Q&A: Apple recording artist Brute Force

May 9, 2012

His song is the most unusual record in the Apple catalog. But there is more to Brute Force than "King of Fuh," a record a lot of people will hear for the first time when "Come and Get It: The Best of Apple Records" is released in the U.S. on Oct. 25. We questioned him by email.

Q: What's your real name and your background?

Brute Force's recording of "King of Fuh" on the Apple label.

BRUTE FORCE: Generally speaking my background is the Universe, a basic goodness, a shining presence, the eternal ground from which all has come, to describe my physical body, an amalgam of chemicals..My body is a repository of my mind. My mind is an endless entity which is comprised of everything there ever was, is and will be ( what we don't know is there waiting to be discovered). The thoughts in my mind are those which I have been taught. I use the method of reason to deal with events, I behave according to reason and emotion.

 As a life form I have been classified as a human being. I have been taught to believe in the unknown. A thought which guides the belief in the unknown is the thought of God, of Spirit. My heritage is Russian. My father and maternal parents came from Russia. My being is connected with gender, race,religion and political classification, that is I am Jewish and American. But my true background is not really a white American Jewish male, none of it, I am that I am, it i was described in the liner notes of the vinyl album Extemporaneous, " I am universal Being on a Spinning Rock." meanwhile many people, and my fans around the world know me as Brute Force. My "real" name is Stephen Friedland.

Q: How did you get involved with Apple Records? 

BRUTE FORCE: At Monmouth College (now University) circa 1963, I had a girlfriend, Joanna. Joanna eventually met Tommy Dawes who had a band, Cyrkle (Red Rubber Ball). They married. I moved to NYC, forgoing a masters degree in dramatic arts at Emerson College, to write songs in NYC with The Tokens production co.I became a Token. Tommy and Joanna also lived in New York City. The Cyrkle was opening for The Beatles around the time that I produced "King of Fuh" with The Tokens, at Olmstead recording studio. It was a long time in the coming because I wanted to cut "King of Fuh" and the Tokens just thought that it would never get play and so it didn't make sense  It took my constant pitch to do it. So my idea was to get the song to The Beatles and Apple. I gave the track to Tommy who gave it to Nathan Weiss, who managed Cyrkle and was a close friend of Brian Epstein. Weiss played it for George Harrison one day in NYC at his office. George decided to make it a single on Apple.

Q: How did the recording session come about? 

BRUTE FORCE: This is answered above. Basic track which was given to George Harrison: Phil Margo played drums. Mitch Margo played bass guitar. I played  piano and Mellotron. We produced "Nobody Knows," which was a hit for the Chiffons, as the B Side, in a psychedelic genre production.

Q: Were any of the Beatles directly involved? 

BRUTE FORCE: George and John called one day to let me and my wife Cynthia know that I had an Apple record. George also wrote me a letter, color painted, letting me know I had a record on Apple. George  had John Barham score the  mellotron lines in the track for 11 strings of The London Philharmonic. He added a harmonic line.  In a letter, Mal Evans  descibes that the violins were overdubbed with the lyrics muted. After the final take, George played the track back with the lyrics added which elicited much laughter from the musicians. In "The Beatles, The Bible and Bodega Bay," pg 212, author Ken Mansfield who was with Capitol. at the time, describes the meeting with John and Yoko. John wanted Ken to explain why Capitol wouldn't release "King of Fuh" in the USA. John wound up calling Ken a...:"tight assed censor." John was descibed as having..."passion for the project." I never knew that John and Yoko had that meeting until some 30 years later. It seriously affected me to know that John branded Capitol a censor and especially that he, John Lennon, was passionate about the song that this songwriter had written. I have left one of my newer productions at the Dakotas for Yoko, Dunno if she got it or listened. Radical Nationalism..The planet as Nation.  One borderline...the edge of earth.  Available on www.brutesforce.com.

Q: What happened after the song was released?

BRUTE FORCE: Language taboo on the word "f---" won the battle. My job as language taboo terminator had its painful start. Although the song doesn't say that word,  program managers and disk jockeys were still in the Land of Fear not willing to journey into the beautiful Land of Fuh. "King of Fuh" was the poster child for hypocrisy, in that everyone loved it, laughed a lot yet the jocks wouldn't play it. One jock in NYC played it and as I remember the telephone board at the station "lit up like a Christmas tree," We'll see what happens now 41 years later.  However anyone of the millions of unsuspecting souls, beautiful people around the world who have never heard "King of Fuh" before (imagine!)...can download it. They, after all, have now become the DJ with their own iPod. I was living in California. My daughter was born. I showcased myself as a comedian, singing my funny songs. Making up songs extemporaneously as I had done as a young lad at parties.  I waited a few years before creating Brute Force Records, Jeff Cheen who was with Tetragrammaton helped me fund the 45 of "King of Fuh" on Brute Force Records. I think we manufactured 2,000. 

Q: What are you doing now?... 

BRUTE FORCE: A few main things. A day job in the financial services industry. And performing gigs. In early May, I played a mini-tour in UK with the very talented Gareth Jones and his seven-piece band, Misty's Big Adventure backing me. I host a Variety open mic night at The Players in NYC. And now the following projects and opportunities to perform with Daughter of Force (my daughter, Lilah) and the Brute Force de Fault Band have increased dramatically. Apple Records release of "Come and Get It, The Best of Apple," which includes Brute Force/"King of Fuh" scheduled for Oct. 28. The Sony/Bar None reissue of "I, Brute Force, Confection of Love" in October, with five bonus tracks one of them a song in Russian and English. Razor films, Los Angeles, is in production of a documentary on Brute Force. A gig in NYC in October will tie these events together with my 70th birthday.

At this time in my life I need a  national nightime TV shot. Fallon, Letterman, Kimmel, Leno, Conan. I don't know if they honor censored artists, I mean I'm not known for running a Mercedes into a tree or going to rehab, or behaving as an egoist,  or throwing a cell phone, or accidentally saying a socially ostracized word...rather people internationally have gotten to know me through my songs,  I testify to the Supreme Court and the Earth is my witness, the F word is not in "King of Fuh" and the FCC and every department of government need not fear that the population will riot when hearing the song, as played by radio stations, especially as downloaded by sentient human beings, but double especially when performed by Brute Force on national nightime TV.

It can help turn the key and unleash the King of Fuh to bring his fun throughout the world, to finally be recognized after some 41 years now... and hopefully to extricate me from death by existential suffocation in the corporate world, and to place my picture on the cover of Big Magazines, or to shoot my brief sidewalk encounter on TMZ as the real American King, the King of Fuh; or to be that mild mannerd reporter earnestly seeking to hold back over four decades of anger fueled by a music biz moguls ripping a 28 yr old singer/songwriter from international music biz celebrity, and censoring his art and craft. Release the Kraaken!! If love is blind, the Universe is Braille.  Your servant, Brute Force.www.brutesforce.com

 A follow-up note from Brute Force: 

 BRUTE FORCE: Nov 4, 2010 at Secret Robot Project in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Brute Force, Daughter of Force and Band perform. BF is now 70. Heart pressure medications turn one's penis into a wet noodle. Your servant, Brute Force. If my music is Timeless, where can I find a bar?