Many musicians and others have revealed their grief over this week’s loss of Beastie Boys founding member Adam “MCA” Yauch. The rapper-musician-filmmaker passed away Friday after a long battle with cancer.
At L.A.’s Hollywood Bowl show last night, British pop hitmakers Coldplay paid musical tribute to Yauch.
In the below video, frontman Chris Martin sits at a colorful piano and reinterprets “(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party),” the Beasties’ first major hit from their No. 1 debut album “Licensed to Ill” (1986).
Watch the performance here:
In his low tenor, Martin croons such legendary lines like “Livin’ at home is such a drag/now your mom threw away your best porno mag,” while the rest of the band slowly joins in in a quietly epic Coldpay way. Martin closes the tune by repeating the line “Aw mom, you’re just jealous — it’s the Beastie Boys” twice, before turning it into “Sending all our love to the Beastie Boys.”
It’s simultaneously amusing and touching to hear the incessantly catchy, ironically bonehead rap-rock party jam turned into a slow, wistful piano ballad. Martin, 35, was probably 10 or so when the song ruled the radio (and MTV) on both sides of the Atlantic, and it’s not hard to imagine that he knew every word by heart back then — and still knows them now.
The video is actually quite touching. And the clip is pro-shot, so the quality is A-OK.
What do you think of Coldplay’s tribute?