Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / When Rock Met Hip-Hop: Run-DMC, Aerosmith, Anthrax & The Birth Of A Cultural Crossover [Episode 354]

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When Rock Met Hip-Hop: Run-DMC, Aerosmith, Anthrax & The Birth Of A Cultural Crossover [Episode 354] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Before playlist and algorithms, there was a time when the
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: walls came down, when turntables met guitar amps, Run DMC
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: and Aerosmith rewriting the rules, the Beastie Boys tearing down
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: genre lines, and Anthrax and Public Enemy proving rifts and
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: rhymes could hit just as hard together. These weren't gimmicks.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: There were culture shifting moments that would change music forever.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: When rock met hip hop, that's coming up next to rock.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: And roll, I mean gotta leave you. You're reading Little
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Hands says it's time to rock and roll.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Roll up, I totally booked. Welcome back to book Rock
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: the podcast for those about to read and rock. We
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: have a returning guest on the show. His new book
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: is called When Rock Met Hip Hop, How Run DMC, Aerosmith, Anthrax,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: the Beastie Boys, and more crossed cultural and musical boundaries.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Stephen Blush Steven Welcome back.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Pleasure to be here, Pleasure to be back. I should
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: say good.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: To talk to a fellow East Coaster who is suffering
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: from this very cold, snowy winter we're having here.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's brutal, It's really brutal. It's like it's like
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: like a punch to the stomach.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you got me beat in New York, you said
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: nineteen inches. Here in Connecticut, I think it was about
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: I don't know, foot foot and a half, but enough enough.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: But you know, this is the time of year. It's
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: a great time of year two to pick up a
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: great book and read, and this is one of them.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: And it's a topic that is really interesting because it's
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: right in my strike zone with my age. Born in
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: seventy two, so I grew up you know, hit those
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: teen years when run DMC and Aerosmith. Yeah, you know
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: the walk this Way song takes off and from there
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: you just see the progression of rap rock. So talk
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: about the book. How long did it take you to
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: put together? What was the inspiration to write the book?
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: This is part of a trilogy. I had written three books,
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: so it was when rock met disco. Actually I have
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: it here when rock met disco. And when I'm telling
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: this story, I'm not really talking about. While I do
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: give you a thumbnail sketch of the history of disco,
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: it's really about when rock crossed over into it with
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: you know, the rolling stones, Miss You and Kiss I
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: was made for Loving You and Rod Stewart, Do you
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: think I'm sexy? And Blondie and Queen and all that
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: kind of stuff. And what that really brought to disco
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: was serious rock bands that played two hundred days a year,
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: you know, as opposed to these like orchestral ensembles or
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: like jazz groups that producers would put together. So it
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: really gave a power to the music and it was
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: a unique sound. And so and then I wrote When
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: Rock met reg A.
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: And one.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: While I do give a thumbnail sketch of the history
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: of Jamaican music, what I'm really talking about is when
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: the Clash and the police and uh, you know those
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: kind of bands, uh, Blondie again, Uh brought their their
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: their heaviness and there they brought a whole new thing
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: to reggae. And likewise, Bob Marley did the song called
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Punky Reggae Party where he named checks the clash and
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: and uh the sex pistols and and all that kind
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: of stuff. So, uh, it's it's a whole new flavor,
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: you know, it's not it's black and white, right, So
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: and so I'm writing this these histories as they go on,
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: and when rock met hip hop was something that I
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: had lived like talking about.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Well, that's what was gonna say. You're you talk about
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: being in the strike zone. Yeah, you're in New York
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: City as a journalist during this time.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I I was really there. I was there,
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: and I was you know, early on, I interviewed the
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: Beastie Boys and run DMC and Anthrax and Public Enemy,
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: and so this was really in my wheelhouse, so to speak.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: And it's really getting a great response. I'm really happy
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: about this book. It's a it's I really feel like
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: it's my my best piece of writing. And I think
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: it's something I could speak from from an area of expertise.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: And you talk you like, see you talked to so
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: many people from that era. When did you start to
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: get the sense that this is going to be around
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: for a while. Did you ever think in the beginning,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: like this may be a fad.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: Well, everybody said it was a fad, but I think
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: that there was. I think what I saw was that
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: in the underground, be it punk or metal or hip hop,
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: there was a commonality of intensity and disillusionment and fighting
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: two make your own music. You know, the idea of
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: the Beastie Boys doing no Sleep till Brooklyn with Carrie
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: King from Slayer. I mean it was so ahead of
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: the curve, it was crazy.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: We'll talk about that he only got what like twenty
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: dollars to do it.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the actual number is two fifty, so's.
