BAD BRAINS

Although they’ve been rocked and billeted by their fair share of freaky storms, with Build a Nation, these unsinkable hardcore legends are raising theirs anchors for yet another wild journey

By Jon Wiederhorn

The poor guy never saw it coming.

In July 1995, at a Bad Brains headlining show at Club Bottleneck in Lawrence, Kansas, singer H.R. was visibly unsettled by the presence of a suspenders-wearing skinhead in the crowd. When, later in the set, someone spit at the stage during “Thank Jah,” the vocalist assumed that the offender was the shorn fan and retaliated, swinging his mic stand into the audience and fracturing the kid’s skull. Then he shouted, “Go get ‘em, soldiers!” to his bandmates.

The gig was stopped immediately, and the skinhead was taken to the hospital, where he received five staples. Police arrived and arrested H.R. (a.k.a. Paul D. Hudson), who was sitting peacefully in the audience and to whom it had to be explained that the cops were actually there for him. He remained behind bars for three months, until the victim’s father, a local judge, had the charges dropped.

Today, bassist Daryl Jenifer is philosophical about the night’s events. “H.R. thought it was our mission to battle the skinheads that night,” he says. “He thought he was protecting us by smacking this kid. That’s just how he thinks sometimes.” At the time of the Lawrence debacle, however, both Jenifer and guitarist Dr. Know (Gary Miller) refused to continue touring with H.R., and the Rastafarian hardcore/metal band was dropped from its then-label, Maverick Records. A brouhaha of this magnitude would indicate the end of most bands, but for the Bad Brains, it simply marked the beginning of one of their many hiatuses.

“We’re not your regular kind of entertainers,” Jenifer explains from his home in Woodstock, New York. “The Bad Brains are a cosmic musical force that exists to spread a message of peace and love. None of us have ever said, ‘Fuck you, I never want to see you again,’ or ‘I don’t ever want to work with you again.’ We just kind of fade in and fade out as the Great Spirit warrants.”

Earlier this summer, the Bad Brains faded back in big time by releasing their first studio album since 1995’s God of Love. The new disc, Build a Nation (Megaforce), marks a return to the band’s raw punk and reggae roots. Songs like “Jah People Make the World Go Round” and the title track combine savage riffs with H.R.’s mystical vocal style, and “Natty Dreadlocks ‘Pon the Mountain Top” and “Roll On” are pure smoked-out dub, replete with deep-groove bass lines and echo-drenched vocals.

"It's amazing to watch them in the studio,” says Beastie Boy Adam Yauch, who produced Build a Nation. “They are one giant instrument, merging into this one entity when they play together. And they have such a fire when they play.”

The importance of the Bad Brains to the evolution of heavy music can’t be overstated. The speed and intensity they brought to punk in the early Eighties pioneered hardcore, their positive lyrics inspired straightedge, their position as African-Americans in an underground rock scene blew the doors open for bands like Living Colour and 24-7 Spyz, and their combination of reggae, punk, and virtuosic metal touched an entire generation of musicians.

“There probably wouldn’t be a System of a Down if it wasn’t for the Bad Brains,” says SOAD bassist Shavo Odadjian, who directed the new Bad Brains video for “Give Thanks and Praises/Jah Love.” “They were so influential, and not just musically. They paved the way for artists to not give a fuck and do what they want to do.”

For the first comprehensive interview with the Bad Brains in over a decade, Revolver talked to H.R., Dr. Know, Jenifer, and drummer Earl Hudson and discovered four individuals united by their devotion and love for music, but different from each other in almost every other way. Jenifer is zealous and talkative, recounting the band’s history in minute detail and speaking candidly about the eccentricities of his bandmates. Dr. Know is irascible, repeatedly complaining about what he sees as simple questions. Hudson, who has rarely done press in the past (“When anybody wanted to interview Earl, he wanted money,” explains Jenifer), seems aloof and somewhat disinterested.

Then there’s H.R., who sometimes shows up for photo shoots in a bulletproof vest and seems incapable of differentiating between various points in the band’s history. He speaks in a gentle, stream-of-consciousness whisper, calls songs “manuscripts” and politicians “magistrates,” and invariably spins off into tangents that suggest he doesn’t have the slightest clue (or care) what the question was.

When asked about his current aspirations with the Brains, he replies nearly inaudibly, “One of the priorities is being able to teach people the new concept firsthand—having the sisters and brothers come to the shows, see the group and also the improvements of our students and our loved ones. Hear their approaches and their ideas and also their new languages.”

