track down whoever was needed.”
More than a year in the making,
Paul’s Boutique
was now complete. And Carr had managed a feat that would have seemed impossible a few months earlier: he had delivered the album on budget, right down to the numerous cartons of eggs. It was time for a well-earned vacation—a fateful decision he is still explaining to this day.
* * *
While the Beastie Boys had been Tim Carr’s most important responsibility during the past year, they were far from his only assignment. In May of 1989, Carr was also the A&R man for a number of other Capitol artists with new releases due that summer. Female-fronted North Carolina rockers Fetchin’ Bones, “Late Show” musical director Paul Shaffer and Algerian rai singer Cheb Khaled were three of eight other acts whose albums Carr had turned in around the same time as
Paul’s Boutique
.
But Carr was, in his own words, “a very opinionated guy,” whose presence would have been unwelcome while Capitol’s marketing department developed its plans for his artists. “For an A&R person, this is the nail-biting time, and the time when you second-guess the record company,” headmits. “And except for the Beasties, who had a blank check from [David] Berman, I was being shouted down at every corner about how best to present the artists to the public. Tom Whalley was even getting fed up with my constant kvetching.”
So when Carr told Berman and Whalley he was “on the edge of a nervous breakdown” and needed some time off, they obliged. Carr set off in June on a backpacking trip throughout Asia, planning to return in September “as the conquering hero, the ruler of the top ten”—with
Paul’s Boutique
a major part of that commercial coup.
Needless to say, things didn’t quite go according to plan.
* * *
The problem with
Paul’s Boutique
, unlike many other albums considered flops upon release and recognized for their greatness later, had nothing to do with its initial reviews. Leyla Turkkan’s decision to force writers to focus on the music had evidently helped produce the desired result; not only did most critics respond quite favorably to the album, a few would spot its groundbreaking qualities straightaway.
“At the risk of sounding ridiculous, let us assert right off the bat that
Paul’s Boutique
is as important a record in 1989 as Dylan’s
Blonde on Blonde
was in 1966,” wrote
Time
magazine’s David Hiltbrand, who called the album “the most daring, clever record of the year.”
That didn’t sound ridiculous at all, as reviewers from both sides of the Atlantic joined Hiltbrand in exalting the rehabilitated Beasties.
The Washington Post’s
Mark Jenkins noted the band’s astounding growth since the debut—“inthe space of two albums, the Beasties have catapulted from “Blue Suede Shoes” to “A Day in the Life”—before warning, with some prescience, that the new effort was “a party, but it’s no beer blast.” David Handelman made the same point in
Rolling Stone
, but his four-star review declared the Beasties were “here to stay.”
“It could have been so bad,” noted
Melody Maker’s
David Stubbs, before declaring the Beasties’ transformation “miraculous” and the album an “outrageously funky triumph.” Meanwhile, in the
Village Voice
, Robert Christgau advised, “give it three plays and half a j’s worth of concentration, and it will amaze and delight you,” calling
Paul’s Boutique
“a generous tour de force.”
There were certainly some discouraging words. Several critics would hone in on purportedly “violent” songs like “Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun,” while others, like
Hip Hop Connection’s
Nick Smash, found the disc’s collages lacking in “song structure.” And then there was the London
Daily Mail’s
Marcus Berkmann, who called
Paul’s Boutique
“the single most tedious album by a supposedly ‘major’ act that I have ever heard.”
Surprisingly, some of the band’s close
More than a year in the making,
Paul’s Boutique
was now complete. And Carr had managed a feat that would have seemed impossible a few months earlier: he had delivered the album on budget, right down to the numerous cartons of eggs. It was time for a well-earned vacation—a fateful decision he is still explaining to this day.
* * *
While the Beastie Boys had been Tim Carr’s most important responsibility during the past year, they were far from his only assignment. In May of 1989, Carr was also the A&R man for a number of other Capitol artists with new releases due that summer. Female-fronted North Carolina rockers Fetchin’ Bones, “Late Show” musical director Paul Shaffer and Algerian rai singer Cheb Khaled were three of eight other acts whose albums Carr had turned in around the same time as
Paul’s Boutique
.
But Carr was, in his own words, “a very opinionated guy,” whose presence would have been unwelcome while Capitol’s marketing department developed its plans for his artists. “For an A&R person, this is the nail-biting time, and the time when you second-guess the record company,” headmits. “And except for the Beasties, who had a blank check from [David] Berman, I was being shouted down at every corner about how best to present the artists to the public. Tom Whalley was even getting fed up with my constant kvetching.”
So when Carr told Berman and Whalley he was “on the edge of a nervous breakdown” and needed some time off, they obliged. Carr set off in June on a backpacking trip throughout Asia, planning to return in September “as the conquering hero, the ruler of the top ten”—with
Paul’s Boutique
a major part of that commercial coup.
Needless to say, things didn’t quite go according to plan.
* * *
The problem with
Paul’s Boutique
, unlike many other albums considered flops upon release and recognized for their greatness later, had nothing to do with its initial reviews. Leyla Turkkan’s decision to force writers to focus on the music had evidently helped produce the desired result; not only did most critics respond quite favorably to the album, a few would spot its groundbreaking qualities straightaway.
“At the risk of sounding ridiculous, let us assert right off the bat that
Paul’s Boutique
is as important a record in 1989 as Dylan’s
Blonde on Blonde
was in 1966,” wrote
Time
magazine’s David Hiltbrand, who called the album “the most daring, clever record of the year.”
That didn’t sound ridiculous at all, as reviewers from both sides of the Atlantic joined Hiltbrand in exalting the rehabilitated Beasties.
The Washington Post’s
Mark Jenkins noted the band’s astounding growth since the debut—“inthe space of two albums, the Beasties have catapulted from “Blue Suede Shoes” to “A Day in the Life”—before warning, with some prescience, that the new effort was “a party, but it’s no beer blast.” David Handelman made the same point in
Rolling Stone
, but his four-star review declared the Beasties were “here to stay.”
“It could have been so bad,” noted
Melody Maker’s
David Stubbs, before declaring the Beasties’ transformation “miraculous” and the album an “outrageously funky triumph.” Meanwhile, in the
Village Voice
, Robert Christgau advised, “give it three plays and half a j’s worth of concentration, and it will amaze and delight you,” calling
Paul’s Boutique
“a generous tour de force.”
There were certainly some discouraging words. Several critics would hone in on purportedly “violent” songs like “Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun,” while others, like
Hip Hop Connection’s
Nick Smash, found the disc’s collages lacking in “song structure.” And then there was the London
Daily Mail’s
Marcus Berkmann, who called
Paul’s Boutique
“the single most tedious album by a supposedly ‘major’ act that I have ever heard.”
Surprisingly, some of the band’s close
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