Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique (2 page)

The Dust Brothers: John King and Mike Simpson. Copyright © Ricky Powell. Used by permission.

The afternoon smog couldn’t hide the spectacular view from the roof of the Capitol Records building. To the east lay the silver and white towers of Los Angeles; to the west the Hollywood hills. And as the Beastie Boys surveyed the city from their thirteen-story eyrie, with the summer stretching lazily before them, it seemed they owned all they could see—and perhaps the rest of the world as well.

Up on the windy rooftop, Mike Simpson wandered around with his friend and fellow Dust Brother John King, both of them amazed at the reception for
Paul’s Boutique
, the album they’d helped create. While an MTV news crew shot footage of the Beastie Boys, who were perched on the edge of the roof, an airplane lazily scripted the band’s name above in the blue, a Dixieland combo played and chefs spooned up gumbo. High spirits were infectious among the Beasties’ friends; at one point, photographer Ricky Powell climbed the Capitol Tower scaffolding to its peak and lit up
a bowlful of pot, getting someone else to snap the picture.

As the Dust Brothers mingled with Capitol staffers, Simpson couldn’t help noticing most of them seemed “bewildered by the whole thing,” but he was reassured by the speech from a label executive who praised the new album and its psychedelic hip-hop collages as the
Sgt. Pepper’s
of its era. All in all, thought Simpson, it was a glorious afternoon, the triumphant end to a year and half’s groundbreaking work on behalf of the Beastie Boys.

The MTV coverage of the release party revealed a few changes to the group that had terrorized Middle America two years earlier with the hit “Fight for Your Right (To Party).” Adam Yauch, known as MCA, had grown his familiar stubble out into a full billy-goat beard. Meanwhile, Michael Diamond—Mike D for short—now sported the look of a thrift-store pimp, with a macramé pendant replacing his trademark Volkswagen medallion. Only Adam Horovitz, the King Ad-Rock, appeared much the same as before, in baseball cap, T-shirt and jeans. But as Mike D lectured his listeners—“I take the risk being a member of this group, so people should have to take a risk to listen to what this group does”—it was apparent the band’s abrasive attitude hadn’t altered much either.

Those who hated the Beastie Boys, of course, would have seen the pomp and circumstance of the day as frustrating proof that these three New York assholes were living charmed lives and would be around to torment decent folks forever. After all,
Paul’s Boutique
was one of the most counterintuitive records ever made. The band’s initial success on Def Jam, with the rude, crude and multiplatinum 1986 debut
Licensed to Ill
, had been unlikely enough; a trio of white
Jewish kids and their white Jewish producer became hip-hop’s biggest stars overnight by offering a primal fusion of metal, rap and teenage rebellion.

But
Paul’s Boutique
abandoned the producer, the label, and the formula, instead smashing apart hundreds of old records and pop culture references, then Scotch-taping them back together in unexpected new combinations. With a trio of unknowns at the production controls, it was a suicidal way to follow up a number one hit.

Yet the music was simply the soundtrack to, and was indeed inseparable from, the Beastie Boys’ riotous California adventure. Somehow they had convinced Capitol to pony up more than a million dollars for a year and a half-long pranking spree in Los Angeles. Now the label was rewarding this lunacy by allowing the group to plant its flag—in this case, a 25-foot-long creation that read “Beastie Boys Records”—atop the once-proud home of the Beatles and Beach Boys. Horovitz and his actor friend Max Perlich, who had skipped out on a movie role to DJ the party, even tagged their names on the hallowed roof, graffiti-style. For the many offended by the Beasties, June 29, 1989 was a date that would live in infamy.

Unless, of course, they knew what was happening just a few floors down. Within the Capitol building, sentiments had turned decisively against the Beastie Boys before the album hit the streets. Even while their flag fluttered on the rooftop, Capitol CEO Joe Smith was furiously declaring that the trio had made his label “the laughingstock of the industry.” A purge of the band’s supporters, beginning with president David Berman, was imminent, while the Beasties’ A&R man avoided the axe only by staying out of sight half
a world away.

