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

by Howie Abrams

  I have no problem with an artist who wants to rock the boat and push down barriers. I don’t have a problem with that. His problem was more with what was probably schizophrenia. That’s just one piece of it. When I first got his number and I went to meet with him, he was living in some really small hole in the wall. Obviously, I knew he hadn’t made any money in a long time. If you hear the albums, you think This guy’s together. This guy’s just a rebel. Nothing alluded to the fact that this guy had some serious mental issues.

  Chino Moreno

  I don’t like to look at it like he once was H.R. and now he’s not. I still believe that he is H.R. I think he has an odd way of how he wants to be perceived. I like to look at the positive side of it all, the things that I got from him that inspired me. What artist today is what they were in their prime? It’s gotta be hard for the other guys in Bad Brains. I’ve never met the same H.R. twice. Although it’s physically him, it just depends on the day or the moment he’s in.

  Jack Rabid

  I don’t know what drugs have been prescribed to him to keep him in a sort of pleased state. I know he went through a period when he was apparently very violent. These are things that I have heard and not seen. I am not a witness to these events. I’ve heard of them, and some of them are well-documented. I assume that he has been given some sort of drugs to curb that violent impulse that he had. He is friendly, and he is encouraging. But he is sort of distant and vacant, as if he is looking at puppies and ice cream and flowers somewhere in the back of his head. I didn’t know Brian Wilson, but I guess if you were a friend of his in 1966 and you talked to him now, you’d see a shell of your former friend.

  William Banks

  He told me that he had an uncle or some family member from Jamaica who was off-center. That’s how he explained it to me at one time. He was trying to say it was a gene thing from one of his family members and they were what people might call “nuts.” But it could be the drugs and the things that people used to do. You can become imbalanced once you get off of certain things. It could be manic depression, because musicians get that way.

  Al “Judah” Walker

  I’m gonna be honest with you, and I’ve said it a thousand times, I honestly believe that Joe was spiked. Spiked in his food or his weed, and the reason I’m saying that is because all the times I toured with him all over the country, we’d always have groupies around in the dressing room, and they would always have some kind of exotic weed already rolled, and he’d just smoke it. When they gave it to me I wouldn’t do that, because I wouldn’t know what they had in it. I’d just put it in my shirt pocket. Anybody who knew him before he became ill with this schizophrenia thing knows all the good he’s done for many people. He thinks about everybody before himself. A real friend, you don’t have to really ask for help; they’ll see that you need it and they’ll give it to you. When you’re doing good, they applaud you and they’re with you. And when you’re not doing so good, people just write you off as being worthless and somebody they don’t want to relate to. If people would show the love that Joe showed everybody, maybe the power of that love could work miracles with his chemical imbalance to bring him back.

  Ron St. Germain

  When you’re mixing Molotov cocktails together, you know, you pay your money and you take your chances. And if you’re on the edge with any kind of psychological thing, you’re not stable. I knew people in college who would take LSD and never come back. Diving out of second-story windows, winding up in the emergency room, having psychotic events, and had to mainline Thorazine for three days to get their shit back together but never really quite recover.

  Allan Aguirre

  I remember seeing a flier for a Human Rights show, and they were actually boasting on the flier: “Making sure H.R. gets to the show for five years in a row.” I was like, Wow! What the hell is going on? There’s gotta be bad stuff going on if these guys are promoting, “We got H.R. to the show.” ’Cause I remember, he would not show up for some shows. I would wait onstage, and he’s not shown up, and now we got to kill time. “Those guys in San Gabriel, the 12 Tribes, he could be with them.” And he wouldn’t show up to Bad Brains shows. It started getting worse. That may be the reason these guys said that on a flier, but there was something else going on, obviously. Now we know there was something really wrong going on.

  Noel Baker

  He got on an airplane, and he’s about two hours into the flight. He gets into the overhead compartment and pulls out a bulletproof vest and throws that on. It freaked out everybody on the airplane. The plane had to turn around, and he was met at the airport by sky marshals and all types of people until they could clear his identity.

  Angelo Moore

  Maybe he’s scared of the beast. The beast can be considered record companies, record deals, the government, major establishments and things of that nature. Get you locked up in a contract that you can’t get out of for a real long time. I remember one time he was playing at the House of Blues in LA and he had a duffle bag right in front of the monitors while he was doing his show. He picked up his duffle bag and left when he was done. He had all his belongings with him. You have to look at it as savant genius. If you have someone with a free spirit who is constantly expressing their different personalities through the music and art, that’s what H.R. does. He does it uncut. He lives it. It’s good. I wanna express myself like that, too. I remember another time he was sitting out in front of Pablo’s house with a sword, dressed like Sir Lancelot, with a little doll on his knee. I don’t know if he was guarding Pablo’s house, or if he wasn’t gonna let Pablo into his own house. Schizophrenia is like a filter for your music and art. I think that’s where you get the magic. You get the magic happening, but it’s also not so great at times either. Everybody’s got a little crazy shit about them, but if your heart is good and your intentions are good, then God will make a way for you somehow.

