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R.I.P. 2 sean carasov aka the captain. he roadie THE CLASH road managed THE BEASTIES held down LYOR COHEN and signed TRIBE. a maverick!
Today someone sent me a message on Facebook mentioning the “tragedy” and asking if I could help feed the feral cats Sean’s yard….Whaaaa? That’s how I found out. Friends drove me the couple blocks to his house since I was pretty much a sobbing wreck. His neighbors and I wept together as they told about the details. I gathered some dirt from the spot where he had taken his last breath before shooting himself with his .45 ,and then we drove to the vet and got Shorty’s ashes which are now on my living room table. The dirt is in a jar on my altar.
Sean was road/tour/personal (under Russell Simmons) management for the Beastie Boys from their early club dates, during the recording of Licensed to Ill, and up to the Raising Hell, Together Forever and Licensed to Ill tours. When the touring finally came to a conclusion, Sean was given a desk job. Then when the Beastie Boys sued Def Jam/Rush to break from their contract, Carasov followed suit and also moved out to California to pursue other opportunities. The Captain went on to do A&R work for several record labels including Jive, Atlantic, and Mammoth; he also signed A Tribe Called Quest and put together the soundtrack for “Menace II Society” at Jive. At one point, Sean took on a fair amount of writing gigs – he wrote for Bikini and a couple of French magazines: Max and Blast. In addition to those, he also wrote for a couple of Japanese magazines including Asayan and Daytona. And who could forget the articles that Carasov penned for the Beasties’ Grand Royal Magazine? Grand Royal #1 had a full-page rant called ‘The Captain’s Beefs’ that Yauch tried to (and did) censor and also put a disclaimer of sorts at the beginning called ’.22 Automatic on My person…NOT’. Then in issue #2, apart from the Slick Rick plea (which Rick needs to see again, as the INS just recently popped him) and his Mullet article, he had another few pages dedicated to more of his “beefs.” When Mike D censored Sean’s writing, the Captain quit and went on to write for a rival ‘zine that Eli (Bonerz) X-Large was down with called Hollywood Highball.
In addition to his literary accomplishments, the Captain went on to work in the adult film business; which he found to be less sleazy than working in the music industry. He scouted porn locations and was offered a mainstream publicity gig at Metro. However, he turned it down and went to do the same for Shane’s World (it is always good to have something to fall back on). When Beastiemania.com asked Sean what else he had been up to he said the following: “I was engaged to a porn star, who shot herself in the stomach (she lived). Then I married a stripper at the Graceland Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas. I got DUIs on consecutive nights, which was not as bad as the guy who got two on the same night. And I shot a hole through my pinky with a .22 (just to watch it die).”
These days The Captain is back working with musicians – he did the music supervision on the Hughes movie “American Pimp” and also worked on the movie “Prison Song” which Q-Tip co-wrote, produced, and starred in. Sean is currently back in the A&R business at Ted Field’s new label, ARTISTdirect Records and recently he finished making an album for ARTISTdirect Records with a crew out of Miami, FL called “No Good.”
Paul’s Boutique by Dan Le Roy
In the Fall of 1987, an exhausted Sean Carasov returned to New York, shaking his head and he reflected on the Beastie Boys’ first headlining tour, and wondered whether there would ever be another.
His British accent raised eyebrows in the hip-hop world, but Carasov had been an inspired choic as the band’s road manager. A Londoner with a razor-sharp sense of humor and a pet theory about nearly everything, Carasov had started as an associate of the Clash, departing for New York in 1984 after the punk legends fractured. At the time, the Clash shared a Big Apple dope dealer with the fledgling Beasties, which was how Carasov met the three rappers and joined them as they began their improbably ascent.
Eight months of Licensed to Ill debauchery had earned Carasov the nickname “Captain Pissy,” later shortened to “The Captain.” The Beasties’ DJ Hurricane coined the handle: “The Captain’ cos I was in charge of the sinking ship,” Carasov says, ” and ‘Pissy’ cos I was pretty much always pissy drunk.” So was nearly everyone else involved, but the Budweiser-guzzling image that had helped the Beasties score hip-hop’s first number one album had nearly drowned them as well.”
Sean “the Captain” Carasov, the Beasties’ former road manager, had become an A&R man for Jive Records by 1989, and was able to play rough versions of Paul’s Boutique tracks to many Jive artists – including A Tribe Called Quest, whom he’d signed to the label – at his New York City headquarters.
“I’d be jamming this shit at my cubicle, and all the cats who were producers, like D-Nice from Boogie Down Productions, and KRS-One, and Q-Tip and Ali – anyone who was a producer would come by and say, ‘Damn, what the fuck is that?’,” recalls Carasov. “People who knew music were blown away. I mean, ‘Shadrach,” in particular – I’d play that in the office and everybody would just gather around.
“Q-Tip was still a young cat – he wasn’t even as deep as he is now – but he was like, ‘This is some amazing shit.’”
Such responses suggest the persistent notion that Paul’s Boutique was too arty – and too white – to appeal to black listeners is mistaken. “It’s because Capitol aimed it at what would eventually become the Beasties’ audience. They thought they were gonna get the college kids again, who had dug ‘Fight For Your Right’,” says Carasov. “Instead they got this album that didn’t fit anywhere, and all these crazy videos, like ‘Hey Ladies.’”


