The long-gestating Beastie Boys memoir is expected to be released this year. In an interview with Matt Wilkinson on Beats 1 (via Pitchfork), Mike D announced that the as-yet untitled tome will come out “in the fall of this year.”
The group’s surviving members, Mike D and Ad-Rock, have been working on the memoir since 2013; it was originally slated to be released in 2015. However, Mike D revealed that they’re still working on the book and refining it. “We’re actually going to finish it, and it’s going to come out finally,” he said. “Like many things we embark on, there are many false starts and, honestly, directions we went in that we realized were not the directions we should be going in, but it’s gonna be coming out in the fall of this year.”
Back in 2013, their Random House imprint publisher Spiegel & Grau said the pair were “interested in challenging the form and making the book a multidimensional experience. There is a kaleidoscopic frame of reference, and it asks a reader to keep up.”
In the new interview, Mike D did not get too specific on the direction the book has taken, but he did emphasize the importance of showcasing the time period and setting surrounding their formation. “To tell our story, we have to give the cultural history of where we came from,” he explained. “So New York City in the Eighties, you had all this incredible, exciting music, art, film. All of that sort of has to converge to be able to explain. We just had the good fortune of being around all of it, so I think that’s Number One.”
In terms of their writing approach, Mike D said it would not be like a typical music biography. “We’re not writers in a book sense,” he said.
He also alluded to using different techniques to convey their story. “I think a lot of times when I read a band book or I watch a music documentary, maybe I’m just kind of ADD, I get a little bored,” he confessed. “But actually, I don’t think they do the subject matter justice because it’s kinda surreal what happens in bands’ lives, so you kind of have to use all dimensions to tell the story more accurately.”
“I can say pretty confidently, it will be unlike any other music book,” Mike D concluded.
