Before my very first Homecoming Dance in 1999, two seniors at my school were killed in a car accident. I didn’t know these kids at all, which made the grieving process a strange one. I remember how the din of the school’s hallways was hushed the next day, I remember seeing friends huddled in in clumps outside the school crying or praying or both, and I remember being driven out to the country, out to the spot of the accident where a makeshift memorial had taken shape. Around the fateful tree lay bouquets of flowers, stuffed animals, some hand-written notes, and well over 50 messages drawn on the road in colored chalk that stretched on for hundreds of feet.
I held the piece of chalk in my hand and walked along the pavement reading all these messages from people who knew the two kids: Messages that thanked, that loved, that wished for the best, that recalled a moment they shared, that said what life would be like without you. I didn’t know what life was like with them. All these messages from people who knew these two kids, and I felt like I had nothing to say, nothing to be thankful for. I finally wrote, “I wish I could have known you. From everything I’ve read, you sound like a wonderful person.”
This was how I felt Friday when Adam Yauch, 47, died. There are many others who knew MCA more than I did, both literally and through his music. I picked up Hello Nasty in 1998 and it sat largely unplayed in my CD binder. License to Ill and Ill Communication came later in high school — I just played the singles. It wasn’t until my cousin sent me Paul’s Boutique late into college that something clicked for me. I came running back to my CDs, late pass in hand, and haven’t looked back since.
Over the weekend I read plenty about Yauch from extensive and emotional histories, to a heartfelt piece from a guy who knew him, to even reading tweets from musicians. Like a lot of people did, I played through every Beastie Boys album like twice, k-holed through Beastie Boys music videos on live performances on YouTube, thumbed through my 33 1/3 book on Paul’sBoutique, and got real bummed out when I couldn’t find my t-shirt that came with my Hot Sauce Committee Pt 2. deluxe vinyl order.This wasn’t me grieving. This was me walking along the road holding that piece of chalk.
But there’s something that separates the two kids and MCA. In reading about and listening to Yauch nonstop for the past three days (and to a more real extent since I first picked up HelloNasty), I found that if you know Beasties Boys’ music, then you know Adam Yauch. All the facets of his life from skeezin’ in the back of a party with some ladies to a mea culpa for his immature youth, to his auteurism in film, to his spiritual beliefs — Yauch’s art truly reflected his life. His heart and soul lives in the grooves of every record and the reels of every film.
If you feel like you don’t know him, start now. Start by listening to him count it down in “The New Style” and fill in every gap between that and his comic masterpiece Fight For Your Right Revisited.
What follows is our note on the pavement.
-Jeremy D. Larson Managing Editor
Rhymes
MCA’s voice scratches like a an old vinyl record . His lyrics reflected sea changes, from his brass monkey-tipping early work to his Eastern-influenced later days, Adam Yauch always served as a counterpoint to Mike D and Ad Rock. We picked some of our favorite MCA lyrics that resonate longer and louder than any others.
“A Year and a Day” (B-Boy Bouillabaisse) - Paul’s Boutique (1989)
“For I am the Bard and I am the last one
I am the king and this is my castle
Dwell in realms of now but live in those of the past
Seen a glimpse from ahead and I don’t think it’s gonna last.
And you can bet your ass.”
Shelved inside of the 12-minute continuous mix that closes out Paul’s Boutique, this MCA solo track is essentialist poetry from Yauch. The way he stresses “I” in the first two lines of this stanza the finest hip-hop braggadocio — soulful and literary, eliciting personal betterment as opposed to flashy materialism. He shifts to an almost undecipherable double-time rhythm for the next two lines– a koan reflecting his newfound buddhist leanings– before capping it off with some Brooklyn swagger. The layers of distortion on his voice were there on purpose to cloud his new spiritual path, but looking back it’s one of the most clear and honest rhymes he ever dropped. -Jeremy D. Larson
“Sure Shot”, Ill Communication (1994)
“I keep my underwear up with a piece of elastic
I use a bullshit mic that’s made out of plastic
To send my rhymes out to all nations
Like Ma Bell, I’ve got the ill communications”
Yauch is incredibly self-aware on “Sure Shot”, spitting out the group’s trademark childish imagery through roughneck vocals that sound as if they’re holding a one-way ticket out of the industrial confines of Gary, Indiana. It takes absolute finesse to drop an album’s title into a song, but Yauch makes it seem so goddamn easy, and with a line that would be chanted again and again by youths everywhere, thanks to later track, “Get It Together”. I’d go so far as to call this a defining chunk of lyricism here. -Michael Roffman
“No Sleep Til Brooklyn” - License To Ill (1987)
“Born and bred Brooklyn, U.S.A.
