The Big Lie

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2:12This episode contains language that may not be suitable for everyone. Well, let's just jump right in and let's just start with you introducing yourself. Oh, God. And it's not a trick, quite. It's like a very simple, just what's your name? You just started off with the hardest question. This is Gavin Bain. But for years, he went by another name. It all started in 1998, on his first day of college in Dundee, Scotland, when he met another student named Billy Boyd. I was running late. I was skateboarding in, and I saw this guy standing outside the campus just nonchalantly. I mean, I'm rushing. This probably sums up both of our personalities.

3:00I'm rushing. I'm thinking, God, you've messed us up already, you know? and he's just standing there. He's got like a bag of jeans on, hair cornrolled, a Hanson T-shirt. I don't know why he's wearing that, but he's just got his headphones on and I kind of skid past him and stop and I'm like, hey, have I got the time wrong? Why aren't you inside? And he's got Nirvana. I can hear that that's blasting. He's got it so loud. And he looks at me and he's like, what do you want? He's so offended that I've interrupted Nirvana. And then I kind of rush off in, and I'm like, oh man, first person I meet looks really cool.

3:40And I just made an enemy out of the first person. But then I get lost. I go into the wrong class. After a while, he managed to find the right classroom. He was 45 minutes late, and the only seat left was next to the guy he'd met out front. And when we were in close range, he was looking at my bag, and I was looking at his bag. and I had Rage Against the Machine, Cypress Hill, Wu-Tang Clan badges on my backpack and he had the same but he had Korn and he had some other metal bands mixed in with Tribe Called Quest so it was like together we covered the entire gamut of the coolest bands in the world at the time and he had Limp Bizkit.

4:23So yeah, we just kind of cracked it off. We started to talk in quotes from kind of rap films from the early 90s. Yeah, we were just, it was just straight in with the flow. And by lunchtime, we were freestyling quietly at first. And then by the end of lunchtime, we had performed our first gig in a way. Everyone was kind of gathered around us and we were rappers. And on the way home, I turned to him and said, hey, do you want to be a rap group? and he was like, absolutely. And that was it. We were a rap group. They practiced all the time, competing with each other to make up the smartest and funniest lyrics they could on the spot.

5:12So we created a game called Porcupine and that was a way for us to battle rap each other, but then also throw each other words and then we'd just start freestyling off the word. And why did you call it Porcupine? Because some people think that's a hard word to rhyme with. But when someone throws a hard word like porcupine, it can make the game funner. But also, we would use it as like that would be the last word to try beat the other person with. You couldn't win the game unless you ended with something to do with a porcupine. They started performing gigs in bars near their college in Dundee. And their friend Oscar joined the group.

5:52Gavin says their main influence was, quote,

5:59Eminem released his major label debut album, the Slim Shady LP, in 1999, not long after Gavin and Billy had met. One reviewer wrote that his lyrics are so clever that he makes murder sound funny. One night, Gavin, Billy, and Oscar stayed out very late, and ended up going back to Gavin's room. Oscar got on the computer. I mean, the internet was kind of early days, so he just randomly found this thing that was on a website called undergroundhiphop.com, and it was just this kind of flyer, this poster for Are You the Next Eminem? And as soon as we saw it, we thought, yeah, of course we are. A record label is holding open auditions in London.

6:49Gavin Billy and Oscar took a 13-hour bus ride there, playing porcupine most of the way. But when they finally got to the audition, the line to get in went around the block twice. It was quite apparent there's just no way we're going to get in, because there's far too many people here. And so what we decided to do was to go and ask if we could battle people for their spot. so knowing like hip-hop people once you get challenged to battle you can't say no if you say no you essentially step aside and let us just take your spot so at first most people would say yes and then we started battling and eventually after you beat like 10, 15, 20 people the seas part you know and by the time we got to the front there was a there were so many people behind us kind of rooting for us like oh my god these guys actually are like Eminem.