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: It's to fifty. Yeah, yeah, okay, so let's give him.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: Let's give him that. He of course regrets that move, right,
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: you know, as many studio musicians tend to feel.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: But was it with run DMC Aerosmith that you thought, yeah,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: this is going to be around or maybe beast To
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Boys you get to the late eighties, it was I
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: remember thinking, yeah, this is here to stay.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's a very good point. So Beastie Boys,
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: the how big they got. You know, that was the
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: number that was the first rap record to go number one,
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: So I kind of thought that that was where it
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: was happening. When Rick Rubin put together Aerosmith and run DMC,
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: that really took it to the top. I mean, that
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: might be the most important record of the late twentieth century,
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: and certainly the video. The video is huge, and the
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: video is really about literally breaking down barriers. If you
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: remember that video sure where they tear down the walls. Yeah,
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: that's metaphorical of something larger. So it's I think VH
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: one called it the number one video of the of
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: the video age, and I think that's correct.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: New York City the epicenter of the cultural universe, you
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: call right prime example, and you mentioned Blondie and the
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: song Rapture. I mean that's an important song too. You
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: spoke with Debbie Harry, talked to Blondie's co founder and
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: guitarist Chris Stine about the importance of hip hop culture
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: in the late seventies. So we're going back to the
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: late seventies when this all starts. You spoke to Fab
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: five Freddy from you know on TV raps. He's in
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: the video for Rapture. Debbie Harry references him and the
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: song which went to number one. So tell us how
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: that song came to be.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: The original disco was rappers Delight in New York, New
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: York and all those kind of songs, Grandmaster Flash, sugar
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: Hill Gang. Uh. That was basically like disco music. And
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: Blondie had already come out of having a huge disco
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: hit right right before, right around that, you know, about
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: a year or two before that, so it was not
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: uncharted territory. The story is that Blondie uh fab five
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Freddy invited Blondie two show up uptown in the Bronx
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: where nobody. Nobody went to the Bronx back then, and
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: that is the first you know, you know, we jumped
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: straight into the Beastie Boys and all that. But really
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: three four years before that is blonde is Blondie rapture.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: And that's really uh kind of defined this kind of
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: uptown and downtown kind of thing. If people don't know
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: what I'm talking about. Downtown is where the clubs were
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: and the artists were. Uptown was where uh.
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: You know it was.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: It was basically non white territory. So when you brought
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: them both together, you developed this new sound and a
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: new flavor. And that's that's the start of when rock
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: met hip hop.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's interesting you talk about the history of
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: rap and how the origins are. A lot of it
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: comes from radio DJs. And I was in radio and
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: there was this thing called hitting the post. You talk
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: right up until the singing starts yep, and it starts there,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: but in different parts of the country, I think from
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: whatever we call in the book, and how the thing
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: is you get to rap over that music, and that
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: leads to these DJs at the clubs looking for the
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: perfect song to rap over. So you want to have
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: something with a really awesome beat, but also something maybe
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: have an extended opening to it that you can talk over, right.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: Right, for sure. It was kind of a freestyle thing
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: that that kind of became a format the MC's. You know,
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: it was like like the word an mc E, m
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: CEE is like the host of a party or a
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: host of an event, master of ceremonies. Yeah, right, absolutely,
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  Speaker 2: and that's what the master of ceremonies thing is taken
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: to a whole new level in hip hop and it
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  Speaker 2: becomes the voice the the music is the DJ, and
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: the music is the the rapping uh master of ceremonies.
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  Speaker 1: As as you just said, how much does it come from?
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  Speaker 1: I always thought about the beat poets in the sixties too,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: like maybe that's also there's some kind of lineage there,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: you know, there's.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: A total connection there. The last poets Gil Scott Heron,
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: if you know these names they were, they were kind
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: of they were rapping early on over music. Yeah, right exactly,
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  Speaker 2: And like you said, in the radio stations, you had
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: the people talking over the record so this was just
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: the next step of how it followed, like grand Master Flash,
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: I'm Sorry Rappers. Delight by the Sugarhill Gang was something
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: that sugar Uh Sylvia Robinson who ran sugar Hill Records,
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: she saw a couple of these cats DJing. Uh, they rapping,
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: but it wasn't called rapping at that point. So she
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: formalized it with this record, and so that's where it
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: kind of starts. But uh, where it becomes really hard.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: It starts with run DMC with rock Box and King
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: of Rock, and then of course, uh after that is.
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: The collaboration with with Aerosmith and then what you had
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: a little bit after that. It was very influential around
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: the country, you know, around the you know, this nineteen
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: eighty six record that Rick Rubin put together is meaning
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: run DMC and Aerosmith kind of takes off around the country.
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: Already you had had license to ill getting around the
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: nation and.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: The world as well. And what that led to was
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: a whole new explosion in Los Angeles. And that's actually
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: with bands with rock bands rapping. So you had the
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: Red Hot Chili Peppers, and you had Faith No More,
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: and you had you had jump around by House of Pain,
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: and you had Cyprus Hill, and where it all culminates
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: is in Rage against the Machine, where there's even a
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: line where a year before the Rage Against the Machine
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: album is when the Bring the Noise by Anthrax and
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: Aerosmith come up, Public Enemy comes out, and that was
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: a really heavy record because Public Enemy had already recorded
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: that song, but when filtered through the urban heavy metal
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: of Anthrax, it really became a whole new song. And
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: when I interviewed Scott Ian from Anthrax, he says, yeah,
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: that was just a song, but if you want to
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: look at where it was taken to, was the next
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: level it was taken to was with Rage Against the
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: Machine because they were a band based on hip hop.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: So that's, you know, super important to understand. And so
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: that's nineteen ninety two. Nineteen ninety three is a record,
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: a soundtrack called Judgment Night, Yes, which is super influential.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Got a whole chapter on that.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well I wrote a whole chapter on that, correct
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: and House of Pain and Helmet, Cypress Hill and Pearl
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: jam iced tea body count with with Slayer doing an
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: Anthrax medley I'm sorry doing a the Exploited medley. So
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: this is music just taken to its furthest Extreme probably
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: one of the most influential records, certainly among musicians from
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: that time, and that's nineteen nine three nineteen ninety four
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: is first Corn record. And then you get the rise
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: of new metal through Limp Biscuit, Lincoln Park System of
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: a down and that music kind of leads to today.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: So when people talk about when rock met hip hop,
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: you know, originally they're talking about like a ten year period,
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: meaning like the mid eighties to the mid nineties. But
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: there's this whole new generation of groups who carry it
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: on to today. So that's that's a very long legacy,
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: and I think it's integral to what music is. In
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: other words, music never music is always going to be
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: a fusion. Now, you know, now you've got country and
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: hip hop, you know, you hear that all the time.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: I heard a cool one the other day, which I
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: guess it's been out for a few years, but these
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: guys do uh white zombie riff and then it breaks
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: into Johnny Cash and it like works perfectly well.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: I think of Shaboozie, right, isn't he that's country rap?
