solesaurust
07-21-2005, 05:32 PM
I loved this interview when I read it, so I traslated it for you. PLEASE, FORGIVE MY ENGLISH!!!!!
It is taken from a magazine for musicians from Argentina, called "EL MUSIQUERO". Please, remember that it's from 1994, so certain things will not appear as new to you now as it was at that time. Enjoy it!
"It looks like at last they will land (on Argentina) on april, the guys who put rap on radios around the world, as well as on the feet and hearts of people who identified with their reckless attitude and the power of their explosive combination of rap rhymes with hard rock riffs, in ther historical debut with "Licensed to Ill". But, sine the Beasties are not guys who would sleep above their achievments, after they pulled a second album that in ist time was a comercial failure - "Paul's Boutique" - and now it has been reedited with all the honors and it's considered the "Sgt. Pepper's of rap", they were reborn comrecially speaking with "Check your head" (1992). On that album, they returned to their instruments, assumed a more responsable posture on their lyrics, and they extended the musical envelope further including jazz, funk and latin music.
Their most recent album - and also most succesful - "Ill Comunication", continues and keeps on digging this line, with th almost unknown fact that the Beasties are a rap group with a rock band (guitar, bass, drums, keyboards and percussion) formation.
While we wait to see how will all this turn out on a live stage, here we give you this juicy interview with guitar player Adam "Ad Rock" Horovitz and bass player Adam "MCA" Yauch, where, with their irreverent characteristic humor, they go over their history, musical influence, working habits, instruments, the "Ill Comunication" album, their own record label "Grand Royal", their hardcore past, and even their particular wardrobe...
Now that rap is one of the musical styles with the biggest worlwide success - the most selled on USA - you might think that the Beastie Boys, Ad Rock and MCA, would be happy just collecting what they gained from hip hop success, only passing their mics, and writing more party hymns like "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" or "Fight for your Right". Nevertherless, most of the songs from their last album, "Ill Comunication", find both Adams momentarly leaving the plates and assuming the formation of an authentic rock group, taking charge of guitar and bass (third Beastie, Mike D, takes care of drums), a direction that they have already started on "Check your head". Not only that, but Ill Comunication presents a wise fusion of rock and rap with jazz and latin rhythm, which includes funk, hardcore, punk and Santana style riffs.
Following this line of reasoning, you might wonder how come that Adam Horovitz and yauch have suddenly learned to play their instruments so well. But actually, Ad Rock played guitar since always, and MCA is a consummated bass player. Even though the Beastie Boys are mainly known for taking rap music into a massive audience concience (and to the top of the charts), with their debud album "Lincesed to Ill", the band started their existence playing hardcore punk, that ultra heavy and ultra fast music, ejemplified by groups like Minor Threat and Black Flag.
They only started rapping to break the monotony that meant playing one "mosh" song after another. When the rap parto of their show started to become popular, Horovitz and Yauch put away their instruments and they went on tour with Madonna.
Now that the Beasites are not a support band anymore, the guitar, the bass and the drums have become again a big part of their shows, the same way that their "first loves" have: hardcore and punk.
"It's really a New York thing", says Yauch. "When we were growing up, clubs not only put rap, or punk, or funk. You went to a place to listen to a hardcore band, and on the intermissions, they put James Brown". So, unlike many of the new bands that just now are "discovering" the punk-funk-rap conexion, the Beastie Boys can go to their early new yorker roots to take an eclectic inspiration. They can follow a hardcore song with a hip hop theme, and they play it over a funky rhythm, which makes of "Ill Comunication" something fresh and ageless. Almost as it were a "mix tape", those cassettes that you make with your favourite songs for your own delight and your friend's
"When you start to think about it, hardcore and hip hop are not really that different", says Horovitz. "The attitude is the same, and it's an attitude that has a lot to do with New York"
- A lot of fans are going to be surprised to know that your first instruments weren't microphones and plates, but guitars and basses.
MCA: Yes. I always wanted a bass when I was a kid, even though at first I could't have it. My parents were too tired of buying me things that ended piled up on the closet. I knew this girl who had a bass, and I went to her place to play it. My parents eventually rented me one under the condition that if I played it, I could keep it.
AD ROCK: When I turned twelve, my mother and her friends gave me a guitar and a little equipment to practice. I talked about playing guitar all the time; I heard a lot of Kiss, and I wanted to be Ace (Frehley, guitar player of the original Kiss formation). I thought that "Shock Me" the song sang it by Ace, it was the best; also "Making love". So, my mother and her friends bought me a HONDO II PROFESSIONAL.
