Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid may be primarily known as a rock and roll guy. But when asked which artist he’s most excited about being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year, he doesn’t hesitate to name fellow New Yorkers Public Enemy. “They changed the game,” he tells Radio.com.
In his own small way, Reid assisted them on their game-changing journey; prior to Living Colour’s breakthrough with Vivid, he contributed guitar to the song “Sophisticated Bitch,” on Public Enemy’s landmark 1987 debut, Yo! Bum Rush the Show. Recalls Reid, “One of the producers on the record, Bill Stephney, had been following me from my playing with [Ronald Shannon Jackson’s] Decoding Society. I had also been writing for the Village Voice and doing the Black Rock Coalition. And Living Colour was beginning to make waves. And he was like, ‘Yo man, I’ve got this band I’m working with and I was thinking you’d be great for them…’ ”
When Reid entered Manhattan’s Chung King House of Metal studio to record his parts on “Sophisticated Bitch,” it was also the first time he met Chuck D and Flavor Flav. “The session was quick,” Reid says. “I played two parts and then a solo. I went through each one pretty much one time. And we hit it off. Flav was a funny guy. Right after I finished the take Flav said, [adopts Flavor Flav voice] ‘Yeah man, that was dope! You know, the guys on my block that don’t like rock can suck my jock!’ [laughs] That’s a verbatim quote.”
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Though the song is now more than a quarter century old, “Sophisticated Bitch” achieved a new life more recently when it was incorporated into a scene in Jackass, during which Johnny Knoxville and crew are transformed into a group of senior citizens. “That was a weird thing,” Reid says with a laugh. “They wound up using almost the entire song. And I’m watching it and Johnny Knoxville just has this weird old man mask on, and he’s staring into the camera as the track is playing. And I’m just like, What?”
In addition to playing on “Sophisticated Bitch” (PE later returned the favor by guesting on Living Colour’s “Funny Vibe”), Reid also recalls attending what he believes was the first ever Public Enemy show, at now defunct Manhattan club The World. But, he says, “It was a near complete disaster. Because hip-hop as a live music was very challenged. They would play a track and then Chuck would go into almost like a lecture. He would talk about the CIA, very heady stuff. And I remember Flav would be going ‘Yo Chuck! We’re losing the people!’ But then they became one of the greatest live acts.”
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As well as, Reid says, one of the greatest hip-hop acts. “I knew they were enormously talented, right from the start. So when I was asked to play on Yo! Bum Rush the Show, I was in. And then they took that genius leap between Yo! and [1988’s] It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. That represents the moment where hip-hop stopped being a novelty music. You could argue that Eric B. and Rakim did that. But for me, It Takes a Nation was it.”
– Richard Bienstock, Radio.com
