FLOOD ISSUE 6, SIDE A

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A FORMAL DEDICATION: “CHECK YOUR HEAD” TURNS TWENTY-FIVE GET YOUR MOTOR RUNNING: AD-ROCK AND JOHN DOE ARE—ER, WERE—“ROADSIDE PROPHETS” FUNKY BOSS: EVAN BERNARD ON THE GREATEST HITS OF NATHANIAL HORNBLOWER DON’T STEP OUT OF THIS HOUSE IF THAT’S THE CLOTHES YOU’RE GONNA WEAR: ELI BONERZ ON X-LARGE STREETWEAR THE BEASTIE BOYS’ GUIDE TO LOS ANGELES A NEW DAY DAWNING: HOW “CHECK YOUR HEAD” INVENTED THE BEASTIE BOYS THAT’S A RECORD ’CAUSE OF MARIO: BEHIND THE BOARDS WITH THE BEASTIE BOYS KEYBOARD MONEY MARK IS STILL HAVIN’ IT

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POW: TWELVE RECORDS THAT INFLUENCED “CHECK YOUR HEAD” IT DOES GO WELL WITH THE CHICKEN: WINE PAIRINGS FOR “CHECK YOUR HEAD” THE MAGAZINE OF CHAMPIONS: ON THE SHABBY BRILLIANCE OF “GRAND ROYAL” MAGAZINE VIEW FROM THE EYE OF THE STORM: A CONVERSATION WITH GLEN E. FRIEDMAN

THIS ISSUE OF FLOOD IS DEDICATED TO ADAM “MCA” YAUCH. PUBLISHER ALAN SARTIRANA EDITOR-IN-CHIEF MARTY SARTINI GARNER ASSOCIATE EDITOR NATE ROGERS ART DIRECTOR MELISSA SIMONIAN CONTRIBUTING EDITOR DANIEL HARMON COPY EDITOR LAURA STUDARUS CONTENT MANAGER ANDREW VAN BAAL INTERNS KAREN GARCIA, JAMIE LAWLOR WRITERS DAMIAN ABRAHAM, NATASHA AFTANDILIANS, A.D. AMOROSI, EVAN BERNARD, MIKE HILLEARY, JOSH HURST, HELEN JOHANNESEN, ILANA KAPLAN, KYLE MACKINNEL, LYDIA PUDZIANOWSKI, DOMINIC SINACOLA, MIKE SPRY, ERIC STOLZE, JASON P. WOODBURY IMAGES KENT ANDREASEN, KOURY ANGELO, GLEN E. FRIEDMAN, COLE GERST, SPIKE JONZE, ELÉNA POTTER, RACHELLE SARTINI GARNER ANTHEMIC AGENCY MICHAEL BAUER, ANA DOS ANJOS, JACQUELINE FONSECA, CHRIS GEORGE, JASON GWIN, ED JAMES, CHRIS MURRAY, TAYLOR NÚÑEZ, RICARDO RIVAS VELIS, KYLE ROGERS

GRATITUDE Wendy, Sebastian, Lucia, Scout, and Savannah Sartirana. The Carolina Sartiranas, The Ragsdales, Marcela, Curtie, and Monica Mason. The Rifkin, DeMott, Paikos, Cook, Tamo, Thaw, Chretin, and Kayland families. Shane Small, Michele and Lana Fleischli, Kevin Held, Amber Howell, Ron Laffitte, Adrian Moreira, Aaron Axelsen, Jeremy P. Goldstein, Adam Starr, Erin Yasgar, Andrew van Baal, Lee Diskin, Brian Hirsch, Damian Abraham, Jeremy Mohr, and Mark Kaplan. Derek, Donna, and Paul T at Goldenvoice, Scott Greer, Ian Rogers, Christy Willingham, Jordan Miller, Cole Gerst, Ivan Minsloff, Michelle Ritorto, the ladies at REACH, Jen (get her some f’ing vodka) Jay, Joan Coraggio, Tara Saremi, Phil (Foster the) Teeple, Leanne Milliken, Thomas Antonucci, Shay Shay K. | Rachelle and Samson Sartini Garner, Clare Billeaud, Herman Garner, Judy McCaffery, Jared Sartini, Kim Sartini, Pat McGuire, Evan Bernard, Glen E. Friedman, David Swinson, Abby McCormick, Brooke Black, Shira Knishkowy, L’Agence, Sweet and Tender Greens, Trader Joe, Trick Daddy, B.G., Spitz Sunflower Seeds, Bennington Slugsworth, Esq. | Ziggy, Bert, Henry, and Ralph | The Simonian Family, Sugar and Spice, The Steiners and Mowgli | Blue, Rose, Darcy Extra special thanks to Mike D, Mario C, Money Mark, Glen E. Friedman, Beastie Mania, Spike Jonze, Peter Smith and John Silva at SAM, NeueHouse Hollywood, and Thomas Middleditch for making this issue possible.

COVER SHOT BY GLEN E. FRIEDMAN | TABLE OF CONTENTS PHOTO COURTESY OF MARIO CALDATO JR.

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A Formal Dedication: Check Your Head Turns Twenty-Five

BY MIKE SPRY 8

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PHOTO BY ARI MARCOPOULOS

By the time Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz, Michael “Mike D” Diamond,

attach labels to inform our understanding, to explain to ourselves

and Adam “MCA” Yauch’s third full-length album found its way into

how we could revel in different eras. This obsession extended

record stores in April of 1992, the Beastie Boys were already at the

to our discussion of music itself, where hyphenates came to

forefront of the counterculture. Their debut, 1986’s Licensed to Ill,

dominate the discourse. Rap-rock, punk-funk, alt-country,

was a mix of punk, rock, rap, and metal whose superbly parodic

and alt-rock, among others, became common couplings when

“(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)” became a staple of

we were looking to describe the music born of the confluence

the suburban frat boy sensibility that they were mocking. Their

of generations and influences. Check Your Head transcended

sophomore offering, Paul’s Boutique, has since its 1989 release

hyphenates and portmanteaus simply by ignoring the anxiety of

become the critical darling of their canon, but at the time it was

age and influence. Musically, it was an ambitious endeavor—more

a commercial disappointment and a confusing follow-up for the

adventurous and experimental than almost anything else that

Kappa Sigmas who were hoping to continue the fight. Check Your

could be found so close to the mainstream.

Head tempered their bewilderment, and it forever changed the way we dressed, the way we spoke, and the manner in which we segregated ourselves by musical tastes. It marks a sea change in the band’s place within the broader cultural zeitgeist.

Of course, the popularity of their first two albums didn’t allow them to eschew criticism of privilege and accusations of cultural appropriation. In a live review of the New York stop of the Check Your Head tour, the Times referred to the Beastie Boys’

The album was released into a popular culture characterized

reputation as “rap’s white brats, clearly working out middle-class

by its inability to define itself—a competition of politics and

white youth rebellion, taking on a black subculture’s forms of

aesthetics where artists were more concerned with defying

dress, speech, and music.” But while Check Your Head still held

genre than celebrating it, even while respecting their elders. Our

appeal for the frats and suburbanites, the literati and elite of rock

affections for the past demanded that we tether ourselves to it

criticism fawned over the album’s gleeful wandering between

while holding on desperately to the present. Every musician over

genres and forms. It was hip-hop where the band played its own

thirty was the Godfather of something: Neil Young, the Godfather

instruments, punk rock with samples, alt-rock with three emcees.

of Grunge; James Brown, the Godfather of Soul; Gil Scott-Heron,

And reputations aside, even the Times celebrated the record as “a

the Godfather of Rap. It was as if in order to like both Neil and

brilliant bit of pop work” and “an indication of where underground-

Pearl Jam, James and the Fugees, Gil and Public Enemy, we had to

tinged pop music was going in the 1990s.”

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The generational divide is addressed at the album’s very beginning,

Of course, Check Your Head appealed equally across demographics

kicking off with a hat tip to our parents in the form of a sample from

like little before it. If you walked into any bar, club, or party in the

Cheap Trick’s Live at Budokan (“This next one is the first song on

mid-’90s, the only band you could get everyone to agree upon was

our new album”). “Pass the Mic” delivers self-parody reminiscent

the Beasties. Our argot borrowed from the album and evolved

of Licensed to Ill, tongue haphazardly in cheek as Mike D rhymes

into something of our own. High school factions were brought

“commercial” with “commercial” in an apparent ode to the lack of

together by esoteric references to Walt “Clyde” Frazier and Richard

imagination in what was at the time a stagnated and conservative

“Groove” Holmes. Hippies, punks, rock snobs, jocks, and nerds

industry; that it’s the result of him flubbing the word “rehearsal”

all had one thing in common. An indie kid like me could date a

in the studio hardly matters. “Finger Lickin’ Good,” “Live at P.J.’s,”

skate betty. Their musical fusion was our bond, and, almost literally

and “Professor Booty” are not masterpieces of lyrical genius, but

and certainly lyrically, marked our progression from parents’

the Beasties never aspired to be Dylan—that’s why they sample

basements to college keg parties to burgeoning adulthood.

him here. “Gratitude” serves as a hint to the future, a precursor to “Sabotage” and the more refined sonic mischievousness that

The next two albums—1994’s Ill Communication and 1998’s

would come to define their later albums.

Hello Nasty—would cement the Beastie Boys as cultural icons.

The upside-down irony of Spike Jonze’s “Sabotage” video and their

My memory of Check Your Head will forever be rooted in

general goofiness would become the aesthetic dogma of a generation.

“So What’cha Want.” The impeccable fusion of rock sensibility

Furthermore, the band’s maturity would both influence and parallel

with hip-hop affectations and Zappa-esque playfulness created

our own. Adam Yauch’s Buddhism, which led to him co-creating

an anthem for those of us who had no idea what we wanted. I

the Milarepa Fund and spearheading the Tibetan Freedom Concert

was fifteen years old when Check Your Head came out, and it

series, would introduce many of us to both global citizenship and

seemed like the album was helping me navigate the complexities

responsible spirituality. Bands that would follow, both politically

of the ’90s. As we left behind an era of cultural segregation

and musically, would owe their social awareness and sound to the

for post-Boomer secularism—Gen X being the first generation

coming-of-age sensibilities of Check Your Head.

to grow up outside of the construct of religion—the Beasties defied labels and categorization, just as we felt we did. The band

As the album turns twenty-five, its disciples enter their forties

even looked like Run-D.M.C. styled by Stephen Malkmus. The

and fifties without the Beastie Boys, riddled by midlife questions

skater/stoner-cum-hip-hop

me—the

analogous to the sense of wonder and confusion that defined

Godfather of the Hipster. The Beasties gave us permission

the ’90s. Listening to it today is like being brought into a dream,

to dress however we wanted, to assemble our outfits as we

a turn-back-the-clock reverie that reminds us how we got here:

assembled our CD collections: without bias or prejudice, limited

by being true to ourselves, our passions, and a sense of inspired

only by what appealed to us.

vagary. Try as you might, you can’t front on that.

