The question is, as Art Publika magazine put it, how did "a group of arty middle-class Jewish kids responding to Manhattan's eclectic music scene" end up bringing hip-hop to the American (and beyond) masses?
As producer Rick Rubin would later remark, with a somewhat backhanded complement; "I met Mike first. I thought he was an arrogant asshole. Through spending time with the Beastie's I grew to see that they had this great sense of humour. It wasn't that they were assholes and if it was, they were funny with it."
Hardcore Days
Michael 'Mike D' Diamond was born in New York City in 1965, to an art dealer father and interior designer mother. He grew up on the Upper West Side and had a very arty background to his childhood.
Adam 'Ad Rock' Horowitz was born the following year (on Halloween no less) in Manhattan, the son of Jewish playwright Israel Horowitz and an Irish Catholic mother.
Adam 'MCA' Yauch was the oldest of the three by a year, born in Brooklyn in 1964, and in a reversal of the other Adam, had Catholic father who was an architect and a Jewish mother who was a social worker.
The Young Aborigines were born in the punk haze of 1979, part of the east coast hardcore scene. The band included Diamond as the drummer, along with Jeremy Shatan on bass, John Berry on guitar and Kate Schellenbach on percussion. When Shatan left in 1981, he was replaced by Yauch.
They would get themselves some good support slots, working with US punk legends like Bad Brains, the Dead Kennedy's and the Misfits.
Over the next few years, a change in musical style, band name and ultimately, personnel, meant that by 1984 the band was all but re-born. Berry was replaced with Horowitz; the sound moved across from hardcore to embrace the underground hip-hop scene. They were now The Beastie Boys by 1983, when they released the song Cooky Puss on Rat Cage Records, a satire on the Cookie Puss ice cream brand.
Then Schellenbach was fired in 1984, it seems that she didn't fit the brash tough rapper image they were developing. It was one of many elements of their early career that they would later be somewhat embarrassed by and try and make amends for. Schellenbach would go on to drum with alt rockers Luscious Jackson.
Beastie Revolution
It was a song on the Cooky Puss EP that would indirectly give them the break they needed. Beastie Revolution was sampled by British DJ Jeremy Healy in a British Airways advertising campaign he worked on, but it was done without their permission. As they started to sue the airline, they settled for $40,000, which would pay for an apartment in Chinatown, which they lived at, but also used to write and record at. It was at 59 Chrystie Street, which would later be immortalised in song on Paul's Boutique.
The second turn of events came when a student who was slightly older than them, studying at New York University, got in touch with them about the possibility of him producing them.
Rick Rubin, although still a student, had formed Def Jam Recordings with Russell Simmons. Their aim was to promote and produce hip-hop, soul, R&B and pop acts - although the first single was by Rubin's art-punk band, Hose. They would eventually become part of the Universal Music Group, and along the way release works by the likes of Run DMC, LL Cool J, and more recently, Justin Bieber.
He produced the 12" single Rock Hard for them in 1984, although it later had to be withdrawn as it used a sample from AC/DC's Back In Black without permission. By 1986 they had swung across North America on Madonna's The Virgin Tour, and opened up for ex-Pistol John Lydon and his Public Image Limited. Their next big tour was as part of the Raising Hell series with Run-DMC, Whodini, LL Cool J and the Timex Social Club.
Rock Hard (Audio only - including that illicit sample of Back In Black)
Years later, when writing their Rock n Roll Hall of Fame essay, Alan Light would say of this transitional period, that "they were a product of the hardcore matiness at CBGB and the early hip-hop nights at the Roxy." In terms of the strange, but seemingly important, choice for them to be on the Madonna tour, Simmons would explain, "Every night they'd go out and make 95% of the people in the audience hate them. But they built that other 5% into a fan base." Madonna, for her part, is alleged to have said - "I thought they were so adorable."
Lovable goofballs or misogynistic frat boys?
Double A-Side Paul Revere and The New Style was one of the fore runners to debut album Licensed To Ill. But the album title itself, was another issue they almost created for themselves. For some unknown reason, the band wanted to call it Don't Be A Faggot, but luckily Columbia (Def Jam's parent) refused to release it like that on the grounds of homophobia. It is one of several early poor choices they subsequently apologised profusely for.
