четверг, 11 августа 2011 г.
The Beastie Boys Interview
Kick it bitch.... Turn up the bass mutherfucker... Now the guitars, wait a minute... no guitars. Oops...
Now jazz hands...Dosie doe your partner... flip her to the ground and spin her round and round...
Kick ball change, second position. Not the same as the first, almost, but not really. Now stop... back to one
From the top, and you don't stop... to the be-bop... Watch it whitey, you know where it comes from, don't cha...
Attention please. We're all in it together... don't forget.
Hi Adam.
Yo.
Yo. How are you?
I'm good. What's up?
Uh, we're just doing a little interview for Juice Magazine on the Beastie Boys' new record that's coming out.
Cool. Where are you? Are you in LA?
Yeah. Where are you?
I'm in New York City.
Is it hot out there?
Yeah, it's kind of nasty.
Do you want to talk about your new record or is it up to me?
You're in charge.
I don't know if that's a smart thing to do, but whatever.
[Laughs]
I don't know what I'm supposed to do, but I'll ask you a thousand questions and get a few answers.
[Laughs] Fair enough.
What's the new record called?
It's called The Mix Up. It's an instrumental record.
And you guys play all the instruments?
Yeah. It's bass, drums and guitar.
Nice. What kind of stuff is it? Is it “Take Five” Brubeck or what?
It's influenced by a lot of different stuff. Like the title implies, it mixes up a lot of different styles. It's a lot of stuff from dub records, post punk and break beat records. It's mostly stuff from the '70s, early '80s and maybe the late '60s.
What did you take your influences from? Was it all that stuff, or the instrumentals?
It's a lot of influences, things like Silver Apples.
No words?
There might be some mumbling between songs, if it wasn't a good take, but there are no lyrics.
When you first started, did you ever think you would achieve the success that you've ended up getting?
I don't think so. When we started out, we were a hardcore band and I think we were planning to play a few shows and then break up. We were just going to play a few parties and whatnot.
Where did you start off, A7 and 2+2 and that kind of joint?
Well, our first show was at my birthday party at my friend John's house. Our second show was at A7. Then we played 2+2 and CB's. We used to open for the Bad Brains at Max's and CBGBs. We started out right around '81.
You started out as a hardcore band.
Yeah, we were on the goofy side of hardcore.
How did you go from doing hardcore into straight hip-hop?
We used to listen to a lot of hip-hop, even when we were a punk band. Being around downtown Manhattan, we'd hear it all the time. We were into rhyming, even when we were punk kids hanging out. We rhymed all the time.
Exactly. Who writes the music? What's your process of writing a song?
There are lots of different ways we go at it. Usually, we start with something looped up. We'll just put on a loop of music and we'll all start writing lyrics. Then we throw lyrics out and add more music to it. That's one way that we write.
You come in with a riff and if everyone likes it, then you do something with it.
Sometimes it starts out with a beat that sounds good. Then we start writing to that. Sometimes it changes completely from how it starts out. In the case of this record, we just went in to the studio and started playing and improvising on the instruments and recording it. Then we listened to it, sorted it out, edited it and replayed some of it.
It's been 26 years since you started, so you definitely have your instruments way more wired now, right?
[Laughs] I think we're better at playing less. Maybe that's what you learn when you've been playing for a while - not to play too much.
Biography
The Beastie Boys were the first successful white rap group and one of the few acts from the early days of hip-hop that still enjoy major success. Their rock and punk-influenced rap has had a significant impact on artists both in and outside the hip-hop scene, and they were the first rap group to gain a substantial following with alternative rock fans.
The Beastie Boys came together in 1979 as a punk band called The Young Aboriginies. In 1981 MCA joined the group and from the suggestion of their guitarist John Berry, they changed their name to Beastie Boys. Their line up then consisted of Adam Yauch (aka MCA) on bass, drummer Kate Schellenbach (later of Luscious Jackson), guitarist John Berry (of Big Fat Love), and Mike Diamond (aka Mike D) on the mic. Beastie Boys’ debut EP, the Pollywog Stew vinyl 7” was released in 1982.
The band’s first foray into hip hop, the Cooky Puss 12”, followed in 1983, with The Young and the Useless guitarist Adam Horovitz (aka Adrock) replacing John Berry. “Cooky Puss” would be the first B Boys record to receive play at NYC clubs like Danceteria as the band played its first shows outside the city.
