In 1987, as they exploded into global consciousness with their wildly successful debut album Licensed To Ill, the first rap album to hit number one on the US Billboard 200 chart, the Beastie Boys were portrayed as the most outrageous, obnoxious and offensive band ever spawned, a threat to decency, morality and the very fabric of Western civilisation. Their parents, however, knew the truth: far from their self-mythologising image as 'the nastiest group in the world', Mike D (Michael Diamond), Ad-Rock (Adam Horowitz) and MCA (Adam Yauch) were just sweet, smart, and polite upper middle class Jewish kids from Manhattan having the best time of their lives.
In April 1987, [now defunct] British music magazine Q sent writer Lloyd Bradley to join the Beastie Boys on the road in the US. Not only did he get to spend time with the trio in their hometown, but he also got to hang out with Yauch and Diamond's parents, who sought to reassure concerned parents across the world that they had absolutely nothing to fear where their offspring were concerned.
"I certainly did not imagine that a son of mine would get rich from being obnoxious!" Adam Yauch's architect father Noel told Bradley. "What can I say? I could play the outraged parent, but I really find The Beastie Boys' whole put-on terrifically amusing.
"At home he's a generous, caring, polite person; I'd be devastated by now if he was really like that. Knowing him like I do, I know that his Jekyll and Hyde act is really very clever. I haven't got a clue why it works, but then I'm not meant to understand it — it's like when I wanted to be an abstract impressionist painter and my parents didn't know what the hell that was all about either!"
Mike D's mother was equally supportive of the trio, as Bradley noted.
"I can understand why it's causing so much anxiety among parents," she admitted, "but it's really nothing to worry about. It's just the same as when I was young and my parents would get mad at me for listening to Frank Sinatra. Twenty years ago it was The Beatles getting blamed for everything. If it wasn't the Beastie Boys it would be someone else."
Mike D himself detected that there was perhaps deeper underlying and unspoken reasons why the rappers were being targeted by moral crusaders and the media.
"In clubs in New York City there's stuff that goes on that's way more offensive than stuff we'll ever do," he pointed out, "stuff that would even offend us — people shooting up on stage, throwing up, setting themselves on fire... performance art. But they don't go on stage and appear in front of twenty or thirty thousand people in Birmingham, Alabama.
"What really is the issue in cities like that," he noted, "is that parents are letting their fourteen-year-old daughters go to shows where around forty per cent of the audience will be black. But not everyone wants to admit that, so when they find out we're coming to town with a twenty foot penis and a girl in a cage they make that into the biggest issue to hit that town."
"We didn't set out to subvert, but it's nice to shake people's feathers once in a while," added Adam Yauch. "Especially the way things are at the moment. America's getting so uptight, so Right wing. The fact that us having a giant dick onstage makes so many people lose sleep, when it's so ridiculous that no sane person could ever take it seriously, is a good indication of how neurotic America's become."
You can read the 1987 Q article in full by taking out a subscription to the excellent Rock's Back Pages website.
