In 1986 the Beastie Boys released Licensed to Ill, and the world of whiteboy rap was changed irrevocably. Licensed to Ill was the first rap album to hit #1 on the Billboard charts, and for two years you could hardly go anywhere without hearing the double-parenthetical “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)” and “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” and “Girls.” But mainly “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)”

But the album that sold in CD shops everywhere was quite different from the album that almost came out. Two tracks, “Scenario” and a cover of the Beatles’ 1965 track “I’m Down,” were cut at the last minute. 
 

 
For years Beastie Boys diehards have circulated an alternate sequencing of Licensed to Ill called Original Ill in which “I’m Down” and its deleted partner “Scenario” are part of the tracklist. (In case you’re wondering, “I’m Down” occupies the 4th slot on side 1, after “She’s Crafty” and before ”Posse In Effect,” whereas “Scenario” is the last track on the album.) The phrase that is invariably used to describe those two songs is “deleted at last minute,” which definitely suggests a possible legal problem or some similar final-hour issue. In the case of “I’m Down” it does seem as if Def Jam or someone in a position to get sued might have been worried about Michael Jackson’s attorneys, whereas for “Scenario” the red flag was quite different—the mere mention of the popular smokable cocaine variant known as crack. (Michael Jackson had recently purchased the entire Beatles catalog; for his part Greil Marcus—see below—apparently understood worries about Michael Jackson to be the central problem at the time.)

On the crack tip, here’s the (oft-repeated) lyric from “Scenario”:
 

Well chillin’ on the corner this one time (time)
Coolin’ at the fuckin’ party and runnin’ that line (line)
Smokin’ my crack sayin’ them rhymes (rhymes)
Countin’ my bank just to pass the time

 
This thread from a Beastie Boys message board supplies the supposed original track listing of Licensed to Ill as well as this quotation about the crack lyrics:
 

It almost seems as if the Beastie’s mentioning Crack was a bad thing because not only was Scenario completely removed from the album, which mentions crack all through out the song, but the original version of Rhymin’ & Stealin’ was edited to take out just two small phrases, “Most crackin-est B-Boy!!” “I Smoke My Crack!” The phrase is left intact on this release though so you can hear how it originally sounded. I do find it weird that they can mention dust, and being dusted out, over and over, but when they mention crack, songs and phrases get deleted.

 
It’s interesting that the line “And I’m never dusting out cause I torch that crack” still lingers on in “Hold It Now—Hit It,” however.

Continues after the jump…

 
Binky Philips has been writing his rock and roll memoirs in the form of a column for the Huffington Post for the past few years. It’s good stuff - funny, warm-hearted and full of the kind of telling details you’d expect from someone who’s traveled through the untamed underbelly of Manhattan’s rock scene during the 1970s and 80s.

What makes Binky’s writing particularly insightful is that through all of his adventures in music he’s been more than just an onlooker, he’s been a participant, a smokin’ guitar player who stood on stages in some of the great rock clubs of the past four decades, including CBGB and Max’s (stages I’ve shared with him). His band The Planets are one of the great unsung groups in American rock and roll and have an almost mythical status among rock fans. Not only because they were great, but also because their music is so fucking hard to find.

In many ways, Binky has been his own worst enemy when it comes to fame. I believe his love of the music overshadowed any business strategy. In that respect, he reminds me of myself. There are times when you really do just do it for the love and not the almighty dollar. When the music seems so sacred, it’s hard to look at it as product. In his writing, you can feel his religious zeal for the pop culture he grew up on and the rock musicians that altered his life forever. And for someone who probably deserved to be a major-league rock star, there’s not a shred of regret or bitterness in his rock and roll heart.

I’m sharing Binky’s most recent Huffington piece on Adam Yauch and the Beastie Boys. It’s a lovely tale and I want to get it out there. For more of Binky’s writing visit his column here.

My God, did we flip for the Beasties at ‘my’ record store, St. Mark’s Sounds in the East Village back in the 80s. We just thought they were a riot. They had all been semi-regular customers for quite awhile. Drummer, Kate, an inveterate browser, seemed to live in our rock section. She would later show up in Luscious Jackson, purveyors of the timelessly fab “Naked Eyes”.

This gang, of what I correctly assumed were NYU students, were always jolly and/or intent on finding something specific as quickly as possible. Unlike some posses of troublemakers, this was a little crew who kinda happily hummed with a Very Alive vibe. It is worth noting that all the early Beastie videos were populated with this same Kadre of Kool Jerk Kool.

