Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique (13 page)

That potential was never realized, perhaps deliberately, but an anecdote from Mike Simpson makes clear how much the song meant to Yauch regardless. Simpson believed in the track’s commercial appeal and took particular care in juxtaposing its elements, which included an opening drum loop from Tower of Power’s “Ebony Jam” and a closing quote from the 1980 rap hit “High Power” by Disco Dave and the Force of the Five MCs (aka the Crash Crew). “I’d done a ton of scratches on it. Some of it was good and some of it was bad, way out of time,” Simpson says. “And when it was done, Yauch said, ‘Yeah, this is really cool, but there are a few things I wanna try. So I want you guys to leave.’ And I
said, ‘OK, just call us when you’re done.’

“And he called about eight hours later, and said, ‘OK, I want you to come down and hear it.’ He had done this mix where he basically opened up all the tracks, and even the bad scratching was playing, and things were coming in and out where they weren’t supposed to happen. He said, ‘I know you’re gonna hate this, but I really like it.’ And I said, Well, that’s cool—let’s print a mix, and we can pull up the other version I was working on.’ And Yauch all of a sudden got really pissed and says, ‘No! I made the decision already. Listen, man, this is
my
record.’ And I said, ‘There’s no question about any of that, I just wanted to have a copy for myself.’ But he was livid, and I just backed off.”

“It was a good lesson for me as a producer,” Simpson adds with a rueful laugh. “You’re not the artist.”

Originally begun in 1987 at Adam Yauch’s Brooklyn apartment (aka The Opium Den), the oldest track on
Paul’s Boutique
is driven by the sonorous kick drum of Adam Horovitz’s Roland 808. Despite its paraphrase of “New York, New York” and the arresting image of a long-haired hermit constructing explosives in his attic (whether they are to be used by or against the “public officials” mentioned isn’t clear)—the song is essentially all setup for an inspired punchline: Johnny Cash’s famous quote about shooting a man in Reno, lifted direct from “Folsom Prison Blues” and transported to Brooklyn.

The sample was the Beasties’ idea, recalls Mike Simpson. And the snippet almost completely refutes the stickup songs
that precede it and underscores the album’s true aesthetic. The Man in Black is referenced less as an Original Gangsta than as a dimly-recalled totem from another generation, in a snatch of music that might have been heard by the adolescent Beasties on a commercial for some K-Tel collection of Cash’s greatest hits. It’s pure nostalgia, not threat, and—as author Angus Batey notes—predates the iconic nineties resurrection of Cash, overseen by none other than Rick Rubin.

Three fragments in one: An opening, public-domain tongue-twister—“He thrusts his fist against the post and still insists he see a ghost”—is followed by a second-line rhythm copped from the Meters’ “Hey Pocky A-Way” and then a short segment from the Crusaders’ “The Well’s Gone Dry,” connected by the (gradually detuned) bass intro from the latter song. An observation from Bob Marley about the problems of communicating with musicians, captured from the
Legend
documentary, closes the track.

The Beasties contribute one of their better couplets, about the dullness of trying to live life in a world where everything is viewed in black-and-white. But the primary lyrical focus of “Dropping Names” has long been the intro, where careful listening reveals Ad-Rock apparently advocating the use of PCP.

Large portions of Kool & the Gang’s “Let the Music Take Your Mind” are tapped for this piece of the medley. Lyrically, comparing the band’s “flavor” to Fruit Stripe Gum
—a multicolored seventies staple—is one of the Beasties’ most inspired pop culture references, although Mike D’s mention of Cezanne is a noteworthy nod to his roots as the son of an art dealer.

Mike D’s answer to “Get on the Mic” is offered over the same Lovebug Starski beat, and veers from serious concerns about his bad reputation to utter nonsense about being rechristened “Spinach D” for eating Popeye’s favorite vegetable. Nonsense wins out with the closing quote, commissioned by the band from goofy weatherman Lloyd Lindsey Young. Young was a fixture for a dozen years on New York’s WWOR-TV, which is where the Beasties discovered him using nontraditional objects—like rubber chickens—as pointers during forecasts.

