Beastie Boys, "Licensed to Ill"
CJ lets the beat, eh, drop!
CJ’s Pitch:
Na, na, na, na, na. Na!
Na, na, na, na, na. Na!
Na, na, na, na, na. Na!
Beastie Boys!!!
That’s my wife doing her impression of what every Beastie Boys song sounds like to her. To be fair, the Beastie’s (Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz, Michael “Mike D” Diamond and Adam “MCA” Yauch) inject their name into almost every song on the album. I’m going to chalk that up to brand building, something that Lady Gaga used to great effect in “Bad Romance.”
Rah, rah-ah-ah-ah
Roma, roma-ma
Gaga, ooh-la-la
Want your bad romance
[Side Note: Lady Gaga has reached sainthood status in my house. My wife and kids love her music and I’m convinced that she is singlehandedly responsible for the New England Patriots improbable second half comeback against the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl LI. You can’t tell me otherwise.]
Licensed to Ill isn’t the Beastie Boys’ best album. That’s Paul’s Boutique, which is innovative, unpredictable and sublime. Licensed is obnoxious, purile and pretty fuckin’ awesome. How the album, and the group, came to be is even more remarkable.
With origins in hardcore punk, the Beasties turned a prank call to Carvel, a chance meeting with DJ Rick Rubin and a $40,000 settlement with British Airways into a single produced by the fledgling record company Def Jam Recordings (formed by Rubin and Russell Simmons) and a slot opening for (I’m not making this up, kids) Madonna on the The Virgin Tour.
Whew!
After finishing up with Madge and supporting Run-DMC on the EONS-enshrined Raising Hell Tour, the Boys finished Licensed to Ill and unleashed it on the world in late 1986. Like Newbury St. inductees Run & Co., the Beastie’s layered metal guitars over their rhymes to great effect. They also sampled some hard rock’s greatest hits, which certainly impressed young CJ who was entering the second semester of his senior year of high school and had plenty of time on his hands to listen to cassettes and watch MTV. “Rhymin’ and Stealin’”, the first track on the album, has pieces of Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks”, Sabbath’s “Sweet Leaf” and The Clash’s “I Fought the Law”. If you were to look at any of old CJ’s Spotify playlists, you would find at least one if not all of those songs on every one.
The entire first side is packed with fan favorites like “She’s Crafty”, in which a young woman robs the fellas blind after MCA brings her home for a one-night stand. Then there’s “Slow Ride”, which samples “Low Rider” by War, something I’m sure the folks in that band never dreamed they’d be telling their grandchildren. I won’t mention “Girls” except to say that if you want to take them to task for this track you are well within your rights.
Side 1 ends with perhaps the greatest teen anthem this side of Nirvana. “Fight for Your Right” pulls from every angsty high schooler’s hit list of why parents, teachers and adults in general are a major drag. It asks the age-old question, “Can’t we just be left alone with our truancy and our cigarettes and our porn? Is that too much to ask?”
Side 2 (or Song 8 if you’re listening in 2023) kicks off with the other big banger on this album, “No Sleep Till Brooklyn”. Leaning heavily into the metal, the Boys put a five boroughs spin on Motorhead’s No Sleep ‘til Hammersmith. They even employed Kerry King of Slayer to lay down the crunchy guitar riffs that defined the song. As you can imagine, young CJ was thrilled.
“Paul Revere”, “Brass Monkey” (a companion aperitif to “Funky Cold Medina”), and “Slow and Low” highlight a second side with essentially no downtime. There may not be a “Shadrach” on Licensed, but it set the tone for a lot of the exceptional rap, rock and hip hop music that defined the ‘90s.
This is the story of how three talented goofballs turned their love of punk, jazz, metal, rap and White Castle (I lost track of how many times they mentioned the home of gross little steamed hamburgers in a sack.) into the foundation of a music empire.
Na, na, na, na, na. Na!
Beastie Boys!
Ken’s Response:
Oh, how I absolutely loved this album! It was groundbreaking in the way it made rap more accessible to the mainstream, it was hilariously funny to every suburban teenager I knew (including all three EONS writers), it was masterfully engineered, the sampling was epic, and let’s be honest, as their Bubbe’s used to say, “How could anyone not like them?”
