THE VIDEO Beastie Boys, "No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn," Licensed to Ill 1987, Def Jam
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SAMPLE LYRIC "No sleep 'til / Brook-lynnnnn / No sleep 'til / Brook-lynnnnn / No! Sleep! 'Til Brooklyn! / (Brook-lynnnnnnnnnnnn!)"
THE VERDICT Yes, I'm switching the site to an all rap-rock theme, and starting off strong with the Beastie Boys. Of course, things will rapidly go downhill after this, what with Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock, Linkin Park if they count, and whoever else is foolhardy enough to try blending rock and rap without the assistance of Rick Rubin. Sure all my posts will be scathingly negative, but that shouldn't get too repetitive, right?
Okay, okay. April Fools! Obviously I would never change the format of this blog. But in the spirit of the first of April, I decided to do something a bit different. Obviously, "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" is not a heavy metal video. It is, however, a pretty decent parody of one! So in honor of all this April Foolery, here we are.
I've heard various of the Beastie Boys comment that this video was inspired by situations they would actually come across as a bunch of white guys trying to play club gigs. In the video, they show up at a club and tell the manager they're the band. When he asks where their instruments are, Ad-Rock produces a record, which the manager promptly breaks over his head. They leave, but a few minutes later, return dressed as a heavy metal band (with exaggerated British and Californian accents) and are promptly ushered onstage.
Their fake metal costumes are pretty good. MCA is wearing a giant Vince Neil-looking blonde wig, though the rest of his outfit is more Tommy. Ad-Rock is more or less dressed as Theatre of Pain-era Nikki Sixx, with a Nikki-style wig, red and black leather pants, and a black and white zebra-striped fringed jacket. Mike D wins though. In addition to a pouffy Twisted Sister-style wig, he's straight up wearing a knight's armor for a very Armored Saint kind of look. He quickly collapses under its weight.
A security guard fails to hold back the four or so female fans (dressed in black, animal prints, and pink as per heavy metal video regulations circa 1987), and they run onstage and grab, among other things, Ad-Rock's wig. They then promptly disrobe all of the Boys, leading to the transition out of their metal outfits. (An especially crafty gal uses a can opener on Mike D -- helpful hint for all you Armored Saint and Grim Reaper fans out there.) The women run off stage with the clothes -- probably happy that since it's 1987, it's all stuff they can wear -- and the Beasties continue rhyming onstage in their underwear. Soon enough though, they've got their clothes on. This infuriates the club owner.
In a sequence that they surely meant to be symbolic, Ad-rock takes an ax to their stack of Marshall amps, Mike D smashes a guitar, and late MCA machine guns the amps for good measure. Yes, we've broken away from the conventions of rock. But have we? 'Cause next thing you know, a blonde who looks and dances very much like the dancing gal from Danzig's "Mother" shows up, dancing around in a silver bra and a very bizarre sort of high-waisted, sumo wrestling-looking belt thing that has a long, silver train.
Because yes -- if you're a youngster and thus only know the Beastie Boys in their "I want to say a little something that's long overdue / the disrespect of women has got to be through" phase of their careers, yeah, they were not always like this. The Licensed to Ill tour not only featured dancers such as this one (often caged, no less!) but also in case that was too subtle, a giant, veiny, 6-foot-tall inflatable penis right in the middle of the stage. Really. Really.
Can you imagine what all the little Madonna wannabes out there in the audience thought of that one? Oh yeah, because on this tour, they were opening for Madonna. Any doubts about whether the Beastie Boys have always been cuddly, vegan, woman-loving, Buddhists can be quickly dispelled by the video for "She's On It" (in which, by the way, we actually get to see Rick Rubin -- he's the guy with the beard who keeps giving them all their "missions" on the chalkboard).
Anyway, back to this video. The club owner/manager guy and some heavies come onstage to drag off the Boys. They have a long altercation that ends in the Boys reclaiming the stage. The next bits are mostly just them rapping onstage and long shots of the dancing girl, but I would be remiss not to mention the many excellent crowd shots. Whoever costumed the extras for this video, well done. It's definitely a more diverse crowd than you'd see at a metal show (I don't just mean racially -- they've improbably made the crowd an exact 50-50 of men and women), but it totally works. Also since it's the Beastie Boys, silly things happen. Mike D tosses a mic offstage and a woman catches it in her mouth, and at one point we see an Orthodox Jew headbanging. Another headbanger bangs his head right off.
Toward the end, this song actually has a guitar solo. At first, it's being played by a guy in a gorilla suit. But next thing we know -- boom! -- that guy gets pushed aside by the guy actually playing guitar on this track -- Kerry King from Slayer!!!!!! I've heard Kerry say they actually wanted him to do sillier stuff in this video (I think including either having the Boys blow him up or having the solo somehow cause him to spontaneously combust), but he wasn't down for that. Nonetheless, he does show up, and we do get to see him play a bit. Slayerrrrr!
The video ends with the Boys breaking into the club owner's safe and stealing bags full of money. Though this pleases them greatly, they are displeased that their exotic dancer leaves with the guy in the gorilla suit.
For me, this track stands up on its own, but let me also mention the many ways that it is a pretty legit metal track. The title plays off a Motorhead album (No Sleep 'til Hammersmith), and the guitar interpolation is a modified version of "TNT" by AC/DC. And lest we forget who's playing that guitar -- it's freakin' Kerry King from Slayer!!
See here's the thing I was getting at above with my little rant about Fred Durst et al. It's not impossible to do the whole rock and rap thing right. But in order for this to happen, you really need Rick Rubin to produce. He cut his teeth with Run-DMC and brokered the version of "Walk This Way" with Aerosmith. And at more or less the same time that he produced Licensed to Ill, Rubin also produced Reign in Blood.
And you can really hear that metal influence in a lot of what he does. I often feel like Licensed to Ill is his greatest statement -- it's got lots of really heavy beats in it (Led Zeppelin's "The Ocean" anyone? How about "When the Levee Breaks"?). Anyone familiar with the Less Than Zero soundtrack (which I highly recommend, allmusic doesn't know what it's talking about) knows that there Rubin puts together a bunch of great tastes that taste great together -- it's got Poison (covering KISS), Anthrax (covering Public Enemy), LL Cool J's best song ever, Slayer (covering Iron Butterfly), the Bangles (covering Simon & Garfunkel), etc. You can still hear this in the hip-hop he produces today though -- just listen to that hard and heavy beat in Jay-Z's "99 Problems."
I'm telling you, Rick Rubin, baby. He might have a weirdo Zakk Wylde beard, but I'm never going to stop with this. Though I am going to stop with the rap-rock. Don't worry, next week will be April Serious, and we'll be back to your regularly scheduled heavy metal videos.
P.S.: Come on, if you're reading this, don't even pretend you don't get the title reference.