As Awesome: I Fuckin’ Shot That hits our screens, Robb Horsley looks back at the extraordinary career of a rap band that have never played by the rules.
Famed as much for their clothing and irreverent sense of humour as they are for their block-rocking beats, The Beastie Boys are one of the most enduring success stories in the American music business. Originally formed in 1979 as punk band The Young Aborigines, the band changed its name to Beastie Boys in 1981, apparently in homage to cult punk rock / reggae act Bad Brains, who they supported at various venues in the early 1980s, including New York’s CBGBs club and Max’s Kansas City.
Commercial success arrived later when Def Jam record producer Rick Rubin took the band under his wing, transforming them from a punk band into a three-man rap crew, blending a hip hop MC style with occasional hard rock backing tracks. A support slot on Madonna’s Virgin tour followed, along with the release of smash hit first album Licensed to Ill, which establishedthe Beastie Boys in 1986 as the world’s biggest selling hip hop act. The sudden success of the band took many critics by surprise, and this, combined with hell-raising tour antics, juvenile lyrics, and the simple fact that the band were all white, resulted in something of a media backlash. The British tabloid press were particularly scathing, portraying the band as public enemy number one - a bunch of violent, swearing, indecent anarchists – in short, the new Sex Pistols.
The combination of endless touring, in-fighting, and negative publicity fuelled a typical rock and roll burnout, and perhaps as a response to their critics, the band released a less commercial and far more accomplished second album (Paul’s Boutique) on Capitol Records in 1989. Slow sales, and limited press interest, allowed the band to assume a low profile, rebuilding their reputation as a diverse and intelligent musical outfit, their new sound something akin to a crossover between traditional hip hop and retro lounge funk.
By 1992, the hip-hop scene was experiencing a renaissance with new, more musically minded rap bands like Cypress Hill and The Pharcyde fighting for airtime alongside low-brow gangster rappers who had replaced the Beastie Boys as the musicians everyone loves to hate. Perhaps sensing their time had come again, the Beastie Boys released the seminal rap/rock/funk fusion album Check your Head, which immediately established them at the vanguard of American popular music. They swiftly followed up with the equally successful Ill Communication in 1994, promoting both albums at the fashionable Lollapalooza festival in the USA.
In 1994, MTV was at the height of its powers, having broken the news of Kurt Cobain’s suicide live from the scene of the crime, and - to draw parallels with the JFK assassination - after 1994, no teenager wanted to turn off their MTV. Perhaps more specifically, pop videos were making a comeback, due in part to the emergence of a new wave of innovative music video directors. The Beastie Boys were wise to this, offering a young Spike Jonze one of his early assignments – the video for So What’cha Want. The alliance continued to flourish with Jonze directing the award winning video for Sabotage - a hilarious spoof of 1970s TV cop shows.
Established once again as a big selling act, the Beastie Boys have diversified their output over the past decade, releasing just two albums, and focussing more on collaboration and political activism. The latter began in 1996 with the first Tibetan Freedom Concerts, which drew attention to the plight of the people of Tibet, culminating in a documentary Free Tibet, which gained a limited theatrical release in 1998.
Filmmaking has always formed an integral part of the band’s output. From the early days, the Beastie Boys were quick to recognise the power of music video as both a marketing and branding tool, with many notable videos under their belt before the Spike Jonze collaborations of the early 1990s. The 1994 VHS release Skills to Pay the Bills is one of the most comprehensive music-based film compilations released by a single band, containing no less than fifteen videos – most previously unreleased, including perhaps the worst (or best) music video ever made (Netty’s Girl), directed by cult feature film director Tamra Davis. In the same year, the band went on to release Sabotage as a stand-alone VHS.
The early VHS releases show a flair for lo-fi filmmaking and cut-up visuals, as well as a shrewd head for collaboration. With their sense of theatre, and an ability to appear contemporary despite rapidly advancing years, the Beastie Boys are perhaps the only modern commercial act who could reasonably expect to get away with releasing a concert film shot entirely on Hi-8.
The original three MCs remain the core of the band to this day: Ad Rock (Adam Horovitz), Mike D (Michael Diamond), and MCA (Adam Yauch).
Awesome; I Fuckin’ Shot That! released on July 7th. The DVD will be released on July 25th.
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