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aesthetic

is—forgive

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get your motor running: AD-ROCK AND JOHN DOE ARE—ER, WERE—“ROADSIDE PROPHETS”

“IT’S A GOOD MOVIE, FOR WHAT IT IS,” John Doe says. “It’s not a great

and TV shows (Carnivàle). As far as Horovitz, Doe says he’s not sure how he

movie.” Doe, of LA punk originators X, is talking about Roadside Prophets, the

made his way to the film, but he was a replacement. “I actually think his part was

1992 film he starred in alongside Ad-Rock, who was billed under his real name,

supposed to be played by Max Perlich, and Max couldn’t do it.

Adam Horovitz. If this doesn’t ring any bells, it’s not your fault. For starters,

it’s out of print. And even when it was theoretically available, it wasn’t easy

really close really quickly.” During shooting, Doe was in his late thirties, while

to see. The film came out via Fine Line, New Line’s now-defunct specialty

Horovitz was in his mid-twenties. “Since I was older and my character was kind

films division, and Doe says the relationship between the two studios was

of the leader, I played that role. Abbe would have these elaborate instructions,

somewhat acrimonious. Both wanted to represent the movie, but when

and Adam would be looking at her like he’s paying attention. She would walk

they found that out, neither wanted to. It was in theaters briefly, and then it

away and he’d go, ‘I’ll follow [what you do].’ And it’s like, you asshole, you’re a

vanished almost completely.

part of this thing! But I found that pretty endearing.”

The plot is straightforward enough. Doe’s character, Joe, is a factory worker

“I didn’t know Adam from Adam,” he continues, laughing. “But we got

Not surprisingly, the movie ended up being notable mostly for its eclectic

in Los Angeles who bonds over motorcycles with a new coworker named Dave.

cast. The first person Joe bumps into after leaving his motel is a bartender played

Dave electrocutes himself playing video games (it’s probably happened before)

by Arlo Guthrie. (“He just made up shit, and they got it on the first or second

and is dead six and a half minutes into the movie. Joe, now entrusted with his

take,” Doe says.) Timothy Leary plays a truck driver who stops for Joe and Sam

ashes, gets on his motorcycle to drive his deceased buddy to El Dorado,

on the road. David Carradine is a sort of shaman they meet in the woods. John

a mythical place Dave had mentioned and which Joe plans to find with a

Cusack is a voracious dine-and-dasher with an eyepatch.

combination of instinct and gas-station road maps. It turns out he’s being

followed by Sam (Horovitz), a restless, high-strung young guy who asks if he

It’s no better or worse than much of what made it out of major studios in the

and his bike can ride along. Joe says yes. Well, Joe actually says that it’s a free

’90s that has since been elevated to cult status—Empire Records, Mallrats, and

road, but nevertheless: off we go.

so on—and it has its adoring fans in comment sections all over the Internet.

The film was written and directed by Abbe Wool, who co-wrote Sid and

But Roadside Prophets almost transcends cult status. Its rarity has made it the

Nancy, and it seems like the part of Joe was written with Doe in mind; the

stuff of legend, albeit a legend not frequently told. Doe is happy—impressed,

motorcycle and the lone-wolf vibe all feel right at home on him. Likewise, Sam,

even—to hear that a DVD of Roadside Prophets is listed at $49.99 on eBay.

who’s young and full of energy, with firecrackers in his bookbag at all times, is

the visual equivalent of Ad-Rock’s vocals on Beastie Boys records. So what’s

“[but] at this point, it’s much better to be mysterious and unavailable.” He ranks

the story? How did Doe and Horovitz come to be in this film that seems perfectly

this as easily one of his favorite movies that he’s worked on, and he recalls his

tailored to their personas?

time with Horovitz especially fondly. “The sort of funny and sad thing is that,

“Um... I auditioned,” says Doe, “and they liked me.” No shock there. In

[as happens with] a lot of productions, we hung out a lot and then didn’t see

addition to being a musical legend, Doe is a working actor. His filmography is

each other. I always felt like, ‘Gee, I wonder whatever happened to him?’ Oh,

composed of indie movies (Border Radio), major motion pictures (Boogie Nights),

that’s right, he’s a big fucking rock star. That’s what happened to him.”

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Despite the weird wattage, Doe’s earlier assessment of the film is spot on.

“At the time, I wished it would’ve been more widespread,” he concedes,

BY LYDIA PUDZIANOWSKI PHOTO BY MERRICK MORTON

Evan Bernard Breaks Down the Greatest Hits of

Nathanial Hornblower

I consider myself among the lucky ones who worked under the tutelage of Nathanial Hornblower. For the uninformed, Nathanial (or as I referred to him, “The Blower of Horns”) is Adam Yauch’s Swiss uncle who directed many of the Beastie Boys’ videos.

Hailing from the Swiss Upenziel, Nathanial seemed an odd choice of director for the Beasties on first glance. I found that once you got over your own preconceived notions of what a music video director should look like, and you got past the ridiculous accent, cartoonish lederhosen costume, and almost Halloween-quality beard and mustache, you were left with an aging alcoholic prone to fits of rage with no working knowledge of hip-hop culture.

Conspiracy theorists have long questioned Nathanial’s true identity. While I find no credence in their claims, I will admit it’s weird that I’ve never seen Mr. Hornblower and the Beasties’ percussionist, Alfredo Ortiz, in the same room at the same time.

Although I haven’t heard from Nathanial in quite a while, I always think of him whenever I hear a horn being blown.

PHOTO COURTESY OF EVAN BERNARD

“So What’cha Want” Hip-hop videos of the this era often incorporated footage of an artist performing to a low-angle camera in an urban environment. I love how this clip flips the convention on its head by placing the band in a rural setting.

I remember sheepishly approaching Hornblower at the bar at the Magic Castle to ask him what his inspiration was for giving the sky a kind of solarized look. I thought he was going to reference some obscure arthouse flick that I hadn’t heard of—let alone seen—but was equal parts surprised and relieved to hear it was influenced by the Wolf’s POV shots from the early ’80s basic-cable staple Wolfen.

Furthermore, the thermal footage of the band performing in the studio was inspired by Predator’s POV from the film of the same name.

I remember thinking, “Wow, smart people are stupid like me.”

“Pass the Mic” I was super excited about the release of this video; I actually stayed in on a Saturday night circa 1992 to watch the premiere on Yo! MTV Raps, much to the chagrin of my then-girlfriend. I had been given a copy of a copy of a copy of an advance of the album, and this track was a standout. I remember really responding to the aggressive nonchalance of the whole clip. It has a lazy, undeliberate, relaxed braggadocio that is distinctively these guys.

I love the use of long, slow dissolves between wide and medium shots of the band performing in the back stairwell of G-Son Studios. This is a convention you see in a lot of old live music shows and is more associated with ’70s soft rock than hip-hop or punk rock. It really encapsulates what I love about this band: their ability to seamlessly mix disparate music and film references into a cross-cultural bouillabaisse that is very much of their own making.

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“Jimmy James” Copious use of the fisheye lens here. Hornblower was an early pioneer and champion of this technique. I think the performance stuff was shot by Ricky Powell on a day off on tour, although referring to “a day off” with regards to Mr. Powell may be a misnomer, as that would imply that on other days Ricky worked, which is not how I would characterize what he did. I like the Bond title sequence references and the cross cuts visually simulating crossfading between tracks on a mixer.

“Intergalactic” I visited the set of this shoot. The guy who plays the octopus played a giant chicken in a video I had directed for Cibo Matto and in that clip had smashed into that exact same wire-tower prop, for what it’s worth.

I argued with Hornblower that the robot is not sympathetic enough here. The robot lands on this planet and then smashes the place up; the octopus is merely trying to protect its turf.

The guy inside the robot costume was a member of The Rock Steady Crew. I remember him complaining that the costume was too restrictive. Clearly, the Party Rockin’ Robot from LMFAO learned this lesson and made the necessary adjustments. Perhaps this is “Intergalactic”’s legacy: enabling future generations to shuffle every day.

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“Alive” Out of all the videos the Beastie Boys did, this is definitely one of them. The driving scooter footage looks really dangerous to me.

I have it on good authority that they did that without the proper permitting or safety precautions. I still don’t approve of this.

Their costumes remind me of something incredibly funny Yauch said one day. I was accompanying him to the set of a Busta Rhymes music video during his “making cameos in other rappers’ videos” phase. We ran into a mutual friend who was rocking a head-to-toe, oversized, forest-green, polar-fleece sweatsuit.

Yauch eyed him up and down and asked, “How many Muppets did you have to kill to make that outfit?” Not sure the guy got the joke, but I almost pissed myself.

“Ch-Check It Out” This is all-around pretty silly. Couple takeaways here: • The guy who stunt-doubles Ad-Rock is very convincing and is probably the second-best version of someone playing Ad-Rock in a Beasties video.

• This is a return to the “the Beasties don’t know what to do, so make them fight” genre of Hornblower’s work, which also permeated his efforts off Hello Nasty.

• It strikes me as a throwback to what I think is Hornblower’s first foray into music video direction, a clip for Tina B.’s song “Bodyguard.”

• The video’s direction is credited to Adam Yauch, but I think this was purely because of Nathanial’s shaky immigration status.

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Fight for Your Right Revisited Nathanial’s Citizen Kane—and the final Beasties clip.

Elijah Wood gives a career-defining performance as Horovitz. He’s more Ad-Rock than Ad-Rock in that first verse. Seth Rogen does an effective reimagining of Mike. And although Danny McBride captures Yauch’s Licensed to Ill–era rebellious spirit, boy, does he swing and miss with regards to lip-synching to double-time playback.

I love how dense this video is with Beasties song and video references.

A couple standouts for me: • Buying hot dogs from George Drakoulias.

• Orlando Bloom playing Johnny Ryall.

• Jason Schwartzman as Vincent van Gogh from the “Hey Ladies” video.

The Danny McBride “smashing the bodega window” moment was taken from a real life experience as well. I believe this happened in the ’80s. As Yauch told it, he was walking down Broadway with a friend. Without warning, the friend suddenly picked up a metal trash can and launched it through a bodega window. Apparently Yauch’s friend had previously shopped at the bodega and believed he had been shortchanged. He went on to do this several more times, explaining to Adam that his revenge policy was “a broken window for every dollar they took from me.”

The realization that there is a definitively final Beasties video is heartbreaking to think about. If there has to be a last one, though, I’m glad this is it. Looking back at it now, it’s kind of like everyone came back for a final curtain call—just with more urine this time.

Evan Bernard is a filmmaker who has directed videos for the Beastie Boys, Slayer, Green Day, and Violent Femmes, but he’s best known for his unparalleled ability to drive the lane.

