Spike Jonze
Beastie Boys Story

The last concert of the Beastie Boys was on June 12, 2009, at the Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee. When they leave the stage, after closing with their classic hit "Sabotage," the crowd is ecstatic. No one yet imagines that this will unfortunately be their last live performance: a few years later, on May 4, 2012, cancer takes away Adam MCA Yauch and brings an end to the nearly three-decade-long career of the Beasties.

In 2018 Mike D and Ad-Rock, known as Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz, published a memoir, "Beastie Boys Book," but they just couldn’t see themselves facing a typical promotional tour in bookstores, signing dedications and answering questions. It only takes a call to their trusty Spike Jonze (Oscar-winning director, but above all the creator of some of the most brilliant music videos of the 90s) and the project takes shape: Jonze directs a sort of theatrical adaptation of the book, divided into chapters, retracing their history with a wealth of anecdotes more or less unknown to the general public. The formula works, and Mike D and Ad-Rock, helped by various audiovisual clips projected on a large screen behind them, carry on the show like seasoned stand-up comedians. The tour touched theaters in several American cities and the video shows us a condensed version of the three nights held at the Kings Theatre in New York.

Diamond and Horovitz on stage joke with each other like the two old friends they are while retracing their saga: the hardcore beginnings, the rap metamorphosis, the sudden fame. The two dispense curiosities and funny stories in abundance, reconstructing the history of the various albums (with special attention to the sacred triad "Check Your Head" – "Ill communication" – "Hello Nasty," as it should be) and everything that revolved around them. They also talk a lot about their relationships with various producers, figures such as Russell Simmons, Rick Rubin, Dust Brothers, and the legendary Mario Caldato Jr, people who played a significant role in shaping the Beastie Boys' sound.

Then there are the curiosities: for example, we learn that Money Mark (Mark Ramos-Nishita, on keyboards in all the records from Check Your Head onwards) was a carpenter Mario Caldato called to fix the gate of the Los Angeles mansion where the group was recording Paul's Boutique; once it turned out that the guy was quite good with organs and various keyboards, they first asked him to stick around for a few jams and then to officially join the band (the result can be heard in masterpieces like "POW," "Groove Holmes," or "Namaste"). Or that the music for "Sabotage," born from a bass riff by Yauch, practically wrote itself, even though the real problems came with the lyrics: for months it remained without verses and after several attempts to make it a rap song, they decided it wasn't working. Then one day, when the track seemed destined to remain an instrumental, Ad-Rock had the idea to go to MarioC's house and have himself recorded while shouting in his face that he was a horrible person and was sabotaging their success.

It's evident from the start how the loss of their friend and brother MCA is still an open wound; the finale is particularly touching, and when it comes time to remember Yauch's death, the emotion is too much, and Horovitz has to stop, unable to hold back the tears. In an interview, Ad-Rock recounted how the same scene repeated itself almost identically every single night they went on stage, making him worry that people might think it was planned.

The 2 hours flow by seamlessly without any downtime, Ad-Rock and Mike D exude charisma and complement everything with their proverbial sense of humor, and even the most well-informed fan will surely find details they have never heard before. "Beastie Boys Story" delivers the portrait of an extremely creative band, capable of reinventing themselves multiple times throughout their career, whose music has inspired an extraordinary number of people and artists.