Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique (6 page)

“They went to the afterparty of the MTV Music Awards, and they had Mario dressed as a security guard,” Carr remembers. “Then they found a stairwell with a balcony, and they went upstairs, and Mario wouldn’t let anybody in. So then it became this private party, inside the party, and people like Cyndi Lauper would come by and go, ‘What’s up there?’ And Mario would say, ‘The Beastie Boys are having a private party up there.’ And they’d say, ‘Can I go up there?’ And he’d say, ‘I don’t know. Are you on their list?’

“So then Arsenio Hall wants to come up, and Mike says, ‘See if you can borrow $100 from Arsenio, Mario.’ So Mario says, ‘I know this is weird, but Mike D wants to borrow $100. Would that be OK?’ And Arsenio looks around and goes, ‘Yo, man, you gotta be shittin’ me.’ And Mario goes, ‘I
wish I was, but he’s pretty serious.’ So Arsenio gives $100 to Mario. Then afterwards, Mike comes down and talks to Arsenio, and Arsenio says, ‘What about that hundred?’ And Mike goes, ‘What hundred?’”
¹⁴

Carr boarded a plane for New York the next day, still amazed at how the Beastie Boys had made fools of so many of their music industry peers. Whether he and Capitol were next on the list was something he tried to put out of his mind.

* * *

The G-Spot has entered Beastie Boys lore as the house that allowed them to indulge their deepest, darkest blaxploitation fantasies. It is imagined as a mansion-slash-museum of perfectly preserved seventies chic, which the band and its associates would thoughtlessly trash in orgy after
Licensed to Ill
—inspired orgy.

In fact, an argument can be made that the one-bedroom house on Torreyson Drive, owned by Alex and Marilyn Grasshoff, actually provided the Beastie Boys some much-needed stability at a time when
Paul’s Boutique
was threatening to get lost in a morass of recreational drug use and hotel bills. If nothing else, the $11,000 rent the band paid each month still beat the cost of three $200-a-night hotel rooms.
“It never had occurred to us that you don’t have to live in a hotel,” admits Diamond with a laugh. “But I think we had all become more serious about thinking, ‘OK, we’ve gotta finish this record.’”

The property offered a view of all the major movie studios and the Griffith Observatory, while the band’s neighbors would have included actress Sharon Stone; the old Errol Flynn estate (later owned by singer Justin Timberlake), was close by on Mullholland Drive. A less glitzy, but still important, benefit was the large gold “G” on the front of the house, making the location’s new nickname both perfect and inevitable.

When they attempted to rent from the Grasshoffs, the Beasties’ reputation—for once—did not fully precede them. As Marilyn Grasshoff remembers it, “The agent didn’t tell us anything about the Beastie Boys. He said they were three young men who were writers.”

The Grasshoffs would soon learn the rest of the story. “When I said, ‘The Beastie Boys are living in my home,’ people said, ‘Oh my gosh, you let them in your home?!’ Because they had made this movie where they trashed this house,” says Mrs. Grasshoff. Once again, “Fight for Your Right (To Party)”—via its video—had come back to haunt the band. “And of course, I don’t watch those kinds of movies, so it made me a little nervous. Maybe we made a mistake.”

It was not as if the Grasshoffs were unworldly rubes. Alex Grasshoff was a producer and director who had helmed episodes of “The Rockford Files,” and “ChiPs,” as well as several films, including the Emmy-winning 1973 documentary
Journey to the Outer Limits
. His wife, better known under her stage name Madelyn Clark, owned a Los Angeles
studio, which A-list musicians would often rent for tour rehearsals.

The couple, who traveled frequently, also had experience turning their home over to showbiz personalities. Actor Bill Murray had lived at the Grasshoffs’ in 1980 while playing gonzo writer Hunter S. Thompson in the film
Where the Buffalo Roam
. (Thompson himself stayed in the guesthouse.) And even rocker Jon Bon Jovi had once been a tenant, pleasantly surprising Mrs. Grasshoff with his tidiness and good manners. “He was very good to the house,” she recalls.

Speculation to the contrary, she would say the same of the Beasties. “What happened was, they were absolutely clean and neat,” she says, “and took care of the place very, very well.”
¹⁵

Of course, the Grasshoffs were also not aware of the activities taking place in their absence. The foremost attraction happened to be Mrs. Grasshoff’s closet, which yielded, as Ricky Powell remembers, “Crazy, crazy seventies shit. Fur coats. Crazy pimp hats. Platforms. Lots and lots of velvet.” Mike Simpson, who also got a good look at the collection, observes, “I don’t think she ever threw anything away.” It was this gold mine of a wardrobe that would give the Beasties—in particular, Mike D—much of their retro look
for the
Paul’s Boutique
era.

