dub AllStars

  It was probably like ’92, and H.R. wound up staying at my pad for a couple of days. He’s a trip to hang out with, that’s for sure.

  Ras MG/MARSHALL GOODMAN | Sublime, Long Beach Dub AllStars

  Sublime ended up playing a show with H.R. at Bogart’s in Long Beach. We were the opening act. It was myself, Eric and Brad at the time. Miguel was onstage as well during that period. I guess a lot of reggae artists sometimes used bands to back them up, especially the solo singers, and that’s what H.R. did. We played as Sublime, and then played with H.R. too. We already knew all the Bad Brains songs because we are huge fans. And then we did a lot of his Human Rights stuff: “Rasta” and “Shame in Dem Game.”

  Miguel Happoldt | Sublime, Long Beach Dub

  AllStars, Skunk Records

  We knew the promoter, Steve Zepeda and he says “It’s H.R. without the Bad Brains. He’s doing his solo reggae thing.” We were like, that’s cool. We were really excited about it. We were already making flyers and then he calls me and says, “Hey, we have bad news. We are canceling that show with H.R. He can make it, but his band can’t. He wanted to come anyway and read poetry or something like that, but I don’t think it will sell tickets.” We had been so fired up to do it. I was like, “Wait, he can make it but his band can’t?” I go, “Actually that’s kind of good. We know a lot of the songs. We play a lot of those songs in our set right now. We could probably back him.” So he asked H.R. if he was interested in that.

  Eric Wilson

  Sublime had a big library of covers we liked playing at parties. We’d play “House of Suffering,” “I Against I,” “I Luv I Jah,” and a bunch of others. The owner of Bogart’s let us practice at the club two days before the show. H.R. showed up there, and we were just kids at Disneyland. I ran up to H.R. with Brad telling him, “We play this, and we can we play that.” I remember I asked him if we could play “House of Suffering,” and he told me I could have it. He said, “It’s yours, man. You can have it,” like, I can now own the Bad Brains song “House of Suffering.”

  Allan Aguirre

  Next thing I know, Bad Brains are recording an album without H.R.

  Mark Andersen

  In the early 1990s, punk rock was going through the roof. The stuff which was the ugly noise of the misfit, the fuck-up and the loser is the new rock mainstream. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” tore the roof off the punk underground, and if you look at that video, there are only two band T-shirts that you notice there: Dave Grohl is wearing a Scream shirt, and repeatedly, you see a person wearing a Bad Brains shirt. It’s clearly meant to be there, to be a tip of the hat to one of the real pioneers, one of the true trailblazers. But that band doesn’t exist anymore. Gary was bringing different singers in, some of them really embarrassing. You’re trying to step into H.R.’s shoes, and you can’t do it. No one could. They got Israel Joseph I, and he was much better, but still, it’s just not Bad Brains.

  Israel Joseph I | Bad Brains Vocalist on Rise

  They were holding auditions in New York, and I was doing my reggae in the City with our band, Uprising. We backed up Eek-A-Mouse. We backed up one of the Marley kids when he was really young. We backed up a whole lot of people as a reggae band. I was sound asleep at a point where there were no cellphones and hardly any beepers or pagers. I’m at my mom’s crib sleeping, and I get a knock on my bedroom door, and she says, “It’s the telephone.” I grab the phone and say, “Hello?” This deep rich dark tone came on and said, “Is this Israel? This is Darryl Jenifer of the Bad Brains.” I said, “Come on, man. Who is this?” The voice was calm and he laughed and said, “Man, this is really Darryl Jenifer.” We began talking, and the conversation lasted an hour. He said, “I got your number from Latasha, and she said that you were a singer.” He asked if I knew their music and told me they were looking for a singer. He said, “We would like you to come up to Woodstock to try out.” We began talking about family. That was the majority of the conversation, about family, and what family is about and what life is about, and at the end of the
conversation, he said, “All right, cool. We’re going to have you come up.” He sent me a Greyhound ticket, and I got on the bus. So I’m there, and we lit up a spliff. It was dark, and the TV was on. We sat there and smoked and just talked. The next morning, we got up and we were going to rehearse. They asked me if I knew “Re-Ignition,” and I said, “Of course.” So we do “Re-ignition,” and it is banging. I mean, it sounds like the record. I start singing the vocals, and because I love this song so much and love H.R.’s voice, and because Jah Rastafari was meaning for something to happen, I sang like the record. After the first verse, Darryl stopped playing. He said, “Hold up on the mic, hold up. That sounds just like H.R.” Doc turned around and started messing with his guitar, and he said, “Youth, you sound just like Joe.” He told me he was closing his eyes and thought it was Joseph singing. I told them, “These are Joe’s songs, so I’m not going to sing them like me. I’m going to sing them like him. I want to pay homage to the Rastaman.” He asked me if I could write rock songs, and we played a few more songs. Darryl eventually came over to me, and he said, “Do you want to be down with this?” I said, “What do you mean, be in the band?” He said, “Yeah.”