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Don’t Step Out of This HOUSE if That’s the CLOTHES You’re Gonna WEAR: E li B onerz on X-LARGE Streetwear

By Laura Studarus Images courtesy of X-Large

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SOFIA COPPOLA AT THE X-LARGE STORE IN NEW YORK, SHOT BY RICKY POWELL 24

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Eli Bonerz occasionally dips into nostalgia while describing the unlikely success of his clothing line X-Large. But really, who can blame him? Not many people can say that after receiving a degree in architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design, they went on to make a lasting impression on the aesthetics of hip-hop and streetwear. But that’s exactly what happened.

“It was a feeding frenzy, it felt like we were slanging dope as customers fiended

operating on intuition and were behind what we were doing. No one thought

for what we were pushing,” he writes in True OG Streetwear, a massive tome

it was going to turn into a company that generated money and became real.

X-Large released in 2016 to coincide with the company’s own twenty-fifth

Or have any lasting impact on style.”

anniversary. “[We were] living the dream, or better yet living the daydream, because we were literally making this shit up as we did it…and getting away

Bonerz and Silverman set up the first X-Large store on Vermont Avenue in

with it, too.”

Los Feliz, then an up-and-coming neighborhood in Los Angeles (more locations in New York, Tokyo, Seattle, and Toronto would follow). The aesthetic was swap-

After graduating in 1989, Bonerz and former RISD roommate Adam Silverman

meet chic: Ben Davis work clothes, deadstock Adidas and Pumas from the ’70s,

collected $30,000 from friends and family with the intention of starting

and a line of graphic tees art-directed by Bonerz. The original merch was a colorful

their own fashion line. Some of that initial investment came from Mike D,

mash note to the collective’s love of B-flicks, graffiti, inside jokes, and their own

who—as legend has it—Silverman met by chance while walking his dog.

logo, which Bonerz designed based on a painting by Steve Gianakos. It was a

Bonerz considers Mike D a patron saint of the company, contending that

confrontational image. As Bonerz explains, New York and hip-hop gave fashion a

without him there wouldn’t have been an X-Large at all. Even still, he’s hesitant

theatrical flair, but Los Angeles and X-Large gave it a harder, more eclectic edge.

to frame the musician’s involvement as a sign he thought the business could succeed—only that it was a vote of confidence for the concept.

“There were a lot of clothing labels that serviced specific parts of the lifestyle culture,” he says. “There was surf. There was skate. There were music-

“We believed it was something to do and we were committed to the imagery

licensed brands. But we didn’t look at those labels as being defining. I think

and the look,” Bonerz says on the phone in Los Angeles, dashing the idea that

we looked at all of them together as a Venn diagram: Where there was overlap,

either he or Silverman ever thought of themselves as business savants. “I don’t

we incorporated that… Today it seems very axiomatic or self-evident that this

think I would mistake anyone believing in it. I’m not sure Mike believed the

is the way companies operate, but we did it because with our generation, that

Check Your Head record was going to have the impact it did. Everyone was just

was something that a lot of people were feeling.”

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X-Large’s willingness to embrace the culture as it was happening became

in the business why Mike wouldn’t do more for the brand. I think it was clear

an effective ethos. A crew grew around it that included present and future

from the beginning that Adam and I understood the limits and the benefits

creative forces alike. Spike Jonze took many of the initial catalog photos,

of working with Mike.”

often working with untrained models. Sister label X-girl was co-created by Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, future Academy Award nominee Chloë Sevigny

As the brand grew, it began to grab the attention of larger companies. Initially

served as a fit model, and 20th Century Women director Mike Mills worked as

they resisted buyouts (Bonerz on Adidas’s attempt: “They offered us a pretty

an in-house graphic designer for the female-centric line.

crappy deal”), instead opting for collaborations with likeminded labels such as FUCT. They also began a series of in-house labels, including Mini

It also helped having a member of a noted rap trio serving as a de facto X-Large

(high-end shirts), XLA (a skate brand), and DEEP (inspired by Asian culture).

spokesman. There were moments of intersection—Bonerz notes with some pride that he gave Mike D the beanie and shoes he’s wearing on the Check

But in 2008, Bonerz divested, selling to Tokyo company B’s International

Your Head album cover. And during a 1994 interview with E!, the rapper

(Silverman had previously left the company in 2000 and has since become

explained the X-Large style, saying, “The whole essence of B-boy fashion,

a celebrated ceramicist). He jokes that he was getting too old for streetwear

hip-hop fashion, is pioneering something, innovating something. You might

before admitting he was simply ready to move on. The scene was evolving,

take a golf visor that only people over the age of sixty are going to buy at a golf

and he wanted to focus his attention elsewhere.

shop, and [if] you’re able to carry that off, then you’ve pioneered right there.”

“That’s just the way it goes in fashion, music, and art,” he notes pragmatically.

But navigating the points of intersection between the company and the

“These ideas coalesce around certain points for a time but they can’t last for

band wasn’t always simple. “Mike and the Beastie Boys in general, they’re not

too long. Moods change because other people get their opportunities as well.

willing to stooge for anybody,” Bonerz says. “We didn’t want him to, because

The creative force can only last so long.”

that would have killed the legitimacy of what he was doing. It was very hard

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to negotiate how that worked. Adam [Silverman] and I, we knew that our

For the X-Large founders, their time as fashion influencers may have been

relationship with Mike was going to be helpful but it was going to have

brief, but their optimism and hustle proved you don’t have to fight for your

limits. It was sometimes hard to explain to other people who were involved

right to party—or even dress the party… Just work your asses off.

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PHOTO BY SPIKE JONZE

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the beastie boys' guide to los angeles

BY LAURA STUDARUS ILLUSTRATIONS BY ELÉNA POTTER

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AD-ROCK’S HOLLYWOOD APARTMENT Its kitchen artwork would grace the cover of the Beasties’ Love American Style EP, but there was much more to Ad-Rock’s Hollywood and Stanley apartment than just American-flag paint and hidden naked women. The early Check Your Head jam sessions held there were basically the first time any of the band members had regularly played their instruments in years—a fact everyone in the neighborhood was well aware of.

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COLE REHEARSAL STUDIOS After Ad-Rock’s apartment sessions, the band (wisely) decamped to Cole Rehearsal Studios, a sparse space on Cole Ave. off of Santa Monica Blvd. Later, that space would go on to host Rage Against the Machine, who turned it into a makeshift studio while making Evil Empire.

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G-SON STUDIOS The Beasties moved to their self-built G-Son Studios after realizing that, yes, they could—and probably should—get a professional recording space. On Glendale Blvd. in Atwater Village, the studio also doubled as a photo-shoot location and all-around clubhouse, complete with basketball court and halfpipe. After Check Your Head, they’d record parts of Ill Communication and Hello Nasty at G-Son before the building was sold in 2006.

NETTY’S Yes, that Netty’s. Apparently, the Mike D–crooned ballad “Netty’s Girl” was penned in honor of the owner’s daughter, who one of the Beasties had a crush on—hence their frequent and enthusiastic patronage of the Silver Lake grill. The restaurant’s motto was “Serving Silver Lake before it was hip.”

Unfortunately, they closed up shop in 2006. A cookbook featuring Netty’s classics—including chocolate almond bread pudding, drunken shrimp in spicy beer butter, pork tenderloin, and warm seafood salad with sea scallops, shrimp, toasted almonds, and orange wedges—has yet to materialize.

WONDERLAND SCHOOL BASKETBALL COURTS The Beastie Boys are noted basketball fans. (See: their 1994 Lollapalooza popup court and Yauch’s 2008 foray into documentary, Gunnin’ for That #1 Spot.)

But their court of choice during the CYH era was at the Wonderland Avenue Elementary School in the Hollywood Hills, where they were frequently joined by Flea.

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DAR MAGHREB Located near Ad-Rock’s old apartment, the Moroccan restaurant was the Beastie Boys’ grub spot of choice. Sadly, those looking to nosh on the same hummus and couscous as the group are out of luck—the restaurant closed in 2012 after thirty-nine years. Its replacement, the Mediterranean eatery Acabar, barely made it past the year mark before shuttering as well. No word yet on what the building’s ornamental arch and imposing white stucco walls will host next.

NONNI The band’s regular spot during the recording of Check Your Head.

(Its location in Atwater right across the street from the studio helped.)

The star treatment was non-existent at the cheap Italian eatery: The biggest perk they ever got as regulars was free garlic bread. Yet another entry in the long line of the Beastie Boys’ favorite restaurants that were claimed by gentrification.

X-LARGE STORE X-Large was launched in 1991, shortly before the Beastie Boys wrapped the recording of Check Your Head. Although Mike D was only a partner, the streetwear clothing line and showroom (located on Vermont Ave. in Los Feliz) gained significant traction after being mentioned in interviews. The storefront eventually shuttered in 2013, but the company still maintains an online presence and is popular in the hip-hop community and among fans in Japan and Hong Kong.

How Check Your Head Invented the Beastie Boys

BY MARTY SARTINI GARNER

PHOTO BY GLEN E. FRIEDMAN

PHOTO BY SPIKE JONZE

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HERE’S A LITTLE STORY THAT MUST BE TOLD. When the Beastie Boys released Check Your Head on April 21, 1992, they weren’t sure whether they still had an audience.

Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz, Michael “Mike D” Diamond, and Adam “MCA” Yauch signed to Capitol after their 1986 debut, Licensed to Ill, became the first hip-hop record to gun its way to the number-one spot on the Billboard 200. Expectations were understandably high. When Paul’s Boutique failed to do even a respectable fraction of its predecessor’s numbers in 1989, the label’s promotional wing turned its attention to Donny Osmond’s comeback record. The Beastie Boys were busted, and most everyone associated with them at Capitol was fired. The week after the album was released, Yauch, the group’s elder statesman, turned twenty-five.

It seems strange to think of Paul’s Boutique as a failure, even knowing its context. It is the mostly-agreed-upon gem of the band’s discography, a masterpiece of concept and execution that boils the Beasties’ exquisite record collection in a gonzo sauce of tossed-off references and passed-around verses. Like only a handful of other records in existence, one of its chief joys comes from thinking of how impossible it would be to make today.

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GET NICE: ARTISTS TALK BEASTIE BOYS

But its greatest legacy might stem from its commercial failure. Suddenly liberated from expectations of any kind, Ad-Rock, Mike D, and MCA were free to pursue whatever they found interesting. The immediate result was Check Your Head, but the end result was something bigger: While they were creating the album, the Beastie Boys were also creating themselves.

PHARRELL It was a transformative piece of work that unlocked what so many of us

“

“

“We[’d] just made something we were very proud of, so we were crushed by the fact that nobody seemed into it,” Diamond says of the days after the release of Paul’s Boutique. He’s sitting in the green room at one of Apple’s studios, in a part of Culver City, California, that you might call “industrial posh.” In another room, the producer A-Trak is putting together a mix for Diamond’s Beats 1 show, The Echo Chamber. It goes without saying that hardly anything Diamond does anymore is ignored, and that that has been the case for a very long time.

were feeling, but only they knew how to communicate.