  Lori Carns Hudson

  I met H.R. in Baltimore. I was going out to see the Fishbone documentary, and he was having a show across the street. I was there with one of my friends and this man walked in, and I was, like, Oh, my God, is that H.R? He walked right by me and our eyes met. It was almost as if we knew each other. A friend of my other friend knew him and introduced us. H.R. showed up to the after-party and I sat by him. We danced together and we talked. It was a beautiful evening. I was just happy that I met H.R.

  I kept in touch with other people who knew him and just started showing up where he was, just because I was fascinated by him. I think he had just moved into Pablo Fiasco’s house, and I was kind of getting to know the situation. People were taking care of him, but I think his mental state was so stressful that he just didn’t know how to deal with it. I just felt from my heart that I was someone that could fill some gaps in his life. I had no idea where any of that would go.

  H.R. and I were dating for only a few months when we decided to get married. As with any couple, the fact that we rushed it was looked down upon by certain people. I married him for the reasons you marry anyone. I loved him and wanted to be with him, and also I knew that if we were legally married I could get him more help. I could add him to my insurance and get him to the doctor. He decided he wanted to get married on Halloween. Not because he is a fan of Halloween. It’s harvest time, I don’t know. We got dressed up and went to Annapolis and got married. It was kind of a bittersweet day for me. He was not in the best mental state that day. He would not take his sunglasses off, but it was still happy in the end.

  When Bad Brains were going to play Lollapalooza in South America, I wasn’t happy about the fact that he was going. He did the shows and they were horrible. He was obviously hallucinating on the stage during the shows. He came back, and I think it was the moment when the rest of the band said, This is enough. We can’t put him on the stage like this anymore.

  Anthony Countey

  After South America, that’s when he realized tha
t he needed real help. To me, that was the first time that he basically was talking about another universe, and I was like, “If there is one thing happening here that you have to know, it is that there is only one universe. Whatever you are imagining, you are only imagining. You are still in this universe, and we are in the same universe.” That kind of brought him around, too. That’s when he realized that some of the stuff that he was paying attention to was not happening. It was just his imagination. Since then he has been getting help, and it’s just a matter of time before he’s able to do what he wants to do.

  Lori Carns Hudson

  It was very soon after I met him and started spending time with him when I recognized that there were some psychiatric issues. It was obvious to me. I didn’t know if anyone had tried to help him with that before. I was just coming into a new situation. It’s just that I wanted to help him in every way that I could, coming from a place of love. I sat down and went on some psychiatric website, and I read him all of the signs and symptoms for schizophrenia. I went down the list, and I read them all to him. “You do all of those. This is you. I know there is a stigma attached to it and nobody wants to admit that about themselves, but I want you to know that I love you no matter what, and this is what is going on with you, and there are things out there that can help you be able to function better.”

  Then Anthony Countey had some conversations with him. It took a while for it to sink in. Even if he doesn’t react well to something that I’m saying to him, he is thinking about it and he comes back when he’s ready to talk more. One day he said, “Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll go to the doctor.” The first appointment, he got scared and didn’t go. I called the doctor crying and she talked to him on the phone and she made him, I guess, trust that it would be okay. His imagination was going all over the place with what it meant to go see a psychiatrist. She showed him it was just sitting down and talking, which it was, so that’s how we got there.

  He started taking the medication, and the doctor told us that the longer he took it, the better his symptoms would be, which has definitely turned out to be true. There was a period of time where I thought, No, it’s not working. We have to try to find the right dose. There were so many ups and downs. He would be totally clear for two weeks, and then all of a sudden, it felt like he was back to before. We just kept going back to see her and talking things through. She was very encouraging to both of us, which I needed. I haven’t seen him in psychosis in a long time. Occasionally, I’ll see a little something behind his eyes, something that looks a little strange. I can see it right away because I know him so well. I see him every single day, and if something is a little off, I can tell. And so I can deal with it and give him extra medicine or whatever he needs. He’s himself now. He wasn’t himself for so long.

  He’s a quiet, kind person. He likes to spend a lot of time alone or just with me. That’s just the way he is. He’s happy and he smiles all the time. It’s great to see him that way. Other people in his life who have seen the changes are really psyched for him, too, of course. The healing process began long before I met him, when he decided to stop smoking herb. He decided that on his own. Somehow he knew inside of him that that wasn’t good for him anymore. When I met him, I talked to him about herbal medicine, nutrition and organic food and everything like that. I tried to get his body healthier, too. He was eating Ramen noodles and breads and that was it. You have to heal from the inside out. Your body, your spirit and your mind alltogether. Once he started taking the medication he definitely had times where he was like, “I’m not doing this anymore,” and I was like, “Yes, you are.” He is completely dedicated. He is not going to stop taking that medication. He really sees the benefit that it has for him.

