Mike D: ‘After Yauch died I couldn’t make music. I would open a computer file and just feel sad’ | Beast Boys
‘YO“It’s funny how far a joke can take you,” smiles Michael Diamond. This time 40 years ago, the New York rapper known as Mike D was working with schoolmates Adam “MCA” Yauch and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz on Licensed to Ill, their 1986 debut album as the Beastie Boys.
The “joke” in question is the album’s cartoonish parody of frat culture, with fusions of hard rock riffs and hip-hop rhythms. As for how far it took them: destinations included global stardom, a page in the history books with America’s first chart-topping rap album, and the crosshairs of British tabloids as they encouraged a generation to “fight for their right to party.”
The Beastie Boys would become one of the most musically and socially progressive acts of their generation, with a series of boundary-pushing albums that touched on politics and spirituality until they disbanded in 2012 after Yauch’s death from cancer. Diamond has since focused his creative energies on producing records for Soft Play and The Hives, while his children, Skylar and Davis, began performing as musicians with indie pop duo Very Nice Person.
Sitting in the lounge of his London hotel, happily eating cereal between questions, the wiry, thoughtful 60-year-old seems content in this quieter chapter of his career. But after playing with his children rekindled his passion for writing, he returns to the microphone with his dizzyingly creative debut solo album, Thank You.
The Beastie Boys formed in New York City in 1981; All three members came from middle-class artistic backgrounds: Diamond’s father was an art dealer and his mother an interior decorator. The group quickly decided that “we had to have our own personalities that were distinct and separate,” and took inspiration from teen comedies like 1979’s Meatballs. The results were the beer-crushing, school-hating louts heard on Licensed to Ill. “When you’re 19,” Diamond says, “you’re spitting out whatever, like, ‘This is going to be so much fun.’ You haven’t faced a big deal. reaction still.”
In the UK they faced the strongest reaction of all. With an album rife with sexist and homophobic jokes, shows featuring a giant inflatable penis and go-go dancers in cages, and tabloid rumors circulating (instantly denied) about them mocking sick children at the Montreux pop festival, their 1987 UK tour sparked a Sex Pistols-style moral panic. Parliamentarians called for them to be banned from acting. “Get Lost Beasties” appeared in a Mirror headline. Their show in Liverpool was cut short after just 12 minutes and ended in a riot. “Britain was that lightbulb moment: ‘Wait, what we say really impacts people,’” Diamond says, calling the experience “terrifying, humiliating, alienating and surreal.”
They almost broke up that year largely due to the fallout. The joke was no longer funny; They also left their Def Jam record label after a royalty dispute, then Horovitz moved to Los Angeles. But the group was creatively revitalized by Horovitz’s new West Coast friends, the Dust Brothers, who were masters of digital sampling.
“It was like our dream had come true. We could have an old blues guitarist with a funk rhythm and a jazz trumpet,” he says. “We could create these infinite possibilities, this musical collage.” That collage became his second album, 1989’s Paul’s Boutique., a left turn that received weak critical reception but has since been hailed as an experimental masterpiece.
Even more surprising is how the trio that once delivered jokes like “You like men and we like beers” (Hold It Now, Hit It) became beacons of positive social messages. As mainstream rap became more toxic during the 1990s, the band took the opposite tack and apologized for past lyrics, declaring that “the lack of respect for women has to stop” (Sure Shot); “homophobes are not okay” (Alive); and “love can overcome hate in any situation” (Bodhisattva Vow).
“In the same way we felt embarrassed after some of the reactions to Licensed to Ill, we felt this nice, enriched feeling,” he says of subsequent albums. “I don’t want to be too ambitious here, since we’re just a rap group, but maybe it changed some people’s minds a little bit.” But throughout their albums, comedy and music remained companions. “Both are things humanity desperately needs.”
Diamond’s new album is also experimental and socially conscious. There’s plenty of the playful eclecticism of his former band, with nods to industrial music, psych and dream-pop, while the lyrics address self-reflection: the need, he says, to “look under the hood, look inside.” But this time the background of laughter was replaced by pain. “After Yauch died, I couldn’t make music for quite a while. I’d open a computer file and just feel sad.”
Reflections on mortality take on great importance in Gracias; on It’s Time, he raps about “all these things I want to do.” For Diamond, Yauch’s death stirred up unresolved feelings. “In the New York we grew up in, there was a high mortality rate. We grew up in a drug-filled club scene. AIDS was brand new, and gay figures we knew from clubs started dying. My father died when I was 15. There was all this emotion that I had never dealt with,” he says. “Part of aging is that question of your own mortality. You can push it away and ignore it, or acknowledge it and feel what you’re feeling.”
More than money, Diamond feels that “time is the most valuable commodity” and getting back to making and releasing his own music is time well spent. “I am the most complete version of myself when I am fully immersed and engaged creatively.” There’s another note of satisfaction when he reflects on hip-hop in general, which the Beasties helped push into the mainstream. He praises two artists who released their debut albums just as the Beastie Boys ended: Death Grips (“a real influence” on much of today’s music) and Tyler, the Creator. “When I first saw Odd Future, I felt a little happy inside, it felt like a continuation of the energy we brought.”
The closing title track of Thank You is an impressionistic look at his early years, filled with fleeting images of partying with his friends at age 16 (“We were just crazy kids,” he sings). It seems to me like a possible farewell tribute to the Beasties, but Diamond explains that it is universal. “It’s for everyone. This combination of your social group, your passion, coming of age and music mixed together.” The album’s title, for its part, was inspired by a visit to a Buddhist monastery (the religion practiced by his old friend Yauch) that led him to reflect on “who I can make music with, who I have made music with.” A smile appears on his face: “I am very grateful for all this.”
Thank You by Mike D will be out August 28.
