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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A panoramic experience that tells the story of Beastie Boys, a book as unique as the band itself—by band members ADROCK and Mike D, with contributions from Amy Poehler, Colson Whitehead, Wes Anderson, Luc Sante, and more.
The inspiration for the Spike Jonze “live documentary” Beastie Boys Story, coming soon to IMAX theaters and Apple TV+ NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Rolling Stone • The Guardian • Paste Formed as a New York City hardcore band in 1981, Beastie Boys struck an unlikely path to global hip hop superstardom. Here is their story, told for the first time in the words of the band. Adam “ADROCK” Horovitz and Michael “Mike D” Diamond offer revealing and very funny accounts of their transition from teenage punks to budding rappers; their early collaboration with Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin; the debut album that became the first hip hop record ever to hit #1, Licensed to Ill—and the album’s messy fallout as the band broke with Def Jam; their move to Los Angeles and rebirth with the genre-defying masterpiece Paul’s Boutique; their evolution as musicians and social activists over the course of the classic albums Check Your Head, Ill Communication, and Hello Nasty and the Tibetan Freedom Concert benefits conceived by the late Adam “MCA” Yauch; and more. For more than thirty years, this band has had an inescapable and indelible influence on popular culture.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A panoramic experience that tells the story of Beastie Boys, a book as unique as the band itself—by band members ADROCK and Mike D, with contributions from Amy Poehler, Colson Whitehead, Wes Anderson, Luc Sante, and more.
The inspiration for the Spike Jonze “live documentary” Beastie Boys Story, coming soon to IMAX theaters and Apple TV+ NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Rolling Stone • The Guardian • Paste Formed as a New York City hardcore band in 1981, Beastie Boys struck an unlikely path to global hip hop superstardom. Here is their story, told for the first time in the words of the band. Adam “ADROCK” Horovitz and Michael “Mike D” Diamond offer revealing and very funny accounts of their transition from teenage punks to budding rappers; their early collaboration with Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin; the debut album that became the first hip hop record ever to hit #1, Licensed to Ill—and the album’s messy fallout as the band broke with Def Jam; their move to Los Angeles and rebirth with the genre-defying masterpiece Paul’s Boutique; their evolution as musicians and social activists over the course of the classic albums Check Your Head, Ill Communication, and Hello Nasty and the Tibetan Freedom Concert benefits conceived by the late Adam “MCA” Yauch; and more. For more than thirty years, this band has had an inescapable and indelible influence on popular culture.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
From the cover
We all have different types of friends, right? There’s the one that’s kind of an asshole but fun to be around once in a while. Fun to get drunk and talk shit with, but you’d never actually call on them for physical or emotional help ’cause they’re just unreliable. (And kind of an asshole.) Or there’s the friend you see once in a while and it’s a nice hangout and you’re always like, “I should spend more time with that person,” but for some reason . . . you don’t. Then there’s that true friend, the one you’d be on the phone with forever. The one that helps you move, or meets you at the hospital, or has a permanent spot on their couch for you just in case you ever need it. Those type of friends are rare, we all know. BUT . . . there’s an even rarer friend: the one that gets you motivated. The one that not only gets themselves going and doing great things but says: we should all get together and do this. And then does it. Adam Yauch was that type of friend. A once-in-a-lifetime type of friend. The friend that makes it happen. The friend that inspires you to go big.
We all see things differently. We each experience an event in our own way. This book is how Michael “Sweet Lou” Diamond and I remember what happened to us. Yauch had talked about wanting to document our band, but, sadly, without him here, me+Mike are gonna have to do it alone. I say “sadly,” well . . . because of the obvious. Adam passed away in 2012. But it’s additionally sad because, if any of the three of us saw things with a unique perspective, it was Yauch. He was truly a wild card. Someone who, in my mind, was like . . . “Shit . . . I’m gonna walk to the top of the Empire State Building with cameras taped to my shoes . . . I’ll carry you up there piggyback-style . . . It’ll be funny . . . let’s go.” He was the rare person who actually does all the crazy things they say they’re gonna do. And does them even crazier than you’d imagine. For instance . . .
