Rest In Peace
August 5, 1964 – May 4, 2012
It is with great sadness that we confirm that musician, rapper, activist and director Adam “MCA” Yauch, founding member of Beastie Boys and also of the Milarepa Foundation that produced the Tibetan Freedom Concert benefits, and film production and distribution company Oscilloscope Laboratories, passed away in his native New York City this morning after a near-three-year battle with cancer. He was 47 years old.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Yauch taught himself to play bass in high school, forming a band for his 17th birthday party that would later become known the world over as Beastie Boys.
With fellow members Michael “Mike D” Diamond and Adam “Adrock” Horovitz, Beastie Boys would go on to sell over 40 million records, release four #1 albums–including the first hip hop album ever to top the Billboard 200, the band’s 1986 debut full length, Licensed To Ill–win three Grammys, and the MTV Video Vanguard Lifetime Achievement award. Last month Beastie Boys were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, with Diamond and Horovitz reading an acceptance speech on behalf of Yauch, who was unable to attend.
In addition to his hand in creating such historic Beastie Boys albums as Paul’s Boutique, Check Your Head, Ill Communication, Hello Nasty and more, Yauch was a founder of the Milarepa Fund, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting awareness and activism regarding the injustices perpetrated on native Tibetans by Chinese occupational government and military forces. In 1996, Milarepa produced the first Tibetan Freedom Concert in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, which was attended by 100,000 people, making it the biggest benefit concert on U.S. soil since 1985’s Live Aid. The Tibetan Freedom Concert series would continue to stage some of the most significant benefit shows in the world for nearly a decade following in New York City, Washington DC, Tokyo, Sydney, Amsterdam, Taipei and other cities.
In the wake of September 11, 2001, Milarepa organized New Yorkers Against Violence, a benefit headlined by Beastie Boys at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom, with net proceeds disbursed to the New York Women’s Foundation Disaster Relief Fund and the New York Association for New Americans (NYANA) September 11th Fund for New Americans–each chosen for their efforts on behalf of 9/11 victims least likely to receive help from other sources.Under the alias of Nathanial Hörnblowér, Yauch directed iconic Beastie Boys videos including “So Whatcha Want,” “Intergalactic,” “Body Movin” and “Ch-Check It Out.” Under his own name, Yauch directed last year’s Fight For Your Right Revisited, an extended video for “Make Some Noise” from Beastie Boys’ Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, starring Elijah Wood, Danny McBride and Seth Rogen as the 1986 Beastie Boys, making their way through a half hour of cameo-studded misadventures before squaring off against Jack Black, Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly as Beastie Boys of the future.
Yauch’s passion and talent for filmmaking led to his founding of Oscilloscope Laboratories, which in 2008 released his directorial film debut, the basketball documentary Gunnin’ For That #1 Spot and has since become a major force in independent video distribution, amassing a catalogue of such acclaimed titles as Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy, Oren Moverman’s The Messenger, Banksy’s Exit Through The Gift Shop, Lance Bangs and Spike Jonze’s Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait Of Maurice Sendak, and many more.
Yauch is survived by his wife Dechen and his daughter Tenzin Losel, as well as his parents Frances and Noel Yauch.
–Beastie Boys official statement
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RIP A LEGEND
You will forever be missed RIP Adam!
ow.
Fuck You Cancer
Open Letter to Williamsburg Hipsters to “Cool” to Mourn MCA
Let me get this straight: your big brother, who you haven’t spoken to in years, up and dies and you don’t reach out? I guess there’s just no cracking your self-important veneer, not even this one time to celebrate, let alone mourn, the man’s life, is there? As much as you might want to, it terrifies you to expose your own vulnerability. I guess that’s what the artists you worship are for. They spill their guts, so you don’t have to.
The surly bartender across the counter can see it in your face. He knows what you want to hear. Nothing would make him happier than if you were to ask him to consider switching off the Bad Brains album he thinks he discovered, so he could snark back at you his ready reply: “yeah, ain’t gonna happen.” As if this joker would ever deign to play A Year and A Day in honor of the man who pioneered a lifestyle he and his ilk (that includes you, fucknuts) have turned into a laughable cliché. Do you have any idea how much you owe this beast of a man, Adam Yauch, for so much of what you hold sacred?
MCA’s gravelly baritone and the sound of his science should have been spilling out of every bar in Williamsburg Friday night into the street like a fist fight. You should have started a chant. Broken bottles until Hold it Now was scratching back and forth and crafty girls were swinging from the rafters. You should have demanded it, like they did their right back when you were “sucking your mother’s dick”. But instead, all that could be heard at L stops this past weekend were the drunken platitudes of you and your privileged friends stumbling through Brooklyn in your mini sombreros and ironic seer sucker jackets, scrolling past tweets about this Borough’s fallen native son for news of Cinco de Mayo and Kentucky Derby parties.
When Michael Jackson died two years ago, the whole neighborhood was moon walking to Thriller and even the burliestly bearded of unemployed bike messengers effused long diatribes on Human Nature. Was it because you could simply couch your emotions in the tragic joke of MJ’s life that night like so many quarters under cushions, safe for the time being until you needed them for an Intelligentsia espresso the next morning? There was no risk to getting in on it. There was no emotional commitment. This time there was. I get it. You’re a fucking pussy. And by not allowing yourself to shed a tear on this sad day, you let your dead brother down. Lucky for you, it’s not too late to redeem yourself. Read on.
The truth is that Ad Yauch made your ideal version of yourself possible. Without him there would be no Williamsburg as we know it. Like the transformation of Williamsburg (I’m not drawing a direct comparison here) it didn’t happen overnight. MCA evolved over the course of his career to embody the impossibly-cool rebel ethos that so many urban-dwelling kids and adults who refuse to grow up these days aspire to only to fail miserably. The “I don’t give a fuck” attitude tempered by a zen-like self awareness. The voracious consumption and subsequent creation of culture. The wry, you-wish-you-knew humor designed only for self-amusement overlaid with retro-referentialism (he coined the term “mullet”). The reverence for music as spirituality mixed with gritty intellect and an up-in-your-grill resistance to injustice: it’s the formula for the kind of man every spineless hipster like you hopes his custom fixie, tattoos and record collection will one day make him. You’ve likely familiarized yourself with the pantheon of legends the Beasties sampled: Jimmy Smith, Johnny Jenkins, Bob James and Trouble Funk. Now, if you could only muster the requisite balls to fill out those skinny jeans of yours, maybe you could actually feel the soul in it.
While he may have started out not giving a God-damn and reaching to the past for inspiration, he died knowing that compassion and passion for right here, right now is where it’s at. Maybe you heard it blaring from my girlfriend’s Kia speakers on Sunday as I drove past McCarren and down Wythe, but in case you missed The Update, here’s a preview of what I hope you’ll be rhyming to yourself in a few years time, once Ill Communication becomes sufficiently retro for you to consider or reconsider, as the case may be:
“Over The Years, I’ve Grown And Changed So Much
Things I Know Now Years Ago, I Couldn’t Touch
There Are Things I’ve Done That I Wouldn’t Do Again
But I’m Glad That I Did ‘Cause I’ve Learned From Them
I Just Try To Stay Present Right Here, Right Now
No Worries, No Fears And Without Any Doubts.”