(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party) (Official music video)
The much better named album became an instant best seller, and with over nine million sales, remains one of the best selling rap albums of all time. It topped the US album chart, and the follow up single, (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!) incredibly gave them their one and only US Top20 single. Later single, No Sleep Till Brooklyn did make the UK Top20 though. [One interesting side note was that since Rubin was also working on Reign In Blood by thrash legends Slayer, he managed to get Kerry King in to solo on Fight For Your Right and Brooklyn.]
It was an album that has so much going on in, and around, it. It is by no means a classic - many of their later albums are much more highly regarded, but as Medium reported, it was the one that took "hip-hop to suburban white kids", although also noting the irony that "after years of critics dismissing hip-hop as being 'too black' for mainstream America, it was three obnoxious Jewish boys who help bring hip hop to the masses."
But, as well as the aforementioned problematic homophobia, the Medium article also notes that there was also more than a whiff of sexism running across many of the songs on the record. These early offensive lyrics were another thing the band spent many years, as their maturity grew, trying to apologise for. This culminated with MCA singing on Sure Shot (Ill Communication):
"I want to say a little something that's long overdue,
The disrespect to women has got to be though.
To all the mothers and sisters and wives and friends,
I want to offer my love and respect till the end."
And controversy followed them around. 1987 saw a wave of vehicle vandalism across the US and UK - and I well remember the furore it inspired - Volkswagen badges in their thousands being stolen from the front of people's cars. Why? Because unlike the gold chains of other rappers, Mike D wore one of those badges on a chain in the Fight For Your Right video. While buying the badges wouldn't have cost the youth of the day very much, that didn't fit with the idea of being Beastie'd - VW were reporting a staggering 250 requests per day for replacement badges at one point.
There was tumult of a different kind when they turned up in the UK that year. Throughout the 1987 tour the band were often accused of provoking crowds to trouble, but it reached new levels when they came to Liverpool's Royal Court theatre. Within ten minutes of the Beastie's hitting the stage there was a riot going on, which culminated with Horowitz being arrested for grievous bodily harm!
Still Ill
1989s follow up album, Paul's Boutique, saw them start to move into more experimental hip-hop. It was not the commercial success that Licensed To Ill had been, but the sonic and lyrical progression was noted, with Rolling Stone referring to it as "the Sgt. Pepper of hip-hop." It was also notable because they had moved away from Rubin and Def Jam and were now working with The Dust Brothers, noted for their innovative use of sampling. Spin summed the record up - "{it] changed the trajectory of hip-hop with their lyrical prowess and the Dust Brothers dizzying use of samples."
Shadrach (Audio only - from Paul's Boutique)
The group set up their own G-Son Studio in Atwater, California and created Grand Royal Records, which they owned through to 2001. Their roster would include the likes of Luscious Jackson (including ex-Beastie, Kate Schellenbach) and Sean Lennon.
Instruments were back to the fore for Check Your Head, and they added Mark Ramos Nishita (Money Mark) on keyboards and also began their collaborative relationship with engineer Mario Caldati Jr. The album showed influences coming in from funk and jazz, but there were also nods back to their hardcore roots.
Jimmy James (Official music video from Check Your Head - a tribute to Jimi Hendrix and including several samples of his)
1994s Ill Communication includes the legendary single Sabotage, a furious rock-rap masterclass, with its award winning cop spoof video directed by Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Where The Wild Things Are). They had been listening to Miles Davis' jazz-rock records during the making of the album, which was also their second US number one.
The official video for Sabotage in all its glory!
They also completed the rock and rap crossover by heading out on the Lollapalooza tour, a moving feast of top alt-rock acts, also featuring the Smashing Pumpkins.
As they moved into the second half of the 90s, they began work (in 1995) on Hello Nasty (which would eventually come out in 1998), and another change of direction, with more big beats and experimental sounds. This album saw them welcome Mix Master Mike into the band - and there were guest appearances from Miho Hatori of Cibo Matto and legendary Jamaican dub musician, Lee 'Scratch' Perry.