Then H.R. launches into deep space. “A lot of people in the early days came from Ethiopia, and they couldn’t really speak English too well, and their handwriting was kind of scribbly. But now through the years of work and its teachings, including myself, we can abide in our humble abodes and also through these concerts and have a very groovy right-on, soul-responding communication that’s just hip. Some people are not hip; they’re just squares. So we’re trying to avoid the squares, show them that they can take a square, turn it into an A+ response, and get an A+ performance and production at the same time.”

When asked about the band’s former relationship with Maverick Records, H.R. replies matter-of-factly, “What happened was Madonna had overheard that Queen Elizabeth wanted love letters from me. So she moves into Carnegie Hall and started leaving phone calls. Well, shortly after that, some of the brothers and sisters said that they heard that Madonna is getting ready to have her second child. And her and Janet Jackson came to express to us that they both thought I was really cool and a right-on dude, and would I be interested in them having my child? And I said,” he laughs, “’Well, I don’t really see any reason why not, but we have to be formerly introduced.’”

Over the years, H.R.’s bandmates have become inured to his eccentricities. They didn’t flinch when, during a shoot by legendary photographer Annie Liebovitz, H.R. chased her and her crew off the band’s bus. And they just shrugged when, in the early days, the singer passed a Canadian border patrolman a handwritten note signed by his father instead of a passport.

“The amazing thing was he got in,” Jenifer marvels. “To have a customs officer look at a band and say, ‘Okay, I can see this guy is just so far out there that there ain’t no need for me to even try to talk to him. Just get out of here’—that can be cool. H.R. lives a free life. The dude does and says whatever he wants.”

H.R. wasn’t always adrift in the cosmos. In 1975, when he, Dr. Know, Hudson, and singer Sid McCray formed the band Mind Power in high school, H.R. was motivated and completely tuned in. At the time, he was playing bass and wanted to sing, so, after meeting Jenifer through a mutual friend, he asked the bassist to join and booted McCray. With the lineup solidified, the members adopted stage names: H.R. was Hunting Rod, Jenifer was Sunlight, and Dr. Know was, well, Dr. Know. But Mind Power had yet to discover punk rock, so they played jazzy funk inspired by Parliament/Funkadelic, Stevie Wonder, the Weather Report, and the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

That’s when McCray, who remained friends with his former bandmates, reentered the picture. One day in 1977, he came over to Jenifer’s house in southeast Washington, D.C., wearing a ripped suit jacket covered with safety pins and carrying copies of albums by the Sex Pistols, Ramones, and Dead Boys. Blown away by the intensity and attitude of the discs, Jenifer played them for his bandmates. “H.R. liked to dress wild and be wild anyway, so once he learned about punk, he was all there,” Jenifer says.

The group changed its name to Bad Brains, which was also the name of a 1978 Ramones track (mere coincidence, they claim), and wrote songs that were faster and more energized than anything they’d previously heard. “I’d listen to the Ramones and go, ‘These motherfuckers think they’re playing fast? Sheeeiiiiiittt!’ So immediately we started constructing faster riffs with our jazz-fusion background, so it would be punk based but more progressive.”

“We were ahead of our time,” Hudson says. “We were like godfathers of hardcore. When the Ramones were playing, they weren’t playing hardcore stuff, and then we came out, and bands followed us and put down our licks, at least beat-wise.”

The Bad Brains’ first public performance was at a party in the basement of Hudson’s mom’s house, but they soon graduated to the local clubs. From the start, the shows were captivating, and the band rapidly developed a strong following. But the greatest life-changing moment for the Brains came after a performance at a house they were renting in Forest Park, Maryland, when a group of Rastafarians turned them on to the power of Jah and the wisdom of Hailie Selassie, the former Ethiopian emperor who is known as God incarnate in the Rastafari movement. With enlightenment came a strong reggae influence and the decision to write songs that were spiritual and positive.

“When we were punk rockers, being crazy kid rebels, our attitude was, ‘You seek, you find,’” says Dr. Know. “So that’s what we did, and we found. The spirit moves mysteriously, and when we found it, that’s when we started the whole PMA [Positive Mental Attitude] movement. We wanted to be positive, so hence, that positiveness was directed to spirituality and consciousness.”

“From the start, they were really constructive,” says D.C. hardcore and straightedge progenitor Ian MacKaye (Minor Threat, Fugazi). “They were encouraging, they were inspirational, and their music was undeniable. They made you want to do something. And H.R. was a visionary who made things happen. Plus, the way they played was so incredible that if you went near a stage and didn’t at least try, you had no business having a guitar in your hand.”

