grand royal issue 1 (bob mack)

The latest chapter in my ongoing saga with the Beastie Boys began last November in New York City, where I made out in the mosh pit with a funky frizzy haired beauty during the band's sold out show at Roseland Ballroom. When Mike looked down from the stage and saw me drenched in sweat and clumsily tongueing this poor girl, I don't think he believed his eyes. And I know he didn't believe them when, a week later, I showed up in Miami, where I invited myself on their tour bus and subsequently leeched a ride all the way across country to San Francisco. It was there that the band's eight-month, four-continent, 150 date world tour finally wound up on the 24th in front of a sold out crowd of some 8,500 kids at the Convention Center. In between Miami and San Francisco there were lots of funny moments:

*MIAMI - On the trip down from New York I come up with a rhyme to bust when I arrive on the scene-something like "I went all the way to Miami/Just so I could be with the King Ad-Whammy." I show up backstage and Mike says, "Bob Mack? It's like that?" Intimidated, I forgot about busting my rhyme. Instead, smoked my first ever blunt with B Real, which put a sharp pain in my right lung that remained up through and past the S.F. show, rapped with the kid from Pervert about the skate/blunt/punk and rap culture which he and the Beastie Boys have helped define, went briefly into the mosh pit where there were stationary wood and steel seats but left after my blue suede Pumas got stepped on. Later I discover that my Pumas were covered with a tar-like substance which I assumed was Coke syrup. The band give me shit about my "dogged out" shoes and express genuine disbelief that I can keep wearing them. Before turning in, I stare in amazement at the video of Ricky's encounter the previous night in Orlando with a girl that, in his own words, "looked like Tom Petty." I wonder if Ricky knows that Tom Petty is originally from Florida.

*TAMPA AND JACKSONVILLE: Can't remember much about these two dates. After the Miami show we got on the bus and drove for a while before stopping at some 24 hr. market in Naples. We roll into the store, half of which is sectioned off by some rope. Ricky ducks under the rope and starts nosing around in the off limits area. When the redneck proprietor finally sees Ricky, he barks, "Hey Skipper!! That area's off limits!" For some reason the way this old bird said "Hey Skipper" is just too much, so Hurricane starts mimmicking him and riding Ricky. "Hey Skipper, get the hell out of there!" and so forth. Guess you had to be there.

Next night, after the Wacksonville gig, the promoter throws a party at some cheesy chain joint called Calico Jacks. Upon our arrival they roust all the patrons and cordon off an ad hoc VIP area as if we were the Bon Jovi entourage. The management does, however, continue to let a suburban cover band keep churning out classic schlock in the background. "Send the bass player a Grasshopper," Yauch suddenly decides. We snicker and forget about it, but 15 minutes later a guy who looks like a lifelong Geddy Lee fan comes up to the table and gives the startled but polite Yauch some sincere thank yous. After getting back on the bus, I smoke and talk with Adam, who's playing a crazy reggae mix made by Mario. I remember thinking that our conversation was heavy, but that's all I remember.

*NEW ORLEANS: This was the highlight of the trip. Sean Carasov came down from L.A. to celebrate his birthday. The King Adrock bought a super-dope forest green bowler from a haberdasher that had been around since Napoleon's time. And we all celebrated our day off by going to dinner at a fancy restaurant, where they ushered us in our jeans and baseball caps upstairs, safely away from all the yuppies. At the top of the spiral staircase was a mannequin in a tuxedo sitting at a player piano. During dinner I chatted with tour manager Wilf Wright about his stints back in the day with heroes of mine like Jethro Tull (teetotaler tightwads) and Black Sabbath (spendthrift stoners). By the end of the meal we were all feelin' pretty squirelly, especially Yauch, who went over and snatched the wig from the mannequin's head and put it on his own. There were over a dozen of us at the table, and we passed around the wig so that everybody (except me) could put it on. Soonafter we tried to leave, but the fidgety maitre d stepped to us. "Excuse me guys, could we get that wig back-it's a rental..." And we're like "A rental! What, you rent it 364 days a year? Come on!" Eventually, though, Yauch hands the rug back to the relieved restaurateur. Suddenly Ricky Powell swoops in, re-snatches the wig and repeatedly yells "SALUGI" at the bewildered greeter.