MCA: And it's the same guitar that he plays nowadays (laughs). He plays it in the new album.
AD ROCK: Well, I still play HONDO II PROFESSIONAL, but last year I grabed my original guitar, the only guitar that I've ever had, the one that my mother gave me, and I smashed it.
- Why?
AD ROCK: It was that perfect moment. The last show on t he "Check Your Head Tour" was in Italy, and they told us that it would be a huge festival with 40.000 guys. But when we showed up, there were only a bunch of old people. It turned out it was a comunist festival! (laughs).
MCA: The audience was made of maybe 100 young people and a lot of old ladies and children.
AD ROCK: But the show was great. It was the best and the worst performance we ever made. Now I have a HONDOS collection.
- (to Horovitz) A few people know that you weren't on the original Beastie Boys formation, by the time you both made hardcore.
MCA: No, he wasn't. He was on a band called "The Young and the Useless", that used to be our support band very often. When our guitar player left, Ad Rock joined the group.
- What happened with "The Young and the Useless".
AD ROCK: We split up in a bad way. The drumer ended up going to a military school from New Jersey.
- What kind of music were you hearing at that time?
AD ROCK: Black Flag, Minor Threat...
MCA: ... and a lot of Bad Brains. Darryl Jenifer (the Bad Brains bass player), was my favourite. He's the musician that influenced me the most. Even Though the things that I play now are quite different, if you hear our hardcore stuff, I think you can detect his influence. And on knowledge speaking, I deffinetly go to see the Bad Brains every time the play. I've seen them like 50 times. I stay up on something to get a good view of Jenifer's hands, and I love it. He's an incredible bass player.
- How did the Beastie Boys made the jump from hardcore to rap?
MCA: When we were around 14 or 15 - Ad Rock was 12 or 13 -, we hand around a lot on clubs and we saw punk bands like Stimulator and Bad Brains. But the clubs not only put hardcore records, they also put James Brown and hip hop. We were very into that, so we just started fooling around and making rhymes.
AD ROCK: It was around that time also that a lot of the main rap performers came downtown to play. We got ourselves into rap the very same way we got into hardcore: we heard a lot of punk rock and then we started playing it. After that, we started hearing rap music, so we started playing it, too.
- How were those shows?
AD ROCK: When we made a show, around the first 15 minutes, it was all hardcore, and then Rick Rubin (their original DJ, from the Def Jam record label, and famous producer), got up and we started with rap. Eventualy, we did all rap. But it was a smooth transition for us. Half of our shows were rap, anyway.
- What rappers were influencing you at that time?
AD ROCK: Funky Four Plus One, Jimmy Spitzer, Grandmaster Flash, Crash Crew...
- Was it hard for you to quite hardcore, since it was the reason you started a band in the first place?
MCA: Hardcore is really the main thing for me, because it is pure expresssion. It's not about technicality at all, it's a basic level, a pure one, that anyone can do. I mean, if you fool around with a guitar for a few weeks, you can achieve certain technique that'd be enough to express yourselfe with hardcore.
AD ROCK: It's the same thing with hip hop. Get a basic rhythm and let it go.
MCA: And your individuality will come up. Hip hop and hardcore aren't as hard as, for instance, classical music, where you have to study your whole life, just to be able to get a little bit close. You can study classical music your entire life and still not even get close (laughs). That's insane. It's not music to me, even though I admite it's so for some people.
AD ROCK: When you start to think about it, hardcore and hip hop are not really that different. On hardcore, you have the verses and the chorus. On a rap song, it's kind of the same thing. The attitude is the same. Urban attitude. It comes from New York. In New York, you have punk and you have rap.
MCA: It's the same attitude, the same power.
- It'd appear that the rap scene is the one that took off.
MCA: Not really... you go to some places and all the kids hear is hardcore. I go to house parties all the time whee hardocre bands play. And it's like I say, "shit, I was doing the very excact same thing twelve years ago. I can't believe that this's still going on.
- Is the band directly commited to the Grand Royal record label?
AD ROCK: Very commited. There's only three numbers on the label, and I'm on two of them. Mike's the president, and I work on the artists and repertories section. MCA's the treasurer...
MCA: Actually, I'm in charge of a collateral thing. Is similar to that, but is a little less meaningful...