7:43So the feeling outside is that these three Scottish kids are just going to walk this. And so our confidence is so high. Well, as soon as we get in and we're going past these dance studios and it starts to become very commercialised and we start to feel like, hmm. You know, so we were kind of shrinking as we got closer and closer and closer. When they got to the audition room, they handed the sound guy their CD. Gavin remembers there were X's on the floor for them to stand on in front of a table with three English talent scouts from the record label A &R's sitting behind it And then we said to press play and the guy presses play but he hasn't turned the volume up so by the time the beat comes in it's already like halfway into the song so we're like no no no please put it back to the start and now we're just like shaking because it's all going wrong so then we start to rap

8:49And as soon as we start to rap, you know, you're hyper aware. The situation, you're so focused on everything. You're looking around the room. And when you're a rapper, you're constantly making eye contact with people because you feed off their, you know, their response. And the three, these A &Rs, were just like kind of looking at each other out the side of their eyes and kind of trying to stop themselves from laughing. And in about like 30 seconds in, 30, 40 seconds into my rap verse, they just kind of put their hand up to the sound guy and said, cool, cool, cool, that's enough. And then they just were kind of like laughing and one of them said, is this a joke?

9:27You know, did Dave put you up to this? And we said, no, this is serious. They said, this is a cool comedy act. but not quite what we're looking for. You know, Scotland is groundskeeper Willie. It's Braveheart. It's Sean Connery. You know, it's drunk ginger people in skirts. Scotland is not rap. We can't sell that. Gavin says they all went straight to a pub after that. And while they were there, they decided to go and try to see someone else before they left London. I just thought they don't get it. So then let's go somewhere to someone who gets it. And there was a guy called Dave Loeb who ran Wordplay and the biggest hip-hop magazine in Europe, Hip-Hop Connection.

10:13So I thought, let's go and see Dave Loeb and we'll ask him. So we go there. It's kind of like this security, you've got to get past a security gate. So we wait for ages. Eventually a guy bringing records comes up the road. He goes in, we sneak in. we get to their office Billy's trying to flirt with the lady on reception to buy his time to get in until he walks past and eventually he walks past and we're like Dave and we kind of just don't want to leave we're like look it's taken a lot to get here we're not leaving until you give us like five minutes so eventually we go into his office and we're like here's our songs let us know what you think and he's like all right you know so he starts playing the cd and he plays the first beat and he's like oh god yeah and you can see he really loves the beat and then as soon as one of us starts rapping he's like nah skips to the next one and then the same thing he's like loves the beat and then skips to the next one as soon as vocals come in and um the third one he loves the beat again as soon as we start rapping pulls the cd out and uh he said don't make me say it And I said, no, say it.

11:24And he's like, you fucking sound like the rapping Proclaimers. And the Proclaimers are great. They're an amazing Scottish group. They sing that classic song, I Will Walk 500 Miles. And they're Scottish heritage, but he's meaning it in a, they're a bit of a joke. You know, like no rapper would ever listen to that, you know. Gavin says that he and Billy didn't say a word to each other. for the whole 13-hour bus ride back home. I kind of was really just trying not to cry. And a part of me was like, they are right, though. You know, I saw that if your job is in marketing, at the time, and hip-hop was all about your credibility, what you've gone through, you know, like, what street you come from, you know, like, the branding of rap in America was so powerful.

12:21and Britain didn't quite have that yet and Scotland definitely didn't have that. So they were right, they can't sell it. So I understood that. But then that left me with the predicament of, well, then we can never do this. When Gavin got back home, he started spending more and more time alone and he wasn't sleeping well. And then one night he was watching TV and a movie came on. A film that I'd seen loads from the 80s called The Secret of My Success. and there's a scene where Michael J. Fox's character, he's trying to get this job, but he's a little small town boy and he's trying to make it in New York City and he's just getting turned down everywhere, you know, because he doesn't fit.

13:04He doesn't fit in their world and he goes into this one office to get changed because he's not wearing the right thing and he's trying to go to this meeting that he's got and in this office, the phone rings and he picks it up and the person says, is that, you know, so-and-so? And he goes, yeah. And he starts to just pretend he is. And he gets so empowered that he can be that person. And I think, like, well, why don't we just become someone else? If being Scottish was the problem, then they'd become Americans. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

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15:47Gavin Bain started recording himself, rapping his lyrics with an American accent, just to see what it sounded like. So the first few times sober that I tried to record myself in the American accent, it didn't sound good, it sounded fake. Like, the way the tongue moves isn't the same as when you switch to another accent. So I was struggling with that, and then I was thinking too much when I was sober. So then I took certain uppers with certain downers to knock myself off center so I could stop being hypercritical about myself and allow myself to flow. And it sounded so good. It sounded real. It sounded like this kid is from California and he sounds like Eminem.

16:33I liked the song so much that I took it to a party. My friend Brian was throwing this big party and he used to throw really cool parties. So he'd have DJs and everyone who was into hip hop in the area would be there. And so I go into the party and I gave our DJ at the time, Skinny, I gave him the CD and I was like, I'll play this, it's a new American rapper I just heard, play this, you know, and he played it right after an Eminem song. And everyone was dancing and loving the Eminem track and then he played that song. And nobody, like no one batted an eye.

