Speaker 1: Let's go doctor Fresh.
Speaker 2: Okay, I've I have prepared a special introduction just for
this episode. Here goes. Well, he's a little story I
like to tell about three both brothers. You know so well.
It started today in history with Jay Coach me start
him off with the labs. Welcome everybody that surely you
can't be serious podcast. We are diving deep into the
world of hip hop eighties and we have with us
a very special guest today, mister David Wright. How you doing, David?
Speaker 3: Very good? How you doing?
Speaker 2: I'm doing great. David is a published author, a award
winning advertising video producer. He has got his third book
coming out next year in March. She can get the
first two on his website.
Speaker 3: Tell us what that is, Dave galaheads doom dot com.
Speaker 4: My series is an epic medieval fantasy story along the
lines of Lord of the Rings. A strong spiritual or
Christian theme to it.
Speaker 2: Awesome. That is awesome. So on that note Christian theme,
I know that you had some concerns about what we're
going to talk about today because you are now deep
into the church world and you're a little concerned about
some of the topics and in going over this stuff.
You know, Beastie Boys have, they've come around a bit.
They were like, you know, hey, some of the stuff
that we did when we were young was pretty stupid
and pretty inappropriate and really just not okay. And they've
owned it and they've said, but hey, you know, we
grew up, right, and we all grew up. We all
did stupid stuff when we were kids, and we kind
of relished in that stupid stuff. That doesn't mean that
we promote it. We wouldn't necessarily want our kids to
do it, but it is kind of fun to go
back and revisit that stuff a little bit.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: I would not want any of my personal notes published.
When I was in the nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2: Right, yep. So we're covering today hip hop, which I
gotta say I'm familiar with. I was a big breakdancer
circa SD so we're talking like eighty three, yeah, I was.
I was breakdancing to Thriller, so it had been eighty
three eighty four. I caught breaking and breaking to Electric
Boogooroo both the day that they came out. I had
Grand Master Flash albums. I had the sugar Hill Gang albums.
I was. I was I had Houdini, I head run DMC.
I had this stuff growing up. Tell us my breakdancing name.
My breakdancing name was Doctor Fresh. Yeah, you can't make
this stuff up. I still use it. I still use it.
Like if I go and do like trivia night at
some restaurant or something, I put Doc Fresh in there
as my trivia name.
Speaker 1: Day. You gotta tell us how you got deaf Dave?
What does that?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 4: I can tell you that rap music in the eighties
pretty much defined my persona in high school. I was
a top forty kid, you know, in the first half
of the eighties. So I was born in seventy one.
I was about ten years old in eighty one. I
started really discovering pop music. The earliest pop songs I
remember is like Man Eater by Haul of Oates, It
cuts like a knife and those kind of songs.
Speaker 3: I I am the thriller generation. I was in sixth grade.
Speaker 4: I was watching when the Motown twenty five special air
the first time saw the Moonwalk Hite Thehead by the Moonwalk.
Speaker 3: With the rest of America. My first concert ever.
Speaker 4: I won a radio contest for free tickets to the
Victory World Tour to see.
Speaker 3: So I was a pop music kid.
Speaker 4: And then in the summer of nineteen eighty five, a
friend of mine, one of my best friends in high school,
he slipped me the cassette to run DMC's King of
Rock album in the summer of nineteen eighty five, and
it did something to my brain, and I was the
rap guy for the rest.
Speaker 3: Of the decade.
Speaker 4: I absolutely just became kind of nuts over run DMC
and the BC Boys and Llo, cool J and everybody
that came out of the rest of the decades. So
you had Eric B and Rock Him and Cool Mo
D and Public and toe Me. I was just absorbed
all that stuff. I quit listening to the radio. It
was all about rap. My name my name to this day,
deaf Day. That's my Twitter handle, deaf Dave. It comes
straight from deaf Jam.
Speaker 3: I mean it.
Speaker 4: All the autographs in my high school yearbook, half of
them say death Day.
Speaker 3: They're gonna have my real name on it.
Speaker 4: So according to legend, okay, according to legend, the way
I got the name deaf Dave was that the the
Holly Hills Crew was sitting around the circle freestyling before
home room, and I would jump in and bust some rhymes,
and I was so good that EJ. Zeus declared me
an official b boy and gave me the name Deaf
davening to a legend Woo.
Speaker 2: So Zeus handed him his name from Mount Olympus.
Speaker 4: So that's the story I went with. In reality, in
the summer of eighty seven, I was going bowling with
a couple of white friends and we needed to come
up with names for the scoring computer, and so we
all came up with funny names, and I gave myself
the name Deaf Dave in the scoring computer there the
bowling alley.
Speaker 3: But the friends that I was with liked it. They
repeated it.
Speaker 4: It stuck, it caught on, and I was already had
the reputation as the rap guy, so that became my legacy.
That's how people in high school still call me that,
and I just embraced it.
Speaker 3: It's kind of my online name too.
Speaker 1: So you weren't handed a flaming pair of Adidas from
Mount Olympus.
Speaker 3: Or anything, No afraid not.
Speaker 2: I'm still just kind of reveling in the fact that
somewhere out there, somebody's got a yearbook that says Deaf
Dave signed your crack right in the crap. So we
are here today to talk about two major albums that
changed the face of music in the mid eighties.
Speaker 1: One wait, wait, wait wait, change the face of music.
Speaker 2: Changed the face of music. Yes, sir, I think you're right.
Speaker 1: I think you're right.
Speaker 2: Keep going. So we are going to be talking about
Run DMC raising hell, and we're going to be talking
about Beastie Boys. Still there you go. So are you
guys ready to jump in?
Speaker 1: Hey, I'm just along for the ride. I mean you,
you guys are the experts. I took a rite turn
into hair metals.
Speaker 4: So I'm sitting here, I'm in my fresh flight threads
with my big Folkswagon medallion around my neck.
Speaker 3: Yes, meeting Colonel Sanders, drinking Heineke brew. I'm ready. I'm
ready to take it like a go to.
Speaker 2: All Right, I'll toast you with my brass monkey and
we'll jump in. Okay. So the story that we're about
to tell started way back in history in the late
seventies Earlydies with three guys named Adam Horwitz, Mike Diamond,
and Adam Yawk.
Speaker 3: Dave. Give us what you got, man, Well, first of all,
I'm gonna throw you for a loop.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna take this story all the way back to
eighteen ninety because, as everybody knows, eighteen ninety was the
year that Margaret Numberg was born. Margaret Numberg was a psychologist,
an educator, an artist, and had learned some theories about
child education over in Italy brought it back to America
in nineteen fourteen, she opened the Walden School in Manhattan.
Speaker 3: Okay, so this is.
Speaker 4: The very first of the progressive education model schools in
a marria, which is basically, let the kids decide what
they want to do, don't give them homework, don't give
them rules, let them decide what they're interested in, the
kids discovering their own way. But it appealed to the
upper class and the well to do in Manhattan society.
Forward that to the nineteen seventies. There's a kid going
to school there named Jeremy Chattan. Now he had an
older brother, and that older brother had a friend, and
that friend had a younger brother.
Speaker 3: His name was Michael Diamond.
Speaker 4: And so Jeremy Chautan and Michael Diamond just kind of
by default, kind of became friends because they were around
each other because their brothers were buddies.
Speaker 2: Yep. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Michael Diamond was somebody whose father was an art dealer
and they put him in the Walden School and they
were going to school together. Kind of separate from that,
Jeremy was also friends with another Walden School classmate named
John Barry. Now John Barry played guitar and Michael Diamond
was starting to learn how to play.