AD ROCK: We always thought it would be great to have our own record label. So we were our first band, then some friends gave us a tape and that's Luscious Jackson. Then we got a 45 from a band that I'm in, called DFL. Hurricane, our DJ, has a record coming out, and that's all we have so far (laughs). We really need to find more groups, so send us your demos to the address on the CD. Oh, we also have a compilation of our recordings when we were a hardcore band, "Some Old Bullshit".
- How do you think your fans are going to react to an album that's made entirely of Beastie Boys hardcore songs?
AD ROCK: Well, they're going to think that the tille is very apropiate (laughs).
- What did you bring to rap from your hardcore experience?
MCA: Well, I think we were the first hip hop group to bring a "mosh" part into a rap song. A "mosh" part is when time radically slows down, at least one out of four hardcore songs have one.
- Was it a good thing for you to leave your instruments to start rapping?
AD ROCK: Not particularly. It wasn't like "I'm doing this, and now I'm doing something else". I was into rap and into writing lyrics at that time.
MCA: And later we returned to play our instruments.
AD ROCK: Well, Yauch more than I (laughs). I think you can tell from hearing the album.
- Did you ever take lessons?
AD ROCK: I took a class once with Laurie Anderson's sister. Do you know that song "Oh, Superman"? I took classes with her sister.
MCA: I took two classes, I don't know where did I meet this guy, he was a studio musician, or something. He taugh me some basic excercises and made me listen to some records. Then I got it: "I can do this by myself. I can make my own excercises and listen to records on my own".
- What kind of bass do you play?
MCA: A Fender Jazz. My favourite pedal is the Superfuzz. I've been using it since the "Licensed to Ill" times.
- Do you practice often?
MCA: We don't really practice. We just get into the studio. In fact, we didn't play together during the entire winter. We got into the studio on may 1st, we plugged in and started playing.
- So all the new songs were written on the studio?
AD ROCK: All it was done in our studio. We start to play, and when it fits into something that sounds cool, one of us yells "remember what you're playing!", then we record it and play around it for a while.
- Who else is on the studio with you?
MCA: Mark, our keyboard player, Bobo, who plays percussion on this album, and Hurricane, our DJ. Mario (Caldato) our producer, also is there quite often.
- The Beastie Boys are known for introducing new and exciting sounds in their albums. Does it take a long time to choose these sounds for the recordings?
MCA: Everything has to sound cool, so we are on it untill it sounds good for us. It's one of the most important thing. We sit down and fool around with the drums for a long time, moving the mics, testing different equal. sets....
AD ROCK: All that, comes from the hip hop part that we do. Rock has more defined sounds, but hip hop is a little bit wilder. To my guitar, I have an equipment that I really like, called SG, even though it has nothing to do with Gibson. It has a distorcion included and also a phaser.
MCA: And it looks like a washing machine.
AD ROCK: It sounds like one! (laughs) It's hardcore hip hop. We love a lot of that "low-tech" sound. Everything's so "high-tech" nowadays, the sounds are so clean that they're just not interesting.
- You've also included distortion to your vocals...
AD ROCK: That's not distortion! we just went out and bought some cheap plastic mics! As you can see, we're not an instrument oriented band, we're more into geting new sounds.
- All of you take care of programming?
MCA: We all do. Mario knows a lot about sampling, so we give him the recordings and we sit in front of a SP1200 (a sampler made by E-mu) for hours. Ad Rock's been into it since the home electric drums appeared.
AD ROCK: Yes, maths was the only signature that I cared about in school. But we don't secuence things, we make loops out of samples from the recordings. We find a beat from a drum rhythm, then we fin a bass beat, we make them last the same time, and we put them together. All the scratching is made live.
MCA: When you're making rhymes (rap lyrics), is nice that rhythms being really solid and they have to be repeated in a very excact way. Each drum beat, every bass note, has to sound exactly the same, that's why when we make a hip hop song, we first record SMPTE over a tape and then we register loops that are at an specific timing. But when it comes to instrumental ones, we just put the tape and play.
- MCA, are you the one that plays the acoustic bass on the album?
MCA: Yes, I've been playing a lot of acoustic bass, latelly. Is like a complete different instrument.
- I understand that it must be difficult for somebody that have learned to play electric bass first, to go from that to double bass.
MCA: No... you just keep playing untill you can actually play something (laughs), I feel proud of being a complete beast. I've been playing it for a couple of years now, but if any jazz player musician see me, would say that I have no techinque.
- Ad Rock, there's a big difference stylisticly speaking between the hardocre guitar and the funky stuff that you play on "Check your head" and "ill Comunication".
