Okay I swear I’m not doing this alphabetical thing on purpose, it just happened! The book is not called “Pizza” by the way, the boys just happen to be in front of a Pizza sign in this photo and probably thought it would be a funny way to confuse readers. There’s no way the use of this picture, and the prominence of the word ‘pizza’, so that it looks like the title, is an accident.
I listened to this as an Audiobook because I read somewhere it was the superior way to do this book. I think that, as a book about musicians, hearing them talk is probably going to be more compelling than reading them, and judging by the cadence of their voices and their vocal mannerisms, I can say that in this case it’s probably true. What makes this one interesting is that they get other musicians and artists to read their recollections, people who are a little more trained in the act of a monologue, and are able to add the kind of inflections and personality that the remaining Beasties may not have the skill for. Of particular note are John C. Reilly, Steve Buscemi, Amy Poeller, and curiously enough, Bette Middler.
From the start, you realize this is a love letter to their departed bandmate, Adam “MCA” Yauch, who died from cancer in 2012. The surviving members start with a touching prologue to the kind of friend, man, and artist Yauch was, painting the rest of the book and their adventures in a rose-tinted glow. The men describe their relationship as something they’ve spent more time with then their own families; it’s easy to see how they all fell in love with each other, and how rare it is for three artists to stay together for 25 years and continue to produce an impressive body of work. They describe their youthful days in New York as a hardcore aficionados, and their antics and pranks as teens of hippies and intellectuals, including sets where they fake prank phone calls, and episodes of early recording sessions in unheated and dilapidated apartments.
A particularly nostalgic account comes from Mike D. recounting his love of his cassette tapes, and the rules around how many you had on you at a time, how you carried them, how you made a mix tape, and how bloody inconvenient it was to walk around with them in your pockets because backpacks were the height of uncool. Although I was just taking my first breaths in the halcyon days of 1986, it does remind me a bit of the late nineties, and my own initiation into pre-digital teen counter-culture, even in the shitty suburbs. I especially love the picture they tell of New York in the eighties. I can remember watching movies, as a child, depicting New York as a seedy nightmare in the eighties, and now I realize I was right to think it was scary as hell.
There are parts where the book drags. At 12 hours unabridged, it at least accomplished the goal of getting me through my more tedious work days, but certain chapters needed to be skipped. One, by a rare female New York DJ, is literally just her listing bands she played in her sets. It’s like, I get it, you were cool and you were next-level, stop listing bands for five freaking minutes.
Whenever the narrator tells you to stop the recording and go find a song, I’d recommend doing it. It does give insight into the Beastie’s music, as you can hear parts they sampled in later hits and get the sense of what they were experiencing at the time when the music was new. It taught me to appreciate just how hard it was to create sampled tracks in the late eighties and early nineties, and gave me a new appreciation of Paul’s Boutique in particular. It’s a well-told tale of a bygone era, told by people old enough and aware enough to be able to apologize and reflect on their youthful mistakes (literally everything they did during the promotion of their first album). What they did in their youth doesn’t pass muster nowadays, and they make it perfectly clear that their early homophobia and sexism was not cool and they are still embarrassed by it.
The later parts of the story, post Hello Nasty, are told in a bit of haste, and the bandmates refrain from personal stories and don’t give details about MCA’s last days. There is a great verbal rundown of all 17 of their music videos as told by Amy Poeller, who is her usual hilarious and sarcastic self.
It’s also fun to listen to an album while they describe the things that led to it. I’d listen at work, download an album, and then hear it on my way home from work or while I was making dinner. It kept the notes fresh, and helped me get their musical evolution.
Like they were in many cases, the Beasties are ahead of the curve with their audiobook. I finished it and instantly wanted to find another band’s story I could listen to, specifically anything about hip hop, punk or new wave in the eighties. I haven’t turned much up, but I just started looking. Hopefully, other musical acts will catch on and do things like this, getting their own story out there as they want to tell it, bringing in guest storytellers, and putting their own stamp on it.