So… early 1986. We all go to London.

Def Jam signed a distribution deal with CBS UK, and there’s gonna be a big party to launch this “hot” new rap record label into the United Kingdom.

So me, Adam, Mike, Rick, Russell, and another Def Jam recording artist, LL Cool J, fly to the UK to make it happen.

Driving from the airport into London takes, like, a long-ass time. (Like in that Jam song London Traffic.) But seeing the city for the first time is so fucking cool. Actual fish-and-chips places. Just like you thought there’d be.

Tons of curry houses. Big British taxis. Tiny winding streets. (You guys, there really is an actual Electric Avenue in Brixton.) We finally get to the hotel and have nothing to do for a while, so we go out. Walk around. Do what people do. Get snacks. But since we’re away from home, we get a ton of “local” snacks.

We figured the right thing to do was order a fish entree, break into Rick Rubin’s room, and slip it under his sheets

You know how you do that when you’re somewhere else? Like, I should probably get all four different bags of potato chips ’cause they don’t have those styles back home.

It actually worked out this time because I got fuckin’ chicken tikka masala-flavoured chips. Back home, we’d call the place we got the snacks from either the deli or the bodega.

Here, it’s called… “the shops”. Gonna go ’round to the shops. Pop down to the shops. Cornershop. Everyone’s got a cool British accent. Like on Monty Python or The Young Ones. We’re spending pounds and pence. The shop people are a little rude to you ’cause they can tell you’re American. But that’s kinda how you want them to be.

One of the snacks we got was something called a scotch egg. I don’t know if you know what a scotch egg is, but as we learned, it’s a hard-boiled egg, wrapped in sausage meat, breaded, then fried. Looking out the hotel-room window we see a British gentleman right out of central casting walking down the street. Maybe, like, 60 years old. Wearing a nice black suit and a bowlerish-style black hat. A proper gentleman. So, of course, the first thing that comes to your mind is… I wonder if… from up here… can I hit that guy with this scotch egg? I mean, throwing a bag of chips (sorry, crisps) out a fifth-floor window at someone doesn’t make sense. It’d take a while to get down there… it’s an odd object to throw, and obviously, the wind would be a factor. But a scotch egg is perfect. Kids, I’m neither encouraging nor condoning this behaviour, I’m just letting you know what happened on our trip to England.

We’re in London for a few days to “work”. Do some interviews, meet the people at the UK record label, etc. But that was daytime. At night we were on our own. Our friend from New York, photographer Josh Cheuse, was friends with Mick Jones from the Clash. He worked with them a little bit and hooked it up for us to go hang out with him one night. AT HIS FUCKIN’ HOUSE! I’d like to preface this by letting you know that this was one of my favourite nights. Ever. It was one of those times where you can’t believe this is actually happening to you. (But in a really good way.)

So, we go to Mick Jones’s house. He lived in a normal house, not the kind you’d think one of the Clash would live in. It wasn’t a dark and depressing tiny British house like in Quadrophenia. His house was grown-up and fancy. Three or four floors. Nice furniture.

Paintings and shit. And by the way, he is one of the nicest people in the world. We meet, hang out, have a little tea, a couple beers, and then he shows us his studio in the basement. Not a practice space, but a nice little studio, with all kinds of equipment. While Mick Jones is showing us a guitar of his, Yauch asks him to play Clash City Rockers. I don’t know what possessed him to do that but, I mean, fuck yeah, I wanted that to happen. He kind of laughed and said that he forgot how to play it, and so Yauch took the guitar and taught Mick Jones how to play the song. Yes! Mick Jones from the fucking Clash. To quote my friend Bridget… “Story doesn’t end there.” Oh wait… Someone’s at the door. Yup. It’s Joe fucking Strummer! Our new close friend Mick Jones had said some people were coming over; and maybe we could have some beers, hang out, and go see a movie. We could’ve either gone back to the hotel to eat, then sleep, or done this. Tough call. Now Joe Strummer’s here and we’re all drinking Red Stripe Crucial Brews, which are delicious, and the doorbell rings again…

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A 1986 press conference en route to London from Montreux, Switzerland. left to right: Mike D, DJ Hurricane, MCA and Ad-Rock. Photograph: Andre Csillag/Rex/Shutterstock

It’s fucking Johnny fucking Rotten! He’s with this cool-ass German lady (who was the mom of Ari Up from the Slits) and we are now officially drunk, and freaking out. In Mick Jones’s living room. We’re getting ready to go see a movie, and one more person shows up on our way out. Take a guess… could be any-fuckin’-body, right? It is one of the coolest people in the world. Ever. Paul Simonon.

Oh… the movie we’re about to go see is called Re-Animator. (A great movie. Not quite on par with TerrorVision, but still a fine, fine film.) Now…

Picture yourself with your two best friends… real tipsy. Driving around the streets of London at night in two cabs with, basically, the fucking Clash and Johnny Rotten. Stopping at red lights, laughing, screaming, and throwing things at each other out the windows. I mean… just a few years ago, these people made music that changed our lives. We absolutely and totally fucking love them. And now we’re getting drunk with them and we’re on our way to go see a slasher movie together. IN LONDON!!!

We were getting our incidentals paid for by the record label, which means free room service. (Obviously nothing is free. We’d soon learn that. “Wait… they said that the flights and hotels were paid for… You mean they’re gonna just charge it back to us later…?”) So one night we have some people over to our hotel, and order a ton of food and drinks. By now it’s really late so we figured the right thing to do before going to bed was to order a fish entree and some salad, break into Rick Rubin’s room, and slip it all under his sheets while he’s sleeping. I can’t remember for sure, but I think we put a big plant or small tree on Russell Simmons while he was sleeping too. I don’t know if it still works but… if you know what hotel room someone’s staying in, you can go down to the front desk, looking really sleepy and out of it, and tell them that you’re that person in room whatever and you somehow locked yourself out of the room and can you please have an extra key to let yourself back in. This was something we made a steady practice of.

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So now we’ve thrown all kinds of snacks at British pedestrians, had a big party, broken into other guests’ rooms, and well… the long and short of it is… we found out the next morning that we were banned for life from the wonderful chain of Hilton hotels. We had to move on. No big deal.

There’s plenty of other places to stay in London.

I feel like I’m telling you all about a vacation I went on, but it felt just like that. Every day of this London trip something amazing and memorable happened. We met a ton of new people and hung out with some of the great ones.

Like Don Letts. For some reason he likes us and gives us some dancehall reggae mixtapes that changed the way we thought about making music. Through another New York friend, Peter Dougherty, we go to a recording studio to hang out with this little-known band maybe you’ve heard of called Madness. We were so overwhelmed and excited and jet-lagged and drunk from drinking snakebites and black-and-tans in the studio that me, Adam and Mike passed out asleep on a couch in the corner of the recording studio. I think all the stimulation of the past few days got to us and we just shut down.

Everything on the trip led up to the big launch party for Def Jam. The party ended up being like the finale of a movie when everything gets wrapped up all neatly. Everyone we met that week was there. Even Paul Simonon. Our performance that night was awful, but for us it was as fun as cannonballing into a swimming pool. London is awesome.