When I listen to the Beastie Boys records, I notice there's a lot of emphasis on the deep, low-end sounds — bass, drums and rhythm — and not the trimmed- down ultra clean detail and sparkly high stuff which is popular with radio and in today's pop music. In a sense, it's going against the grain of what the popular music business wants to hear. How intentional is that on your part?
It just happened because we didn't listen to a lot of pop and stuff that was on the radio. We just always went for what we were into. We did the same thing you do — listened to other records that inspired us. "Hey, let's check out The Meters and listen to how it's recorded — like, man, listen to those hi-hats." There's no tricks or sparkle there. It's just raw rhythm and playing, which is the meat of the music, ya know, the rawness of it cuts through. For me it's just the simple way to record something — put more focus on a good groove as opposed to the technical.
I've tried to figure out how The Meters did all that stuff. I think they probably didn't use many microphones.
Yeah 4-track, it's crazy. It's a good plan. Just one or two mics on the drums. It's always in mono bass, guitar and keyboards — boom, boom, boom. Sometimes they panned something, full to one side or the other, but basically it's just mono, I still think that's the best way to learn, to work with a 4-track, and just work on the music. Then you can develop from there.
I heard you got started with music when you were a kid. When did first get "hit" by music?
I got interested in music at a young age. I took piano and organ lessons. When my Dad bought me a Silvertone organ, that was a big turning point. The electronic aspects of pushing buttons and getting weird sounds was interesting to me. When I got a little older, I had friends who had a band. They asked if I wanted to jam with them, and the only thing I had was the organ. I actually hauled it over to my friend's house and started jamming. My organ wasn't that loud so we hot-rodded the output of the speakers and ran it into an amplifier. It sounded like Deep Purple, like fuzz organ. I was kinda like rhythm — we had a guitar player who'd do solos, and I'd just rock the chords underneath it. I just had to do a couple notes and it sounded heavy. I played in a band in junior high and high school for a few years, doing covers and a couple originals. We just had a blast. After graduating school, I eventually bought a synthesizer and an Univox electric piano to give me more variations on my sound. When I saw synths at the music store, with all those sound effects I was like, this is what I want!
Yeah all the knobs. I went a little crazy when I saw that too.
The sound was cool. Filters, sirens, sound effects, white noise, pink noise — it was a neat item. And nobody had 'em at the time. It was like 1976-77, so I was the first one in my neighborhood to have a synth. But I sucked as a player. I was more into the sounds. Eventually my friend from Gardena High School, Money Mark, bought a 4-track, a Teac 1/4" 3340, and decided he was just gonna make music on his own. He was a one-man band kind of thing, and just started recording stuff at home. All of us, all our friends, were impressed by him. We used to think, "Wow, he makes songs... it's got the bass, drums, guitar... how do you do that?" He figured it out. His dad's an electronics guy and Mark is very talented. He bought a couple pieces of gear, some SM57s, had some drums and other stuff, and started mic'ing things-up. He turned me on to recording and technique. He was living with his family, with his two brothers in a little house, so he needed to move his studio out of there. So I let him set up his studio at my house. I had a back-house I rented from two hippie brothers. I was seventeen when I moved out. We started building up equipment. He got a tape echo one day, I'd bring in a flanger, I got some mics, and then I'd walk in with a condenser mic, an AKG 414. Whoa! It just grew from there. Soon I bought my own 4-track and then we had two 4-tracks. We could bounce between the two machines and add tracks.
What was your next move? Did you start recording bands?
We did that for a few years. He wrote all the songs and played almost all of the instruments. Occasionally he had other friends, good players, come over to play drums or bass. The ska movement was blowing up in the early '80s — The Specials and Madness and all that stuff was happening. We got inspired by that whole thing. Shit we could do that! We really got into ska and reggae. I started playing bass with his brother, who played drums, and we got another friend to play guitar. Mark wrote songs and sang, and we were his band, The Junglebugs. We played for a few years, we did a bunch of gigs, and we pressed some acetates that we sent to local and college radio. Eventually we got into a 16-track studio through my friend Brian Foxworthy who was a student at Harbor Community College. They had a 2" 16- track. We recorded our best songs there. I put up the money to produce it and we made a single.
Did it sound better than the stuff you did in your home studio?
