I’ll let Chuck D finish the tale: “London wasn’t into soft music. They wanted their music rock hard.”
I’ll let Chuck D finish the tale: “London wasn’t into soft music. They wanted their music rock hard.”
A long-standing London musical conundrum was solved for me this week and not before time. Admittedly it wasn’t something I dwelt on every day but during quieter moments, I’d often wondered why Public Enemy had used an unlikely recording of Dave Pearce introducing the group at the Hammersmith Odeon to open classic 1988 album "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back."
Last week I’d finally got round to reading "Fight the Power", written by Public Enemy’s powerhouse, Chuck D, after years of having it in an ever growing "to read" pile. And there it was staring me right in the face on pages 92 – 94. Apparently the album had taken off in London before the US cottoned on and PE’s first London performance at the Odeon during the Def Jam tour was especially memorable for Chuck D, Flavor Flav and the boys. Despite being third on the bill behind LL Cool J and Eric B and Rakim, Chuck D himself remembers "that first night in London, England, was the hottest we ever left the stage. That stage was like nitroglycerin."
Discerning London rap fans (unfortunately I wasn’t amongst their number – I was still living at home two hundred miles away in a crap small town in the Midlands) immediately made PE’s album a big seller and had recognised that here was a group which was going to treat them to something they hadn’t experienced before, whether they liked it or not.
It would seem odd that London would recognise Public Enemy before their hip-hop savvy home-boys in New York, but I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. London has a long tradition of welcoming US artists, often before they have hit the big-time back across the Atlantic. The most famous example must be Jimi Hendrix, who had played and toured in the States for years before being invited to swinging London, and the rest, as they say, is rock history. OK, he started playing small venues (the Toucan pub just off Soho Square is a great place to go for a pint of Guinness and also has a plaque on the wall commemorating one of Hendrix’s first London gigs) but the musical cognoscenti soon picked up on him and pushed him on his way to super stardom. More recently, London and the UK took an early shine to American bands such as The Strokes, The White Stripes and the Kings of Leon.
It’s an odd but readable book – part autobiography including the story of Public Enemy, touring with U2 and Chuck D’s travels to Africa and beyond, part comment on the hip-hop world, part sociological text, part polemic and part history lesson, amongst other things. All mixed together leaving you pausing for breath – pretty much the literary equivalent of a Public Enemy album, really.
Unwittingly Chuck D also relates a London anecdote which made me smile. At the time, LL Cool J had taken to lying on a couch on stage to perform "I Need Love", a much slower jam than LL’s previous records which combined power, pace and lyrical gymnastics to stamp his place in the Rap history books. Apparently the London crowds started a trend of throwing money at him, in a move which could well sum up the essential differences between the US and Europe when it comes to capitalism and money.
When young hip-hops fans wanted to demonstrate their respect and appreciation, they threw dollars bills at Kraftwerk during a US gig in the late 70s. British fans used their hard earned cash, not as a mark of respect, but to treat LL to a full-on, football terrace fifty pence barrage, accompanied by resounding boos. LL eventually abandoned his European tour and flew back to Queens. I’ll let Chuck D finish the tale: "London wasn’t into soft music. They wanted their music rock hard."
Reading the book took me back to when I first heard Public Enemy’s "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back" as a teenager. It still counts as one of my all-time favourite records. Playing it again shows it still retains an edge which time doesn’t seem to have blunted.
I had already bought Public Enemy’s debut album "Yo! Bum Rush the Show" but was only impressed by the odd track. When "It Takes a Nation…" dropped, it looked and sounded like nothing else we’d ever heard before. Just look at that cover – Chuck D behind bars looking like the meanest mother ever. Lyrically they were clearly angry but also switched on, displaying a level of political consciousness (and delivering it so forcefully) which made them stand miles apart.
Musically it pushed hip-hop to beyond any previous experience featuring a willingness to experiment and blending funk, rock, samples of God knows what and big hip-hop beats with polemic rhymes. The music seemed chaotic and hard but retained a funkiness which made them addictive. "Rebel Without a Pause" has a looped sample which sounds like a fire siren being played backwards and made the hair on my neck stand up. Want to hear where Madonna nicked the beat for "Justify My Love"? – it’s all on there.
The avant-garde recording techniques which production team, The Bomb Squad, pioneered, were apparently an influence on Thom Yorke and co, when Radiohead looked to completely change direction with the Kid A/Amnesiac sessions.
As a young, fairly affluent, white boy from near Coventry, I couldn’t identify with all of the album’s themes but recognised that here was a group which wasn’t messing around. They clearly wanted to push people out of their comfort zones, in a way that was really exciting. The DJ’s name was Terminator X, for Christsakes. Printed on the inside sleeve was the slogan "Freedom is a road seldom travelled by the multitude" and the credits featured Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan and Jesse Jackson. Public Enemy seemed to land from another planet with a fully fledged, socially aware and relentless philosophy, all delivered with Chuck D’s powerful and thought provoking rapping.
Radical and revolutionary politics, especially covering racial relations in such a hard hitting way, wasn’t big on the agenda of other bands I liked at the time – The Smiths, The Cure, The Jesus & Mary Chains et al. I had a penchant for obscure fey indie guitar bands (which now get lumped together on Rough Trade compilations) – they never made singles with titles such as "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos." The Shop Assistants or the Flatmates never once told us to "Fight the Power." More’s the pity, I suppose.
Of course it was the jewel in the crown during what was purple patch for hip hop – although nobody knew it at the time. Now aficionados even call the period from 1986 to early 1990s, Hip Hop’s Golden Age. At the time it seemed like acts like Public Enemy, EPMD, Run DMC, LL Cool J, JVC Force, Stetasonic, Jungle Brothers, Boogie Down Productions, Eric B and Rakim, Ultra Magnetic MCs etc etc etc would keep moving hip hop forward forever. As it turned out, hip hop eventually hit a down-turn and some argue it was only revived by the Wu Tang Clan in the mid 1990s before starting its meteoric rise to become the 21st Century’s most popular musical genre.
Me personally, I started to drift away from hip hop around this time as I was attracted to the lustre of Mancs with floppy hair-cuts, bad skin and baggy jeans, but that’s another story…
Words: John Cottrill.