You just have to admire the Beastie Boys, when other bands are ready to jump on any kind of endorsement and get the cash – as Beyonce did it for Pepsi, Jay Z for Samsung, 50 cent for Vitamin Water, Justin Bieber for a nail polish and so many others in the past – the rappers from New York still refuse to play the game. Last year, they sued the company GoldieBlox for using their song ‘Girls’ in a video promoting their girl-empowering toys. While they were supporting the message, the Beastie Boys didn’t want to betray the memory of one of them, Adam Yauch, who died two years ago and had always been against the use of their material in commercials or ads. At the time, they had released an open letter declaring:
‘As creative as it is, make no mistake, your video is an advertisement that is designed to sell a product, and long ago we made a conscious decision not to permit our music and/or name to be used in product ads.’
GoldieBox agreed to pay $1million, and the money was given to a charity supporting science, technology, engineering and/or math education for girls! Isn’t it fantastic? This is what I call having some ethics.
But they have also another lawsuit against Monster Energy Drinks which used some of their songs in a snowboarding video titled ‘Ruckus in the Rockies’ back in 2012. The trial went finally to court this past week, and we learnt that Adam Horovitz and Michael Diamond are suing the Monster drink company for more than $2 million! At the top of this, the NY Daily News reports that, during his testimony, Mike D revealed the band refused another big pay-off: the use of their song ‘Sabotage’ for the Arnold Schwarzenegger’s flick of the same name. ‘It felt like too much of an endorsement of the movie’, said Diamond, ‘we weren’t fans of Mr. Schwarzenegger’s recent . . . work’.
The movie bombed anyway, I don’t even remember hearing about it, and although Celebrity Networth says that each of the three Beasties is worth $75 million, they won’t make more money off the Beastie Boys as Mike declared ‘We have not been able to tour since MC died. We can’t make new music.’ When MCA died, Diamond and Horovitz made it clear they would never put out new BB music without him.
How many people respect their friend’s memory and last wishes as they do? Probably very few, so kudos to the Beastie Boys.