The trio managed to get a Ping-Pong table into the house—chipping Mr. Grasshoff’s Emmy Award in the process. They also made frequent use of the home theater system, rare for its time, and what Mike Simpson remembers as Mr. Grasshoff’s “huge collection of prison movies.” Simpson and John King, who had access to the house even when the Beasties were away, spent as much time there as possible.

“Despite the fact that John and I had success from the Tone-Loc and Young MC records, we still hadn’t seen a dime. We were sharing a $600-a-month apartment, and we had to step over bums to get into our building, and we were digging in our couches for loose change to buy a burrito at 7-Eleven,” Simpson recalls, laughing. “So the G-Spot offered a lot of luxuries that we weren’t accustomed to.” Yet the only truly crazy thing King noticed there “was a bunch of late teen/early twenties kids hanging out in such a mack-adocious—yet dated—pad, partying.”

“They didn’t trash the place the way they trashed a lot of other places,” admits regular guest Sean Carasov, who had seen more than a few accommodations wrecked by the Beasties. “But they
worked
it.”
¹⁶

Although Diamond commandeered the home’s master suite, while Yauch set up shop in the video room, it would
be Horovitz’s underground bedroom in the guesthouse, with its window into the swimming pool, that became the G-Spot’s best-known feature. Ricky Powell would shoot the inner sleeve photo of
Paul’s Boutique
through this porthole, capturing the Beasties clowning underwater. Back on land, however, they were about to get serious.

* * *

After months of incubation in their thousand petri dishes, the songs that would comprise
Paul’s Boutique
reached maturity in surprisingly short order. All during the late fall of 1988, the album’s creators buckled down; by Christmas, when Tim Carr returned to California for a progress report, the record was almost completely written and recorded.

The track that had turned things around, Carr thought, was “High Plains Drifter.” Based on a large, ominous chunk of The Eagles’ “These Shoes,” it was less complex than many of the creations that surrounded it, and its true-crime verses were written “from beginning to end, based around a really interesting set of samples. And all of sudden they had this complete song.” It was a psychological boost—for the beleaguered Carr, at least.

One factor that helped the project overcome its rough patches, Matt Dike thought, was the Beasties’ unusual closeness. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen ’em fight,” he muses. “They could fuck with anybody else, but they knew just when to give each other space.” It was a friendship that even survived what could have been a traumatic romantic dispute, when Yauch began dating Lisa Ann Cabasa, who had gone out a few times with Horovitz. “Yauch had asked him if it
was OK to call me, and he said, ‘No, it’s not OK,’” recalls Cabasa with a laugh. “I didn’t wanna be a Yoko Ono, so we kept it hidden for a while.”
¹⁷

The work done in Matt Dike’s apartment during this period is now “all kind of a blur,” confesses Mike Simpson, who still has to hum several songs to remember their titles. No other collaborator offers a clearer recollection. “After we did the first two songs,” says Mario Caldato, “there was a break, then it went full-on till we finished.”

Most likely, the ingredients Simpson once listed as essential to the making of
Paul’s Boutique
—“a blue bong, high quality indica buds, hash, hash oil, freebase, red wine, cigarettes, LSD, coffee and whippets”—have a lot to do with everyone’s hazy memories. What is certain is that Capitol’s executives, who had the album on the label’s spring 1989 release schedule, were finally demanding to hear the music. Carr was dispatched to get it, but instead received proof of that age-old saw about payback being a mother.

“I go there and I say, ‘I gotta hear it.’ And they say, ‘We can’t give it to you, but you can hear it,’” Carr recalls. “And Yauch says to me, ‘Yo Tim, can I have your key? I need to stuff this joint.’ So I give him the hotel key, he stuffs the joint and slaps it back in my hand. And someone says, ‘Hey Mike, why don’t you drive Tim around?’”

The ride that followed, around the holiday-lit streets of
Los Angeles, gave Carr the Christmas present he’d wanted most. “I listen to what they have, which is basically all of the basic tracks for
Paul’s Boutique
. I feel this sigh of relief—it’s
so
great,” he remembers. “All of the samples are underneath the perfect rhymes, and it’s this perfect mixture of New York memorabilia and hip-hop knowledge.”

