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For Whom the Cowbell Tolls: 25 Years of Paul's Boutique
Think you know everything possible about the Beastie Boys classic album Paul’s Boutique? Think again. To commemorate the album’s 25th birthday, author Dan LeRoy and journalist Peter Relic joined forces to “drop the new science and kick the new knowledge” about this legendary 1989 release.
The follow-up to LeRoy’s acclaimed 33 1/3 series volume about Paul’s Boutique, this all-new book is crammed with deep research and fresh information. Released on 6623 Press’s creator-owned 66 & 2/3 imprint, it’s a stunning new chapter in Beastie scholarship — and archaeology — that might just startle the band themselves.
Learn about the freshly unearthed outtakes from Paul’s Boutique—including the album’s great lost single. Get a behind-the-scenes look at Capitol Records’ fateful decision to sign the Beasties and its controversial aftermath, featuring new interviews with all the top label executives. Take a look at forgotten, freshly unearthed Beastie artifacts.
Then dig into the “Boutique Bouillabaisse,” a multi-part tribute to the album’s famous closing medley, jam-packed with inside information. Watch rap's densest lyric sheet take shape in pictures of notebook pages jotted during the Paul’s Boutique sessions. Go track-by-track through a rare Mike D mixtape that influenced the album’s prescient retro sound. Meet the hip-hop duo nobody knows, who inspired Adam Yauch. Find out how three DJs reconstructed Paul’s Boutique, sample by sample. Learn more about characters like Beastie “trim coordinator” Dave Scilken. With many more funky exclusives, this one-of-a-kind book includes 36 photos and three illustrations from artist Jim Mahfood's 2007 Beastie Boys graphic novel Ask For Janice.
For Whom the Cowbell Tolls: 25 Years of Paul’s Boutique is guaranteed to make you as smart as when “Galileo dropped the orange”!
Dan LeRoy is the author of a book about Paul’s Boutique for Continuum’s 33 1/3 series, and The Greatest Music Never Sold: Secrets of Legendary Lost Albums. He has written about music and politics for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, Alternative Press and National Review Online. He lives near Pittsburgh.
Peter Relic is a Los Angeles writer whose work has appeared in Da Capo’s Best Music Writing anthology, as well as Rolling Stone, Vibe, XXL and Mass Appeal. He is currently writing a book about the history of the iconic label Delicious Vinyl.
Paperback available August 2014.
Learn more at www.PaulsBoutiqueBook.Tumblr.com, www.6623Press.com, @DanLeRoy and @6623Press.
The follow-up to LeRoy’s acclaimed 33 1/3 series volume about Paul’s Boutique, this all-new book is crammed with deep research and fresh information. Released on 6623 Press’s creator-owned 66 & 2/3 imprint, it’s a stunning new chapter in Beastie scholarship — and archaeology — that might just startle the band themselves.
Learn about the freshly unearthed outtakes from Paul’s Boutique—including the album’s great lost single. Get a behind-the-scenes look at Capitol Records’ fateful decision to sign the Beasties and its controversial aftermath, featuring new interviews with all the top label executives. Take a look at forgotten, freshly unearthed Beastie artifacts.
Then dig into the “Boutique Bouillabaisse,” a multi-part tribute to the album’s famous closing medley, jam-packed with inside information. Watch rap's densest lyric sheet take shape in pictures of notebook pages jotted during the Paul’s Boutique sessions. Go track-by-track through a rare Mike D mixtape that influenced the album’s prescient retro sound. Meet the hip-hop duo nobody knows, who inspired Adam Yauch. Find out how three DJs reconstructed Paul’s Boutique, sample by sample. Learn more about characters like Beastie “trim coordinator” Dave Scilken. With many more funky exclusives, this one-of-a-kind book includes 36 photos and three illustrations from artist Jim Mahfood's 2007 Beastie Boys graphic novel Ask For Janice.
For Whom the Cowbell Tolls: 25 Years of Paul’s Boutique is guaranteed to make you as smart as when “Galileo dropped the orange”!
Dan LeRoy is the author of a book about Paul’s Boutique for Continuum’s 33 1/3 series, and The Greatest Music Never Sold: Secrets of Legendary Lost Albums. He has written about music and politics for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, Alternative Press and National Review Online. He lives near Pittsburgh.
Peter Relic is a Los Angeles writer whose work has appeared in Da Capo’s Best Music Writing anthology, as well as Rolling Stone, Vibe, XXL and Mass Appeal. He is currently writing a book about the history of the iconic label Delicious Vinyl.
Paperback available August 2014.
Learn more at www.PaulsBoutiqueBook.Tumblr.com, www.6623Press.com, @DanLeRoy and @6623Press.
- GenresNonfictionMusic
246 pages, Paperback
First published July 24, 2014
32 people are currently reading
94 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 20, 2020
Talking about this book to a friend, the conversation touched on the difference between a geek and a nerd.
