Sunday's Page 6

[Rich Cheney]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/pagesix/20040613/en_pagesix/licensetochill

[dee_bee_76]

Ah man, this is one of the best interviews I've read out of all the press blitz stuff so far, gotta cut and paste it for y'all:

LICENSE TO CHILL

Sun Jun 13, 4:18 AM ET

By RUSSELL SCOTT SMITH

IT'S hard to get a straight answer from one of the Beastie Boys, especially if you're wondering why it took them six years to record the follow-up to their hit 1998 CD, "Hello Nasty."

They'll tell you they were kidnapped by Sasquatch, the famous Bigfoot, and held prisoner for three years in his Pacific Northwest cave.


"Actually, we're not supposed to talk about Sasquatch anymore," Adam "Adrock" Horovitz told the Post.


"We were talking about him, but then we got a cease-and-desist letter from Sasquatch's lawyers. It embarrasses him, and it's getting him too much attention.


"There are paparazzi hanging around outside his cave, and they're trashing the forest, leaving their film canisters everywhere, which is totally unacceptable to him because he's an environmentalist."


OK, Adam. But why did fans really have to wait so long for Tuesday's release, "To the Five Boroughs"?


"Well," Horovitz replies, "mostly it was because of people in the front office of our label, who were trying to work out a deal to trade me for the lead singer of Creed.


"It was going to be a blockbuster trade, actually, involving me, the guy from Creed, the guy from Nickelback and Michael Bivins from Bell Biv DeVoe.


"But it got bogged down in contract disputes - it was a real mess."


No, really.


"All right." Horovitz finally says. "We've just been very busy.


"For example, I've been working really hard on my Scrabble game."


Oh, boy.


The truth behind the Beastie Boys' six-year hiatus is actually much simpler. They're busy with other things these days - like kids.


Long gone are the crazy mid-1980s, when the Beasties were hotel-trashing rock stars fighting for their right to party.


On their classic 1987 "Licensed to Ill" tour, Horovitz, Adam "MCA" Yauch and Michael "Mike D" Diamond had a stage show that included a giant inflatable penis and a stripper gyrating in a cage.

But now Yauch and Diamond are dads.

Yauch, who turns 40 in August, lives on the Upper West Side with his wife, Tibetan-American writer Dechen Wangdu, and their 6-year-old daughter, Tenzin.

Mike D, 38, lives downtown with his wife, film director Tamra Davis, and their 2-year-old son, Davis Diamond.

They have another baby due at the end of June, which explains why the Beasties won't start their much-anticipated "Boroughs" tour until August.

Both kids have cameos on the new CD: There's a Tenzin sample - "I'm going to tell on you," she says - and the boys rap about "Baby Davis getting older, can't take a rain check."

Horovitz, 37, is the only unmarried and childless Beastie. He was divorced from actress Ione Skye (news) in 1999, and now lives downtown with his girlfriend, Kathleen Hanna, the lead singer of the Seattle riot-grrrl band Bikini Kill.

"I'm Uncle Fart Joke," he says of his relationship to Tenzin.

"It's great. Anything that has to do with farts works for her, because she's 6. You don't even have to make a joke. You just say, 'fart.'"

The threesome still spend a lot of time together - "probably more than we should," says Horovitz.

They get together to play hoops and Scrabble and eat fondue - or at least they used to, "until everyone else got into fondue, and there was, like, the 'Time Out Guide to Fondue Parties.' So we didn't do it anymore," Horovitz says.

It's no surprise others caught on - Adrock, MCA and Mike D have been ahead of the curve since the mid-1980s.

They established themselves as the first great white rappers with "Licensed to Ill," and in 1989, made the pioneering "Paul's Boutique," a crazy quilt of funky samples and hilarious rhymes ("I got more stories than J.D. got Salinger / I hold the title, and you are the challenger") that influenced rockers and rappers from Beck to Kid Rock and OutKast.

