Dan LeRoy Q&A on For Whom the Cowbell Tolls: 25 Years of Paul’s Boutique
In 2014, to mark the 25th year since Beastie Boys classic album Paul’s Boutique writers Dan LeRoy and Peter Relic combined on For Whom the Cowbell Tolls: 25 Years of Paul’s Boutique, which expands on LeRoy’s 33 1/3 series book about Paul’s Boutique. Published by 6623 Press’s creator-owned 66 & 2/3 imprint, the 2014 collaboration unearths material recently discovered by Relic and behind-the-scenes details previously unavailable. To gain some knowledge about the book (now available in paperback) I interviewed LeRoy recently.Learn more at www.PaulsBoutiqueBook.Tumblr.com,www.6623Press.com, @DanLeRoy and @6623Press.
Tim O'Shea: Given that Matt Dike is so reclusive and reluctant to give interviews, how was it that you gained his trust and such access? Have you heard what he thought of the book, or is that not something he would care about?
Dan LeRoy: Tracking Matt down was, as the cliché holds, a story in itself. I thought of including it in the 33 1/3 book, but there just wasn’t space, and this last time around, in For Whom the Cowbell Tolls, didn’t quite seem like the moment, either. The most compressed version is that, after being told by multiple people that Matt would not talk – that he had not talked to much of anyone in 20+ years – I was determined not to take “no” for an answer if I could help it.
So after months of dead ends throughout 2005, I was fortunate enough to track down a friend of a friend of a friend, who called me unexpectedly one morning and said, “Call this number in 10 minutes and Matt will answer.” I did, and he did. And as to gaining his trust, I can say only that Matt Dike is one of the most interesting people I’ve ever talked with. He has amazingly insightful things to say – not just about the Beasties, or about hip-hop – and I was lucky enough to be the guy who was there when he decided to share them.
Maybe that trust and access had something to do with the fact that my own interests are more broad than the Beasties and hip-hop, as well. I think Matt liked talking about Paul’s Boutique – he hadn’t, really, ever – but I also think he, like anyone with small-C catholic tastes, gets restless focusing only on a single thing. I remember during one of our first conversations, I had just come back from seeing a Paul Weller show, and we talked for a long time about the Jam; he’d seen them in England when he was a teenager, and he knew just about everything about the mod revival. Despite the fact that I think he’s earned his “genius” tag, Matt remains a fan, first and foremost. That’s one of the things that makes talking to him such a pleasure.
As for his reaction to the 33 1/3 book, I sent him a couple of copies, and I heard from a mutual friend that he liked it. No word yet on the new one, though!
How hard was it tracking down the Capitol executives and getting them to talk with you?
Easier this time around than it was in 2005. That’s because while a lot of them were still working in the industry back then, a lot of them now aren’t – or, as in the case of Tom Whalley, who was running Warner Brothers at that time, they may just have more time to talk now.
I like to think that one of the things this book accomplished is to attempt what few enough people – including me – have really tried. That is, to tell the story of a record from the label’s perspective. It’s just too easy to paint people who work for a record label as unknowing or uncaring, and to give them all the blame for the failure of an album like Paul’s Boutique. Someone I spoke with, though – perhaps it was several people – said something I’ll paraphrase: “People get into the record business because they love music.” That’s a thing I think we forget, all too often.
How much did the material uncovered by Peter Relic change your perspective on the album, if you compare what you wrote in 2006 versus your most recent analysis?
Pete performed one of the great archeological digs of our time, and he came back with something just this side of the Holy Grail – at least for Beasties fans. That would be the Paul’s Boutique outtakes he uncovered. It says a lot about Pete that he 1) was willing to share this find with me, and 2) more important, that he was willing to return these tapes to their rightful owners.
Hearing the great lost single, “The Jerry Lewis,” didn’t change things for me as much as clarify them. I think everything Pete says in his chapter about these outtakes is dead-on, including the observation that this was, in fact, the hit single from Paul’s Boutique that should have been. The band’s late A&R man, Tim Carr, was absolutely right: there was no hit single on the album. But this was it.