17:13They were like, is this the new Eminem track or something? Like, they just thought it was Eminem, or they thought it was an American rapper. And so I'm watching the room, and I look at Billy, and he looks over to me, because he knows they're my lyrics, and he's just, like, mind-blowing. He's like, oh my God, it sounds real. And then Gavin told Billy about his idea to pretend to be Americans. Gavin says that Billy said no But he did want to see what it sounded like And he experimented with recording some of their songs In an American accent A few weeks later, their friend Brian Who had thrown the party where Gavin played the song Died in an accident Gavin and Billy drove to the funeral together On the way there, they listened to the radio and then one of their songs came on with them rapping in American accents.

18:10Gavin says they each thought they were playing a trick on each other but when they got to the funeral Brian's brother told them that before Brian died he'd entered the song into a national radio competition as a surprise and that it had won. We'd beaten every single rock band every single folk act every pop act we won it and the song was getting airplay and Billy finally kind of turned around and said, OK, let's do this for Brian. And so we were on our way. Someone from Sony had heard the song on the radio and had gotten in touch to see if they could meet with Gavin and Billy in person in London in two weeks.

18:53So we had two weeks to perfect the accent. And so we made this agreement that we would speak to each other all the time in American accent. Everything we did, we did an American accent. We would have sex in American accents. Wait, what? Which our girlfriends thought was really fucking annoying. That does seem really bad. I'm surprised they stayed with you. I'm surprised as well. But you only, did you know anything about Americans besides the movies? I mean, what did you think Americans? We were, yeah, no, we were like, we'd just grown up watching American movies. We loved American stand-up comedy.

19:45And we just took a whole bunch of different characters and we mashed them together. Gavin says they wanted to study interviews with American rap stars and skaters, but all they could really get their hands on in time was a DVD of Friends and a few American movies. Gavin started watching Back to the Future over and over again, until he could say Michael J. Fox's lines along with him. He also watched a lot of Good Will Hunting and studied Matt Damon's character. Billy studied Matthew Perry's character in Friends, Chandler. They watched as many episodes as they could. Gavin says they paused it whenever Chandler said something funny and then tried to repeat it.

20:31They came up with new names for their American personas. Gavin Bain became Brains McLeod, and Billy Boyd became Syllable. They called their group Syllable and Brains. They decided they would be from California They picked a city called Hemet where Billy actually had family Billy bleached his hair Gavin tried out a trucker hat They both started wearing more colorful clothes And at the end of the two weeks they got back on the 13-hour bus ride to London The first place they went was Sony Records to meet with Dougie Bruce the scout who had heard their song on the radio. And as soon as he sits down, he's like, Aye, all right, boys, you know, and he's got this broad, Glaswegian accent.

21:22The first person, the first A &R that interviews us is Scottish. We're screwed at that point. Because when someone's Scottish is speaking to someone's Scottish, you start to kind of like, you join, you know? And so we were talking and we were both finding it very difficult not to say Scottish words. And then eventually he said something. He said, I, and Bill went straight back with, I can, which is I know in Scotland. And two Americans would never know to say I can. It's in the way that Bill said it. And as soon as we said that, he looked straight at Billy and then he looked at me and it was like, he knows.

22:04So we felt like everything that we were saying, he was like, where are you boys actually from? and the way he said actually was like he knows this is this is you know we're done here basically and uh when we left that outside of the sony building i grabbed bill and i said this isn't going to work if we're half-assed like we need to be in all in like 24 7 we need to become the characters if this is going to work let's just be the the craziest version of who we want to be turn it all up to 11 and let's just go you know and so as soon as we went to do a show that night we kick in the door you know we start stomping around like we own the place we did this crazy stage show chasing each other around we're vomiting on the front row and then when we came off stage this guy came up to us and he was like uh where are you guys from now earlier in the morning when Dougie Bruce asked us where are you guys from we both answered at the same time because we hadn't even got our story in line we were just so excited that we didn't even you know run through what our story is so in the morning i said huntington and billy said hammett at night um with chris rock at island records billy says huntington and i say at the same time and this guy is just looking at us like cool and he didn't he didn't care and he's like right here's my card.

