Hip-hop greats Beastie Boys get raw in their new documentary
Beastie Boys Mike D and Ad-Rock are refreshingly honest about their bratty, sexist behaviour from the past in a raw documentary that covers everything from unceremoniously dumping their original female drummer to the flop of their second album.
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When the surviving members of revered hip-hop act Beastie Boys, Michael Diamond and Adam Horowitz, agreed to chronicle the band’s history first in a book, then on stage and finally on film, they insisted on telling the story warts and all.
“If you’re looking back for writing a book about yourself or your band, you might as well look back on everything – the good, the bad and the ugly,” says Horovitz, better known by his Beasties moniker Ad Rock.
“So, it was nice to really be honest about a lot of things. And it was also really fun to think about the stupid s--- that we have done and talk about it.”
The book in question wasBeastie Boys Story the weighty, 571 page tome released two years ago, which traced the trio’s unlikely journey – third member Adam “MCA” Yauch died of cancer in 2012 – from teenage punk rockers in New York to being mega-selling, arena-filling, Big Day Out-headlining, Grammy-winning rappers.
Once the monumental task of finishing the book was complete, Diamond (Mike D) and Horovitz weren’t sure how to promote it, but rather than hit the trail for a round of signings and excerpt reading sessions at book stores, took to the stage instead, with a series of spoken word shows.
“It was kind of awkward and uncomfortable,” says Diamond.
“We liked that part because it was new to us. We liked that we lived to tell this story of ours and it still seemed to be kind of relevant to people.”
To stage it, they enlisted the help of Oscar-nominated director and long-time collaborator Spike Jonze and together they decided to capture the experience on film as a “live documentary”.
But what Diamond and Horovitz thought was going to be an edited-down version of their four-hour stage show evolved into a more elaborate and personal look at their celebrated career, interspersed with interviews (including the late Yauch), music and videos.
Jonze, the man behind their famous 1994 Sabotage video, pushed the pair to dig deeper than they otherwise might have done and tell the stories behind the hits and accolades and the result is the candid, illuminating Beastie Boys Story that is now streaming on Apple TV+.
“His main job in this was to go ‘wait, so when that happened – how did this make you feel?’ or ‘what were you thinking?’,” says Diamond.
“Again, it was an awkward, uncomfortable place for us, so working with someone we were so comfortable with – we have known and worked with Spike for so long, and he seems to be pretty good at what he does – was a really nice thing.”
Beastie Boys first shot to global fame with their 1986 debut album Licenced To Ill, home to the party anthem (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party), which became the first rap album to hit No.1 on the US Billboard chart and went on to sell 9 million copies.
But despite the rapid rise – or perhaps because of it – the album also nearly spelled the end of the band.
Not only did they fall out with their Def Jam label bosses Rick Rubin, who also produced, and Russell Simmonds, by the end of the tour that followed it, which featured women dancing in cages and giant hydraulic penis, they were horrified to discover they had become the frat boy stereotypes they had been parodying.
In Beastie Boys Story, Diamond and Horovitz are refreshingly honest about their bratty, sexist behaviour, which included unceremoniously kicking their first drummer, Kate Shellenbach out of the band, and were grateful for the opportunity to made amends.
“I think we have all made mistakes and said stupid things and wished we had not said them and been smarter,” says Horovitz.
“You look back and you can’t rewrite history, so to own your stupidity, I guess we are lucky that we get to do that.”
Diamond and Horovitz explain in Beastie Boys Story that what got the band back on track for the follow up album Paul’s Boutique was returning to what they loved, which was a desire to impress and crack up the other band members.
Even though that album was a flop at the time, it cemented the creative bond between the three and not only became one of the most revered releases in the hip-hop canon but also paved the way for their future hit records including Check Your Head, Ill Communication and the Grammy-winning Hello Nasty.
“We really didn’t give a sh-- about what the outside world was thinking,” says Diamond.
“It was about impressing each other and making each other laugh and going from there. That was the starting point, always. And the finishing point.”
Indeed, “f---ing around” is revealed to be the band’s main creative process, which is nowhere more apparent than in Jonze’s Sabotage video.
It was filmed entirely on the fly around Los Angeles with the three band members dressed as ‘70s era cops and was nominated in five categories at the 1994 MTV Music Video Awards.
“I think that was like the apex of our f---ing around,” says Horovitz with a laugh.
“Both the song and the video,” adds Diamond.
“Yauch came in and started playing this bass line and we sat down and started playing this thing together and it took us months and months and months until Adam (Yauch) started getting the lyrics down and did the vocal performance. And the video literally was us driving around and f---ing around – with no proper permits to do so.”
Diamond says that while it wasn’t something they specifically set out to do, the Beastie Boys Story book, stage show and documentary ended up becoming as much a tribute to Yauch as it was a band history.
“I think the two really go hand-in-hand,” Diamond says.
“First we just set out to make the book work somehow on stage. We thought ‘how do we communicate that story in the best possible way?’ And there’s no way we could communicate the story of the band without talking about the relationship that all three of us had. But obviously one of the three of us isn’t here, so we couldn’t not address that.”
Certainly, it comes across both in the doco and in the course of the interview that Yauch’s absence is keenly felt, not just for his musical input but also as a friend and wise counsel.
“Definitely,” agrees Diamond. “Even during this whole pandemic thing there are times when it’s like ‘what would Yauch do right now?’ It’s interesting.”
Diamond confirmed in 2014, two years after Yauch’s death, that Beastie Boys had officially disbanded, but that putting the various documentary projects together “felt OK because it’s us talking about the band and bringing the band to life without having to be the band”.
But that doesn’t mean the band’s passionate fans around the world have heard the last of Beastie Boys, with Horovitz confirming there is still music in the vaults they hope to release when the time is right.
“I think at some point we would do something like that,” Horovitz says.
“It would be nice. There is just so much music that we recorded. Maybe a very small percentage of that is listenable.”
Beastie Boys Story is streaming now on Apple TV+.
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