The Mike D/MCA/Adrock Beastie Boys lineup debuted in 1984 with the “Rock Hard”/”Beastie Groove” 12.” Produced by Rick Rubin, who went on to produce albums for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Johnny Cash and Audioslave. The “She’s On It”/ “Slow And Low” 12” followed in 1985 and Beastie Boys went on Madonna’s “Virgin Tour.” as her opening act.
Licensed to Ill dropped in fall 1986 and became the first Beastie Boys album—and the first Rap album ever—to go #1. Fueled by Fight For Your Right and No Sleep Till Brooklyn it remained at #1 for seven weeks and simultaneously reached #2 on the urban chart, becoming the fastest selling debut to date for Columbia and the first hip hop record to break 5 million.
In 1989 Beastie Boys released their second album Paul’s Boutique produced by Beastie Boys and the Dust Brothers. Paul’s Boutique laid down the blueprint for a generation of emergent genres and went over the collective head of a nation. The likes of “Shake Your Rump,” “Lookin’ Down The Barrel Of A Gun,” “Car Thief,” Shadrach,” and the hip hop “suite” “B-Boy Bouillabaisse” contained lyrical and musical references too plentiful and diverse for the average mind to compute in one sitting.
Check Your Head, released in 1992, heralded the return of live instrumentation into the B Boys mix. The album was produced by the band and Mario Caldato Jr. (who first worked with B Boys as engineer on Paul’s Boutique), Check Your Head would yield a watershed of new B Boys staples, including So Whatcha’ Want, Pass The Mic, “Gratitude” and “Jimmy James.” With the assistance of Keyboard Money Mark, Eric Bobo and assorted percussionists, Beastie Boys returned to the touring circuit and Check Your Head hit double platinum.
In the summer of 1994, Ill Communication, also produced by the band and Mario Caldato Jr., entered the charts #1. The album featured such hits Sure Shot and Sabotage. Ill Communication was supported by Beastie Boys’ first arena headline tour since the ’80s. Following the tour’s conclusion, Beastie Boys recorded and released Aglio e Olio consisting of eight songs clocking in at 11 minutes, the EP recalls the vintage hardcore punk of the band’s infancy.
On July 14 1998, their fifth album titled Hello Nasty was released. Spurred by the monster success of the ”Intergalactic” single and video, the record clocked first week sales of nearly 700,000 in the U.S. and went straight in at #1 in England, Germany, Australia, Holland, New Zealand and Sweden. Early in the tour, Beastie Boys made live tracks available for free download to fans unable to attend the shows-and were blindsided by their label pulling the tracks down.
Having closed 1998 by accepting the Video Vanguard lifetime achievement honor at the MTV Video Music Awards, Beastie Boys rang in 1999 with Artist, Band and/or Record of the Year accolades from the likes of Rolling Stone, SPIN, The New Yorker and Playboy, among others. A month later, at the 41st Annual Grammy Awards, the now quadruple-platinum Hello Nasty took Best Alternative Music Performance, while “Intergalactic,” nailed Best Rap Performance By A Duo Or Group—the first time an artist has ever won in both Rap and Alternative categories.1999 would also see “Intergalactic” take Best Hip Hop Video honors at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards.
Beastie Boys’ sixth studio album, To The 5 Boroughs, released in summer 2004, was the band’s third consecutive #1 debut-and Rolling Stone magazine’s only 5-star review of the year. To The 5 Boroughs was supported by world tour - traveling pageant - supported by Talib Kweli and Bob Moore’s Amazing Mongrels (yes, a live dog show, hence the pageant appellation).
2006 saw the release of the film, Awesome, I Fuckin’ Shot That!, a concert film made up of footage filmed by audience members, which debuted at Sundance in early 2006 and was released theatrically the same year.
In 2007 Beastie Boys released The Mix-Up, first ever full length offering of all-new, all-original instrumental recordings.
On February 3rd, 2009, they digitally remastered and released Paul’s Boutique on their website.
The band’s next record, “Hot Sauce Committee Part 2” will be released in the first quarter of 2011. It features the same tracklisting as the previously announced “Hot Sauce Committee Part 1” (which when will released will now feature different tracks), which was delayed indefinitely after Yauch was diagnosed with a tumor on his parotid gland (which was successfully removed).
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