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: I guess right, right? Yeah?
• 17:29
  Speaker 5: But but where is all this if not for these
• 17:33
  Speaker 5: rock artists bands having the courage being open minded enough
• 17:38
  Speaker 5: to do it, because then you wonder, maybe it wouldn't
• 17:41
  Speaker 5: have gone where you got Aerosmith.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: Credit to them, you got Anthrax, you know right now.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: The other and the other story is Billy Squire. No,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: he didn't. He didn't collaborate with anybody but his songs.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, what's his song at the Big Beat is
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: one of the most sampled rap.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the beats and the big Beat and the stroke.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: And the stroke. So you devote a whole chapter to
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: this because it's a really interesting topic. You talked to Billy.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: What did he have to say about all of this
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: success and and let's face it, money, right, I mean
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: publishing that he's gotten from hip hop artists. He had
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: to allow it, so he also had to be somebody
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: who was a little open to that. I mean, artists
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: have more of an open mind. So I guess I'm
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: not that surprised.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: But yeah, you know, we live in a world which
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: is obsessed with race, and you know, musicians don't really
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: think that way, right right.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: You know, labels, they don't like labels, they don't like
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: all that stuff that's marketing stuff.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: Musicians. What they do is they hear a riff. You
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: hear a lot of this stuff about how people rip
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: off other people's music, and that's not really what it is.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: It's they listen to something that inspires them and then
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: they put their own twist on it, right, right, and
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: then they give props to it, usually, you know, when
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: they uh out of love and respect for and then
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: you keep talking about it. And that's what music history is.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: It's like a lore that keeps, you know, bands giving
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: props to new pans ten years before them, and you know,
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: it just keeps going.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: Reintroduces it to all new generation.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no doubt. And that's how it works, and that's
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: what goes from generation to generation, just like that.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Find the bookdown Rock website at bookdown rock dot com.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: There you can find all the back episodes of the show,
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: the latest episode in video and audio, links to all
• 19:49
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• 19:52
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• 19:57
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• 20:00
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• 20:03
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• 20:09
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• 20:10
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• 20:14
  Speaker 1: With Aerosmith, they were open to a both Joe Perry
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: and Stephen Tyler, I think the quoted in the book,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: and they really didn't have too much of a problem
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: with it. They were open to it, and at that
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: point their career was really in the tank.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So that came about because of Rick Rubin. Did
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: he have the he brought the two sides together.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: Rick Rubin was wanted to do this, but he wasn't
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: getting any response. He was trying to contact management and
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: just wasn't really getting anywhere. And then he spoke to
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: a friend of mine who was This was the Aerosmith
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: soundman back in the day, and as goes by the
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: nickname of night Bob because nobody could pronounce his last
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: name was Bob. I can't even pronounce his last name,
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: to be honest with you, but he was the Aerosmith
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: soundman for for all these years. And then he he
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: met with Rick Rubin and put Rick on the phone
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: with Joe Perry, and Joe Perry was like, you know,
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: he had heard about rap and he was smart enough
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: to he just thought it sounded really cool. You know.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: It was just something like, yeah, let's do it. There's
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: also funny quotes in the book where Steven Tyler's talking about, like,
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: you know, he would go around Hell's Kitchen and in
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: Manhattan and trying to cop drugs, and he would find
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: the people on the streets selling bixtapes and so he
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: would of course buy one. You know.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: So now the other side, though, the guys in run
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: DMC were they.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: Little well, they already they had been dipping their toes
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: in it, like with Rock Box and King of Rock,
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: and they were already going in that direction, but they
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: really weren't making a lot of money. They were like
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: on MTV and stuff like that, but it wasn't it
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: wasn't translating into like a career. So they were almost
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: scared to really they were kind of scared to do this,
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: and they got kind of talked into it by Rick
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: as well. They had been scratching with toys in the
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: attic by Aerosmith, but they didn't really put it all together.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: You were talking about Billie Squier before and and his
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: impact on all this with with hip hop, and you know,
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: you hear or you see in the book run DMC
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: h d MCS saying that the godfathers of hip hop
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: were James Brown and Billie Squire. You know, you talk
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: to Big Daddy Kane and he'll say the same thing.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: So I think it's you know, music is not black
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: or white, it's gray or it's brown. You know, it's
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: a fusion, you know. So I think that's what's really important.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: So for when run DMC and Aerosmith happened, it was
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: really about bringing the two worlds together and making a
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: new form of music based on common based on certain commonalities.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: You mentioned scratching. That was Jim Ester j right, he
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: would have the Aerosmith records. I love that eighties. Back
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: in the back in the day, they had the milk
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: rates with all the vinyl records in them. It would
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: take him to the gigs.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: Ye, digging in the crates is what they used to call.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there was what there was like a go to
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: record store there too in New York where they went
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: to right.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a few. There was a few places
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: where it was you know where they where they would
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: get the Billy Squire records or something like that. Like
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: I'm saying it's the The important thing to get out
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: of this is that ah music changed. Music has changed
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: the world for the better, and it's because it's the
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: one place where you're not based on greedy capitalism and
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: race obsession and things like that. So even though we're
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: hitting a few bumps of the road right now in
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: our society, I think what's super important is to to
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: realize that musicians played the biggest role in and changing
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: all this.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: You're so right because at that time, before then, there
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: was a divide there. It was there was white music,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: black music. And I remember my friends in high school
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: and some of them just not really open to it
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: and being transparent myself, you know, I wasn't open to
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: it right away, this idea that the two can come together.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: Then over time and I became a huge Beastie Boys fan,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: which I still am, but then that at one point
