Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique by Dan LeRoy Read Free Book Online Page A

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 lookfor 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 wouldbe 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 itwas 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