SASHA FRERE-JONES, MUSIC CRITIC

“

“Nobody at the record company wanted to have anything to do with us,” he continues. “So it gave us this total freedom and this vacuum in which we could create Check Your Head. If it were an anticipated record, they would’ve wanted to hear what [was] going on. But nobody was fucking paying attention, so we could do what we wanted.”

The first time I heard Mike D rap was on a thing he did with two other kids in our school [St. Ann’s in Brooklyn Heights], and it was like a proreading rap. It was under the name Beat Brothers. We talked about all kinds of music all day long, and he wasn’t bratty at all. Mike knew about every record in the world before anyone; he was that guy. We would talk about Ornette Coleman and Isaac Hayes and stuff like that.

When they went to Check Your Head, from there forward I was like, ‘Oh, that’s kind of who they are. That’s of their [career] they were pretty much who I remembered them to be.

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“

the people I remember.’ For the rest

Even more than its audacious predecessor, Check Your Head presented an ambitious vision of a group who were still best known for a handful of novelty hits. Where Paul’s Boutique and, to a lesser extent, Licensed to Ill derived their thrills from the head-snapping sampling, they were both recognizable as hiphop albums of their era; Ill is simpatico with contemporary records from the Beasties’ tourmates in Run-D.M.C., and Paul’s Boutique was released three months after De La Soul brought psychedelia to hip-hop with 3 Feet High and Rising (“Here we were trying to make something really creative and out-there, and we felt like, ‘Fuck, these guys beat us to it,’” Diamond says). Check Your Head, though, asks more of its listeners—a particularly bold move given that the band didn’t know whether they had any listeners left. It shoves muddy, overdriven hip-hop rapped through several layers of vocal distortion against hardcore pastiche and the kind of organ jazz you’d imagine hearing at someone’s loungeage bachelor pad.

It’s not the most popular record in their catalog (Licensed to Ill still accounts for nearly half of their total sales), nor does it show them at the peak of their powers (that’d be its sister record, 1994’s Ill Communication, which delivers on Check Your Head’s stylistic promises while returning to the gang-shout jokiness of the first two albums). But that feverish pursuit of whatever sound Ad-Rock, MCA, and Mike D happened to be feeling—regardless of whether it fit the preconceived idea of who they were or what they could do as a band—as well as its budding sense of social consciousness make it the Beastie Boys album par excellence. Say the band’s name and the burst of allusions and associations that spill out like playing cards onto a tile floor all have their origins here.

HENRY ROLLINS

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I think the first time I met them was at a Black Flag show in NYC in 1983. They didn’t say much. I guess I met them again when we did shows together in 1992.

My impression was that they were very intelligent and funny. I didn’t spend much time with them on tour but would talk with different members, mainly Yauch, now and then at the venues. I always watched them play. I saw them many times. No bad shows.

With no tour scheduled after Paul’s Boutique, and feeling like they’d pushed sample-based hip-hop as far as they could take it, the Beasties didn’t have anything to do but bum around Los Angeles in vigorous pursuit of leisure.

Horovitz picked up a few acting gigs, Yauch got into snowboarding and booked a trip to Nepal, Diamond helped to launch the X-Large streetwear brand.

“Because of that failure, we had nothing but time on our hands,” he says. “Every single day, our ritual was to wake up, have coffee, eat breakfast, smoke pot, go record shopping, and get inspired.”

That [1992 Beastie Boys/Cypress Hill/ Rollins Band] tour was different for a lot of reasons. The bands were in tour busses with pro drivers. There was plenty of money, food, access to whatever. It was nothing like being in a van and playing in clubs. The Beastie Boys, as far as I could tell, were very committed to doing good shows every night. I never saw a show that was dialed in.

They [also] seemed quite health conscious.

They were playing instruments onstage [and] doing instrumentals, which ticked off some of their younger, MTV-raised audience who wanted to hear the three songs their attention span allowed. It was interesting to see kids in the front row cursing at them when they played an instrumental. I think it was part of the band breaking through to a much bigger audience. My impression was that they wanted to make their mark as real

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A normal day for most Angelenos, in other words, but it’s that last little action that separated them from their peers. The group was still reeling from the double-blow of 3 Feet High and Rising and Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (“We knew we’d never make something that good,” Diamond says of the latter). When A Tribe Called Quest released People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm in the spring of 1990, the Beasties recognized a kindred spirit in their leader. “We could see ourselves contextually fitting with [Q-Tip],” Diamond says. “We had a kinship with him and Biz Markie and Mike from the Jungle Brothers. We were all going out, digging for records, being inspired by some of the same stuff, and all wanting to push what people thought—and what we thought—hip-hop could be.”

musicians and were honestly going for it. It made me like them more.

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF MARIO CALDATO JR.

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ERIC BOBO, CYPRESS HILL; FORMER BEASTIE BOYS

But to make a new kind of hip-hop record, they’d have to look beyond hip-hop itself.

The Beasties had always had heterogeneous taste—they began life as a hardcore band, and the music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, who went to school with Diamond, remembers trying and failing to impress the young Beastie with his newfound knowledge of Isaac Hayes’s more obscure work—but the heady momentum of Licensed to Ill and all that followed had carried them away from their roots.

PERCUSSIONIST

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A friend of mine had a club in Hollywood that my little jazz band used to play at. He called me up and said Adam Horovitz from the Beastie Boys was

“There’s a weird thing that happened to some degree with Licensed to Ill. You come from hardcore and punk and this not-very-mainstream world where you print up some flyers and hopefully your friends show up and try to have fun,” Diamond says. “And then hip-hop was a bigger playing field, but it was still a very homemade culture. People weren’t trying to make records that sounded like hit records; the records were radical at the time.”

interested in having me play at his wedding [to Ione Skye].

I’m like, ‘Get the fuck out of here.’ My band did the wedding march and everything.

A couple of months later, I got a call from Mike D asking if I was interested in going on the road for the Check Your Head tour.

They needed a percussionist,

To reconnect with the humble radicalism that had provided their original guiding light, the band returned to the instruments they’d played when they were still a hardcore band goofing on other hardcore bands in the downtown scene. Horovitz played guitar, Yauch bass, and Diamond drums. And while they were still able to bash (“We felt like we had come full circle…[and] could embrace Black Flag and Minor Threat and Bad Brains,” Diamond says), they didn’t limit themselves to orthodoxy of any kind. Jamming first in Horovitz’s Hollywood apartment with producer Mario Caldato Jr. and keyboardist “Money” Mark Ramos-Nishita, and then at Cole Rehearsal Studios nearby, they’d run through funk workouts inspired by The J.B.’s, with Nishita’s versatile keyboard work rounding out and rooting their sound.

and that was my main gig. We gelled very quickly—I mean, I had to gel with them; they were already tight. For those three or four years that I was with them, we were a machine. It was a

“

mellower time; we’d let out the crazy energy on stage.

Caldato eventually noted that they could rent a space and build their own studio for a fraction of the cost of a professional room, so they found a rental in a former ballroom above a drugstore on Glendale Boulevard in the then-humble neighborhood of Atwater Village. Nishita, who was a carpenter by day, installed a basketball hoop and a half-pipe and occasionally slept in the space. Caldato filled it out with equipment. Outside, a sign proclaimed the name of a previous tenant—“GILSON”—but in a tidily poetic move the winds of change (or sheer entropy) had worn away the “IL.” G-Son Studios was born.

“We set everything up, and a lot of times we wouldn’t even make music,” Caldato says. The Brazilian-born producer had engineered Paul’s Boutique and would go on

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to co-produce Ill Communication and Hello Nasty after Check Your Head. Late-night sessions would be booked only to devolve into record-listening parties. “We were all [deep] into music, so everybody would go shopping individually and show [off] bags of records every night. We’d be playing basketball and listening to records by Sly Stone, James Brown, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry.”

It’s impossible to overstate the importance that those listening sessions had on the record and on the band. “We’d be listening to The Meters and then try to get up there to play like The Meters, and it would never sound like [them],” Caldato laughs.

KATE SCHELLENBACH, LUSCIOUS JACKSON; ORIGINAL MEMBER OF THE BEASTIE BOYS

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I grew up playing with them, and I knew what kind of stuff they were influenced by. I think what attracted us all together as

“We came from hardcore! We didn’t come from conservancy, we didn’t go to music schools,” Diamond says. “So we can be totally inspired by [other artists] but we can’t in any way compete. [Instead,] we can just look at, like, what makes that work, why do we love it so much, what do we think is the coolest part? And then we’d try to make one bar that seems somehow cool to us in a similar way. In the process of doing that, it ends up being totally different.”

friends—and I mean the girls in Luscious Jackson and the Beastie Boys and other people in the scene—was that there wasn’t really a snobbery around music. We were all pretty open minded and excited to turn everybody on to

Still, it can be tempting to think of Check Your Head as a handful of big-beat hip-hop songs strung together by a series of genre exercises, and giving a song that sounds like an imitation of Richard “Groove” Holmes the name “Groove Holmes” doesn’t exactly dispel the criticism. If “Time for Livin’” comes across as a convincing take on early hardcore, that might be because its music was originally written by small-time punks Front Line (with lyrics ripped from Sly Stone, to boot). “Live at P.J.’s” namechecks Kool & the Gang in its title and Fugazi in the acute angle of Yauch’s bassline.

“POW” sidesteps The Meters by swapping its titular bit of onomatopoeia for “Cissy Strut”’s “Hi-yah!”

stuff. So when they started playing their instruments [again] and playing, like, odd-time-signature funk, it made perfect sense.

They were coming from a real DIY aesthetic of being in charge of everything—as opposed to a lot of bands who are controlled by their record labels. They were designing their own merchandise, marketing plans, records, videos, artwork. Signing with them [on the Grand Royal label], we knew we’d be treated the same way—and if you’re an artist with a strong point of view, that’s a great place to be.

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But the album is guided by a kind of audacity that refuses to recognize itself as audacity. It doesn’t even dare you to suggest that following the sunbaked rock of “Gratitude” with a conga-led organ jammer is a bad idea; it succeeds almost entirely on the power of the Beastie Boys’ conviction that it would succeed, that the contours of their map might be recognizable even if the landmarks aren’t. “They could relate and dig deeper with Check Your Head, because it fit their [evolution] in a lot of ways, too,” Diamond says of the audience they discovered when they finally took the album out on tour. “It may not have been the same trajectory of music that they discovered along the way, but they could relate.”

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It was “this freedom to [try] shit and be inventive and use the whole century as a palette,” as Nishita puts it. “Let’s just smash it all together.”

SEAN LENNON

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They turned me on to a million things.

