It is not nice to speak ill of the recently deceased, but when I first met Adam Yauch, also known as MCA from the hip-hop band the Beastie Boys, I was not too impressed.

ONE does not like to speak ill of the recently deceased, but when I first met Adam Yauch, also known as MCA from the hip-hop band Beastie Boys, I was not too impressed. I had been commissioned by the New Musical Express to photograph the group before their first tour of Britain in 1987, soon after their album “Licensed to Ill” had become the first rap album to top the Billboard 100. A famous Rolling Stone headline read “Three Idiots Create a Masterpiece”. At a time when serious, black hip-hop artists from the Bronx were spitting verses on gang violence and black power, these scrawny Jewish kids from Brooklyn and Manhattan had broadened the appeal of rap beyond the ghetto. While Public Enemy sampled James Brown and cited Louis Farrakhan, the Beastie Boys used heavy-metal guitar licks and wrote songs about wild parties and promiscuous women. It was hip hop for the pubescent masses. They were masters of publicity. That month they were doing their best to wind up the easily riled British press. They had threatened to ship in a 20-foot inflatable penis and have girls dancing in metal cages as part of their stage show. (The girls in cages materialised; the penis remained limply sheathed in its box.) More seriously, the Daily Mirror had accused them of mocking disabled children at a festival in Switzerland. An MP demanded they be banned from Britain. The rest of the tabloids piled in, working up the sort of moral panic they do so well. I met them in a pokey, fetid apartment in New York's West Village. They were clearly keen to live up to their press image, larking around and showing off. We shot some pictures in the street and they stood around striking all the standard hip-hop poses (above). Mike D wore a Volkswagen grille badge around his neck. It was a look that would prove the bane of VW owners all over the world for the next few years. Countless woke to discover the marques ripped from their cars so that they might adorn the necks of teenage hip-hop wannabes.

When we'd finished the shoot, they presented me with a small, metal key ring. It was in the shape of two figures, an attractive young woman and a rather unattractive looking old man. It was articulated so that the figures could engage in enthusiastic sexual congress. It was barely worthy of Donald McGill; the type of rubbish one might find in a seaside novelty shop.

It didn't dawn on me at the time but their performance might have been something of a test. I suspect they put all members of the media through it, just to see how they would react. In the years to come, after they moved to Los Angeles, I shot the Beastie Boys many more times and I got to know them quite well. My initial impressions of them turned out to be completely wrong. Three nicer, more thoughtful and more intelligent young men one could not hope to meet.

As they matured, they outgrew their brash image. In the 25 years after “Licensed to Ill” they recorded seven more albums. The last, “Hot Sauce Committee Part Two”, was released in 2011. Almost with embarrassment they began to amend some of their early lyrics at live shows. “MCA's in the back because he's skeezin' with a whore," from “No Sleep ‘til Brooklyn”, for example, was changed to "MCA's in the back at the mah jong hall". At the height of their success, in the early to mid-1990s, they started their own record label and magazine, Grand Royal, and became a focal point for an extended family of musicians, artists, designers, actors and film-makers.

As the oldest of the three, Mr Yauch always struck me as the softly spoken, contemplative one. He converted to Buddhism after first visiting Nepal and then hearing the Dalai Lama speak in Arizona. In 1994, he co-founded the Milarepa fund, a non-profit organisation to raise money for the Tibetan independence movement. This was two years before the first Tibetan Freedom Concert, held in San Francisco's Polo Fields in 1996. Although there are many capricious, self-regarding musicians who attach themselves to political causes for their own ends, he never seemed to be that way.

Mr Yauch directed many of the band's videos. He maintained his interest in film-making until he died. His production company, Oscilloscope Pictures, distributed several art-house classics, including “Exit Through the Gift Shop” about Banksy, a street artist. That was in 2010. A year earlier he had been diagnosed with cancer. He died on May 4th. I am pleased that I had the chance to get to know him after that first, inauspicious meeting. He was a joy to know.

(Photo credit: Derek Ridgers)