Speaker 3: They were junior high. They were like seventh and eighth grade.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he said, I need to introduce my two buddies
to each other. They don't know each other yet. One
plays guitar, one plays drums. So it's like John, this
is Mike, Mike this is John, and they started playing
a little bit. So the earliest formation of the Beastie
Boys began around nineteen seventy eight with John Barry and
Michael Diamond playing together, and Jeremy Chatan was the one.
Shatan was the one who got them together.
Speaker 1: I heard that they were introduced at a Joe Jackson concert.
Speaker 2: Yes, because that's the influence for the Beasti Boys is
Joe Jackson.
Speaker 1: Joe Jackson right stepping out right, So Mike d and
John Berry are at a Joe Jackson concert. This is
the first time they've met, and John Barry is acting
like a wild man, like he's going crazy, barely keeping
his seat, and Mike d is like, who is this guy?
Speaker 2: This guy's crazy? This guy.
Speaker 1: I don't like this guy at all, Like this guy
is not for me. But then they both liked punk music.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they both liked the clash.
Speaker 1: And so they kind of bonded over that.
Speaker 4: So one thing that was true about the late seventies
in the early eighties New York club scene was there
was a diversity in the music. Like if you went
to a hardcore punk club, you were likely to hear
soul or funk or even hip hop. And you go
to any other dance club, they're gonna include punk in
their in their playlist too. So they were exposed to
a lot of different kinds of music. So it's not
weird for me to hear that these two punk rockers
met at a Joe Jackson concert. In nineteen seventy nine,
there was a man by the name of Dave Parsons
who lived in Boca Raton, Florida, and he started a
fanzine for punk music.
Speaker 3: Called The Mouth of the Rat.
Speaker 4: During this time, he received a fan letter from a
musician in New York in the punk scene. Her name
was Kate Schellenbach. Well, he moved to New York City
in nineteen seventy nine opened up his own record store,
the Rat Cage or rat Cage Records, and within three
days of living in New York he met both Kate
Schellenbach and John Barry at a club, and Kate Shellenback
was someone who was bouncing around different bands playing drums.
Mike and John are in a band called Band B
eight N and Kate Shellenbach is in a band called
bag Ladies.
Speaker 3: And it was at they were.
Speaker 4: All in one venue at the same spot one night,
and they all kind of met each other and the
three of them decided they wanted to start a band.
Speaker 2: I think that they had known each other like at
a younger age, but recognized each other and kind of
renewed their friendship at that point.
Speaker 4: So they had a drummer, Mike already, but then Kate
comes along as a drummer, so she becomes the percussionist
and Mike remains a drummer. John is a guitarist. So
Jeremy Chattan the common friend who got them all together
in the first place, decides he'll play bass, and so
in the early months of nineteen eighty one, the very
beginning of eighty one, they form a band and call
themselves the Young Aborigines.
Speaker 2: There we go, yep.
Speaker 4: But eventually Mike Diamond took over as the lead singer
and Kate became the drummer, and they played a grand
total of two gigs in their entire existence, and both
of them were on the same day in June of
nineteenth eighty one.
Speaker 1: And you know the world famous song that the Young
Aborigines came up with, right, This song was recorded on
June nineteenth, nineteen eighty one. The song is called Asshole.
You know that was on a regular rotation on my
pop forty.
Speaker 4: Head as I understand that the entire the entirety of
the lyrics of that song was Mike Diamond repeating the
title over and over again at the top of his lungs.
Speaker 2: Sounds about right, yeah, yeah, some deep lyrics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, but we're talking their.
Speaker 3: Teena oh yeah, they're early high school yes, yes and uh.
Speaker 4: And it was during these months in eighty one leading
up to that fateful night June nineteenth, of the Apex
of the Young Aborigines career. That I do know that
Michael Diamond did meet Adam Yawk at a Bad Brains performance,
and they had kind of noticed each other, but they
weren't saying anything to each other because the tough guys
don't do that, right, and they decided that they were
They were just gonna not like each other for a while,
but eventually they found out that they were into the
same stuff, of course. And after the Young Aborigines performed
their two gigs on the same night, Jeremy Chattan had
to leave for the summer, and when he left, Adam
stepped in. Adam Yawk stepped in and became the new bassist.
And at that point John Barry suggested they changed their
name to the Beastie Boys.
Speaker 2: Boys Entering Anarchistic States towards Excellence Boys.
Speaker 4: Well, and that's according to their legend. I think that
came a few years later.
Speaker 1: I think you're right, Yeah, that was afterwards.
Speaker 2: That's a reverse anagram with thing.
Speaker 3: That was John Barry's idea.
Speaker 4: He came up with the name Beastie Boys and their
very first gig was on August fifth of eighty one
at Adam Yak's seventeenth birthday party at John Barry's Lost
They just had few friends over. It was not a
paying gig, but they all got up on stage and
the Beastie Boys performed for the first time.
Speaker 1: So that was Adam Yoak's seventeenth birthday party. And I
think he was a couple of years older than the
other guys, the other people in the band, and so
Mike Diamonds said that that was the first time he
had ever been drunk. Yeah, we've got some common interests
and we've got a lot of lack of parental control here.
Speaker 4: One quick thing about Adam Yawk is when he was
in high school, he took an aptitude test. They did
a career aptitude test for all the kids. He took his,
and the only thing that his aptitude test concluded was
that he should never go into anything related to music.
Speaker 2: That's crazy. That's perfect.
Speaker 4: So after this night, at first his birthday party at
John Barry's Loft, they do get a paying gig opening
for another band in November of eighty one, and then
by December eleventh, they're opening for Bad Brains, which is
a band that they there's a big name in the
punk scene and they were big fans of it, so
they were excited to play for Bad Brains. I don't
know what happened that night, but whatever it was, they
decided they were quitting. They decided it wasn't fun anymore,
and the BC Boys broke up in December of nineteen
eighty one.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: After yes, absolutely, they were done. You know this is
no one's got dreams of being rich and famous. It's
just casual band. You're in and out of bands all
the time. This one was over. But then Dave Parsons,
the owner of rat Caage Records, had been at the party.
He had told them at the time that he was
thinking about launching his own recordly, and so in December
he came up to them and said, I'm ready to
record with you guys. Why don't we put some of
your material and record it. So the band had already
broken up and they decided to reunite just to record
at Dave Parson's new studio. Well, the studio was owed
a lot of back rent and the landlord was threatening
to take all their equipment in return for back pay
and kick them out, and so they had.
Speaker 3: To hurry up.
Speaker 4: They had two days to record only at night they
had to sneak in. They had two days to do
an entire EP. They recorded an EP called polywog Stu.
Speaker 3: Now, the way.
Speaker 4: Punk music was at the time is everything is very,
very brief. These songs are less than two minutes long,
I think, most of them.
Speaker 3: But they got in. They recorded with John Berry in
the lineup.
Speaker 4: They did a hardcore punk EP called pollywog Stu, but
then they lost the equipment, they lost the studio. There
was a guy there working as an engineer named Scott
Jarvis who snuck away with a tape machine and he
was able to mix what they had cut at home
in his bedroom. And is only because of that guy
that they were able to get this EP finished and
released and get it out there.
Speaker 2: So what were the songs that were on Pollywokstick.
Speaker 3: BC Revolution was one that was on there, uh huh.
Speaker 4: And also they're probably their most famous one because they
kept it in their set for a long time was
egg Raid on Mojo.
