Review by New York Times Review
There is a giant hydraulic penis that has, for the last 30 years, lived in a storage facility in New Jersey. Once, in its glory days, it was a phallic jack-in-the-box transported from arena to arena across America as part of the Beastie Boys' 1987 "License to ?G tour. The finale of each show was their hit "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)." "When the song would start," writes Adam Horovitz, the co-author of a new book along with his bandmate Michael Diamond, "someone would flip the switch and out, and up," the penis rose. "In retrospect, of course, this was a really unfortunate move. But it seemed funny at the time." The hydraulic penis is both a totem for the band's pranking badness at the height of their first fame, and a way to measure their subsequent remorse and enlightenment. A photo of the penis - out of the box - appears on Page 238 of "Beastie Boys Book." About 150 pages later, Adam Yauch, the third member of the band (who died in 2012), is pictured with the Dalai Lama sharing a moment of warmth and good humor. As with their records, the book's structure is a lyrical three-man weave, except now it's two voices covering the three parts. The chapters alternate between Diamond and Horovitz. Most are just a page or two and filled with captions, affirmations, interruptions, shout-outs, heckles and fact checks. Horovitz's account of Yauch blowing up his backyard fence at age 12 is augmented by a box of text in which we suddenly have Mrs. Yauch on hand to confirm that yes, her son set off a giant explosion in their Brooklyn Heights backyard, but no, contrary to legend, it did not destroy the fence. Horovitz's description of the Yauch residence is one of the most vivid passages of the book, especially the creaky wooden stairs of the ancient brownstone; after their shows they would have to carry all their equipment up to Yauch's room on the top floor, right above his parents, who either slept through it all or pretended to. My enthusiasm for this passage is literary - it's so vivid and, given Yauch's fate, moving as hell - but 1 also recognize this prelapsarian New York City as my own. 1 was classmates at St. Ann's, the Brooklyn private school, with Mike Diamond and Tom Cushman, the friend of the band who co-wrote "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)" among many other contributions to the Beastie Boys canon. 1 was in the band's orbit from approximately "Cookie Puss" in 1983 through "Paul's Boutique," circa 1990. On any given night in the mid-1980s 1 would find myself rushing on their coattails into Danceteria or Pizza-aGo Go, or some other nightclub. So take it with a grain of salt when 1 say 1 found the book fascinating. At nearly 600 pages, it is a Beastie bouillabaisse. Part liner notes, part playlist, part museum catalog, part coffee-table book, part magazine, it is the chronicle of a band. Inevitably, even reluctantly, it is also a memoir from the trio's surviving members. As on their records, there are many guest artists: Luc Sante appears, almost at the book's start, with a beautiful essay on the genre-mingling East Village music scene of the late 1970s and early '80s on the cusp of transformation; Jonathan Lethem offers a taxonomy on parenting styles of the New York creative class; Colson Whitehead delivers a spoof on "Cookie Puss," the Beastie Boys' first club hit. Ada Calhoun, author and St. Marks Place native, does the heaviest lifting with a "lab report" that examines the question of her 1990s feminist cohort's feelings about the band: "Problem: We hate sexism. We love Beastie Boys. Is this a contradiction?" After the collection and analysis of the data - i.e., calling her friends from Stuyvesant - she concludes: "Jeez, we just liked them, I don't know. And their feminist reformation validated our initial tolerance." There are telling omissions, though. The role played by the infamous and legendary producer Rick Rubin (who, in "Star Is Born" fashion, turned a four-piece punk band into a trio of jokester-rappers with a hydraulic penis) is discussed frankly, and Kate Schellenbach, the exiled drummer, is given a whole section in which to vent gracefully. But there is a difference between saying what happened and examining it. Contrition and remorse for their youthful antics are almost too present in the book, I felt, because the gesture serves as a stand-in for a deeper selfscrutiny and disclosure. I felt the same when it came to the role of Tom Cushman. He died this summer after the book was completed, so there is no R.I.P. after his name. He's credited here correctly with co-writing "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)" (in the video, he gets a slo-mo pie in the face). But