Speaker 1: This is a podcast from Minute Media.
Speaker 2: Let's go doctor friend.
Speaker 1: Okay, I've I have prepared a special introduction just for
this episode.
Speaker 2: Here goes well.
Speaker 3: He is a little story I like to tell about
three both brothers. You know so well. It started today
in history with Jay Coach. Start him off in the labs.
Speaker 1: 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 4: Very good? How are you doing?
Speaker 1: 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. You can get to
the first two on his website.
Speaker 4: Tell us what that is, Dave galaheads doom dot com.
Speaker 5: My series is an epic medieval fantasy story along the
lines of Lord of the Rings. A strong spiritual or
a Christian theme to it.
Speaker 1: 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 4: Exactly.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 6: I wouldn't not want any of my personal notes published.
When I was in nineteen eighty six, right, yep.
Speaker 1: So we're covering today hip hop, which I got to
say I'm familiar with. I was a big breakdancer circa SAD,
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 Boogoloo
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 had run DMC.
I had this stuff growing up.
Speaker 2: Tell us your name my break.
Speaker 1: Dancing name, dance. My breakdancing name was Doctor Fresh. Yeah,
you can 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 2: All right, Dave, you gotta tell us how you got deaf? Dave,
what does that?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 5: 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 4: I I am the thriller generation. I was in sixth grade.
Speaker 5: I was watching when the Motown twenty five special air
the first time saw the Moonwalks on the head by
the Moonwalk with the rest of America. My first concert
ever I won a radio contest for free tickets to
the Victory World Tour.
Speaker 4: To see that.
Speaker 2: Awesome.
Speaker 4: So I was a pop music kid.
Speaker 5: And then in the summer of nineteen eighty five, a
friend of mine, one of my best friends in high school,
lipped 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 4: Of the decade.
Speaker 5: I absolutely just became kind of nuts over run DMC
and the BC Boys and Ello, 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 publicanem 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 Dave. That's
my Twitter handle, deaf Dave. It comes straight from deaf jam.
Speaker 4: I mean it.
Speaker 5: All the autographs in my high school yearbook half of
them say deaf Day.
Speaker 4: They don't evena have my real name on it.
Speaker 5: So according to legend, okay, according to legend, the way
I got the.
Speaker 4: Name deaf Dave was that the the Holly Hills.
Speaker 5: Crew was sitting around a circle freestyling before home room,
and I would jump up in and bust some rhymes,
and I was so good that DJ Zeus declared me
an official b boy and gave me the name Deaf Dave.
Speaker 4: According to a legend who.
Speaker 1: So Zeus handed him his name from Mount Olympus.
Speaker 5: 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 the 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 4: But the friends that I was with liked it. They
repeated it.
Speaker 5: 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 4: It's kind of my online name too.
Speaker 6: So you weren't handed a flaming pair of Adidas from
Mount Olympus.
Speaker 4: Or anything, No afraid not.
Speaker 1: I'm still just kind of reveling in the fact that
somewhere out there, somebody's got a yearbook that says death
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 6: One Wait, Wait, wait, wait, change the face of music.
Speaker 1: Changed the face of music. Yes, sir, I think you're right.
Speaker 2: I think you're right.
Speaker 1: Keep going. So we are going to be talking about
Run DMC raising hell, and we're going to be talking
about Beastie Boys.
Speaker 2: Still there you go.
Speaker 1: So are you guys ready to jump in?
Speaker 6: 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.
Speaker 5: I'm in my fresh flight threads with my big Folkswagon
medallion around my neck. Yes, meeting Colonel Sanders, drinking heinekebrew.
Speaker 4: I'm ready. I'm ready to dig into me like Ada.
Speaker 1: 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 yack, Dave, give us what you got, man.
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, I'm gonna throw you for a loop.
Speaker 5: 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 4: Okay, so this is.
Speaker 5: The very first the progressive education model schools in America,
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.
Speaker 4: Kids discovering their own way.
Speaker 5: 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 4: His name was Michael Diamond.
Speaker 5: And so Jeremy Chautan and Michael Diamond just kind of
by default kind of became friends because they were around
each other because.
Speaker 4: Their brothers were buddies.
Speaker 1: Yep. Yeah.
Speaker 5: 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 drums.
Speaker 4: They were junior high. They were like seventh and eighth grade.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: He said, I need to.
Speaker 5: 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
Chataian was the one. Chatan was the one who got
them together.
