Beastie Boys Book

We all have different types of friends, right? There s the one that s kind of an asshole but fun to be around once in a while. Fun to get drunk and talk shit with, but you d never actually call on them for physical or emotional help cause they re just unreliable. (And kind of an asshole.) Or there s the friend you see once in a while and it s a nice hangout and you re always like, I should spend more time with that person, but for some reason . . . you don t. Then there s that true friend, the one you d be on the phone with forever. The one that helps you move, or meets you at the hospital, or has a permanent spot on their couch for you just in case you ever need it. Those type of friends are rare, we all know. BUT . . . there s an even rarer friend: the one that gets you motivated. The one that not only gets themselves going and doing great things but says: we should all get together and do this. And then does it. Adam Yauch was that type of friend. A once-in-a-lifetime type of friend. The friend that makes it happen. The friend that inspires you to go big.
 
We all see things differently. We each experience an event in our own way. This book is how Michael Sweet Lou Diamond and I remember what happened to us. Yauch had talked about wanting to document our band, but, sadly, without him here, me+Mike are gonna have to do it alone. I say sadly, well . . . because of the obvious. Adam passed away in 2012. But it s additionally sad because, if any of the three of us saw things with a unique perspective, it was Yauch. He was truly a wild card. Someone who, in my mind, was like . . . Shit . . . I m gonna walk to the top of the Empire State Building with cameras taped to my shoes . . . I ll carry you up there piggyback-style . . . It ll be funny . . . let s go. He was the rare person who actually does all the crazy things they say they re gonna do. And does them even crazier than you d imagine. For instance . . .
 
Yauch got into snowboarding in the

Beastie Boys is a trio consisting of Michael “Mike D” Diamond, Adam “ADROCK” Horovitz, and the late Adam “MCA” Yauch (1964–2012), formed in 1981 as part of New York’s hardcore punk underground. The group’s first full-length album, Licensed to Ill, was the first rap album to reach #1. With seven multi-platinum albums from 1986 to 2011, including Licensed to Ill, Paul’s Boutique, Check Your Head, Ill Communication, Hello Nasty, To the 5 Boroughs, and Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, Beastie Boys are one of the longest-lived hip hop acts worldwide. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012, received the MTV Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award in 1998, and have won three Grammy Awards.

A fascinating, generous book with portraits and detail that float by in bursts of color . . . As with [the band s] records, the book s structure is a lyrical three-man weave. . . . Diamond s voice is lapidary, droll. Horovitz comes on like a borscht belt comedian, but beneath that he is urgent, incredulous, kind of vulnerable. . . . Friendship is the book s subject as much as music, fame and New York. The New York Times Book Review

Wild, moving . . . resembles a Beastie Boys LP in its wild variety of styles. Rolling Stone 

As nutty, irreverent, and fun as you think it would be. Vogue

As freewheeling and funny as their albums . . . a beautifully messy (and large) talisman containing within it many of the great joys and surprises that come with listening to the Beastie Boys The AV Club

Horovitz and Diamond share sincere moments of reflection about their music, their friendship and the guy who taught them to fix radiators, to care about human rights, to own up to mistakes and to grow up. NPR, Morning Edition

Teeming with tour anecdotes, personal letters, playlists, comics and photographs [Beastie Boys Book] unspools the crew s thirty-year run in the music industry and is appropriately massive. Los Angeles Times

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. Booklist (starred review)

This entertaining look at Beastie Boys history is as innovative and raucous as the band s music. Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Beastie Boys fans will devour this book, as will