AD ROCK: Well, I don't play much on hip hop songs (pause) I'm trying to think on the hip hop songs in which I really played... only on "Root Down", that's it.
I listen a lot of Eddie Hazel (guitar player from Parliament/Funkadelic) and Jimy Hendrix. I don't know why, but I simply like that Funkadelic guitar; I like to rok on that style. Or better said, I like to rock, but on a different way. I like playing rhythms and let MCA lead the thing. Guitar players usually take too much sapce. I personally like rhythms and bass lines, with only a little guitar on the accents.
- The funk guitar it appears to be having a reborn thing in pop music.
AD ROCK: Well, I think the word "funk" it's pretty bad used. I always think of funk as something with a lot of space. In James Brown music, all musicians give place to the others to breath. That's what it makes it funk. A lot of what people call funk these days, is just everybody in the band playing as many notes as they possibly can. Guitar players play all these notes and they forget about the song. A little is a lot more than what these people play. That's what I like about funk.
MCA: That's why we try to keep everything quite spaced.
- The songs from "Check your head" and "Ill Comunication" change from rap to hardcore, to rock to funk, there's even a violin piece in it. Were you trying to get a mix tape feeling out of it?
AD ROCK: Yes. It's something that is fun to do, and the reason for it, is the reason why we started playing rap in the first place. It's fun to play hardcore - it really is - but after a few songs, everything sounds the same. We had to do something different.
MCA: We've always loved different kind of music and we were always making mix tapes, so when we play, we like to change a lot on what we do.
AD ROCK: It would be like we were more DJ's than musicians.
- The Beastie Boys also have a lot of songs in their records. Both "Check your head" and "Ill Comunication" have 20 songs each.
MCA: (laughs) We just keep recording until we're done.
AD ROCK: There are ten songs that we didn't use for the album, and four songs that we actually recorded but then we eliminated them from the final cut.
- When will fans be able to hear them?
MCA: Oh, those ones will en up as B sides.
AD ROCK: To me, the B sides (from the CD singles) are as important as the albums. We're really into singles becasue you can extend more. For isntance, we couldn't put a song like "Your sister's death" in the album. You would feel robbed, and you'd wanted your U$S 1.50 from the album price back for having to hear that one (laughs). But people is happy to have it as a B side.
- What five tapes do you take with you when you're on tour?
AD ROCK: Five tapes? It would be more like five hundred! I take all my mix tapes with me.
- What's in them?
AD ROCK: Everything.
- Everything?
AD ROCK: Well, I don't hear wester country, opera nor classical music. I don't have anything against those, if they appear on radios, I won't change them... well, some stuff from western country can get into my nervs (laughs).
- So, what's in those tapes?
AD ROCK: Quest, Back Door, Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Yusseff Lateeff, Miles Davis, Brasil '66... and James Brown. You MUST have James Brown on every mix tape you make; Bob Marley also, then I have Stone Alliance, The Clash...
MCA: ...Abba! (laughs).
- Do you ever make covers of songs from those artists?
AD ROCK: We're not very much into covers. It's hard enough to learn to play good enough to be able to play things from other people (laughs). It's just easier to make your own things.
MCA: And cut the intermediator.
- Do you wish you had continue your music studies?
MCA: Well, we just play souds that we find cool. The technique is alright, as a tool to get out what's in your head, but if it goes beyond that, your trapped. And you don't need a lot of equipment, expensive and modern. all you need is the basic.
AD ROCK: We're a living proof that you don't need to be any good to stand out.
- Is that the key to success?
MCA: Well, If your goal is to become really famous by making a demo and sending it to the record labels... that's a big step to take. But if all you wanna do is to entertain your friends, that's a totally different thing. And that's where we come in.
If you really write a couple of songs to play in a few parties, you would be a lot more in contact of what the people want. You have to let your band grow, but it has to happen naturally. A lot of kids practice a lot in their houses, they get a good technique, and then they go out and expect to get a record contract. But, for whom are you really writing the songs for?
AD ROCK: You don't know it, now; but you'll feel bad if you miss all those home parties.
MCA: Yes, in what other place can you pee in the ice bucket?
- Apart from marking the way to others with your music, the Beastie Boys are also fashion makers. Haven't I see you in the "House of Style" from MTV?
MCA: (laughs) I've been using the same cheap shit for years. I feel proud of my cheap clothes.
