‘Beastie Boys Story’ Is Moving Tale Of Friendship, Loss, And A 25 Foot Hydraulic Penis 

For New Yorkers of a certain age, The Beastie Boys weren’t just a band we watched go from local heroes to global superstars — they were us. We played salugi, we wrote graffiti and we grew up on the same mix of downtown punk, uptown hip hop, and outer borough classic rock and disco. We were in on the joke. We knew why Ad Rock got his BVDs at V.I.M. When Adam “MCA” Yauch died in 2012, it felt like a death in the family and put us on notice that we had now reached that age where our friends could die not from misadventure but disease.

Beastie Boys Story, the new film which begins streaming today on Apple TV+, is a first person recollection of the band’s history and a loving tribute to a lost friend. Filmed in front of a live audience, surviving members Michael “Mike D” Diamond and Adam “Ad Rock” Horovitz tell the tale of “three kids that met and became friends and did all kinds of crazy stuff together for over 30 years.” It covers much of the same ground as 2018’s Beastie Boys Book and was directed by frequent collaborator Spike Jonze. The nearly two-hour monologue is augmented with images, video and the occasional gag projected on a screen behind the two Beasties. “The two of us will do the best we can because one of us isn’t here, Adam Yauch,” Diamond pledges at the outset.

Yauch’s presence looms large. “‘What would Yauch do?’ is always on our minds,” says Horovitz. His bandmates credit him as the creative force that inspired them into existence and enabled their artistic and personal growth. The most naturally accomplished musician among them, he was also a born tinkerer who could fix a hot water heater and engineer recording sessions. He was a prankster and a seeker, whose interest in Buddhism begat the Tibetan Freedom Concerts, a far cry from the louts who brought a 25 foot hydraulic penis on stage with them a decade earlier.

Throughout Beastie Boys Story, Diamond and Horovitz make amends for bad behavior at the start of their career. It’s easy to forgive them considering they grew up in public. It didn’t start out that way. Made up of punk rock misfits who met at Misfits shows, Beastie is actually an acronym which stands for Boys Entering Anarchistic States Towards Inner Excellence. As Horovitz hilariously notes, “Boys is already in the title of the band so the name is ridiculous and redundant and inaccurate because there was a girl drummer,” founding member Kate Schellenbach.

Always catholic in their musical tastes, the band became infatuated with hip hop and ditched their instruments for microphones. They fell in with aspiring producer Rick Rubin (“the cool older brother”) and manager Russell Simmons (“the crazy ass uncle”) and signed to Def Jam Records. Kate Schellenbach split, uncomfortable with the label’s vision of the band as a “cartoon rap version of an ’80s metal band.” (She went on to be a member of Luscious Jackson, who were signed to the Beastie’s Grand Royal record label.)

Their debut, 1986’s Licensed To Ill, was the first rap album to go to #1 on the Billboard charts. Within two years, though, they acrimoniously left Def Jam and relocated to the West Coast. They soured on the party bro frat boy anthems and reemerged on 1989’s Paul’s Boutique with a dense collage of samples would be hailed as groundbreaking in the years to come. Upon its release, however, the record stiffed.

With little left to lose, the band set up shop in a low rent corner of L.A. and began the next stage of their career. They picked up their instruments again, recorded funk instrumentals, hardcore punk songs, and created the template that would find them a new audience on 1992’s Check Your Head and 1994’s Ill Communication, their first #1 album since their debut. Other records would follow but much of the band’s legacy rests on their early ’90s transition into alt rockers who seemed to know what was cool 6 months before anyone else (whether that was Ben Davis workwear or vintage effects pedals).

By 2000, the Beastie Boys had moved home. Back in New York, they reconnected with family and started their own ones. “It’s not so much that we grew up. It’s more like we wised up,” Horovitz says. In June 2009 they headlined the Bonnaroo Festival. They didn’t realize at the time it would be their final gig. Horovitz chokes up recalling the event and the loved ones no longer with them. That same year Yauch was diagnosed with cancer which would claim his life in May 2012. He was 47 years old.

Beastie Boys Story isn’t your typical music movie. It’s a rock doc that’s also a live performance but there’s no live music. It’s a story about a pretty interesting place and time that coughed up a band that made some of the most important music of the late 20th century without ever taking themselves too seriously. But most importantly, it’s about friendship and three guys who met as teenagers and despite numerous ups and downs, “still loved each other and being together even more.”

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.

Stream Beastie Boys Story on Apple TV+