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: I remember thinking, well, wait a minute, the fact that
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: these hip hop artists are sampling rock and roll, what
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: does that mean? That means they love rock and roll.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: They're fans of rock and roll, right, you know there,
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: they know these records, they know Zeppelin, stones and who
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: are some of the Africa Bombarda was talking about the
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: Big Records, A whole lot of love with Zeppelin, it
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: was a whole lot of love. Black Dog fog Hat's
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Slow Rider was a great one, Russia's Tom Sawyer, the Stone,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Honkys Woman, Miss You Hot Stuff, and then you mentioned
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: Billy Squire, but any Money's Baby Hold On to Me.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: Those were songs that they were familiar with, that they
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: loved and that were perfect to wrap over and that
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: that's now, it's just it's normal. But in the eighties
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: it was. It was one of those things. It was
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: just they were separated into categories and now it's one
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: combined category. I want to talk about the BC Boys
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: now because they are to me and I love License
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: to Ill. But when you get to Paul's boutique, for me,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: that's when the experimentation begins, and that that really, that
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: serious endeavor into the art begins. Even though that have
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: the first album, I mean it was, like I say,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: number one, and still the funny story of them opening
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: for Madonna, you know, tour with Madonna? Right, that was
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Deaf Jam Records and DC's were one of the label's
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: first success and you nail it with the introduction to
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: them in a book I'm going to read what you're
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: right here, so you write quote. Beastie Boys, one of
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: def Jam's first successes, brought together rock and rap, crossing
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: over from the punk side. Over time, they evolved from
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: an ordinary, noisy hardcore band to a groundbreaking hip hop group,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: and ultimately to something far beyond their iconic sound and
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: Soyle revolutionized music and culture. And Mike d said, the
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: only way they could have become the band that they
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: became is because New York had everything going on then
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: and it's just a perfect place for them to be.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: How do they come together, Adam Horowitz, Adam yuk and
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: Michael Diamond, how do they come together to form Beastie Boys?
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: Adam Yelk and Mike Dee went to school together, and
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: Adam Horowitz was in a kind of like a rival
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: hardcore band. They were also kind of humorous, and he
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: was a really good guitar player, so that's how he
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: ended up in the group. Just like that. I mean,
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: these these this was a fifteen band of fifteen year
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: olds at the time, and Rick Rubin stepped in and
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: gave them, you know, this musical vocabulary that was far
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: beyond what they had had before. And he produced them.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: And yes, it was the DJ on that Madonna tour.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: So that was and you know, everybody wanted the Beastie
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: Boys thrown off the tour that it was Madonna who
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: said no way.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's always up there with the Hendrix Monkeys, you know,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: like those odd pairings.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. What's super cool about all that is it wasn't
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: very complicated musically, right. I mean you listen to License
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: to Ill and it's not you know, it's pretty mch
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: to one sound throughout the throughout the record. When they
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: get to their second, third, and fourth albums, they do
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: evolve into something different. They have become a band again.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: They weren't really a band during Licensed Ill. They were
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: MC's right, right, and then the and the music. Not
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: only do they become a band playing live, but they
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: create like a whole new sound. You know, it's it's
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: hip hop and it's rock, and it's punk and it's alternative.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Right, I mean in the nineties alternative rock radios that
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: they found a new home.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and that's where that's an incredible thing. You know,
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: I think Sabotage and you know, all those kind of
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: songs are just so incredible because they they are something different.
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: It's something very unique.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: And when Adam Yauk died, I just thought, boy, this
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: is the end of This is the end of something
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: really special, end of an era.
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: Well it was, it was it was the end of
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: the Beastie Boys.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: They never did that thing where they would find somebody
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: else to replace him and move forward.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: It was like, that's that's it, right.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: Well, similarly to the run DMC, when jam Master J died, right,
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: it was just over. You know, there's a quote in
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: the Book of where DMC says, you know, it's like
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: trying to put the Beatles back together, you know once,
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: once you lose a few key characters, you just can't
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: do it. And to me, the soul of the Beastie
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: Boys was Adam Yeuk. You know, he was a deep soul,
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: you know he was had become Buddhists. But besides that,
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: he was always the soulful musician. So to lose him
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: change things on so many levels for sure.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: The Book Down Rock Podcast is part of the Boneless
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: podcasting network. If you're a fan of classic rock and
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: classic film like I am, go to Boneless Dot Lovable
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: Dot app to find over twenty great shows there. That's
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Boneless dot lovable dot app or just go to bookdown
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: rock dot com. Click on the logo. It'll take you
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: right to the Boneless podcasting network. It is what you
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: want to be listen with confidence. Mentioned Carrie King from
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: Slarry on No Sleep Till Brooklyn and yeah, I have
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: it here two hundred and fifty dollars for the session,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: so I was off for the twenty dollars. Yeah, but
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: they were in the same building. They were both recording,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: and Rick Rubin just said, hey, carry can you come
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: by and just, you know, do do a solo. That's
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: like really well, I don't remember the word, but it
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: was like, do something really strange or out there.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: Kind of stupid?
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: They stupid.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: It carries like it went over there for like twenty
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: minutes and now he's he's part of music history. But
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: with Paul's Boutique nineteen eighty nine, that's when it's regarded
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: as one of the most innovative records. But at the
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: time it didn't do that well commercially. I mean it
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: had it did okay, It had Hey Ladies was the single,
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: and it did okay, but it really just grew over time.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: This is the sampling I believe, if I recall correctly too,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: they were sampling. This is before these artists realized there
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: was a lot of money in their music being sampled. Right,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: So at the time I don't think they asked for permission.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: And then later there was all these legal issues.
