Welcome to my Beastie Boy page!!!
Here you'll see pics and get a lot of useless info about the beastie boys!
Allright, this is how it started; Article from Spin magazine, september "The Story of Oy"
about 18 years ago in Manhattan, Mike D (Michael Diamond and two other people, John Berry and Kate Schellenbach were together in a punk band. Mike played drums and still does to this day, John played the guitar and Kate played percussion. When Adam Yauch (MCA) met John Bery ata club one night they started talking and became friends.
He would try to come to rehearsals to play the bass, all he could do was play like "Public Image" which was like 2 notes.
Their first gig ever was at a party at John's house, it was Yauch's 17th birthday, it was probably the first time Mike ever got drunk too. Anyways, after their set the owner of the record store below them came up to them and asked them if they wanted to join his new record label.
When they first started recording it was crazy, they were in this guy's apartment, like editing stuff with like glue and tape.
Then John really started getting messed up, he stopped rehearsing and was like on crystal method. That's when Ad-rock came (Adam Horovitz. His old band The young and the useless were covering the beastie's songs and Adrock thought it would eb great to join.
Around that time the Beastie Boys were getting into stuff like Grandmaster Flash and the Sugarhill gang, all they were trying to do was breakdance and write rhymes.
When they went into a real studio they did nothing really, they recorded only a few songs, like Cookie Puss, which is a hip hop type song with a crank call to a local ice cream store in the background , they also recorded Beastie Revolution.
Once they started getting college radio play they tried to get a little more "hip-hop" so they got Rick Rubin, a friend of theirs from NYU, who became their DJ. Rick had a lot of new ideas, for one instead of them wearing new normal clothes he got them all matching sweatsuits and wore bandannas on their heads. Since Rick was sexist and homophobic he got all of the stuff when Kate was on vacation. i think she got the idea that she was kicked out of the band.
One day in about 1985, Russell Simmons (Co-founder of Def Jam, the beastie boy's current label) came up to them and said "hey guys, guess what?? Madonna's manager called and now guess who's going on tour with her??" Just in case you didn't notice it was the beastie boys going on tour.
I didn't think that worked out with thousands of 12, 13 year old girls going to see Madonna when the Beastie Boys, were swearing their heads off, and throwing beer all over the place. Every night about 95% of the audience hated the Beastie Boys, but they built that 5%into a fan base.
in 1986 around the time when Licensed To Ill, their first album came out, Adam and Adam were debating if they should keep Mike D in the band, they were wondering if he was "Beastie down" and cool enough to be in the band. It was by a slim margin that they kept him in. Licensed to Ill was originally going to be called "Don't be a Faggot" which Columbia Records did not approve of it.
The Beastie Boys were going to make a movie "Scared Stupid" for Def Pictures, they were going to go to a Haunted House or something, but they started really getting mad with Rick and Russell from Def Jam and they wanted to go film it with Universal but Def Jam wouldn't let them or thety would eb sued.
Sometimes at concerts the Beastie Boys would open for themselves and come out as a metal band called trip hammer and wear long wigs and play Black Sabbath stuff, at one point in the concert there was an inflatable dick in a box that was like 25 feet tall at one point it was just crazy.. they also had these cage dancers in their live show.
Here is how the Beastie Boy's almost got banned from England.
When they first arrived in England, there was a lot of fear and hate from the media, and tabloids, so Russell Simmons created a "Minor Stir", at a party with the Beastie Boys and Run-DMC (whom the beastie boys were good friends with at the time)
Russell, told Yauch to go up to jam Master Jay (the run dmc DJ) and punch him in the face. They got on the cover of thousands of newspapers across the world, the Beastie's did it for fun and Russell did it for publicity and money.
At the time when the Beastie Boys played, it was at a really old theatre in Liverpool, the crowd was ill, there were two big security guys in the pit and then there's spit all over their heads and everywhere. Then cans were being thrown all over the stage. The Beastie's were lkke cool out, don't throw stuff, so the crowd started throwing bottles at them, Ad-rock got a baseball bat and was out there hitting bottles and cans like baseballs to survive. The Beasties ran off and the crowd rushed the stage and tore it down!!!
When the police came, they arrested Adrock because supposedly he hit a can and it hit her in the face. It was a total piece of bullsht, the girl was 80 feet back. He was in jail about 2 or 3 days, he said it wasn't too bad, he was with some old timers telling him dope stories. One woman came up and said ive me an autograph or I'll "stitch" you up in the press, the beastie boys reacted with like an fuc you and the next morning they see a headline saying Beastie Boys mock children.
the tabloids said that they were swearing at crippled fans, parliament was even trying to get them expelled from the counrty!!!
