STACK #186 Apr 2020

MUSIC FEATURE

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WHEELHOUSE FLAVOURS If you dig Beasties, you should check out… LL Cool J During the early days of Def Jam, Beastie Horowitz was given the task of sifting through the demos from aspiring rappers which constantly arrived at Rubin’s NYU dorm room for Def Jam’s consideration. One such eager and ambitious rapper was LL Cool J. “If it wasn’t for Ad-Rock I might still be sending in those tapes,” the now-legend wrote in his 1998 biography I Make My Own Rules . “My man A-Rrock: Good lookin’ out, baby!” Public Enemy Given that their debut LP Yo! Bum Rush The Show dropped on Def Jam the following year, Public Enemy’s first record was most likely funded by the money that Licensed To Ill brought in for the label. As Yauch told writer Danny Weizmann: “It’s crazy because we brought Public Enemy on the road and showed them to America.” Eminem Following Yauch’s death in 2012, Eminem acknowledged in a statement: “I think it’s obvious to anyone how big of an influence the Beastie Boys were on me and so many others.” Em also appropriated the Licensed To Ill artwork for the cover of his 2018 album, Kamikaze .

jesters, sure, but they were always in on the joke; Rolling Stone ’s favourable review of Licensed To Ill ran under the headline “Three Idiots Create A Masterpiece”, but whatever you think of Beastie Boys’ geeky, horny-frat-boy rap, their arrival on the scene transformed hip-hop’s possibilities, in both look and sound. The Beasties’ sense of humour was

With Def Jam co-founders Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons, 1980s

permanently front- and-centre and they celebrated the art of scratching. The 13 tracks on this album play out like a mixtape, beats varying wildly – Brass Monkey is built from a Wild Sugar brass sample; Girls utilises a drum machine beat, simple electronic keyboard riff and doo-wop BVs (reminiscent of The Earls’ 1962 hit Remember Then ) – but the trio’s tag- team weaving rhymes ensure cohesion. Each Beastie boasts

Backstage with Billy Idol, 1985

this time, and replaced Berry – who had started making a habit of turning up to rehearsal strung out on meth – in the Beasties in 1983. When the Beasties were looking

Chasing Madonna with water pistols backstage during theVirginTour, 1985

for a DJ, one of the contributing factors to Rubin getting the gig (under the moniker DJ Double R) was his bubble machine. After that, Rubin bought the three Beastie Boys their trademark matching Puma trakkies, while Schellenbach was away for the weekend. The story goes that Schellenbach rocked up to Area (a Manhattan nightclub) one night and bumped into the trio – sporting their matching ensembles – and immediately sensed she was out of the band, but no one formally sacked her (which all Beasties Boys members have since acknowledged was “sh-tty”). “Rick’s influence was really hard to deal with,”

a distinctive voice and they often finish each other’s sentences or alternate the syllables they spit: Adam “MCA” Yauch (RIP) supplies the low, raspy timbre, Michael “Mike D” Diamond’s pipes are high-pitched and nasally, and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz’s tone sits somewhere in the middle (he takes lead vocals on Sabotage ). When he was just 14, Diamond started the hardcore band that morphed into the first incarnation of Beastie Boys (rounded out by Yauch, guitarist John Berry and Kate Schellenbach on drums) and they went on to open for bands such as Circle Jerks and

Bad Brains. Schellenbach (who later joined Luscious Jackson, an all-girl group that would become the Beasties’ Grand Royal label’s first signing) has said: “Whereas other bands – just as awful as the Beastie Boys – would actually believe they were good, for Mike and Adam the whole point was to be terrible and admit it.” Horovitz was in another punk band, The Young And The Useless (who played Beastie Boys covers) around

like, grabbing their dicks and talking about girls. It was very disappointing and alienating.” Although typical at the time, the offhand sexism in these early Beastie Boys lyrics is impossible to ignore (e.g., “We ragtag girlies back at the hotel/ And then we all switch places when I ring the bell”). In fact, the working title for Licensed To Ill was ‘Don’t Be A Faggot’ (WTF!?) and Horovitz issued the following apology in 1999: “I would like to... formally apologise to the entire gay and lesbian community for the shitty and ignorant things we said on our first record, 1986’s Licensed To Ill . There are no excuses. But time has healed our stupidity…We hope that you’ll accept this long overdue apology.” BC

Schellenbach has told journalist Alan Light. “Everybody in our crew was very open and not sexist at all, and Rick was this piggish guy from Long Island, or wherever the hell he was from. He was really sexist and homophobic, and they were all getting into his persona because they thought he was cool. And they were also getting into what they thought a hip-hop group was supposed to act

Ad-Rock and Winona Ryder in 1989

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APRIL 2020

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