  Juan DeCosta

  I was there. How many people can say that they were there with Bad Brains? How many muthafuckas slept on the roof with Joseph? We used to break bread together. Joe taught me how to eat natural food. It wasn’t even popular back then. Joe taught me how to take care of myself. If you’re looking at me, you see a piece of Joe. My life is good because of Joseph. He’s never alone because the Lord will always be with Joseph. You come in here by yourself and you leave by yourself, but let me tell you, that dude’s like a cat with nine lives. He always lands on his feet. Joe is alright, man. Joe is all right. Just find some peace with yourself, man. The fight is over, man. And guess what? We won.

  Anthony Countey

  H.R. is definitely a success. He was real for people who needed him to be real and that’s much more important than anything else. He survived those days he was living in a warehouse. H.R. was the protector of the spirit of it all, and in order to protect that spirit he had to kill the dragon over and over. It’s about what’s on those records and what was at those shows. All the rest is just talk.

  Earl Hudson

  H.R. is my brother. We’re family so there’s nothing that’s gonna destroy that. There have been certain times when he’s lifted me up, and if there’s anything I can do for him, then I have do that for him. He knows that. That’s why he came back to do Bad Brains, so I could eat food, too—so we could all eat food. Him, Darryl, Gary, and I are all brothers, in essence. He’s like our oldest brother. We all love H.R. because we remember how he was back in the days. We all starved and ate together and cried together and everything. He is a contributing factor to why the Bad Brains happened and why this music is so profound in America these days—because of all his work, writing lyrics and the positiveness that he did bring to the music.

  Lori Carns Hudson

  I want to make sure people know that H.R. is not all of the things he has done wrong in his past. That has nothing to do with who he is at this moment. Everybody has a past. We have all done stupid shit. He has done a lot of stupid shit, but he is not that. Who he is for real is a sincere, genuine, creative, beautiful spirit, and that’s why I married him, and that’s why I’m with him. He’s not perfect. A lot of people call him a prophet, and that’s great if that works for you. I’m sure he’s helped a lot of people through his music. I do not see him that way. He is my husband, but I understand. I was a fan of his before I met him. I’m still a fan of his, just in a very different way. Sometimes I look at him and honestly I just think, How am I sitting here with H.R.? It would just be great if everyone could put aside things from the past or ideas that they have created about him and try to see him as the real person that he is. If I can make H.R. laugh, deep belly laughs, then I know how happy he is—and that is everything right there.

  H.R.

  The lady at the hospital told me I had to remember that people who do not sleep are always going through changes. And when I went to that hospital and I started to get myself together, a big change came into my life. I want to thank all you guys for helping out too. The kids have always supported the Brains. I’ll tell you the truth, the hospital helped me to become a better human being. It’s a miracle that I’m alive because about ten years ago, one doctor analyzed me and said, “He’s only got a few more months to live and then he’s gone.”

  My life has been changed. It’s all about how people can set an example with good things, and people can learn from it. It was a bad scene but now that I’ve been reborn again and have repented, it’s a good scene. Read the bible to the fullest, come to grips with reality and one will be able to learn. I want to tell the musicians, and this is very important: keep your families together, keep your job and don’t fuss and fight because it’s not going to work.

  Peace and blessings to each and everyone, and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Don’t worry because the Lord is working in mysterious ways; where there is a will, there is a way and one can achieve whatever they do truly conceive and believe.

  Cast of Characters

  Allan Aguirre was a member of the short-lived Christian punk band Scaterd Few during the early ’80s. He later played with H.R. around the time of the Charge album.

  Marco ALDACO is
a friend of H.R.’s from Los Angeles, who looked after him upon finding H.R. homeless on Hollywood Boulevard in the mid-1990s.

  Mark Andersen is the cofounder of the activist/creative collective Positive Force DC, which was sparked by the ’80s punk and hardcore scene in Washington, DC. He has published two outstanding books, Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation’s Capital and All The Power: Revolution Without Illusion.

  Al Anderson was a guitar player in The Original Wailers. He is the only musician to have played with both Bob Marley and H.R.

  Terry Anzaldo was the head of promotions at Maverick Records during the Bad Brains’ time signed to the label.

  Noel Baker was H.R.’s personal manager from 1998 to 2004.

  William Banks appears on several of H.R.’s reggae recordings playing various instruments, including the short-lived Zion Train project.

  Julie Bird is a cofounder of Olive Tree Records, which released titles by H.R., Beefeater and others. She was the unofficial den mother of the infamous Dread House.