That's when the Beastie Boys were really depressed and bored, one show the beastie boys were playing, Adam Yauch was throwing a temper tantrum of somesort and he was sitting off to the side not doing much, rapping his lines, and then during another song he came onto the middle of the stage and started throwing beer into the midddle of everything and stomping on it shouting bored, bored, bored, bored...
That's when the Beastie Boys had to get off of Def Jam, they hated getting back together but they did. After touring Licensed To Ill, they went their own ways for a while, Adrock hung out in California, and filmed a movie or two.
Licensed to Ill was a big success though, it got thousands of white kids into hip-hop, it was the first rap album ever to go gold and was an overall success
Then they moved to L.A. and started on their next record. Once they were coming up with stuff they were having fun again.
The Beastie boys immediately got signed to Capitol Records after that. For Paul's Boutique nothing was rushed it was more on their terms. The Beastie Boys heard about the Dust Brothers studios and came in one day. The Dust Brothers were putting together all these weird crazy songs for no reason at all, and the Beastie's were like wow, this is great can we buy this stuff from you??? Since the technology was advancing quickly, it was around the time samplers came out, around 1988, they quickly layered loops of alkl kinds and different beats. They sampled stuff from all types of music for Paul's Boutique, country, to rock, to everything.
The fourth song on their second album Paul's Boutique, in my opinion their best album, is called Eggman, the story behind that is that the Beasties became obsessed with throwing eggs at people. They were staying at the Mondrian Hotel on the 9th floor. It was the beginning of summer and people started lining up outside across the street to go to the comedy store, it was "open session" for them and their eggs. They finally got a diplomatic letter from the hotel management saying that they've had reports of things falling out tehir windows. If there's a problem with the window, let us know.
That's when they started driving around in limos throwing eggs at people.
Paul's Boutique in many people's oppinion is way ahead of it's time, it was too complex for anyhting then, that's why it didn't sell to well, now 10 years later it's still a popular album.
After Paul's Boutique they rented a house they called the G-Spot, named after an old couple, the Grasshoffs, the Beastie Boys started looking in their closets and tehy found all this funky 60's and 70's style clothes, when they put it on they looked like weird pimps.
Mike D had the master bedroom and Adrock had this weird underground room with a window which looked into the pool.
They were living very differently, Yauch lived in a log cabin and Horovitz had a big house up in Hollywood. Very different compared to their apartments in the Upper WEst Side, Manhattan and Brooklyn.
In 1992, the Beastie Boys started recording another album, Check Your Head, it was hard though because they had to make another recording studio, they built the G-Son studios, they had skateboard ramps, basketabll nets and a recording studio there, so you could play ball, skate and record.
That's around the time Adam Yauch became more spiritual, he went on a long, long snowboarding trip to Tibet and Nepal up in the Himalayas, when he saw a bunch of Tibetans who escaped, thier story had a huge effect on Adam, He began driving along Tibetan land and sat in a monastery for a long time. That's why he doesn't allow food into his apartment, he isn't allowed to kill anything and he's afraid he will attract insects. Now that he's a Buddhist. He's also good friends with the Dalai Lama.
when they finished touring Check Your Head they had so much fun they recorded another album, Ill Communication, It's another good album, it has a few of their old punk rock songs, from the early 80's style. At that time Mike got married to film producer Tamra Davis and Adrock got married to actress Ione Skye. Adrock got divorced unfortunately.
Around 1995, the Beastie Boys got sick of looking for sweatsuits and pairs of Adidas' so they went and started their own thing, Mike thought up the idea for the clothing store X-Large and he now still own's it. They kept thinking and they came up with the idea to make their own record label, and magazine. The Beastie Boys actually work their too, they final all the signing decisions and they bring in types of music too. Yauch brings in punk rock, Mike D brings in Ben Lee stuff, and Horovitz brings BS2000 music (BS2000 is adrock's side project, a techno DJ type of thing where he uses his sampler).
The Beastie Boys, went to Lollapalooza, and after that recorded the EP to Aglio E Olio, a hardcore tour, and Adam Yauch started getting involved creating the Tibetan Freedom Concert.
In their new album, Hello Nasty, it was a more old-school album, because Horovitz was more behind it, he was into that beats and rhyme thing the most. Yauch didn't want to really rap, they also recorded a country album in which Mike sings.
Well, now the Beastie Boys, are touring across the world, for the COMPLETE article you can find it in SPIN magazine or SPIN online or at musicblvd.com