AD ROCK: I get all my clothes for free, at the Mike store, XL. My fashion it's called "free fashion": wear anything that you can get for free.
It is taken from a magazine for musicians from Argentina, called "EL MUSIQUERO". Please, remember that it's from 1994, so certain things will not appear as new to you now as it was at that time. Enjoy it!
"It looks like at last they will land (on Argentina) on april, the guys who put rap on radios around the world, as well as on the feet and hearts of people who identified with their reckless attitude and the power of their explosive combination of rap rhymes with hard rock riffs, in ther historical debut with "Licensed to Ill". But, sine the Beasties are not guys who would sleep above their achievments, after they pulled a second album that in ist time was a comercial failure - "Paul's Boutique" - and now it has been reedited with all the honors and it's considered the "Sgt. Pepper's of rap", they were reborn comrecially speaking with "Check your head" (1992). On that album, they returned to their instruments, assumed a more responsable posture on their lyrics, and they extended the musical envelope further including jazz, funk and latin music.
Their most recent album - and also most succesful - "Ill Comunication", continues and keeps on digging this line, with th almost unknown fact that the Beasties are a rap group with a rock band (guitar, bass, drums, keyboards and percussion) formation.
While we wait to see how will all this turn out on a live stage, here we give you this juicy interview with guitar player Adam "Ad Rock" Horovitz and bass player Adam "MCA" Yauch, where, with their irreverent characteristic humor, they go over their history, musical influence, working habits, instruments, the "Ill Comunication" album, their own record label "Grand Royal", their hardcore past, and even their particular wardrobe...
Now that rap is one of the musical styles with the biggest worlwide success - the most selled on USA - you might think that the Beastie Boys, Ad Rock and MCA, would be happy just collecting what they gained from hip hop success, only passing their mics, and writing more party hymns like "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" or "Fight for your Right". Nevertherless, most of the songs from their last album, "Ill Comunication", find both Adams momentarly leaving the plates and assuming the formation of an authentic rock group, taking charge of guitar and bass (third Beastie, Mike D, takes care of drums), a direction that they have already started on "Check your head". Not only that, but Ill Comunication presents a wise fusion of rock and rap with jazz and latin rhythm, which includes funk, hardcore, punk and Santana style riffs.
Following this line of reasoning, you might wonder how come that Adam Horovitz and yauch have suddenly learned to play their instruments so well. But actually, Ad Rock played guitar since always, and MCA is a consummated bass player. Even though the Beastie Boys are mainly known for taking rap music into a massive audience concience (and to the top of the charts), with their debud album "Lincesed to Ill", the band started their existence playing hardcore punk, that ultra heavy and ultra fast music, ejemplified by groups like Minor Threat and Black Flag.
They only started rapping to break the monotony that meant playing one "mosh" song after another. When the rap parto of their show started to become popular, Horovitz and Yauch put away their instruments and they went on tour with Madonna.
Now that the Beasites are not a support band anymore, the guitar, the bass and the drums have become again a big part of their shows, the same way that their "first loves" have: hardcore and punk.
"It's really a New York thing", says Yauch. "When we were growing up, clubs not only put rap, or punk, or funk. You went to a place to listen to a hardcore band, and on the intermissions, they put James Brown". So, unlike many of the new bands that just now are "discovering" the punk-funk-rap conexion, the Beastie Boys can go to their early new yorker roots to take an eclectic inspiration. They can follow a hardcore song with a hip hop theme, and they play it over a funky rhythm, which makes of "Ill Comunication" something fresh and ageless. Almost as it were a "mix tape", those cassettes that you make with your favourite songs for your own delight and your friend's
"When you start to think about it, hardcore and hip hop are not really that different", says Horovitz. "The attitude is the same, and it's an attitude that has a lot to do with New York"
- A lot of fans are going to be surprised to know that your first instruments weren't microphones and plates, but guitars and basses.
MCA: Yes. I always wanted a bass when I was a kid, even though at first I could't have it. My parents were too tired of buying me things that ended piled up on the closet. I knew this girl who had a bass, and I went to her place to play it. My parents eventually rented me one under the condition that if I played it, I could keep it.
AD ROCK: When I turned twelve, my mother and her friends gave me a guitar and a little equipment to practice. I talked about playing guitar all the time; I heard a lot of Kiss, and I wanted to be Ace (Frehley, guitar player of the original Kiss formation). I thought that "Shock Me" the song sang it by Ace, it was the best; also "Making love". So, my mother and her friends bought me a HONDO II PROFESSIONAL.