23:34He slid his card to us and he's like, come and see me on Monday morning. When you say you were like banging and stomping, is that something you thought like Americans did? Like they just kind of take the room? Yeah. Yeah. If you've grown up watching rap music videos, we just basically became like our favorite rappers in those videos, you know. But then in person with people, we would switch to characters from, like, friends, you know? So Bill would play a version of Joey and I would play a version of Ross or Chandler because those are likable characters, you know? So we knew that when we're around people, don't be banging around.

24:18And also those characters are actually closer to our personalities. I mean, it really feels like two opposite ends of the spectrum to be Eminem on stage and Chandler off the stage. I don't really know how those two meld You know, every artist I've ever met has been one person on stage and off stage a completely different person I'd seen loads of interviews with members of Slipknot and members of Korn and all these kind of dangerous kind of rock bands but actually they were like real sweethearts when the masks were off you know Gavin says that on Monday morning after going over their story again he and Billy went to Island Records to meet with Chris the scout who'd given them his card at their show now that we're American he was selling himself to us so it was a big change you know and so he was like tell me everything about you guys and that's a different question from where you're from or what do you do or, you know, that you kind of feel like you're being examined.

25:31So Bill and I just started telling the story, like, look, we're from this kind of cookie-cutter neighbourhood in Hemet. And, you know, we met each other at the San Diego Vans Tour because we had known a lot about that tour, specifically because of the bands that they played. We were really interested in that. We had the DVD about it. So we actually knew some things that happened and we knew that there was a battle rap competition that happened in the parking lot. So then we kind of incorporated that. And I said that, yeah, we met at that, at the San Diego work tour, and then we moved to Huntington Beach, slept on the beach under the pier.

26:09You know, like, this is just, like, versions of Chili Pepper songs now coming out, you know? And then we got this job in this skate store, and then, you know, we became a rap group, came over here, ran out of money, and now you're going to give us a record deal and let the fun continue. And the way it just flowed off the tongue, us cutting each other off. It was like we were rapping. Gavin says Chris seemed to believe the story completely. Gavin remembers that he even told them it was beautiful. And he was like, you've got to do that thing that you did the other night. You know, because basically we had this thing that if anyone heckled us from our audience, we would just like pick that person out and then we would, you know, just tear into that person with freestyles.

26:51so he called all the A &Rs into the main kind of open area and he was like alright do that thing now go and he was basically telling us to go around the room just ripping into everyone and I was like oh my god you know so like this is it and so we just started doing it you know look at this guy in the fake Adidas look at his beard who does he think he is Jesus you know and just move on to the next person eventually we get to Chris everyone's like falling around laughing. We get to Chris and we start making fat jokes and Chris is quite fat. And Chris was not laughing at this point. He started to look furious that the joke had now been turned on him but as all of his staff were in tears laughing and then they realised he wasn't laughing and they all stopped and then he just burst out laughing and we knew that we've got it.

27:43Then we just felt like, God, this is easy. But Gavin says they couldn't just sign with the record company First they needed a lawyer and a manager Chris got them a meeting with one of the biggest music managers in London A man named Jonathan Shallott This guy is the Simon Cowell, the nicer version of Simon Cowell So he just gets straight to the point and he's like, what do you want? And at this point we had no money We had no money left So as soon as he said, what do you need? I don't know why I said it. Maybe it was like a line in another movie. But I said, we don't get out of bed. In an American accent, we don't get out of bed for anything less than 70k.

28:29And Billy looked at me like, what the holy crap, you know? But Jonathan Shalit said okay. And all of a sudden we had 70 ,000. For a couple of days after that, we kept going to the bank machine to see if the money was in. And every day that it wasn't in, we felt like, okay, this isn't really real. And then the day that the money was in, we'd both never seen that amount of money in our bank accounts. And I think that changed something a little bit. Because my head started to be like, hmm, what if, is this a crime? and then Billy was like, is this our money? You know, that didn't stop us from immediately going out and getting blooter drunk and having the best week of our lives getting hammered every single day.

29:30Jonathan Shallott's office helped get them set up in a big apartment and arranged for them to play at showcases around London, trying to see what kinds of offers came in. And it worked. After about three months, they made a deal with Sony. They went into the office to sign the contract. Gavin remembers it was in a big boardroom, with staff there to help them celebrate. There was champagne. And people kept coming up to them to ask them about the stories they'd heard about them. A big part of the story was that we became very close friends with D12 and Eminem. which is quite a stretch. But when you're improvising and acting, the whole point is the same as freestyle, is to make little links and then let them grow and let them grow.