‘The Jerry Lewis’: The Untold Story of the Beastie Boys Single That Never Was
In their book, For Whom the Cowbell Tolls: 25 Years of Paul’s Boutique, published by 6623 Press, authors Dan LeRoy and Peter Relic dive deep into the backroom arcana and recording studio hijinks surrounding the Beastie Boys‘ greatest album. In this excerpt, a piece of musical history is found sitting undisturbed on a shelf in a Los Angeles storage facility.
The reel sat in storage for nearly 25 years.
There was no mistaking the writing on the box, penned in Sharpie in black block letters: BEASTIE BOYS #1. This did not refer to the band’s chart position at the time, or their place in the hearts of fans. Handwritten by engineer Mario Caldato, Jr., the stick-on label indicated that the box contained the first reel of tape from the Paul’s Boutique sessions that took place in Matt Dike’s Hollywood apartment in the spring of 1988. The list of contents was tantalizing: CAUGHT, SCRATCH ME, YACH, FULL CLOUT, SHADROCK, BLUE NOTE. Aside from the recognizable working titles for songs that would appear on Paul’s (and the fact that Caldato had yet to learn the proper spelling of Adam Yauch’s surname), this was like being smacked in the booty with Indiana Jones’ bullwhip. This was, perhaps, the ark of the Beastie covenant.
By the summer of 2013, the corrugated cardboard box of Ampex Grand Master 456 half-inch tape was resting amongst similar boxes on a shelf inside a public storage facility in West Los Angeles. The storage unit was being rented by Michael Ross, who co-founded record label Delicious Vinyl with Matt Dike in 1987. In the process of cataloging the label’s archive in advance of a Delicious Vinyl box set, Ross handed over the keys to the storage facility. “There’s probably boxes of old press releases and newspaper clippings in there that might help with research,” he reasoned. “Have a look.”
The storage space did indeed contain molting, mountainous testament to the deluge of media attention that Delicious Vinyl received in 1988 and 1989 as the label scored surprise hit singles “Wild Thing” and “Funky Cold Medina” by Tone-Loc and “Bust A Move” by Young MC. There were lots of original tapes there too, documenting work by Delicious Vinyl artists. And then there was the Beastie Boys reel. The implications of the tape’s existence were significant. But what, exactly, was on the tape?
Showing up for the first day of work can bring a knotty mix of optimism, determination and trepidation. It was no different for the Beastie Boys when they arrived at Matt Dike’s apartment to begin recording the follow-up to their 1986 debut album Licensed To Ill.
Set above an oil-fumed carburetor repair shop along a sketchy stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard, Dike’s apartment was no crappier than Chung King, the NYC Chinatown studio where the Boys made Licensed To Ill. After the success of “(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party),” the Madonna tour, the U.K. tabloid brouhaha, MTV Spring Break shenanigans and the first rap album ever to go to Number One on the Billboard pop charts, presumably the Boys could opt for opulence when it came to make a follow-up. But money can’t conjure magic and anyhow the Boys were in contractual purgatory between their blighted Def Jam deal and the beaucoup Capitol Records contract yet to come.
Expecting the Beasties’ imminent arrival, Dike left the door to the street unlocked. Bordered with art deco blue-and-yellow tile, the door led to a steep, narrow staircase and then a small landing. Up another flight was a modest foyer, then straight ahead a walk-in closet. Deep enough to house a Shure microphone clipped to a silver stand, its walls and ceiling stapled with mottled green carpet scraps to baffle the sound, the closet was the isolation vocal booth for what was colloquially known as Delicious Studios, where Tone-Loc and Young MC had laid down the vocals for their chart-frosting hits. In the commentary track to the 20th anniversary release of Paul’s Boutique, Ad-Rock observed: “They blessed the closet.”
the Boys were in contractual purgatory between their blighted Def Jam deal and the Capitol Records contract to come.
Dike played the Beasties a beat he’d made for them, to get them excited to record again, to inspire them to rhyme over the super-saturated break-beat fantasia quilted together for especially this moment. Horovitz recognized a bit in a track that’d somewhere down the line get named “Hey Ladies”: “Yo, that’s ‘Shake Your Pants’ by Cameo. Cameo is def!”
Then Dike’s Delicious Vinyl partner Mike Ross walked up the stairs. Ross was dressed confidently in young executive style: shiny sport coat over open-necked dress shirt, tennis-hero blonde mane blow-dried to perfection. Ross saw the Beastie Boys standing around, looked at MCA, then pointed at the closet and said, “Get in there and bust a rhyme!’ “Why don’t you go fuck yourself,” was Yauch’s friendly rejoinder. And with that, Mike Ross’ potential involvement in the creation of Paul’s Boutique was over before it started.