A live in the studio shout-out to various Beastie friends and acquaintances, rounded up by Donovan Leitch. “I can’t remember who all was there,” says Matt Dike. “At that point, I was seriously losing interest.” The Beasties had noticed. “Definitely, Matt would get annoyed with us,” Diamond says. “I know sometimes he would be going, ‘You gotta be kidding me … another night wasted.’”

“A.W.O.L.” quickly gives way to the electric piano riff of “Loran’s Dance,” and then we’re back where we started, waking up in Kansas wondering if it was all a technicolor dream. It wasn’t—and before long,
Paul’s Boutique
would no longer be the Beasties’ nightmare.

Not long after
Paul’s Boutique
was completed, the Dust Brothers and Beastie Boys reconvened at the Record Plant’s Big Apple headquarters to come up with some remixes and B-side filler. Once again, Capitol signed off on an intriguing, but commercially dubious, proposition. “The label probably wanted us to use whoever was hot at the time, like maybe Prince Paul, for the remixes. But we were so into our own world, we were like, ‘No, we’ll do it ourselves,’” says Diamond, adding with some understatement, “I don’t think it achieved what the label was hoping.”

What the sessions did accomplish, however, was to give a home to all the samples that had yet to see action on the album. Among the Beasties, Adam Horovitz apparently had the longest list of unused sample fodder, which included everything from the dancehall singles he loved to a line from the recurring Monty Python sketch, “Spanish Inquisition.” In all, three songs—“Hey Ladies,” “Shake Your Rump,” “Shadrach”—were given mostly instrumental rethinks and renamed, while a fourth, “Stop That Train,” received a dub-inspired treatment and a new title as well.

Otherwise, details are hazy; it’s possible that “33% God,” a version of “Shake Your Rump” that John King says “was closer to the original Dust Brothers track,” might have actually been recorded in Los Angeles, at Westlake Audio. The unusual title came from an experience the Dust Brothers had at that studio, when superproducer Quincy
Jones walked in one day. “We asked him how he made all those great records,” Mike Simpson recalls, “and he told us it was thirty-three percent talent, thirty-three percent luck … and thirty-three percent God.”

The instrumental remix of “Hey Ladies” is worth hearing just for its audio glimpses of how the song’s many disparate parts fit together. Yet it also adds to the inspired mashups of the original, with a drum loop that is an ingenious combination of the funky Jamaican shuffle from Stevie Wonder’s “Boogie on Reggae Woman” and the percussive introduction of “Keep Your Eye on the Sparrow,” Sammy Davis Jr.’s discofied theme from the cop show “Baretta.”

Along with “Shake Your Rump” and its instrumental “33% God,” this track was included on the “Hey Ladies” 12-inch. Titled
Love, American Style
, the four-song EP also boasted a striking cover photo, depicting the red, white and blue-painted kitchen of Adam Horovitz’s Los Angeles apartment.

This reworking of “Stop That Train” attempts to play up the dub reggae influence suggested by its primary sample, taken from
The Harder They Come
soundtrack. Unfortunately, the mix reflects its title a bit too accurately, with the echoed voices of Ad-Rock, MCA and Mike D ricocheting arrhythmically off the horn-spiked riddim. The results were appended to the “Shadrach” 12-inch; the Beasties would
tackle dub more successfully almost a decade later, teaming with the visionary producer Lee “Scratch” Perry for the tribute “Dr Lee, PhD” on
Hello Nasty
.

The instrumental version of “Shadrach” boasts a laundry list of new samples, including the riff from Black Flag’s hardcore anthem “Rise Above,” soundbites from various dancehall records and an interjection from comedian George Carlin. Yet although it only appears at the tail end of this mix, the snippet of the Jam’s “Start!” that gives the track its title is the most intriguing lift.

That Adam Horovitz chose the sample is probable; a few months later, he remarked to the
NME’s
James Brown, “Paul Weller’s def, man. What happened to him?” The answer was that fewer and fewer people considered the onetime mod icon def by the summer of 1989. His soulful post-Jam band, the Style Council, was in its death throes, after Polydor had rejected Weller’s house-inspired album
Promised Land
. The very week it ran part two of the aforementioned Beastie Boys interview, the
NME
also reviewed the infamous Albert Hall performance from the Council’s farewell tour, which found the group baffling even its fans with dayglo cycling shorts and garage beats. Critic Stephen Dalton gave the show a proper slating, criticizing Weller for playing almost no past hits and alleging, “no one alive could be more white and uptight.”