he also co-wrote "Gratitude," played guitar on their first record and participated in two significant side projects, Diamond's "Big Fat Love" and Yauch's "Brooklyn," among many other activities. All this is mostly left out. friendship is the book's subject as much as music, fame and New York. But exclusions like the ones involving Cushman give a faint sense of whitewash and dissembling. It's not just about fact-checking. Now that the Beastie Boys are good, they struggle with how to talk about having been bad. They haven't really figured out how to address difficult things. But being ruminative is not what the Beastie Boys are all about. They made a lot of people dance, laugh, think and - in some ways most impressive - feel included in their scene. To be down with the Beastie Boys was - and is! - to be on the inside of a style, a method of art making, a worldview: "Down with Ad-Rock and Mike D and you ain't and I got more juice than Picasso got paint," as Yauch put it in "The New Style." I still get chills when I hear the early rap songs - "Hold It Now, Hit It" most of all - and remember that startled feeling when it became apparent these guys weren't only joking around, they were good rappers. Most of my favorite passages focus on the formative years. Diamond riffs on a diner in a tidy wooden building you can eat in today - the Metro, on 100th and Broadway - that was once the ramshackle residence of one of the original members of the group, John Berry, and his father. Diamond's voice is lapidary, droll. Horovitz comes on like a borscht belt comedian, but beneath that he is urgent, incredulous, kind of vulnerable. There is an almost Caulfieldian sense of grief about the irretrievable past. Both are collectors - they kept the hydraulic penis for 30 years, after all. And this book is their attempt to uncover the details of their lost civilization - a pre-smartphone era where serendipity ruled - to today's youth. "Pre-cellphone/smartphone, kids had to call each other's houses," Diamond explains in a lengthy aside that goes on, wonderfully, to describe the ultimate agony: "When my mom picked up and started dialing before she realized I was already on the phone." Really, it's a fascinating, generous book with portraits and details that float by in bursts of color. The fact that a Black Flag show served as a kind of Big Bang for New York's punk scene is a revelation. Then there's the unusual genesis of the lyric that opens their song "Paul Revere": "Here's a little story I got to tell." I always considered this, in tone and syntax, to be the most explicitly Yiddish of their lyrics, and assumed that Horovitz, who delivers the line on the record, was the one who wrote it. But it turns out that he first heard it from Run of Run-DMC, of all people, while sitting on a stoop before a recording session. As Horovitz recalls that day, it was also one of the first moments the band felt they had arrived. "Just a couple years ago, me and Dave Scilken got busted for writing graffiti, so we ran and hid from the police in a stairwell leading to the basement, two doors down from where we are sitting now," he remembers thinking as they waited for Run-DMC to show up. "And here we were, waiting to record a song with the greatest of all time." Thomas beller is the author, most recently, of "J.D. Salinger: The Escape Artist," which won the New York City Book Award for Biography/Memoir.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 11, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Michael Diamond, Adam Horovitz, and Adam Yauch turned one fun experience into another and eventually brought forth the exceptionally popular and influential hip-hop group, Beastie Boys. As Horovitz points out in the introductory chapter of this career-encompassing chronicle of the group, the type of friendship that keeps you motivated, creating new things, experiencing life, and just plain having fun was the wild card in the mix, and that was what his friendship with band-mate Yauch was. This is, therefore, as much a requiem for the late Yauch, who died of cancer in 2012, as an account of in-jokes, the early hardcore punk days, and life on tour with Madonna. These tales are accompanied by every visual record the band could muster, resulting in a photo album of Beastie Boys history. Diamond and Horovitz alternate as narrators, and their prose is as infectious as their music. Other contributors chime in with their own idiosyncratic takes. Roy Choi offers a mini cookbook of Beastie-themed dishes. Amy Poehler delves into the videography of the group. Luc Sante takes the reader on a musical tour of New York City streets in the early 1980s. The result is a book Beastie Boys fans will clamor for and a must-read for music enthusiasts.