Speaker 2: Right, So egg Grade on Mojo was about a bouncer
at one of the clubs.
Speaker 3: I can't understand a thing they say.
Speaker 2: So there was there is a bouncer one of the
clubs named Mojo, and he would never let them come
into the club because they were kids, you know, they
were able to sneak into other places, but not the
place they wanted to go. And so I don't think
it ever happened. I think it was just a song
about their dreams of getting a bunch of eggs and
pelting Mojo with the eggs, and so that's that's what
the egg raid on Mojo is all about.
Speaker 4: So after they recorded this and before it was released,
they broke up again because they were already done. So
they got together to do this recording and they were done.
But what happened was there was somebody in the club
scene that made the trip to LA and took a
selection of songs from the New York scene and had
them played on the radio in Los Angeles, and one
of the songs from Polly wog Stew was performed in California.
And so interest in the Beasi Boys began to spark
and began to grow, even though they were technically no
longer together apparently from what I've read, because they started
to get interest, John Barry decided to quit the group.
He didn't want it to get too serious. I guess
I don't know, he didn't maybe it was coming too professional.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: He had some I think he had some substance abuse
issues that he was dealing with as well, you know,
a little bit of a drinker. I think there was
probably some attitude issue as well.
Speaker 1: But yeah, alcohol plus punk rocker equals bad attitude.
Speaker 2: Tough to deal with. So they need a guitarist.
Speaker 4: Now, what do you know about another hardcore punk band
called The Young and the Useless.
Speaker 2: That band had a guy and it named Adam Horowitz. YEP.
Speaker 4: When John Barry quit the Beastie Boys, it was only
natural for Adam Horowitz to kind of step over and
take over as the guitarist for the Beastie Boys.
Speaker 1: Dave I was telling thee before we started this, you know,
I was like, I don't really think I'm a hip
hop guy very much. But what I found out was
I'm really not a hardcore punk guy.
Speaker 3: Yes, that is not my style, very very loud.
Speaker 4: The Young and the Useless did record their own EP,
also on rat Cage Records. It was called Real Men
Don't Floss and it is just as much of a
sonic assault as Polywogs Do. But anyway, by the time
that was released. Adam Horowitz was with the Beastie Boys. Yeah,
I did find out a couple of interesting things about
The Young and the Useless bandmates, their other lead singer,
Dave Skilken. He died of a drug overdose in the
early nineties.
Speaker 2: He was a really close friend. When they first met him,
they noticed him and they're like, here's this kid. You know,
it's the middle of the school day and he's obviously
skipping class and walking around with a synthesizer in his
hand as like a mohawk carecut, and they're like, this
kid looks cool. And they meet him. He's in sixth grade,
eleven years old. They're like fifteen and he's eleven, and
they're like, this dude's cool. We need to hang out
with him. So yeah, Dave Skilkin was an interesting guy.
I believe he's in the Fight for You rite video
if I remember right.
Speaker 4: The other two guys in The Young and the Useless
Arthur Africano. He would go on to be a cameraman
working in Hollywood. He's worked camera for shows like Picket
Fences and The Practice. So he went on and had
a pretty solid career in television. He also shot a
few of the b C Boys videos, such as Intergalactic
in the nineties, and there was yet another Adam, Adam
tres or Tresi, and he would go on to be
an actor and he performed in thirty Rock and Law
and Order and Sopranos and things like that. So the
young and the Useless they ended up being kind of significant,
and Dave Parsons says they were better than the BAC
Boys and in the world of part were punk.
Speaker 3: They were they had.
Speaker 4: The potential to be huge, but it was a it
was a case of bad time because by the time
their EP came out and there was interest in them,
they were kind of already losing their direction because Adam
Horowitz was hanging out with the Beastie Boys.
Speaker 1: Okay, so about this time they recorded a song called
Cookie Puss.
Speaker 2: So where does that come from?
Speaker 1: It comes from a ice cream commercial.
Speaker 2: Like they make an ice cream that's called the cookie Puss.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So like it's like a it's like an ice
cream cake. So I watched this. Have you seen the
commercials for this? So Carnell ice Cream had a like
an ice cream cake is really weird looking, so like
the nose was like a laid down ice cream cone
and it had a high pitched voice, was like high
on cookie Buss and uh, how did it go?
Speaker 5: Cookie?
Speaker 1: And on on Saint Patrick's Day they would have oh,
Cookie Puss or Cookie o pusus. Adam Horovitz thought it
would be hilarious to call the Carnival ice cream and
asked to speak with Cookie Buss and they recorded this
prank call and then they just put it down on
a beat and it was just kind of this goofy song.
Speaker 2: Yo man, Cookie Puss, then Cookie Puss, I want to
speak to Cookie Puss Man.
Speaker 4: Nobody here, but.
Speaker 1: But it became popular.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they started playing it at clubs and then they
go to they go to see a friend who's working
at a studio and they find out that there's a
talk show going on upstairs. It was a lesson on
how to properly scratch like it had Yes, it had
Africa Bambada and DJ Jazzy Jay I think was the
other guy on there. And they were teaching these little,
you know, white suburbanites how to properly scratch their records.
And then all of a sudden, like there's a question
from the audience and the host he goes back there
and then Adam It stands up and he's like, hey, yeah,
have you heard of this song called Cookie Puss? And
and Africa Bombarda was like, yeah, yeah, I've heard it. Yeah,
song gotta I like it. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I was just wondering there's a song I really like
called Cookie Puss by the Beastie Boys that don't you
ever heard of it? Yes, Cookie Puss. I've gotten the
record through the rock pool.
Speaker 3: It's tough. Yeah you like that?
Speaker 1: Why do you like that one?
Speaker 5: It's just a really funny song.
Speaker 2: I heard on the radio scratching and work on it
like that.
Speaker 1: It has a little bit scratching on it and is funky.
Speaker 2: And so now they're on like national television and the
talk show and they've announced their album and it was
all just them being goofy dumb kids.
Speaker 1: Brilliant marketing right there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, what was interesting is that they were still a
punk band. But Cookie Puss is not a punk.
Speaker 2: Track, right.
Speaker 4: It's got hip hop beats and it's got hip hop effects,
you know, scratching and things like that on it. You
can't say they're really rapping on it, but it's definitely
a hip hop arrangement and it was the first time
they had introduced anything like that to what they were doing.
And it did take off, and it didn't gain attention,
and it gained attention among the hip hop community, and
there are a lot of it's important.
Speaker 2: It's important to note that at this time, like this
is when sucka MC's comes out, right, this is when
run DMC becomes you know, whatever boombox is playing in
New York City, and so at that point they become
rap devotees. Like they were emulating and trying to imitate
everything that run DMC was doing, and they ended up
getting a they were going to be in the Battle
of the Bands. They were they were in a Battle
of the Bands at Studio fifty four. The Studio fifty four. Yeah,
so they've got this, They've got there. They're like, Okay,
we've got the Battle of the Bands. Cookie Pusses are song,
but we just recorded it. We've never done it live.
We've got to have a DJ to do a lot show.
And somebody's like, you know who you should talk to.
You should talk to my buddy Rick, who's an NYU student,
Rick Rubin, Rick freaking Rick freaking Rubbin, who at this
point was just a kid in kid in college. Yeah,
a weird kid in college, but go ahead. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So Rick Rubin at the time that I met him
was the social director for the student union at NYU,
which probably means he was just a professional partier.
Speaker 3: Is going to be my guest.
Speaker 1: Excuse me, I'm out of toilet paper. Can you help
me on with that.
