THE BEASTIE BOYS
The ‘live documentary’ BEASTIE BOYS STORY tells the potted history of the legendary New York hip-hop crew. They pass the mic in a rare interview
You gotta fight! For your right! To interview the Beasties about their new doc! Hmm. Doesn’t scan.
IN 1994, SPIKE Jonze and the Beastie Boys made one of the best music videos of all time for their track ‘Sabotage’. Twentyfour years later, they teamed up again for a stage show, to promote Beastie Boys Book, which Jonze has now expanded into a documentary about the trio’s 30-year career, from their rowdy New York adolescence to the death of founding member Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch in 2012. They ended as a band that day, but Beastie Boys Story is a typically eccentric and irreverent reminder of their wild ride. The surviving Boys — Michael ‘Mike D’ Diamond and Adam ‘Ad-rock’ Horovitz — hopped on a Zoom call with Empire to explain how it came about, and where this fits in their somewhat chequered cinematic canon.
So, how did the book lead to the film?
Michael Diamond: We had to promote the book. Adam and I were like, “What are we gonna do? Put on blazers and pretend that we’re authors?” That would basically suck. So we started working with Spike on doing a version of the book for the stage. Adam and I were used to playing music on stage. We don’t have a band to hide behind in this format. We actually enjoyed doing it so we refined it and Spike filmed that whole run.
Adam Horovitz: We thought it was just going to be a document
How come you have so much footage from the early days?
Diamond: We were lucky. When we were making [1986 debut album] Licensed To Ill we had the very first Sony Hi8 video camera and that was a huge deal for us. You didn’t really need to know what the fuck you were doing.
Was there anything too embarrassing to include? Horovitz: Well, if it was all the embarrassing stuff it would be, like, 30 hours. We wanted to address the weird shit that we did, the mistakes, all of it. We were lucky because we had a bunch of friends around who we could call and ask, “Wait, did this actually happen?”
Was Spike one of those friends?
Diamond: Yeah. When we were recording our [1992] album Check Your Head we had this studio called G-son [in LA] that became our theatre of operations. All these other people would come through and hang out and Spike was one of those people.
Has looking back helped you process the loss of Adam Yauch?
Horovitz: As heavy as it is, and as hard and sad, it was really nice to have him with us, just through us talking about him. We miss him so much and it was nice to be able to tell stories about our friend.
Diamond: Spike had this true love and camaraderie with Yauch, too. We could all delve into it together, knowing that he got it. We never had to explain that to him.
Adam, you acted in a few movies in the late 1980s… Diamond: Can we apply the word thespian to Adam, maybe? Horovitz: Was I one of the first rapper-slash-actors? Yes, if that’s what you’re getting at. Let’s talk about Lost Angels [1989 flop in which Horovitz plays a troubled youth]. We met Method Man from the Wu-tang Clan years ago and he said, “Yo, I saw that movie you were in. Yo, that sucked.”
Don’t we owe your album Paul’s Boutique to Lost Angels? Diamond: If Adam hadn’t been in LA, then he wouldn’t have been at this party where [legendary music producers] the Dust Brothers were playing, which led to us meeting and working with them. You should ask Method Man about this…
Is this movie the last thing you’ll do as the Beastie Boys? Diamond: [Deadpan] No, we’re working on a scripted telenovelastyle soap opera. A General Hospital kind of thing.
Horovitz: Mike and I are going to do Ultimate Fighting Challenge. Diamond: What about a Dancing With The Stars spin-off? Horovitz: We’re great dancers, both of us.