Yet here I am in 2023 listening again, part of me still mourning our beloved MCA, Adam Yauch, another part of me cringing at the lyrics I used to find so funny and witty. The whole album is littered with overt references to sexual assault, armed robbery, homophobia, and extreme misogyny. As a society, we’ve grown up from Licensed To Ill; even the Beastie Boys themselves have said so. In a 1999 interview, Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz said, “I would like to formally apologize to the entire gay and lesbian community for the shitty and ignorant things we said on our first record. There are no excuses. But time has healed our stupidity…. We have learned and sincerely changed since the ’80s…. We hope that you’ll accept this long overdue apology.”
Had they never shown any contrition, had they never admitted that the small, musical world they helped create preyed on marginalized people, I would have sent this thing to the top of the trash heap of cultural embarrassments. But I love a good growing-up-and-reinventing story.
Licensed To Ill was an important record in the 1980s, and it still stands both as a testament to originality and musical acumen. Is it the fault of a bunch of young guys from New York City that they were brought up (just like the rest of us) in a culturally insensitive and oppressive age?
Pitch Successful (but please be nice and respectful to the sheriff’s daughter)
Mitch’s Response:
Growing up in the swamps of New Jersey gives you a weird relationship with New York City, especially if your grandparents live on Long Island and you spend half your childhood sitting in bridge and tunnel traffic. We went to Manhattan a lot. To see shows, to eat deli, and best of all, to visit my Popper's office, which inexplicably had an ice cream sundae bar in the lobby.
After a while, NYC starts to feel familiar. You know your way around, you're not scared or intimidated by the random lunatics, you'll eat anything off a pushcart, and you get used to that signature summertime garbage and pee smell.
But deep down inside you know you're not really a local. You're not a tourist, but you're definitely not a city kid. And there was nothing that seemed cooler than being a city kid.
City kids were rad. They seemed older than the rest of us, more sophisticated and experienced. They dressed funky and smoked clove cigarettes. They took the subway and cursed in front of their parents. How I wished I was a city kid.
But like most things in life, you had to be born that way. I wasn't a city kid, I would never be a city kid, but I could vicariously live the life of a city kid by listening to the Beastie Boys - the ultimate city kids.
###
Licensed to Ill shouldn't work. It should have been a novelty like Cooky Puss (which, yes, I bought on vinyl before stupidly flipping it for big cash in the CD-era). The idea of three Jewish city kids making a rap album right as rap was breaking through to the mainstream seems like something between a joke and cultural appropriation.
But here's the secret to their credibility and their success: the Beasties weren't imitating black rap music in an attempt to ride a wave. Sure, they have a lot in common with the RUN-DMC sound, but they come at it from a completely different direction. Most rap music from the time is rooted in funk and R&B, where the Beasties are influenced by punk and rock. They share in the braggadocio MC style of the time, but their lyrics reflect their authentic lives and upbringing.
Licensed to Ill holds up so well. I remember every song, every lyric, and every sample. I've always been a Paul's Boutique guy, but I may have to reconsider that position. This album is great. Perfect for cool city kids, or wannabe city kids from Jersey.
Pitch Successful (Hey Mike D, at least I’m not from Secaucus)
CJ’s pitch was successful and the Beastie Boys have kicked it right into the Newbury St. Collection. What’s your take on the b-boys and Licensed to Ill? Which Top 20 album from 1987 would have you pitched? Please let us know in the comments.
Other albums from 1987 that we’ve discussed:
Please join us next week as the EONS Time Machine jumps from Manhattan in 1987 to Boston in 1989 with Ken’s pitch for the New Kids on the Block’s Hangin’ Tough.
You guys are brilliant and I'm thrilled to see this was a successful pitch. For this 57 year old Irishman, I prefer LTI over Paul's Boutique every time. I know every single word on LTI and it was always impressive to the ladies. Helped me get a little. (sleep you perverts) Anyhow..as always...Great work here. Now where is my Wiffle Ball bat?
This was the classic example of an album I was dismissive of when it came out as just noises from sophomoric white teenage morons who can't hold a tune, and was surprised to discover how much innovation and thoughtfulness was actually hiding behind the teen angst. In 1986 I would have rolled my eyes at adding License to EONS, but today I say bravo!
(If you objected to misogyny in 1986, the music industry had very little to offer, nor did the movie or TV industries...)
PS. for the record, at 28-3 in SB 51, I got a text from a friend saying I needed to "DO SOMETHING!," so I switched seats with my companion, and that was definitively the sole catalyst of the Patriots' comeback. Lady Gagging had nothing whatsoever to do with it.