Speaker 2: So it's interesting because Rick Rubin he was going to
NYU with the intention of going to law school. And
I've got more on that later, but he was going
with the intention to go to law school. But he said,
I never scheduled a class before three pm because I
knew I wouldn't be awake before then. Because he was
spending every night going out to the clubs where like
all of the rap music was playing, and he had noticed.
You know, he'd get excited about these out and then
you get the album and you'd be like, this doesn't
sound like the live show, this doesn't sound the way
that the club sounds. I want that sound. And that
was kind of the impetus for him to decide, Hey,
I want to do some DJing and ultimately want to
do some producer.
Speaker 4: Here's the thing about Rick Rubin. He started out in punk.
He was a punk rocker.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: He backed a couple of bands, right, Yeah, when he
was in high school. His first band was called the Pricks.
Speaker 4: The Pricks, well, the Pricks never actually The Pricks never
really made it out of Long Island, except they had
a gig one night at CBGB's Have you heard about this?
So at their performance, a fight breaks out in the
audience and the cops are coming in and shutting the
place down during the fight. So the cops come right
in and shut it down. As it turns out, even
though the fight was real, they had friends of theirs
as plants in the crowd to kind of get things started.
Speaker 3: They were the provocateurs. They made the fight happen. And
the cob.
Speaker 4: Get this, the cop that busted in to shut him
all down, he happened to be right on the scene.
He busting the door and shuts the whole performance down.
That was Rick Rubens's dad in a costume.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's brilliant.
Speaker 2: So it's all just a marketing set up.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's a way to get some notoriety and some publicity.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's a great story.
Speaker 4: When he goes on to NYU, he forms a band
called Hose. Hose was a hardcore punk band. But then
by eighty three, what Rick was personally finding was that
the punk scene seemed to kind of be dying off.
And what he had discovered was the hip hop scene
and the rap scene.
Speaker 3: And his mind was blown.
Speaker 4: And he was going to all these clubs and hearing
all this pure hip hop, you know, in its earliest stages.
He was hearing the innovators. He was He's there at
ground zero for the birth of this whole scene. But
what he realized was that there was a lot of
similarity between rap from this era and punk because they
both shared the same outlaw kind of attitude. They both
shared a like a low fi, do it yourself type
of ethic to it. And I mean, honestly, you didn't
need a lot of technical musical talent. With that musical
talent was not a barrier of entry into either one
of these amls.
Speaker 2: To this day, Rick Rubin will say he's not a musician,
and he's also not particularly good with mix a mixing board.
It's it's just not what he does. His expertise is
figuring out what's going to be good music, Like what
people are going.
Speaker 1: To like, Dave, what you said that really blew my
mind because to me, hardcore punk and rap have nothing
in common. But then when I started watching these videos
and doing research for this podcast, they do have some commonalities,
you know. For them to pivot from that to this
and it not being that far is kind of interesting
to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So there was also what I said before about there
was this diversity of selection of music being played in
these clubs, so kids were getting exposed to all kinds
of stuff. It wasn't strictly what you might think in
terms of genreing category and Africa Bambada has said that
the punk rockers were the very first white audience to
accept what he was doing, except that rap sound. So
there was already before the BC Boys came along, there
was already kind of an organic connection happening in the
clubs between punk rockers and wrap.
Speaker 2: Okay, guys, before we go any further, let's take a
quick break and we are going to do the Shirley Showcase.
We have a special guest this time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, We've got my buddy, Cameron Eckert. He was my
college roommate, one of my best friends in the entire world.
He decided to weigh in on our usual Illusion one
and two versus Metallica's Black album kind of that run
of ninety one albums that we did this summer. And
here's what Cameron had to say.
Speaker 5: Hello, s, you can't be serious podcast. Hey, this is
Cameron from Vancouver, Canada. Such a fan of you guys
and your show from day one. And yes, that maybe
because I knew it was coming, being a very good
friend of Jason Colbyn, one of my college roommates. But
you know what, I've loved it from day one. You
guys are great together. You can tell that you are
friends first and podcast co host second. I'm very honored
that Jason asked me to send in a comment, and
as a music fan and a hard rock music fan
at that, I definitely had to choose Metallica Black versus
guns N' Roses use your Illusion one and two. I
am a bigger fan of hard rock than most of
the genres I steer clear from, However, some of the
softer groups like Poison and Warrant and yes, Jason bon
Jovi huge fan of both Metallica and Guns n' Roses,
though tend to like guns n' Roses a little bit better. However,
in the case of Black versus User Illusion one and two,
I have to agree with d on this one. All
in all, I like the Black album just that bit
better than either Use Your Illusion one or two. I would, however,
agree with you guys that Use Your Illusion two is
the better of those two albums. I'll tell you though.
For me, it's a very close race between all three
of them one, A, B and C.
Speaker 2: Really, but if.
Speaker 5: I'm walking out the door, I'm definitely going to skew
towards Metallica Black. I became a huge Metallica fan probably
off this album, which I know maybe sacrilege to the
harder core Metallica fans is that tend to like their
earlier harder core work. But I just found this album
to be great and it made me actually go back
and become a fan of Metallica's earlier work. So I've
really appreciated that about the Black album. I did find
that this release from thirty year anniversary of it, with
all the different artists doing their takes on it was
very cool to listen to. Obviously, there was some good
stuff in there and some not so good, but it
was just to see what kind of influence that album
had on this generation, you know, and I think Guns
probably had a big influence too, but their work seemed
to spread over Appetite through Use Your Illusion one in
two a little bit more. I liked Appetite a bit
better than these albums, no matter what Axel thinks of them,
and I don't know, I just I think I would
take Appetite over Black, but against Use Your Illusion one
and two, I'm still going to stick with with the
Black album. I do find it amusing that in this case,
and in most of you guys's final judgments, no matter
the topic, I tend to.
Speaker 2: Agree more with d than with Jason.
Speaker 5: It's funny because on the same age as Jason, we
kind of you know, went through the formative college years together.
But I think I've evolved my tastes maybe a little
bit more than Jason over the years. He's stayed with
the pop culture of the eighties and nineties and I've
kept going forward, which may be why it's a little
bit different. So maybe make some sense anyway, guys, I
just wanted to weigh in on that and wanted to
tell you to keep up the great work. I look
forward to seeing what of their music, movies and other
topics you guys cover in the future.
Speaker 2: Take care well, what can I say? I mean, I
don't know about you know, evolution in the musical taste area.
But right is right and Black Album is just a
better album. It's just the way it is.
Speaker 1: It's facks, you know, facts, right right? Cam?
Speaker 2: Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: These heads now humongous. I can't even fit in the room.
Thank you for taking the time to weigh in. We
do love all three of these albums, and I think
all three of us agree that your Allusion Too is
the better Guns N' Roses album. However, I can't really
fault you for loving Metallica and the Black Album. So Cameron,
thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Bro.
Speaker 1: We appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Thanks Cameron.
Speaker 4: By the time that eighty three rolls around, Rick is
just like all In He's forgotten about. He's still a
classic guy. He loves AC, DC, led Zeppelin, Aerosmith. He's
a big fan of those guys. But he is obsessed
with what's happening, the innovation and creativity. He's hearing in
the hip hop clubs and he's learning how to be
a DJ and scratching and programming drum machine and all
that kind of stuff, and he's all about it. Well,
he finds a kindred spirit in Adam Horovitz. So what
happens is you were saying, we pick up the story.
The BC Boys are.
Speaker 3: A punk band.
