

If, like me, you’re a Beastie Boys fanatic, or even a music fan in general, you may have heard that the pioneering hip-hop trio from New York have released a “Live Documentary” on Apple TV+. Personally, I have been eagerly awaiting its release since it was announced last year. It is a follow-up to their New York Times Best Seller Beastie Boys Book from 2018, which was accompanied by a string of live shows as part of a book tour. I attended one of these shows in London in December 2018. An audiobook featuring an extensive list of guest readers such as Steve Buscemi, Will Ferrell, Snoop Dogg, Kim Gordon, Elvis Costello and Bette Midler was also launched at the time. The live shows comprised the surviving members of the band, Adam ‘Ad-rock’ Horovitz and Michael ‘Mike D’ Diamond regaling tales from their tome alongside a slideshow and soundtrack provided by Mix Master Mike, with the ultimate goal being to pay tribute to their fallen bandmate, Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch, who unfortunately passed away from cancer in May 2012. This new documentary, directed by longtime Beastie collaborator Spike Jonze and produced by Jonah Hill, is a tweaked version of that live show.

The Beastie Boys are a phenomenon. Theirs is a truly unique story, and we get a deep insight into their early days as a hardcore band and meet some of their oldest friends who remain important to them years later after all of their success.

Friendship is at the heart of the documentary. You could call it a labour of love for the fans it is being presented to, but even more so, it appears as though they’re presenting this to honour their friends: those passed and those still with them. You get the sense that they have actually made this film to acknowledge their friends from their teenage years such as Jill Cunniffe, Jeremy Shatan and Kate Schellenbach while equally paying tribute to Yauch, Dave Scilken and John Berry. These are all names you will find mentioned in the documentary, from various stories right down to the credits. I’m certain they made their loved ones proud, as the Beastie-fan community and critics alike have been impressed with the show.

There’s some funny interplay between Adam, Mike and Spike. Gaffes aren’t glossed over, and sometimes mistakes are made on purpose, usually to Ad-Rock’s detriment. Bill Hader’s voice features prominently as an example of this, but I won’t spoil the joke.

The reason that I was inspired to write this post, was down to a researcher from 2fm, an Irish National Radio Channel. I was contacted about the possibility of reviewing this documentary for a show presented by Dave Fanning, the legendary DJ. That opportunity fell through, but I decided to compile my thoughts into my first blog post in around 3 years.

Beastie Boys may have been a passing fancy in Ireland for many, I’m sure people remember Fight for Your Right to Party on MTV in the late 1980s, but take the gen Xers, Beastie Boys would have been huge for that group, right up there with Nirvana. For whatever reason they certainly don’t get celebrated as much here. I remember when MCA passed, Steve Wall of The Stunning recalled that he saw them play on a GAA field in Galway in 1998, and that experience would have been shared, cherished and envied by others growing up at the time.

From an Irish perspective, people may not realise the impact the Beastie Boys had globally. Take another successful American entertainment product, The Simpsons. Irish fans of the show quote its lines and references obsessively, but what they may not know is that the reason we see Lisa Simpson championing the cause of a Free Tibet in some episodes is a result of Adam Yauch popularising the movement highlighting the plight of the Tibetan people. After visiting the disputed territory in the early 1990s, Yauch wanted to help their cause and did so by arranging benefit gigs, the Tibetan Freedom Concerts, and starting the Milarepa Fund.

Adam Yauch aka MCA in one of several interview snippets used in Beastie Boys Story

In my opinion, the BEST change that they made from the book tour show to this one is the addition of Yauch’s voice. He appears in video fleetingly, and this allows him to tell us the Beastie story alongside his two surviving band mates. I’m unsure as to which interviews they got this footage from, the one pictured above appears to be an interview from circa-1998, but I’d likely credit the incorporation of moments like this to Jonze. Getting him involved to collect both previously seen and unseen materials, introduce occasional props and freshen up the script breathes more life into the stage adaptation of their book. Songs and comedy cues are changed here and there, and this is mostly for the better. It means those of us diehard fans aren’t seeing what we saw already (not that we’d have a problem with that) but it also means anyone who watches this is getting a painstakingly refined product. This is a lifetime of memories turned into a book, turned into a stage show, and then turned into a TV show/live documentary. Sure, mistakes are made (intentionally most of the time) but this is as slick as you could ever expect from the Boys, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Beastie Boys Story is available to stream now on Apple TV+