Speaker 2: I heard that they were introduced at a Joe Jackson concert.
Speaker 1: Yes, because that's the influence for the Beasti Boys is
Joe Jackson.
Speaker 2: Joe Jackson, right, stepping out right.
Speaker 6: 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. I don't like this guy
at all, Like this guy is not for me. But
then they found out that they both liked punk music.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they both liked the clash.
Speaker 2: And so they kind of bonded over that.
Speaker 5: 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 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 4: Called The Mouth of the Rat.
Speaker 5: During this time, he received a fan letter from a
musician in New York in the punk scene name was
Kate Shellenbach. 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 Shellenbach
and John Barry at a club, and Kate Shellenback was
someone who was bouncing around different bands playing drums.
Speaker 4: Mike and John.
Speaker 5: Are in a band called Band b E N and
Kate Shellenback is in a band called bag Ladies.
Speaker 4: And it was at they were.
Speaker 5: 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 1: 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 5: 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.
Speaker 4: John is a guitarist.
Speaker 5: 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 1: There we go, yep.
Speaker 5: 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 6: And the world famous song that the Young Aborigines came
up with, right, This song was recorded on.
Speaker 2: June nineteenth, nineteen eighty one. The song is called Fosshole.
Speaker 6: You know that was on a regular rotation on my
pop forty.
Speaker 5: 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.
Speaker 1: Of his lungs.
Speaker 6: Sounds about right, yeah, yeah, some deep lyrics. Yeah, I mean,
but we're talking.
Speaker 2: They're teenagers at this point.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, they're early high school.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, 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 1: Boys Entering Anarchistic States towards Inner Excellence Boys.
Speaker 5: Well, and that's according to their legend. I think that
came a few years later.
Speaker 2: I think you're right, Yeah, that was afterwards.
Speaker 1: That's a reverse antegram with thing.
Speaker 4: That was John Barry's idea.
Speaker 5: He came up with the name Beastie Boys, and their
very first gig was on August fifth of eighty one
at Adam Yawk's seventeenth birthday party at John Barry's Lost
They just had a 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 6: So that was Adam Yak'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, exactly right. Yeah, we've got some
common interests and we've got a lot of lack of
parental control.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 5: One quick thing about Adam Yack 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 the thing that his aptitude tests
concluded was that he should never go into anything related
to music.
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
Speaker 1: That's perfect.
Speaker 5: 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 4: Wow after yes, absolutely, they were they were done.
Speaker 5: 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 to hurry up. 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 pollywog Stu. Now, the way 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. But they got in. They recorded with
John Berry in the lineup. They did a hardcore punk
EP called polywog Stu. But then they lost the equipment,
they lost the studio. There was a guy there working
as an engineering Scott Jarvis, who snuck away with a
tape machine and he was able to mix what they
had cut at home in his bedroom.
Speaker 4: And is only because.
Speaker 5: Of that guy that they were able to get this
EP finished and released and get it out there.
Speaker 1: So what were the songs that were on pollywog Stiff?
Speaker 4: BC Revolution was one that was on there, uh huh.
Speaker 5: 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 1: Right, So egg Grade on Mojo was about a bouncer
at one of the clubs.
Speaker 4: I can't understand a thing they say.
Speaker 1: So there was there was a bouncer at one of
the clubs named Mojo, and he would never let them
come into the club because they were kids and 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 5: 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 Beas 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 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: 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 6: But yeah, alcohol plus punk rocker Eagles bad attitude tough
to deal with.
Speaker 1: So they need a guitarist.
Speaker 5: Now, what do you know about another hardcore punk band
called The Young and the Useless.
Speaker 1: That band had a guy in it named Adam Horowitz. Yep.
Speaker 5: 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 6: 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 2: Yes, that is not my style.
Speaker 4: Very loud.
Speaker 5: 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.
I did find out a couple of interesting things about
The Young and the Useless bandmates, their other lead singer,
Dave Skilken.
Speaker 4: He died of a drug overdose in the early nine
He was.
Speaker 1: 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 5: 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 beast Boys videos, such as Intergalactic in
the nineties, and there was yet another Adam, Adam trez
or Trezi, 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 Beastie Boys,
and in the world of hardcore punk, they were they
had the potential to be huge, but it was a
it was a case a 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 6: Okay, so about this time they recorded a song called
Cookie Puss.
Speaker 1: So where does that come from?