MCA: And it's the same guitar that he plays nowadays (laughs). He plays it in the new album.
AD ROCK: Well, I still play HONDO II PROFESSIONAL, but last year I grabed my original guitar, the only guitar that I've ever had, the one that my mother gave me, and I smashed it.
- Why?
AD ROCK: It was that perfect moment. The last show on t he "Check Your Head Tour" was in Italy, and they told us that it would be a huge festival with 40.000 guys. But when we showed up, there were only a bunch of old people. It turned out it was a comunist festival! (laughs).
MCA: The audience was made of maybe 100 young people and a lot of old ladies and children.
AD ROCK: But the show was great. It was the best and the worst performance we ever made. Now I have a HONDOS collection.
- (to Horovitz) A few people know that you weren't on the original Beastie Boys formation, by the time you both made hardcore.
MCA: No, he wasn't. He was on a band called "The Young and the Useless", that used to be our support band very often. When our guitar player left, Ad Rock joined the group.
- What happened with "The Young and the Useless".
AD ROCK: We split up in a bad way. The drumer ended up going to a military school from New Jersey.
- What kind of music were you hearing at that time?
AD ROCK: Black Flag, Minor Threat...
MCA: ... and a lot of Bad Brains. Darryl Jenifer (the Bad Brains bass player), was my favourite. He's the musician that influenced me the most. Even Though the things that I play now are quite different, if you hear our hardcore stuff, I think you can detect his influence. And on knowledge speaking, I deffinetly go to see the Bad Brains every time the play. I've seen them like 50 times. I stay up on something to get a good view of Jenifer's hands, and I love it. He's an incredible bass player.
- How did the Beastie Boys made the jump from hardcore to rap?
MCA: When we were around 14 or 15 - Ad Rock was 12 or 13 -, we hand around a lot on clubs and we saw punk bands like Stimulator and Bad Brains. But the clubs not only put hardcore records, they also put James Brown and hip hop. We were very into that, so we just started fooling around and making rhymes.
AD ROCK: It was around that time also that a lot of the main rap performers came downtown to play. We got ourselves into rap the very same way we got into hardcore: we heard a lot of punk rock and then we started playing it. After that, we started hearing rap music, so we started playing it, too.
- How were those shows?
AD ROCK: When we made a show, around the first 15 minutes, it was all hardcore, and then Rick Rubin (their original DJ, from the Def Jam record label, and famous producer), got up and we started with rap. Eventualy, we did all rap. But it was a smooth transition for us. Half of our shows were rap, anyway.
- What rappers were influencing you at that time?
AD ROCK: Funky Four Plus One, Jimmy Spitzer, Grandmaster Flash, Crash Crew...
- Was it hard for you to quite hardcore, since it was the reason you started a band in the first place?
MCA: Hardcore is really the main thing for me, because it is pure expresssion. It's not about technicality at all, it's a basic level, a pure one, that anyone can do. I mean, if you fool around with a guitar for a few weeks, you can achieve certain technique that'd be enough to express yourselfe with hardcore.
AD ROCK: It's the same thing with hip hop. Get a basic rhythm and let it go.
MCA: And your individuality will come up. Hip hop and hardcore aren't as hard as, for instance, classical music, where you have to study your whole life, just to be able to get a little bit close. You can study classical music your entire life and still not even get close (laughs). That's insane. It's not music to me, even though I admite it's so for some people.
AD ROCK: When you start to think about it, hardcore and hip hop are not really that different. On hardcore, you have the verses and the chorus. On a rap song, it's kind of the same thing. The attitude is the same. Urban attitude. It comes from New York. In New York, you have punk and you have rap.
MCA: It's the same attitude, the same power.
- It'd appear that the rap scene is the one that took off.
MCA: Not really... you go to some places and all the kids hear is hardcore. I go to house parties all the time whee hardocre bands play. And it's like I say, "shit, I was doing the very excact same thing twelve years ago. I can't believe that this's still going on.
- Is the band directly commited to the Grand Royal record label?
AD ROCK: Very commited. There's only three numbers on the label, and I'm on two of them. Mike's the president, and I work on the artists and repertories section. MCA's the treasurer...
MCA: Actually, I'm in charge of a collateral thing. Is similar to that, but is a little less meaningful...