  Chuck Treece

  At that time, I had started playing drums in the band. We found Israel through this girl in New York and he was great, so we started going through all the motions of getting songs together. We had about four or five songs, and they started talking to Ron St. Germain, and Ron thought that having Mackie on the record would be stronger because Mackie had played with the band longer and he felt like Mackie was a better drummer. It’s a blow to the ego, but those things happen. They were signed to Epic Records through Living Colour, because they were going to be touring with Living Colour. They did the tour, and that’s when I joined the band. It was kind of a whole new Bad Brains, and Beau Hill ended up producing the record. There was a twisted vibe about that whole situation.

  Anthony Countey

  Well, it was kind of good. It was a decent year and a half. It was a real band with a real record. Everybody got along pretty well. They toured and toured and toured. It was sort of Bad Brains the way it was supposed to be. It wasn’t H.R., though. Israel is Israel.

  H.R.

  I didn’t feel betrayed when they brought in another singer. I didn’t respond as if it was betrayal, but more like a stepping stone that paved the way for the authentic group to eventually reform. When one door closes, another door opens.

  11. Voyage Into Infinity 1994-1995

  You can’t make everybody happy, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need. Don’t look back; keep moving forward. That’s what I did. I kept on moving forward.

  -H.R.

  H.R.

  We’ve had many transformations. We’ve gone through about seventeen or eighteen different generations, and I keep meeting youngsters who want to climb on board—asking me if there is room for me to try them out. I’d say, “We’ll see, we’ll see.” I met some youngsters in California, The Crabiteers: Al and Jamie, and his brother Andy. They were inspiring after another break from the Brains.

  Andy Rondon | The Crabiteers

  At that time, he was really on top of his game. A stickler for music academia. We lived together for a long time, and it was a growing time for us as players and musicians. When you worked with Joe, it was a school’s–in–session kind of thing. And H.R. truly knew everyone, from the rich and famous to the completely unknown. He loved surfing. He loved the water; Spent a lot of time at the beach in North San Diego County where he had some friends. He’d just kind of bounce back-and-forth. He would never really spend too much time with anyone in particular, and he never had a problem picking up a bag and moving around a lot.

  Jamie Mitchell | THE CRABITEERS

  Andy and H.R. were living together in our rehearsal studio. It was getting a little tense, and H.R. needed to move out. So Andy said to me, “You’ve got that apartment and everything,” so I picked Joseph up and he moved in. We were like two peas in a pod. It was like my stepdad came to town. I was going to junior college, and we were doing shows on the weekends. I would wake up in the morning and he would be like, “Gotta get your breakfast, son.” And he would make me potatoes with soybean powder and some milk with spirulina sprinkled on top of it. That was followed by a massive cone of weed. He’d be like, “You ready for school, son?” I’d walk the five blocks to school, just out of my mind high, but my life was really happy. It was cozy with Joe there. However, there were a few things that happened that just made me uncomfortable.

  Here I was with one of my musical heroes; we sold out three nights at the Dragonfly, and we played at Long Beach Arena with General Public as our opening act, and Eek-A-Mouse playing after us. I was kind of living my dream, but there were parts of the dream that were not necessarily dreamy. It saddens me to have this memory. I realize now what happened with Joseph. The manager from my building—I’m not gonna say everything that happened—but he observed behaviors that were happening when I was gone at school or at my girlfriend’s place. This happened outside of our apartment. I just should have been there. I should have been there to take care of my bro but I wasn’t old enough to process what was happening to him. He wasn’t trying to fuck with me or mess with anybody; he was just dealing with his own self. So I would be gone and things would happen at the apartment, and I would come home and Joseph would be a really different person. When you’re with somebody all the time, and you love them and make intense art with them, and you’re at the peak of what you’re doing with this person . . . when you have that down time together, it can be awkward. And when you add the element of someone who potentially has some sort of schizoaffective disorder, it festers and can get really crazy. And it got really crazy at the apartment. It got really crazy. If I’m totally honest about it, I abandoned the apartment, and I abandoned Joe there. Things were getting so strange, I had to leave.