They were all huge, huge mentors to me. I was such an ungrateful bastard when I was twenty and they signed me [to Grand Royal]. Like, I was thankful and I was blown away, but I should’ve been doing their dishes and

For all of the musical progressivism they demonstrated on Paul’s Boutique, the Beasties were far from sophisticated in their lyrical worldview at the time. Women are chased and left behind, and Yauch casually flashes his gun and—in a line that would quickly become infamous—tells a hater “I was making records when you were sucking your mother’s dick.” After all this time, it’s still shocking to hear that line coming from the same voice that would just a few years later pledge his “love and respect to the end” to all of the women in his life.

vacuuming their house. They were my favorite band in the world.

I always used to tease them by calling them The Beastles, because to me, they were like my generation’s Beatles. When Paul’s Boutique and Check Your Head came out, that was our Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s. Check

Licensed to Ill’s artistic merits are obscured by the immaturity that is occasionally the album’s motivating force, and the Beasties’ extended demonstration of their commitment to human rights both on- and off-stage (as well as Yauch’s hat-inhand apology in Ill Communication’s “Sure Shot”) make the album something of an aberration within their catalog. Far from signalling a reinvention, the rhyming on Paul’s Boutique feels like the natural next step: the gang-shouting is more sophisticated and the references are more oblique, but they hadn’t yet realized that they might have something to say.

Your Head opened my mind to Indian music and world music and jazz—it all came at once and totally changed my life.

I’ve been tracking with this upright Kay bass that Yauch gave me for my

“It wasn’t until Check Your Head that we discovered ourselves and how our records affected people and how our actions affected people,” Diamond says. Later, while discussing the Check Your Head tour, he notes that it was the first time that they’d played rooms small enough to actually interact with the crowd in a meaningful way, and that they were no longer “these rock star people that needed to be separated from [the audience] anymore.”

twenty-first birthday. When he passed away, I was so sad, and I started using that bass to connect with him through the ether. It’s been a nice meditation, in a way, to just think about him and

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my life and how much the Beasties did for me.

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A growing sense of responsibility might be why the group were hesitant to say much of anything at all on Check Your Head. Yauch at one point declared that it would be an instrumental album—an inspired idea, artistically speaking, that they would eventually realize on 2007’s The Mix-Up, but that almost certainly would’ve ended their career in 1992—and even when they relented, most of the vocals were delivered through “bullshit mics,” the rappers’ voices typically processed beyond recognition. Check Your Head is often at its most effective

DARRYL JENIFER, BAD BRAINS

when saying least—see the narco-dub of “Something’s Got to Give,” one of the album’s conceptual high points that’s built around a wordless chant, Nishita’s wonky keyboard line, and Diamond’s dubby drumming. Caldato’s production takes cues from Lee “Scratch” Perry, but the lyric is decidedly of this world. “I wish for peace between the races,” the song’s opening lines go. “Someday, we shall all be one.”

“

The Beastie Boys used to be fans of ours.

We were kinda young—if I was twenty-one, they were in their teens, in high school—and we all used to hang out at this [record store] called Rat Cage on the Lower East Side. Next thing you know, hip-hop jumps off. They

Between sessions, Yauch took the aforementioned trip to Nepal. There, he was confronted with the effects of the Tibetan exile, which saw the Chinese forcefully removing Tibetans from their native land. “He was an incredibly compassionate and empathetic human being,” Diamond says of Yauch, who died of cancer in 2012. “I don’t know why he had those qualities, but he had them and embodied them in spades, and what he saw in Nepal deeply affected him. The concept that somebody who had certain ideological and philosophical beliefs that led them to get exiled from a country when they themselves were practicing nonviolence— it’s pretty hard to see the justice of it, obviously.”

do their little version—better watch out!

Sometimes when you do your little version, shit jumps off and then you’re that.

It was satire as far as I could tell. They were more serious about the rock than being hiphoppers. But I guess it caught on.

There was no change in Adam [Yauch] or any of those cats, really. Me and Yauch were

When Yauch returned to G-Son, Diamond says, “It immediately shifted our awareness and our consciousness to a large degree, and that became a guiding— or changing—thing on the record.”

homies—he dug the way I kicked it on the bass and I dug the way his voice sounded a great thing what those guys did.

Diamond’s qualification seems apt. While the Ill Communication era would find them sampling the chants of Buddhist monks and Yauch co-founding the Milarepa Fund to benefit Tibetan independence, Check Your Head paints a portrait of a band in transition. The album-closing “Namasté” aside, it stakes its morality on a kind of non-sectarian sense of responsibility and happiness that takes as much from the noisy positivity of Bad Brains’ Positive Mental Attitude as it does Mahayana Buddhism.

“

rapping. I dug a lot of their music. I think it’s

DJ HURRICANE, BEASTIE BOYS DJ

“

On the tour, we’d start off hip-hop, then four or five songs into it, we’d switch it up and go into ‘Lighten Up,’ ‘Gratitude,’ ‘Maestro,’ and then we’d go back to a couple of hiphop songs, then we’d go back to a medley of punk stuff, and then back to hip-hop.

I created a scratch for ‘In 3’s’ that I’d do, ‘Time for Livin’’ I’d do backing vocals.

It had never been done before. It wasn’t like we could look at someone else and say ‘Well, they did it this way, let’s do it their way.’ There was no rap group out that was playing punk and rapping, who had a DJ and

“

Despite the lack of support and the chance that they might be working on the last major-label album of their careers, a comfortable and confrontational joy is the radiating spirit that guides Check Your Head. You can hear it in the way the sample of an evening spent enjoying expertly paired wines and chicken in “The Blue Nun” is followed by the yawking sax of Back Door’s “Slivadiv” in “Stand Together,” or in the goofy strut of “Funky Boss,” which sits right after “Jimmy James” near the beginning of the record, lest you should miss it as a statement of intent.

who were a band—that wasn’t being done at the time. But the show had to flow.

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SHEPARD FAIREY

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When I got into skateboarding, I thought, ‘I’ve got to only like punk rock.’ You know, genre orthodoxy. Being a white guy from the South, I felt a little bit out of my element being a part of hip-hop culture. [But] the great thing was knowing that the Beastie Boys came from punk and hardcore when Licensed to Ill came out, [so] it was sort of like, ‘It’s OK to check out this record.’

Even the big singles are powered by a straightforward positivity that must’ve seemed strange after the campy comedy of Paul’s Boutique’s disco-breakin’ “Hey Ladies.” They sound at ease in “Pass the Mic,” a posse cut in which they trade verses with a settled confidence; “to tell the truth, I am exactly what I want to be,” Diamond raps. Money Mark gooses a Southside Movement sample with a whorl of organ in “So What’cha Want,” the stomp of the song a redeemed echo of Licensed to Ill’s “Rhymin & Stealin.” “Gratitude” is rolled out with a straight face, as blunt a device as anything by the Beasties’ heroes in Fugazi. Yauch’s distorted bass and Horovitz’s stabs of guitar flash across one another like overlaid videos of lightning strikes. The music video presents them playing outdoors in the bright daylight of a quarry, the rim of a backwards Kangol keeping the hair out of Horovitz’s eyes as he rounds into the chorus: “When you’ve got so much to say, it’s called ‘gratitude,’” he shouts as a tracked camera rolls by. The fact that it’s all a direct rip of Pink Floyd’s Live at Pompeii film is the closest they come to winking.

This idea that you had to stay in your lane genre-wise, and that some things had to stay with this ethnicity or this subculture…

All of a sudden those rules were just being decimated. And I loved that. But then Check Your Head came out and they flipped it up once again—and of course all these things are subjective.

To me, Check Your Head is a masterpiece in that it let the Beastie Boys show their diversity in a way that pretty much no other

Check Your Head was not a blockbuster—that would come two years later, when “Sabotage” pinned Ill Communication to the Billboard 200 for sixty-three weeks.

But it did well enough to prove that there was a large, previously unknown audience who were willing to follow along with the Beastie Boys’ whims. The album’s polyglot approach would set the tone for both Grand Royal magazine and the band’s label of the same name, and the heavy-step beat of “So What’cha Want” made a home for itself on the nascent alt-rock radio. After the album’s release, they would invite Cypress Hill and the Rollins Band to open for them on tour, and the deeply Californian combination of stoney G-funk and brainy hard rock were a perfect complement to the aggressive charisma of the band’s live sound.

hip-hop act had up to that point. It’s a total fusion record. [And] it comes across like they had some master plan intellectually,

“

but, you know, I think they [just] trusted their instincts.

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But perhaps more importantly, the album transformed Horovitz, Yauch, and Diamond from burnt-out novelties into career musicians for whom the development of taste and personal responsibility were of paramount importance.

“The reason we were able to make that work for so long is because we did a pretty good job of being true to what felt important to us at a gut level,” Diamond says.

“I feel like somehow we honored the inner compass and it worked.” A quarter century later, you can still feel what they’re feeling.

PHOTO BY GLEN E. FRIEDMAN

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that's a record ’cause of mario BEHIND THE BOARDS WITH MARIO CALDATO JR.

ACROSS THREE CONSECUTIVE ALBUMS—1992’s Check Your Head, 1994’s

Ill Communication, and 1998’s Hello Nasty—the Beastie Boys had a memorable

that record’s engineer (and picked up a production credit on “Ask for Janice”).

habit of shouting out their collaborator and co-producer Mario Caldato Jr.

“I was once working at this all-black nightclub in South LA as the soundman. The

“Mario C, you can’t front on that,” Mike D says from far away at the beginning of

guys [there] would always be playing the Beastie Boys’ first record and a DJ there

“So What’cha Want.” In “Intergalactic,” we learn that he likes to keep it clean.

would always be calling me out, saying, ‘Hey, Beastie Boy!’ I had no idea what he

(“It gets pretty messy with a bunch of guys,” says Caldato. “I was always tidying,

meant by that. And he turned around the record sleeve and showed me it was

keeping the tapes organized, putting the records away, putting all the cables

three white guys. I didn’t even know they were white!”

and mess away.”) To this day, Caldato says those namechecked inclusions were

never thought out beforehand.

stepping stone in the relationship between Caldato and the band. With the group

“It was always spontaneous,” he recalls. “When the guys would do these

choosing not to tour behind the album, Caldato says that he and the Beasties

rhymes, a lot of times not all of it was written. So someone would have a line, but

simply “hung out a lot.” These hangout sessions eventually turned into extensive

“I never imagined working with these guys,” says Caldato, who served as

Despite its initial commercial failure, Paul’s Boutique became a crucial

they didn’t have the next one and

jam sessions, with Caldato and

would just say something, putting in

“Money”

a filler rhyme about me. It just ended

building them a custom recording

up sticking.”

studio and recreation hall in the LA

neighborhood of Atwater Village.

