dee_bee_76
06-08-2004, 08:57 AM
Back to old school
By SIMON HOUPT
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
New York — A large goldfish whizzes over the head of Adam Horovitz and smacks a window behind his chair, falling dead to the ledge. Another swiftly follows, barely missing his leg. Horovitz swivels in his chair and, plucking the first poisson from its perch, waves it menacingly at his Beastie Boys bandmate, Adam Yauch, who'd just launched the missiles over the transom of a large window dividing this office space from his own.
"Funny man," he grumbles, placing the middle finger of his left hand on his forehead and staring coldly at Yauch. "I'll just keep these over here," he shouts through the window, like a sullen, disappointed schoolteacher. He turns away from Yauch and mumbles, "I'll fight him right now. I could take him."
Those wondering why it has taken the Beasties six years to release their first studio album since Hello Nasty may now be getting a sense of what they've been up to. More than 20 years after founding the band as a jokey and jockish rap group devoted to frat-boy antics and silly party music, Horovitz, Yauch and third member Michael Diamond are still carrying on like kids who will hand in their homework whenever they damn well please.
This new crib of theirs, a sprawl of old-fashioned offices five storeys above Canal Street that looks like the set of Barney Miller, is across the hall from their long-time recording studio. It has a contemporary rumpus room aesthetic. One room, set up for journalists to hear the new disc on headphones plugged into an eMac computer, features special chairs implanted with an ass-rattling mechanism that thumps with the bass levels of the music. A sleek orange espresso machine hums by a far wall. A child's tricycle stands at the ready.
Horovitz, sporting a bright yellow T-shirt and electric blue sneakers from Finland, surveys the years since the last album. "Not much has changed," he declares. "I guess I'm pretty the same as I was six, seven years ago."
But there are a few essential differences. For starters, Yauch's hair is now silvery, and it doesn't look like the result of a dye job. Perhaps the pressures of being mini-moguls got to them: A few years ago the Beasties shuttered Grand Royal, a company they'd formed in the early nineties to expand their influence into fashion, publishing and recording ventures. That same year, their hometown was attacked only a few blocks from this downtown studio space. Then George W. Bush began his march across the world.
To the 5 Boroughs, the Beasties' album which will drop in stores next Tuesday, pays tribute to New York while offering harsh words for cynical politicians who say they're acting on behalf of the victims of Sept. 11, 2001.
"Maybe it's time that we impeach Tex and the military muscle that he wants to flex," they chant in the cut It Takes Time to Build. "By the time Bush is done, what will be left? Selling votes like E-pills at the discothèque. Environmental destruction and the national debt. But plenty of dollars left in the fat war chest."
Strong words, but the Beasties don't care if they're attacked as the male equivalent of the Dixie Chicks. "We played last year at this festival in California," Horovitz recalls, "and Yauch was saying something about Bush, and a bunch of kids cheered for what he was saying, and a few kids were booing him. But what are you gonna do?" He shrugs: That's all.
For a member of a band that prides itself on tongue-twisting verbosity -- there are more than 6,000 words in the album's 15 tracks, with dizzying strings of pop culture references sprinkled among the social indictments -- Horovitz seems oddly flat. Is he distracted by Yauch's antics or just not in the mood to talk? He comes off like a fellow who throws all of his energy and ideas into making an album, with nothing left over afterward.
So, about that critique of the U.S. administration? "It just seems like things are pretty harsh right now in the world," he says, then catches himself, apparently sensitive to the fact that his words may reflect a blindness to the eternal troubles of the world outside America long before Sept. 11. "Not that they haven't always been. It just seems scary right now, scarier than it has in a long time."
He explains that 1992's offering, Check Your Head, which the Beasties made while they were living in Los Angeles, came from a similar urge to challenge official authority.
"That was done during the other Bush's Gulf War and we were thinking a lot about that, but it didn't really come across necessarily on the record," Horovitz explains of the difference between the two discs. "I mean, for me, probably because I know I just smoked so much weed I just kind of phased out a bit. And now it just seems so much closer."
Horovitz says he doesn't smoke so much weed any more, but he's vague about exactly when that lifelong habit ceased.
One thing which certainly hasn't changed is their method of creating music. Songs usually originate with a sample or snatch of music that one of them wrote while noodling at home, but once they begin writing together everything that follows is collaborative.
"The three of us have to do everything together. One person can't be like: Here's the thing, here's how it goes. So you have to have a whole debate about this sentence and then this drum roll," Horovitz explains, rolling his eyes. "It's a pain in the ass."
They are both blessed and cursed by the fact that they have their own recording studio, which means no one can tell them when to stop working. Still, To the 5 Boroughs was only finished when their record company gently suggested a release date to them. If it was up to the Beasties, they would have tinkered forever.
The early word suggests they have no need to worry about having been away for all that time. The first single, a buzzing, head-bobbing call to musical arms called Ch-Check it Out, is already near the top of the Billboard charts. And Horovitz says he's not concerned about people remembering the Beastie Boys. Pop music bands may see their shelf lives evaporate because of short attention spans among music buyers, but in rap music, it has always been thus.
"You can't worry if you're going to be relevant or not, because six months goes by and you're not relevant any more. That's just how rap is," Horovitz explains. "If you're an old rapper you just gotta accept that people are going to like you or they're not. People don't get that nostalgic."