Speaker 4: They're playing punk sets, but now they are expected to
play cookie Puss and to truly be able to do
that justice on stage, they got to have a DJ.
So they found Rick Rubin. They were introduced to him.
He went by the name DJ Double R. He would
come on at the end of their set to DJ
for them so they can start incorporating a little hip
hop into their shows.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the show would start with punk music and end
with hip hop music basically, right, that's right.
Speaker 1: Rick Rubin got the job, kind of like the way
David Lee Roth got the lead singer in Van Halen.
Speaker 2: Except instead of having a piece, he had a bubble machine.
He had the mix, he had the bubble machine.
Speaker 1: The bubbles.
Speaker 2: The bubble machine is what led them. And there he's like,
he's got this awesome setup and he's got a bubble
machine and they're like, wait, a bubble machine. Yeah, we
got to get the guy with a bubble machine. When
they met him, when they walk into his dorm room, like,
this can't be the hip hop DJ guy because he's
got the beard and his hair's all scraggly, and he's
got like these leather long gloves, like black leather gloves,
and like this dude's weird. But he ends up being
like a big brother to him, and his music knowledge
and his determination to succeed is infectious.
Speaker 1: David Lee roth Rick Rubin both get the job because
they happen to have a piece of equipment that's needed
to get the job done.
Speaker 2: So just just to touch on it, since I mentioned
the Battle of the band Studio fifty four, they lost.
Speaker 3: Well, what happened was Rick continued to hang out with them.
Speaker 4: He befriended them, probably closer to Adam Horvis than the others.
But they're all spending a lot of time at his
dorm room, so they his dorm MOVI has been described
as like a bomb site. It's as slovenly as you
can imagine, and just pro wrestling posters on the wall,
beat the boxes stacked up in the corner, and just
crates and crates of music from all different types of categories.
To the course of nineteen eighty three, he's talking to
the BC boys about how they need to corporate, they
need to do more hip hop.
Speaker 1: It makes sense for them to kind of go down
that hip hop route because cookie busses having success. Yeah,
I mean, you'd want to chase that type of success.
Speaker 2: It's not like the hardcore punk was their dream. They
were doing this for fun. I mean they were trying
to have a good time and make each other laugh
and be silly. And so for him to go, hey,
you guys should focus more on hip hop and left
it's on punk rock, I don't see any It's not
surprising to me. They're like, Okay, whatever that works. Sure
that worked. Mean, let's keep trying to do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: So the guys were I don't know where Kate was.
She was still in the band. They were still doing
punk shows. But the guys were hanging out in Rick's
dorm room a lot every day, just going through his
crazy just hanging out having fun.
Speaker 1: Me.
Speaker 4: But they're still gigging as the Beastie Boys, and Rick
is further exploring the rap scene, and he eventually befriends
a club DJ named Jazzy Juh. Jazzy j was on
the air in New York and he was a member
of Africa Bambada's Zulu Nation, which is just a big
organization of rappers and hip hoppers are all about world
peace really and really trying to use music in a
positive way to detert to steer people away from violence
and things like that, and using music to kind of
build culture and cultural bridges. And he got to know
Jazzy j and Jazzy Jay and Rick Rubin got together
and they produced a trap and they decided they wanted
to try to release this as a song. So they
went about trying to find someone to rap over this track,
and they couldn't find a rapper. It took them like
two years from the time they decided to get together
to put the song out.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting right next to a rapper. Why did it
take them so long?
Speaker 2: There's more to come, man, more to come.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying they only knew about Doctor Fresh back then.
Speaker 2: I was like seven years old.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Doctor very Fresh.
Speaker 4: But anyway, the first choice they had for a rapper
they wanted Cool Mode Now was somebody that I recognize
as a solo artist from them from the second half
of the eighties, but at this time, he was a
member of a very significant group called the Treacherous Three,
and they couldn't get Cool Deep, and they couldn't get
uh Special K, which was another member of the Treacher's Three.
Their record label wouldn't let them do it, so they
turned to Special K's older brother.
Speaker 2: Te La Rock.
Speaker 4: Tela Rock became their artist, and he came in and
recorded the rap over the track that Rick Rubin and
Jesse j had produced.
Speaker 3: And at the end of the song, they.
Speaker 4: Need some background vocals just doing nonsense stuff in the background.
Those background vocals belong to Adam Horowitz, Adam y'all and
Michael Donald.
Speaker 2: Nice freaking awesome n So the song that they came
up with is called It's Yours and it's really good.
I mean Rick had hit upon that formula that he
was looking for trying to get the club sound onto
a record. And one of the people who heard this
track It's Yours, was a manager named Russell Simmons, and
he was managing for his brother's group, among others. His
brother's name is Joe Simmons, but we know him by
a different name.
Speaker 3: I'm the King rondj run Run.
Speaker 1: He was also going to get.
Speaker 2: Into the picture here. I've got a good story on
that one, Okay.
Speaker 4: But at this time, Russell Simmons is one of the
biggest names in the business as a as an artist manager.
He not only managed run DMC, which was the biggest act,
he also manages a lot of other acts, including Houdini
and Doctor Jackeline, Mister Hyde, Curtis Blow, and a few others.
Speaker 2: At the time, Yeah, when he finds out that it's
some white NYU kid who's produced it's yours, and that
white NYU kid is like, hey, I want to meet
you and I want to talk to you. They get
together for lunch and Adam and Mike and Adam are
all there, like at a different table, just kind of
watching eagerly about what's going on. And basically he he
talks Russell Simmons into starting a record label, and Russell
Simmons is like, man, I'm busier than I can be
with managing these groups. I don't want to have to
start something new. And Rick Rubin says, you don't have
to do anything but be my partner. He goes without you,
I'm just an NYU college student. With you, I've got
a name. I will do all the work you just
be my partner name, and so Russell Simmons agrees to it,
and that's how we come to the formation of deaf
Jam Records. Wow.
Speaker 4: Yes, So when It's Yours was released, it was released
with the name deaf Jam on it, but deaf Jam
didn't actually exist as a company at that point. It
was just a name and a logo that Rick Ruben
had come up with. It had been it was actually
released through a small local independent label, but it was
a name that he already had and it already used unofficially.
And then in the summer of nineteen eighty four, you
got it exactly right. So he and Russell Simmons sat down,
and Russell went to his dorm room, stepped through the
mess and listened to the beats he had programmed, and
he's he was blown away and said these were all
hits in the making. And so they formed the record
label and they officially became deaf Jam Records in the
summer of nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2: So, as you mentioned, they were spending a whole lot
of time with Rick, and as that happened, they were
spending a whole lot less time with Kate Schellenbach, who
was drummer, and kind of that influence is what led
to her being asked to leave the band. And I
think they still even today feel bad about this. Now
it ends up being kind of okay because she ends
up being a drummer for a group called Luscius Jackson
who ends up doing shows with them. But at the
time they were just like, hey, we're a you know,
we're a guy's band and we are a hip hop
now band, and so we don't really want to have
a girl drummer, and so they they kick Kate out
now before that happens. Before that happens, they get to
go to Russell Simmons office and they're thinking, because he's
the because he's the manager of these group, huge groups,
they think it's going to be this big, showy office
and it's like two rooms, you know, it's like two
small rooms even together. But when they go in, there
is Curtis blow In talking to Russell Simons, and he's
not just talking to Russell Simmons, he is trying to
learn how to break dance. So there's another group called
Full Force that's there with them, and they're like all
around him as he's trying to do like headspins and stuff,
and the Beastie Boys are like, you know, they've they've
met some of their idols. Now, Curtis Blow is sitting
here and I told I told, I told Jason. On
the way over here. I was like, man, Curtis Blow
is one of those albums that I played all the time.
