Beastie Boys - Sabotage
From Ill Communication (1994)
“Write about what you know”. One thing many young musicians probably know is a producer nagging them about getting to work. (Especially if you have a basketball hoop and a skate ramp in the studio.) So that’s what they wrote about:
I can't stand it I know you planned it
But I'm gonna set it straight, this Watergate
I can't stand rocking when I'm in here
Because your crystal ball ain't so crystal clear
It’s a scandal on par with Watergate that their producer is making them work in the studio.
It’s to a large degree ironic. It’s fun and a little show-off’y that if your producer is nagging you to work, to go to the mike and making up a great song about how this is “sabotage” of your creative process.
The song sort of proved them right, in that their process turned out this song. They worked smarter not harder, with the guitar just playing two notes and the organ just one.
In an ongoing theme here on Biweekly Songs, the song was not immediately recognized as great, and almost wasn’t included on the album.
While we were listening, the owner of the studio — a guy named Chris — walked in. He was an older rock dude with super-long hair, and although he'd never normally comment much about what he heard when checking to see how things were going, he heard the 'Sabotage' rhythm track and said, 'Now that's what I'm talking about! This is rockin' right here! This is it!'
And Chris was right. The song has an engaging rock intensity that are a characteristic of many of my favorite songs, such as Killing in the Name, Whole Lotta Love, I’m Shipping up to Boston. I'll tell you now, I keep it on and on.
They called the rhythm track ‘Chris Rock’ and kept it in mind. However, it was for a long time just a shelved instrumental, and was almost put on the album in that form. Until Ad-Rock came up with the lyrics for it in the last week. It’s evidently not always so easy to recognize what will turn out great. The crystal ball ain’t so crystal clear.
They did a live version on Letterman that was a superb performance, rivaling the album track.
There is also a good parody version that is a critique of the Jones Act, about where ships can dock and a term called “cabotage”, inverting the usual pattern with the parody being a serious version of the real song.