It came out different because of 16 tracks and more mics and better quality gear. Actually, some of our own stuff was captured in a different way [at home]. It was just a great experience. We were all psyched to have all that stuff in this studio — headphones! drum kit! direct boxes and everything! To me it just opened the door even wider to recording. I signed up for a class at the college so I could have access to the gear. If you become a First Engineer you can use the studio. That was my goal. I started taking courses there in the recording arts, the teacher, John Payne, was very knowledgeable. He went with more of a technical aspect. We didn't do a lot of recording — he left us to record on our own. He explained what microphones did, transducers, traveling sound, compression, reverbs and delays. It was a good class. I got access to the studio and worked with Brian. We produced this almost-all-girl band, Alice I Wonder. I got into recording and producing. After a couple of years, The Junglebugs were starting to phase-out. I was collecting equipment and got into the PA business and doing live sound. I was into live mixing. I really enjoyed going to the shows. I started watching people mix — I could do this — I had some mics and some equipment, some amps. Next thing ya know I'm getting a little PA setup, a DJ rental, and I'm doin' some gigs, then I'm going to Hollywood to the clubs. Then on to a whole new phase. The PA stuff started generating money, and it was interesting and exciting too. I used to go to a club called Power Tools. It was the best club in L.A. — like a New York-type club, an underground club. They had big halls and set up big art installations. Andy Warhol used to go there, and all kinds of people would show-up, actors and all these freaky people. It was a scene. I was there one night and the Beastie Boys were coming to play. They didn't have an album out, they just had a single, I think it was "Slow And Low". Me and my friends were like, wow, cause every once in a while the club would have a performance and they would stop the DJ. So these guys were up on the stage ready to perform. They had three mics and a DJ setup and were testin' the mics — one-two, one-two. DJ Hurricane was testin' out the turntables and cueing up the first record — chukka- chukka-chukka-bowm. When he hit the first note, the 808 bass sound, the whole sound system shut- off! So [the Beastie Boys] said fuck this and threw their mics down and walked off the stage. Aw man what a bummer! It really sucked cause like fifteen hundred people were there. I was like damn, this PA is bullshit. It was like four speakers and a 200 watt stereo power amp, you know, like a home stereo amp. It just collapsed. The setup sucked, the speakers were on the ground [instead of raised-up]. I was so mad. I had to find out who runs this place, who owns this club. I found the owner and said, "This is embarrassing. Ya know your sound system just doesn't work." He said if I had the equipment I could come back next week with it. So I got some wires and some amps, I raised the speakers up. The owner was so impressed, and I got the gig. I started taking care of their sound system. I bought him a 500- watt amp and four subwoofers. The go-go dancers could be on top of them — they made a perfect platform. We got more amps — a $1500 investment — it made such a difference. All of a sudden they had SOUND, and people were psyched.
Did you meet the Beastie Boys that night?
No not yet, that happened later. I got to be friends with the DJ there, Matt Dyke. He was into all kinds of music. He played everything — early good rap to hard rock — Zeppelin, old Aerosmith, AC/DC, Stevie Wonder, Kraftwerk, Brazilian, Sergio Mendes. He was very tasteful. He'd play some Latin Jazz and go into some Missing Persons or Sex Pistols — he would just play it at the right time. He knew how to rock the crowd so they would never stop dancing. It was just amazing. Matt was trying to get into producing. At his house he had a 4-track cassette, so I told him to upgrade a little. He got a Tascam 388, the kind of 8-track with 1/4" tape and the mixing board built right in.
I love those!
Yeah, they're great, I made a lot of records on those. We used the closet in Matt's living room as a vocal booth with a Sennheiser 421 mic. He also bought a EMU SP12 drum machine. He had thousands of records that he started sampling, and I did the recording. The first guy we recorded was Tone Loc — that was the beginning of Matt's label, Delicious Vinyl.
Did you make money off that record?
