Dan LeRoy, “Paul’s Boutique” (Continuum, 2009)

After spending millions to steal superstar Brooklyn-based rappers the Beastie Boys away from Def Jam Records in 1988, Capitol Records had high hopes for the act’s follow up effort. And why not? License to Ill (1986) had sold over five million copies while topping the Billboard charts. MTV had fallen in love with the trio and played their videos around the clock. By all accounts their next LP would be another MTV-ready commercial monster.

But as Dan LeRoy recounts in his eminently entertaining and essential Paul’s Boutique(Continuum, 2009), the Beastie Boys had a different agenda. They took Capitol’s money and relocated to Los Angeles to party, write and record the new LP. Rather than spend their advance on expensive recording studios, they laid down most of the tracks in the living room of one of their collaborators. While at work, the Beasties — and their producers the Dust Brothers — drew on an encyclopedic knowledge of pop music as they selected the hundreds of samples of other artists’ recordings that they would use (in a legally dubious manner) on their new album.

Released with much fanfare in the summer of 1989, Paul’s Boutique would kick off one of the more inexplicable album cycles in pop music history. LeRoy notes that the album lacked a true single and likewise, the Beasties chose not to tour behind it. The final result was an LP that went over the heads of most Beastie Boys fans and dropped from the charts within months of its release. As Le Roy demonstrates, however, Paul’s Boutique has come to be recognized as a revolutionary album that presaged the ways in which pop music is created and consumed today.

Dan LeRoy is Director of Literary Arts at Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School in Midland, PA. He has written for the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Newsweek, and many other publications. He is the co-author, with Michael Lipton, of Twenty Years of Mountain Stage, a history of the NPR musical variety show, and The Greatest Music Never Sold: Secrets of Legendary Live Albums David Bowie, Seal, Beastie Boys, Beck, Chicago, Mick Jagger & More! He lives near Pittsburgh with his wife and three children.

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