Almost a year out from losing one of their founding members, the remaining Beastie Boys – Michael ‘Mike D’ Diamond and Adam ‘Ad-Rock’ Horowitz are ready to tell their own tell-all version of the group’s history in a set of forthcoming memoirs, with a reported book deal in the works.
The surviving members of the iconic hip-hop group have signed a publishing deal with an imprint of Random House Publishing Group, Spiegel & Grau, the same group who published Jay-Z’s 2010 tome Decoded.
In an interview with The New York Times, Spiegel & Grau publisher Julie Grau says the storytelling will play to a slightly different beat and will be “loosely structured as an oral history,” told by Ad-Rock and Mike D.
Founding the Beastie Boys in 1979, Michael “Mike D” Diamond, Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz and Adam “MCA” Yauch initially formed as a hardcore punk group before they found their feet in hip hop. Releasing their debut LP Licensed to Ill in 1986, the record became the biggest selling rap album of the decade and earned them the honour of having the first rap album to reach #1 on the charts in the United States.
For the forthcoming memoir, Mike D and Ad-Rock are “interested in challenging the form and making the book a multidimensional experience,” and in tone with the Beasties’ iconic flavour, “there is a kaleidoscopic frame of reference, and it asks a reader to keep up,” the publisher reveals. For the forthcoming memoir, Mike D and Ad-Rock are “interested in challenging the form and making the book a multidimensional experience.”
Group agent Luke Janklow has compared the new memoir to Grand Royal, the Beastie Boys’ acclaimed but short-lived magazine published in the 1990s. The magazine was initially set up to write back to fans, but eventually evolved into a published magazine with articles like ‘Mulling Over The Mullet’, an piece that lampooned the mullet hairstyle.
The as-yet-untitled memoir will surely celebrate the rich history and aesthetic of the Beastie Boys, with a planned release in 2015.
Fans of the trio were rocked by the news of founding member Adam “MCA” Yauch’s passing in May last year after losing his battle with cancer, aged 47.
Diagnosed in 2009, Yauch remained positive saying that the salivary gland tumour was “very treatable”, but soon the group were forced to cancel a number of shows as he underwent further treatment – there hasn’t been a live performance from the hip-hop outfit since the summer of 2009 – and it also delayed the release of their 2011 album Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2.
For many, Yauch’s death marked the end of the influential trio and the forthcoming memoirs could possibly mark the final hoorah for the prolific group, with the book set to have contributions by other writers and a strong visual component.
Conversely, the Beastie’s producer for over 20 years Mario Caldato Jr. revealed last June that there’s a wealth of new material from early records locked away in the Beastie Boys’ vault that could be released in the future.
“There’s a handful of extra stuff from each record,” Caldato said last year, but deemed that the release of any unearthed material is “too soon” following the death of their fallen friend adding that “we’ll take it slowly. No-one’s thinking of doing anything right away.”
The Beastie Boys have a history of “challenging the form” when it comes to telling their story, says Billboard. The trio’s 2006 concert project Awesome: I Fuckin’ Shot That, was a kaleidoscopic concert film shot by selected fans at a sold out Madison Square Garden show in 2004 who were given handy-cams to cover the performance.
With this kind of pedigree, the Beastie Boys’ memoir is set to be one of the most influential and interesting reads of this decade.