It sold 2.5 million records. I had half a point on that record. That was the full length, Loc'ed After Dark. I still had my day job of 10 years as a machinist, making aircraft parts, which I did from age 17 to 27. There was a point at which recording and doing the PA rental business generated more money on the weekend than my day job. So I went in to work one day and just quit — no two weeks notice, no nuthin' — I said "Man, I never want to do this job again." That was around 1988. When I quit my job, I got $9,000 in severance pay. I didn't know I was getting that money! I got out the old Recycler [the want ads]. I'm buyin' a 16-track! I bought a Tascam 1" [MS16] with an Allen and Heath CMC-24 board with MIDI-mute automation. The board had selectable EQs and stuff. That's all I needed, I was used to using two-band EQ — bass and treble. [laughs] Three bands is great! So I bought it and started using that. We did a single, called "Cheeba Cheeba," pressed it to vinyl then played it in a couple clubs. People were getting into it so we did another single, "I Got It Goin On," and sent it to a rap radio station in L.A. It got up to #4 and sold 10,000 units. We were like, this is good, were on the right track. Then we were working with all these groups at the same time — Young MC, Def Jeff, Body and Soul, Mellow Man Ace. In the 2 years I worked there, we were doing a lot of 18-hour days. People started calling us up sending us stuff. One day we got these 4-track demos from two guys from Pomona, EZ Mike and John King. They had a rap [radio] show at Claremont College. They would play rap stuff and they would make their own music a little bit. They had been playing "Cheeba Cheeba" on their station. These guys were genius. They were kinda ahead of us. They had loops layered down, they listened to a lot of Public Enemy and were into all the multi-samples and cuts. Matt heard it and said "This shit is cool man. Let's hook up with them." We brought them to our studio and re- recorded their stuff on 16-track. That was the beginning of the Dust Brothers. We heard that the Beastie Boys were getting off their label and were looking for a new record deal. We sent them two songs — "Car Thief" (Stevie J. was rappin' on that one) and an instrumental, "Shake your Rump", that we remade on 16-track from the Dust Brothers 4- track version. The Beastie Boys flipped out and said we gotta come out there right now. For the official meeting, only two came out — Mike D. and Adrock, MCA wasn't there. "These tracks are pretty cool... how'd you do it?... is this your studio?... that's pretty cool man, we want to try to rap on these." Sowesetitup-itallcamefullcircle.Ihad become a recording engineer and was making cool music. That's when we started Paul's Boutique [1989]. Delicious Vinyl had sold 2.5 million of the Loc'ed After Dark album, the single, "Wild Thing" sold 2.5 million as well, and Young MC had sold almost 2 million records. I had points on all of them, but I got gypped, with every deduction they could take out. I got a check for $20,000, which is amazing when you are used to getting $300 a week. I got about 4 or 5 checks like that and I was stoked. Delicious Vinyl kinda peaked out, too much success too fast. I quit working there and the Beasties hired me and we worked for nine months on their second album, Paul's Boutique (Mostly as the engineer — sometimes producing, with Dust Brothers usually producing and putting the music together then the Beasties would write words and do vocals on top).
Where did you do Paul's Boutique?
We did some of it D-Vinyl, still in my friend Matt Dyke's living room where I had all my gear. The Beasties sometimes called that place "Mario G's". Then we booked time at The Record Plant in Hollywood. That was my first time going into the big studio and doing a real project. The Neve board, the Studer tape decks, full access to all the mics. But we didn't really use it. We did everything in the control room. That record was all samples except for one or two songs. We did one song at Ocean Way where we recorded live bass and guitar for "Lookin' Down the Barrel". I did a rough mix of "Egg Man" there and we used it on the record instead of the real mix. It just sounded better. The intro to "To All The Girls" was done at D-Vinyl. When the record came out, it didn't do so good. The president of Capitol Records was fired two weeks before along with the whole staff, so there was no promotion. The band decided they didn't want to go on tour — they had girlfriends and they wanted to stay home and chill. They made a lot of money on the first record [License To Ill, 1986] and had caused a little havoc, so they were just gonna hang around and jam.
Where?
In L.A., they had moved out here. It was good for them to come out here — good weed, sunshine, California girls, all that shit. After we did Paul's Boutique we realized we had spent a lot of money in the studio. We had spent about a $1/4 million in rights and licensing for samples. $1/4 million in studio costs! Just a ridiculous amount. So they busted out the guitars, bass and drums and started messin' around. We got some equipment and started jamming in the guys' houses. They rented this big house that had a big gate with a "G" on it at the top of the driveway so they called it the "G- Spot". That's where the whole "G" thing started. It was some big film director's house. You used to have to hit a button to open up the gate. One day we were playing ping-pong in the living room, and we could see a car coming towards us down the driveway way too fast, then we saw it was Mike D's car, and he crashed through gate. He came flying down the driveway and didn't hit the brakes in time and smashed into the wall. We were right on the other side. It coulda been really bad, we were all in shock. Then we just started busting out laughing! I told Mike my friend Mark was a carpenter and could fix the gate. So that's how Money Mark got to meet the Beasties. Next thing you know he's got a keyboard, he's hanging out at the house and jamming with the Beasties. The neighbors started complaining so we had to rent a rehearsal space. We brought the Tascam 388 over to the space and I recorded a little bit. The next thing you know, we've got a couple of ideas, we got the rhythm parts for "Something's Got to Give".
I read in the liner notes of Beastie Boys Anthology: The Sounds Of Science [1999] that you did a vocal part on that song.