That night the group went and saw some local group of hotshot teenage zydeco musicians, The Re-Birth Brass Band, at a tiny uptown bar. Meanwhile, Hurricane, percussionist Eric Bobo and I hit Bourbon Street and got loaded on the mixed drinks they sell there that are actually called "Hurricanes." At a sleazy strip joint we saw a black woman with an ass like a wrecking ball. This butt had a mind of its own. Each cheek moved separately and shit. Being the only white guy in the place was the least of my worries. It was that woman's ass that put the fear of God in me. By the end of the night Cane and Bobo were rescuing me from carniverous transvestites and dragging me away from an ancient shoeshine man who was attempting to clean my blue suede Pumas with a shred of Kleenex. Finally, the three of us stormed into the empty lobby of a Holiday Inn. I promptly leaped behind the service counter and started giving directions to a drunk stranger who wasn't aware that I was pulling a Chevy Chase on him. When he finally wised up he cursed me like the Devil himself and to this day Cane and Bobo can't look at me without shaking their head and crossing themselves.

The next night was a great gig. Iggy Pop was there: tiny and taut, wearing no shirt, blue jeans and the smallest pair of black, high-top Reeboks I've ever seen. He did a duet with Rollins that was pretty dope-but not nearly as dope as the way Rollins would later sing along, offstage, with "Eggman." For some reason this is Henry's favorite Beastie Boys song. Every night across the country he'd stand off stage and lip-sink, complete with facial contortions. Sometimes he'd even dance a little jig. One time he saw Ricky and I taping him and laughing, but he didn't even glare at us.

*DALLAS: We enter the Evil Hyatt and immediately get a bad vibe. Bellhops built like manatees with faces like flank steaks grit their teeth and grumble when the Beastie/Rollins/Cypress posse spills into the lobby. In the lobby is one of those message boards with white letters pressed on to a black rubber background. You know "The Evil Hyatt of Dallas Welcomes The NRA"-kind of thing, except in this case they were welcoming a convention of amusement park architects. In time, Adrock sidled up to the message board with that inimitable gait of his, and we all started giggling as he began re-arranging the letters. Eventually he steps back and reveals his new message, which reads: "Blow Me." We laugh but Ricky Powell has an extra idea. He walks up to the board and we grow silent, hoping that he doesn't ruin it. Then Rick steps away and unveils his newer, improved message: "Yo, Blow Me!"

That day Adrock and I bonded when everybody went in search of the usual vegetarian rabbit food and we put our foot down and hit the first greasy spoon we could find. It was also here in Dallas (or maybe New Orleans), where I hung with him in his hotel room, toking and joking. He had his sampler with him and was chomping at the bit to get home so he could start listening to all the records he'd bought on the road. In the meantime, though, he was pre-occupied with whether or not Ricky was going to fuck up his laundry.

That night the show is absolute mayhem. The venue is a decrepit wrestling arena with sagging ceiling and rotten floorboards. The barrier between the mosh pit and the stage is destroyed during the opening set, and the panicky security guards stage a walk out. For the entire set, Ricky and I act as ad hoc security guards and throw would be stage divers back into a pit that has become an actual whirlpool. The wooden floor has collapsed, creating a human funnel of flesh. When we throw the kids back into the crowd they diappear down the tubes. During "The New Style" MCA puts the mic to my mouth and asks me if he can count it down. To which I was supposed to say, "yes", or "go ahead", kind of like Maceo to James Brown. Instead, I stutter and count to four myself with about as much flavor as Lou Ferrigno. MCA says, "Yo, that was wack."

HOUSTON: The Main Event. Mike and Ricky's birthday. Tour manager Wilf Wright procures two bimbos dressed in bikinis with sashes reading "Ricky's Girls." They look good but ultimately give up nothing. Prior to the show the Beastie Boys get restless on ginseng and hit batting practice with apples, not unlike the scenes from their first tour video. This is technically the last night of the tour for them because after the show they get to go to sleep, wake up and fly home to L.A. (since the last three gigs are in California and they can travel to those shows in their own cars). Ricky and I, however, have to get to California the hard way- i.e. via 24 hour, straight ride on the crew bus from Houston to San Diego. More of that later. Near the end of the show Mike admits to the crowd that by tomorrow night he'll be seeing his fiance for the first time in a long time and that he's "ready to do some bonin'!" After the show, I come across a five year old kid in tears. I ask his mom, "Is he scared? Was it too noisy for him?" And she says. "No, he's upset because MCA just walked by and he can't talk to him." Backstage, a local celeb and N.O.R.M.L activist named Johnny Hemp uses thumb and forefinger to wipe away his white build up and ask the Beastie Boys if they're OK: "I'm mellow," whispers Adrock. "You're mellow? Do you need to get high. A quick pick me up? Some speed, acid, shrooms, gak?" An under-the-weather and road weary Mike D says, "No I'm gonna go back to the hotel and chill-out." The hemp man counters, "Chill out? I got some valium- how bout some Xanex?" This man is truly a travelling pharmacy. Before Adrock can grin a polite "no," Johnny Hemp's off on another tangent, throwing down elborate rhymes that celebrate the extra-curricular uses of cannabis. The end is nigh. The band manages to escape for a late dinner courtesy of their promoter/friend Tom Bunch at a Vietnamese restaurant. Throughout the dinner a group of Vietnamese teens giggle and timidly hurl taunts at our table: "Mike D!" would hum one, "Beastie Boy Whatch you wan?" would hiss another. Finally, as we leave, the kids line up on either side of the front door, outside on the sidewalk. As each of us walks out we are asked if we are Mike D. When the real Mike D. walks out, he says no. One guy's too sharp for the ruse and steps to Mike with a human beat box version of "So What'cha Want" and "Paul Revere." For an instant I think I've finally got an answer to Hurricane's eternal question, "What's Really Going On?"

