When the Beastie Boys released Licensed To Ill in 1986, no one could have guessed that a silly Jewish hip-hop trio from New York—King Ad-Rock (Adam Horovitz), Mike D (Michael Diamond), and MCA (Adam Yauch)—would outlast their own novelty, much less become one of the most innovative groups in hip-hop. Buoyed by the hit "Fight For Your Right (To Party)," Licensed To Ill became history's first number-one-selling hip-hop album, but the Beastie Boys' goofy shtick (reinforced by their usually juvenile concerts) seemed destined for a short lifespan. Which was true—because the group got bored with it.
After falling out with producer Rick Rubin and Def Jam, the label Rubin co-owned with Russell Simmons, the Beastie Boys redefined themselves on 1989's Paul's Boutique. The densely layered, sample-heavy album was an artistic triumph, though its departure from Licensed To Ill's style led to low sales. In time, Paul's Boutique became a cult hit and earned the Beastie Boys artistic credibility, which grew when they used live instruments on 1992's Check Your Head. The album became a hit, and so did its 1994 successor, Ill Communication. On subsequent albums—1998's Hello Nasty and 2004's To The 5 Boroughs—Beastie Boys expanded further and got back to basics, respectively, while always maintaining its sonic fearlessness.
That attitude carries over to the group's new concert documentary, Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!, released this month. The group gave video cameras to 50 concertgoers dispersed around Madison Square Garden, then created an "authorized bootleg" from the footage. The result mixes the grit of amateur filmmaking with the precision of professional post-production. Beastie Boys recently talked to The A.V. Club about the film, surviving after 40, and their new grunge-reggaeton sound.
The A.V. Club: Were you influenced by other concert films? Was there anything you wanted to avoid or recreate?
Adam Yauch: The way we went into it wasn't so much like, "We need to make a concert film—how are we going to make it? I think this is a good idea." It was more kind of backwards, like, "This is an interesting idea, making a documentary concert this way," you know what I mean? It wasn't like we needed to make a concert film. But the idea does kind of uniquely remove most of the cliché things in concert films, like the camera flying over the audience.
Michael Diamond: Although part of the loss of that is that, unfortunately, the part where I fly off of the drum riser and do somersaults over the crowd multiple times is not documented in the film.
AVC: You worked with amateurs for this—what were the advantages and drawbacks?
AY: I don't think there were any drawbacks. I mean, it was kind of what we hoped it would come out as. I was banking on the idea that with 50 cameras out there rolling at the same time, at any given point there would be at least one interesting thing going on in one of them, which turned out to be true.
AVC: Besides the concert footage, what showed up on-camera?
AY: There were four different trips to the bathroom, so there were a bunch of pee-pee shots.
AVC: And one made it in.
AY: One made it into the film, yeah.
MD: None too graphic, I might add. I would have preferred a little more graphic—that's me.
AY: Adam wanted to see less information, not more.
Adam Horovitz: Me, personally, I didn't need to see the pee, you know what I mean? For me, just the sound was enough—you get the idea.
AY: He's a team player, though. I said, "The pee is really important to me." Adam said, "Well, if it's that important to you, you're a fucking golden-shower weirdo."
AH: Which is documented and is true—he is a golden-shower weirdo, unfortunately.
AVC: Musically, you've explored a lot of different styles on your albums. When you go back into the studio, how do you avoid feeling like you've done it already?
AY: I don't really look at it like there's anything… like if we do some shit that's completely new, that's cool. If we do some shit that's similar to stuff we did before, that's okay, too. Usually we just mess around and see what sounds good.
MD: But we will sit down and play each other stuff we've been listening to and get inspired as to what we like, just kind of talk about ideas: "Okay, what could we do that'd be a little bit different than this?" or "Where could we take this?"
AH: And we check demographics against sales charts for what's hot now.
MD: Of course, I bring my young writing team in to sort of bounce, to "collabo" as I like to call it, on ideas.
AY: Yeah, you gotta let people see you're on the street.
AVC: So maybe some reggaeton on the new one?
AH: A lot of reggaeton. Grunge is back, so we're doing the new grunge-reggaeton.
MD: Grunge-reggaeton hybrid, because we figured that will really cross over.
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