Did you realize at the time how unique it was—your upbringing, what you were exposed to?
When you’re a teen-ager, whatever’s happening in your home life or whatever, good or bad, that’s normal. I had a weird childhood and that was normal. You don’t think about bigger-picture stuff when you’re a kid.
How about when you went on your first big tour and saw what life was like elsewhere?
Oh, it seemed like, you know, America. Like, we left New York—that was noticeable. That we had left the city. We’d be in, you know, no offense to wherever, but we were in Dallas and we were like, Whoa, this is not New York City. Everything else seemed quaint and small-town, you know?
Along those lines. When you’re young and creating, you often don’t have the time or desire to think about the past or the future. You’re just in the present. I’ve read that there were things like the Beatles or “Seinfeld” that you only discovered later, long after the fact.
You mean things that I wasn’t allowed to like, that I now like? ’Cause the point is that our band, me and Adam and Mike, and our group of friends, we weren’t allowed to like hippie music. We weren’t allowed to like rock music. We were punks and that was it. Rick Rubin played us certain music and was like, “Oh, but this is why I like it.” That was interesting. I don’t know. I don’t like much (laughs). If you’re trying to just get me to say something about the Lakers, I’m not gonna.
Can you tell me what it was like to meet Rick Rubin back then? Whenever I hear stories, I can’t tell if he was the coolest person ever or just this really absorbing weirdo.
For one, he was a little older, so that was kinda cool. He’s just one of these people who would let you know, like, Oh, I’m really cool and really smart and my opinion is the actual right opinion. And when you’re a kid, you’re like, Oh, O.K.. But, in retrospect, he’s just . . . he’s interesting. You want to believe things when you’re a kid, you know? You want to believe things.
Even though “Licensed to Ill” was the big turning point, in terms of people first hearing the band, it often sounds like the Def Jam years were a little traumatic.
Learning experience, that’s for sure.
What did you learn?
The main thing was that me, Adam, and Mike were friends, and that the band we started as friends was more important than business stuff. If we were going to break up, we were going to break up and still be friends. I mean, that’s an important lesson.
After Def Jam, you begin working with John Silva, who still manages you today. One of the things that draws people to the Beastie Boys is this sense that you’re like this close-knit gang—the band but then also the people around you. Can you talk about what it means, as an artist, to have a good manager?
That’s interesting, because anytime you see those award shows and stuff, and people are like, “I have to thank my manager, my team,” blah, blah, blah—I always thought that that shit was corny. Right? But this guy is my friend, and we weren’t friends for a long time. He was the manager, you know what I mean? Years ago, we went on vacation to Hawaii, and I saw Silva in a parking lot. And I caught his eye, and he quickly cut left and just tried to run away from me. I was like, “That’s fucked up . . . but I kinda love that. That’s really good. He’s on vacation. He doesn’t need to deal with me.”
We’ve known him and worked with him for thirty years now. They do all the actual work. Yauch wanted to do these Free Tibet concerts. He doesn’t know how to actually put on a concert. Do you know what I mean? [Silva] helped us not be corny.
Like you’re saying, at the core of the Beastie Boys is this model of friendship—you, Adam, and Mike, the people around you. It’s beautiful to hear you talk about how the friendship is what survived Def Jam. I’m curious how you guys handled disagreements.
Well, Mike and I have talked about it a bunch, because we’re both the youngest of three siblings. Yauch was an only child, so me and Mike would always just be like, “O.K.” Luckily, Yauch had fucking fantastic ideas, and he was ninety-eight-per-cent right, always. And parenting, right? Yauch’s parents were amazing parents, and they were really supportive, and they helped him do all kinds of things as a kid. So he had a sense of, This is what we’re doing, but not in any negative, bratty, selfish, or entitled way. And Mike and I, when you have older siblings, you’re like, “No, I don’t want to . . . O.K., O.K.” You never get the good seat in the car. You have to sit in the back, in the fucking trunk or whatever it is, and you’re like, O.K.
Me, Adam, and Mike were together all the time. We recorded every day. We toured every day. When we weren’t together, when there were breaks after tours and stuff, we would still see each other. We would talk, we would swing by Adam’s house. That . . . that speaks to me. Do you know what I mean? That is something to hold on to. I love them, and they’re my friends, and it’s meaningful to like hanging out with your co-workers when you don’t have to.
You’ve always seemed really at ease with yourself, and with growing older. Can you pinpoint when you started to feel this way, feeling comfortably out of the loop?
When we came out here [to Los Angeles, in the late eighties], we had money. Do you know what I mean? We didn’t come out here trying to find gigs. I was really lucky. I could live in a hotel. It’s just different. Your circumstances, like the way you see things, it’s different. When I was kid, my aspiration was to have snacks—to be able to have whatever snacks I wanted. That’s not what my house was like. My friend Neil and I talked about success, like what success really is. And I was like, “If you have a washer/dryer in your apartment, you’re fucking big time.” And, ’cause we both really liked basketball, he’s like, “I feel like when I get a personal trainer to just stretch me out wherever I am, that’s when I’ve made it.”
But now, it’s too late for anything else. You’ve got people telling you you’re cool all the time. What am I supposed to do? It’s like Peter Schjeldahl said, you know, you get attention for something, so you just keep doing that thing. Unless people are calling you a fucking scumbag and then, I don’t know, you either embrace that or you figure out what to do about it. What else am I going to be? I’m fine. I wish I had better hair. I wish I were a little taller. I never thought I’d have a car. I have a car.
