Beastie Boys Book is Boss!

The late Adam “MCA” Yauch stands in the center of the cover photo of the Beastie Boys Book. After reading the weighty tome, it’s clear that is very much the point. Yauch was clearly central to everything the Beastie Boys did, from their earliest days as teenage punks to staging giant benefit concerts. In fact, Adam “King Ad Rock” Horowitz states in the book’s very first chapter that Yauch was the heart of the band, the guy who got everyone else off their asses. He was the one who pushed them to start playing music in the first place, the one who always had a new perspective on things – the one who knew how their equipment worked!

I grew up with the Beastie Boys. More accurately, I grew up along with the Beasties. When they released Licensed to Ill, I was a hard-drinking college idiot who reveled in obnoxious nonsense like “Fight for Your Right (To Party).” Their rude, abrasive hijinx fit perfectly into my beer-guzzling, caps-playing lifestyle. When the Beasties put out their pot-fueled funk-sample masterpiece Paul’s Boutique, I was knee-deep in my own stony old-school funk obsession. A few years later when they picked up their instruments and reinvented themselves again as a cool-ass alternative hip-hop band, I was living in San Francisco, where their crazy melange of an album seemed to be the perfect theme music. I literally used to ride the bus to work every morning and listen to “Mark on the Bus.” Throughout their career, whatever the Beasties were up to seemed to perfectly mirror what was going on in my own life. My internalized identification with them made Yauch’s premature death all the more alarming. A Beastie Boy up and dying certainly put a new perspective on things. A little too much fucking perspective, to quote David St. Hubbins.

It’s been a few years since Yauch’s shocking death at the age of 47, enough time to process what he and the band accomplished and meant to the culture. Which is clearly what his bandmates Horowitz and Michael “Mike D” Diamond have spent a lot of time doing since he passed. And while they were at it, they turned their memories into the Beastie Boys Book, an autobiography as unique as the band it documents. Clocking in at over 500 pages long, the book is as much the story of the world that created the Beastie Boys as it is about the Boys themselves. You’re 200 pages into the book before they even start recording their first album!

Before that, Horowitz and Diamond concoct something of a love letter to late 70s/early 80s New York, describing how a trio of goofy teenagers were able to run wild through a city in seedy decline. The Beasties were the product of (maybe overly) permissive Jewish intellectual parents who let their kids pretty much roam free through NYC – “as long as their grades stayed up.” Coming of age just as punk rock and hip-hop blossomed in the city, the Beasties fell in love with the musical chaos and heady energy that was swirling all around them. They were able to tap into that energy and draw inspiration from it for the remainder of their careers, as their fond recollections of the time and place make clear. They don’t sugar-coat it, though, and every story of hanging out on the third floor of Danceteria is tempered by one about hordes of rats swarming from their apartment trash cans.

Horowitz and Diamond take turns telling their story, each taking a chapter or two at a time. I preferred Horowitz’ wide-ranging anecdotal style a bit; most of my favorite chapters are his. Diamond’s storytelling is a bit more straightforward. Mike D’s stories are awfully entertaining, too – and probably more heavy on the actual factual information – but Ad-Rock’s writing has a goofball edge to it that I appreciated.

As you might guess, the Beastie Boys have a lot of crazy stories. Chapters here have titles like “Butthole Surfers Saved My Life,” “It All Started at Dolly Parton’s Birthday Party” and “Who at This Table Sucks Dick?”. One section on touring with Madonna ends with “Was John Salley getting freaky in a hot tub? Yes, of course he was.” But Beastie Boys Book is more than parties and pranks, as Horowitz and Diamond also delve into the crappy side of their early break-out success: the drunken, sexist, frat-boy image that Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons (semi-) foisted on them for Licensed to Ill. They cop to being assholes to original drummer Kate Schellenbach, basically dropping her at Rubin’s behest, as well. As to Yauch’s death, that’s clearly still a little too close to home. They don’t delve into details about any of it, how they found out, or anything like that. Horowitz simply says, “Too fucking sad to write about” at one point and leaves it at that.

Beastie Boys Book is a big, sprawling, messy tome that displays their typical scattershot approach to their various ventures. It’s got everything. There’s a miniature Roi Choi cookbook based on his favorite food-based Beasties lyrics (Eating chicken gizzards with a girl named Lizzy…). There are maps, photo galleries, playlists, charts, instructions on the best way to mend an old cassette, a bizarre review of Ill Communication, a letter from Sasquatch, even a copy of Kool Moe Dee’s old Rapper’s Report Card (The Beasties got a C, the lowest grade on the card.). They let guest writers lend their perspectives as well, including old school NYC DJ Anita Sarko, Schellenbach, and Luc Sante. The whole thing is an inspired melange that perfectly evokes what the Beastie Boys were all about. It’s hilarious, inspired, honest, and above everything else, a tribute to Adam Yauch, the “Wild Card” in the group whose curious, provoking spirit bleeds through every page. Plus, there’s a story about hanging out with Lee Perry on Halloween!