1981-Mike Diamond (Mike D)
Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock)
Adam Yauch (MCA)
In 1987, their debut album, Licensed To Ill, became the first rap album to hit #1 in the US. It went on to sell over 10 million copies in America; their next four albums sold at least 2 million each.
Early on, they were a hardcore band, but the rapping became the focus of their shows when they started working with producer Rick Rubin. Kate Shellenbach (later of Luscious Jackson) and John Barry were also in the group when they started.
They are from New York City. They are all Jewish, but both Adams are half-jewish, and they never were brought up with religious traditions.
They signed with Def Jam records, but went to Capitol after their first album, Licensed to Ill, was released. This sparked a nasty lawsuit, with the group claiming Def Jam withheld earnings, and Def Jam asserting that Beastie Boys owed them seven more albums. Russell Simmons of Def Jam claimed that he was responsible for their success, since he got them on tours and in the movie Krush Groove, and made them credible in the black community. The legal entanglements delayed their second album, Paul's Boutique, until 1989 - three years after their debut.
They opened shows for Madonna in 1985 and Run-DMC in 1986. Predictably, their sets didn't go over well with Madonna's fans, but she kept them on the bill anyway. Horovitz explained in the book I Want My MTV: "The audience's hatred for us worked in her favor. When she got onstage, they couldn't have been happier to see her."
It was hard for the band to pull off their rebellious aesthetic when they were signed to Capitol Records, a huge label, so they had Capitol set up an imprint for them called Grand Royal so it would sound like they were on an indie label. They issued their 1992 album Check Your Head on Grand Royal in 1992, and later that year decided to make it a real record label when they heard from their old friends Gabby Glaser and Jill Cunniff, who started a band called Luscious Jackson. They made that group the first signing and over the next few years added a handful of other acts, including Sean Lennon and Atari Teenage Riot. They shut down the label in 2000 because it was losing money and taking up too much of their time.
"Beastie" stands for "Boys Entering Anarchistic States Toward Internal Excellence," although no one remembers what that's supposed to mean, if anything. The name was chosen because it looks good on the kind of pin punks would wear of their favorite bands. They went with it even though they had a girl in the group at the time: Kate Schellenbach.
In the Licensed To Ill era, Mike D wore a Volkswagen medallion on a rope necklace. Many fans made their own, using pilfered emblems from local VWs. The Volkswagen company offered free replacements and spun the trend into some positive marketing, taking out ads with the headline: Designer labels always get ripped off.
Original member Kate Schellenbach was frozen out of the band in 1984 when they became more of a rap act and Rick Rubin started shaping their image and sound. She was devastated, and disappointed when her ex-bandmates, who had always treated her and other women in their circles with respect, started acting like lunkheads.
Schellenbach says it was Rubin's influence. "When they were around him, they'd put on this hip-hop swagger, make sexist jokes, and act like knuckleheads," she wrote in the Beastie Boys Book. "It was hard for me to accept this assholian behavior from these nerdy boys who had never overtly sexualized me or any of the other girls in our scene."
The Boys expressed remorse for the way they booted Schellenbach from the band and for the way they treated women. They started correcting course in the early '90s, and in 1992 they signed the all-female band Luscious Jackson to their label, Grand Royal. After the signing, Schellenbach became the drummer in Luscious Jackson.
When the group left Def Jam, the label enlisted Chuck D to create another Beastie Boys album made up of outtakes and other leftover bits. After the group signed with Capitol and released Paul's Boutique, Chuck abandoned the project, since it was clear the group was a serious rap act and not a clownish concoction. Chuck became one of the group's biggest supporters and inducted them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012.
Horovitz married actress Ione Skye in 1992. They divorced in 1998.
They went through DJs like Spinal Tap went through drummers. Dr. Dre from Yo! MTV Raps was their DJ before hosting the show for MTV.
They published six issues of a magazine called Grand Royal from 1993 to 2000. The first issue included an interview with basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; the second with the reggae legend Lee "Scratch" Perry. Mike D did most of the interviews and had the most interest in the magazine.
Michael Diamond married the director Tamra Davis (
Billy Madison,
Half-baked,
Crossroads) in 1993. Their dog Rufus, who has since passed away, appears in the Beastie Boys video for "
Sure Shot."
Horovitz acted in a few movies, notably Lost Angels and Roadside Prophets.
They love basketball and are big fans of the New York Knicks. When they set up their own studio (G-Son) in Los Angeles to record their 1992 album Check Your Head, they installed a basketball hoop so they could play when they weren't working (which was often).
Horovitz and Jill Cuniff (ex-Luscious Jackson) studied together in the 5th grade.
The three of them lived together twice. The first place was a crappy apartment in Chinatown, before they were really famous. The second was soon after they moved to LA in the late '80s. They lived in a rented house they baptized the G-spot, because their owner was a nice old couple, the Grassholffs.
Yauch and Diamond both went to college. Yauch went to Bard but left after two years, and Diamond went to Vassar, but he gave up after six months.
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Suggestion credit:
Phoebe - Rome, Italy
"MCA" stands for "Master of Ceremonies Adam."
The Beastie Boys have supported a variety of causes over the years. Some of the benefits they played were for Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier and AIDS. They organized the Tibetan Freedom Concerts, which started in 1996 to help liberate Tibet.
Adam Yauch died from cancer at the age of 47 on May 4, 2012. The surviving two members of Beastie Boys announced in June 2014 that they were discontinuing the group.
They have never allowed their music to be used in commercials, and are unlikely to ever do so, as Yauch stated in his will that he would like all future requests to be denied.