My husband Peter manages rock bands, including the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Ohio last month. I went with him to the ceremony. Other bands I’d known and loved as a teenager were being inducted, too, among them Guns N’ Roses and the Beastie Boys. Two of the three-man rap band — Ad-Rock (Adam Horowitz) and Mike D (Michael Diamond) — were there to accept their awards. But they wouldn’t go on stage without Adam Yauch. That day, Yauch had entered hospital for the last time.
When he died, the international media overflowed with grief. Yauch made television news bulletins in Britain and the front page of the New York Times; he was a worldwide ‘trending topic’ on Twitter for more than a day. Musicians, rappers, actors, directors spoke of their loss. Generation X, now running newspapers, civil servants, even MPs, put their sorrow on the record. It was some contrast with the state of affairs in 1987, when the Beastie Boys toured the UK, and MPs tried to ban them.
Pop stars die most weeks. What was so significant about Yauch? We can go through the tropes of his life; frat-boy rapper turned Buddhist activist, sensitive director, filmmaker. The Beastie Boys released the party rap classic Licensed to Ill in 1986. Produced by the great Rick Rubin, with Kerry King from Slayer on the guitar, it sold more than nine million records. It was the first hip-hop album to top the charts; three white Jewish boys from New York had become the unlikely kings of rap. They followed it up three years later with Paul’s Boutique, a 180-degree artistic pivot. Now liberal and left-wing but still awesome, the Beasties refused to repeat the sort of success they were known for. The album was critically lauded but sold two million rather than nine million records. The band would never repeat Licensed to Ill, but they kept their self-respect and that of their peers. Yauch was perhaps the most liberal of all. He organised concerts in aid of Tibet, brought Buddhist monks on tour. The kid who had once rapped about skeezin’ with whores and how girls should do the dishes became a feminist:
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I want to say a little something that’s long overdue
The disrespect to women has got to be throughTo all the mothers and the sisters and the wives and friendsI offer my love and respect to the end.
This was gutsy stuff in the world of rap, where women are too often bitches and hoes. What is more, Yauch made it count by making it rock. That track, ‘Sure Shot’, will blow you out of your headphones. This is no mealy-mouthed woolly do-gooder.
Yauch’s death provoked such a reaction because his band brought rap to the masses, and because he was so evidently spending his life trying to improve the world. When he changed my own life, though, it was 1987 and I had scammed my way to the front row of a Beasties gig in Brighton, supporting Run DMC. I screamed my head off (I was 16); I could rap their entire record, start to finish, and Run DMC’s as well. That gig didn’t have much feminism. It had topless girls in cages and a giant inflatable penis. But on the other hand, the Beastie Boys were on fire. I left the hall dazed, and when the lights went up, the only thought in my head was: ‘I want in.’
That gig led to my fascination with music, and the music business, that changed how I spent my twenties; led to MTV and record companies, tour buses and backstage passes, aftershows and crew drinks at 2 a.m. It led to a young life in music that was blissfully happy for more than ten years. At the Hall of Fame, in the non-political half of my life, where my husband is a legendary manager, I got to meet two of the Beastie Boys at long last, and pay my respects. I never met Yauch. But when I read about his death that night I cried. Many thousands of others did too.
The last word might go to the film director Kevin Smith. ‘For a Beastie,’ he said, ‘you sure were a beaut.’