The Beastie Boys Book Tour Is as Nutty, Irreverent, and Fun as You Think It Would Be
Over the past two nights, Michael Diamond (aka Mike D) and Adam Horovitz (aka Ad-Rock) began what will most likely be the last tour of anything calling itself the Beastie Boys, first at Manhattan’s Town Hall and last night at Brooklyn’s immaculately restored Kings Theatre. (The show moves on to Los Angeles this weekend, followed by San Francisco and London.) The occasion isn’t a reunion record—another legacy act out for one last big cash grab—but, rather, a new, weird, and righteous book. Beastie Boys Book, a 571-page behemoth that’s about as far afield from the usual artist’s hagiography as you could imagine, is stuffed with photos (many of them by longtime collaborator Spike Jonze) and a multitude of stories from the band about making it, faking it, breaking it, and starting all over again.
There are also a few choice contributions from people outside the band: Author Colson Whitehead delivers a. . . let’s call it “fanciful” oral history of the Beastie’s first single, “Cooky Puss”; Kate Schellenbach, a founding Beastie, tells the story of how Rick Rubin kicked her out of the band for being, basically, a girl; chef Roy Choi masterminds a Beasties-theme cookbook; Amy Poehler, after gushing about her nearly lifelong fandom of the band, acidly reviews their video oeuvre (“‘So What’cha Want’: Smoke weed smoke weed smoke weed smoke weed smoke weed smoke weed smoke weed smoke weed smoke weed all day.”) Finally, Horovitz sits down with André Leon Talley to review the band’s various looks. (Talley: “I would say this is a look that you might find today on Grindr. This is your pre-Grindr look. And it is not working.”)
Most crucial, though—and thankfully tacked right up front—is a deeply informed, deeply immersive essay from Luc Sante, “Beastie Revolution,” that places the then-nascent band amidst the cultural milieu of New York City, and the world at large, in 1981, from the Walkman and Ronald Reagan and Grandmaster Flash getting booed off stage while opening up for the Clash in Times Square to Robert Mapplethorpe and WBLS radio and the Mudd Club and still-cheap rent.
Sante summons up an evocative, provocative world of both danger and opportunity—and Diamond and Horovitz’s live show book launch does much the same, riffing on everything from riotous storytelling to a very public latter-day reckoning with the band’s early beer-swilling frat bro image. The band’s longtime sound sculptor Mix Master Mike is pressed back into service on stage, and Jonze projects some rarely seen (or never-before-seen) early footage of the band, including something that the band’s third member, the late Adam Yauch, put together solely for the three Beasties to have. And while Yauch (aka MCA) is very much a part in the book thanks to the memories, photos, and contributions of virtually everyone, his presence—warm, wise, elusive, mysterious, righteous, human, and thoughtful—bookends the live show in a way that reflects the band’s ideals and its warm, wacky heart at its best.
For a group that started out, as Diamond recently recalled, trying to roll into an opening-act slot for the legendary Kurtis Blow at a club in Queens by stepping out of their rented limo in matching Puma tracksuits (where they were greeted with the immortal line: “Who the fuck are you guys—Menudo?”), their evolution and transformation into pioneers of a genre and standard-bearers of a certain cross-platform creative genius is a thing to behold—whether between the covers of Beastie Boys Book or on stage one more time.