He's like, I don't, I'm not familiar with that. I'm like, dude,
basketball is my favorite sport. I like they wave, they
dribble up and down the court, just like I'm the
King of the Microphone. With Doctor j and Moses Malone.
I like slam dunks they take me to. My favorite
play is the alley up. I like to figure go.
I like to give in and go. It's basketball with
mister Curtis Blue. I used to play it all the
time when my brother would come out in his basketball
games in high school. I was I was deep into it.
I remember those lyrics from hearing them when I was
seven eight years old. Doctor Jay and Moses Malone. Wow,
yeah yeah, And they were at the end of the
song there's like talk going on and they're like talking
about you know, the new Young upstarts. The New Young
Upstarts is Michael Jordan's new.
Speaker 1: Young Upstars Michael Jordan.
Speaker 2: That is awesome.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I got to tell you about a guy named
Todd who was living in Queens during nineteen eighty four.
He was down in his mother's basement with a drum
machine and a turntable, cutting demos and sending them out
to anybody he could find, Okay, and he sent to everybody,
including when he got a hold of a copy of
Tila Rocks It's Yours. Rick Rubin had put the address
the business address, which was just his dorm room.
Speaker 3: Record, right, and.
Speaker 4: So Todd sent a demo, took that address and sent
a demo to that record company.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: It was just Rick's dorm room, It's all it was.
And that demo tape got thrown in a box which
was probably buried under a bunch of other boxes, and
it just all stacked up.
Speaker 3: All this stuff was coming in.
Speaker 4: Demo tapes were coming in after Tela Rock's record was out,
and Rick Rubin wasn't bothering with any of it.
Speaker 3: But the BAC boys were hanging out.
Speaker 4: In his dorm room just killing time every day, the
anything else to do. And Adam Horoviz is just kind
of thumbing through these demos and he listened to a
little bit and if you found something he liked, he'd
tell Rick about it. Well, he put this one on
called I Need a Beat from a guy named Ladies
Love Cool James, and it was James Todd Smith who
had fit this in and he's like, Rick, you might
want to listen to this, and they were blown away
by it. They bring in Todd Smith. He goes by
the name ellll cool j and they're like, you've got
to meet Russ. We want to produce your record. They
had just formed deaf Jam Records. They hadn't put out
a record yet. They were looking for the artists. They
were looking for the song to launch their label. He says,
you gotta meet Russ, you gotta meet Russ. They go in,
they meet Russ. The ellow cool Jay's meeting rus Simmons
for the first time and Rick Rubin plays the tape
and Russell Simmons is like, I hate it.
Speaker 1: Like that wow.
Speaker 4: So young Todd he's all he's all disappointed and he's
walking out kind of sad, and Rick Ruben comes up
to him and says, don't listen to a word. He says,
we're gonna recut this and he's gonna love it. So
they get back in the studio with Adam Horovitz programming
the drum beats. They recut I Need a Beat beat
with Jesse Jay on the remix. They play it for Russ.
They play that one for Russell Simmons. He's blown away.
He loves it, and that launches loo Pool Jay's career,
and it launches Deaf Jam as a label, and I
Need to Beat becomes their very first single. It came
out in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2: Fantastic Wow, that's a good story man. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And then from pollywog Stew they had a British Airways
commercial had lifted one of their songs, BC Revolution and
placed it in their commercial that went global and went international.
They did it without permission, and the BC Boys decided
that didn't like somebody sampling their music without perm and
so early on this is the this is the John
Barry lineup, the punk lineup with polywog Stew. They sue
and they collect forty thousand dollars. It was the first
money the Bat Boys ever made was off of this situation,
and it was enough to get them out of their
parents' house and they all got a place together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, forty dollars adjusted for inflation today is about one
hundred grand.
Speaker 2: It's not a bad it's not a bad take.
Speaker 4: Well, they fast forward to three years to nineteen eighty four,
they put out rock Hard, which really sounds like a
Rick Ruben record, and it sounds like the Beastie Boys.
Speaker 3: Count of this.
Speaker 4: This is the sound we have, we will come to know.
It's the three male Beac Boys rapping over a hip
hop drum beat but with heavy rock and roll samples,
and it's all built around back in Black by ac DC,
and I think significantly they refer to themselves as King AD, Rock,
Might D and MCA in the song, which is probably
the first time they do that, and they're truly kind
of embracing hip hop at this point. Small problem they
sampled somebody else's music without their permission. Ac DC is like,
who are these guys? No, stop it right now. So
even though it was technically Deaf Jam's second release, they
immediately had to recall it and it was no longer available,
and it was a collector's item in a bootleg for
a long time.
Speaker 3: It's still not available on Spotify.
Speaker 4: I've noticed, but I do know that at least in Europe,
it was cleared for release legally in two thousand and seven,
and ac DC gave them permission, and you can find
the song on YouTube. And I just heard it recently
for the first time, and it's actually really good.
Speaker 2: They found their voice. Don't sound like some other band,
you know, they weren't. They're not imitating somebody else. They
have their own unique sound.
Speaker 1: And that's hey little thing, here's a little thing I
just put together on that. So they steal Back in
Black from ACDC, they wrap over at whatever, they sample
it without permission. It turns out okay, because in nineteen
eighty six, guess who's in the.
Speaker 2: Fight for Your Right video? But Langa, Well Langa I
forgot about that. That's right.
Speaker 1: He was in there, the producer of acdc's Back and Black.
Speaker 2: I think Flee was in there too, if I remember right.
Speaker 1: Fleell cool J and the Sword and the.
Speaker 2: Girl who was like later on MTV News was in
there as the young blonde.
Speaker 1: You're you're blowing my stuff for Fight for Your Right.
Speaker 2: Sorry, well, we will come back to that when we
do our track to track.
Speaker 1: Okay, when when's Madonna. Get in here right from Madonna?
Speaker 2: I got a good story on Madonna. Can I tell
my Madonna's story?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 3: Yeah, just real quick.
Speaker 4: When eighty four ended, that's when Kate Sellenbach was out
and they truly just became straight up hip hop group
with Rick Rubin still as their DJ. And we get
into eighty five and that's Madonna.
Speaker 1: So what you got so Madonna is what what you would?
Speaker 2: Go ahead?
Speaker 1: No, please please finish that?
Speaker 2: So what Madonna wanted?
Speaker 5: What?
Speaker 2: What? What Madonna wanted was an opening act for her
first tour, her first tour, and so her manager, Freddy
Demand calls up Russell Simmons and says, hey, we want
to get run DMC as the opening act for Madonna
on her first turn. Now, this is Madonna at her
she's blown up at this point, right, And so russell
Simmons is like, no problem. Run DMC plays for twenty
thousand dollars per show, and Freddie Demand's like, uh no,
have a nice day. Click and they're done, and then
he's a few minutes later, russell Simmons gets a call again.
It's Freddy Deman again. He's like, okay, hey, wait, what
about the Fat Boys? Can you get the Fat Boys
for us? And Russell Simmons is like, ah, man, the
Fat boy are busy. Russell Simmons didn't actually manage the
Fat Boys ever at all. Wow, And he goes, but
I tell you what, I can get you the Beastie
Boys for five hundred dollars per show. And so Freddie
DeMann was like, sounds great, let's do that. And so
that is how the Beastie Boys became the opening act
for Madonna on her very first tour.
