The Beastie Boys discovered something quite odd upon inspecting the gold plaque they received for their 1989 album Paul’s Boutique – and it happened to indirectly involve Barry Manilow.
During their appearance on Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend, published on Tuesday (August 13), Beastie’s Ad-Rock and Mike D told quite the story about a studio session from back in the day.
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“We had a gold record on the wall [for] Paul’s Boutique and I was looking at it. I could see that it has like nine songs on the one side, but I was looking at the actual gold record [they include in the plaque]. It only had four songs on it and I was like, ‘Wait….'”
He continued: “So we opened it and we put the record on the record player – the gold record – and it was doing like piano versions of like Barry Manilow songs and some other shit. Apparently they just take any record – at least for us!”
“He was the guy who had the craziest fucking idea that anybody would possibly have in the room, and then show up the next day with the equipment that would make it all possible,” Mike said. “And then you’re doing it.”
Ad-Rock then interjected: “We didn’t do all of the stuff that he was saying, though,” to which Mike jokingly replied: “Thankfully.”
“He wanted to do a tour underwater,” Ad continued. “He really, really thought about it, had drawings and everything,” Ad-Rock said.
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Mike D added: “There was a lost city of Atlantis fascination that went on for a while,” before joking how the tour could never have been logistically possible due to the lack of oxygen underwater and electrical risks involved.
It was previously revealed that Adam Yauch’s death from cancer in 2012 prevented a collaboration between the Beastie Boys and Eminem from happening.
