SameOldShawn: It kind of seemed like, in a way -- and you'd certainly be in a position to know -- that whole album and persona was kind of a put-on that became real as they became bigger stars

Bill Adler: You know what? It's a little subtler than that, and it's really something that the Beasties have struggled with to this day. What it comes down to is this: people underestimate Rick Rubin's influence on the Beastie Boys, in terms not only of the records they made, but in terms also of their personae as performers, and the entire kind of thrust, so to speak, of what they did

Rick's aesthetic at the time was, he was a fan of Abbott & Costello, the slapstick comedians. He's a fan of professional wrestling, which is also very cartoonish

I'll say this -- the Beastie Boys came to him with this name, "The Beastie Boys," which is kind of perfect for what Rick envisioned for them. And they also came to him -- they had their bad boy inclinations, their humorous inclinations. But Rick is somebody who amped up all of that, and it turned out to be very, very potent, very attractive. They made a great album together, and then they went out, and they had a year...1987 for the Beastie Boys was like a year out of the Beatles' history, before they retired. The Beastie Boys were the biggest thing in pop music during that year, and it damn near broke the band up