Speaker 1: That is also how Adam Horovitz got to make out
with Madonna backstage in the bathroom.
Speaker 2: It's nuts.
Speaker 1: I was talking to you guys. I'm like, you know,
that's not exactly an exclusive club probably, but that's a
club that I still wanted to join in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 2: Oh sure, yeah, and she's I mean she's a little
bit older than him. I guess, well, and oh that
would have been.
Speaker 1: Some fun times bringing the heat back then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was YoY. Not that he wasn't an attractive guy,
but row I am.
Speaker 4: This was her first tour, so it was promoting both
her debut Madonna album as well as her Like a
Virgin album, So she was at the top of the game.
So one of the biggest names in pop music and
the beast Boys are coming out to open and nobody's
heard of these people. And they embraced and this was
quite intentional. Rick Rubin gave them this instruction. He was
a pro wrestling fan. He said, nobody there knows you.
They're gonna hate your stuff. Just embrace it, own that
and be the heel like in pro wrestling terms. You
just go out there and be the be like a
bad guy wrestler and just make them hate you.
Speaker 2: They were, and so they decided to be memorable by
being rude wrestling style, and so they would literally go
out when the show was over. They were just like,
you all can just burn this place down now because
there's never going to be a better show than us,
and fu you mother efforts. Which if you're thinking about,
you know, attendees at a Beastie Boys concert, okay, but
think about who was listening to Madonna back in nineteen
eighty four eighty five. These are little like priesteen girls. Yeah,
these are these are like the girls who are our
wives now back when they were you know, ten and eleven.
So they're cussing out a little Girl.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they they purposely set out to get people to
hate them, and they did, and they said that every night,
ninety five percent of the crowd absolutely hated them, but
with the other five percent, they built a fan base
and Madonna thought it was great. They absolutely did not
take themselves seriously. Like the record would be playing, they're
supposed to be lip syncing. They would completely ignore that
and just like basically slam dance on stage and just
laugh at it all. And they just didn't take it seriously.
And they're they're kind of on stage persona of being
these rude, crude frat boys that just party hard and
didn't care about anything.
Speaker 3: That really came together on this like a virgin tour.
Speaker 1: And that rude, crude frat boy attitude is basically full
force on license.
Speaker 2: De hll.
Speaker 1: That's what you get for twelve songs or whatever. And
people did embrace that. They liked it, Yeah, literally, they
liked it.
Speaker 4: But it absolutely took out of the New York club
scene and it was putting it in front of the nation.
Speaker 3: This is people's first exposure.
Speaker 4: Maybe it was not the best put forward for rap,
but it was significant in terms of getting some national exposure.
Speaker 3: But then just a couple months later.
Speaker 4: In October of nineteen eighty five, there was a movie
that came out. Now, this movie was shot in April
of eighty five. It was produced and starred Rick Rubin.
It was produced and featured a cameo from Russell Simmons.
Speaker 3: It was called Crush Group.
Speaker 4: Now, this is coming after nineteen eighty four, where there
had been several breakdance movies, and so there were some
low budget film studios that were looking to continue to
capitalize on the hip hop market for these low rent movies,
and they decided instead of breakdance, they needed to do rap.
There was no bigger name in wrap in nineteen eighty
four and they were looking to do this than Russell Simmons,
and they basically approached him about taking a fictionalized version
of his story, his biography, and putting it in a movie.
And so that's what you get. Crush Groove is kind
of a synonym for def Jam and it was the
name of the record label inside this movie.
Speaker 3: And this movie is great. I love it.
Speaker 4: It's cheesy, it's terrible acting, and it's low budget.
Speaker 2: But Underwood, you got Blair Underwood as the Russell Simmons
character was like Russell Walker or something. Isn't that right?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Much. Blair Underwood is a much handsomer man than Russell Simmons.
Is I would have for Russell? I would have Blair
Underwood play me even though we look on the line.
But Russell Simmons look at this. I mean, he wanted
to make a movie, but what his objective was was
make it a show piece for all of the bands
that he managed. And so you've got just a slew
of these mid eighties rap hip hop bands that are
appearing throughout the movie.
Speaker 4: Run DMC, Curtis Blow and Sheila E or kind of
kind of drive the story. The Fat Boys were added
without Russell's knowledge, was shot separately and cut into the
movie separately, and if you'll notice, their scenes never advanced
the plot. So he was really upset to find out
the Fat Boys were in his movie. But they were
a big name and it drove the box office. The
Ellopool j Mex a cameo appearance. The Beastie Boys make
a cameo appearance and they performed a new song that
they recorded in nineteen eighty five called She's on It.
Speaker 3: COLU, What was interesting.
Speaker 4: At this point, def Jam only had a couple of
singles out that they had two successful singles, they had
I Need to Beat and Rock Hard, which had to
be pulled for legal reasons. They had put out several
other smaller records that hadn't done anything. They had yet
to put out an album. Deaf Jam had not even
put out an album as a company yet, and there
was already a movie in theaters that was giving their story.
Speaker 2: That's crazy, that's impressive.
Speaker 3: So what happens here right at this time? This is critical?
Right here, after the success of I Need to Beat
and Rock Hard, it's enough.
Speaker 4: Success to garner interests from major record labels and they
end up signing a deal with Columbia for a distribution
to So Deaf Jam has Columbia Records distributing for them.
Speaker 3: So this is give them a huge infusion of cash.
Speaker 2: This is the story that I was that I was
alluding to earlier. So Rick Rubin was supposed to be
going to law school after NYU, right, That's what his
parents are expecting. And so the way that he broke
the news to his parents that he wasn't going to
go to law school was that he sent them a
picture of the check that he got from Capitol Records.
It was for six hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm giving you six hundred thousand reasons why I'm
not going to law school.
Speaker 4: Well, that money was enough to move deaf Jam out
of his dorm room and move him too a three
story building which Russell Simmons had Rush Management, which was
his artist management business, on the first floor. Deaf Jam
Records was on the second floor, and Rick Rubin moved
into the third floor. So that Columbia money allowed them
to do that. But what it did was it set
the stage for nineteen eighty six. In nineteen eighty six
is the year where it really all started coming together.
Speaker 2: Hit it.
Speaker 1: Four and three and.
Speaker 2: Two and one. Okay, So obviously you know they lost
Kate Schnellenbach. They've got DJ double r Rick Rubin as
their DJ. But at some point that changes because I
know that doctor Dre No, not that doctor Dre the
other one from MTV raps, that Doctor Dray He was
their DJ for a while, and he was their DJ
for the first part of the Raisin Hell to him, right,
But then how did it move from Rick Rubin to
Doctor Dre well, I.
Speaker 4: Would say fate intervened. It was during the Madonna tour
in the summer of eighty five, where Ruben was still
on the road with them, and it was a part
of the act. History was about to go a different way.
This was going to be a four piece act with
the DJ Double R as a part of the Beastie Boys.
But after a couple of shows, he came down with
an ear infection and the doctor told him that he
couldn't fly while he's recovering from this ear issue, and
so he went back to New York. The rest of
the band didn't really know what had happened to him,
They didn't know why he had he had bounced out,
but they did get.
Speaker 3: Doctor Dre to step in and fill in as the DJ.
Speaker 4: So Doctor Dre serves as the DJ for the rest
of their takes over as their DJ for their gigs
that point forward in the middle of the madonnatur But
the reason this is fate intervening is that this now
freed Rick Rubin up to stay at the studio and
to work on production and to work on beats and
sounds and to develop them help them develop.