Speaker 2: It comes from a ice cream commercial.
Speaker 1: Like they make an ice cream that's called the cookie Puss.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So like it's like a it's like an ice
cream cake. So I watched this.
Speaker 6: 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.
Speaker 2: It was like high, I'm cookie Buss and uhait, how
did it go? Cookie Puss?
Speaker 6: And on on Saint Patrick's Day they would have oh,
Cookie Puss or Cookie Opus COOKI.
Speaker 2: Opus out.
Speaker 4: Body get out.
Speaker 6: Adam Horovitz thought it would be hilarious to call the
Carnival ice Cream and asked to speak with Cookie place
and they recorded this prank call and then they just
put it down on.
Speaker 2: A beat and it was just kind of this goofy
song man.
Speaker 1: Cookie Puss there, Cookie Puss, I want to speak to
Cookie quiss Man nobody here.
Speaker 6: But but it became popular.
Speaker 1: 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 who it stands up and he's like, hey, yeah,
have you heard this song called cookie Puss? And and
Africa Bombarda was like, yeah, yeah, I've heard it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I heard song, got a funk, I like it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I was just wondering.
Speaker 4: There's a song I really like called cookie Puss by
the Beastie Boys. I don't you ever heard of it?
Speaker 6: Yes, a Cookie Puss.
Speaker 7: I've gotten the record through the rock pool. It's tough.
Speaker 4: Yeah you like that?
Speaker 1: Why do you like that one?
Speaker 4: It's just a really funny song I heard on the
radio scratching and work on it like that.
Speaker 7: It has a little bit scratching on it and is funky.
Speaker 1: 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 2: Brilliant marketing right there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Well, what was interesting is that they were still
a punk band. But Cookie Puss is not a punk
track in right, 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 did gain attention, and it gained attention among the
hip hop community, and there are a lot.
Speaker 1: Of it's important it's important to note that at this time,
like this is when sucka MCS 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 devotes. 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. I've
never done it live. We've got to have a DJ
to do a live 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 Rue, Rick
freaking Rubin, who at this point was just a kid
in a kid in college. Yeah, a weird kid in college,
but go ahead. Yeah.
Speaker 5: 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 4: Is going to be my guest.
Speaker 6: Excuse me, I'm out of toilet paper. Can you help
me on with that?
Speaker 1: 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 albums and then
you'd get the album and he'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 producing.
Speaker 5: Here's the thing about Rick Rubin. He started out in punk.
He was a punk rocker.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He backed a couple of bands, right, yeah, when he.
Speaker 4: Was in high school. His first band was called The Pricks.
The Pricks now The Pricks never.
Speaker 5: Actually did 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 4: They were the provocateurs. They made the fight happened.
Speaker 5: And get this, the cop that busted in to shut
them all down, he happened to be right on the scene.
He bust in the door and shuts the whole performance down.
That was Rick Rubens's dad in a in a costume.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's brilliant.
Speaker 1: So it's all just a marketing set up.
Speaker 5: Yes, it's a way to get some notoriety and some
some publicity. 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. And his mind was blown.
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.
Speaker 4: The same outlaw kind of attitude.
Speaker 5: 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 als.
Speaker 1: 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 to.
Speaker 6: Like, Dave, what you said that that really blew my
mind because to me, hardcore punk and rap have nothing
in common.
Speaker 2: But then when I.
Speaker 6: 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
is kind of interesting to me.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: 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 genre and 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 Beac Boys came along,
there was already kind of an organic connection happening in
the clubs between punk rockers and wrap.
Speaker 1: 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 6: 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.
Speaker 2: And here's what Cameron had to say.
Speaker 7: Hello, surely 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.
Speaker 1: One and two.
Speaker 7: I am a bigger fan of hard rock than most
of her 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 really, but if
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 some good stuff in
there and some not so good, but it was just
interesting 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 gonna 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 agree more with d than with Jason.
It's funny because on the same age as Jason, and
we kind of, you know, went through the formative.
Speaker 1: College years together.
Speaker 7: 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 makes 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 1: 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 the
better album. That's just the way it is.
Speaker 2: It's a facks you know facts, right right? Cam?
Speaker 6: Thank you very much. These head is 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.
Speaker 2: Guns N' Roses album.
Speaker 6: However, I can't really fault you for loving Metallica and
the Black Album. So Cameron, thank you so much, Bro.
We appreciate you.
Speaker 1: Thanks Cameron.