  Andy Rondon

  There were times when the guy was just gone. Totally and absolutely gone. We would be backstage ready to perform, and he would literally go through these psychoses of hearing people, and turning the lights off and telling everybody to be quiet. And we’re sitting there just praying to the good Lord Almighty: I just want to go home. I just want to make it home and make it through this night.

  Earl Hudson

  He was kinda struggling living out there in California. I don’t know what the hell he was doing out there. He was trying to do music, too, but . . . I don’t know, man . . . he was tripping. He was going through some things.

  Mark Andersen

  So after nearly two decades of ups and downs, Bad Brains are finally offered that big deal, that major-label deal that has been out there for a decade, the one that H.R. had walked away from numerous times. Madonna’s label, Maverick Records, wants the Bad Brains, and Joseph signs on the dotted line. The original Bad Brains, back in the studio with Ric Ocasek to record their new record God of Love. It’s like the stars have aligned. We haven’t seen Bad Brains since Quickness. They deserve a shot like this. They were out there, blood, sweat and tears on the punk rock trail, blazing that trail for everybody—including Nirvana.

  Chino Moreno

  We had just gotten signed to Maverick Records in ’95, and one of the first conversations I remember having with Guy Oseary was him asking me what my biggest influences were. I said, “Today I’m listening mostly to Sade and the Bad Brains; those are my favorite two artists I listen to most throughout the day. That’s what I like.” It was probably a few weeks after that he gave me a call and said he ran into H.R. and he invited me and H.R. over to his house. H.R. took us to some Ethiopian restaurant. We had dinner and went back to Guy’s house. Me and H.R. sat in a little room and played some music together. He had his trumpet with him and I had a guitar. We sat in this spare room and just jammed. I was twenty years old at the time and hanging out with one of my biggest influences.

 
; Earl Hudson

  Darryl and Gary were in New York and were pissed off at the drummer dude they had, so they wanted me to go to Australia. I went with them. They used this other cat to sing, but it turned out that the cat wasn’t good and people wanted to see H. H.R. was in California and met Madonna’s A&R cat, and dude asked what it would take to get the Bad Brains to record again. So that’s when we pulled H back in and did the album God of Love. We got the Bad Brains back on track for a little bit longer, and that, you know, didn’t last.

  Guy Oseary | Maverick Records

  I was backstage at Lollapalooza and H.R. was there. I walked up to him and I introduced myself, and he said, “Oh, let me have your number.” I gave him my number and saw that on one side of the paper he gave me, it said “Adam Yauch” with his number. And I thought, Oh, they’re probably trying to sign the Bad Brains, too. Once I saw Adam Yauch’s name on the back of the paper, I thought, Okay, Grand Royal’s gonna try and beat me to the punch, so I immediately got on it.

  Chino Moreno

  A couple of days after that, Guy was like, “I want to sign them, I want to get them a deal.” I was like, “You need to do this. They are one of the best bands ever.” More than anything, I wanted to hear a new Bad Brains record. God of Love was made, and when they went on tour, we were the band they took with them. I think it lasted six shows.

  Anthony Countey

  Guy checked in with me and said he wanted to do something with the band, and wanted to know what I thought. I told him the truth. I told him it’s extremely unpredictable, and he shouldn’t expect much—although from my point of view, it will always be worth trying. The band wanted to try, but it gets very complicated. Gary Gersh wanted to sign them as well, but he didn’t call me. There was a certain point when Adam wanted to bring them out to LA to meet labels and stuff. I was, like, “Sure, that’s cool, but don’t you need me there?” They basically didn’t want me there, which was cool with me because it’s how they wanted it. So they went and had a meeting with Gary Gersh, and at the same time Guy and Freddy DeMann from Maverick are on the phone with me, saying the whole time, “We really want to do this, Anthony.” I said, “Well, we’ll see how it comes out.” I think H.R. was just waiting for Gersh to call me, but he wouldn’t tell him that, so when they didn’t, H.R just got up from that meeting and went over to Maverick. The deal was done the same day. It was crazy. Such a funny situation. I think Gary was smart not to have signed them. We did get the record out, and to me that is an important thing.