There’s been a proper string of musical deaths over the last few weeks, starting with Adam Yauch, aka the Beastie Boys‘ MCA, who finally lost his battle a fortnight ago, aged just 47.  Yauch was diagnosed with cancer in a salivary gland in July 2009 and was unable to attend his band’s induction into the Rock n Roll Hall Of Fame, due to his illness, last month.

The band started off as a hardcore punk outfit, supporting the likes of Dead Kennedys and Bad Brains, in the early Eighties, but later went out as support on Madonna‘s Like A Virgin tour, in 1985, before releasing debut album Licensed To Ill through immortal hip hop label Def Jam, in 1986.   This record made an indelible impression on me growing up (we sampled some of its artwork for this New Idols flyer – see if you can spot it), becoming a massive hit with various friends, with one cassette getting passed around and bootlegged relentlessly until everyone knew all the words to No Sleep (Til Brooklyn) and (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!) and recited both ad nauseam…

It was hard not to get caught up by the infectious nature of these songs but I wasn’t really a massive fan then or consequently, getting more caught up by what Prince (and, it must be said, Madonna) was doing at that time and more heavily into black hip hop acts like De La Soul, Public Enemy and then A Tribe Called Quest a few years later.  I have, though, long since returned to re-assess and re-discover a lot of the older material that i’d ignored or missed the first time around and Yauch’s death has inevitably prompted more of this.

Everyone always talks about 1989’s Paul’s Boutique (Rolling Stone called it “the Pet Sounds/The Dark Side of the Moon of hip hop”), which is hard to fault and does include Shake Your Rump, Hey Ladies, Car Thief, Shadrach and the epic B-Boy Bouillabaisse – surely an influence on DJ Shadow‘s Lessons series, alongside Steinski‘s earlier mashups – among others (and is very much of its time in terms of containing a veritable stew of classic samples and heavily textured production techniques).

And, while 1992’s Check Your Head is pretty good, 1994’s Ill Communication is right up there in terms of tracks that have really stood the test of time and can still be played out today: Sure Shot, Root Down, Sabotage and Get It Together.  But one of this band’s real highlights for me is actually the ‘unofficial bootleg’ album, Def Before Dishonour, which apparently came out between the official release of Licensed To Ill and Paul’s Boutique and thus unsurprisingly sounds a bit like a collection of out-takes from both.  It includes Rock Hard (with that immortal AC/DC sample), Beastie Groove, plus bona fide B-boy killers And What You Give Is What You Get (a Shadrach remix), 33% God and Dis Yourself In ’89.  It also features an hilarious interview between the band and a British music journalist at the end, which is well worth checking out…

Rest In Peace, Adam Yauch.  Your music lives on.

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