Speaker 5: By the time eighty three rolls around, Rick is just
like all In. He's forgotten about punk. He's still a
classic rock 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 4: A punk band.
Speaker 5: 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 1: Yeah, the show would start with punk music and end
with hip hop music basically, right, that's right.
Speaker 6: Rick Rubin got the job kind of like the way
David Lee Ro got the lead singer in Van Halen.
Speaker 1: Except instead of having a PA, he had a bubble machine.
He had the mix, he had the bubble machine.
Speaker 2: The bubbles, the bubble.
Speaker 1: 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 the 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 6: 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 1: So just just to touch on it, since I mentioned
the battle of the band Studio fifty four, they lost.
Speaker 5: Well, what happened was Rick continued to hang out with them,
He befriended them, probably closer to Adam Horvitz than the others,
but they were all spending a lot of time at
his dorm room, so they His dormy has been described
as like a bomb site. It's as slovenly as you
can imagine, and just pro wrestling posters on the wall,
pizza 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 6: 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 1: 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 unless's on
punk rock, I don't see. It's not surprising to me.
They're like, okay, whatever that works.
Speaker 2: Sure that worked. Mean, let's keep trying to do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: So the guys were I don't know where Kate was.
She was still in the band. They were still doing
punk shows. The guys were hanging out in Rick's dorm
room a lot every day, just going through his craze,
just hanging out having fun. 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 J.
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
that 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.
Speaker 4: And he got to know Jazzy J. And Jazzy Jay.
Speaker 5: 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 2: I'm sitting right next to a rapper. Why did it
take them so long there to come?
Speaker 4: Man? Come, I'm just saying they only knew about Doctor
Fresh back then.
Speaker 1: I was like seven years old.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Doctor very Fresh. But anyway, the first choice they
had for a rapper they wanted. Tool mo d 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 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 1: Te La Rock.
Speaker 5: Teela Rock became their artist and he came in and
recorded the rap over the track that Rick Rubin and
Jesse j had produced. And at the end of the song,
they need some background vocals just doing nonsense stuff in
the background. Those background vocals belong to Adam Horowitz, Adam
Yak and Michael Dinald.
Speaker 2: Nice freaking awesome nice.
Speaker 1: 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 4: I'm the King. Oh Ron j Run.
Speaker 2: Was also going to get into the picture here.
Speaker 1: I've got a good story on that one, okay.
Speaker 5: 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 Kudini
and Doctor Jekyl and Mister Hyde, Curtis Blow and a
few others.
Speaker 1: 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 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.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 5: 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.
Speaker 4: It was just a name and a logo that Rick
Ruben had come up with.
Speaker 5: 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, well 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 1: So, as you mentioned, they were spending a whole lot
of time with Rick, and as that happened, they were
in a whole lot less time with Kate Schellenbach, who
was their 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 Luscious
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, and he's not
just talking to Russell Simmons, he is trying to learn
how to break dance. So's 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've played all the time.
He's like, I don't, I'm not familiar with that. I'm like, dude,
it's basketball is my favorite sport. I like they wave
the 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 the My
favorite play is.
Speaker 4: The l e oup.
Speaker 1: I like to figure go. I like to give in
and go. It's basketball with mister Curtis Blue.
Speaker 3: They used to play it all the time when my
brother would come out and it's basketball games.
Speaker 1: In high school, it was I was deep into it.
I remember those lyrics from hearing them when I was
seven eight years old. Doctor Jy and Moses Malone wow, Yep, yep,
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 2: Young Upstarts, Michael Jordan. That is awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: 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.
Speaker 4: Just his dorm room record, right.
Speaker 5: And so Todd sent a demo, took that address and
sent a demo to that record company.
Speaker 4: Right. It was just Rick's dorm room, It's all it was.
Speaker 5: 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. All this stuff was coming in.
Demo tapes were coming in. After Tela Rock's record was
out and Rick Rubin wasn't bothering with any of it.
But the BAC boys were hanging out in his dorm room,
just killing time every day they 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.
Speaker 4: He liked, he'd tell Rick about it.
Speaker 5: 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 a 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 got to meet Russ.
You got to meet Russ. They go in, they meet Russ.
The Llo cool Jay's meeting Russ Simmons for the first
time and Rick Ruben plays the tape and Russell Simmons.
Speaker 4: Is like, I hate it. I don't like.
Speaker 5: Wow, so young Todd, 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.