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: Yes, they ended up in a whole bunch of lawsuits
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: because of who they sampled.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: And hundreds of artists funk, rock, soul pop.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: But in all fairness, they probably could have settled these
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: lawsuits in a better way than dragging these guys to
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: the Supreme Court, you know, lawyering up and dragging you know.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: I if there's a a thing I don't like about
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: the Beastie Boys, it's that they did that. They there
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: were a lot of poor musicians who just wanted their
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: their you know, minimal come up, and instead what they
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: did was use their expensive corporate lawyers and drag it
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: all the way to the Supreme Court and bankrupt these music,
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: these these struggling musicians.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: The Ramones, Eagles, Zeppel and the Beatles in there. But
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: you're talking about there was some smaller artists that they sampled.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there was.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: There's probably a list somewhere on a website we can look.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: I just want to see the eagles. I'm thinking, I
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: don't want to mess with Don Henley. Yeah, you know,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: Don Henley was like wait a minute, because he's you know,
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: he's notorious for that.
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: I think I remember a famous quote about Don Henley
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: where everybody his ambition wasn't to have a gold record
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: or anything like that, it was to own a jet, right,
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: So you got to watch out for those kind of guys,
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: for sure.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: I'm looking maybe if I could find a quick website
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: that has the listenings of all these.
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: While I looked that up, though, what.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: Was Jimmy Castor is one of them?
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: But you know, like you say, it brought sampling to
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: an art form. It raised sampling to an art form.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: Whose idea was it to do all of that sampling?
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Because it's like that was.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: From they had already worked with Rick Rubin and they
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: had there was this famous studio called chun King in
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: the city where everybody worked and you would just see
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: these guys cutting tape all night long. They're just cutting
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: and pasting and cutting and pasting. And because don't forget,
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: it was before everything was digital, so you had to
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: do it. I guess to make a joke of it,
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: you'd have to do it digitally, like with your hands.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: So they connected with the Dust Brothers when they got there.
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: The Dust Brothers.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the Beastie Boys heard the Dust Brothers because they
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: there was if there was a deaf jam of the
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: West Coast, it was called Delicious Vinyl. And Delicious Vinyl
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: did the Uh, they did Young MC, and they did
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: Tone Look and they you know, some of the first
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: West Coast hits, and the producers of those were the
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: Dust Brothers. So when the Beastie Boys first moved to LA,
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: they connected with the Delicious Vinyl crew and they hurt.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: The Dust Brothers were actually making their own album, and
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: they convinced them to make those Beastie Boys songs and
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: pretty much most of Paul's boutique are were originally Dust
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: Brothers songs intended for an album of their own.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: Oh, I didn't know that, man. I'd love to see
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: the inner workings of that album and how they put
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: it together during the pre digital era. I mean, it's
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: intricate stuff.
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: Here you go.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: These are just some of the artists here that you
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: refer to that are ones that yeah, you know, dragged
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: to the courts and really took them for for pretty
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: much everything they got. Come let Me Love You by
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: Jeanette Lady Day. You know that's this is, hey, ladies.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: Mcgilla Gorilla by Hoyte Curtain from nineteen sixty three. Funky
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: snake Foot by Alphonse Mouzon on Shake Your Rump you know. Yeah,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: these are tell Me Something Good by Ronnie that's a
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: well known song, Idris Muhammad Laurens Dance. I mean, yeah,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: these are some artists that.
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: Bernard Herman the Murder.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: They mentioned Jimmy Cast.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: Probably which song would he be on? I can't remember
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: because they have this thing where you got to click
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: for even more connections. It's like the list is so long.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: Jimmy Caster, Well me, let's see Jimmy castor oh, here
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: we go. The Beastie Boys sampled the Jimmy Caster bunch,
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: specifically utilizing the track drop the Bomb in the song
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: car Thief. Okay, yeah, that's the one. But and you're
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: hearing like there's ones that you're like, oh, yeah, that's
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: Zeppelin right there. You know you could pick up on it.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: But Life in the fast Lane is on one of
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: those Stephen Blush, the author of When Rock Met Hip Hop,
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: How Run DMC, Aerosmith, Anthrax, The Beastie Boys, and More,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Cross cultural and musical Boundaries. Chapter on Public Enemy, it
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: is another one of my favorite hip hop groups, talk
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: about how they blended hip hop, beats and thrash metal.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: On their collaboration with the Anthrax, You did talk about
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: a little bit bring the noise. Scott Ian says nothing
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: comes close to moving him as much as Public Enemy did.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: How did that partnership happen?
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: Again?
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: Well, just to go back a step, Chuck d had
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: done a radio show on a college radio in Long
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: Island at a Delphi University and he had a song.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: I don't know what the title of it was, but
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: it was the intro song to the TV to the
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: radio show. And Rick had heard this and flipped out
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: over it, and he went Chuck was working at a
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: record store and he I guess Chuck had told them
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: if some guy named Rick rubinkles tell here. And that
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: went on for like six months, and Chuck was said,
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: I want to do this on my own terms and
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: I want to be the clash of hip hop. And
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: Rick Rubin was like, yeah, whatever you want you know,
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: go ahead, you got it. So and the sound of
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: the of Public Enemy was producers, a producer squad called
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: the Bomb Squad, and Hank Shockley, who was one of
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: the main guys of the one of the main characters
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: in the Bomb Squad. Uh worked at a heavy metal
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: record store, so he was a big fan of Metallica
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: and Iron Maiden and Megadeath was a big one, you know.
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: So to him, when he got started working on the
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: first records by Public Enemy, he said, I want to
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: make my version of Peace Cells, but who's buying by Megadeth.
