Grand Royal was the Los Angeles, California based vanity record label set up in 1992 by the Beastie Boys in conjunction with Capitol Records after the group left Def Jam Recordings.
Due to mounting debts, Grand Royal went out of business in 2001. Its assets were sold off via auction on Bid4Assets; these assets did not include any rights to Beastie Boys music. The assets and back catalog were purchased by a group of fans who in turn started GR2 Records.
Grand Royal was also the name of a magazine written and published by the group. It was most famous for its article "Mulling Over the Mullet" in issue two, which lampooned the mullet hairstyle (the Beastie Boys also recorded a song called "Mullet Head", which was released on Grand Royal on its Sure Shot 12-inch single).
Famous quotes containing the words grand and/or royal:
“There is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say no,—why, they are in the happy condition of judicious, unincumbered travellers in Europe; they cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet-bag,—that is to say, the Ego. Whereas those yes-gentry, they travel with heaps of baggage, and, damn them! they will never get through the Custom House.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“An Englishman, methinks,—not to speak of other European nations,—habitually regards himself merely as a constituent part of the English nation; he is a member of the royal regiment of Englishmen, and is proud of his company, as he has reason to be proud of it. But an American—one who has made tolerable use of his opportunities—cares, comparatively, little about such things, and is advantageously nearer to the primitive and the ultimate condition of man in these respects.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)