Smart-ass musical magpies with an encyclopaedic knowledge of jazz, funk, metal, hardcore and classic rock, Michael ‘Mike D’ Diamond, Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch and Adam ‘Ad-Rock’ Horovitz were initially attracted to New York's hip-hop scene for the genre’s irreverent, anything-goes attitude, becoming the scene’s great white hopes in the mid-‘80s as much by accident as design.
Ironically, it was via their immersion in '80s rap that the Beastie Boys, who started out as a hardcore punk band, rediscovered their shared love of hard rock and metal.
"I used to hate bands like Led Zeppelin," Adam Horovitz admitted to me in 1995. "But when hip hop DJs started using those chunky riffs, we started checking out old metal shit again. '70s metal was definitely the coolest. AC/DC had some fly records, Sabbath had some cool shit. So had Kiss and Krokus."
