Kathleen Hanna's “Rebel Girl” Shares Love Story with Beastie Boys' Ad-Rock — Get a Sneak Peek Here (Exclusive)

The Bikini Kill and Le Tigre singer's new memoir covers her challenging childhood, evolution as a feminist punk icon, life on the road and much more

Trailblazing feminist icon, musician, women’s rights activist and original rebel girl Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill has a new book coming out, and we double dare ya to read it, ASAP.

Readers may remember Kathleen Hanna and her band Bikini Kill as one of the punk icons of the 90s, putting out anthems like “Rebel Girl” and “Double Dare Ya." Her new book, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk, due out May 14 from Ecco, takes readers through her tumultuous childhood, her formative college years and on the road for her first shows.

"As Hanna makes clear, being in a punk 'girl band' in those years was not a simple or safe prospect," says the publisher. "Male violence and antagonism threatened at every turn, and surviving as a singer who was a lightning rod for controversy took limitless amounts of determination."

But even through the tumult of those years, she developed a series of sustaining relationships with names readers will also recognize: certainly her bandmates Tobi Vail, Kathi Wilcox, JD Samson and Johanna Fateman, but other musicians as well, like Kurt Cobain, Ian MacKaye, Kim Gordon and Joan Jett.

Hanna also opens up about falling in love with Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys, her debilitating Lyme disease and musical journey with bands Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin. Below, read an exclusive excerpt from Rebel Girl on the first inklings of love and how confusing it can get when two Adams enter the fray.

In Australia, the sun was always out. We stayed in nice hotels for the first time and got a piece of paper with our daily schedule on it under our doors each morning. We had a tour manager. And we saw how the other half lived. We’d never been on a tour with big-time bands and we were as enchanted by them as they seemed to be by the novelty of our ragtag DIY-ness.

Summersault was a huge traveling festival featuring bands like Sonic Youth, Beastie Boys, Foo Fighters, and Beck. We played in the daytime on a small stage far from the festival center. We called it “the dumpster stage” because it was usually near where they kept the trash.

After our first show, I stayed to watch Noise Addict play and caught a glimpse of the sexiest boy I’d ever seen in my life. He was Mike D’s bandmate. I’d met him briefly once before, but something had changed. I knew immediately that I would do anything to be near him. I felt like a dog that had gotten lost in the woods for years and was finally seeing its person again.

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Adam Horovitz was sitting on a construction digger in the performers’ area listening to Noise Addict when I bolted toward him. I ran straight at him without saying anything. Startled, he hid behind the digger. I chased him around it until we were both tired. Then I asked him if he wanted to play dominoes with me. Thus began the daily ritual of tour, finding ways to be with him.

I borrowed two skateboards from the guys in Rancid and went up to a group of musicians. “Who wants to go skateboarding?” I said, trying to seem casual. I looked right at Adam. “I do,” he said. We skateboarded around Adelaide and then lay on the pavement behind a grade school talking and looking at the stars.

One night Beastie Boys and Bikini Kill played music together in the hotel lobby. We commandeered the bar band’s equipment when they took a break and performed a long, sloppy version of Steve Miller’s “Rock’n Me.” It was fun. And I only realized how desperately I needed fun once I started having it again.

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The Summersault festival gave us a community feeling we didn’t know we’d been missing. Many of the bands had started as DIY punks themselves and seemed to really like our music. They weren’t putting us down for every mistake we made or telling us how much we sucked. I was worried that when it ended, we’d all go back to our real lives and never see each other again. Especially Adam Horovitz, who was the person I thought of from the moment I woke up until the second I fell asleep. He was the center of my every fantasy. Unfortunately, he was also married. I knew his marriage was on the rocks, but because he was “taken,” we never even held hands. I was scared I was the only one who thought we were falling in love.

After Summersault, Beastie Boys were going to Asia to tour. Bikini Kill was staying in Australia to do our own tour of smaller venues.

On the last night of tour, as Adam was getting in the elevator, I jumped in after him.

“Am I ever going to see you again?” I asked.

He didn’t really give me an answer, he just kind of stammered. I went back to the hotel room and lay on my side so Billy couldn’t tell I was crying.

The next morning, I woke up and under my door were letters from a bunch of the musicians I’d met on the tour, with messages like “That was fun! Stay in touch! Here’s my address.” Some were flirty. Some were businessy. They were all great, but none was the letter I wanted. I kept waiting and waiting for one from Adam.

Finally, a letter slid under my door. It was in graffiti handwriting so I knew it was one of the guys from Beastie Boys. It was signed “Adam.”

It was over a page long, but the basic summary was, “I really love your band and would like to work together in the future. Bye.”

I wasn’t sure which Adam it was from as there were two Adams in the band. If it was from Adam Yauch, it was really nice, but if it was from Adam Horovitz, I was devastated.

I cried behind cheap sunglasses the whole van ride to our next gig, thinking I’d never see him again. When we checked into our hotel, there was a fax waiting for me. It read: “What’s up? We’re in Southeast Asia. Adam.”

Again, which Adam???

I went to my twin bed against the wall in the hotel room we were all sharing. I took out the under-the-door letter and the fax and did a handwriting analysis. They were clearly written by two different people.

But which Beastie Boy Adam wrote which letter? The fax one seemed like he might have a crush on me. The letter-under-the-door one did not. I faxed the fax Adam back, hoping it was Horovitz. He drew me a goofy picture of something we’d talked about while playing dominoes.

It was Horovitz!

For the rest of our tour, Adam and I faxed letters and drawings back and forth to each other’s hotels every day. Nobody had cell phones, so when the Bikini Kill tour moved on to Europe, Adam got my whole itinerary from Kill Rock Stars. I’d walk into every sound check and the bartender would say, “There’s a call for you.” And I’d sit on the sticky floor by the bottles of booze and talk to him for hours. By the time I got back to Olympia, I was madly in love with him, and we’d still never even held hands.

From Rebel Girl by Kathleen Hanna. Copyright 2024, Kathleen Hanna. Excerpted by permission of Ecco, an imprint on HarperCollins.

Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk by Kathleen Hanna is on sale May 14 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.

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