“They made you reevaluate what you thought was rock music,” says legendary SoCal hardcore frontman Henry Rollins (Black Flag, Rollins Band). “And H.R. to me is still the ultimate frontman and a huge influence on me. At one point, I was at a Bad Brains show and he went, ‘You are gonna be a singer,’ and I went, ‘Oh, c’mon, H.R.’ And he went, ‘Nope, you’re gonna be a singer, and tonight you’re gonna sing in the Bad Brains.’ And he had me come up and sing along, and that planted the seed in my mind that, OK, maybe I’ll do this.”

As happens with many groups, with success came friction. Jenifer became a rigid perfectionist, and if something didn’t sound the same onstage as it had in practice, he’d get pissed. Over the years, Jenifer’s temperament was the cause of some of the band’s worst fights, including their first: “We were practicing in our basement and Earl wasn’t on it, so I was like, ‘Look, man, why don’t you play this shit right and stop playing the drums like a bitch?’” recalls Jenifer. “So my man gave me a mean look, clicked his sticks, and played the hell out of that shit. And when he finished it, he put his sticks down and jumped my ass.”

The band’s inflammatory hardcore wasn’t just causing internal tensions. “We once played Dupont Circle, and the Congressional police came down on horseback and circled the crowd,” Jenifer says. “Then one of them politely led his horse down to the post we had our electricity on, leaned over, and turned it off.”

It was a sign of things to come. After a raucous show in a restaurant ballroom, the owner said the band couldn’t play there anymore. Since the area’s biggest venue, the Atlantic Club, had closed, there was hardly anywhere left to perform, and the bandmates joked that they had been “banned in D.C.” (The phrase became the title of a song on their 1982 self-titled debut.) While that wasn’t the case, they decided to leave town. Following a gig with British punks the Damned, the headliners asked the Brains to tour Europe with them. So the Bad Brains sold most of their gear and booked a flight to the U.K., but they didn’t realize they needed work visas to perform overseas. When they arrived in London, they were held at the airport for eight hours, then sent on the next flight to New York City. By the time their plane arrived back in the U.S., the rest of their equipment had been stolen. Deciding there was nothing left for them in Washington, they stayed in New York.

“It was a real struggle,” Hudson recalls. “We were just focusing on playing shows and trying to stay alive. We sometimes had a bag of chips a day, and that was breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”

After settling into a shared house in a dangerous section of town, they got a call from Jimmi Quidd of the New York band the Dots, who had seen the Brains play in D.C. Quidd offered to record the Brains’ first single, the storming “Pay to Cum,” which encapsulated all of the energy and aggression of hardcore in a mere minute and 25 seconds.

Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra liked the song so much that he included it in on his 1981 compilation, Let Them Eat Jellybeans!, which also featured tracks by Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, D.O.A., Flipper, and the Circle Jerks. The attention from the track, along with the reputation the Bad Brains gained from their kinetic shows, encouraged budding producer Jerry Williams to record a full album with the group at his four-track studio.

“Some of us were staying there, and so we rehearsed before we recorded,” says Hudson. “Everybody was strapping and gung-ho, but it was kind of crazy because me, Doc, and Jerry were doing [bike] messengering [between sessions] because we had no money. Plus, we were playing shows.”

That album, Bad Brains (a.k.a. the ROIR cassette), set the scene alight. Not only were the songs lightning fast but the playing was fist-tight, and the rhythm shifts—cultivated from years playing jazz fusion and funk—made the music even more arresting, spreading the band’s popularity to some seemingly unlikely places. After a Brains show in Boston, Ric Ocasek, frontman of the well-known new-wave pop act the Cars, told the band he wanted to put them in a studio and produce their next album. So the band recorded 1983’s Rock for Light, a higher-fidelity disc that featured most of the tracks from the debut, along with a batch of new songs.

The band’s profile grew, but after touring for the album, H.R. left for what would be the first of several attempts to pursue a reggae career. He released two solo albums, It’s About Luv and Keep Out of Reach, but mended fences with the Bad Brains in time to record 1986’s groundbreaking I Against I. Produced by Ron Saint Germain, who has since worked with Sonic Youth, Living Colour, and 311, the album sacrificed some of the band’s speed to showcase their breathtaking versatility. Metallic guitar leads, stop-start riffs, abrupt rhythm shifts, and unconventional tempos abounded, blending smoothly with H.R.’s hostile roars and Jamaican-tinged melodies. It was perhaps the Bad Brains’ finest moment. The only snag was when H.R. landed in jail for possession of marijuana and had to record his vocal track for “Sacred Love” over the phone from behind bars.

“At the time, we were a real force to be reckoned with in terms of the youth,” Jenifer says. “Just like from the teachings of [reggae great] Bob Marley—we were the punky reggae party that Bob Marley talked about.”

