Beast­ie Boys Story

All rock stars must even­tu­al­ly grow up, and the larg­er they lived dur­ing their rebel­lious hey­day, the more dra­mat­ic the inevitable change. This is just to say that a greater-than-usu­al dis­tance sep­a­rates the Beast­ie Boys – hell­rais­ing rap trio, scourge of par­ents’ con­cern groups, the very essence of cool dur­ing the 1980s and ​’90s — from the mid­dle-aged guys pac­ing around the Kings Theatre’s stage dur­ing the new doc­u­men­tary Beast­ie Boys Story.

Michael ​“Mike D” Dia­mond and Adam ​“Ad-Rock” Horovitz brought a live show to Brook­lyn in ear­ly 2019, essen­tial­ly a walk­through of their recent­ly pub­lished mem­oir in TED Talk form, com­plete with a back­ground Pow­er­Point accom­pa­ni­ment. Spike Jonze now relays that per­for­mance to the rest of the world with a filmed ver­sion so straight­for­ward that his name may be his most mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion to the project. There’s hard­ly any of the mis­chie­vous toy­ing-with-the-form for which the Beast­ies were once known, a symp­tom of a more com­pre­hen­sive mat­u­ra­tion that’s estranged these adults from what made them leg­ends as kids.

The grand arc of their pre­sen­ta­tion trends toward com­ing-of-age, track­ing them as they evolve beyond each suc­ces­sive phase of their career. From the fight­ers of the right to par­ty, they advanced into more sophis­ti­cat­ed sam­pledelia with the help of pro­duc­er Rick Rubin and man­ag­er Rus­sell Sim­mons, and so on. The mon­ey mate­r­i­al occurs ear­ly on, as the boys cavort around a New York with­out rules, absorb­ing the rat­ty yet seduc­tive influ­ence of punk culture.

Once the band has been assem­bled, how­ev­er, it’s most­ly infor­ma­tion that any­one who loves the Beast­ie Boys already knows. The pre-noto­ri­ety behind-the-scenes ele­ments – befriend­ing, grow­ing apart from, and reunit­ing with col­lab­o­ra­tor Kate Schel­len­bach, for instance – break fresh ground in a way that the con­stant con­tex­tu­al­is­ing of their fame does not.

The creaky rec­ol­lec­tions about all the ​“crazy shit” (a repeat­ed catch­phrase marked by a sound cue that mal­func­tions at first, in one of the show’s only attempts to play with the form) find pur­pose in hon­our­ing the mem­o­ry of the group’s third mem­ber, Adam ​“MCA” Yauch.

Tak­en too soon by can­cer in 2012, he seems here to be the brains of the out­fit. As head musi­cal bound­ary-push­er, he guid­ed their sound into unchart­ed ter­ri­to­ry. As video direc­tor, under the alter ego of his Swiss uncle Natha­nial Hörn­blowér, he made them DIY icons. And as their polit­i­cal com­pass, organ­is­ing the epochal Free Tibet con­cert, he made them an impor­tant part of world his­to­ry. The affec­tion and respect these men show for their de fac­to broth­er flat­ters their age in a way that rem­i­nisc­ing about the good ol’ days of trou­ble­mak­ing cannot.

There’s a pauci­ty of that anar­chic spir­it in the organ­i­sa­tion­al pol­ish of this stroll down mem­o­ry lane. All the par­ty­ing-and-girls talk draws a stark con­trast with the grey­ing fig­ures in t‑shirts and slacks before us, even before they dis­avow their first album as some­thing of a joke that got away from them. One sup­pos­es that that mak­ing peace with the pas­sage of time must be a prefer­able out­come to attempt­ed boy­hood-cling­ing, and yet that doesn’t erase the sad sense of dete­ri­o­ra­tion that attends all come­back concerts.

Though the sto­ries about meet­ing Kur­tis Blow and fid­dling tape-loop machines amply amuse, they come from a safe remove that feels alto­geth­er un-Beast­ie. Nobody stays young for­ev­er, but when you’re in no small part defined by your youth, that’s a dif­fi­cult part to let go of.