Beastie Boys Book by Michael Diamond

Author:Michael Diamond [Diamond, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography, Music
ISBN: 9780812995541
Amazon: 0812995546
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Published: 2018-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

As for me, my mom had just passed away and I was running from all kinds of things. The chance to escape into becoming a different person couldn’t have come at a more perfect time. That’s the thing with dealing with tragedy when you’re young and/or a drunk and/or stoned: you can’t really comprehend the severity of what’s actually happening. It’s easier to go into denial mode and shut off what’s real. But that’s a story for my personal memoirs. Which I just set on fire in my bathtub.

During all of this madness we’d stopped being paid royalties on our record. We made money for playing shows. Big shows. Madison Square Garden shows. But zero dollars for the multiplatinum smash hit Licensed to Ill. The fucking record that a group of friends made together. Had intense and real fun making together. And now, for whatever reason, one of those friends, the one that is half owner of the record label, decides that the other three should not receive the earnings for the sales of that record. THEY DID NOT FUCKING PAY US! Rick+Russell…our friends. Def Jam. We’d been there with them from the beginning. I was there in the studio with Rick when T La Rock recorded “It’s Yours.” I was there in the studio with Rick when the Junkyard Band recorded “Sardines.” I made the beat for LL Cool J’s first single for Def Jam, “I Need a Beat.” We felt that Def Jam’s success was success for us. And vice versa. ’Cause we were all friends.

So what happened? Allegedly Rick and/or Russell said that we were in breach of our contract because we hadn’t started to record our second album for Def Jam yet. I mean…Russell was our manager, as well as the owner of the record label. If he wanted us to record a new record by a certain date…he shouldn’t have had us on tour during said date. Right? Why not just have a conversation about it all? Or an argument. Or whatever friends are supposed to do with each other to figure things out. But basically…$ was what it was all about. How $ad is that? We were all making a $hitload of money but, for whatever reason, it wasn’t good enough.

We never got the chance to actually even have creative differences. Things just spun out of control. Allegedly Russell threatened to put out a record of unreleased songs of ours, call it White House, and have someone remix them to the theme of this hot new sound, house music. Ferreealz!?! The whole thing was just a real bummer ’cause we really were friends and things could’ve gone a different way. Not that I regret what-all happened next. I don’t. ’Cause walking away from those dudes was actually the best thing to happen to us as a band, and as friends. It’s just…I don’t know…sad.

We didn’t really run into them that much during the next few years, and when we did it was in a crowd of people at a party or something.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.