{"id":1367,"date":"2017-06-04T04:19:14","date_gmt":"2017-06-04T04:19:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dailykemp.com\/?p=1367"},"modified":"2021-11-25T17:37:12","modified_gmt":"2021-11-25T17:37:12","slug":"hank-shocklee-the-bomb-behind-public-enemys-squad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailykemp.com\/2017\/06\/04\/hank-shocklee-the-bomb-behind-public-enemys-squad\/","title":{"rendered":"Hank Shocklee: The Bomb Behind Public Enemy’s Squad"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In 1991, when I interviewed Hank Shocklee — the Bomb Squad production crew member who Chuck D once called the “Phil Spector of hip-hop” — the dazzling art of digitial sampling had reached a legal impasse. Shocklee, along with his brother Keith \u00a0and Eric Sadler, was one of the architects of the dense and chaotic clashes of found sounds, sirens, subway screeches, blasts of R&B horns, free-jazz squawks, and shards of rock guitar on such early Public Enemy classics as Yo! Bum Rush the Show<\/a> and It Takes a Nation of\u00a0Millions to Hold Us Back<\/a>. At the time of our interview for <\/em>Option magazine, the wide-open creativity in hip-hop was being challenged in the courts, and Shocklee was worried about the future of the musical artform he not only helped pioneer but that he loved deeply.<\/em><\/p>\n

Turntable Terrorist<\/h1>\n

By Mark Kemp, <\/em>Option, May 1991<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

When New York hip-hop filtered down from Harlem and the Bronx into the suburbs of Long Island around the turn of the last decade, a young posse of b-boys took the inner-city hype and breathed into it a new kind of noise. It was an angry, rebellious suburban noise, not unlike the noise of the post-punk rock bands over on another coast, like Black Flag or Minutemen.<\/p>\n

Hank Shocklee was one of the key architects of that noise. Along with his brother, Keith, a college friend named Carlton Ridenhour, now better known as Chuck D, and studio wiz-kid Eric Sadler, Shocklee formed a production team called the Bomb Squad, a rap group called Public Enemy, and introduced a sonic boom to hip-hop that would give pop music its loudest jar since the Sex Pistols. It was a sound that would forever change the way records are made.<\/p>\n

Today, Public Enemy are hip-hop heroes, regarded by a new rock underground much the same as mega-rock bands like the Who and Zeppelin were regarded a generation earlier. “We’ve always been pretty much rock’n’roll kind of guys,” says Shocklee at the offices of S.O.U.L. Records, a label he co-founded last August along with his longtime partner and former Def Jam executive, Bill Stephney. Shocklee, sitting behind a conference room table, a gray Pistons cap pushed so far back on his head you can see the slightly Asian-like features of his eyes. His feet are hiked up on the table, and his arms are crossed.<\/p>\n

“We always liked the way rock’n’roll built up its heroes,” he continues. “You know what I mean? Like Iron Maiden \u2013 they’re cult heroes. The way the whole concept is built around that huge mummified figure…that’s incredible.”<\/p>\n

\"Hank1\"<\/a>Maybe so, Hank. But Shocklee’s style has always been more early Zappa, particularly in the studio, than Iron Maiden; more punk attitude with an avant-garde aesthetic than heavy metal. Oh, sure, the theatrics are metal, but the sound is much, much more. If Run-DMC is rap’s Aerosmith, then Public Enemy is its Sonic Youth.<\/p>\n

“What you’re calling the ‘signature Shocklee sound’ is something we developed over years,” he tells me. “We were doing stuff in the nightclubs back in the early ’80s that no one was doing: mixing sets, calculating the moods of our audiences. We’d go from reggae beats to soul to disco to slammin’ punk rock; then we’d hit them with the sound effects and lights and everything, and then bring the mood back to the floor. And then, all of a sudden, out of all the buzz and dramatic stuff, you’d hear, like BLIP-BLIP-BLIP \u2013 WHOOOMMMP!…and we’d be…” He jerks forward, slams his hand down onto the table, and then: “Right smack into our crazy hip-hop set!” Shocklee leans back again, relaxes, and then says very quietly: “And all of this was long before Yo! Bum Rush The Show<\/em> ever saw the light of day.”<\/p>\n

For the most part, Shocklee seems relatively serene at the moment; it wasn’t like that a few moments ago. He was animated, his hands were motioning wildly; he was speaking loudly and sharply to someone on the phone about the cover design for the S.O.U.L. debut by Young Black Teenagers, a rap group Shocklee and Stephney have been pushing with gusto. His personality shifts like Public Enemy’s mix, there’s moments of calm in a storm of chaos. He’ll be shy, then funny, then dramatic and outspoken. Shocklee shrugs his shoulders as if it’s all just routine biz.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cWhat you\u2019re calling the \u2018signature Shocklee sound\u2019 is something we developed over years. We were doing stuff in the nightclubs back in the early \u201980s that no one was doing.” — Hank Shocklee<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

