This time 40 years ago, the New York rapper known as Mike D was working with schoolfriends 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 that record’s cartoonish send-up of frat-bro culture, set to fusions of hard rock riffs and hip-hop beats. As for how far it got them: destinations included global stardom, a page in the history books with rap’s first US chart-topping album, and the crosshairs of British tabloids as they roused a generation to “fight for your right to party”.
The Beastie Boys would evolve into one of the most musically and socially progressive acts of their generation, with a run of boundary-pushing albums touching 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 sons, Skylar and Davis, took up performing as musicians themselves with the indie pop duo Very Nice Person. Sitting in the lounge of his London hotel, happily munching cereal between questions, the wiry, thoughtful 60-year-old seems content in this quieter chapter of his career.
But after jamming with his sons reignited his passion for writing, he is returning to the mic with his dizzyingly creative debut solo album Thank You. The Beastie Boys formed in New York City in 1981; all three members hailed from artsy, middle-class backgrounds – Diamond’s father was an art dealer, and his mother an interior decorator. The group quickly decided “we had to have our own personas that were distinct and separate”, and took inspiration from teen comedies such as 1979’s Meatballs.
The results were the beer-crushing, school-hating louts heard on Licensed to Ill. With an album strewn with sexist and homophobic jokes, shows featuring a giant inflatable penis and go-go dancers in cages, and tabloids circulating (instantly denied) rumours about them mocking sick children at Montreux pop festival, their 1987 UK tour stirred a Sex Pistols-style moral panic. MPs issued calls to ban them from performing.
Their Liverpool show was cut short after just 12 minutes and ended in a riot. They nearly split that year largely due to the fallout. The joke wasn’t funny any more; they also left their record label Def Jam after a dispute over royalties, then Horovitz moved to Los Angeles.
But the group were creatively reinvigorated by Horovitz’s new west coast friends, the Dust Brothers, who were masters of digital sampling. We could have an old blues guitarist with a funk drumbeat and a jazz trumpet,” he says. Even more striking is how the trio who once delivered punchlines such as “You like men and we like beers” (Hold It Now, Hit It) became beacons of positive social messaging.
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