Speaker 4: They play it for Russ. They play that one for
Russell Simmons. He's blown away.
Speaker 5: He loves it, and that launches Loo Cool Jay's career,
and it launches Deaf Jam as a label, and I
Need to Beat becomes their very first single.
Speaker 4: It came out in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: Fantastic Wow.
Speaker 2: That's a good story man.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: 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
they 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 BC 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 6: Yeah, forty dollars adjusted for inflation today is about one
hundred grand.
Speaker 1: It's not a bad it's not a bad. Take.
Speaker 4: Well, they'll fast forward to three years.
Speaker 5: In nineteen eighty four, they put out rock Hard, which
really sounds like a Rick Ruben record, and it sounds
like the Beastie Boys.
Speaker 4: The DP.
Speaker 5: Count of this.
Speaker 4: This is the sound we will come to note. It's
the three male Beastie.
Speaker 5: 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.
Speaker 4: Hip hop at this point.
Speaker 5: Small problem they sampled somebody else's music without their permission.
Ac DC is like, who are these guys?
Speaker 4: No? Stop it right now.
Speaker 5: 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. It's still not available on Spotify,
I've noticed, but I do know that at least in
Europe it was cleared for release legally. In two thousand
and seven. 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 1: They found their voice. They don't sound like some other band.
They know they weren't. They're not imitating somebody else. They
have their own unique sound.
Speaker 6: And that's hey little thing though. Here's a little thing
I just put together on that. So they steal back
in Black from ACDC, they wrap over it whatever, they
sample it without permission. It turns out okay because in
nineteen eighty six, guess who's in the Fight for Your
Right video? But Langa, well Langa, I forgot about that.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: He was in there, the producer of acdc's Back in Black.
Speaker 1: I think Flee was in there too, if I remember right.
Fleell cool Ja and with the sword and the girl
who was like later on MTV News was in there
as the young blonde you're.
Speaker 2: Blowing my stuff for fight for your right.
Speaker 1: Sorry, well, we will come back to that when we
do our track to track.
Speaker 2: Okay, when when's Madonna?
Speaker 1: Get in here?
Speaker 2: M Madonna.
Speaker 1: I got a good story on Madonna. Can I tell
my Madonna's story now?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Just real quick.
Speaker 5: 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 is their DJ. And we get
into eighty five and that's Madonna.
Speaker 2: So what you got so Madonna is what what you would?
Speaker 1: Go ahead?
Speaker 2: No, please please finish that.
Speaker 1: So what Madonna wanted?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 1: 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 Madonna.
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, 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? Could you get the Fat Boy?
And Russell Simmons is like, ah, man, the Fat Boys
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 Deman 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 6: That is also how Adam Horovitz got to make out
with Madonna backstage in the bathroom.
Speaker 1: It's nuts.
Speaker 2: I was talking to you guys. I'm like, you know,
that's not.
Speaker 6: Exactly an exclusive club, probably, but that's a club that
I still wanted to join in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, yeah, and she's I mean, she's a little
bit older than him. I guess, well, and that would
have been some fun times bringing the heat back then. Yeah,
she was y, not that he wasn't an attractive guy,
but row I am.
Speaker 5: 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 1: 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 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
wife now, back when they were you know, ten and eleven.
So they're cussing out little girls.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: 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. I mean, they absolutely did
not take themselves seriously. 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.
Speaker 4: And they just didn't take it seriously.
Speaker 5: And they're kind of on stage persona of being these rude,
crude frat boys that just party hard and didn't care
about anything. That really came together on this like a
virgin tour, and.
Speaker 6: That rude, crude frat boy attitude is basically full force
on Licensed Hill. That's what you get for twelve songs
or whatever. And people did embrace that.
Speaker 2: They liked it, yeah, literally.
Speaker 5: But it absolutely took rap out of the New York
club scene and it was putting it in front of
the nation.
Speaker 4: This is people's first exposure.
Speaker 5: Maybe it was not the best foot forward for rap,
but it was significant in terms of getting some national exposure.
But then just a couple months later, 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 4: It was called Crush Group.
Speaker 5: 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 rap in nineteen eighty four,
and they were looking to do this than Russell Simmons,
and they basically approached him about doing take 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 4: And this movie is great. I love it. It's cheesy,
it's terrible acting, and it's low budget.