The offices of S.O.U.L. have been a whirlwind today. In the main room, a few dozen crates of CDs and cassettes, some tables and chairs, and lots of paperwork litter the floor, reflecting the ambience. Busy-bees diligently package up the music goods and answer the telephones. Lots of telephones. Which may be another reason for Shocklee’s fluctuating anxiety. Ooops. Looks like it’s happening again. He glares up at an assistant who, for the fifth time in about ten minutes, has appeared in the doorway with a telephone in her hand.<\/p>\n

“Hold all calls,” he instructs her. “I don’t want to hear from you. I don’t want to hear from anybody. I’m in an interview.”<\/p>\n

Hank Shocklee is mindful of the interview process; he knows well the potential havoc an interview can wreak on one’s career. For four years, he’s been at the helm of Public Enemy’s Bomb Squad through thick and thin. Ever since the shit hit the fan in 1989 over anti-Semitic remarks made by PE’s then-Minister of Information, Professor Griff, Shocklee and the rest of the PE posse have approached the press with caution. Yet he also knows the importance of marketing, imaging, publicity \u2013 the keys to commercial and artistic success in the ’90s, according to the 29-year-old artist and entrepreneur. Interviews are a necessary annoyance. Besides, controversy itself \u2013 in its more benign forms \u2013 is good for business.<\/p>\n

Take the Young Black Teenagers. They’re actually white. A white New York City rap group that is already causing something of a stir among the hip-hop lot with their single, ‘Proud To Be Black,, and with their black-is-an-attitude-not-a-skin-color creed. Most recently, YBT and the Bomb Squad have been riding Madonna in the press for lifting PE’s ‘Security of the First World’ for ‘Justify My Love’, and not crediting PE (is this irony or what?). YBT also wrote a song honoring the Material Girl, called ‘To My Donna’. Shocklee, unlike his ’60s counterpart Phil Spector, is as much a marketing genius as he is the architect of a radical new urban pop music sound. “I try to treat every artist I work with individually,” he says. “From the sound right down to the image. Not every artist should get the treatment Chuck D gets; it just wouldn’t work \u2013 it couldn’t work.<\/p>\n

“On the Teenagers’ record the production is a lot simpler; there’s less going on in the mix, a little bit more harmony in there,” Shocklee says. “It involved taking this particular group and \u2013 gosh, how am I going to say this? \u2013 you know, because they’re white, trying to get the sound across much easier to the audience.” The restraint in that comment is as radical for Shocklee as the lack of restraint he uses in Public Enemy’s mega-mix.<\/p>\n

\"PublicE_YoBumRu_CoverAr_1500DPI300CMYK1000181782_1024x1024\"<\/a>When Yo! Bum Rush the Show<\/em> hit the record bins in 1987, there was no turning back for hip-hop. Public Enemy had cemented the relatively new aesthetic of sampling and layering techniques into America’s larger pop music consciousness. In the studio, the Bomb Squad took a no-holds-barred approach to noise. While others had been experimenting studiously with the technology for a few years \u2013 only a year before the record came out, Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys had taken the technology into the mainstream \u2013 it was PE that brought the form to its creative apex. The Bomb Squad created a constantly erupting and grating sound that gave PE the single most distinctive sound in rap. But it took them years to get it down on a widely distributed record.<\/p>\n

“At first we was like…we’d always thought you had to be musicians to make records,” Shocklee says. “We weren’t musicians, we were just a bunch of DJs. We were just sampling stuff; taking a beat, pausing it up and doing a rap over it. This was still at a time when most of the other rap records were using a lot of live instruments: Kurtis Blow, the Sugarhill Gang, even Run-DMC would use bass or keyboards or lead guitar \u2013 something live. We were doing stuff without any live shit.” (Until the debut album, that is, on which Vernon Reid contributed quite a bit of lead guitar.) “When we got the choruses there would be nothing but scratching. It would be (he mimics Chuck D’s voice and the sound of Terminator X doing turntable maneuvers): ‘Yo \u2013 I’m bad! (pause) Beehhnnh-Behhnnh…chicka-chicka-chicka…Beehhnnh-Behhnnh…chicka-chicka…’ That was our chorus \u2013 absolutely no instruments…none! It’s the only way we could do our music on the radio show we had on WBAU. Even for sampling effects, we’d just have Chuck repeating his vocals. He would go something like: ‘Public Enemy Number One…One-One-One…One…”<\/a> because we didn’t have any sampling machines at that time.”<\/p>\n

