NO SERIOUSLY: The Beastie Boys vs. David Lee Roth, the Toughest Decision I Ever Had to Make
It was right before License to Ill was released. I knew the name “The Beastie Boys” because they were ex-hardcore people and everyone was talking about them being the greatest thing since Lee Jeans. I didn’t know the music though until my brother came home with the “She’s On It” single that proceeded License to Ill. Being more hip than I could ever hope to be, he played it incessantly, drilling that song into my skull. I thought they were funny, stupid, and right up my alley. It was the days of metal, hardcore, rap and punk fusing together into entirely new genres. Metal bands were playing punk. Hardcore kids were playing metal. Or Rap. Allegiances were being broken and boundaries were being crossed. And once I bought the Anthrax poster at the flea market, the one in which Scott Ian wears a Beastie Boy t-shirts on stage, I decided I was a full-fledged Beasties fan.
So when my brother and our friend, Jason, aka Dirt, asked me if I wanted to see The Beasties with them at Nassau Community College, I could barely disguise my excitement. Of course, I would go. Murphy’s Law was opening up as well and by this time, they were already hardcore legends. It was going to be my introduction into the world of live hip hop and hardcore simultaneously. I was like a zit ready to burst.
There’s just one thing, Jason said. It’s the same night as David Lee Roth at the Nassau Coliseum.
Oh Shit.
I already bought a ticket for the DLR show and was planning to go with my friends, Vito and Mike. I never had a chance to see Van Halen live and I also loved the DLR solo record, Eat ‘em and Smile. Plus Steve Vai, guitar virtuoso, and Billy Sheehan, bass twirling maniac, were playing in Dave’s band. His cards were stacked and there was still a little bit of the hard rock bug in me to want to witness this extraordinary explosion in person. I decided to go see DLR over The Beasties.
The DLR show was fantastic. Dave came out on a surfboard, at least fifty feet above the audience. The musicianship was stellar and the setlist was as fulfilling as expected. Though, as stated before, my brother and Jason were always on top of things. They knew which was the real show to go to. They dropped me and my friends of at the Coliseum, while they went to see The Beasties and Murphy’s Law.
They picked us up afterwards and told us all about the video The Beasties were filming and how my brother threw his hat onstage and King Adrock picked it up and wore it for the rest of the night. Sure enough, about a year later, when the “Slow and Low” video came out, there was my brother’s hat in the middle of a crazy hip hop/hardcore onslaught that would go down in the musical history books. Meanwhile, that summer, License to Ill came out and that was all my brother played in the Light Blue Buick Regal he acquired from my mother. Within weeks, we knew every word on that record. I could still recite it in my sleep, if need be. And then eventually the record became #1, ricocheting The Beastie Boys into stardom.
What’s funny is, now that twenty years have passed and I no longer listen to Eat ‘em and Smile but I still listen to License to IIl and it still sounds fresh. The beats are dope and the rhymes are rockin’. I marvel at the creativity that went into its creation. It’s so colorful and playful in its conception, its lyrical approach, and its delivery. It’s also funny and danceable. And if anything, it’s a great reminder of what a creative nerve center New York City, particularly Greenwich Village, used to be. It’s hard to imagine, where skyscrapers now stand and rich kids from the Upper East Side now throw up on Friday nights, kids like the Beastie Boys were able to put together the musical equivalent of the tastiest alphabet soup you ever ate. Where Jackson Pollack and Andy Warhol earned their stripes, so did The Beasties Boys. And what’s even more incredible is they didn’t stop with that one album. They upped the ante, taking the genre into unexplored territories with Paul’s Boutique, working with The Dust Brothers, who would later make a name producing Beck and other 1990’s acts.
Still, it all started with three hardcore kids that wanted to sing rap and had the guts to do it. Thank the Lord they did. If they hadn’t, we would never have those immortal albums that are stamped into our consciousness forever. And thanks to my brother for drilling “She’s On It” into my skull. If he hadn’t, I’d be writing about David Lee Roth’s “Yankee Rose” right about now (No direspect to DLR. I still consider him a genius, but that’s another story).
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