AD ROCK: We always thought it would be great to have our own record label. So we were our first band, then some friends gave us a tape and that's Luscious Jackson. Then we got a 45 from a band that I'm in, called DFL. Hurricane, our DJ, has a record coming out, and that's all we have so far (laughs). We really need to find more groups, so send us your demos to the address on the CD. Oh, we also have a compilation of our recordings when we were a hardcore band, "Some Old Bullshit".
- How do you think your fans are going to react to an album that's made entirely of Beastie Boys hardcore songs?
AD ROCK: Well, they're going to think that the tille is very apropiate (laughs).
- What did you bring to rap from your hardcore experience?
MCA: Well, I think we were the first hip hop group to bring a "mosh" part into a rap song. A "mosh" part is when time radically slows down, at least one out of four hardcore songs have one.
- Was it a good thing for you to leave your instruments to start rapping?
AD ROCK: Not particularly. It wasn't like "I'm doing this, and now I'm doing something else". I was into rap and into writing lyrics at that time.
MCA: And later we returned to play our instruments.
AD ROCK: Well, Yauch more than I (laughs). I think you can tell from hearing the album.
- Did you ever take lessons?
AD ROCK: I took a class once with Laurie Anderson's sister. Do you know that song "Oh, Superman"? I took classes with her sister.
MCA: I took two classes, I don't know where did I meet this guy, he was a studio musician, or something. He taugh me some basic excercises and made me listen to some records. Then I got it: "I can do this by myself. I can make my own excercises and listen to records on my own".
- What kind of bass do you play?
MCA: A Fender Jazz. My favourite pedal is the Superfuzz. I've been using it since the "Licensed to Ill" times.
- Do you practice often?
MCA: We don't really practice. We just get into the studio. In fact, we didn't play together during the entire winter. We got into the studio on may 1st, we plugged in and started playing.
- So all the new songs were written on the studio?
AD ROCK: All it was done in our studio. We start to play, and when it fits into something that sounds cool, one of us yells "remember what you're playing!", then we record it and play around it for a while.
- Who else is on the studio with you?
MCA: Mark, our keyboard player, Bobo, who plays percussion on this album, and Hurricane, our DJ. Mario (Caldato) our producer, also is there quite often.
- The Beastie Boys are known for introducing new and exciting sounds in their albums. Does it take a long time to choose these sounds for the recordings?
MCA: Everything has to sound cool, so we are on it untill it sounds good for us. It's one of the most important thing. We sit down and fool around with the drums for a long time, moving the mics, testing different equal. sets....
AD ROCK: All that, comes from the hip hop part that we do. Rock has more defined sounds, but hip hop is a little bit wilder. To my guitar, I have an equipment that I really like, called SG, even though it has nothing to do with Gibson. It has a distorcion included and also a phaser.
MCA: And it looks like a washing machine.
AD ROCK: It sounds like one! (laughs) It's hardcore hip hop. We love a lot of that "low-tech" sound. Everything's so "high-tech" nowadays, the sounds are so clean that they're just not interesting.
- You've also included distortion to your vocals...
AD ROCK: That's not distortion! we just went out and bought some cheap plastic mics! As you can see, we're not an instrument oriented band, we're more into geting new sounds.
- All of you take care of programming?
MCA: We all do. Mario knows a lot about sampling, so we give him the recordings and we sit in front of a SP1200 (a sampler made by E-mu) for hours. Ad Rock's been into it since the home electric drums appeared.
AD ROCK: Yes, maths was the only signature that I cared about in school. But we don't secuence things, we make loops out of samples from the recordings. We find a beat from a drum rhythm, then we fin a bass beat, we make them last the same time, and we put them together. All the scratching is made live.
MCA: When you're making rhymes (rap lyrics), is nice that rhythms being really solid and they have to be repeated in a very excact way. Each drum beat, every bass note, has to sound exactly the same, that's why when we make a hip hop song, we first record SMPTE over a tape and then we register loops that are at an specific timing. But when it comes to instrumental ones, we just put the tape and play.
- MCA, are you the one that plays the acoustic bass on the album?
MCA: Yes, I've been playing a lot of acoustic bass, latelly. Is like a complete different instrument.
- I understand that it must be difficult for somebody that have learned to play electric bass first, to go from that to double bass.
MCA: No... you just keep playing untill you can actually play something (laughs), I feel proud of being a complete beast. I've been playing it for a couple of years now, but if any jazz player musician see me, would say that I have no techinque.
- Ad Rock, there's a big difference stylisticly speaking between the hardocre guitar and the funky stuff that you play on "Check your head" and "ill Comunication".
