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Beastie Boys Photographer Dusts Off Decades-Old Photos For NYC Art Show: Gothamist

Last week Sunny Bak held the opening for her new show at the Ivy Brown Gallery on Hudson Street in Manhattan, about eight blocks from her old studio, where her friends the Beastie Boys filmed their video for “Fight For Your Right (To Party)” (add 876 Broadway to the walking tour). The show, Solid Gold Hits: A Tribute to the Beastie Boys, is a collaboration with Cey Adams, who did a lot of the band’s design and artwork, one of the first being the lettering that spelled out Beastie Boys on the album cover of the 1983 release Cooky Puss. The opening party for their show was held on May 3rd, and sadly, at 9 a.m. the next morning, Adam “MCA” Yauch succumbed to the cancer he’d been battling for three years.

Below Bak shares some of her photos and talks about the old days with the Beastie Boys… though when she first met them, they were called The Young and the Useless.

 
Photo by Sunny Bak

When and how did you meet the Beastie Boys? I met them in the early ’80s through my City As School intern Dave Scilken, who was in The Young and the Useless with Horovitz. Adam Horovitz, Dave and I had all gone to CAS (along with Jean Michel Basquiat). They were the guys who came along with sweet little Dave. Dave, who we lost too soon, another death I am not over…

 
Photo by Sunny Bak, with Cey Adams

Do you have any favorite memories from those early days? I have so many memories of the early days, hanging in my studio, Milkbar, Palladium, the street, Chung King studio sleeping on the floor till dawn, walking up from Chinatown with them, Rick Rubin asking me to shoot the guys at the hemisphere in Flushing forLicense To Ill, on the road in the tour bus in the drive thru liquor store outside Cleveland, mothers pulling their young daughters out of the venue because the boys had young dancing girls in go-go cages with hardly anything on, Adam on the huge speakers in Detroit, Dave as the “trim coordinator” [Editor’s note: Scilken got a shout out for this in the Beastie Boys’ “Lookin’ Down the Barrel of a Gun.”], the Beasties bbq-ing at my mom’s apartment in LA and the letter from the board complaining about the noise.

Rodney Dangerfield in the Sunset Marquis and the guys being so excited about it and calling him on the phone (the gatefold pic on Solid Gold Hits), so many softball games (that was just last week). So many years of memories…. No favorites they’re all my favorite.

 
Photo by Sunny Bak

How did the “Fight For Your Right…” video come about to be shot in your studio? The video was shot at my studio because I probably had the biggest place. It was low budget so all our friends were in it. I didn’t want a pie in my face so I wasn’t in it. I had whipped cream in my bathroom carpet forever though. And all my photos are in the video. Little known fact is my photos of supermodel Carol Alt, Village People cowboy Randy Jones, Eric Clapton, and ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev are all in the video.

The current show opened just prior to Adam’s death. Did you get to reminisce with him at all before he passed? Adam Yauch and Cey Adams did get to see all the photos before I selected them a few years back when I pulled them out after 25 years… It was a walk down memory lane. He did not get to see them blown up. I miss him.

 
Photo by Sunny Bak

Ivy Brown Gallery is located at 675 Hudson Street, #4N. The show runs through June 21st.