Day After Day #77: Gratitude

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Gratitude (1992)

It's interesting to watch artists grow and evolve. When the Beastie Boys first hit mainstream prominence in 1986 with Licensed to Ill, their image was of frat boy smartasses spraying beer and grabbing asses. In reality, the group had come out of the New York hardcore punk scene, opening shows for Bad Brains, the Dead Kennedys, the Misfits and Reagan Youth. 

The group did its first hip hop track, "Cookie Puss," in 1983 and began working rap into its act. Original drummer Kate Schellenbach (who later helped found Luscious Jackson) was let go as the Beasties developed their rap image, something Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz later said he regretted. After working with Rick Rubin, the band was signed to Rubin's Def Jam label and prepared that first album, which blew up with the success of "Fight for Your Right to Party." They combined big rock riffs with rap, included plenty of samples and a lot of New York attitude and became a huge hit. Opening for Madonna on The Virgin tour brought the Beasties to a much wider audience.

Their second album, the underrated Paul's Boutique, came out in 1989 and was more experimental than their debut. As a result, it didn't sell as well, but in retrospect is considered a pivotal and essential work. For the third album, the Beasties decided to play their instruments again, with Horovitz on guitar, Adam "MCA" Yauch on bass and Mike "D" Diamond on drums. There was still plenty of hip hop, but the band also incorporated punk and funk elements with the help of keyboardist Money Mark.

By '92, the music scene was getting a little less segmented, with audiences embracing Nirvana and Soundgarden as much as they did hip hop artists like Public Enemy and Ice Cube. The success of Lollapalooza, which included Ice-T and Cube in its first few iterations, also spoke to that. And Check Your Head, with its feet firmly planted in both worlds, became a crossover hit. The Beasties brought Rollins Band and Cypress Hill on the Check Your Head tour, further cementing that punk-hip hop cross-pollination. 

The album blew up right away with hip-hop singles like "Pass the Mic," "So What'cha Want" and "Jimmy James," but next single, "Gratitude," spoke to rock fans directly. Leading off with a fuzz bass riff from MCA, Ad-Rock launches in sounding badass but talking about something really meaningful: appreciating what you have while you have it.

"Good times gone, and you missed them/What's gone wrong in your system?/Things they bounce like a Spaulding/What'd you think, did you miss your calling?/It's so free, this kind of feeling/It's like life, it's so appealing/When you've got so much to say it's called gratitude/And that's right."

Ad-Rock then rips into a hot guitar solo, heavy on the wah wah.

"Good times gone, but you feed it/Hate's grown strong, you feel you need it/Just one thing, do you know you?/What you think, that the world owes you?/What's gonna set you free?/Look inside and you'll see/When you've got so much to say it's called gratitude/And that's right."

The video for this song has the Boys playing in the middle of a New Zealand desert, using Pink Floyd's vintage amps. I remember seeing this and, not knowing much about their punk background, being impressed at their musicianship. I think a lot of rock fans who may have already liked them grew to be that much more appreciative of their skills. They weren't just Bud-swilling bozos riding giant inflatable microphones that looked like phalluses around. Hell, even Beavis and Butt-head loved the song.

The Beasties followed this album up with an even bigger record, 1994's Ill Communication. The song and video for "Sabotage" were monster hits and the group became one of the biggest in music. They released four more albums, the last being Hot Sauce Committee, Part 2 in 2011.

In July 2009, Yauch announced doctors had found a cancerous tumor in his parotid gland and a lymph node. When the Beasties were inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame in 2012, Yauch wasn't able to make it because he had been admitted to the hospital. A few weeks later, he died from cancer at the age of 47. Horovitz and Diamond have kept the band's memory alive with a book and documentary. It's called gratitude, and that's right.