With Good Vibrations just days away from hitting the launch button, the biggest attraction of this year’s lineup is, of course, the Beastie Boys. The NYC trio are looking forward to nothing more than taking a summertime break down under, and along the way will remind us why they’re still at the top of their game after more than two decades in the international spotlight. ITM’s Semone Maksimovic realised a lifelong dream recently when she spoke candidly down the line to Mike D, the 41 year old founding member.
They were the taste makers and rule breakers. It didn’t matter what they did, they were – and still are – the very essence of cool. Although their bones maybe getting a little brittle, their hair a little greyer and their smiles a little more indented; they are still the kings of the party, the key bearers to fun we’re yet to experience at such a level. Even if we met them back at school, where they may have been at risk of being painfully uncool, there was always something magic about these three white Jewish boys from Greenwich Village. Any ‘rules’ or ‘formulas’ we were taught about being cool, Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch, Michael ‘Mike D’ Diamond and Adam ‘Adrock’ Horovitz pissed on, then set them alight. They defied all logic of ‘cool’ and have illogically, but rightly, remained at the height of it for the last two decades.
“I’m about half an hour from being reminded that THOSE days are over,” laughs Mike D down a clear line from his New York pad, as he prepares to take off his international rap star hat and trade it for his less-popular father cap in order to collect his sons Davis and Skylar from school. “They get embarrassed if I’m in view and quickly remind me to stay out of sight,” he continues. Confirming that no matter how cool we are before parenthood, we’ll never be considered so to our kids. “They don’t really pay attention to what we [Beastie Boys] do, I think the only track they really like is ‘Brass Monkey’,” he adds with a laugh. As for whether there’s any possibility the boys will one day end up in their father’s shoes under the spotlight, Mike laughs at the prospect. “We have lots of jams together, but as for whether or not they’ll get serious about it, [that] remains to be seen.”
Juggling sell-out shows, recording commitments and family life has proved a challenge for the trio, but it’s proved to make them thankful for what they’ve got. “Getting older has been a great lesson; it’s made us all appreciate our families so much more and the fact that after all these years we’re still able to travel the world doing what we do best, with our best friends. The quantity of time we have to juggle between it all makes us appreciate the quality of the time we do have with our families and the band,” he states, on a more serious note, which most long-time fans would know is a rare occurrence with Diamond and his Beastie cohorts.
Although it seems like there’s been a little too long between drinks for the Beasties of late, you can rest assured that they’ve been anything but content to sit back on their laurels. Last year’s somewhat surprise release, ‘Awesome, I Fuckin’ Shot That’, was a DVD that saw the band hand over control to fans to shoot them in all their live glory. The boys are again planning to pounce upon us when we least expect it, with their seventh full-length studio effort coming soon. “We’ve been hard, now I mean HARD at work on that shit for quite some time,” admits D animatedly about the band’s recent studio progress. “It’s been in the works for a while now, but it’s only over recent weeks that we’ve started to actually FEEL the progress. So it’s time to get excited,” he reveals.
As for whether there’s any chance of a previewing action from the boys’ live sets on their forthcoming tour, Mike is quick to shrug off the possibility. “We just recently came back from playing festivals in South America for three weeks [before Christmas], where we played a mixture of old material from all albums. So we had fun again, it was more like a paid summer getaway, a chance to find our feet out of the studio again,” he says with a smile. “We haven’t really had a chance to feel the [new] tracks live yet, plus we’d feel like we were ripping people off by playing half a set of tracks they haven’t heard yet. So it’ll just be the best of the past this time round.”
As for when this new studio album will be likely to hit the shelves, Mike isn’t too sure, but the aim is to have it in our hot little hands sometime by the end of 2007. “At the moment, we’re set on taking our time and being happy with what we’ve made. We’re in no rush to get it out there before we’re happy. That’s the joy of playing this game for so long, I guess. We’ve proved ourselves and now we can sit back and take our time a little, plus we’re not handling the physical as well as we used to,” he quips.
Don’t miss the Beastie Boys when they rip it up live at this year’s Good Vibrations Festival. Remind yourself why there’s still no suitable comparison for hip-hop’s most electric eclectic trio!
Feb 10 – Melbourne, Good Vibrations Festival
Feb 11 – Gold Coast, Good Vibrations Festival
Feb 17 – Sydney, Good Vibrations Festival
Feb 18 – Perth, Good Vibrations Festival
catrionalr says...
I saw the Boys back in January 2005 at the Horden. It was unbelievable. For me they're one of those groups that have been with me since I was a kid and listening to songs like Brass Monkey and No Sleep Til Brooklyn just took me right back to the good old days. The best thing was that their new stuff was just as slick. They dominate the stage and put on a amazing show - simply mesmerizing! CAT.