Speaker 1: But Underwood, you got Blair Underwood as the Russell Simmons
character was like Russell Walker or something. Isn't that right?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Much. Blair Underwood is a much handsomer man than Russell
Simmons is I would have Russell. I would have Blair
Underwood play me, even though it looks they like 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 5: 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.
Speaker 4: But they were a big name and it drove the
box office.
Speaker 5: The Ello Coool 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 conclude what was interesting 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 1: That's crazy, that's impressive.
Speaker 4: So what happens here right at this time?
Speaker 5: This is critical right here, after the success of I
Need to Beat and Rock Hard, it's enough success to
garner interest from major record like and they end up
signing a deal with Columbia for a distribution deal.
Speaker 4: So Deaf Jam has Columbia Records distributing for.
Speaker 5: Them, So this is give them a huge infusion of cash.
Speaker 1: This is the story 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 6: Well, I'm giving you six hundred thousand reasons why I'm
not going to law school.
Speaker 5: 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, and nineteen eighty six
is the year where it really all started coming together.
Speaker 6: Hit it four and three.
Speaker 2: And two and one.
Speaker 1: Okay, So obviously you know they lost Kate Schallenbach. 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 Dre. 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.
Speaker 5: It was during the madonnatur in the summer of eighty five,
where Reuben 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.
Speaker 4: But after a couple of shows.
Speaker 5: 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 that he had
bounced out, but they did get Doctor Dre to step
in and fill in as the DJ. 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 madonnataur H. 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 the musical material that
would be used on.
Speaker 4: License to Deal.
Speaker 5: And I can tell you this, the run DMC Raising
Hell Tour had already started without the Beastie.
Speaker 4: Boys on it.
Speaker 5: 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 Ello
Cooljay 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's 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.
I didn't miss them by much apparently, but they would
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.
Speaker 4: A couple of stories about.
Speaker 5: 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.
Speaker 4: They're a part of it.
Speaker 5: That's important to know when you think about their acceptance
and the reaction to their album.
Speaker 4: It's easy when it comes out, it's easy to think
of them as a joke or parody. But the truth
is they had credibility.
Speaker 5: They had pred 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 to
Her 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 Dre's like, what can
I do? I'm just back here spinning records. I can't
help what comes out of their mouths.
Speaker 4: Sure enough, they're in the middle of their show. They're gone.
Speaker 5: Ad Rock's 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.
Speaker 4: Like what do we do? What do we do? And
Doctor Dre's like, I don't know. Adam York and Mike
d take off.
Speaker 5: They run off the stage and Horovitz looks around realizes
he's by himself.
Speaker 2: Boom.
Speaker 4: He runs off the stage.
Speaker 5: The crowd is left staring at Doctor Dre like, well,
who are you hanging out with these clowns?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 6: And he.
Speaker 5: 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 off the stage.
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
Speaker 5: I can also tell you that at another stop on
the tour, they were in Miami and Doctor.
Speaker 4: Dre overslept and they left without him.
Speaker 2: He's still mad about that. I saw an interview. He's
still mad about that.
Speaker 1: He fell asleep and like it was like the couch
and the lobby of the hotel or something right, and
he's like, just wake me up, leave me. 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 your 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 jem Master Jay. Jem Master Jay goes, hey, Yuck,
it'll be funny if you go out there and play
bass with them, and so Yuck, 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 5: The Raising Hell 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 man in breaking Wrap through to
a crossover audience and kind of setting the table for frankly,
a white audience to embrace.
Speaker 4: This new music form.
Speaker 5: 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.
Speaker 4: As we speak.
Speaker 2: Today is Wednesday, November the seventeenth. Today that we're recording.
Two days ago was the thirty fifth anniversary. It's incredible. Well,
are we ready to dive in tack by track?
Speaker 4: Ready?
Speaker 1: All right, We're gonna 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 they were able to play those instruments. It's just
not what they were doing. It wasn't there. But our
friend Adam Yaq 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, Yak 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 stand, 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 6: All right, So when we finally ready to go track
by track through license till yes, yes, next week, next week,
not today.
Speaker 2: Sorry, all right, Dave.
Speaker 6: We'll catch you next time and we'll do track by
track through license till Hey.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 4: Me Well, looking at Magucci, it's about that time.
Speaker 2: All right, Thanks a lot, Dave. We'll see you next time,
all right.
Speaker 4: Thanks. Look my god that I'm more.
Speaker 2: Skilled, man.
Speaker 6: I love that.
Speaker 7: Steward h