“When the shit hits the fan … there won’t be any umbrellas, man,” Yauch joked, shortly after the album was released in July. He was right. Despite a series of glowing reviews and respectable initial sales, consumers quickly realized what the chastened Capitol braintrust had already figured out: this was in no sense the
Licensed to Ill, Part II
everyone had been expecting. It would spawn only one single that grazed the top 40, and there would be no major tour to help generate more hits. By November the album had fallen off the charts, and
Paul’s Boutique
was, for all practical purposes, closed.

The Golden Age of hip-hop would continue without the trio, who stayed out of sight in Los Angeles as Vanilla Ice became the new pale face of rap and quickly rolled back the credibility the Beasties had won for white MCs. And Def Jam could hardly resist kicking its old stars while they were down, trotting out the Beastie-bashing duo 3rd Bass as replacements.

“Capitol really thought they had stolen the goose that laid the golden egg,” recalls graphic artist Cey Adams, one of the band’s oldest friends. Within five years, the Beastie Boys would prove Capitol had been right; within ten,
Paul’s Boutique
would be universally recognized as a landmark achievement, a masterpiece of rhyme and collage that changes in sampling law had insured could never be repeated. But as the summer of 1989 disappeared, along with the Beasties and their album, the popular view was that Capitol’s golden goose was cooked—and that its former owner, Russell Simmons, had been wise to let it run squawking away.

* * *

In the fall of 1987, an exhausted Sean Carasov returned to New York, shaking his head as he reflected on the Beastie Boys’ first headlining tour, and wondered whether there would ever be another.

His British accent raised eyebrows in the hip-hop world, but Carasov had been an inspired choice as the band’s road manager. A Londoner with a razor-sharp sense of humor and a pet theory about nearly everything, Carasov had started as an associate of the Clash, departing for New York in 1984 after the punk legends fractured. At the time, the Clash shared a Big Apple dope dealer with the fledgling Beasties, which was how Carasov met the three rappers and joined them as they began their improbable ascent.

Eight months of
Licensed to Ill
debauchery had earned Carasov the nickname “Captain Pissy,” later shortened to “The Captain.” The Beasties’ DJ Hurricane coined the handle: “‘The Captain’ cos I was in charge of the sinking ship,” Carasov says, “and ‘Pissy’ cos I was pretty much always pissy drunk.” So was nearly everyone else involved, but the Budweiser-guzzling image that had helped the Beasties score hip-hop’s first number one album had nearly drowned them as well. They were sick of screaming “Fight for Your Right (To Party)” to inebriated frat boys; they were sick of the giant beer cans and the infamous hydraulic penis
¹
from their stage show; they were sick of sensationalistic press and police scrutiny; and finally, they were sick of each other.

Relations with their label, Def Jam, had also deteriorated over a variety of issues. Many of them concerned the Beasties’ friendship with Rick Rubin, their old DJ, and Def Jam’s cofounder. Rubin was widely hailed as the Svengali whose metallic rap hybrid had sent the trio to the top of the charts. But the Beasties, who produced the single “Hold It Now, Hit It” and had taken an active role in making
Licensed to Ill
, “found it vexing that Rick got a disproportionate amount of the credit,” recalls former Def Jam publicist Bill Adler. “They didn’t have the credit they deserved early on for being creative,” Def Jam’s other cofounder, Russell Simmons, admitted years later.

Further complicating the situation with Rubin was his involvement in a proposed Beastie Boys MTV special and a movie, provisionally titled “Scared Stupid.” The band would chafe at the control Rubin reportedly planned to exercise over both projects, neither of which came to fruition. Meanwhile, Rubin’s closeness to Horovitz had also caused friction within the group.

And then, there was the not inconsiderable issue of money. “They worked like hogs that year, every day,” says Adler. “One of the things they were looking forward to was getting fucking paid!” It didn’t happen. Simmons withheld an estimated $2 million in royalty payments from the multiplatinum
Licensed to Ill;
why he did so has become a matter of some debate.

The Beastie Boys’ massive success had exposed the weaknesses of a label that, just two years earlier, was being run from Rubin’s dorm room at NYU. Hamstrung by an unfavorable distribution deal with Columbia, and dedicated to reinvesting profits into the company, Simmons was left
shorthanded when the Beastie Boys demanded their money, says Carasov. “He wasn’t trying to rip anybody off; they would have gotten paid eventually. But he wasn’t expecting them to call his hand.”