They call me Adam Yauch – but I’m M.C.A
Like a lemon to a lime a lime to a lemon
I sip the def ale with all the fly women”
Not only is “No Sleep Til Brooklyn” one of the band’s best and most well-known songs, MCA’s rhymes encapsulate his entire persona. This particular verse brims with old-school swagger and cockiness, yet the structure and wordplay is off-kilter and bizarre. Holding the whole thing together, though, is MCA’s unceasing “Brooklyn-till-I-die” attitude. Posers and fly honeys alike: You’ve been warned. -Chris Coplan
“Root Down” - Ill Communication (1994)
“Well, I ain’t comin’ out goofy like the Fruit of the Loom guy
Just struttin’ like The Meters with the Look-Ka Py Py Downtown Brooklyn is where I was born
But when the snow is falling, then I am gone
You might think that I’m a fanatic
A phone call from Utah and I’m throwing a panic
But we bring it through the roof when we kick it on down
Jimmy Smith is my man, I want to give him a pound.”
Epitomizing hip-hop’s ever-present penchant for pop culture references, these eight bars manage to allude to underwear ads, a classic funk LP, and the jazz organist whose “Root Down (And Get It)” was sampled on the track. Exactly which Fruit of the Loom guy MCA is talking about here, we’re not sure, but pretty much all those dudes were/are goofy. -Mike Madden
“Make Some Noise” Hot Sauce Committee Pt. 2 (2011)
“I burn the competition like a flamethrower
My rhymes age like wine as I get older
I’m getting bolder, competition is waning
I got the feeling and I’m single laning.”
It’s tough listening to “Make Some Noise”, from Hot Sauce Committee Pt 2., without wondering how much Yauch’s disease was weighing on him. Despite this, his voice is strong, confident and authoritative as he demonstrates to snot-nosed hip-hoppers how to properly boast old school. -Gilles LeBlanc
MCA’s Got A Beard Like A Billy Goat
As was the case with The Beatles and the Jackson 5, so too did the Beastie Boys each fulfill some essential pop archetype. Ad-Rock was the joker, Mike D was the artsy one, and MCA was the cool older brother (he had three years on his bandmates). As an extension of that, MCA was a notorious prankster in the group’s early (pre-Paul’s Boutique) days, readily wreaking havoc by destroying room service carts or pissing in the shrimp at Beefsteak Charlie’s. He also partied the hardest, favoring the volatile fuel of alcohol over the mellow pot-smoking of his fellow Boys.
Even as the definitive source of mayhem and mischief, MCA was the group’s unofficial central figure, representing so much of what made the trio unique and groundbreaking. When they left the halls of CBGB for rap-dom, MCA’s leather jacket and tough guy persona kept them grounded in their rebellious, unpredictable roots. His distinct voice, made of gravel from the most rugged quarry in BK, added some balance to his compatriots’ impish wails. And while Ad-Rock and Mike D were weaving goofball tales about girls and near-improbable situations, MCA’s rhymes focused on simplified displays of oddball brag-itude, standing as the constant thug-ish element to the group’s sound.
Perhaps recognizing his macho leanings, MCA eventually spread his creative wings by taking a more hands-on approach to the band’s visual aesthetic. Under the guise of Nathaniel Hörnblowér, MCA directed several music videos beginning in the late ’80s, including “Shadrach” and “So What’cha Want”. With these efforts, he found a creative counter, a means to transcend the group’s bro-ish tendencies toward genuine artistic maturity. They were also the start of a longer journey, one that would see MCA further leave the stoop for worldlier missions and aspirations. -Chris Coplan
Got More Rhymes Than I Got Grey Hairs
Adam Yauch and his fellow Beasties grew older, with Yauch’s grey-speckled hair the most telling of this fact. In addition to the inevitable, Yauch completed an act many of his fellow artists struggle to accomplish during their respective, lengthy careers: He matured. As the Beastie Boys entered the nineties, Yauch’s artistry never became overtly self-important (e.g the outrageous Nathaniel Hornblower persona, the hilarious videos, etc.), but he entered a realm of responsibility and giving back, of settling down and admitting to errors made in his past.
1994’s Ill Communication features MCA apologizing for his misogynistic past. His verse on “Sure Shot” settles the score: “I want to say a little something that’s long overdue/The disrespect to women has got to be through/To all the mothers and sisters and the wives and friends/I want to offer my love and respect to the end.” It was a verse so strong in gesture that Saturday Night Live re-aired a live performance of it this past weekend in tribute. A few years later, Yauch wrote a letter to Time Out New York apologizing for homophobic lyrics in the band’s past. “There are no excuses,” he wrote. “But time has healed our stupidity.”
