Beastie Boys memoir scheduled for 2015
April 29, 2013

NEW YORK (AP) — The Beastie Boys want it all on the record.

The iconic hip-hop group has a deal with Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of Random House Inc., for an illustrated oral history. The currently untitled book is scheduled for Fall 2015. Spiegel & Grau says the book will track the band’s rise from its high school years in New York City to its induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012. The publisher says “world-famous writers and cultural figures” will be interviewed for the project.

The book will be organized by surviving band members Michael Diamond (Mike D) and Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock) with the help of hip-hop writer and editor Sacha Jenkins. Adam Yauch (MCA) died last year.

Three years later, this book is finally finished and scheduled for publication. I've added the pre-order details to the first post.

Has anyone else on the board read this book? I was really looking forward to it, and it was better than I expected. Liked hearing about their early days as a hardcore punk band and the late 70s early 80s NY music scene. They are quite open about the stupid and/or thoughtless moves they made throughout their career and have chapters written by other people sprinkled through the book, like Spike Jonze, Amy Poehler, and one by Kate Schellenbach, who was a member of the band in their early days and was passive-aggressively pushed out of the group. It helps give a well-rounded portrait of them, and the differing viewpoints, and the use of comics for a chapter, photos for another, and chapters written individually by Mike Diamond and Adam Horowitz, which also have asides by each other to clarify, give another view on the same event, or just make a wiseass comment, really does a good job of reflecting the patchwork sampling and wide source of influences found in their music. I think the best story in the book was the two pages detailing Adam Yauch encountering "singer/songwriter Paul Williams" in the Hollywood Hills.