That night Ricky and I board the crew bus. The crew bus doesn't like us because up until now we've been traveling on the band's bus and are thus perceived as pampered. Ignoring the vibe, Ricky and I laugh about the Vietnamese kids and crash. I wake up to find the assistant lighting guy smugly smoking my last joint right in front of my face. Ricky wakes up to find that other crew members have commandeered his video camera and shot new footage of themselves over his own, priceless tape of Cypress live. Ricky goes ballistic and rousts the guilty party- for the record the soundboard dick who kept pumping Depeche Mode over the P.A.- and challenges the half asleep Jeff Porcaro lookalike to a throwdown. The next thing I know, we're in San Diego and I'm taking a cab to the house of a high school buddy.

SAN DIEGO: I try to convince my mossback reactionary pals that the Beastie Boys aren't cretins but semi accomplished jazz funk musicians and live entertainers. This takes several hours and beers, but by 10:00 p.m we're rolling to the gig. Upon arrival we see a stream of fans leaving the venue. "Hey yo," I yell at some high school kid, "which way to the gig?" After the laughter and insults subside, the kid is cool enough to let me know that "Yo homeboy, that shit is over- it started at 8:00 p.m.!" I'm stunned and bummed. Up until now The Beasties have gone on at 10:00 p.m. each night, but because we're in fascist fucking Sham Diego, sucker motherfucker Pete Wilson or Rush Limbaugh has ordained that the band must go on early. I'm too embarrassed to go backstage, which is a mistake because the band, bless their souls, are actually wondering where the fuck that dusted journalist flunky friend of theirs is - and are even ready to present me with a new pair of Pumas to replace the ones I was trying to have my man slick up in New Orleans. When I don't show, they assume I've started slipping again and dismiss me with mild contempt.

LOS ANGELES: I bum a ride up to L.A. But at the venue- the unionized, more-fucked up-than-San Diego Universal Ampitheatre- I'm dissed. Told that my all access pass is worthless. After much finagling, I share a ticket with another guy and we each see half the show. I see the bitchen beginning when my boy Dick Butkus came out wearing his orange Mil Mascharas mask. I also catch the grand finale, a version of "So Whatcha Want" with Cypress Hill. The stage was filled with all these hype motherfuckers trying to stay ahead of the monster riff with a rapid delivery but finally Yauch slowed the last verse down and set forth the plan: "I'm tired of driving, it's due time that I walk about." I thought it was one of the more revelatory experiences I've ever had, but of course afterwards the band and entourage think that I've missed it all. "It was our best show in seven months of touring," they keep saying, and where was l? But I'm too busy trying to avoid my nemesis, Michael Balzary (a.k.a. Flea) that I don't bother to explain myself.

SAN FRANCISCO: The next morning I wake up on my friend Virgil's couch. I leave his front door wide open and go to Union Station. This ruins my relationship with Virgil and his roomate Evan, but I don't even realize it till a week later. I take a bus to Bakersfield, a train from there to Stockton, a bus from Stockton to Oakland, and then a bus to San Francisco. A cab gets me from the train station to the Civic Center. I'm late but not too late. I enter the arena during the beginning of the third song, "Pass The Mic." You know the intro to "Pass The Mic"? The way it wafts upward with those off-kilter ambient tones? Well, fuck you if you don't, because I do and when I hear those chords and then hear Yauch's voice "We'll if you can feel what I feel than its a musical masterpiece." Oh shit. My ribs and lungs hurt like hell. Still, I hit the pit. Mike sees and laughs at me. He dedicates the next song to me and all other idiots who've followed them from town to town like a Grateful Dead bootlegger. "This next song goes out to all of youse who have followed us from city to city like my man Bob Mack....This one is called 'High Plains Drifter.'"

