One night in 1998, three white New Yorkers won an award.
In and of itself, there’s nothing particularly striking about such an occurrence – after all, the years are marked by awards ceremonies, and we are largely numbed by the sight of rich people handing out statuettes to other rich people. So no, a trio of slightly dorky looking men in matching outfits taking to the podium is hardly the kind of image that might inspire a revolution – particularly given the white bread blandness of the evening that had led up to that point.
After all, this was an MTV Music Awards ceremony being held towards the tail end of the ‘90s, and it seemed only fitting that an era marked by the commercialisation of rebellion – a decade in which ‘grunge’ had transformed from a genre to a marketing slogan – would make for some pretty uninspiring television.
And yet, after listing off a range of standard ‘thanks mom’ pleasantries, one of the three men began to take a new tact entirely. “If you guys would forgive me, I would just like to speak my mind on a couple of things,” he said stiffly.
The atmosphere in the room changed immediately. “I think it was a real mistake that the US chose to fire missiles into the Middle East,” the man said, before launching into an impassioned critique of the US’ interventionist overseas policies. “I should say … most Middle Eastern people are not terrorists, and that’s another thing America needs to think about: its racism.”
His band was not an unknown at that stage – it had already sold chart-topping records and travelled the globe. But the moment was a turning point; a transformation. Those unaware of the speaker’s group or his legacy were seized by curiosity: who was this man, the musician unafraid to speak his mind in a room full of sniffy, straight-backed music executive types?
The answer was simple. His name was Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch. And he was a Beastie Boy.
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Such a speech was striking as much due to the Beastie Boys’ history as it was due to its content. The early years of their career was defined by excess, and by an ever-so-slightly troubling indulgence in bacchanalian delights. They were, after all, a group that made their name by assuaging one’s unalienable rights to party, and their music videos were often filled with the consumption of alcohol and the pleasures of the skin.
Part of that was send-up, surely. After all, the group’s three members (Yauch, Adam ‘Ad-Rock’ Horovitz and ‘Mike D’ Diamond) came from upstanding New York families, and the ‘lad bro’ personas they adopted were a far cry from their upper-middle-class childhoods: Horovitz’s father was a playwright, and Diamond received his education at an arts-focused private school.
Certainly it’s easy to dismiss something like the ‘(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)’ video as parody. Less excusable, however, were the group’s slightly more sexist overtones – their habit of touring with dancing women assigned to cages, for example. The band members played the whole thing very straight, because of course they did – because a joke’s not funny when you have to explain it – but still, defending some of their actions did often take a fair bit of leftist wiggling.
So tricky was the subtext of a song like ‘Girls’, what with its ‘women will always betray you’ message, that the likes of Kathleen Hanna found it hard to engage with the band initially. No matter that she eventually ended up dating and then marrying Horovitz: before she met him, she was worried that the band had a ‘girls, girls, girls’ songwriting attitude.
Indeed, many have claimed Hanna was instrumental in the Beastie Boys’ transformation from post-ironic sorta-fratboys into impassioned and embattled word-slingers. And while she certainlyhad a part to play in the group’s evolving attitudes –in particular spurring Horovitz to give his own impassioned MTV acceptance speech, one in which he tackled the many cases of sexual assault taking place at American festivals like Woodstock –to argue that the change came down to any one individual seems overconfident.
Even in their calls for social revolution, each band member took up their own cause. Thanks in no small part to his Buddhist beliefs, Yauch became closely involved with the Tibetan independence movement, while Diamond and Horovitz aligned themselves with the feminist message. The band even began to retcon the past, apologising for past incidences of sexism and including a message of support in their song ‘Sure Shot’. “To all the mothers and sisters and wives and friends / I want to offer my love and respect to the end,” Yauch powerfully spat.
So why, then? What changed them, and so quickly?
Although many suggestions have been offered up to explain the group’s transition, it seems like the key to understanding what happened relies upon realising it was less an overhaul and more a refinement. After all, from their very outset, the Beastie Boys were always about love and compassion. Make no mistake, it was always an odd kind of love –the kind that sounds cringey and awkward if you actually have to shape it into words, and one often hidden behind a distracting sheen – but it was a love nonetheless, a kind of audible generosity extended to the listener.
Even a song like ‘Girls’, though troubling, is never unkind or cruel, and the band’s cultural faux pas came from a desire to excite and invigorate rather than to exclude. The Beastie Boys simply began channeling their anxieties and passions into something conscious, and connected: their songs were just as alive and emphatic as ever, only now they could fit into a bigger structure, and seemed more aware of their surroundings.
What did the Beastie Boys do to change, then? They just listened a little more: to their critics, to their friends. And they didn’t start playing a new game – they just got better at their old one.
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Last month, the Adam Yauch Memorial Park in New York was befouled by Islamophobic and pro-fascist graffiti. When Horovitz found out, he teamed up with the local city council and organised a demonstration. Dressed against the cold, surrounded by a committed crowd, he delivered a speech.
“If you’re able to protest, protest,” he said. “If you’re able to give money, give to Black Lives Matter. Give to Planned Parenthood. Give what you can. If you’re able to volunteer, volunteer.”
It was his first such public appearance in a while, and a welcome return: one that proved that Horovitz’s attitudes have not been softened by time. But more than that, the speech made clear the real legacy of The Beastie Boys. The object of their resistance might have changed over the years, but their resistance never has.
And how powerful is that message, delivered just when the world collectively seems ready to hear it. Now as ever, you really do have to fight for your right.