Intergalactic (Official music video - from Hello Nasty - and another fabulous video)
Back to the Boroughs and a sad conclusion
To The Five Boroughs was their first self-produced record, and provided a reaction to the events of 9/11 on their city three years earlier. But more than that, it provided (in the words of Light) "a stripped down tribute t the music that first inspired them, shot through with political protest and an acknowledgement of their pride in being 'funky-ass Jews."
Ch-Check It Out (Live on Letterman - but amusingly starting out on the subway, before ending up in the studio)
The Onion AV Club summed it up nicely; "With To the 5 Boroughs, Beastie Boys' members discover a musical entryway to an earlier, more innocent era, affording listeners the exuberance of youth along with the hard-won wisdom that can only come with experience."
An Open Letter To NYC (Official music video - also from To The Five Boroughs - one of my personal favourites)
As the end of the noughties approached, the band was working on Hot Sauce Pt 1, and before that was ready, also on Pt 2. In the end, things got very complicated, as Yauch was diagnosed, in 2009, with parotid gland and lymph cancer. What was finally put out in 2011, was actually mostly what would have been on Pt 1, but in a different order.
Make Some Noise (Official music video - from Hot Sauce. A kind of follow up video to Fight For Your Right, featuring Elijah Wood, Danny McBride and Seth Rogen as the Boys - there are then brief cameos by a number of other A-Listers, before John C Riley, Will Ferrell and Jack Black also pop up as the band)
December 2011 saw the announcement that the Beastie Boys were to be inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. At the ceremony, on 14 April 2012, they were inducted by Chuck D (Public Enemy) and LL Cool J. Only Diamond and Horowitz were in attendance, with Yauch to sick to travel, although he did send a note for them to read out. And then, less than three weeks later, Yauch was dead aged just 47.
It was the effective end of the Beastie Boys.
Music for Tibet
Yauch, who had become a practising Buddhist, started to play a prominent role in the movement trying to secure independence for Tibet from China. He helped set up the non-profit organisation, Milarepa Fund, to help Tibetan monks. He also drove the band to establish a series of fundraising concerts, the Tibetan Freedom Concerts.
Starting at the Polo Fields in San Francisco, in June 1996, the Beastie's, joined by a series of big act guests, travelled around the world, playing music and raising the profile of what was going on in Tibet.
That first show was attended by 100,00 and raised almost $1 million, with the Beastie Boys joined by the likes of Smashing Pumpkins, A Tribe Called Quest, Pavement, Rage Against The Machine, Sonic Youth and Beck.
Concerts followed in New York City (with Foo Fighters and U2), Washington DC (with Radiohead, REM and Pearl Jam), Wisconsin (with Run DMC, The Cult and Blondie), Amsterdam (with Blur and Garbage) and Sydney (with Neil Finn). There were also more low-key events in Taipei, Vienna (including the Dalai Lama himself) and Geneva.
Legacy
As ever, we need to look at the legacy of a band like the Beastie Boys. Over a thirty year career, they demonstrated lots of growth, in terms of musicality and maturity, and experimented with many diverse styles.
There were obvious signs of their influence on acts like Eminem, Rage Against The Machine and Limp Bizkit. Eminem remarked on Yauch's passing that "[he] brought a lot of positivity into the world and I think it's obvious to anyone how big of an influence the Beastie Boys were on me and so many others."
Spin paraphrased wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper (of all people) when discussing this ability to change tack, saying, "Just when you thought you had the group figured out, they'd rip your expectations to shreds."
Far Out talked about that bringing of hip-hop out of the musical woodwork: "Before the Beastie Boys, hip-hop was an underground secret and it wasn't like today, where every obscure genre of music is available at the touch of a button." Mike D elaborated on that - "Now, you can get every song that ever influenced us on this phone, but at that time, New York truly was the only place in the world that had that confluence of all this different kind of music."
We'll go back to Far Out for the final summary. "The Beastie's unique brand has survived the test of time because it was so un apologetically authentic to them. They weren't trying to be anyone else but three goofballs from New York, and that resonated with people who decided maybe hip-hop was for them after all."
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