More critically acclaimed discs followed: 1992's "Check Your Head," 1994's "Ill Communication" (with that famous "Sabotage" video directed by Spike Jonze (news)) and 1998's "Hello Nasty."

Then the hiatus began, and Diamond and Horovitz worked on side projects including "Country Mike's Greatest Hits," an improbable record of original folk tunes with titles such as "Don't Let the Air Out of My Tires" and "The Half-Wit."

Diamond, a longtime country fan, originally meant the disc as a jokey Christmas present for pals, but bootlegs got out, partly thanks to Yauch, who sneaked copies into the used record bins of various New York-area stores.

The group was originally planning to tour in the summer of 2000, then Diamond took a nasty spill of his bicycle at the corner of 11th Street and University Place.

"It was a serious pothole - one of those they put an orange cone over," Horovitz recalls. "Except, this one was so big, the cone had fallen in.

"Mike hit it, and he really fucked himself up. His collarbone was sticking out."

The group canceled its tour and didn't return in earnest to the studio - on the fifth floor of a rundown Canal Street office building - until summer 2001.

Then September 11 happened.

"I was home, in bed," Horovitz recalls. "My girlfriend woke me up and said, 'I think something's going on outside - something about a plane.'"

After the attack, he recalls, "nobody wanted to leave the city. We all wanted to stay and contribute."

The threesome organized a New Yorkers Against Violence benefit concerts at the Hammerstein Ballroom in October 2001.

The shows featured the Beasties and friends such as the Strokes, Cibo Matto, Mos Def, the Roots, Neil Young (news), Yoko Ono (news) and U2's Bono. They raised money for people the Beasties thought had been overlooked by charities after 9/11, such as undocumented citizens who were touched by the tragedy.

In between the songs, there were plenty of political speeches, almost all with a pro-New York but anti-Bush administration slant.

"Bush was gung-ho to start blasting people in the name of the United States," Horovitz says. "We didn't think it was right to answer violence with more violence."

The Beasties carried that political consciousness into the studio. Last March, they released an angry single, "In a World Gone Mad," that criticized the administration's Middle East policies and encouraged fans to vote.

Four of the 15 tracks on "To the Five Boroughs" have a similar edge. "We got a president we didn't elect," they rap on "It Takes Time to Build." "The Kyoto treaty he decided to neglect / Still the U.S. just wants to flex / Keep doin' that, we gonna break our necks."

But as the group kept recording, they moved away from hard political rhymes and got back to the fun-loving raps they're known for.

Over stripped-down, old-school hip-hop beats, they dis sucka-MCs ("Your rhymes are weak like a Canal Street watch / You're hearing me, and you're like, 'Oh my god! It's Sasquatch!'") and reminisce over old pop culture ("I bring the shit that's beyond bizarre / Like Miss Piggy, 'Who? Moi?'").

More than anything else, "To the Five Boroughs" is a love letter from the Beasties to their hometown. The cover is a pencil drawing of the Manhattan skyline, including the World Trade Center, and on "An Open Letter to NYC," Horovitz raps, "Dear New York, I know a lot has changed / Two towers down, but you're still in the game."

"It wasn't directly because of 9/11 that the album is so much about New York," Horovitz says. "But we're just really proud of our city, and 9/11 made us think about that."

[PhatPat]

good stuff. i like the part about yauch slipping copies of country mikes greatest hits into bins in record stores.

[Deep_Sea_Rain]

And Mike D having another kid in June....wow.

[DiscoJP1]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/pagesix/20040613/en_pagesix/licensetochill

thanks Rich! Damn good article, one of the best I've read in a while. I love the blockbuster trade talk, that's hilarious ish. Thanks again.

[YoungRemy]

Horovitz raps, "Dear New York, I know a lot has changed / Two towers down, but you're still in the game."



it was actually Diamond who says it.

can't wait to run into Yauch on the UWS

[smushface]

Word. I dig that the Beasties are so human. I mean, they don't fuck around sounding like bigshots or anything. They're the kind of people I would actually be friends with. Dig it.