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: Then there's on the first or second album there's a
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: song called she Watched She Watched Channel zero and that
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: features a slowed down version of the rifts from Rain
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: and Blood by Slayer, which is of course a song
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: about like a Nazi, you know, like Joseph Mengola, and so,
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: you know, it was a really intense, intense band. They
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: were just following this track of doing that. And then
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: Scott Ian was wearing a Public Enemy T shirt on
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: the cover of some heavy metal magazine that it was
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: forwarded to that somehow Chuck Deese saw, so he I'm
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: not sure what song it was, but he name dropped
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: Anthrax in a.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: Rap waxes for Anthrax.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the lyrics, yeah, and which I don't still
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: don't understand what that means, but it sounded cool right.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: Fast forward a few then you fast forward a couple albums,
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: and I think it's on the third album that they
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: did Bring the Noise, but it was a black version
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: of it, and it was a Public Enemy's version. It
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: was intense, but it wasn't like what it would become.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: So because us Anthrax, as New Yorkers, always had this
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: interest and hip hop, ah, they just kept calling Chuck
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: d until he came around to do this. But it's
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: not like that they were in the studio together. It's
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: not like what Rick Rubin did. It's basically, uh, there
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: were It was the song and a bunch of samples
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: and a bunch of separate tracks sent to Anthrax, and
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: then they assembled the whole thing themselves. So that's that
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: makes it a little bit different. And that record came
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: out both on an Anthrax record and on a Public
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: Enemy record. That that version and the tour, the Anthrax
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: Public Enemy Tour, which on most of the dates also
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: included Primus and this group called Young Black Teenagers, which
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: was also produced by the Bomb Squad. They were one
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: of the first white rap groups as well. Those tour dates,
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: every one of them sold out in the arenas and
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: there was a real respect between the audio. I remember,
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: like a real respect between the audiences. It would be
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: probably about seventy percent white rockers and about thirty percent
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: wrap Pe fans.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: There was concern at that time too, how is this
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: going to go down? Is it gonna be Saif? And
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: they all they all get together?
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: Great? Yeah, yeah, cool.
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, everything was totally cool and again another another track
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: that changed the face of music.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: Hey guys, we'll get back to the show, but first
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: I want to tell you about an exclusive deal for
• 44:05
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• 44:21
  Speaker 1: Floyd led Zeppelin, and many many more. Go to old
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: glory dot com, make sure to use the promo code.
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: Booked on Rock.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: Also find a link in this episode show notes, or
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: just go to booked on rock dot Com and click
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: on my deals. By the way, d X Ferris is
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: quoting the book author d X Ferris, and he said
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: to say hello. By the way, I said, I'm having
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: Stephen Blush on and d X Farris. He's a great guy.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna have him on again. He's got a book
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: on Donnie Iris. I want to talk to him about so.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: But he is a huge Rick Rubin fan. And I'm
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: just realizing now as we talk here and just talking
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: about the book. I mean, where is this whole genre
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: without Rick Rubin?
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Like, how important
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: is he to them? Because he produces Blood Sugar Sex
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: Magic in ninety one that's their breakthrough. I mean, the
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: Chili Peppers were successful, but not to the level that
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: they were with this album.
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: I think Rick Rubin has produced ten of the groups
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Wow, and
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: he accounts for like one hundred and fifty million in sales. Staggering,
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: just staggering. Yeah, Yeah, it's his his So, I mean
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: he obviously has had I'm sure there's been books on
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: Rick Rubin or or he I know, he does his
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: own podcasts and stuff like that. But he's I knew
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: him a bit back back in those days, did you. Yeah?
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: And I liked what he was doing because it was
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: kind of where I was it from. I mean, although
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: I was a writer, you know, which is very different,
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: I was a music termalist during that time. And ah,
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: you know I talked before about some of my first
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: interviews and stuff. Rick Rubin changed the face of music.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: He just had It seemed like he had no no boundaries,
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: no rules, like the perfect guy too, to break open
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: that that that genre and this just anything goes outside
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: of the box. Why not instead of, you know, to
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: steal the Bobby Kennedy line? And some asked why, I
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: asked why not? Right, I mean, why not? But I'm
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: sure there were a lot of people that was like,
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: you don't want to do this. This isn't gonna work,
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: This isn't going to sell, This isn't we can't market this.
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: How are we going to do this?
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's there's a line where the guy who signed
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: Aerosmith to Geffen he's yeah, yeah, And there's a quote
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: by John Kalodner. Actually that's not my interview. That's a
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: quote that I found but he basically said to Rick
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: Rubin when he heard that Aerosmith was going to record
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: with Rod DMC, he was just like, good luck.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's in the book. But that's just what
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about. I mean, Ruben was just like, also fearless,
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: you know, he was a fearless guy, you know, because
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: you're putting a lot on the line there, you're risking
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: your career, I guess you could say. But yeah, Blood Sugar,
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: Sex Magic is a phenomenal album. And you mentioned Faith
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: No More nineteen eighty nine when Epic came out. I
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: remember that very well, summer of eighty nine, but I
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: did not know they had a song called We Care
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: a Lot from four years earlier that should be mentioned,
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: right because you talk about the importance of this song
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: a different lead singer, not Mike Patton, Chuck Mosley was
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: the original front man. Why is this song important?
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: That was one of the first rock rap records that
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: goes back to like nineteen eighty five. They did an
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: independent record for Mortem Records, which was Ruth Schwartz who
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: used to write at Maximum Rock and Roll, the punk magazine,
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: and she put out that record. It ended up getting
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: picked the band ended up signing with Slash Records, and
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: the first on the first Slash record, which was just
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: called Faith No More, which I think was nineteen eighty seven,
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: they we recorded with care a lot with Chuck Moseley again,
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: and then in nineteen eighty nine they debuted their new singer,
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: Mike Patton, and that's where they did epic and they
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: were pretty much a hit from the minute he joined.