THERE ARE SECRETS IN AIR.<\/strong> It’s a few hours later, and Shocklee and I are walking away from the Greene Street Studios in SoHo, where two of the most important records of last year \u2013 PE’s Fear of a Black Planet<\/em> and Sonic Youth’s Goo<\/em> \u2013 were recorded. Shocklee stops and spins around on the sidewalk. It’s the fourth time he’s done this routine since we first started leaving the place half an hour ago.<\/p>\n

“Yo, Chuck!” he calls back to a friend he had come to see who’s now walking in the opposite direction. I half expect him to follow with a cool, “We gonna pull a power move on ’em!” \u2013 but that’s Flavor’s line.<\/p>\n

The Chuck in question is, of course, Chuck D, the man behind the deep voice that rumbles with authoritarian fervor such anti-authoritarian lines as, “Teach the bourgeoisie and rock the boulevard.” Shocklee continues: “Don’t forget what I told you, OK?” Chuck \u2013 who’s actually quite shy in the flesh \u2013 doubles over laughing, barely catching his Raiders cap before it slips off his head toward a puddle of rainwater. Shocklee mimics the move. It’s the fourth variation on that<\/em> routine, too, and I’m completely in the dark. I think they like it that way.<\/p>\n

Shocklee and Ridenhour met at Adelphi University in the early ’80s, when hip-hop was still a Harlem and Bronx thing. Shocklee was organizing parties at the time, and Ridenhour was a graphic design student. Shocklee enlisted Ridenhour to help him visually promote his shows. Meanwhile, Bill Stephney was the program director at the campus radio station, WBAU, and was known as a huge champion of hip hop. Stephney had heard of Shocklee and wanted him to do a show on the station \u2013 a three-hour show featuring nothing but hip-hop.<\/p>\n

\"BombSquadBackIntheDay\"<\/a>
The Bomb Squad: “That was the beginning of Public Enemy.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“That was the beginning of Public Enemy,” says Shocklee. “The radio station was pretty much the focal point of how we all got together. Bill had this slot and asked us if we wanted to help him work on it. So we did. But we had to make master mixes of the local rap records, as well as our own demos of other rap groups in the community, because there just wasn’t enough rap records being made at the time to support a three-hour show. This was…I’d say, around ’82 or ’83. I mean, there were rap records out there, but not enough to sustain that much time. So we made these master mixes and that was where we developed our sound.”<\/p>\n

When Shocklee talks about this development, he gets excited; his brain gets ahead of his words, often causing his sentences to bounce into each other. “We…uh, we-we-we…we were like mixing records and MCing at the same time on what we called the ‘Super Spectrum\u00a0Mix Show.’ It’s like, it’s like…you know, it’s like, we’d mix the records right there, live on the air, do the MCing and do master mixes of the songs \u2013 ALL AT THE SAME TIME! Man, we were doing some innovative stuff back then.<\/p>\n\n\n

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“We’d mix the records right there, live on the air, do the MCing and do master mixes of the songs \u2013 ALL AT THE SAME TIME! Man, we were doing some innovative stuff back then.” — Hank Shocklee<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

“And then we discovered multi-track recording. It’s, you know, it’s…when you’re doing disco DJing or whatever, you have two turntables and they’re going into one or two tracks. So that would be one set \u2013 BOOM! Then we would take a four-track and do it again \u2013 BOOM!” Shocklee is now shouting, his voice rhythmic and emphatic: “We would take that FOUR-track machine and do it aGAIN! So, now you have four turntable sounds going at once and what you’re hearing is all these strange sounds; like, a record would be coming in for a second and then it’d go out. It was just so chaotic, so wild; that’s how we developed the idea \u2013 the concept \u2013 for the multi-layering that you hear on Public Enemy’s records.”<\/p>\n

The Bomb Squad isn’t just Shocklee. Each member is as essential to the sound as the other. “You talk to Chuck or Keith or me and we know our records backwards and forward. We’re record librarians. And Chuck and I are arrangement fanatics, too; we know arrangements, concepts, songs, ideas, beats. So we put that together and say, ‘This is what we wanna do.’ Then there’s Sadler. Eric Sadler knows the machinery. He was in a band, so he has a musician’s head. He’d say, ‘Yeah, we can go do this, but we can’t go that far out. Give it at least some kind of musical structure.’ Then once we knew what we wanted, we put together songs, which is ultimately what you want to do, right?<\/p>\n

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Listen to Hank’s brother Keith Shocklee reminisce about the days of their ungodly creativity:<\/strong>