One day, two of this sect’s young goofballs walked in with several boxes of 7” 45s under their arms.

“We just made a record. Can we leave some on consignment?”

Our store policy was to never refuse. We’d take 5 of anything anyone ever brought in like that, supporting local acts with as little fuss as possible. These two were pitching me to take a whole box. Since I knew them, at least by sight, I took 10 copies of “The Pollywog EP” from Adam Yauch and Mike Diamond.

They left and I put it on the store’s stereo. We were all howling within a minute. They had turned Punk into a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

“Egg Raid On Mojo” was about one of our other regular customers. Mojo, was a large, gregarious, very handsome, very dark-skinned, Ska-styled doorman at more than one hip boite downtown. He was a genuinely okay guy, but, his gig led him to being a bit “I’m hot and know it”, one lame vibe, indeed. The Beasties would have none of it. The song recalls true events. While “Egg Raid” is an absurdist punk classic, for me, of the Beastie Boys’ early ‘work’, “Cooky Puss” is nonpareil, the most wonderfully ridiculous crank call of all time with a hilariously wretched noise-rhythm track.

Anyway, a week later, diffident Adam walked into the store with more 45s. I bought a box, the 10 having sold within two days. WTF?! What was up with these dopes?! Adam’s reaction to me offering to buy a box outright, the hell with consignment, was memorable. Every cell in his body silently screamed “OF COURSE YOU ARE!” while remaining unflappably deadpan. I actually felt this.

This became a little weekly ritual; Adam coming in on a Thursday or Friday afternoon, almost dour, in a hurry, handing me another box, me handing him cash. Probably sold over 300 of ‘em. Mine’s in storage, rats!

I found Adam’s demeanor intriguing, totally at odds with his band’s vibe. Deadly serious with that sort of classic off-in-the-distance gaze. Looking back, other than the first pitch, MCA was the only one to bring the records by, clearly the one BB focused on turning what started out a total joke (How bad can we be?) into something that has rightfully had lasting international impact.

The Beastie Boys are possibly the most wonderful example of the maxim (I just made up)... You make it big by never having the intention to do so!

When “Licensed To Ill” was released, we’d play it in the store for literal hours, just flipping back and forth between side one and two. It was extreme fun to annoy sensible customers with a stadium-volume spin of “Girls” several times a day. All my fellow employees decided to treat the album with an absurd reverence. “Is it time?”, we’d solemnly ask before dropping the needle for the 120th time. A great mind-fuck of a rekkid! My only complaint, they didn’t use the BB’s original title, “Don’t Be A Faggot”! Like Eminem’s Detroit, in Brooklyn, that word didn’t have the virulent bigoted connotation. It just meant downer, wimp, lame, chump… Def Jam punked out! How faggot-y, Russell!

I grew up in an idyllic neighborhood called Brooklyn Heights, right at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. Adam Yauch grew up there, too. My oldest and dearest Heights pal, Ben, lived two doors east of the Yauchs. Being 12 years older than Adam, Ben often babysat. I was at Ben’s house all the time. I might’ve met a Beastie Boy when he was a baby and don’t recall it. Ben tells me that Adam Yauch was wonderful right from the jump, a devoted son with both his folks.

Ben’s parents used to have to “endure” the earliest rehearsals of the nascent Beasties as they made ungodly guitar and drum noise in the Yauchs’ living room two doors down.
One can imagine.

The image I want to leave you with, because I suspect it is truly an accurate depiction of Adam Yauch…

About 5 or 6 years ago, Brooklyn Babysitter Ben’s Dad was in rehab following two knee replacements. His Mom was living at home alone for quite some time. One day, as Ben was walking down his old block on his way to pay Mom a visit, he saw her coming towards him with a tallish guy carrying 2 or 3 grocery bags for her. The tallish guy was International Rap Superstar, Adam MCA Yauch.”

 
Binky would probably be pissed with me for focusing too much on him at the expense of Adam Yauch, but they’re both seminal members of the New York music scene, so fuck it.

Binky playing at Max’s Kansas City in 1975:
 

 
The Beastie Boys performing “Egg Raid On Mojo” in Brooklyn in 2007:

 
Via Binky Philips and The Huffington Post

 
As a tribute to Adam Yauch, comedian Neal Brennan, who co-created, co-wrote and co-executive produced the Chappelle Show, uploaded this video to YouTube from the unaired third season (2004) of Dave Chapelle’s cutting-edge comedy program.