The warm and fuzzy feelings ended the moment he returned to the Mondrian. “I realize I don’t have my room key. And I go, Oh,
shit.’”
Carr’s L’Eggs prank of months before now seemed like foolishly stirring up a hornet’s nest.

After getting another key, Carr would find his room completely destroyed, the handiwork of Horovitz and Yauch. “They had even taken the phone cord from the receiver, so I couldn’t call out. I was like, ‘These thorough fuckers! I have learned my lesson. I will never, ever, play you boys again!’”

* * *

With the album nearing completion, the Dust Brothers had been instructed to submit to Mike D a list of all the samples used. What happened afterward depends on who you ask.

Sample clearance is the greyest of the many grey areas surrounding
Paul’s Boutique
. Finding someone involved with the album willing to fully discuss the dozens, if not hundreds, of samples used to create it,
¹⁸
is impossible. It is easy to understand why.

At the time, the Beasties had already been targeted in one sampling-related lawsuit; in 1987, they settled out of court with musician Jimmy Castor, who sued the band for a sample used in “Hold It Now, Hit It.” A pair of further, high-profile lawsuits against hip-hop acts De La Soul and Biz Markie would not stop sampling, but they helped set guidelines for sample usage, and insured sample clearance would no longer be optional.

In addition, the Beasties would later endure a long legal battle with jazz musician James Newton, over a sample used on the 1994 song “Flute Loop.” (The sample had been cleared, but Newton wanted publishing rights as well.) The band would win the suit, but at the cost of a half-million dollars in legal fees.

It may well be understood that the samples on
Paul’s Boutique
are now exempt from litigation, as Adam Yauch explained to
Wired
in 2004: “If ten years have gone by or whatever it is, and there hasn’t been a problem, then it’s not an issue.” But Adam Horovitz’s response—“At least that’s what we’re hoping”—reflects the uncertainty of that claim.

Thus, Caldato begs off discussing samples—“It might not be cool”—while Mike Simpson offers, “I know lots and lots of samples cleared, and I know some samples didn’t clear.” Tim Carr, on the other hand, counters that “none of the samples were cleared, as far as I know. But in that day, drums weren’t part of sample clearance, and now they are.” Later, Carr amends his statement: “They cleared what they had to clear.”

In a 2002 interview with
Tape Op Magazine
, Caldato recalled the band paying a quarter-million dollars in sample clearances for
Paul’s Boutique
. Mike Simpson also remembers
that when he and John King received their first royalty statement for the record, “there was a huge deduction for sample clearances.” And Diamond contends it was the first hip-hop album where an attempt was made to clear every sample.

What all parties involved agree upon is that an album like
Paul’s Boutique
would be all but impossible to make today. “You could do it as an art project, if somebody gave you a couple million dollars to make a record like this,” muses Mike Simpson. “But commercially, I don’t think you could ever do it again.”

Yet that, says Matt Dike, was part of the plan from the beginning. “I remember having this discussion with Yauch, and him saying, ‘Let’s just go completely over the top and sample everything. Let’s make this the nail in the coffin for sampling,’” Dike remembers. “And that’s kind of what happened. Some of those tracks are total plagarism of the worst kind, but that’s what’s funny about that record. It’s like ‘Hey, we’re ripping you off!’”

“Sometimes,” he adds with a laugh, “those guys could be pretty profound.”

* * *

After making the rounds of the holiday party circuit,
¹⁹
the band would return to the Record Plant in early 1989 to finish
Paul’s Boutique
. The sixteen-track collages would be spread across twenty-four tracks, the Beasties would polish and record their final vocals and the album would be mixed.

The seven collaborators were joined by an eighth during these weeks: Allen Abrahamson, an assistant engineer at the Record Plant. Little has been said about Abrahamson, and some fans have doubtless wondered whether he was simply another alter ego for Adam Yauch, aka Nathaniel Hornblower. But not only was Abrahamson a real person, Mike Simpson says, he was a valuable contributor—especially to the Beastie Boys’ inexperienced production team.

If Tim Carr had been ready to breathe a sigh of relief as
Paul’s Boutique
drew to a close, it would have to wait. “They went to the Record Plant. And the first thing they did was, Mike D called a barroom rental place, and he got a large-screen projection television, a Ping-Pong table, a foosball table, an air hockey table and three pinball machines,” he says. “If they could have got a bowling alley, they would have. And they took over the big room at the Record Plant, which is there to record symphonies and Led Zeppelin, and it’s filled with all these games. And Mike says, ‘Yo Tim, it was a deal. The more stuff I got, the better deal they gave me!’ So now, I can’t even bring anyone from the company down.”