9 Major Takeaways From ‘The Beastie Boys Story’ on Apple TV+

“It might have been at a Circle Jerks show, but I like the Misfits more, so I’m gonna say it was the Misfits,” joked Horovitz. Whatever show it was, he does remember that he met them, along with former drummer Kate Shellenbock, in the women’s bathroom.

Many fans probably knew this one already, but it’s still funny to hear Horovitz reflect on the band name, which was Yauch’s idea. “The acronym alone makes no sense because ‘boys’ is already in the title of the band,” Horovitz said. “The name was ridiculous and redundant, and it was inaccurate because there was a girl drummer, Kate.”

Both Diamond and Horovitz expressed regret for the way Schellenbach was treated, though it’s not clear whose decision it was for her to leave—other than the fact that it wasn’t Schellenbach’s, and that it happened after the group began working with Def Jam Recordings founders Rick Rubin and Russel Simmons.

“It was decided at some point that we had to kick Kate out of the band, because she didn’t fit into our tough rapper-guy identity. How fucked up is that?” Horovitz said. “When Beastie Boys began, the majority of our friends were girls—like the coolest girls. And it’s really embarrassing to think that we let them down. It was shitty the way it all went down.” Horovitz later tells a story about seeing Schellenbach at a deli a few years later, after the Beastie Boys first hit album, and not saying hi. “I guess I didn’t say hi because I was embarrassed about how much I’d changed.”

Ten years later, the Beastie Boys reunited with Schellenbach when they played with her band, Luscious Jackson.

This was just before the group released their first album, and Yauch was the only one with a nice apartment because he got to live their rent-free. “If your radiator broke, Yauch would come up to fix it,” Horovitz said. “He had zero qualifications for the job but he could do just about anything on instinct.”

It’s not just that they were influenced by the hip-hop group—they studied them and tried to copy their every move. “We studied every song, every lyric, we were looking at every picture trying to figure out their sneaks, their clothes, everything,” said Diamond.

Diamond said all three of them were later embarrassed by the song, and were ashamed of the way they got swept up in the party-mantra they had been mocking. “We morphed from making fun of party bros to actually becoming those dudes.”

“He didn’t tell us about it until a couple years later,” Diamond said. “He was sick of being the drunk guy at the party. Yauch said the Russell [Simmons] wouldn’t listen to him, and he kept telling Yauch that it was all fine, and he should just get back on tour, put water in a beer can, and splash it around.”

“Zero dollars for the multi-platinum smash hit, Licensed to Ill,” Horovitz said. “For whatever reason, the record label decides to not fucking pay us. Allegedly Russell said we were in breach of our contract because we hadn’t started recording a new record for Def Jam yet.”

Added Diamond, “When Russell signed us, we thought he believed in us in some big way. But in hindsight, he just needed three white rappers to get on MTV. I mean, we coulda been anybody.”

The Beastie Boys are hardly the only members of the music industry to have a problem with Simmons. The producer has been accused multiple times of serious cases of sexual misconduct and assault, which is the subject of the upcoming HBO documentary, On the Record. The doc was originally supposed to be released by Apple TV+, but the company withdrew following pressure from Simmons.

“The lyrics were about how Mario was the worst person ever,” Horovitz said, “and how he was always sabotaging us, and holding us back, and I thought it would be funny to just stand next to him and scream that while he recorded it.”

Watch The Beastie Boys Story on AppleTV+