It’s Pete’s other thought, however, that I think is more prescient: thank goodness it didn’t happen. Because had “The Jerry Lewis” been released – and I also agree wholeheartedly with Matt Dike; it would have been huge – Beastie history would have changed in ways we can’t predict. Paul’s Boutique might well have been a hit – and then there’d probably have been no Check Your Head.
I love “what if?” –ing as much as anyone, but sometimes it’s best not to know what would have been behind Door #2.
Seeing as you had already written a book in 2006, how hard did you have to be convinced the revisit the topic again after so many years?
I knew the 25th anniversary was coming up. And I knew I should do something. I just wasn’t sure what, exactly. Then Pete came along and solved that problem pretty easily.
What was the hardest aspect to research?
The whole area of sample clearance is still a little murky. I tried to dig deeper into that this time around, but the truth is – and as the recent Trouble Funk lawsuit proves – nobody really wants to talk much about this, because nobody knows exactly where the next lawsuit might be coming from.
Just as an example, I talked to the great jazz fusion drummer Alphonse Mouzon, whose drum fill is sampled at the beginning of “Shake Your Rump.” He says he never got paid for the use of that sample. I wasn’t able to research that claim (it isn’t in the book), and it didn’t sound like he was rushing off to a lawyer. (“If I were gonna do that,” he told me, “I’d have done it already.”) Still, it begs the question: how many other potential claimants might there be out there? So it might be decades before we know the full story about what cleared and what didn’t.
Are there certain cuts that you grew to love more the greater amount of research you did about it?
I’ve listened to the record so many times that it’s hard for me to even think of it as separate tracks any more. Which I think speaks to a point Mike Simpson of the Dust Brothers made in the 33 1/3 book: he was talking about how people focused on “B-Boy Bouillabaisse,” when he viewed the whole album as one long medley. The more I listen, the more I agree with that idea.
However, I can say that knowing the stories behind songs like “A Year and a Day” or “Egg Man” really makes me appreciate them more than I did back in 1989. And if we’re just talking favorite moment, I will never get tired of hearing the Beasties shout “They tell us what to do? Hell no!/Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego.” Total Biblical punk rock perfection.
In addition to Peter Relic’s discovery with the treasure trove of memorabilia, as well as the Matt Dike and Capitol executives’ perspective–was there some distinct part of your research for the book that in retrospect proved to be a critical factor in helping you tie together your overall theme for the book?
I’d say it like this: Pete’s discoveries ensured that there would be a book. That gave me the chance to do something I felt had been neglected in the first book, and look at the album from Capitol’s perspective. That still didn’t quite feel like an entire new book, though, and we really wanted to give value for money.
So one of my favorite parts of this book was the “Bouillabaisse” section, where Pete and I got to investigate some connections to the album that I suppose you could call “tangential.” We followed some leads and they took us to some pretty cool places, from talking with folk musician David Bromberg, whose song “Sharon” is a big part of “Johnny Ryall,” to longtime Beastie friend Arthur Africano, who gives a very moving remembrance of the late Dave Scilken, to the story of KMD, the greatest Golden Age hip-hop act you’ve never heard. (Yet.)
Paul’s Boutique is a piece of work respected by a wide variety of musical talent. Just prior to his death apparently even Miles Davis had praise for it. From your research, is there anyone in particular you were really surprised to learn appreciated the album?
To reference the “Bouillabaisse” section again, there’s a chapter about the award-winning playwright Young Jean Lee, who not only loved Paul’s Boutique from the moment she heard it, but figured out a way to incorporate it into her own art, though an idea she calls “the cowbell moment.”
It’s easy to see why musicians would love the album, and lots of them do: it’s a work of musical genius. Seeing how that genius inspired someone in a completely different artistic field, however, was even more inspiring.
Anything we need to discuss that I neglected to ask you?
I would add only something that I tell my writing students all the time: you don’t do this for money or notoriety. You do it instead, in large part, because you love the experience. For me, being able to share this experience with friends like my co-author Pete, and my publisher, D.X. Ferris, is reward enough – no matter how corny that sounds.
