In 1992, Fishbone's star was in the ascendant. Their album The Reality of My Surroundings featured Fight The Youth, Everyday Sunshine and Sunless Saturday, which coupled with their breathless, energetic live shows, earned them coveted spots on Saturday Night Live and The Arsenio Hall Show. Their third album was a commercial success and everything was theirs for the taking come album four.
But as the band were nearing completion of 1993's Give a Monkey a Brain and He'll Swear He's the Center of the Universe at Los Angeles' One on One studios, guitarist Kendall Jones' bandmates began to notice a rapid change in his demeanour.
After his mother died of cancer a few years previously, his bandmates had already began to feel concern for his welfare and mental state.
He decided that he wanted to marry his girlfriend Anna while they were making their fourth album, but his drinking habit was becoming a big problem and his proposal was declined. In the excellent 2010 documentary, Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone, Chris Dowd recalls that particular evening.
"I’d been concerned about Kendall emotionally since his mother died," said Chris. "He really had no sense of family, and felt like desperate. He called me up that night, basically inconsolable, you know?"
According to founding member Norwood Fisher, the guitarist went into a deep depression during the sessions and eventually made peace with his estranged father, who lived in Northern California. This reconciliation concerned his bandmates, who'd known him since he was a child.
"He hated his dad," explained trumpet player 'Dirty' Walter A. Kibby II. "That was what he used to always tell us. He didn’t like his dad. His dad was a religious freak. He was a nut."
Norwood saw a rapid change in Kendall's personality during the daily studio sessions, and would learn of his excessively long telephone conversations, day-long prayers and fasting which would last a week.
"He came to the studio [and said] ‘I was on the phone to my father for 9 hours’," revealed Norwood. "The day after that, ‘I was on the phone with my dad for 14 hours’.
"By day three, I’m like ‘Oh, he’s brainwashing Kendall’."
Kendall told his bandmates that there were spirits coming out of the speakers and that they were all influenced by demons.
At a meeting with their record label Sony, the guitarist went on a "tirade" about how their fish skeleton symbol was demonic and represented death.
He went bug wild, chasing the devil through the walls of his apartment.
Norwood Fisher
"You could just see the looks shoot across people’s faces, eyes, ‘This motherfucker is losing it’," said Chris.
He told his girlfriend about demons who'd come to kill him: the band's singer Angelo Moore and bassist Norwood.
"Angelo was fucking elated because it was like, finally, he wasn't the crazy person," laughs Chris.
"He went berserk, man," Norwood told Montreal Mirror in 1998. "He went bug wild, chasing the devil through the walls of his apartment. He was seeing the devil in everything. To him, his whole life had been in service to Satan, in some subliminal fashion."
The guitarist, who'd symbolically shaved his head, left Los Angeles to travel 400 miles north to be baptised by his father in Novato.
"For lack of a better way to explain it, he was in a cult that his dad ran, with all these women living there that his dad was married to and telling him it’s the end of the world," Anna explained.
Norwood contacted a psychiatric evaluation team to get advice on how to rescue their friend. The answer was to stage an adult intervention, or in layman's terms, "take his ass forcibly to the psychiatric ward".
On April 28, 1993 – just a few weeks before the release of the album – Norwood, Kendall's girfriend Anna, Kendall's brothers Brian and Larren and a friend named Jeffery, got into a van and drove to where the guitarist was staying.
The intervention did not run smoothly and Kendall, despite being gaunt and significantly outnumbered, "fought like a bull".
“I had him in a choke hold and I had him good," said Norwood. "There was nothing he could do."
But he refused to give up, and his brothers said to let him go and reluctantly returned back to Los Angeles without their guitarist and friend.
The five who attempted to bring Kendall back later faced court. Norwood himself faced a charge of attempted kidnapping and assault, facing up to 11 years in jail.
During the court case, Norwood's defense attorney Kim Kruglick told the judge, "The individuals who came here tried to help a friend. A brother. A lover. Not because of criminal conduct.”
"I remember showing the judges our videos of Everyday Sunshine and Party at Ground Zero, how everybody in the band loved each other," recalled Angelo. "[It] was a brotherhood, and you know, there’s no way that Norwood’s intentions were to hurt Kendall."
After taking two and a half hours to deliberate, the jury decided they were not guilty on all charges.
"You know what got us the full acquittal in the courtroom, though?" Norwood asked Montreal Mirror in 1998. "Kendall got on the stand, and under examination and cross-examination, he went bug wild!
"Kendall was out of his mind so I don't even blame him for all that shit," he added. "It was just like that's not the guy I've known since I was 11. It was another person. It was some other motherfucker speaking through his body."
It was a brotherhood, and you know, there’s no way that Norwood’s intentions were to hurt Kendall.
Angelo Moore
Despite the acquittal, it was an expensive trial. Norwood was left with some hefty legal fees to contend with as the band took part in Lollapalooza 1993.
Several bands from the touring festival came to the bassist's assistance early the following year, with Porno For Pyros, Primus, Tool and Alice In Chains taking part in a benefit concert at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on January 7.
With Kendall out of the band, the band never fully recovered from the incident and trial. Their guitarist John Bigham – who'd previously worked with Miles Davis – assumed full guitar duties on the Give a Monkey a Brain tour, but on the documentary, Chris credited Kendall with being the voice of reason during the writing and recording process. He would leave later that year, citing creative differences, rejoining in 2018.
But the story has a happy ending; 17 years after the acrimonious split and subsequent court hearing, Kendall made a surprise, one-off appearance with the band during their performance of Alice in Chains' Them Bones for The Museum of Pop Culture's annual fundraiser in 2020.
Over three decades later, Fishbone is a very different band; only Angelo and Chris have survived the original line-up. Norwood left the band in 2023 and is currently playing with Trulio Disgracias and The Familyhood Experience.
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