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: Right, Mosey was more of a shell. And yeah, Mike
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: Patten was a showman. But the voice, amazing voice. One
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: amazing singer here is right and he's done some great
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: work with soundtracks.
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: A Place Beyond the Pines is one of my favorite
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: movies from last ten to fifteen years. And sure enough
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: at the end they roll the credits and he said
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: music by Mike Patton.
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: M Yeah, he was. You could tell that he was
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: onto some I never got the feeling that he was
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: going to be with Faith No More forever. You know
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: that he had he had ambitions, but he was pretty
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: open about it to those guys. To be fair, they
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: were they were playing with fire as as a band.
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: Sure, what's the band he was in? He may still
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: have it, mister Bungle yes, and they were playing a
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: couple of Van Halen songs. Yeah, our old school women
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: and Olden first era of Van Haalen.
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so he he was always onto something else. But
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: that song Epic, that was probably the first one of
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: the first rap rock records coming from the rock side
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: played on MTV. Right, I think that's you know, I
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: don't know if I mean, there was a time where
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: Faith No More and the Red Hot Chili Peppers were
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: kind of one and two. They were like right there,
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: the two groups, and that was right around that.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: Time Mike Patten, Faith No More wasn't the type of
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: band that was going to make the same album over
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: and over again. Midlife Crisis is such a great song,
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: but it's not what it's not what Epic is.
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: Right, The Angel Dust album was probably the most probably
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: the most influential record to musicians of the early, early
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: and mid nineteen nineties or of the nineties new metal.
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: You could certainly a point straight back to Angel Dust.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: Things go too far because I remember Winger. It's a
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: Winger song where Swinger is rapping, and uh, I think,
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: what's the kiss song where you hear Paul Stanley rap
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: in a bit?
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: You know?
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: I mean because now bands were starting to really pick
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: up on this and then figured we got it, we
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: got to get in on this.
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: Well, that's that's what happens with everything, right, Yeah, people,
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: somebody does it well and then everybody, everybody repeats it
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: until it till everyone's sick of it, and then they
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: go move on to something else.
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: Could it? Could it be? Is a kiss?
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: Is it?
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: The Kiss classic? Read My Body from in the Shade?
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: I think that's where Paul is rapping.
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: And then the the Winger one. I have the cassette
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: still in the heart of the Young album and you
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: hear Kip Winger rapping in one of the songs.
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: You know, it was like remember that, and that's.
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: When you're like, oh yeah, here we go. Now a
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: lot of you know, a lot of these bands are
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: gonna try to do it. And then grunge took over,
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: so you know that that became the thing that steamrolled
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: all those steamrolled all those bands. Now, you did talk
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: about the West Coast Band's body count. I see his
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: band Rage Against the Machine, the Judgment Night soundtracks. Who
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: covered those? I was gonna ask you about that? But
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: Detroit you had you covered Detroit in the book and
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: their influence eminem Kid rock in Saint Clown Posse. And
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: there's a chapter on trip hop, which you say played
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: a crucial role in the global fusion of rock and rap.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: For those who may not know about this one, how
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: would you define trip hop?
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: Trip hop would be like Massive Attack and Pored his
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: Head and groups like that, Tricky the artist Tricky, Yeah,
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: they were. They weren't really rock guys, like they were
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: playing dance music, but they took like the heaviness of
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: rock and the space, the spaciness. I guess you would
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: call it of of these dance groups and uh mix
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: it with hip hop flavor. So that was that was
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: a really important development. That's something that could have only
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: happened in England. But that's the that's when I'm I'm
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: talking about the fusion of rock and rap becoming universal.
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: Hey, guys, thanks so much for checking out the Book
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: Down Rock podcast. If you've just found the podcast, welcome.
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: If you've been listening, thank you so much for your support,
• 54:04
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• 54:07
  Speaker 1: share on social media and let people know about Booked
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: on Rock. And if you do like the podcast, make
• 54:12
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• 54:15
  Speaker 1: listen to the Booked on Rock podcast, We're on Amazon, Apple, iHeart, Spotify, Spreaker,
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  Speaker 1: tune In, and on YouTube music. You can check out
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: the full episodes on video, along with video highlights from
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: episodes on the Booked on Rock YouTube channel. Find it
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: at Booked on Rock. Thanks again for listening. Now back
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: to the show. There's the fusion of jazz and rap.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: His native tongues posse. That genre is that the one
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: with the tribe called Quest and Okay, Dla Soul and
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: those are some great groups that that was a short
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: lived but distinguished rap scene that crossed over to white
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: kids on the rock side. Tell us about the scene
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: and that I miss Who are the other groups.
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: Tribe Cold Quest, Yeah, yeah, you know there's sampling Sweet
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: Jane by Lou Reed and things like that, really thinking
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: outside of the box, black kids from the suburbs. So
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: it was a little bit again it was black and white.
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: It was black and white music, and it's super important,
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: you know, super important in the rise and fall.
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: It managed to confuse radio programmers. Yeah, oh, Tank, you know.
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: I mean especially black black radio programmers.
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a precursor to where we're at now,
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: where everything is streaming, and you know, you got playlists
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: that are all sorts of stuff that are all mixed together.
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: But radio programming, if you wanted to capture the widest net,
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: you had to have some kind of target audience.
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: But this music was kind of the opposite, right, you know,
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: there was there wasn't really a target market because what
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: is the target market. The target market is black and
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: white kids, hip hop and rock and punk and alternative.
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: You know, it's it's kind of hard to nail that down.
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: And that's that's the magic.