Unfortunately, the sonic shift of I Against I also created a major stumbling block for Bad Brains. Attracted by the heaviness and technicality of bands like Metallica and Anthrax, Dr. Know and Jenifer wanted to go in a metal direction, but H.R. and Hudson were far more interested in following a reggae path. So they split again, and Dr. Know and Jenifer continued together, hiring ex-Cro-Mags drummer Mackie Jayson and unknown singer Todd Singleton, and entering the studio with Saint Germain to record Quickness.

“Soon after we started, Ron came to me and went, ‘Look, man, you guys are chasing this singer down a fucking railroad track. He doesn’t know how to do this,’” recalls Jenifer. “So we stopped the sessions and got a hold of H.R.”

The enigmatic singer agreed to come back to Woodstock to record Quickness. Although the album is far from the Brains’ most cohesive effort, it has jaw-dropping moments, and the interplay between Dr. Know and Jenifer is striking. Following the disc’s independent release, the members of Living Colour helped the Bad Brains land a major-label deal on Epic for their next album. Intimidated by the thought of being on a major and disinterested in recording another rock record, H.R. and his brother bowed out again, leaving the Brains in the lurch.

“That was just typical,” says Anthony Countey, who has managed the band since 1982. “As well as I know H.R., I don’t really understand him. I think he didn’t believe in commercializing the music, so he would dismantle it whenever it got to that point.”

Determined to persevere, the Brains kept Jayson on drums and found vocalist Israel Joseph I through auditions. As they prepared to enter the studio, their problems were twofold. Bad Brains fans weren’t about to accept a new singer, and Epic insisted hair-metal specialist Beau Hill (Winger, Warrant Ratt) produce the album. Slick and overly flamboyant, Rise was both an artistic and commercial failure, and the label soon dropped the band.

Then in 1994, Adam Yauch ran into H.R. at Lollapalooza and decided to call Jenifer after the show to persuade him to do another album. He also gave Jenifer the phone number of Maverick CEO Guy Oseary, who had expressed interest in working with the band. At the time, H.R. seemed amenable, so in 1995 the Brains reunited in the studio with Ocasek and recorded the ill-fated God of Love. While the album had all the hallmarks of a Bad Brains release—complex rhythms, blazing guitars, touches of reggae—it lacked the spirit and strong songwriting of the group’s earlier work. During the tour, H.R. was unsettled and temperamental. At one point, he punched out Countey. “As the tour went on, he was getting more intense and closed off,” Jenifer says. “I think he was trying to ward off the pressure.”

Then came Lawrence, Kansas. “It wasn’t really catastrophic,” says H.R. of the split that followed the aborted show. “But [it was] a momentary absence of the objectives and the reward that one receives once they are able to tune in with what is happening in the matter of expansion of the soul, rebuilding the nation, and learning to love I and I.”

In 1997, the Bad Brains reconvened again to play shows under the name Soul Brains. They performed spot dates for the next three years, and then in 2001 Yauch called Jenifer again and asked if he could produce a new album for the band.
“I told him the same thing I told Ric,” Jenifer recalls. “You got the spot? You got the fundage? And he’s like, ‘No problem.’”

The wheels started turning again, but slowly at first. In late 2003, Jenifer and Dr. Know sketched out the songs for Build a Nation, and in early 2004 Bad Brains entered Yauch’s Oscilloscope studios in downtown Manhattan. They tracked the album, and the vibe was strong. Then tragedy struck. Before the band had a chance to finish the vocals and start mixing, Jenifer’s mother developed terminal cancer, and the bassist dropped out of the project for 18 months.

“When you’re going through something like that, all this other stuff is just whatever,” says Jenifer. “It’s just a band—it’s not a priority. So I buried my mom on January 28, 2005. Then I was able to take a deep breath and focus back in.”

Even with the long delay, Build a Nation was almost finished by 2005. But it sat on a shelf for over a year before anyone decided to shop it around. “None of us wanted to rush into anything,” explains Countey. “People are asking, ‘Didn’t you want to go and make money quick on it?’ Well, we don’t think that way. And I guarantee you if you gave H.R. a million dollars, within two weeks he’d be broke again. He’d hand it out to street people and stuff.”

Money is one thing; notoriety is another. While many rock critics, musicians, and artists are tapped into the Bad Brains, the average punk and metal fan has minimal understanding of their place in music history. And considering Bad Brains’ impact on hardcore, straightedge, funk metal, and hybrid metal, the lack of recognition is a crime. But while the Bad Brains would surely like to receive acclaim for all their accomplishments, such desires take a back seat to giving their own thanks and praises. “Would we like to be huge?” asks Dr. Know rhetorically. “We are huge because our father is the hugest.”