Skills To Pay The Bills The Story Of The Beastie Boys

1: Young and Useless: 198182 ADAM YAUCH: I met this guy John Berry at Tier 3, a little teeny hole-in-the-wall punk club, and we hung out a little. Then a day or two later, John brought Mike with him. They had this band called the Young AboriginesMike played drums, John played guitar, Kate Schellenbach played percussion. JOHN BERRY: When I first met Adam Yauch, he was the funniest motherfucker I'd ever met in my life. He had this incredible knack for picking up somebody's voice. He was really into Monty Python. I think a heavy influence of his was the silly-walk skit. ADAM HOROVITZ: I have this memory of seeing Yauch at a record store. He wore an overcoat and boots and just looked funny. I'm not saying that I looked cool, but he looked funny. SASHA FRERE-JONES: I went to Saint Ann's in Brooklyn Heights, this private, progressive school. Mike D came in as a junior. He was from Manhattan, was into punk rock, and instantly started hanging out with all the cool, good-looking girls. He used to wear an Isaac Hayes T-shirt, which was incredibly cool at the time. JILL CUNNIFF: When I met Mike, he had sort of crazy calico hair. Adam Yauch had a raincoat with "White Riot" spelled out on the back with pieces of tape, and combat boots. We all wanted to be hip, cool punkers. BERRY: The first practice was at my housewe called it the Hell House. Just a bunch of fucking noise. I don't think there was any direction, no one really taking any reins or being, like, the creative guru. It was just a bunch of kids dashing around. KATE SCHELLENBACH: Adam Yauch started hanging around, and after rehearsal he'd start playing the bass. He knew how to play "Public Image" by Public Image and that was it. Like two notes. Then we started switching aroundI'd play drums and Yauch would play bass and we'd make up songs about the bodega downstairs, stuff like that. Mike had nothing to do, so we made him the singer. Which was funny because he was so introverted and shy and so he was the least likely candidate to be lead singer. YAUCH: We went and saw Black Flag one night. It was like when Black Flag first came to New York and Dez [Cadena] was singing, it was before Henry [Rollins]. I think it was actually the first time Henry ever saw Black Flag, too. And after we saw Black Flag, all these kids from D.C. started moshing, and we'd never seen that before, diving off the stage. This was at Peppermint Lounge up on Seventy-seventh, or somewhere in Midtown. But I think we got kind of inspired by that. It was just when hardcore was kind of starting in the U.S., because we were listening to more punk bands coming over from England, Stiff Little Fingers and stuff like that. And things were starting to happen like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Public Image. And that's the kind of stuff that was inspiring us. Young Aborigines was more going toward those kind of P.I.L./Siouxsie sounds. I think after we saw Black Flag, we thought we should start a hardcore band. There weren't really any New York hardcore bands, so it was kind of like the D.C. hardcore scene, there was sort of an L.A. punk scene. But Bad Brains was the first band that was really starting to play fast. And I guess Minor Threat was probably just coming out. And we were like, Let's start a New York hardcore band, kind of as a joke. And that was called Beastie Boys. We were trying to think of the stupidest name. CUNNIFF: When we first saw Black Flag play, we thought it was really funny. Like, Look at these people banging into each other, look at this guy sweating with no shirt on. (laughs.) Like, "What is this?" TLight, Alan is the author of 'Skills To Pay The Bills The Story Of The Beastie Boys', published 2006 under ISBN 9780609604786 and ISBN 0609604783.