Remembering Adam Yauch

"The only limit is the mind." - Adam Yauch

Adam Yauch, "MCA," with smiling other bandmates blurred in the background, Mike Diamond, "Mike D," and Adam Horovitz, "Ad-Rock".

Sure, I can admit that I was never the biggest Beastie Boys fan, but that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t touched by Adam Yauch’s death. The music industry suffered a loss and it was felt around the world. Any young adult would be lying if they said “Fight For Your Right To Party” wasn’t part of their childhood.

Cancer is a powerful and destructive weapon, and like Yauch, it has taken too many young lives. The 47-year-old died earlier this month from a tumor on his salivary gland, a very rare form of the disease, and the world has been lamenting since. (Click here to see some cool street artists’ graffiti tributes to Yauch.)

The other two-thirds of the Beastie Boys, Adam Horovitz and Mike Diamond, admitted that they were unaware of the severity of Yauch’s condition. “I believed, up to [the] last week, that Adam was somehow coming back,” Diamond confessed to Rolling Stone in an interview on May 23.

Yauch was a unique hip-hop/rapping star. His voice was a raspy baritone, making him sound just a tinge more soulful than his counterparts. “Even when we were doing our first hip-hop records, when we were 19 and 20, he sounded like a gruff 40-year-old,” said Diamond.

Years after forming his band, Yauch experimented (and stuck with) the realms of Buddhism. After experiment with LSD in the recording room, he found that there were layers to his music beyond what was explicitly heard.

“He abandoned the band for months in the winter to go snowboarding, on this very serious level. Then it wasn’t snowboarding. He would disappear for two months of teaching by his Holiness the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala. He gradually incorporated that into the music. He was the first to realize we had this soapbox, and we needed to use it,” said Diamond on how Yauch’s Buddhism affected the band.

Yauch was more than a musician. He was an activist, fighting for the Tibetan independence movement and feminism and LGBT rights. Not many people are familiar with this side of Yauch, I wasn’t even enlightened until hearing reports about his life after death.

Another marvel possibly unknown is the star-studded revisited music video to “Fight For Your Right.” It stars “The Beastie Boys,” Seth Rogen, Elijah Wood and Danny McBride stumbling through town after a wild and drunken (and acid-filled) night, until they bump into the “Future Beastie Boys,” John C. Reily, Will Ferrell and Jack Black. Also included in the video are Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci, Will Arnett, Orlando Bloom, Danny Masterson, Zach Galifianakis and more. Although the video at times is redundant and dragged-out, I still found myself laughing, especially at the scene where Elijah Wood and Will Ferrel start peeing on each other, starting a full out pee-tastic war. Also, of course, the beginning where the boys are wasted walking down the street, acting as if no one can notice their drunken antics.

Here it the vid, check it out and enjoy:

And just because I love this song: "Intergalactic"

Here are some more Beastie Boy songs to look at for in memoriam:

"Sabotage," "Make Some Noise," "So What Cha Want," "Shake Your Rump," "Root Down," "Paul Revere," "Hey Ladies," "Shadrach," "Sure Shot," "Pass the Mic," "Car Thief," "Body Movin'," "Jimmy James," "She's Crafty," and "Get it Together."