Yauch got into snowboarding in the late ’80s. He met some other people that were into it and would go snowboarding with them. But not like how a regular person would do it. He met someone who knew someone in Alaska, and this person in Alaska would fly them to the top of an un-snowboarded-on mountain in a helicopter . . . they’d jump out of the helicopter, with their snowboards attached, and head down the mountain. That’s a crazy thing to even dare yourself to think of, let alone say you’re gonna do. Or do. Or have done.
The first time we went to Australia was in 1992. To me, Australia was a foreign land. Not only had I never been there, I don’t think I had ever met anyone who was Australian. What happens there? I had no idea. The flight took, like, sixteen hours. And when we arrived, we went through customs and all that stuff, got outside, exhausted from the flight, and a little nervous aboutbeing in a new place so far away from home. I just wanted to get to either a bed or a cup of coffee. As we left baggage claim and headed out to find a taxi, Yauch tells us that he met someone on the flight, and that they had some friends who were all meeting up to go snowboarding somewhere hours and hours (of more traveling) away. And since our first show wasn’t for a couple days, he was gonna cut out and hang out with these people for a bit, and see us all at sound check before the show. Wait . . . WHAT!?! At that point in my life I liked to think of myself as a spontaneous kind of person, but this was a little too next-level. I...
About the Author-
BEASTIE BOYS is a trio consisting of Michael "Mike D" Diamond, Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz, and Adam "MCA" Yauch (1964-2012). Formed in 1981 as part of New York's hardcore punk underground, the group's first full-length album, Licensed to Ill, was the first rap album to reach Number One. With seven platinum or better albums from 1986 to 2004, including Licensed to Ill, Paul's Boutique, Check Your Head, Ill Communication, Hello Nasty, and To the Five Boroughs, Beastie Boys are one of the longest-lived hip hop acts worldwide. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012.
Reviews-
December 1, 2018
This history of the groundbreaking hip-hop band takes the reader from their origins as troublemaking teens who achieved success too early to know what to do with it to their days as skilled musicians who never stopped having fun. Horovitz and Diamond dig deep and linger affectionately on the music and club scene of 1980s New York and don't flinch away from their missteps and the people they hurt on the way to success. It's a wildly strange, funny, and entertaining book. The book is a love letter to the late Adam Yauch, the Beasties' third member, who died in 2012. Horovitz and Diamond don't dwell on Yauch's death, making it clear that this is a memoir of the band, not its members, but his life and influence are woven throughout, and their affection for Yauch and their sadness at his absence shine through clearly in both the text and their narration. A handful of guest contributors, including Spike Jonze, former Beasties drummer Kate Schellenbach (who was fired from the band in its early days), and Amy Poehler, add a chapter here and there for other perspectives. Horovitz and Diamond narrate about half the chapters and pop in frequently to comment on each other's narratives via footnotes (usually with a healthy dose of snark). Horovitz is a little more comfortable and natural as a reader, but both voices add rich notes of authenticity. The book features a dizzying array of celebrity guest performers (nearly four dozen), including Snoop Dogg, Elvis Costello, John C. Reilly, Maya Rudolph, Jon Stewart, and Bette Midler. VERDICT Recommended for fans of the band, of course; readers who want a music memoir liberally laced with absurdist humor; and those with an interest in the history of the New York punk and hip-hop scenes of the day. ["Highly recommended for fans of the trio as well as public libraries and academic collections serving students of music and cultural and American studies and U.S. history": LJ 10/15/18 starred review of the Spiegel & Grau hc.]--Jason Puckett, Georgia State Univ. Lib., Atlanta
Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Bahrain, Egypt, Hong Kong, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen
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This excellent band memoir features more than 40 mostly celebrity narrators--a diverse crew ranging from Snoop Dogg to Rachel Maddow. Most of the narrators add value to the audiobook experience, but the pass-the-mic structure sometimes distracts from the great content. Some of the most stirring sections occur when the Beastie Boys co-authors narrate, especially when they talk about their bandmate Adam Yauch, who passed away in 2012. Like their albums, this audiobook is both stupid (there's a fictional oral history of Cookie Puss) and smart (the backstory of Grand Royal records is explained), as well as eclectic (there are recipes, mixtapes, equipment lists) and historical (the evolution of downtown hip-hop and New York City before 9/11 are described). R.W.S. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