Speaker 3: The musical material that would be used on license to deal.
Speaker 4: And I can tell you this, the run DMC Raising
Hell Tour had already started without.
Speaker 3: The Beastie Boys on it.
Speaker 4: And the reason I know is that I attended a
show in May of nineteen eighty six. They came to
my hometown of Columbus, Georgia, and I saw Houdini and
Elo Cool Jay open for Run DMC, and they were
playing material from their brand new Raising Hell album that
I had not heard yet, and it was blowing me away.
And the BC Boys were not a part of that show.
What was happening was they were still in the studio
working on the album. They were still putting their material
together and having conducting their sessions, and it would be
a little bit later in the year, not too much later.
Speaker 3: I didn't miss them by much apparently, but they would.
Speaker 4: Join the Raising Hell Tour during nineteen eighty six as
an opening act, but their set consisted of only three songs.
They sang Slow and Low, She's on It, and hold
It Now Hit It, and that's all they had. Every
night they went out and did those three songs and
they were done. A couple of stories about the Raising
Hell Tour. You know these guys are brash, they're rude.
They offend on purpose. They think it's funny when they
can get a reaction out of people. And they're real
tight with Russell Simmons and run DMC and the whole
rap crowd. And they're accepted by the hip hop community right.
They're a part of it, And that's important to know
when you think about their acceptance and in the reaction
to their album.
Speaker 3: It's easy when it comes out, it's easy to think
of them.
Speaker 4: As a joke or a parody. But the truth is
they had credibility. They had cred they were legit, they
were from the scene. They knew all this right people,
they had the credibility. But this is nineteen eighty six
and they were among friends. They wanted to offend people.
They were using the N word on stage as a
part of their routine, which sounds crazy in twenty twenty one,
but back then, with the environment they were in, it
was a part of what they did. Here's the problem.
The Raising Hell tour stopped at the Apollo Theater in
the Harlem. They were doing a show and Russell Simmons
is freaking out. He goes up to Doctor Dre, which
is for the show starts and says, whatever you do,
do not let them say that word. And Doctor Dres like,
what can I do? I'm just back here spinning records.
I can't help what comes out of their mouths. Sure enough,
they're in the middle of their show.
Speaker 3: They're gone.
Speaker 4: Ad Rocks up front with his hands in the air,
getting the crowd going. The crowd's with them. He blurts
it out. He throws it out there. Immediately you could
hear a pin drop. Everybody's just staring at him. Oh
my goodness. Ad Rock's got his hands in the air.
So he realized he's lost the crowd, and he's like,
what am I gonna do? Mike d turns around at
Doctor Dre. He's got fear in his eyes. He's looking
at him on stage, like what do we do?
Speaker 1: What do we do?
Speaker 3: And Doctor Dre's like, I don't know. Adam y off
and Mike d take off.
Speaker 4: They run off the stage, and Horovitz looks around, realizes
he's by himself.
Speaker 3: Boom, he runs off the stage.
Speaker 4: The crowd is left staring at Doctor Dre like, who
are you hanging out with these clowns?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And he.
Speaker 4: He goes backstage himself. The BC boys are gone. They're
nowhere around the tour buses there, they're not there. They
ran out the back door and got in a cabin.
They were gone before Drey was even.
Speaker 3: Off the stage.
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
Speaker 4: I can also tell you that at another stop on
the tour, they were in Miami and Doctor Dre overslept
and they left without him.
Speaker 1: He's still mad about that. I saw an interview. He's
still mad about that.
Speaker 2: He's a sleeping like it was like the couch and
the lobby of the hotel or something right, and he's like,
just wake me.
Speaker 1: Up, leave me.
Speaker 2: Don't leave me, literally, don't leave me. And they left
him anyway. And that is how DJ Hurricane became because
he had been with run DMC before and Doctor Dre
was like, screw you guys, I'm gonna go do yo
MTV wraps. I'm joking. Of course that wasn't until much later,
but but yeah, that's how DJ Hurricane comes on. Now
what else also happens in Miami? We talked about this
when we did our Aerosmith episode. This is where Joe
Perry and Steven Tyler come in and they do the
performance of Walk This Way with Run DMC. Right, they're
there to do just this one song, and so I
think I think it was Run, I think it was No,
Maybe it was No, it was jim Master Jay. Jem
Master Jay goes, hey, Yuck, it'll be funny if you
go out there and play bass with them, and so Yack,
who's mostly drunk at this time, goes out while Joe
Perry and Steven Tyler are on stage performing Walk This
Way with his bass, and they're like, who is this
drunk kid out here? You know, what is this? And
he keeps trying to do the back to back with
Joe Perry, and Joe Perry keeps like walking away from him,
and so he ends up chasing him around the stage,
walking backwards, trying to be cool with Aerosmith.
Speaker 4: The Raising Hill album did come out in May of
eighty six. Walk This Way came out as a single
in July of eighty six. So here we are winding
down the year and this song has taken over. Right,
we'll talk about it in the next episode, but Walk
This Way was absolutely massive in breaking Wrap through to
a crossover audience and kind of setting the table for
Frankly a white audience to embrace this new music form,
and so by the end of eighty six, the Beast
Boys actually put out another single. Paul Revere is a
single that comes out ahead of the release of the album.
But on November fifteenth, License to Ill is released. So
we're celebrating the thirty fifth anniversary of that album this week,
as we speak.
Speaker 1: Today is Wednesday, November the seventeenth. Today that we're recording.
Two days ago was the thirty fifth anniversary.
Speaker 2: It's incredible.
Speaker 1: Well, are we ready to dive intack by track?
Speaker 3: Ready?
Speaker 2: All right, we're going to jump in track by track. Now,
keep in mind these guys are real musicians. But they
and I don't mean that hip hop isn't real music.
But like they when they did their punk stuff, they
played the drums, they played the guitar, they played the bass,
They were able to play those instruments. It's just not
what they were doing. It wasn't their act. But our
friend Adam Yack was a guy who was like he
was special. Like he you talked about how his profile
said you should do anything except music, don't do music.
I think that must have been inspiration for him because
he studied it. And so back before YouTube back before Google,
back before Wikipedia. He knew that Jimmy Hendrix and sly
Stone were doing stuff with this idea of looping a track, right,
and so what you know, people not nowaday today know
what looping is, but back then nobody really knew. So
one day Mike d and Adam Horwitz come in and
at this point, at this point, Yack is a superintendent
of an apartment complex, like he's he's got a free
place to say because he's going to be the superintendent,
which means there were people who had like their toilet
go bad, and Adam Yak was the one that came
and fixed the toilet. And so they come in and
he's got this reel to reel and he's got the
tape going around. One MIC's going around, another mic stand
going through a rocking chair and back in and the
beat that's playing is from led Zeppelins when the levee
breaks and it sounds like this.
Speaker 1: All right, So when we finally ready to go track
by track through license till yes, yes, next week, next week,
not today? Sorry, all right, Dave, we'll catch you next time.
We'll do track by track through license.
Speaker 2: Deill, Hey, if you've been with us, this long. Be
sure to hit that subscribe button, that follow button so
that you catch our next episode next week, where we
will go track by track through license to Ill Eat
Me Well.
Speaker 3: Looking at Magucci, It's about that time, all.
Speaker 1: Right, Thanks a lot, Dave.
Speaker 2: We'll see you next time.
Speaker 3: All right. Thanks.
Speaker 2: Lock does not have more still.
Speaker 1: Men of robing and stewards
Speaker 4: H