"High Plains Drifter" is of course my favorite Beastie Boy track, the one that's based on a sample of the Eagles "Those Shoes," from The Long Run LP. This ol' hippy is finally happy. Meanwhile, the band's guitar tech, Pinske, was allowed to come on stage and smash one of Adrock's guitars (earlier in the tour Pinske had purchased a bunch of custom guitar picks emblazoned with the Beastie Boys logo, a gesture that was not exactly appreciated by the increasingly tired and cranky trio). Post game entertainment was provided by Adam Yauch, who right after exiting the stage for the last time in '92, did the Ronnie Lott thing and tackled his own manager, John "Did You Do That Phone Interview?" Silva. Silva battled back in what looked like a scene from American Gladiators, two comrades rolling on the floor, half joking, half serious, both releasing their last bit of tension at tour's end. After the gig, Hurricane had to leave immediately to catch a plane, and exchanged a hurried, dewey-eyed goodbye with his mates. As Cane says in his interview elsewhere in this 'zine about the on-stage chemistry the band has developed, "it ain't no mystery."

Now THAT is what I'm talking about....

Fine. But that was November of last year and now it's November of this year. What happened in between?

Actually, I can't remember, I'm too dusted. One thing Mike did was travel to the Gavin Convention in San Francisco last February, where I noticed that he was the only artist who got play from both the rap and alternative rock crowds. That night we saw Onyx and I remember thinking that they were pretty astute to exploit the culture of the mosh pit for their own purposes. Mike was nice enough to let me crash on his hotel room floor and I returned the favor by keeping him up all night with my infernal snoring. I woke up in the morning surrounded by room service menus, alarm clocks, Gideon Bibles and all the other trash he's thrown at me in his unsuccessful effort to shut me up. In the morning he says, "yo, you should see a doctor about that shit."

Otherwise, it's been business, not as usual but in the new, disciplined Beastie Boys mode. Hurricane recorded his solo joint and Luscious Jackson released their EP, thereby legitimizing Mike's pipe dream of having a real label. Currently Cane is pissed that Mike is waffling on a release date of his solo joint.

Meanwhile, Yauch is pissed at Mike because.... I can't tell you. Actually, he's not pissed, it's just that the last time I overheard Mike and Yauch talking, I heard Mike backpedalling, saying, "Yes, but we're not Sting, we're not Phil Collins."

You see, Yauch wants the album done by November for April '94 release because he's on a crazy mission to snowboard all winter. Mike has taken to calling him The Taskmaster," but it is not true, as Entertainment Tonight has reported, that Yauch wants to institute a series of fines within the band, a la James Brown, for unshined shoes and showing up to the studio blunted.

While Yauch's been rippin' shit on the upright and the mic (one night he looped some Fred Wesley and did a "Disco Dave"-type rap on top of it), the Kid's been switchin' it up as usual. He's playing bass with D.F.L., and in the studio he's always drumming whenever I'm around. But his real speciality is beats, loops, scratches and that type of shit. He comes in with his beats on discs, goes into the room with his sampler and creates something out of nothing. He even loops the Young and the Useless. I'm not worried about his guitar because I've heard his sneaky scratching on various playbacks and it's tasteful as ever.

Right now they've got some 30 or 40 tracks in varying degrees of completion. One song has a bass line like the one from "Red Onion" by Groove Holmes and features the boys rapping in a similar sing-song delivery throughout the whole cut. One fragment I caught from a Mike verse was something like "D.I.Y. means do it yourself/ ain't waiting around for someone's help." For good measure the Kid scratched in a fragment from Kurtis Blow's "Tough." I took to calling this cut "The Airplane Song" because the intro had the sound effect of a 747 skidding to a halt before the music kicked in, but Mike now informs me that the plane has been replaced by a helicopter- so as you can see, it's futile and ultimately no fun to find out what's really going on. Just wait till the album comes out.

At any rate, there's lots of stand up bass and treated vocals sung through the Sony Variety Mic. The zen-like silence and haikus of the last LP will in some sense give way to a torrent of verbiage not unlike Paul's Boutique. Then again, there also promises to be plenty of different styles flexed: already on tape are a couple of smokin' fusion jams, a punk rock joint about my portly pal Sean called "Heart Attack Man" and a spacey, far eastern extravaganza which Mike terms as an homage to the German group Can, featuring Eugene Gore, the self-proclaimed "Renaissance Asshole," on violin. That's right, violin. Eddie Jobson, where are you now?

The bottom line is: It's not like they're jerking around in the studio waiting for something to give: They're a real band now. On a real schedule.

The band's longtime friend Tim Carr (the AR guy who signed them to Capitol) notes that in the past, the band has always taken so long to record their albums because "they always have to reinvent the wheel."

"But this time," Yauch counters philosophically, "we're just gonna rotate the tires."