Long before Mike D, MCA,

Mark

Ramos-Nishita

and Ad-Rock altered the course

of his life, the São Paulo–born,

basically,”

Los Angeles–raised Caldato spent

space eventually dubbed G-Son

his youth playing in bands, DJing,

Studios, where Caldato and the

amassing a substantial collection of

Beasties went on to co-produce

music gear, and investing countless

Check Your Head and parts of Ill

hours behind the desk mastering

Communication and Hello Nasty.

the technical minutiae of recording.

“It was two and a half years of

As he got older, his self-taught

jamming and horsing around to

expertise as a soundman came in

come up with Check Your Head. It

handy when a chance encounter

was a lot of working and reworking

at a nightclub introduced him to

and arranging and stuff like that.

another LA DJ named Matt Dike,

But there was no pressure. There

who recruited Caldato to help in

“It

was he

a

clubhouse,

says

of

the

was nobody coming in and saying,

constructing a makeshift studio in Dike’s apartment. Together with another friend,

‘Hey, turn in the record next week.’ There was none of that, and it was great. When

Michael Ross, Dike began using the space Caldato had built to invite up-and-

we had it done it was exactly the way we wanted it. And from that point on, we

coming artists to record, with Caldato serving as their engineer and co-producer.

were always in control.” He’d go on to produce records by Super Furry Animals,

Under the banner of Dike and Ross’s newly formed Delicious Vinyl label,

Jack Johnson, and Beck in the Northern Hemisphere and Marcelo D2, Seu Jorge,

the enterprise earned quick success, delivering the early hits of Tone-Loc (“Wild

and Marisa Monte in the Southern Hemisphere, and he still works out of a studio in

Thing,” “Funky Cold Medina”) and Young MC (“Bust a Move”). The team then

Eagle Rock, not far from the old G-Son location.

set their sights on working with the Beastie Boys, who were looking to start

the follow-up to their massively successful debut LP Licensed to Ill. After they

do it well, he learned on the job; it’s in his nature. “As a kid, I learned how to

impressed the trio with tracks written by a pair of Delicious Vinyl acquisitions—

make and fix stuff at home. We would never call the plumber or the electrician.

Michael “E.Z. Mike” Simpson and John “King Gizmo” King (a.k.a. The Dust

We’d do everything ourselves. Same thing with the studio,” he says. “It was really

Brothers)—work soon began on what would become the rap group’s seminal

hands-on learning, making mistakes. We had some experiences and put them all

1989 album, Paul’s Boutique.

together, and it really flourished. [We] had a beautiful run.”

48 48

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BY MIKE HILLEARY

Looking back, everything Caldato ever learned about his role, and how to

PHOTO COURTESY OF MARIO CALDATO JR.

k e yb oard m on ey mark is sti l l havi n ’ i t EARLY, EARLY DAYS ASIDE, THE BEASTIE BOYS WERE ALWAYS A TRIO—

the sight of Adam, Adam, and Mike poised and ready to rhyme is so iconic that

remembers. “There was nothing to do on those long drives [other] than look at

it really goes without saying. But if you look not so far in the space behind the

each other and play Yahtzee or cards or watch a VHS tape.”

Beasties, a fourth presence consistently stands with them on stage: keyboardist

Mark Ramos-Nishita, steadfast contributor to every Beastie Boys record from

three of the most legendary rappers in history would find a bit of nostalgic thrill in

Check Your Head to Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2 and the longest-running member

recounting those days, but Nishita tells his stories like a dad talks about meeting

of their extended crew. The Detroit-born son of Japanese-Hawaiian and Mexican

his college roommate. For him, his past has already been laid down; he sees

parents turned a youthful fascination with the machinery and mechanisms of

no need to retread his musical origin story. Instead, Money Mark is obsessed

“When we were on tour, we were just—we were really super close,” he

You would think that someone who spent decades playing and touring with

music into a career that’s taken

with

him from building set pieces for

technologically, and socially.

Pee-wee’s Playhouse and writing

music

theater

lotta things to do,” he says,

troupes to covering Elton John at

and you can almost hear the

Madison Square Garden.

gears

for

traveling

Occasional

visits

to

the

future—musically,

“I feel I have a lotta, lotta,

in

through

his the

head

ticking

possibilities.

Matt Dike and Michael Ross’s

His latest project? Starting a

Delicious Vinyl label in the early

musical school and setting up

’90s put him in direct proximity

a program that provides music

to iconic producers The Dust

therapy for veterans in LA. “The

Brothers and eventual Beasties

job you do has to include in it

comrade Mario Caldato Jr. “I’d

some social good,” he says.

stop in and smoke pot and do

It’s an idea taken directly from

a little recording with them.

Adam Yauch, and one that

That’s how I met that whole

carries through Nishita’s life

crew,” he says. But before

on a daily basis: “We work, but

the trio got to know him as

then we also work for a greater

“Keyboard

good,” he says.

Money

Mark,”

they knew him as Mark, the

While

carpenter

all-around

impression on the public is

handyman. As legend has it,

likely that of the keyboard

and

Mario C called Nishita after

his

most

lasting

master backing the Beasties,

one of the Beasties wrecked the gate of their crash pad, and he happened to

he’s also played with De La Soul, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Trick Daddy, and he

bring his keyboard along with him to the job. “Yeah, the whole ‘Cinderella’ thing

appeared alongside David Byrne playing the songs of William Onyeabor

where I just came and fixed the gate at the Beastie Boys’ rental,” he says with

in the Atomic Bomb! Band. Still, working with other groups is really only

a laugh. “Not true, but, you know—I was actually a carpenter.”

“25 percent” of what’s up his sleeves nowadays. He spends his time with his

Whatever the case, the group quickly realized that Nishita had the skills

two sons dreaming up creations amongst the staggering collection of

to pay several kinds of bills, and they brought him on as a keyboardist and

keyboards in the mad scientist’s lab that is his design studio. If he’s not

carpenter. He ended up helping to construct both the Beasties’ G-Son Studios in

working on his eighth solo album, he’s inventing instruments or researching

Atwater Village—decking it out with unexpected amenities like a basketball hoop

new methods for urban farming.

and a skate ramp—and Check Your Head, which they were then in the process of

conceiving. From 1992 until the final Beastie Boys performance at Bonnaroo in

simply, “Everything...everything.” With Keyboard Money Mark, you know that’s

2009, Money Mark was there.

exactly what he means.

BY NATASHA AFTANDILIANS

When asked what he sees himself focusing on in the future, Nishita says

PHOTO COURTESY OF MARIO CALDATO JR.

TWELVE ALBUMS THAT INFLUENCED CHECK YOUR HEAD

BY MARTY SARTINI GARNER

Kool & the Gang — Live at P.J.’s It’s exceedingly difficult to believe that Kool &

Buying, playing, and discussing records was an integral part of

the Gang ever made music for any purpose other than having it played on cruise ships, but before

the making of the Beastie Boys’ third album. Here are twelve

they were celebrating good times, they were an

slabs of wax that were in constant rotation at G-Son.

outrageously funky combo playing small clubs around the US. Live at P.J.’s was recorded in West Hollywood, a mile or so from Ad-Rock’s Check Your Head–era apartment, and it captures the band barreling through hard funk (“Ronnie’s Groove”),

Alice Coltrane — Journey in Satchidananda While Adam Yauch’s trip to Nepal instigated his

strutting soul (“N.T.”), and pensive jazz pocked with the bright horns that would eventually turn them into hitmakers (“Dujii”).

lifelong relationship with Buddhism, it wasn’t the only thing influencing the mental direction of

Minor Threat — Salad Days EP

the three Beasties. Alice Coltrane’s 1971 classic

Even leaving aside the Beasties’ return to

of spiritual jazz still sounds mind-expanding—

hardcore, the influence of Minor Threat’s final

has anyone else ever managed to make a harp

release on Check Your Head is indelible. Over

sound jazzy?—and the album’s effortless intermixing of tablas, sitars,

a for-them-sprawling two minutes and forty-

stand-up bass, and brushed drums suggests a search for transcendence

six seconds, the DC hardcore legends abandon

both musical and spiritual.

genre orthodoxy on the title track in favor of experimentalism: Acoustic guitars! Chimes! Spoken, obscured vocals!

John Coltrane — A Love Supreme

Such creative independence would define Check Your Head; during the

“Sure,” you’re thinking, “Every band ever cites

photoshoot that eventually yielded the album’s cover, Yauch even asked

A Love Supreme as an influence, when we all know

photographer Glen E. Friedman to make them look like Minor Threat on

they were listening to Thin Lizzy.” But in the case

the cover of the Salad Days sleeve.

of the Beasties, the Coltrane classic actually was in heavy rotation. (And before you speak ill

A Tribe Called Quest — The Low End Theory

of Thin Lizzy, play “Funky Boss” next to

With a few splashy exceptions—a wash of sax,

“Showdown.”) While the album provided them with the same spiritual

a chickenscratch guitar, a sampled backbeat—

nourishment they were getting from Journey in Satchidananda,

there are three sounds on The Low End Theory:

there’s a cool, slightly sublimated tone to the John Coltrane classic—

live drums, stand-up bass, and voice. In the case

this is questing music, for sure, but we never get the sense that the

of “Verses from the Abstract,” that bass comes

saxophonist is losing himself in the process.

courtesy of legendary sideman Ron Carter, whose work on Johnny Hammond’s “Big Sur Suite” is sampled in “Pass the Mic.”

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De La Soul — 3 Feet High and Rising

jazz chordings and easy-morning tones, too. The impact of the New

3 Feet High and Rising is a stone-cold classic, and

Orleans band on Check Your Head is massive: Despite the brilliance of

it’s an unspoken influence on just about every

the playing, the sparse, uncluttered sound of their recordings makes

hip-hop record to come in its wake. The album’s

funk seem no less accessible than hardcore.

wiggy psychedelia, Steely Dan samples, and weirdo interludes were enough to put the Beasties

Bad Brains — Bad Brains

off their game while they were wrapping Paul’s

Legend has it that when Bad Brains sailed on

Boutique, but it also gave them the confidence to pack Check Your Head

up to New York from DC, the lightning power of

with odd interstitial moments like “Mark on the Bus.”

their live show scared bands away from opening for them. While 1986’s I Against I is the likely

Public Enemy — It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

masterpiece, the self-titled debut from four years

As the ’80s begat the ’90s, was there anyone in hip-

prior shoves all of that album’s flourishes—reggae,

hop who wasn’t taking notes from Public Enemy?

hard rock, funk—into a ruthless hardcore container. After Licensed to

Yes, Chuck D (no relation to Mike) raps with a fury

Ill, Yauch teamed up with bassist Darryl Jenifer to form the supergroup

and conviction that still makes him impossible to

Brooklyn, whose song “I Don’t Know” eventually became the base of

argue with, but It Takes a Nation is also a remarkably

Check Your Head’s “Gratitude”; Yauch would also produce Bad Brains’

funny record—all those “Yeahhh, boy-eee”s aren’t

2007 album Build a Nation.

in there for Flavor Flav’s health—and it’s a feat of engineering, too; the motion-blurred spinning of Queen, The J.B.’s, and Big Audio Dynamite in

Richard “Groove” Holmes — Soul Message

“Terminator X to the Edge of Panic” is still dizzying.