Yet while 1989 would mark a commercial low point for Weller and the Beastie Boys, both would experience a rebirth in 1992 with recordings that reflected immersion in vintage
funk: Weller on his first solo album, the Beasties via
Check Your Head
. Years later, the Beasties would fully acknowledge whatever debt they owed the Modfather by turning “Start!”—with guest vocals by Cibo Matto’s Miho Hatori—into an organ-fueled, soul-jazz shuffle not a million miles away from the Style Council. This version became part of the Jam tribute album
Fire and Skill
.

Weller, whose bands always struggled to gain commercial acceptance in the US, found the Beasties’ attention “really nice. I didn’t even know they knew who the Jam was,” he says. “It kind of shows how ignorant I was about North America, and what we meant to people over there.”

One of the most endearingly wack moments in the Beasties’ discography, this come-on from Mike D is also proof of his importance to the group. His old roommate, Sean Carasov, can recall a time when Diamond’s status in the band was uncertain. But against the more conventional cool of Adam Horovitz and Adam Yauch, Mike D’s willingness to play the clown has proved integral to the Beastie Boys’ success. His stream-of-consciousness interviews helped take the edge off the band’s early image, and it could even be argued that within the group, his gentler sense of humor has become ascendant.

Had “Some Dumb Cop” received a wider hearing, it might well have been slammed as the sort of hip-hop misogyny for which the Beasties remained well known. Reviewing
Paul’s Boutique
and LL Cool J’s contemporaneous release,
Walking with a Panther
, critic J. D. Considine focused on the “arrant sexism” of both albums, worrying they might “undo a lot of the good rap has managed for contemporary African-American culture.”

And lines like “Just leechin’ off my bitch, that’s what it’s about” could also have supported such an argument, were they not delivered in a voice ludicrously slowed down by tape manipulation, atop the Young-Holt Unlimited chestnut “Soulful Strut.” The incongruity between lyrics and breezy, brassy AM soul backing just keeps widening, as Mike D apologizes for a tryst with his girlfriend’s mother: “You know, I’m real sorry you had to walk in like that and see / Hey, shit happens, you know.” It’s the best Biz Markie record the Biz never made himself.

Although included on the 12-inch version of “Shadrach” and treated as a
Paul’s Boutique
outtake, “Your Sister’s Def” has no real connection to the album. Instead, it’s an a capella demo of a song by Dr. Dre, the Beastie Boys’ former DJ and the co-host of “Yo! MTV Raps.”

He submitted this track to the Beasties “as a potential song for them to use,” remembers Mike Simpson, “based on
Licensed to Ill”
Cowritten by Dre and Anthony Davis, “Your Sister’s Def” makes it clear that they, like most observers, imagined the Beasties’ sophomore album would be much like the first.

Set to an aggressive, Rick Rubinesque rhythm, the lyrics—which entreat a nerdy fan to help the Beasties gang bang his sister—represent the payoff of almost everything the
“Fight for Your Right” video implied. Given that, and some nauseating sexual references, it’s somewhat surprising the track saw release. According to Mike Simpson, “We just thought it was really funny.” The Beasties found it amusing enough, at least, to rhyme the opening verse during one of their 1989 MTV appearances.

If one were searching for an album to compare to
Paul’s Boutique
, the 1968 masterpiece
The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society
would assuredly not be the first choice. Or the second. Or, for that matter, the 583rd.

Yet these are two of the most nostalgic records ever released. And if Ray Davies’s odes to a green and pleasant England are not always as sentimental as they first appear,
³⁶
neither are the Beasties’ remembrances of seventies and eighties pop culture quite as cynical as is commonly believed.

In her book
The Future of Nostalgia
, Svetlana Boym notes that nostalgia “inevitably reappears as a defense mechanism in a time of accelerated rhythms of life and historical upheavals.” The AIDS and crack epidemics, Tiananmen
Square, the
Valdez
disaster, and—most significantly—the fall of the Berlin Wall made 1989 one of those years.