Simmons, however, claimed he was withholding royalties because the Beasties had failed to honor their contract. Ever since the band had returned from the road, Simmons had been demanding a follow-up to
Licensed to Ill
. This, says Michael Diamond, was the last thing the group wanted to hear.

“You haven’t even gotten off the roller coaster, and the record company says, ‘OK, here’s your ticket for Round Two. Give us more of the same right now,’” he remembers. “And you say, Wait a minute, I’m dizzy and sick. I’m taking a break and getting some popcorn.’” It was this insistence on new material, Carasov thought, that drove the final wedge between the group and Def Jam.

“The rest of that shit—the movies, the money, and whatever else—might have been part of it, but this was the catalyst,” Carasov says. “They needed time off. But Russell wouldn’t listen to me. He refused to see what was right in front of his face, which was a band on the verge of breaking up.”

After returning to New York after the tour, the Beasties had indeed gone their separate ways. Horovitz, then dating actress Molly Ringwald, scored a starring role in the 1989 film
Lost Angels
, playing a troubled Los Angeles youth. Yauch, meanwhile, recorded an album’s worth of classic rock-inspired demos with a new band, Brooklyn, featuring Bad Brains bassist Darryl Jenifer, Murphy’s Law drummer Doug E. Beans and old friend Tom Cushman.

Diamond’s musical side projects included the rock group Big Fat Love and the Flophouse Society Orchestra, “a crazy little jazz band” with a regular Wednesday gig at the Odeon, Carasov recalls. But the main goal of Mike D and Carasov, who had continued rooming together following the
Licensed to Ill
tour, was far less ambitious. “Me and Mike had decided that we were just gonna take a year off and do fucking nothing, except take mushrooms and drink.”

The idea of his chart-topping band squandering the next twelve months on side projects or R&R was maddening to Simmons, for understandable reasons. All he wanted, Simmons would later tell
Rolling Stone
, “was a commitment. ‘Just reaffirm your deal.’”

Unsurprisingly, the Beastie Boys saw things differently. “If someone offered to pay you the money they owed you if you promised to do some other work, then you’d probably say, ‘Well, pay me for the work I’ve already done because that’s what we agreed on,’” Yauch explained. On that note, the lawyers would take over.

The supreme irony was that Simmons defended his decision by saying he feared the Beasties would simply break up if they were paid. And Carasov thought Simmons’s actions had indeed pulled the feuding trio back together. “Now they had this villain,” he says, “that they could fight back against.”

The three old friends would reconvene in Los Angeles, determined to escape the creative shadow of Rick Rubin. Fate, however, was about to lead them to the man yearning to be his replacement.

* * *

“So you’re writing a book about
Paul’s Boutique?”
asks Jon Sidel, searching for a vacant office at the Los Angeles headquarters of V2 Records, where he now works in A&R. “That’s cool, but what you should really do is write a book about Matt Dike.
That’s
your story.”

Of all the enigmas concealed within the labyrinth of
Paul’s Boutique
, none is greater than Matt Dike. At the time he helped create the album, Dike was the king of Los Angeles, an ultra-charismatic DJ, producer and club owner whose tastes would soon reshape not just popular music, but popular culture as well. With his beard, bandanas and shades, as well as his love of mashing up hip-hop and hard rock, he bore many similarities to the man he hoped to emulate, his friend Rick Rubin. But he had broader, more cosmopolitan interests than Rubin, making him even more compatible with the deceptively erudite Beastie Boys.

Yet little more than a decade after
Paul’s Boutique
, Dike had fallen so far off society’s radar that his name was even misspelled (as “Dyke”) in
The Sounds of Science
, the Beastie Boys’ hardcover career retrospective. The anonymity was by choice. “All Matt ever wanted to do was make millions off music so he could stay home and do drugs,” recalls graphic artist Eric Haze, a friend of both Dike and the Beastie Boys. “And that’s what he did.”

Matt Robinson, who served as Dike’s backup DJ during the mid-eighties, recalls him retreating from well-wishers, spinning records “literally out of a closet” as his fame grew. “He had such a hard time accepting any level of success.” Dike would later speak admiringly in interviews about legendarily eccentric producer Phil Spector. And those he worked with, including the Beastie Boys, Mike Simpson and
John King, noted Dike’s own eccentricities early on, including an extreme fondness for the comforts of home.