Mike D: ‘After Yauch died I couldn’t make music. I’d open a computer file and just feel sadness’

‘It’s funny how far a joke will get you,” Michael Diamond grins. This time 40 years ago, the New York rapper known as Mike D was working with schoolfriends Adam “MCA” Yauch and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz on Licensed to Ill, their 1986 debut album as the Beastie Boys. The “joke” in question is that record’s cartoonish send-up of frat-bro culture, set to fusions of hard rock riffs and hip-hop beats. As for how far it got them: destinations included global stardom, a page in the history books with rap’s first US chart-topping album, and the crosshairs of British tabloids as they roused a generation to “fight for your right to party”. The Beastie Boys would evolve into one of the most musically and socially progressive acts of their generation, with a run of boundary-pushing albums touching on politics and spirituality until they disbanded in 2012 after Yauch’s death from cancer. Diamond has since focused his creative energies on producing records for Soft Play and the Hives, while his sons, Skyler and Davis, took up performing as musicians themselves with the indie pop duo Very Nice Person. When you’re 19, you’re just spewing out whatever, like: ‘This is going to be hilarious’ Sitting in the lounge of his London hotel, happily munching cereal between questions, the wiry, thoughtful 60-year-old seems content in this quieter chapter of his career. But after jamming with his sons reignited his passion for writing, he is returning to the mic with his dizzyingly creative debut solo album Thank You. The Beastie Boys formed in New York City in 1981; all three members hailed from artsy, middle-class backgrounds – Diamond’s father was an art dealer, and his mother an interior decorator. The group quickly decided “we had to have our own personas that were distinct and separate”, and took inspiration from teen comedies such as 1979’s Meatballs. The results were the beer-crushing, school-hating louts heard on Licensed to Ill. “When you’re 19,” Diamond says, …