The music of Richard “Groove” Holmes isn’t cool.

It’s not heady like Alice Coltrane or muscly like

Lee “Scratch” Perry — Roast Fish, Collie Weed & Corn Bread

The Meters, and it doesn’t bop the way The Jazz

A Lee “Scratch” Perry production never feels like

Crusaders do. But there’s a reason this man, of all

it should work: minor percussive sounds might

the people to ever enter a recording studio, got to

sit right in the front of the mix while the vocals

take the nickname “Groove.” His playing here at

sound like they’re being recorded in the next

times presages Herbie Hancock circa Head Hunters and at times skirts

door neighbor’s bathroom. Whole songs might be

the stately blues of his contemporary Booker T. Jones. Sometimes it

drowned in so much reverb and spangled with so

sounds like he’s playing at a ballpark. But he’s always deep, deep in

many whirrs and ticks that it can take four or five listens before their

the pocket.

actual formal complexity begins to come into view. In other words, Perry is able to synthesize disparate sounds by force of his own quirks

The Jazz Crusaders — The Festival Album

and personality—a concept that is the essential guiding force of

In 1971, The Jazz Crusaders dropped the “jazz”

Check Your Head.

from their name and began playing fusion. This live album recorded in 1966 suggests that they

The Meters — The Meters

may have reached the end of jazz’s possibilities.

The Meters’ 1969 debut is a hard pearl of minimal

The group’s playing at the Newport and Pacific

funk formed by compressed grooves and the salty

Jazz Festivals is exceptionally tight: It’s formally

flow of Art Neville’s organ. Opener “Cissy Strut”

elegant, delicate where it needs to be, and energetic in all the right

is canon, but “Here Comes the Meter Man” and

spots—listen to them call out to one another off-mic between solos in

“Sophisticated Cissy” show them flexing subtle

“Wilton’s Boogaloo.”

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Wine Pairings for Check Your Head Yeah, sure, you may have had your share of brass monkeys while listening to Licensed to Ill, but Check Your Head is a record made for a more mature palette. So we asked Helen Johannesen of Helen’s Wines and the excellent LA restaurant Jon & Vinny’s to take us on a fermented journey through the Beastie Boys classic. Come along, won’t you?

BY HELEN JOHANNESEN LET TERING BY R ACHELLE SARTINI GARNER

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SIDE ONE

Hit play on “Jimmy James” and turn shit up with a natural iteration of sparkling wine: Pétillant-naturel, a.k.a. Pét-nat, a.k.a. Lil’ Natty. My current obsession is the Brut Nature from Martin Texier, son of famed winemaker Eric Texier. Made mostly from the Chasselas grape, it gets you into a natural state of mind.

Moving into “Funky Boss,” it’s time to pop open some Chablis. I think the most fitting would be some 2009 Raveneau Les Clos to set the precedent for what’s to come. Stay enveloped in this insanely good expression of chardonnay for “Pass the Mic.” SIDE TWO

Jean Foillard has a million ideas that he ain’t even rocked yet, and his 2015 Morgon Côte du Py talks no bullshit. The only wine you’d wanna call “Finger Lickin’ Good.” Have some now, but save some for later.

“So What’cha Want” and “Time for Livin’” are a little more intense, and they need the guiding light of electricity that the 2013 Saumur Blanc “Clos David” from Château de Brézé can bring. This is the truth when it comes to Chenin Blanc.

Clos Davis might be the illest motherfucker from here to Orléans, but “Something’s Got to Give” brings the organs, and that means it’s time to lay low with a bottle of rosé: You need a 2016 Touriga Nacional Rosé made by Arnot-Roberts, and you need to keep that bad boy frigid.

SIDE THREE

For “The Blue Nun” and “Stand Together,” let’s just take a beat and recognize how insane red burgundy can get with age… Alright, done. Now grab Regis Forey’s 1990 Gaudichots from Vosne-Romanée— and yes, it does go well with the chicken.

“The Maestro” drums up some heavy Italiano vibes. Brunello di Montalcino might have a Riserva por Carla, but you don’t know Carla, and the La Torre alle Tolfe Sangiovese is comin’ up your block.

Time to get yours.

Swill it for a minute, then at “Groove Holmes,” it’s time to get sexy, Northern Rhône style.

Thiérry Allemand is your man, and his Cornas goes all day, whether Reynaud or Chaillot; both single vineyards are bombastic.

SIDE FOUR

What you need for “Live at P.J.’s” and “Professor Booty” is some Sylvain Pataille—but then again, it’s what you always need. Let some 2014 Le Chapitre rouge rip on that groove.

Finally, dip back into that laid-back bottle of Foillard Morgon with “In 3’s,” chill the fuck out, and ride it to the end of “Namasté.”

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By Jason P. Woodbury

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IN POPSTAR: NEVER STOP NEVER STOPPING, ANDY SAMBERG’S CONNOR 4 REAL SHARES EVERYTHING. With his iPhone out, the titular pop star (and former member of the Beastie Boys–inspired rap trio Style Boyz) broadcasts directly to his fans. In addition to being one of the best films of 2016—Criterion edition no doubt forthcoming—Popstar illustrates how open the relationship between star and fan has become. Through Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook, we have nearly unlimited access to our stars, and they have a direct line of communication to us.

When the Beastie Boys launched Grand Royal magazine in 1993, it was a different story. Video had killed the radio star more than a decade earlier, but pop music still held mystique. The goal of the magazine was similar to that of Connor’s tell-all updates. With Grand Royal, the Beasties could share their pop culture musings directly with an increasingly rabid fan base.

But the idea didn’t start so ambitiously. In a 1997 article in Select Magazine, Mike D stated, “We didn’t sit down and think, ‘Hey, let’s make a magazine.’ We had all of these people writing to us (using the address listed within the Check Your Head liner notes) about the band and we weren’t getting back.”

The group figured a newsletter would reach fans, but quickly realized they had the opportunity to do something on a larger scale. Flush with major label cash, they conspired to create “a proper magazine.”

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Like the trio’s label of the same name, Grand Royal was sprawling in its diversity.

From ’93 to ’97, they published six issues, each packed with content that covered the Beasties’ various passions. Along with friends like Thurston Moore, Kate Schellenbach, Spike Jonze, and Mike Watt, they dove deep into music, basketball, skating, fashion, religion, food, and whatever else made sense (or didn’t). There was little in the way of promotion for the Beasties’ label or even the group itself, but the magazine helped solidify their brand as irreverent, inspired, weird, funny, and often intensely sincere. All three Beasties contributed to the first issue, which featured a comic book–style illustration of Bruce Lee on the cover, but over a five-year stretch, the two Adams mostly stepped aside, leaving the magazine in the hands of Mike D and a revolving cast of editors.

Two decades after it stopped being published, the anything-goes feel of Grand Royal still reads as remarkable. Its pages crackle with energy and seem to encompass everything cool from every corner of the pop culture landscape. George Clinton was profiled alongside Evel Knievel; early coverage of Lil Jon and Kid Rock was published, as was a review of the WNBA’s first season and a list of the best hotel pools to break into in LA. (“I think it’s very moral to swim in hotel pools when you’re not technically staying there,” Jonze wrote). It was ostensibly a “cool bible,” with pieces like “Why It’s OK to Like Metal Again” and a top ten prog rock list offering readers permission to enjoy less-than-hip genres; feral enthusiasm always trumped elitism.

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“I think the goal was to put out a cool zine with the Beastie Boys’ power and juice behind it, just to write about cool stuff that they [were] into,” says Peter Relic, who interned and wrote for Grand Royal, and went on to work for Rolling Stone.

“It’s a Beastie Boys thing, just throwing a bunch of zest into the pot and making a

Feral enthusiasm always trumped elitism.

bouillabaisse out of it.”

Even when the magazine took harsh critical stances, as when Mike D reviewed

Perhaps most famous of all is the issue’s “Mulling Over the Mullet” spread, a

Soul Asylum’s “Whatever the Fuck Their New LP is Called” as “white music by

six-page feature that explores the short-in-front, long-in-back hairstyle through

white people for white people,” it did so with canny self-awareness. “I don’t know

the lenses of race, economics, and history. The academic approach is hilarious but

why I wrote this review,” he went on. “Maybe I’m bitter, maybe I’m jealous, maybe

not entirely a put-on as it asserts the “social democracy of the mullet.” Mike D even

I’m just tired of seeing their milk toast [sic] faces and milk carton video on MTV

wore a mullet wig for a day, visiting Guitar Center, having lunch at Denny’s, and

every five minutes… I can’t defend what I’ve written here, it’s just plain wrong, and

attending a Hollywood party where he garners “wrathful stares from the glitterati.”

more importantly, whatever I think about about Soul Asylum is unimportant since I don’t listen to that Midwestern platinum punk shit anyway.”

After its sixth issue, the cover of which was dedicated to demolition derbies, Grand Royal folded. Never the most efficient enterprise, the magazine’s sporadic release

No single issue better encapsulates all that was pivotal about Grand Royal than the

schedule made selling subscriptions and (more importantly) advertising difficult.

second. Featuring Steve Knezevich and Craig Yamashita’s iconic Wheaties-style cover bearing an image of Lee “Scratch” Perry with a giant spliff dangling from his

“What’s the spine of the second issue say?” Relic asks. “Long awaited, much

mouth, the issue capped a year-long wait. Grand Royal #1 established substantial

anticipated, grossly outdated.”

hype, but the delay was exacerbated by former SPIN/Spy/National Review writer Bob Mack’s obsessive editing and a generally “relaxed” work ethic (“It was bong

For a time, the magazine went digital, but that soon ceased as well. And the end of

rips and Budweiser for breakfast,” Relic laughs).

the mag foretold future problems for the Grand Royal label: In 2001, the imprint was shut down after accruing massive debt.

But the extra time was worth it. Mack’s manic drive fueled and defined Grand Royal’s early days, and those first two issues pulse with gonzo energy. The

But Grand Royal’s influence—editorial and otherwise—continued on. Contributor

Perry cover might be the definitive story on the reggae icon, illuminating his

Jay Babcock formed the esteemed counterculture guide Arthur—giving voice to

arcane methods like few pieces have. Mack sits down with Ted Nugent and things

the rising freak-folk movement—and part-time editor Spike Jonze went from

go off the rails almost immediately, the Michigan guitarist shouting the n-word

shooting skate videos and Beasties clips to winning an Academy Award; the

(at least it reads that way; the Nuge is quoted in all caps) and Mack—claiming

cocky attitude and all-encompassing scope of his VICELAND channel is no doubt

a staunchly libertarian ideology—rips into Ted over his racism, Damn Yankees,

informed in part by his time at Grand Royal.

and selling out. It’s hard to fathom how hot the takes would be in reaction to the interview were it to be published in 2017.

