| Big
Fat Love
The Grand Royal Records label served
not only as a platform to release new projects by up and
coming musicians, but also gave old side-projects like Big
Fat Love an opportunity to be heard. The 1997 release of
Big Fat Love's Hell House album featured both new
recordings, as well as older material that had been recorded
at Secret Society on Centre Street around 1983. Secret Society
was where Beastie Boys went on to record Licensed
to Ill. This studio was also where Rick
Rubin recorded many of the early Def Jam albums.
Big Fat Love was kind of a reaction
to the hardcore and other music trends that were permeating
the spaceways during the early 1980s. The original members
were Michael Diamond on drums,
John Berry on bass and some
vocals, Bosco on vocals and
acoustic guitar, in addition to Eric Huebel on slide and
other guitars. Before long, Mike D departed from the band
just as success was beginning to materialize with the Beastie
Boys. Following some personal tribulations, John Berry left
the group and moved to San Francisco, CA. At one point Erik
Talbert was added to the group, and then later down the
road Tom Cushman was also
added to the Big Fat Love line-up.
Whereas 59 Chrystie Street, the G
Spot, and later G-Son, would provide the Beastie Boys with
inspiration and a place to hang out and jam, for Big Fat
Love their location was John Berry's place which was pictured
on the cover of the band’s Hell House release. In
the words of Thomas Beller, "the house was a large
ramshackle wooden structure which had collapsed in on itself
slightly, as though from exhaustion, and so had the distorted
angles and strange perspectives of a fun house. It looked
like something one might find in the middle of a field,
surrounded by farmland. Instead it sat, somewhat defiantly,
on 100th Street and Broadway. The living room was large
and open. We sat around drinking beer with a guy with lanky
blonde hair. After a while I recognized the man from the
picture on the back of the Beastie Boy's first record, Pollywog
Stew. He was John Berry. But the face was different
from the one on the jacket photo. In the photograph he had
an obsessive and slightly homicidal expression. Now he looked
much more laid back. He wore a plaid shirt and jeans. The
leaning farm house on Broadway was his."
What started out as just hanging
out and rehearsing at Berry's place, quickly grew into what
became now as Big Fat Love. Thomas Beller described it as,
"various spontaneous jam session were always taking
place at the old house." In addition to more conventional
rock and roll instruments, Bosco played the accordion. John
Berry played bass. Mike or myself or whomever would bang
on something. A drum set made its way to the living room.
Eric Huebel was frequently hanging around with his guitar
and slide. His father had won a Nobel Prize for physics,
but his career was on a decidedly different path. A band
was eventually formed, Big Fat Love.It should be note that
the names Swamp Gas and the Road Apples were tossed about
as possible names for the band, prior to deciding on Big
Fat Love.
The group would go on to play several
gigs around New York City, including some of the Beastie
Boys famous hardcore haunts such as CBGB's and Danceteria.
When Mike D left to tour with the Beastie Boys, the band
fell apart only to resurface later with a different line
up. On April 23rd,
1987, Big Fat Love opened for Big Audio Dynamite at
Irving Plaza. The group would make additional line-up changes
again a year later, with Mike D back on drums & atmospherics
and Tom Cushman on bass and altitude. Following this period,
Yauch and Diamond's place on
59 Chrystie Street would serve as a rehearsal spot for both
Big Fat Love and later Brooklyn.
Although Adam Yauch never played
live with Big Fat Love, he was always close to the band
and always lent his encouragement. He served as producer
during both recording sessions, and saw to it that the Hell
House album was released in 1997. When asked about it Bosco
said the following; "Adam was really into it and he
even does the horse clopping sounds on 'This way to Glory'."
Big Fat Love's sound is unlike any other Beastie Boys side-project
and may take a few listens before one gets into it or out
of it, as the case may be. The music though is a wonderful
document to just how creatively diverse original Beastie
Boys members, Mike D and John Berry, could be. When people
ask about this period in the band's history, Thomas Beller
has the best description of it. "Big Fat Love was organized
around a particular living space, in this case a house,
where several of the band members lived and where, in the
mid-80's, an amorphous and slightly derelict group of people
spent time. Big Fat Love didn't move to the house as a band,
they just sprung up out of the house the way that, in the
right conditions, a random bit of plant life springs up
from a crack in the sidewalk."
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