By SIMON HOUPT
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
New York — A large goldfish whizzes over the head of Adam Horovitz and smacks a window behind his chair, falling dead to the ledge. Another swiftly follows, barely missing his leg. Horovitz swivels in his chair and, plucking the first poisson from its perch, waves it menacingly at his Beastie Boys bandmate, Adam Yauch, who'd just launched the missiles over the transom of a large window dividing this office space from his own.
"Funny man," he grumbles, placing the middle finger of his left hand on his forehead and staring coldly at Yauch. "I'll just keep these over here," he shouts through the window, like a sullen, disappointed schoolteacher. He turns away from Yauch and mumbles, "I'll fight him right now. I could take him."
Those wondering why it has taken the Beasties six years to release their first studio album since Hello Nasty may now be getting a sense of what they've been up to. More than 20 years after founding the band as a jokey and jockish rap group devoted to frat-boy antics and silly party music, Horovitz, Yauch and third member Michael Diamond are still carrying on like kids who will hand in their homework whenever they damn well please.
This new crib of theirs, a sprawl of old-fashioned offices five storeys above Canal Street that looks like the set of Barney Miller, is across the hall from their long-time recording studio. It has a contemporary rumpus room aesthetic. One room, set up for journalists to hear the new disc on headphones plugged into an eMac computer, features special chairs implanted with an ass-rattling mechanism that thumps with the bass levels of the music. A sleek orange espresso machine hums by a far wall. A child's tricycle stands at the ready.
Horovitz, sporting a bright yellow T-shirt and electric blue sneakers from Finland, surveys the years since the last album. "Not much has changed," he declares. "I guess I'm pretty the same as I was six, seven years ago."
But there are a few essential differences. For starters, Yauch's hair is now silvery, and it doesn't look like the result of a dye job. Perhaps the pressures of being mini-moguls got to them: A few years ago the Beasties shuttered Grand Royal, a company they'd formed in the early nineties to expand their influence into fashion, publishing and recording ventures. That same year, their hometown was attacked only a few blocks from this downtown studio space. Then George W. Bush began his march across the world.
To the 5 Boroughs, the Beasties' album which will drop in stores next Tuesday, pays tribute to New York while offering harsh words for cynical politicians who say they're acting on behalf of the victims of Sept. 11, 2001.
"Maybe it's time that we impeach Tex and the military muscle that he wants to flex," they chant in the cut It Takes Time to Build. "By the time Bush is done, what will be left? Selling votes like E-pills at the discothèque. Environmental destruction and the national debt. But plenty of dollars left in the fat war chest."
Strong words, but the Beasties don't care if they're attacked as the male equivalent of the Dixie Chicks. "We played last year at this festival in California," Horovitz recalls, "and Yauch was saying something about Bush, and a bunch of kids cheered for what he was saying, and a few kids were booing him. But what are you gonna do?" He shrugs: That's all.
For a member of a band that prides itself on tongue-twisting verbosity -- there are more than 6,000 words in the album's 15 tracks, with dizzying strings of pop culture references sprinkled among the social indictments -- Horovitz seems oddly flat. Is he distracted by Yauch's antics or just not in the mood to talk? He comes off like a fellow who throws all of his energy and ideas into making an album, with nothing left over afterward.
So, about that critique of the U.S. administration? "It just seems like things are pretty harsh right now in the world," he says, then catches himself, apparently sensitive to the fact that his words may reflect a blindness to the eternal troubles of the world outside America long before Sept. 11. "Not that they haven't always been. It just seems scary right now, scarier than it has in a long time."
He explains that 1992's offering, Check Your Head, which the Beasties made while they were living in Los Angeles, came from a similar urge to challenge official authority.
"That was done during the other Bush's Gulf War and we were thinking a lot about that, but it didn't really come across necessarily on the record," Horovitz explains of the difference between the two discs. "I mean, for me, probably because I know I just smoked so much weed I just kind of phased out a bit. And now it just seems so much closer."
Horovitz says he doesn't smoke so much weed any more, but he's vague about exactly when that lifelong habit ceased.
One thing which certainly hasn't changed is their method of creating music. Songs usually originate with a sample or snatch of music that one of them wrote while noodling at home, but once they begin writing together everything that follows is collaborative.
"The three of us have to do everything together. One person can't be like: Here's the thing, here's how it goes. So you have to have a whole debate about this sentence and then this drum roll," Horovitz explains, rolling his eyes. "It's a pain in the ass."
They are both blessed and cursed by the fact that they have their own recording studio, which means no one can tell them when to stop working. Still, To the 5 Boroughs was only finished when their record company gently suggested a release date to them. If it was up to the Beasties, they would have tinkered forever.
The early word suggests they have no need to worry about having been away for all that time. The first single, a buzzing, head-bobbing call to musical arms called Ch-Check it Out, is already near the top of the Billboard charts. And Horovitz says he's not concerned about people remembering the Beastie Boys. Pop music bands may see their shelf lives evaporate because of short attention spans among music buyers, but in rap music, it has always been thus.
"You can't worry if you're going to be relevant or not, because six months goes by and you're not relevant any more. That's just how rap is," Horovitz explains. "If you're an old rapper you just gotta accept that people are going to like you or they're not. People don't get that nostalgic."