an interview with yauch from playboy '87
SO I'M SITTING there, talking on the phone with Adam Yauch, a.k.a. MCA, whois one third of the Beastie Boys. I ask him the major question of our pop era: Why the Beastie Boys now? And I experience this epiphany that sheds neutron beams of new light on said question. To wit:
What most adults don't understand about most teenagers is that most teenagers are extremely conservative most of the time, even as they are engagingin obnoxious behavior designed to differentiate themselves from most adults. Most teenagers enjoy a heavily structured life, are threatened by deviations from the conforming norm and will ridicule those enamored of deviating from the conforming norm. In this way, most teenagers are exactly like most adults, the only difference being that teenagers piss their lives away in high school while adults piss their lives away in corporations. Most teenagers do, after all, grow up to be most adults.
At 22, Adam Yauch can dig the above principles because when he was at Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn, he was the only kid who wore combat boots and spiked hair and got kicked around for it-the classic coming-of-age experience for punks. Yet, at this writing, Yauch and the other Beastie Boys have a number-one album -Licensed to Ill (Columbia/DefJam) -and kids who used to spit on him are now chanting his lyrics, particularly Fight for Your Right (to Party), about beer and sex and drugs, which leads to the question of Tipper Gore.
''What's Tipper Gore?'' Yauch asks. The wife of Senator Albert Gore and cofounder of the Parents' Music Resource Center, I reply. The music biz needs Senator Gore to protect it from digital audio tape, and Gore needs the music biz so he can denounce lyrics about beer and sex and drugs and look good to the wacko right. I don't see how the music biz can claim to have cleaned up its act with you guys at number one.
''Yeah. I think they don't understand what we're saying. Mothers don't pick it up when we're not too blatant.''
Which sounds plausible, until you actually listen to the record, the charm of which is that it's utterly blatant. Total, unexpurgated insistence on teenage experience, without regard for ideology, the FCC or Mom-and it's at the top of the charts after years of unrelieved unrequited love and guitar fascism from multiplatinum bombinators. Then Yauch volunteers that the Beasties are negotiating with the networks to do a situation comedy, which is going to be oneof the good ones, like I Love Lucy or The Honeymooners or Mr. Ed.
But what about all the drug references? I ask. The networks have a strict policy against mentioning drugs in anything but a negative context. Johnny Carson can't even joke about the band's smoking dope.
Yauch pauses two beats and says, ''There aren't any references to drugs on the album.''
The references to being dusted-they're not about angel dust?
Yauch pauses two beats and says, ''No, that's a reference to unemployment.''
There are no references to drugs on the album?
''No. Excuse me, man, there's a knock on the door.''
Yauch's saying there are no drug references on Licensed to Ill is like Hugh Hefner's saying there are no nudes in PLAYBOY. To cite one example from Hold It, Now Hit It: ''I'm in my car, I'm going far and dust is what I'm using.'' Or from The New Style: ''I rolled up the wooler and I watched Columbo.'' A wooler, according to my street sources, is a joint with crack in it. The Beasties' lyrical style is to brag and tell tall tales, so you cannot in fairness say they are advocating anything. But they are absolutely referring to drugs. So I had yet another epiphany, this time a two sided one.
1. It is a bad thing that Adam Yauch lies. Faced with a choice of affirming his own vision or a potential network sitcom, Yauch opted for a sitcom. This is really disillusioning. A majority of Americans under the age of 45 have had some sort of illegal-drug experience, and of those, most have had an interesting time and got on with their lives. Lying about it makes antidrug hysteria possible at election time. I say everyone who ever used an illegal drug ought to pee on the White House lawn and tell the President to analyze that. And then everyone ought to pee on the Fortune 500 firms who demand urinalyses of their employees. If the Beastie Boys mean it about fighting for our right to party, they will tell the truth and lead us.
2. It is a good thing that Adam Yauch lies. The networks are run by cynical greedheads and staffed with dullards who think that if the demographics show antidrug hysteria is happening, it's the truth. Lying to such people is not selling out; it is growing up. The Beastie Boys could make a great TV show. There won't be a mass pee-in on the White House lawn, because, as I said, most people are extremely conservative and enjoy their heavily structured lives.Why be a martyr?
''Sorry, man,'' says Yauch. ''That was a pack of cheerleaders. They wanted to do their routine for me, but I told them they had to take their clothes off first.''
Did they? ''No, they're down the hall now.'' So, drug references aside, how do you get it up after all that beer you purportedly drink?
''It comes down to the girl. If she's talented, she can get you up if you're dead. That's just a theory I have.''
Is it true that your contract rider says you get a supply of condoms along with the condiments in your dressing room?
''Yes, the Beastie Boys are into safe sex. We're also into making our own porno movies with our video camera. We got a great segment of this girl who wouldn't suck dick unless we sang Brass Monkey. So we sang Brass Monkey and she blew us.''
Where'd that happen? ''Washington or Montana. Middle America, man-you'd be amazed. I'm calling from South Carolina right now, and the South is known for its incredible dick-sucking abilities.''
So the Beasties haven't gone for the antisex hysteria, anyway. Maybe something is shifting out there. Maybe the fact that the Beasties are number one now while other bands (such as The Ramones and the Dictators) with similar humor failed means that all those extremely conservative teenagers are willing to laugh at themselves again, to be irreverent again, learning again not to takethe word of extremely conservative adults.
''Seems that way to me, man. Excuse me. Someone's at the door again.''
So maybe this is the beginning of a new phase . . . the beginning of. . . the return of. . . the Sixties?
''Sorry, man. I gotta go. Those cheerleaders are back.