I anticipate that we’ll be seeing fresh Beastie Boys photos and video footage in weeks to come. Adam Yauch’s death is hitting music and pop culture fans hard and the amount of attention his passing is generating is testimony to how magic his vibration was and continues to be. Thanks Neal for sharing this.

The Beastie Boys perform “The New Style” on a boat in New York City’s East River. Chappelle gets in on the action.

Decks on deck.

 
The Beastie Boys tore down the walls that existed between rock and rap and did so with such crazy grace and a seamless groove that nobody noticed until the deed was done that these white boys had brought uptown downtown and vice versa. Even people who up-until-then had no place for hip-hop in their lives found themselves smitten. And the hardcore haters were musically bum-rushed so swiftly by the sonic velociraptors from NYC that resistance was futile. Everybody ended up coming to the party and found it worth fighting for.

I remember hearing “Cookie Puss” on the radio for the first time in 1983 and wondering “what the fuck was that?” It defied all categories of music as I knew it…and I loved it. I immediately headed over to Sounds on St. Mark’s Place to buy the 12 inch single. I’d play it for my friends and got a kick at watching their amused and perplexed reactions. This shit was fresh - a simple keyboard and drum riff with some scratching and a taped crank call to a Carvel Ice Cream store melded into something hilarious and infectious and a lot smarter and pioneering than we knew back then - it heralded the coming of a band that played dumb but were possessed of a poetic irreverence that celebrated popular culture while subverting it - yeah, punk rock with a hip-hop sense of the beat. On the surface it sounded sloppy and off-the-cuff. In reality it was perfect. The Beastie Boys had a “fuck you” attitude wedded to a shitload of charm and craft. They elevated the ordinary with the lyrical deftness of a Jack Kerouac or Chuck Berry.

It was announced that Adam Yauch (MCA) died today. I know that what I’ve written reads like an obituary for the entire band. It’s not. Mike D and Ad-Rock are still very much alive and I suspect will continue to create new music, produce films and act, as well as taking up the torch for the plight of Tibet as Adam had done for the past two decades. When someone dies, it brings perspective and an opportunity to remind oneself of how much certain things have meant in one’s life. Adam’s death has given us the chance to appreciate what made his band so fucking amazing. Long live the Beastie Boys!

When the Beastie Boys were inducted into this year’s Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, Chuck D was there to celebrate the legacy of one of hip hop and rock n’ rolls most innovative groups. The fact that Adam Yauch was too ill (physically speaking) to attend, made the evening all that much more significant.

Here’s Chuck D’s Beastie Boys induction speech on April 14:

  Get it! Get it! You know the Beastie Boys? Can we get a ‘Yeah’ to hip-hop? Can we get a ‘Hell, yeah,’ Cleveland? Hip-hop in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame before I turn it over because Def Jam, in the words of Billboard, is the last great record label. And this man behind me wants to finish it off because Chess is to electric blues as Def Jam is to hip-hop and this man helped build the house. So as a resident, can you give three and a half minutes to hip-hop and the Beastie Boys for me? Help me out ya’ll!

  [raps with audience] Now here’s a little story – I’ve got to tell about three bad brothers – you know so well It started way back in history with Ad-Rock, M.C.A., and number three – Mike D.

  I know I can read from the teleprompter but I wrote it down. I won’t take much of your time. There’s no adequate measure for the impact that the Beastie Boys had on rap music and yours truly, Public Enemy, during our formative years. Artistically, just like my man back here, they are our role models. They gave us some of our richest support and that’s uncharacteristic of the many advisors in this game. They led and lead by example.

  The very first time the Beastie Boys headlined they toured, it was the ‘Licensed to Ill’ tour, they hit the road in January 1987. They invited us to join the bill in April 1987. The lineup was the Beastie Boys, Murphy’s Law, and Public Enemy. Watching them tear the house up just like 9,000 here tonight, tearing the house up, we learn so much the importance of a great stage show, just like my man back here.

  They made us rethink what we should do on stage and affirmed for us how important our own Beastie Boys, he calls himself Flavor Flav, might be to our success. In that way, the Beastie Boys literally helped us to get our act together by living up to more than their name night after night on the road.
  They were and still are one of the greatest live acts in music. How can we not learn from the way this group has challenged the dimensions in the music business? How they made up their own rules about what it means to be world class hip-hop heads.

