When I first saw the cover for License to Ill by the Beastie Boys, I thought it was the Beastie Boys on their own private jet. Three lads from New York, living their best lives at thirty thousand feet. Afterall, the logo on the tail confirmed it was their plane. They're totally on board that plane. They're flying somewhere loud and probably illegal. Good for them.

I was wrong. The plane isn't flying. It's crashing. And the logo on the tail isn't just a logo. And the tail number isn't just a tail number.

Rick Rubin, Led Zeppelin and a Private Jet

The idea for the cover came from producer Rick Rubin, after reading Hammer of the Gods, the wild biography of Led Zeppelin's rock excess. In the book there is a photograph of the Led Zeppelin private jet. Rubin said: "The Beastie Boys were just a bunch of little guys and I wanted us to have a Beastie Boys jet."

So the concept started as an act of pure ambition, three young men from New York who wanted to announce themselves to the world in the most outrageous way possible. If Led Zeppelin had a private jet, the Beastie Boys would have one too. Except theirs would be crashing into a mountain.

The full album cover, front to back, features an American Airlines Boeing 727 with a Beastie Boys logo on its tail, crashing head-on into the side of a mountain, the wreckage taking the shape of an extinguished cannabis joint.

The art director was Stephen Byram and the artwork was created by collage artist David Gambale, who worked under the name World B. Omés. Between them they took Rubin's concept and turned it into something that managed to be simultaneously funny, absurd, slightly dangerous and completely unforgettable.

The Logo and The Number

Here is where the cover stops being just a great image and becomes something closer to performance art.

The Beastie Boys logo on the tail of the plane was intentionally designed to evoke the Harley-Davidson logo. Three young Jewish kids from New York appropriating the most iconic symbol of American biker culture and slapping it on a crashing plane. Subtle it is not. Perfect it is.

And then there is the tail number.

The registration number on the tail reads 3MTA3. Held up to a mirror, it spells EAT ME.

Just sit with that for a moment. Someone, and it was deliberate, designed an album cover where the tail number of the crashing plane is a rude message that only reveals itself in a mirror. In 1986. On the fastest selling debut album in Columbia Records history.

According to Rick Rubin, if you look at the cover sideways it looks like something else entirely that we will leave to your imagination. The Beastie Boys were not, it is fair to say, aiming for subtlety.

The Name, The History and MCA

Licensed to Ill became the first rap LP to top the Billboard 200 chart, and was eventually certified Diamond by the RIAA for shipping over ten million copies in the United States.

On March 7, 1987, it topped the Billboard 200, the first hip-hop album ever to do so. It then stayed there for seven straight weeks. Three young men, a crashing plane, a mirror trick, a Harley-Davidson logo and something else that you can probably make out changed music forever.

It is worth pausing on that for a moment. In November 1986 the Billboard Top 10 was dominated by Bon Jovi, Huey Lewis, Lionel Richie and Madonna. Licensed to Ill crashed into that world (see what I did there?) and nothing was the same afterwards.

Adam Yauch (MCA) died in May 2012 from cancer. He was 47. In the week following his death, Licensed to Ill reached number one on Billboard's Catalog Albums chart. A whole new generation going back to find out where it all began. And finding that crashing plane with that naughty, little message hidden in the tail number.

What The Cover Actually Says

The cover of Licensed to Ill is not trying to be art. It is not trying to be profound. It is three young men announcing themselves to the world with maximum noise and minimum restraint, and hiding a joke in the tail number just to see who would notice.

It worked because it was completely honest about what the Beastie Boys were in 1986. Loud. Funny. In your face. And smarter than they wanted you to think.

I thought it was their private jet. I thought they were on board, flying somewhere great.

Until I opened it.