Kerrang! Radio Spotlight: Beastie Boys

This week marks the first anniversary of the untimely death of Beastie Boys founding member Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch from cancer. In honour of the amazing music he concocted alongside Mike ‘Mike D’ Diamond and Adam ‘Ad-Rock’ Horovitz, all this week we’re shining the Kerrang! Radio Spotlight on the mighty Beastie Boys!

From ‘Intergalactic’ to ‘Sabotage’, ‘(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)’ to ‘Ch-Check It Out’, Loz & Keith, Kate, Jake and Matt will be bringing you all the Beastie Boys’ greatest hits and be asking YOU to share your thoughts and memories of one of the greatest rap groups of all time.

13 Beastie Boys Facts

1. Beastie Boys formed as a punk-rock band in New York City in 1981. The original line-up featured Michael Diamond (later dubbed Mike D) on vocals, Adam Yauch (MCA) on bass, John Berry on guitar and Kate Schellenbach on drums. Their first hardcore EP ‘Polly Wog Stew’ was released on 20th November through independent imprint Rat Cage Records.

2. Former The Young and the Useless guitarist Adam ‘Ad-Rock’ Horovitz joined Beastie Boys in 1983 when John Berry quit the group. Beastie Boys released their first hip-hop single ‘Cooky Puss’ on 12” vinyl later that year which became a huge underground hit in their native New York.

3. A little known New York University student called Rick Rubin transformed Beastie Boys’ career when started producing their records and signed them up to his fledgling imprint Def Jam Recordings. Rubin was instrumental in persuading the group to abandon their punk roots in favour of hip-hop, leading to Schellenbach’s departure in 1984. The remaining trio adopted hip-hop monikers MCA, Mike D and Ad-Rock and the rest, they say, is history.

4. Following early tours with the likes of Madonna and John Lydon’s Public Image Ltd., Beastie Boys’ 1986/87 ‘Licence To Ill’ tour was steeped in controversy. Featuring such eye-popping spectacles as scantily clad women dancing in cages and a giant motorized inflatable penis, Beastie Boys hit headlines across the globe. Their notoriety peaked at Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre in May 1987 where a full-blown riot erupted just 10 minutes after the trio took to the stage resulting in the arrest of Ad-Roc on assault charges. Ouch.

5. Legendary Slayer guitarist Kerry King plays the lead guitar on Beastie Boys’ 1987 anthem ‘No Sleep till Brooklyn’. The collaboration came about as Rick Rubin was simultaneously producing Slayer’s seminal album ‘Reign In Blood’ and asked King to jump aboard. Keeping things very metal, the track’s title is actually an overt homage to Motörhead’s fearsome 1981 live album ‘No Sleep ‘til Hammersmith.’

6. One of Beastie Boys’ defining anthems, ‘(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!)’ was written as a blatant lampoon of cheesy party songs such as Twisted Sister’s ‘I Wanna Rock’ and Brownsville Station’s ‘Smokin’ in the Boy’s Room’. However, the irony was lost on the vast majority of the public and it has been firmly adopted as a classic party track. Mike D commented: "The only thing that upsets me is that we might have reinforced certain values of some people in our audience when our own values were actually totally different. There were tons of guys singing along to 'Fight for Your Right' who were oblivious to the fact it was a total goof on them."

7. Although nowhere near as successful as its 9million selling predecessor ‘License To Ill’, July 1989’s sample-heavy ‘Paul’s Boutique’ (their first release on Capitol Records) is widely regarded as a landmark record and one of the greatest hip-hop albums ever. It appeared on Q Magazine’s Readers' 100 Greatest Albums Ever countdown, at #156 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, #3 on Pitchfork’s Greatest Albums of the 80’s and many more polls. The artwork is a image of Ludlow Street in Manhattan by photographer Jeremy Shatan.

8. Directed by the highly influential Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Where The Wild Things Are), the video for 1994’s ‘Sabotage’ is a hilarious parody of seventies US cop shows like Hawaii Five-O, The Streets of San Francisco and Starsky and Hutch. Edited as a fictional TV show called Sabotage, MCA, Ad-Rock, Mike D and their turntable wizard DJ Hurricane appear as tongue-in-cheek actors with names like Sir Stewart Wallace, Vic Colfari and Alasondro Alegre. Trainspotting director Danny Boyle said the opening credits of his 1996 movie were a direct nod to the ‘Sabotage’ video.

9. Lifted from the trio’s awesome fifth studio album ‘Hello Nasty’, 1998’s ‘Intergalactic’ became Beastie Boys’ highest charting hit in the UK peaking at number five. Another TV parody, this time of Japanese sentai-influenced shows like Power Rangers, the video centres on a giant robot demolishing Tokyo while fighting a preposterous giant octopus. The fighting scenes are interspersed with shots of the Beastie Boys in their iconic boiler suits. The song won a Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group in 1999, while the promo scooped the Best Hip-Hop Video gong at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards.

10. Mike D’s penchant for wearing a large Volkswagen logo around his neck in the late eighties inadvertently caused a spate of thefts direct from car bonnets around the globe as fans tried to copy the look. In the UK, the issue became so widespread that Volkswagen dealerships offered car owners free replacements if the emblem had been stolen. Volkswagen also gave away thousands of emblems in a bit to counteract the problem.

11. After making the shortlist in 2009, Beastie Boys were finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April 2012 by Check D and LL Cool J. Sadly, due his deteriorating health, Adam Yauch was admitted to hospital that day and was unable to attend the ceremony. Mike D and Ad-Rock accepted the honour on Yauch’s behalf and read out a speech he had written. They became just the third rap group to enter the Hall of Fame behind Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five (2007) and Run D.M.C. (2009).

12. Born to a Catholic father and Jewish mother, the late-great Adam Yauch was a practicing Buddhist who became an ardent supporter of Tibetan independence movement. Together with activist Erin Potts in 1994 he set up the Milarepa Fund raising money for the movement and from 1996 onwards organised the series of Tibetan Freedom Concerts in San Francisco, New York City, Washington DC, Tokyo, Amsterdam and Sydney which hosted performances from the likes of Radiohead, Rage Against The Machine, U2, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters and, of course, Beastie Boys themselves. When Yauch was diagnosed with cancer in 2009 he became a vegan upon the advice of Tibetan doctors.

13. Throughout their 31-year career, Beastie Boys sold an estimated 40million records across the globe including 22million in their native United States. Only one of their records, 1998’s ‘Hello Nasty’, has topped the charts in the UK but they achieved four number ones in America – ‘Licensed To Ill’, ‘Ill Communication’, ‘Hello Nasty’ and ‘To The 5 Boroughs’.