Beastie Boys to Beastie Men

Over the years, a lot of musicians have identified themselves as boys: Beach Boys. Boyz II Men. Boy George. But only Adam Horovitz, Mike Diamond and Adam Yauch have called themselves boys twice—Beastie being an acronym for Boys Entering Anarchistic States Toward Internal Excellence. The Beastie Boys can stake a claim not just to redundancy but also to twice the boyhood of all the other boys who play rock and roll.

Enthusiasm, energy, willingness to mock power, an ability to focus on the new because they don't know a lot about the old—these are the virtues of boyhood, Beastie and otherwise. Boys also grow up. Even Beastie Boys develop a sense of mortality, a concern with a world beyond babes, beer, theft and proclaiming one's greatness to adoring fans and an annoyed world. But let's not jump to premature maturity.

The Beastie Boys formed in 1981 as a punk band. The New York hardcore scene at that time was an odd subculture. Punks insisted that lyrics should address the horrors of reality and singers should appear alienated. Metalheads, on the other hand, thought lyrics should explore pagan mythology and singers should make grand gestures, like professional wrestlers. Everyone agreed that punk was supposed to be anticonformist, so you would be viciously criticized for having a short spiky haircut. If you didn't have a short spiky haircut, you'd be viciously criticized for not looking like a punk. And if you were an NYU student who dared go to a hardcore show at A7 or CBGBs, the only question was whether you should have your nose broken before or after you paid admission.

Somehow the Beastie Boys emerged from this scene with their sense of humor intact, which is in evidence on 1982's Polly Wog Stew. Like other hardcore bands, they were loud and fast and had no interest in melody. For reasons that are still unclear, in the song Michelle's Farm they equate going to school with fucking farm animals. Influenced by Bad Brains, a black band that ruled the New York scene and alternated hardcore with reggae, the Beasties put out a single called Cooky Puss in 1983. Where most bands sought only to play harder than the next guy, the Beasties experimented with sound and combined styles outside hardcore's ideological boundaries. In the case of Cooky Puss they put an electronic dance beat under a prank phone call. It sort of worked.

In 1984 they abandoned punk entirely for rap, after coming under the influence of NYU student and budding producer Rick Rubin. They put out several 12-inch singles for Rubin's influential label Def Jam. In 1985 they opened for Madonna on her Like a Virgin tour. Then, in 1986 they opened for (and sounded a lot like) Run D.M.C. It was a historic moment: the first all-white rap group going over with a black audience. Their respect for the form and their lack of respect for everything else somehow made them the real thing.

Combining hip-hop beats with punk and metal riffs, the Beastie Boys kept the punk idea of writing about their closely observed reality and added the rap custom of (concluded on page 142)Beastie Boys(continued from page 119) bragging on their major-label debut album, Licensed to Ill, in 1986. The first rap album to reach the top of Billboard's album chart, Ill has sold over 5 million copies. Its anthem, Fight for Your Right (To Party), will probably remain a staple at frat parties for decades. But every cut celebrates the demented energy of young men who tell tall tales of crime and tumescent tales of following your dick wherever it may lead.

At various points along the trail blazed by the Beasties, we find some of today's most vital acts: Rage Against the Machine, Korn, Limp Bizkit and a host of others in trip-hop and electronica. And in the ditch by the side of the trail we find Vanilla Ice and Faith No More.

The Beasties continued to sound lively, although they concluded that they didn't have a lot of money to show for their association with Def Jam. They moved to California, switched to Capitol Records and released Paul's Boutique.

Unfortunately, they decided not to tour for the album and Paul's Boutique bombed. They moved back to New York in 1990, founded their own label, Grand Royal, and built a studio, G-Son. Getting back to their roots both geographically and musically proved liberating (they were playing instruments again, as well as manipulating sound electronically). In 1992 they had their first hits since Licensed to Ill with the neopsychedelic album Check Your Head. Most notably they scored with So What'cha Want, a hilarious but disturbing single that became a staple on MTV.

Ill Communication in 1994 included the metallicized hit Sabotage, which combined turntable scratching with a Ted Nugent–style drone. But the most remarkable aspect was the expansion in subject matter. In The Update they did their first serious political rap, warning about the ecological crisis and committing themselves to the tradition of Martin Luther King. During a snowboarding trip to Nepal, Adam Yauch became interested in Buddhism, and his vows started showing up in lyrics. Could this be the same band that recorded Licensed to Ill? Well, they don't perform most of that early crimes-and-babes material anymore. Even Beastie Boys grow up.

At last summer's Reading Festival in England, they asked Prodigy not to perform Smack My Bitch Up on the grounds that it promoted violence toward women. Prodigy retaliated by denouncing the Beasties from the stage. "We explained that although this may sound hypocritical, we have been trying to be more careful choosing what songs we play, and changing some of the lyrics in songs we do play," said Adam Yauch in an e-mail exchange. "We are in the process of learning from our mistakes, and feel that some of the things we did in the past that we thought were a joke ended up having lasting negative effects."

Named for the phone greeting you get when you call their PR firm, Nasty Little Man, 1998's Hello Nasty continued the band's traditional commentary on popular culture with the hit Intergalactic, a parody of cheesy Japanese science fiction. The fans who wanted them to play the Merry Pranksters every time out were happy enough to buy more than 3 million albums. But there were again new elements, namely self-doubt, from the former masters of ego inflation.

Even boys have to face that eventually. In the meantime, the Beastie Boys have provided us with a link between the comic vision of youth in Leiber and Stoller's hits with the Coasters in the Fifties and Mike Judge's Zen stupidity with Beavis and Butt-head in the Nineties. That's a lot for one lifetime, and there's more to come. They're a band you want to watch grow up.