AD ROCK: Well, I don't play much on hip hop songs (pause) I'm trying to think on the hip hop songs in which I really played... only on "Root Down", that's it.
I listen a lot of Eddie Hazel (guitar player from Parliament/Funkadelic) and Jimy Hendrix. I don't know why, but I simply like that Funkadelic guitar; I like to rok on that style. Or better said, I like to rock, but on a different way. I like playing rhythms and let MCA lead the thing. Guitar players usually take too much sapce. I personally like rhythms and bass lines, with only a little guitar on the accents.
- The funk guitar it appears to be having a reborn thing in pop music.
AD ROCK: Well, I think the word "funk" it's pretty bad used. I always think of funk as something with a lot of space. In James Brown music, all musicians give place to the others to breath. That's what it makes it funk. A lot of what people call funk these days, is just everybody in the band playing as many notes as they possibly can. Guitar players play all these notes and they forget about the song. A little is a lot more than what these people play. That's what I like about funk.
MCA: That's why we try to keep everything quite spaced.
- The songs from "Check your head" and "Ill Comunication" change from rap to hardcore, to rock to funk, there's even a violin piece in it. Were you trying to get a mix tape feeling out of it?
AD ROCK: Yes. It's something that is fun to do, and the reason for it, is the reason why we started playing rap in the first place. It's fun to play hardcore - it really is - but after a few songs, everything sounds the same. We had to do something different.
MCA: We've always loved different kind of music and we were always making mix tapes, so when we play, we like to change a lot on what we do.
AD ROCK: It would be like we were more DJ's than musicians.
- The Beastie Boys also have a lot of songs in their records. Both "Check your head" and "Ill Comunication" have 20 songs each.
MCA: (laughs) We just keep recording until we're done.
AD ROCK: There are ten songs that we didn't use for the album, and four songs that we actually recorded but then we eliminated them from the final cut.
- When will fans be able to hear them?
MCA: Oh, those ones will en up as B sides.
AD ROCK: To me, the B sides (from the CD singles) are as important as the albums. We're really into singles becasue you can extend more. For isntance, we couldn't put a song like "Your sister's death" in the album. You would feel robbed, and you'd wanted your U$S 1.50 from the album price back for having to hear that one (laughs). But people is happy to have it as a B side.
- What five tapes do you take with you when you're on tour?
AD ROCK: Five tapes? It would be more like five hundred! I take all my mix tapes with me.
- What's in them?
AD ROCK: Everything.
- Everything?
AD ROCK: Well, I don't hear wester country, opera nor classical music. I don't have anything against those, if they appear on radios, I won't change them... well, some stuff from western country can get into my nervs (laughs).
- So, what's in those tapes?
AD ROCK: Quest, Back Door, Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Yusseff Lateeff, Miles Davis, Brasil '66... and James Brown. You MUST have James Brown on every mix tape you make; Bob Marley also, then I have Stone Alliance, The Clash...
MCA: ...Abba! (laughs).
- Do you ever make covers of songs from those artists?
AD ROCK: We're not very much into covers. It's hard enough to learn to play good enough to be able to play things from other people (laughs). It's just easier to make your own things.
MCA: And cut the intermediator.
- Do you wish you had continue your music studies?
MCA: Well, we just play souds that we find cool. The technique is alright, as a tool to get out what's in your head, but if it goes beyond that, your trapped. And you don't need a lot of equipment, expensive and modern. all you need is the basic.
AD ROCK: We're a living proof that you don't need to be any good to stand out.
- Is that the key to success?
MCA: Well, If your goal is to become really famous by making a demo and sending it to the record labels... that's a big step to take. But if all you wanna do is to entertain your friends, that's a totally different thing. And that's where we come in.
If you really write a couple of songs to play in a few parties, you would be a lot more in contact of what the people want. You have to let your band grow, but it has to happen naturally. A lot of kids practice a lot in their houses, they get a good technique, and then they go out and expect to get a record contract. But, for whom are you really writing the songs for?
AD ROCK: You don't know it, now; but you'll feel bad if you miss all those home parties.
MCA: Yes, in what other place can you pee in the ice bucket?
- Apart from marking the way to others with your music, the Beastie Boys are also fashion makers. Haven't I see you in the "House of Style" from MTV?
MCA: (laughs) I've been using the same cheap shit for years. I feel proud of my cheap clothes.
AD ROCK: I get all my clothes for free, at the Mike store, XL. My fashion it's called "free fashion": wear anything that you can get for free.