Poring over back issues, it’s easy to imagine what it must have felt like for fans to get their hands on these generous dispatches from Beasties HQ. They were guides

The issue boldly steps outside of time, presenting a 1981 interview with

to unknown worlds, inspired and passionate musings beckoning readers to fall

Viv Albertine of The Slits by Luscious Jackson’s Jill Cunniff and a Mark Reibling

deeper in love with the restless creative spirit that fueled the group. Or, as they

feature that trips through the “secret psychedelic underground,” asking, “Was

described their mission: “Being low-lifes in fine print and birdies with tweet treats,

Timothy Leary a CIA agent? Was JFK the ‘Manchurian Candidate’? Was the ’60s

we paraphrase Ornette to say, this is our magazine, or to paraphrase Mad Richard

Revolution a Government Plot?”

from Verve, this is magazine.”

FFLLOOOODD

5577

S E A S O N

O P E N E R

BARCLAYS CENTER J U N E

ALLEN IVERSON CHAUNCEY BILLUPS GARY PAYTON CLYDE DREXLER CHARLES OAKLEY COREY MAGGETTE

2 5 T H ,

2 0 1 7

MIKE BIBBY RASHARD LEWIS JERMAINE O’NEAL STEPHEN JACKSON RICK BARRY AL HARRINGTON BONZI WELLS TICKETS ON SALE NOW M O R E

I N F O

AT

B I G 3 . C O M

KENYON MARTIN JASON WILLIAMS RICKY DAVIS GEORGE GERVIN DERMARR JOHNSON RICK MAHORN

DOWNTOWN LAS VEGAS • SEPTEMBER 22 — 24, 2017

www.lifeisbeautiful.com

PUBLIC ENEMY, NEW YORK CITY, 1987

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VIEW EYE ALL PHOTOS © GLEN E. FRIEDMAN

A

FROM OF

THE

CONVERSATION

GLEN

E.

THE STORM WITH

FRIEDMAN

BY KYLE MacKINNEL

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A

SINGLE

LOOK

AT

THE

STORIED

LIFE

OF

PHOTOGRAPHER

GLEN E. FRIEDMAN IS ENOUGH TO DISPEL ANY NOTIONS OF COINCIDENCE: Surely no one person could possibly be in that many right places at that many right times. Were the Check Your Head cover photo his lone credit, it would still be enough to satisfy most creative minds. In his case, however, Friedman seems to derive a deep pride from exploring the cutting edges of culture, and for the past four decades this probing drive has led him to serve as a key player not only in the emergence of modern skateboarding, punk, and hip-hop cultures, but also in their evolution.

We can look at Friedman’s origins as an East Coast transplant to the right side of the tracks in 1970s Los Angeles, managing through his plucky persistence to infiltrate the ranks of Dogtown and skate among such legends as Tony Alva, Jay Adams, and Stacy Peralta. The teenage Friedman’s dynamic, participatory style of photography further endeared him both to the Z-Boys and to the editors of SkateBoarder magazine, where he would become a regular photographer and staff member.

Or we can examine the iconic photos and record covers that Friedman shot of early hardcore punk outfits like Minor Threat, Black Flag, and Bad Brains, many of which appear in his several photography books, including his debut zine, My Rules: Photozine (1982), which moved ten-thousand copies to become the best-selling zine of the punk era, as well as Fuck You Heroes. In 1983, Friedman would leap across the mixing desk, producing the debut album by Suicidal Tendencies (in addition to taking the cover shot). His photos of Public Enemy, LL Cool J, and Run-D.M.C. are iconic.

But perhaps it’s more pertinent to focus instead on Friedman himself. Take heed of his uncompromising mode of cultural discourse and refreshing ability to say what he means with brutally honest abandon. Friedman’s history of inserting himself into the most crucial moments of scenes has allowed him to transcend simply documenting them—he’s contributed something vital to their nature.

But don’t trust my vantage. See it from Glen’s own perspective, firmly entrenched at the molten core of the zeitgeist.

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TONY ALVA, PACIFIC PALISADES, CA, 1977

IS IT A STRANGE FEELING FOR YOU TO COMMEMORATE THINGS AND HAVE NOSTALGIC CONVERSATIONS? DOES IT FEEL CONTRARY TO WHAT PUNK CULTURE WAS ACTUALLY ABOUT? That’s a good question. You know, saying something is twenty-five years old today [like it’s a big deal], it’s all bullshit. But if it helps people remember something or it inspires people in some way, then what the fuck? I mean, it got us to talk. I don’t commemorate those things myself; I barely celebrate my own birthday.

WHICH PASSION DID YOU DISCOVER FIRST? SKATEBOARDING, MUSIC, OR PHOTOGRAPHY? As a kid, skateboarding came before all of it because there was no punk rock and there was no hip-hop before I started skateboarding. When I moved to California in third grade, the first thing someone gave me when I got off the plane as a welcoming gift was a skateboard. I wasn’t far away from getting my first camera for Christmas, but I didn’t have a camera yet and I certainly wasn’t in love with photography yet.

Politics came before both of those things, because I was a kid in the ’60s. I grew up in one of the first integrated school systems in the United States. Most people only knew “Cowboys and Indians.” I actually had a Native American friend who was in my class—and also black friends who were persecuted, [who] I saw being treated differently when I was in fucking first grade.

Some of the earliest memories I have are [of] my political life, other than watching cartoons like Underdog. I fought to be a BAD BRAINS, WHISKY A GO GO, WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA, 1983

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part of it, to make a difference, and to try to inspire other

me to hip-hop by sending me tapes. And we were punk

people by what I was being inspired by.

rock friends; we met at a Circle Jerks show in New York City, but she was telling me about this new shit that was

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO STEP BEHIND A CAMERA?

happening.

Skateboarding was my culture, and I think I was [part of]

Adam Yauch was one of her childhood friends, and so I

one of the first generations of skateboarders who were pure

became friends with the Beastie Boys through her. I think

skateboarders. Everyone else before, it was “the waves are

Yauch invited me to go see a movie premiere in New York

flat,” or “we’re getting to school and we’re going to use our

City at a [roller-skating rink] called The Roxy, where they

skateboards, but we’re surfers.” That’s where it all started.

were gonna show The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle, the Sex

But I was drawn to skateboarding. It was wheels, and it was

Pistols movie. Everyone’s sitting on the floor watching a

radical terrain.

small TV screen, and as the movie’s over people start filtering in, doing the roller-rink thing around the perimeter. My

As a skateboarder, I [was] thinking, “Wow, what I’m seeing

friends told me, “These guys are coming here tonight—you

in front of me is more exciting than even what I’m seeing in

want to stay and watch what they do.” And what happened

the magazines,” which is exciting to most people. So I’m like,

was, a group of guys came into the center of the rink and

“I’ve just gotta start taking pictures of this.” I had my own

just started dancing without roller skates. These guys were

perspective on it, and I thought, “I can do this, and I want to

The Rock Steady Crew.

do this. I want this shit to take over everything.” I was playing Little League baseball before that. I was actually pretty good,

HOLY SHIT.

and I liked baseball. But once I had a Bahne with Cadillac wheels, and I broke my hand punching someone in the face,

No one was there except for them practicing and people

and I couldn’t hit a curveball, it was on to skateboarding.

roller skating around them. The person who was spinning

That was it. I didn’t look back until forty years later, ’til I

records played hip-hop and breakbeats, and it wasn’t

started playing softball with Adam Horovitz.

a big scene yet. I saw that, and I was just blown away.

It was like seeing [Tony] Alva do the frontside air. You

WHAT WAS YOUR PERSONAL INTRODUCTION TO

don’t even know how to describe it. It’s some new shit

HIP-HOP?

that came out of fucking nowhere. It was kind of like, “Oh shit.” You know? Something’s brewing, something’s

I made a friend who lived in Brooklyn. She introduced

going on.

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65

Punk rockers at the time were very open-minded people, and mostly artists, creative people. It didn’t matter whether it was being played with guitars and drums and bass, or if it was turntables, or horns. Whatever was interesting and new and exciting, that’s what we were into, and that’s what punk was about back then. To us, [hip-hop] was just a new art form, new music, and a new culture that was going to become almost as rebellious as punk rock was.

When the Beastie Boys were on their very first trip to Los Angeles after Licensed to Ill, they were obviously breaking into that whole hip-hop thing, and they knew no one in LA. So I showed them all around and got them on radio shows. I was so fucking inspired, I just helped them as friends. I made this great photo session with those guys over a period of two or three days. That was a good time, and we did a lot of good work, and a lot of fucking around. Those guys are just totally hilarious. Had me crying every day—in tears with laughter.

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE CHECK YOUR HEAD COVER PHOTOSHOOT? I was out in LA, and I went to their studio. They had a fucking studio, you know? I mean, a recording studio which doubled as a skateboard ramp and a basketball court in a big room above a pharmacy.

BLACK FLAG, CUCKOO’S NEST, COSTA MESA, CA, 1981

66

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They invited me to hang out with them while they were sequencing the album, we’re playing basketball, having a good time. The whole vibe was just so incredible. And then they start playing me the music while we’re playing ball, and I’m stopping while we’re playing, in awe, like, “What the fuck is this?”

“ONCE WHEELS,

I

HAD AND

A

I

BAHNE

BROKE

MY

WITH

CADILLAC

HAND

PUNCHING

SOMEONE IN THE FACE, AND I COULDN’T HIT A CURVEBALL,

IT

WAS

ON

TO

SKATEBOARDING.”

So we’re listening to the record, and I was just floored by it. I was floored and I was really inspired. They were back to their own instruments—this was them.

I said, “Let’s have some fun like we did in the old days. Let’s meet up tomorrow at the Capitol Records building and make some photos.”

It was the last three shots of the first roll of the day, just them sitting on the curb. It was my idea to have them bring their instruments, and since Mike didn’t play an instrument [that he could carry], to bring a shopping bag like a homeless person or something to hold his mic and his drumsticks. We really didn’t take them out ever, but they were in there.

I stretched the roll and had an extra shot. Yauch is kind of laughing, as we were always joking most of the time, but as an artist I didn’t necessarily want to portray that [then]. But as he’s passed, certainly it’s a beautiful picture to have of him. It shows his character and his heart. The first time I ever exposed it was the day after he passed. And I didn’t even remember that it was there.

BEASTIE BOYS, HOLLYWOOD, CA, 1991

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67

IMAGES COURTESY MARK LAUDENSCHLAGER AND MICHAEL LOVE (WWW.BEASTIEMANIA.COM)