--Michael Ruzicka Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this immensely enjoyable illustrated biography, Beastie Boys members Diamond and Horovitz share the band's history, from the release of its first album, Licensed to Ill, in 1986 to band member Adam Yauch's death from cancer in 2012. The book is a tribute to him and "the spirit that marked a lot of the adventures" he led the three of them on. Hilarious anecdotes include an episode, before the release of their first album, when record producer Russell Simmons encouraged them to rap onstage at the Danceteria night club in New York City (their performance was completely ignored) and an awkward conversation with Bob Dylan at a party for Dolly Parton in L.A. (he asked the band to join him in a "pro-smoking concert," then simply stared at them), as well as various details from the heady mayhem of their final world tours, when they were "together having fun, and it was all-consuming." Densely packed with photographs, set lists, and album track descriptions, the book also features such guest essayists as Amy Poehler (with a "Beastie Boys Video Review") and L.A. chef Roy Choi, who recalls first hearing the Beastie Boy's song "Paul Revere" as the moment when "part of my life changed." This entertaining look at Beastie Boys history is as innovative and raucous as the band's music. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Beastie Boys Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz and Michael "Mike D" Diamond give readers front-row seats to their careers. While the unique perspective of their third coconspirator, the late Adam "MCA" Yauch, is missed, he is still an integral part of the story. Starting with a joyous view of New York City in the 1980s, when the artists were teens, the narrative moves on to their debut record, Licensed To Ill (1986), the first rap album to hit No. 1. (Horovitz and Diamond acknowledge that their being white had a lot to do with their success.) After several "it seemed funny at the time" moments, the group did some reckoning, while maintaining a love of a wide variety of music and staying true to their sound. Consisting of chronologically arranged anecdotes, this account is packed with pictures and peppered with playlists, recipes from chef Roy Choi, an annotated breakdown of equipment used, and guest essays from author Colson Whitehead, filmmaker Spike Jonze, and others. VERDICT Highly recommended for fans of the trio as well as public libraries and academic collections serving students of music, cultural, and American studies and U.S. history. [See Prepub Alert, 4/9/18.]-Lani Smith, Ohone Coll. Lib., Fremont, CA © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A lively and accessible account of the Beasties' decadeslong career, told by the Boys themselves and a coterie of friends and admirers.The long-awaited first book from co-authors and fellow Beastie Boys Diamond and Horovitz is a fan's dream. The narrative details the group's meteoric rise to fame, from their humble beginnings in the New York hardcore scene of the early 1980s, to their first tours (opening for the likes of Madonna and Run-DMC), and on through the many permutations of their music and persona as they held on to their position as standard-bearers in the worlds of music, fashion, and pop culture throughout the '80s, '90s, and 2000s. Diamond and Horovitz each wrote roughly half of the chapters, and their respective personalities shine through in their writing styles; they play off each other the way comedy teams do, much as they did when they were on the mic. These chapters alternate with insightful essays from heavy hitters like Luc Sante, Jonathan Lethem, and others as well as goofy rap album-style interludese.g., a comprehensive review of all of their music videos by comedienne Amy Poehler. The book is often laugh-out-loud funny, especially when Horovitz narrates, and Diamond's comparatively dry sense of humor makes him the perfect foil. The fact that third Beastie Adam Yauch (1964-2012) wasn't around to contribute lends the book an elegiac tone that bubbles just under the surface of the narrative. Superfans may long for more details from the later years of the group's career; the amount of space devoted to the band's formative years is huge. There are, however, song-by-song details for all of their records, which will delight the faithful, and the aforementioned "interludes" fill out the overall picture quite well.Beastie Boys fans will devour this book, as will anyone interested in the early days of hip-hop, the art/music/street life of New York City in the 1980s, and the alternative-nation zeitgeist of the '90s. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