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: Which is a great thing. Yeah, it's just yeah, it's
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: a great thing. All rock rap Beck right, nineteen ninety
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: six is album Odlay, huge hit. Yeah, And there's a
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: Beastie Boys connection here because Beck was a big fan
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: of Paul's Fatigue, right.
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: And then there's also the group Luscious Jackson, who literally
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: is part of the the Beastie Boys crew recorded for
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: Grand Royal, their record label. I'm also talking about the
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: band Cake who did also did a lou Reed sample
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: and brought it to the Dam.
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: Going the Distance, great stuff.
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: So that's another twist and turn in the in the
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: rock and rap it's because it's kind of a paradigm.
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: You know, when you're doing rock and rap together, you know,
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: it's it's not supposed to work. Yeah, but when rock
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: met hip hop changed the.
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: World, and we're winding down here and and I feel
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: like I have to defend myself when I say I
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: like Limbiscuit, but I like I like a lot of
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: the stuff, and they're part of the new metal scene.
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: I wrote a lot about new metal in the book.
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, tell me about what do you think of that
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: era Limp Biscuit, Corn, System of a Town.
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: I can't say when it's uh, you know, I can't
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: say I was the biggest lymp Biscuit fan when I
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: started writing this, But I really spent a lot of
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: time listening and trying to be truly objective in all
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: this stuff. And you know, ah, two plus years later,
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: I've I love I already liked Corn, but I like
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: Limp Biscuit, I like System of a Down, I like
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: don't I haven't quite don't really think I like Lincoln Park,
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: but I tried, I've tried.
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: Well, there was over exposure with Limp Biscuit, Fred Durst,
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: I get it. I mean it was a little bit
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: too much for people to take and I think even
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: he realized it. But still there's some there's some musicianship there.
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: There's something really happening with it.
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: And don't forget the DJ is DJ Lethal from House
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: of Pain right right, who's very He's a force to
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: be reckoned with. I mean, he's a hell of a DJ.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: He's really smart, really smart guy. I mean he was
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: the if there was a braids aspect to House of
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: Paid would certainly be him.
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and Method Man is on I know at least
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: one of the songs. I mean, if you're getting respect
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: from Method Man of Wu Tank Lamb is another one
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: of my favorite groups, you're doing something right.
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: And Method Man, doctor dre An exhibit first and foremost.
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's plenty of others, but those guys are
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: all tied into Limp Biscuit or System of a Down.
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: John Otto, Westmorland, Yeah, yeah, that's.
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: Some good stuff. But did it it kind of?
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: I think it takes takes the heat for bringing rap
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: rock to a halt. Where are we at now?
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: I think I don't think it there was a hole.
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: I think there was like a break. I think there
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: was a period where people just bagged on this music
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: for so hard for especially the critics. But you know,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: it's like limp biscuits, like how I would compare it
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: to like heavy metal during the punk years, where it
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: was very disrespected but had its huge fan base.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: And now they're playing to pretty big audiences. I've seen
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: some clips of them playing in stadiums.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's breakdancing, and it's guitars and it's and
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: it's DJ lethal scratching, And I think it's great. I
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: think it's great, and I think the fact that it's
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: still around is a testament to the power of when
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: rock met hip hop. The whole point of this is that, like,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: this is not just a ten year from the early
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: mid eighties to the early mid nineties. This is something
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: that carries on till today. So this is a this
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: is a universe soul theme of music, and it's only
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: for the better racially, musically, psychically, ideologically, it's right there.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: What I love is when you hear younger people say, man,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: I wish I grew up during that period in the
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: nineties or what the eighties too, you know, but you know,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: when the Beastie Boys are out or even early two thousands,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: and you'll get some kid who's just not old enough
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: to remember what it was like, so they are listening
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: to that like you and I would be listening to
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: the Doors or Neplain or skinnered or whatever. You know,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: you're just you know, you weren't around for that time.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: You wish you could be, and so you're just fascinated
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: with it all, and you're listening to the music and
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: you're reading books. Liked it when you wrote, and I
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: think it's important to read this book to get a
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: full understanding of the history of this from the beginning
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: until now, when rock met hip hop, How Run, DMC, Aerosmith, Anthrax,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: the BAC Boys, and more across cultural and musical boundaries.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: The book is out now right.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: You can literal literally the past few days.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, find whoever books are sold and look forward at
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: your nearest bookstore. Bookdown rock dot com. You can find
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: your nearest independent bookstores. You can find a copy there.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: And Steven, where can people find you online?
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: Stephen Blush dot com. I'm on Facebook and uh Instagram.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: The Stephen Blush is Instagram. I don't even know what
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: the Facebook one is, but it's uh. You can find me.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: You can find look for it. Yeah, and I'll I'll
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: talk to anybody I I and anybody who's with has
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: been listening to this, which I consider very cool podcast.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: Thanks Man, So happy to have you back on again.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: There's a couple of years, maybe more since your last time.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: Yep, it's been a while, but I'm always I'm going
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: to keep doing this till they.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: Bury me, so all right, Yeah, and again plug the
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: other two books as part of the series.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: That's the yeah.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is a trilogy. When rock met Disco,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: When Rock met reggae, and now when rock met hip Hop.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: Yes, cool. I'd love to have you back on again
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: to talk about those books. And we had I had
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: you on for your hair metal book and what was
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: the title, American hair Metal? American hair Metal, which we
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: had a lot of fun and people were very surprised
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: to see that you wrote a book on hair metal, right,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: we were talking about that.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of people.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: I know you're known as a hardcore metal guy. Fantastic
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: to have you on, love the book. All the best
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: with that and Steven thinks we'll talk to you.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: In down the road.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: All the best. Thanks Eric. That's it. It's in the box.