  After ‘Licensed to Ill,’ the Beasties left the Def Jam label and broke with their producer Rick Rubin and still kept it going on. Everyone wondered and how many people were pessimistic about how the hell they were going to top their multi-platinum debut, ‘Licensed to Ill.’ But their second album, ‘Paul’s Boutique,’ broke the mold, and with it they accomplished everything they hoped for.

  They kept the band together through a challenging period when most groups would have broken up and gone home. They proved that they can produce themselves when too many folks wrongly believed they were puppets of marketing and production. And they insisted on maturity as a band and as human beings, when the easier thing for the band was to come back with a form that might have been ‘Licensed to Ill 2.0.’

  It was the courage and self-respect that we all learned from, and so right now we make sure we never take the easy way out just to repeat a hit record for a hit record’s sake: never to compromise our faith in ourselves and our artistry.  Besides they were the first hip-hop group on the World Wide Web in 1993, people.

  Two more minutes for hip-hop, people. One of the most – gotta sulk it in – the third hip-hop group ever. Gotta sulk it in. One of the most admirable qualities about the Beastie Boys is that they stayed so true to the game over the years. No matter what was going on with them or hip-hop culture in general, as far as I’m concerned, I quote myself, the trip towards individualism in hip-hop have come a play. Yes, I quote myself. In a [indiscriminate] art form.

  Yet through it all, the Beastie Boys remain a team of MCs, in the style of groups that inspired them – the Treacherous Three, the Crash Crew, the 2007 inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Grand Master Flash and The Furious Five. The 2009 inductees salute Run-DMC and Jay Master Jay. And let’s not forget the DJs throughout the years Andre, Dr. Dre, my friend DJ Hurricane, Mix Master Mike, and DJ Double R better known as Rick Rubin.

  And rock and roll fans’ still got to be a fan, it’s the same thing with hip-hop, the Beastie Boys have made a mountain for us all. Be together, play together, stay together, together forever.  A couple of paragraphs, one more minute for hip-hop, they ain’t got nothing on me. Sulk it in hip-hop and rap music it’s been around 30 years, gotta do it.

  Time and time again and in word and in practice The Beastie Boys honor hip-hop. As true musicians they move beyond drum machines and repetitive samples and sometimes pick up their own instruments. It’s their way of paying tribute to musicians who preceded them who built the foundations of hip-hop. More than many, many situations out there the Beastie boys have fought, in particular I’m thinking about somebody who wasn’t able to join us tonight, Adam Yauch, salute M.C.A. I feel him here tonight, you all feel him here tonight.

  And LL got more to say about that. He belongs here with the greatest. It was M.C.A. who committed the Beastie Boys through their lengthy campaign for freedom for Tibet. The campaign that not only helped the shining light on Tibet’s struggle for independence but allowed the Beastie Boys to move from fighting for their right to party to partying for their right to fight.

  Lastly, no matter what your lyrical subjects are on stage parodies, one thing the Beastie Boys never were to me was a joke. They remind us that this is a craft. We were talking about this on the side. This is a craft, this is not a hustle. And I couldn’t be more honored to induct this group along with this man behind me because they represent the best of the hip-hop/rap music idiom.

  I did love and always thank them for doing a hard work of paving those roads for musicians all over the world, and to rock, rap and roll on those roads, especially before people took us seriously as artists. Rap music is here to stay because it pays homage. So, may we all be as professional, distinctive, powerful as this group coming up right here and as this man. The Beastie Boys are indeed three bad brothers that made history.

Here’s more of Mister D talking about the Beasties, rock n’ roll and Bette Midler. April, 2012. It’s pretty much wonderful.
 

 
A crazy good performance of “Fight For Your Right” on the Joan Rivers Show in 1987 after the jump…

Photo by Glen E. Friedman

An entire generation is sad today.

Adam Nathaniel Yauch, “MCA” (August 5, 1964 - May 4, 2012)

May he rest in peace.

In the video below, the Beastie Boys when they were all about 19 or 20 years old on the Manhattan Cable cable access program, The Scott & Gary Show on Valentines Day, 1984. Kate Schellenbach, later of Luscious Jackson, was a Beastie girl, playing drums in the group from 1979 to 1984, when they were basically a lighthearted punk band.
 

 
After the jump, an interview with the young Beastie Boys (and girl)

 
Five years ago today Don Ho ascended in a spiraling cloud of tiny bubbles to the great luau in the sky.

Here’s the master of mellowness covering Peter Gabriel’s “Shock The Monkey” from the album When Pigs Fly and The Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” on The Conan O’Brian Show in 1995.
 

 
My favorite Don Ho tune after the jump…