Along with the tracks, Yauch will most likely BE remembered for the Tibetan Freedom Concerts that took place during the late ’90s and early ’00s. A practicing Buddhist, Yauch helped spread word of the Tibetan plight to the youth of the country, with the concerts raising millions in the process for their cause. Adam “MCA” Yauch will be remembered for the records without question, but his political and social movements set an example for all future musicians who wish to pick up the mike or plug in the instruments. -Justin Gerber
Yauch Behind The Camera
The rotoscoping on the music video for “Shadrach”, Adam Yauch’s (a.k.a. lederhosen-wearing alter-ego Nathanial Hornblower) directorial debut, is a marvel — each frame was hand-painted and visually imitates all of the many colors heard on the Paul’s Boutique track. It translates the essence of “Shadrach” onto film so perfectly, it’s an understated masterpiece (especially if you know the painstaking time that comes with working with rotoscope, and especially back in the late 80′s). Yauch’s early music videos appeared simple, but so fit the style of the medium he was working with. ”So Whatcha Want” is straight early-90′s sensory-overload MTV aesthetic, like if Hype Williams loved Predator. The other Check Your Head video for “Jimmy James” was like if Hype Williams loved LSD and Hendrix.
That early aesthetic would be refined with Hornblower’s later work: The campy Godzilla send-up of “Intergalactic”, the campy Italian spy movie send-up of “Body Movin’”, and the campy Hollywood send-up of “Triple Trouble”. Interpolated with the bad costumes, hammy acting, and cheap effects were the three boys spitting rhymes at the camera like provocateurs. Yauch balanced the frivolity and ferocity of the Beastie’s songs with these videos — their iconic style shadowed only perhaps by Spike Jonze’s “Sabatoge” video, which incidentally aped some of Yauch’s earlier work.
His auteurism extended beyond the role of in-house music video director to feature films. Yauch directed the full-length documentary Gunnin’ For That #1 Spot about a group of high school basketball players, and the fan-shot documentary of their 2004 homecoming show at Madison Square Garden, Awesome, I Fucking Shot That!
In 2008, he opened up a movie distribution company called Oscilloscope Laboratories, an offshoot of of his indie music studio Oscilloscope Records. Without his distribution company, films like The Garden, Exit Through The Gift Shop, Wendy and Lucy, The Messanger, and many more would never have seen wide release. Also during his time at Oscilloscope Laboratories (where he dubbed himself the “Minister of Information”) Yauch formed a DVD of the Month Club called the “Circle of Trust”, on which he jokingly commented: “There’s a real void in the marketplace since Columbia Record club is no longer active, so we’re hoping to hire a staff of tens of thousands to call our valuable membership over and over again and harass them until they cry.”
The final distribution project Yauch involved himself with at Oscilloscope was the distribution of the LCD Soundsystem movie documenting their final show at Madison Square Garden, Shut Up and Play The Hits, bringing the emotional tenor of that movie to unfathomable levels.
The final intersection of MCA’s music and film, of director and actor, of humor and illness is Yauch’s 2011 masterpiece, Fight For Your Right Revisited. The 30-minute short embodies and music career of MCA, the video career of Nathanial Hornblower, and the life of Adam Yauch. -Jeremy D. Larson
Some Voices Got Bass
Back during his tenure at Brooklyn’s Edward R. Murrow High School – and years before picking up the mic — Yauch taught himself to play bass, likely in hopes of latching on to the hardcore scene that was beginning to pop off in New York at the time. Within a year or two, he would hook up with pals Michael Diamond (Mike D), guitarist John Berry, and drummer Kate Schellenbach to form the original Beasties incarnate, which would go on to release 1982′s strictly hardcore Polly Wog Stew EP and perform alongside Bad Brains and the like at venues including CBGB and Max’s Kansas City.
No doubt was this the era wherein MCA spent his most time on the four-string, but he would also incorporate the instrument (the guitar version as well as its string and upright counterparts) into such Beasties LPs as Check Your Head (1992), Ill Communication, the entirely instrumental The Mix-Up, and last year’s HotSauce Committee Part Two. At some point, Yauch also learned a few things on keyboard, too, though most of that instrument’s involvement with the Beasties came by way of “Money” Mark Ramos-Nishita. -Mike Madden
Selected Live Videography
“Fight For Your Right (Live on The Joan Rivers Show)”:
“Shadrach (Live on Soul Train)”:
“Sabotage & Intergalactic (Live at T In The Park ’98)”:
Adam Yauch and his fellow Beasties grew older, with Yauch’s grey-speckled hair the most telling of this fact. In addition to the inevitable, Yauch completed an act many of his fellow artists struggle to accomplish during their respective, lengthy careers: He matured. As the Beastie Boys entered the nineties, Yauch’s artistry never became overtly self-important (e.g the outrageous Nathaniel Hornblower persona, the hilarious videos, etc.), but he entered a realm of responsibility and giving back, of settling down and admitting to errors made in his past.