If you are a geek, you'll like this book. If you're a nerd, you love it.
I was geeking out because Paul's Boutique is one of my favorite albums of all time. I liked reading stories about the production, the aftermath, and seeing some of the original notes and lyric ideas. Then, while reading this book, I came across a 10 minute YouTube video that, in 10 minutes, summed up the book, plus played the relevant audio samples described in the book. Unfortunately no book can do a song justice describing what a song actually lets you hear. (The old "describe the color red to a sightless person" exercise) My geekery was satiated.
The author is a nerd. I say this, not as denigration, but because this is the 2nd book the author has written about this single album. The author sources lost cans of tape recordings, old notebooks, and almost everything he could, save some shells of eggs splattered on the LA pavement after some immature pranks. That level of dedication is what seemed over the top to me, a geek, but is just the thing needed for a nerd. I think it's cool to know how a computer works, I don't need the history and details of each resistor and diode.
Good information, just presented for those with different sensibilities than mine.
If you are a geek, you'll like this book. If you're a nerd, you love it.
I was geeking out because Paul's Boutique is one of my favorite albums of all time. I liked reading stories about the production, the aftermath, and seeing some of the original notes and lyric ideas. Then, while reading this book, I came across a 10 minute YouTube video that, in 10 minutes, summed up the book, plus played the relevant audio samples described in the book. Unfortunately no book can do a song justice describing what a song actually lets you hear. (The old "describe the color red to a sightless person" exercise) My geekery was satiated.
The author is a nerd. I say this, not as denigration, but because this is the 2nd book the author has written about this single album. The author sources lost cans of tape recordings, old notebooks, and almost everything he could, save some shells of eggs splattered on the LA pavement after some immature pranks. That level of dedication is what seemed over the top to me, a geek, but is just the thing needed for a nerd. I think it's cool to know how a computer works, I don't need the history and details of each resistor and diode.
Good information, just presented for those with different sensibilities than mine.
March 20, 2023
A kind of continuation of the 33 1/3 boom about Paul's Boutique, this is a total mishmash of extra content. Some really interesting, some not so much, like all the Capitol record exec stuff that was covered in plenty of detail in the first book. For obsessive Beasties fans, this is worth a read.
February 2, 2019
There were several reasons why I decided to read Dan LeRoy and Peter Relic's book, For Whom The Cowbell Tolls: 25 Years Of Paul's Boutique (2014). I had previously read and enjoyed LeRoy's 33 1/3 book on Paul's Boutique and I had recently ordered the Beastie Boys Book. It is a good bookend to LeRoy's previous books. Some chapters were more interesting than others. For example I enjoyed reading about the lost single in Chapter One: "If Jerry Lewis Owned Paul's Boutique: The Story of Beastie Boys' Great Lost Single." Some of the business-related sections dragged a bit for me, but I was fascinated to read about Young Jean Lee in f) That Great Cowbell Moment: "How Paul's Boutique Inspired Playwright Young Jean Lee." It seems that Lee grew up in Pullman, Washington a few years behind me and gave up an academic career to become a playwright and cited the album as an influence on her sense of creativity. There are some obscure roads the authors followed in this book that were interesting more often than not, however, I think this is a probably a book for only the biggest Beastie Boys fans.
July 10, 2018
This is a good book and a continuation of the 33 1/3 book on Paul's Boutique. It adds a bit more to the book but overall I found some parts just repetitive and unnecessary. If you are a completist then I recommend it for you.
September 27, 2018
A thorough follow-up to the 33-1/3 look at one of the greatest albums ever made. Entertaining and insightful all the way though, and a must for die-hard Beastie Boys fans.
February 1, 2020
A book for super fans, and for those of us who know that there is no such thing as too much Paul’s Boutique.
March 25, 2015
The writing isn't flash - it's sometimes a bit of a mess actually - but the subject is what matters here. One of my favourite albums by anyone ever and a nostalgia trip whenever I hear any of it or sit down to play all of it. And so here we get a behind-the-scenes-type miscellany; samples, the record-company backstory, the evolution of the band...all in bits and pieces. But it's fascinating because of the pull of the music.
December 15, 2014
I eat alladem.
More inside baseball than 33 1/3 for sure, and it has a couple of ridiculously unnecessary ingredients in the bouillabaisse section, but man there are some things you'll want to hear after reading this. Like that KMD stuff. Or the Jerry Lewis.
More inside baseball than 33 1/3 for sure, and it has a couple of ridiculously unnecessary ingredients in the bouillabaisse section, but man there are some things you'll want to hear after reading this. Like that KMD stuff. Or the Jerry Lewis.
February 17, 2015
The 33 1/3 book on Paul's Boutique was GREAT -- this book fills in some side details which I did not find fascinating.
July 15, 2015
Are yinze gonna read this story about my favorite album, or what?
November 12, 2016
does a great job of building on the 33 1/3 book, and includes a few interesting tangential stories, and a few not as interesting.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews