Episode 977 - The Beastie Boys

00:00:32Marc:Today on the show, I talked to the Beastie Boys, and I want to talk a little bit about that, a little bit about the Beastie Boys in general.

00:00:39Marc:But I'm going to hold off on that, but they are here.

00:00:41Marc:But you might want to hang out for the intro.

00:00:43Marc:I don't know where it's going to go right now, but I will address some stuff.

00:00:48Marc:Fast forward and just get to it.

00:00:50Marc:You're going to enter into a world that I haven't set up for you.

00:00:53Marc:You think you know, but you don't know.

00:00:55Marc:You know what I'm saying?

00:00:56Marc:Isn't that mostly the case?

00:00:58Marc:You think you know, but you don't know.

00:01:00Marc:Are you big enough a person to say, I don't know?

00:01:03Marc:Are you a big enough person to go, I'm wrong?

00:01:07Marc:Are you a big enough person to say like, yeah, I fucked everything up and now I don't have a place to live anymore.

00:01:12Marc:That was kind of specific.

00:01:13Marc:Before I get to that, let's deal with what's in front of me right now, which is that you can get To Real, my latest special, in audio format at WTFPod.com.

00:01:24Marc:It's right on the front page there.

00:01:26Marc:It's nice to have.

00:01:27Marc:It's a nice gift.

00:01:28Marc:I think you can give it.

00:01:29Marc:I don't know.

00:01:30Marc:Also, the dates.

00:01:32Marc:I've got a couple of dates up there that are happening.

00:01:35Marc:The Wheeler Opera House in Aspen, Colorado, March 23rd.

00:01:38Marc:Probably going to be snow still, right?

00:01:39Marc:The Boulder Theater in Boulder on March 24th.

00:01:42Marc:I'm going to be flying one of those little jets, right?

00:01:44Marc:Aspen.

00:01:45Marc:Right into the bucket.

00:01:46Marc:Get on that little plane.

00:01:47Marc:You're like, ooh, we're swooping in.

00:01:49Marc:And we're swooping out.

00:01:51Marc:Two dates.

00:01:51Marc:Those two dates at wtfpod.com slash tour.

00:01:54Marc:They're available.

00:01:55Marc:That's happening.

00:01:56Marc:You know...

00:01:58Marc:I sort of honed in on something that's probably pretty obvious to most of you, and that is the incredible capacity for the human animal to be just immersed in fucking denial.

00:02:10Marc:Now, I get hung up on this shit, but denial in the sense that, like, you know what triggered this?

00:02:15Marc:And it was kind of this moment of catharsis, this kind of moment where my brain just went, oh, shit, of course, that explains it.

00:02:21Marc:It's humanity.

00:02:23Marc:It's humanity is that, you know, in this federal court ruling that deemed Obamacare unconstitutional, the individual mandate, I just started to ask myself, you know, who rejoices this?

00:02:38Marc:Who says finally we don't have to sign up for health coverage?

00:02:41Marc:Finally, that racket is over.

00:02:42Marc:Finally, we don't have to chip into the pot so we can all get coverage.

00:02:46Marc:It's like I don't understand it on a policy level, but here's the fucked up thing is I started to understand it on a human level.

00:02:53Marc:Nobody.

00:02:54Marc:Except grown-up people who have faced adversity or seen it in their life.

00:02:59Marc:Nobody wants to think about getting sick.

00:03:02Marc:They just wait it out.

00:03:04Marc:It's just something humans do.

00:03:06Marc:That's why there's such a strain on emergency rooms, on the existing health care system outside of Obamacare.

00:03:14Marc:Most people, sadly, I think most people, they're like, yeah, this cough is nothing.

00:03:19Marc:Nah, this will go away.

00:03:19Marc:This bump will go away.

00:03:21Marc:I'm putting some...

00:03:22Marc:Some salve on it.

00:03:23Marc:I don't think it's a goiter.

00:03:27Marc:I don't think it's a tumor.

00:03:28Marc:I don't think it's a glandular problem.

00:03:30Marc:I'm just going to put some balm on it.

00:03:33Marc:Let's put some arnica on that lump.

00:03:35Marc:And of course, you wait it out.

00:03:36Marc:You wait it out.

00:03:36Marc:It doesn't go the way you go to the emergency room.

00:03:38Marc:And it's like all over your body.

00:03:39Marc:It's gutting you.

00:03:40Marc:It's in your insides.

00:03:41Marc:It's something horrible.

00:03:43Marc:Because you waited because you didn't want to accept it.

00:03:46Marc:It happens.

00:03:48Marc:People do that.

00:03:49Marc:Why do you want to confront that shit?

00:03:50Marc:But then like the thing I put together was like, this is exactly what we're doing with climate too.

00:03:56Marc:It's human nature to rationalize and it's human nature to say, nah, I don't want to think about it.

00:04:00Marc:I don't know.

00:04:01Marc:We'll deal with it.

00:04:02Marc:We'll deal with it.

00:04:03Marc:We'll deal with it.

00:04:04Marc:And then all of a sudden the universe has a tumor and it's planet earth and it's caused by a very sort of

00:04:13Marc:self-involved rationalizing species of monsters anyway ceramics i went to a ceramic sale at a house in pasadena there were several people in the backyard all of them ceramicists selling pots and vases and plates and dishes and art and whatnot and i i

00:04:33Marc:I bought a little bit from everybody, but I bought this teapot from this woman who I think was Danish.

00:04:38Marc:And it was so beautiful and so balanced and so perfectly weighted.

00:04:41Marc:And the spout looked great.

00:04:43Marc:And she like was clearly attached to it.

00:04:45Marc:And I picked it up.

00:04:46Marc:I'm like, how much?

00:04:46Marc:And she's like, oh, that one.

00:04:48Marc:And I'm like, what?

00:04:49Marc:She's like, yeah.

00:04:51Marc:I'm like, what do you want to keep it?

00:04:52Marc:There's that moment where people I don't know how people with art who do art of any kind do that.

00:04:56Marc:Like you put so much of yourself into something.

00:04:58Marc:She's like, that's perfectly balanced.

00:04:59Marc:It doesn't leak.

00:05:00Marc:It's like she was so she talked like an engineer about this teapot she made.

00:05:04Marc:And it was so perfectly beautiful, hand thrown, just great.

00:05:08Marc:And I felt bad for a minute.

00:05:10Marc:I felt like I was watching a weird detaching grieving process.

00:05:15Marc:That lasted about 22 seconds.

00:05:18Marc:And then she wrapped it up and and I swid my credit card.

00:05:21Marc:But but it was I really envied the precision of how she spoke about making teapots.

00:05:26Marc:And I thought, see, why can't I do that?

00:05:28Marc:Why can't I put something in the world that's tangible and useful?

00:05:31Marc:I know this talking sometimes does that, but you can't you know, you can't serve it.

00:05:37Marc:At dinner, you can't go, hey, for dessert, if you're wondering what you're eating out of, it's Marc Maron's words.

00:05:47Marc:You can't say that.

00:05:49Marc:Can you?

00:05:50Marc:I can.

00:05:51Marc:I can.

00:05:52Marc:Yeah.

00:05:53Marc:Anyways, the Beastie Boys.

00:05:55Marc:So here's the deal, man.

00:05:59Marc:I honestly, for me, I was so totally on board.

00:06:04Marc:Paul's Boutique, Check Your Head, Ill Communication.

00:06:09Marc:I listened to the fuck out of those records.

00:06:11Marc:A little bit of Hello Nasty, but then it kind of dropped off.

00:06:14Marc:But I definitely listened to three of them like a lot.

00:06:19Marc:Now, many of you know me.

00:06:22Marc:You've known me for years.

00:06:23Marc:I'm not a hip hop guy.

00:06:25Marc:I'm not oriented hip hop wise.

00:06:27Marc:It didn't it didn't register with me when I wasn't the age or like, you know, I listen to it now, the bigger names, but I certainly wasn't immersed in it.

00:06:37Marc:And I knew the mainstream stuff.

00:06:40Marc:So the Beastie Boys are the Beastie Boys.

00:06:42Marc:OK, you know, sadly, Adam Yawke has passed.

00:06:47Marc:But, you know, Mike Diamond and Adam Horowitz are still with us.

00:06:52Marc:And they wanted to come on the show because they got this Beastie Boys book out.

00:06:55Marc:Now, my first reaction when I thought about it, it's like, how are they not going to be difficult?

00:06:59Marc:Not in terms of like, you know, like talking to them, but how are they not going to just be kind of dickish?

00:07:05Marc:It's just like it's the perception you might have of the Beastie Boys.

00:07:08Marc:I mean, as great as they are, you listen to their music and you're like, that's just going to be hard to wrangle.

00:07:13Marc:Those guys are going to just run around me.

00:07:15Marc:They're going to like, I don't know what it is, but it's not going to be that kind of interview I do.

00:07:20Marc:So I was resistant.

00:07:22Marc:And then they sent the book, Beastie Boys book, which is, you know, what they're out promoting right now.

00:07:27Marc:And I just I started reading it and I read the whole fucking book because it really gave me insight into their music.

00:07:34Marc:There's a lot of pictures.

00:07:34Marc:There's a lot of essays by other people.

00:07:37Marc:Blake and Jonathan Latham are in here.

00:07:39Marc:DJ Anita Sarco wrote a piece in here.

00:07:43Marc:There's really a kind of a stunning story.

00:07:45Marc:essay in here that I'm looking for.

00:07:49Marc:Luke Sante, Beastie Revolution, and also the Latham episode was pretty great, but there's also a little chart, sort of interesting little approach to the feminist reaction to the Beasties, and also there's an essay by a woman who was in the band, Kate Schellenbeck, who was kicked out of the band in sort of a rude way early on, and she wrote a piece, so they really balanced out.

00:08:11Marc:I never even really thought about

00:08:13Marc:the kind of feminist reaction to the Beastie Boys in terms of, you know, who they were when they started, the language they used and how that might have offended.

00:08:20Marc:But, you know, they seem to get a pass and they seem to have evolved.

00:08:25Marc:I think they were just doing it as a, you know, there was a character thing.

00:08:28Marc:It was they were doing rap and it was the thing.

00:08:30Marc:And now they're grown men and they're

00:08:31Marc:fairly sensitive i thought and uh well whatever the the point is there's great pictures there's all kinds of ephemera about the records about songs about food there's a whole cookbook there's a roy choi cookbook in the middle of the beastie boys book and it's i read the whole thing i don't do that there's all these essays by mike and adam about you know being in the beasties about you know the things that happen with a lot about adam yawk who is he was no longer with us it opens with sort of a eulogy i love the book so i'm like okay

00:09:01Marc:let's do it let's have Mike and Adam on now how I approach it you know it's usually tricky with two people but I wanted to learn a little bit about hip-hop I wanted to you know you know connect and talk about the music and talk about New York and you know and everything and

00:09:21Marc:Well, my original fears were slightly realized, but not not terribly.

00:09:27Marc:I mean, the thing they've been doing this a long time.

00:09:30Marc:I get it.

00:09:32Marc:But right out of the gate, it was clear that Adam was like, you know, didn't give.

00:09:36Marc:I don't know if he gave zero fucks, but maybe gave one and a half fucks about being here.

00:09:41Marc:But Mike D was like engaged and he was in it.

00:09:43Marc:And I'm not throwing them under the bus here.

00:09:45Marc:I think this might be just the dynamic they do.

00:09:47Marc:The good cop, bad cop shit.

00:09:48Marc:The sort of run circles around the house kind of business.

00:09:51Marc:But ultimately, I got what I got.

00:09:54Marc:But I love the book.

00:09:56Marc:And enjoy.

00:09:58Marc:Enjoy me talking to the Beastie Boys.

00:10:00Marc:And I love this book.

00:10:01Marc:As a guy who lived in New York and missed this time.

00:10:04Marc:But there was enough in New York left when I finally did get there.

00:10:08Marc:To have a certain nostalgia for certain periods in the book.

00:10:11Marc:It really is a love letter to New York.

00:10:12Marc:to their bandmate and friend that passed, and just to, you know, the sort of great time in a way that these guys had.

00:10:21Marc:So this is me, Adam Horowitz, and Mike D. talking.

00:10:33Marc:So I was at your house.

00:10:34Marc:Yep.

00:10:35Marc:And I met you briefly.

00:10:36Marc:Yep.

00:10:36Marc:And a very nice house.

00:10:38Marc:Super nice house.

00:10:39Marc:It's a very nice house.

00:10:40Marc:It's a rental, but it is.

00:10:41Marc:Is it?

00:10:42Marc:Yes.

00:10:42Guest:And I hate to compliment.

00:10:44Guest:I don't know if I should be complimenting Adam or his lovely wife, Kathleen, but they really did.

00:10:48Guest:You guys really, the backyard that night of that soiree looked great.

00:10:52Guest:You guys really had some very nice out there.

00:10:56Guest:Mike, whenever the rare times that Mike gives me a compliment, it's as though I'm like his 11-year-old son.

00:11:02Yeah.

00:11:02Guest:Like, wow, you really, you did a great job tying your shoes.

00:11:08Guest:Look at you.

00:11:08Guest:Oh, man.

00:11:09Marc:Look at you.

00:11:10Marc:Oh, my God.

00:11:12Guest:Yeah, it was a powerful- Yeah, and I have the same amount of amazement, too.

00:11:16Guest:I know.

00:11:16Guest:I could be like when my teen sons actually do something great, I'm like, oh, look at that.

00:11:22Guest:It's the same tone.

00:11:23Guest:I don't believe you actually loaded the dishwasher without me telling you.

00:11:27Guest:I can't believe it.

00:11:28Marc:It was a powerful night.

00:11:29Marc:That was a powerful woman who spoke.

00:11:32Marc:Yeah.

00:11:33Marc:What was her name?

00:11:33Marc:Tina.

00:11:34Marc:They had a very big impact on my girlfriend, who's a painter.

00:11:37Marc:She's going to name... Her next show is going to be called The Sun Will Not Wait, which Tina brought up in her talking.

00:11:45Marc:It was a saying of some kind.

00:11:47Guest:Oh.

00:11:47Guest:Well, the charity is called Peace Sisters, and it's two-pronged, and my wife Kathleen's is called Tees for Togo.

00:11:55Guest:T-E-E-S-F-O-R-T-O-G-O.

00:11:58Guest:Tees for Togo, and it goes to...

00:12:00Guest:$40 can send a girl in Togo to school for a year.

00:12:05Guest:Yeah.

00:12:06Guest:And there's great t-shirt designs.

00:12:08Guest:Yeah.

00:12:09Guest:Assuming they're still available.

00:12:10Marc:Of famous people by famous people.

00:12:12Guest:Yes.

00:12:13Guest:Yeah.

00:12:13Guest:And I personally, I purchased the Ad-Rock t-shirt.

00:12:17Marc:Oh, you did?

00:12:17Guest:And then with this plan, I snuck it out of Adam's house and then I wore it on stage.

00:12:23Guest:We were doing these shows to promote the book and this kind of stage spectacular, if you will, in the holiday season.

00:12:32Mm-hmm.

00:12:32Guest:Maybe not so spectacular, but we tried.

00:12:34Marc:Where was it?

00:12:35Marc:At a bookstore?

00:12:36Guest:No, no.

00:12:36Guest:Big show?

00:12:36Guest:These are theatrical events.

00:12:38Guest:Oh, yeah?

00:12:38Guest:In theaters.

00:12:39Guest:In LA, I was here at the esteemed Montalban Theater.

00:12:44Marc:And you guys performed?

00:12:46Guest:Yes.

00:12:47Guest:We kind of adapted a version of the book, Beastie Boys book.

00:12:52Guest:See, I'm being very professional.

00:12:53Guest:Which is available.

00:12:54Guest:Yeah.

00:12:55Guest:Fine places.

00:12:56Guest:Now, where you buy books.

00:12:57Guest:And we adapted it basically for...

00:12:59Guest:the stage, if you will.

00:13:02Guest:Really?

00:13:02Guest:Are you guys playing yourselves?

00:13:05Guest:We've been playing ourselves for a very long time.

00:13:07Guest:Yeah, in both senses of the word.

00:13:10Guest:But anyway, in the show, as a boy, I do a costume change and I put on my Ad-Rock t-shirt and wore it.

00:13:17Guest:And Adam did not comment.

00:13:18Guest:It didn't phase him at all.

00:13:20Guest:He didn't even notice.

00:13:21Guest:Yeah.

00:13:21Marc:He seems very unfazed now.

00:13:22Marc:There's sort of a vibe going on, sort of like this has been going on for decades.

00:13:28Guest:Yeah.

00:13:28Guest:It has been.

00:13:29Guest:Yes.

00:13:29Guest:Whatever's happening- Really, it's hard to get a rise out of you, Adam.

00:13:32Guest:Mike, see, for me, it's all about the kids.

00:13:34Guest:It's all about the children.

00:13:35Guest:And it wasn't about the flashy shirt that you wore.

00:13:37Guest:It was about the $40.

00:13:38Guest:Okay, Mike?

00:13:39Guest:So, I appreciated it.

00:13:40Guest:Okay.

00:13:41Guest:Yeah.

00:13:41Guest:But- But I was in the workplace, so I didn't have time.

00:13:45Guest:Yeah, your tunnel vision.

00:13:46Marc:I get it.

00:13:46Guest:Very focused.

00:13:47Guest:Very focused.

00:13:47Marc:I want to tell you, because I'm very proud of myself, but I actually read this whole fucking book.

00:13:52Marc:Really?

00:13:52Marc:I read the whole- It's a lot of books.

00:13:54Guest:So you don't have your assistant or, as we talked earlier, your elves?

00:13:57Guest:No, my one elf.

00:13:59Guest:The elves that don't exist, they don't read it and give you cliff notes?

00:14:02Marc:No, I don't do that.

00:14:03Marc:I can't do that.

00:14:04Marc:But the thing is, with you guys, it was one of those things.

00:14:07Marc:I'm a couple years old.

00:14:08Marc:I'm 55.

00:14:09Marc:I remember listening-

00:14:12Marc:I know, I know, man.

00:14:14Marc:What are you, 52?

00:14:15Marc:All right, all right, all right.

00:14:16Marc:We're not talking about me right now.

00:14:18Marc:But like, you know, I knew the records, but I missed the whole thing.

00:14:21Marc:Like I was dug in doing comedy and I missed, there was a lot of things about hip hop in general and about you guys and about that scene in New York, even though I was there a few years later that I just didn't know about.

00:14:32Marc:So I was like, I better take a look at the book.

00:14:33Marc:But then I was like, fuck it, this is great.

00:14:35Marc:I loved it.

00:14:35Marc:It was like, not just about you and about the music, but about New York.

00:14:39Marc:I mean, about a New York that is just not there anymore.

00:14:43Marc:And it was nostalgic, and it kind of got me all warm inside.

00:14:48Marc:We meant to do that.

00:14:49Marc:No, I could feel that.

00:14:50Marc:That's good.

00:14:51Guest:Yeah.

00:14:51Guest:Well, I don't know about the warm inside.

00:14:52Guest:I like that, because I don't... Maybe you, Adam, were that clearly intentioned.

00:14:57Guest:Well, I mean, we're here in California.

00:15:00Guest:Yeah.

00:15:00Guest:The warm part, we're...

00:15:01Guest:Right.

00:15:01Guest:That's true.

00:15:02Guest:We are ex-New York.

00:15:03Guest:So you did time in New York.

00:15:05Guest:Yeah.

00:15:05Marc:I was there.

00:15:06Marc:Yeah.

00:15:06Marc:I was from 89.

00:15:07Marc:I was there to 89 to 92.

00:15:10Marc:And then I went back in like 93 to 2001.

00:15:13Marc:I mean, I was there a lot.

00:15:15Marc:I was at one year.

00:15:16Marc:Yeah.

00:15:17Marc:92 to 93.

00:15:17Marc:Yeah.

00:15:18Marc:92 to 93.

00:15:18Marc:What happened?

00:15:21Marc:I was in San Francisco.

00:15:23Guest:That's all right.

00:15:23Marc:San Francisco.

00:15:24Marc:All right.

00:15:24Guest:I got out.

00:15:25Guest:You had to bounce out for a year.

00:15:27Guest:Yeah, I was going back and forth.

00:15:28Guest:New York is tough on people.

00:15:29Guest:It's a real, you know, can break people.

00:15:30Marc:It wasn't New York's fault.

00:15:32Marc:Maybe.

00:15:33Marc:It was just the desperation.

00:15:34Marc:That's the other thing I like about the story is there was definitely ups and downs, even though you were pretty up for a long time.

00:15:41Marc:But when you were growing up there in the 70s,

00:15:44Marc:It was fucking crazy.

00:15:46Marc:I mean, it was bombed out.

00:15:47Marc:It was weird.

00:15:48Marc:And you guys were able to just run around and no one, you had parents that kind of half gave a shit.

00:15:53Guest:Yeah.

00:15:54Guest:Well, no, I mean, I don't know if they half gave a shit.

00:15:56Guest:It's kind of like part of the deal.

00:15:58Guest:We talked about that a lot.

00:15:59Guest:It never even, I don't think, even dawned on us until we were writing this book.

00:16:03Guest:Yeah.

00:16:04Guest:What the fuck?

00:16:05Guest:Like our parents just let us run wild.

00:16:09Guest:And in New York City, that's far more dangerous and wild than it is now.

00:16:12Guest:So like 73, 74?

00:16:13Guest:Yeah.

00:16:14Guest:So in the 70s, exactly.

00:16:15Guest:So we were kids in the 70s.

00:16:17Guest:And so I think that was part of the deal.

00:16:19Guest:Well, let's just back it up for a minute.

00:16:21Guest:I was now seven in 1973.

00:16:21Guest:Okay.

00:16:22Guest:Let's talk.

00:16:23Guest:Not get crazy.

00:16:24Guest:78?

00:16:24Guest:You were a bicentennial child.

00:16:28Guest:You were 10 years old.

00:16:29Guest:The bicentennial minute was a big deal for me.

00:16:32Guest:That was a big year for New York City.

00:16:34Guest:I remember watching the fireworks, the whole thing.

00:16:36Guest:But that was the glossy, nice, sort of Disney-like part of New York.

00:16:42Guest:But the reality of New York, and that's what I was trying to get at, I think it was the thing of we all had these artsy-type parents that-

00:16:52Guest:all had made this decision of at that time, if you had two or three, I was the youngest of three boys.

00:16:59Guest:So it was like, if you had three kids, you are out of the city.

00:17:01Guest:You moved to Westchester or like Hastings on the Hudson or some bucolic nice place that was a little bit away.

00:17:10Guest:And then you could safely raise your family away from all this chaos.

00:17:13Guest:But our families, these families decided like, no, this is for us.

00:17:17Guest:We're part of this like...

00:17:19Guest:Urban renewal culture and this is where our lives are going to be.

00:17:23Guest:And so that was kind of like the deal was like, all right, we're buying into this.

00:17:27Guest:So our kids are just going to run wild somehow.

00:17:29Guest:Actually, you know what?

00:17:30Guest:It's different because your mom grew up in New York.

00:17:32Guest:Yeah.

00:17:33Guest:So she's from New York.

00:17:33Guest:My parents were like the freaks that came to New York to be artists.

00:17:38Guest:Which is more common.

00:17:39Guest:Yeah.

00:17:39Guest:In the 60s?

00:17:39Guest:Which is more common.

00:17:40Guest:Yeah, in the 60s.

00:17:41Guest:Yeah.

00:17:41Guest:Or late.

00:17:43Guest:Yeah, in the 60s.

00:17:44Guest:Yeah.

00:17:44Guest:Right.

00:17:44Guest:Early 60s.

00:17:45Guest:Yeah.

00:17:45Guest:So, I mean, that's different.

00:17:46Guest:I guess I hadn't thought about that.

00:17:47Guest:My parents came, but your mom was there.

00:17:50Guest:True.

00:17:50Guest:But if you ask her, she looks at it like she made it out of the South Bronx.

00:17:55Guest:Her aspiration was to make it.

00:17:56Guest:She looks at it like she went to New York because that's where all the cool stuff was happening and she just wanted to get out of the Bronx.

00:18:02Marc:But both of you grew up in very artistic sort of intellectual households, like open minded.

00:18:07Marc:You know, you were learning things.

00:18:08Marc:You had everything the city had to offer sort of came through your parents because they embraced it.

00:18:13Marc:And, you know, there was no real restrictions.

00:18:15Marc:They were very encouraging, it seemed like.

00:18:17Guest:Yeah, I grew up in Greenwich Village.

00:18:20Guest:I grew up downtown, and we were just sort of left to our own... The city was your babysitter.

00:18:26Guest:We just sort of figured it out, and I knew where my mom was.

00:18:29Guest:My mom had a store, and so I knew to be there when the sun went down, and that's when she closed the store, so I just had to be there then.

00:18:36Marc:Don't you look back at that as this tremendous gift?

00:18:39Marc:Just like it was an amazing childhood.

00:18:42Guest:Yeah, it's definitely interesting how parents are with their kids now as opposed to then.

00:18:47Guest:Yeah, go ahead.

00:18:50Guest:I loved my childhood.

00:18:51Guest:I loved running around New York.

00:18:53Marc:It's bizarre to me because people always talk about just how fucking dangerous it was.

00:18:58Marc:But even now, there's always people out.

00:19:00Marc:There's a safety that I feel in New York that I don't feel here.

00:19:03Marc:I can always walk outside, and it's like, no, there's a lot of people here, and they'll take care of me somehow.

00:19:10Marc:Right.

00:19:10Guest:Well, in 2018, the people walking around late at night in New York just might help you, whereas in 77, they would not.

00:19:16Guest:They were probably on angel dust or other substances.

00:19:18Marc:think that?

00:19:19Marc:I always feel like that if somebody goes down to New York, out of everybody walking by, someone will step in.

00:19:24Guest:No, my favorite is fucked up, but I was crossing the street, this is a long time ago, and an old woman fell in the middle of the street, and a fucking van comes barreling around the corner and screeches right next to her, right next to this old lady on the street, and the guy screams at her, fucking Giuliani!

00:19:40Guest:And then just takes off.

00:19:43Guest:And we're like, what does that mean?

00:19:45Guest:And then we help the lady up, and I was like...

00:19:47Guest:Did he mean like Giuliani didn't fix the streets so she tripped over?

00:19:52Guest:Yeah.

00:19:53Guest:What did he have to do with this pro woman?

00:19:55Marc:I don't know.

00:19:57Marc:I don't know.

00:19:58Marc:So that's a bad example.

00:19:59Marc:That lady didn't get help.

00:20:01Guest:I thought that was a good example.

00:20:02Guest:But I think that's the point is that in this 70s New York that we're talking about from our childhood, it's like you kind of just...

00:20:10Guest:There was the stuff that you accepted as normal, which you would never, ever see today.

00:20:15Guest:I think the term cars on blocks, I remember walking on the blocks between Columbus and Amsterdam, my house on the Upper West Side.

00:20:25Guest:Every day, you would see, and they'd sit there for weeks and weeks.

00:20:28Guest:You'd see cars where people had taken tires and the rims off of, and they're sitting there on cinder blocks.

00:20:34Guest:That was just what you see, or you'd see every day,

00:20:37Guest:It would not be possible to walk down the street and not see a car whose window had been busted out to grab the cassette deck or whatever's in there.

00:20:46Guest:They'll break in for change.

00:20:48Guest:Yeah.

00:20:49Guest:But the thing is a neighborhood is a neighborhood.

00:20:51Guest:Right.

00:20:51Guest:And if your kids roaming neighborhoods-

00:20:55Guest:Most likely, at least for me, my mom owned a store, and the store next door- Where was it?

00:21:01Guest:It was in Greenwich Village on 10th Street.

00:21:03Guest:It was a used clothing store for kids.

00:21:06Guest:It was called Gee the Kids Need Clothes.

00:21:08Guest:And so I knew everybody in the neighborhood.

00:21:09Guest:Fatherwise is a great name.

00:21:11Guest:Yeah.

00:21:11Guest:Yes.

00:21:11Guest:Yeah.

00:21:12Guest:And so, you know, I knew everybody in the neighborhood.

00:21:14Guest:They knew me.

00:21:14Guest:They knew my mom.

00:21:15Guest:Yeah.

00:21:16Guest:You know what I mean?

00:21:16Guest:So like, I'm sure your mom knew the guy at the bike store on Columbus and 80 whatever street.

00:21:21Guest:You know what I mean?

00:21:22Guest:Like in all those people in the neighborhood.

00:21:23Guest:It's a weirdly rigged game.

00:21:24Guest:Like I remember like that was like the big, in terms of this freedom, like at the beginning, like back to school,

00:21:29Guest:My parents were pretty responsible.

00:21:31Guest:My mom's like responsible parents.

00:21:33Guest:She's like, okay, you're going back to school.

00:21:35Guest:You need to go get your back to school clothes.

00:21:37Guest:So there was like the store on Broadway where we go and it was, but it was kind of like a rigged game.

00:21:41Guest:Alexander's?

00:21:43Guest:Morris Brothers.

00:21:45Guest:But it was like rigged with Mr. Morris.

00:21:48Guest:Right.

00:21:49Guest:He knew.

00:21:49Guest:This is how much my kid can spend.

00:21:52Guest:Right, right.

00:21:53Guest:So I felt totally autonomous.

00:21:54Guest:Like, oh, okay, I'm walking.

00:21:56Guest:Here I'm like, I'm eight years old.

00:21:57Guest:I'm walking to the store to like pick out whatever I want for like my back to school gear.

00:22:03Guest:I think I'm going to get dressed up like Michael Jackson in the cartoon.

00:22:05Guest:No, it didn't happen.

00:22:06Guest:This is going to be great.

00:22:08Guest:But yeah, well, he kind of, you know, he would steer you a little.

00:22:10Guest:Like maybe not so much purple and fringe for you.

00:22:12Marc:Right.

00:22:13Marc:Now, were your parents both, were they together through your childhood?

00:22:16Marc:No.

00:22:17Marc:No?

00:22:17Marc:No.

00:22:18Marc:So when were they separate?

00:22:18Marc:No, but I don't think you were allowed to in the early 70s.

00:22:21Guest:No, it wasn't really.

00:22:22Guest:I mean, really, most in that time when we grew up, my parents were anomalous, and they stayed together until my dad died, basically, which is still young for me.

00:22:31Guest:But-

00:22:32Guest:And then I was brought up like just a single mom household.

00:22:34Guest:But most, I don't know.

00:22:36Guest:I just remember like it was definitely more common.

00:22:39Guest:Adam Yauk's parents are the only parents that I could think of from our childhood that stayed together.

00:22:44Guest:They stayed together the whole run?

00:22:45Guest:Whole run.

00:22:46Marc:Yeah.

00:22:46Guest:Are they still around?

00:22:48Marc:His mom, Francis, is still alive.

00:22:50Guest:Noel passed away sometime.

00:22:52Guest:A couple of years ago, maybe two years ago.

00:22:55Guest:Way too fast right now.

00:22:56Marc:Isn't it now?

00:22:57Marc:Yeah.

00:22:57Marc:This is what happens.

00:22:59Marc:I know.

00:22:59Marc:Yeah.

00:22:59Marc:But when you wrote the book, how did it make you feel to see your whole life spread out like that?

00:23:05Marc:I mean, did you feel old or were you able to relive it?

00:23:08Marc:You got a lot done and you seemed to have a really good time.

00:23:11Guest:Definitely had a good time.

00:23:15Guest:I mean, it's interesting.

00:23:17Guest:Everything that's in that book is pertaining to our band.

00:23:20Guest:So it's not really like my specific life.

00:23:22Guest:It's my specific life.

00:23:23Guest:And same thing with Mike.

00:23:26Guest:Meaning it could have been a lot bigger.

00:23:27Guest:This book could have been a lot longer.

00:23:29Guest:Well, but the band also...

00:23:30Guest:Yeah, you were in a band for a long last time.

00:23:32Guest:The band was our lives, and I think that's one of the points we kind of make in it, and Adam does it really well, is that we would just hang out with each other all the time.

00:23:41Marc:The primary focus was punk rock, and you had a resistance towards mainstream rock.

00:23:47Guest:I mean, the primary thing was just getting attention.

00:23:50Guest:Yeah.

00:23:51Guest:Or just hanging out, like something to do to hang out.

00:23:55Guest:But I don't think it was getting attention.

00:23:56Guest:For me, it was like, I wanted- It was for me.

00:23:59Guest:No, but I really, I wanted to be able to love something that, like most of the kids, I went to this like private-

00:24:05Guest:High school on the Upper West Side, junior high school.

00:24:09Guest:Then I switched to going to Brooklyn Heights.

00:24:10Guest:But some of these progressive schools, and most of the kids were kind of like these hippie-ish type kids that would listen to whatever, normal adolescent stuff.

00:24:20Guest:Yeah, grateful dad, whatever.

00:24:21Guest:Hendrix, Black Sabbath, The Who, whatever.

00:24:25Guest:So I was desperately like, what do I find that I'm gonna love that none of them are gonna listen to?

00:24:30Guest:How am I gonna be different?

00:24:32Guest:How am I gonna be different?

00:24:33Guest:Exactly.

00:24:33Guest:Yeah.

00:24:34Guest:I mean, when we were kids, when we were kid kids,

00:24:36Guest:pop music was pretty amazing what they played on the radio just the variety of things like you'd have david bowie fame right carol king there's so many different styles of music played on just top leo sayer leo sayer yeah big name right nobody it is true like pop music you'd hear everything from uh wait leo sayer it's got the word she make me feel like this

00:25:00Marc:Oh, that one, yeah.

00:25:02Marc:You should sing more of that.

00:25:03Guest:You should just keep singing that.

00:25:04Guest:It's really embarrassing.

00:25:05Guest:There's a slow one.

00:25:06Guest:I said just saying the name, but you can't just say the name to the Leo Sayers song.

00:25:09Guest:No, you make me feel like dancing.

00:25:09Guest:You want to dance the night away.

00:25:10Guest:Yeah, you got to do the high flow.

00:25:11Guest:Wasn't there a slow one?

00:25:12Guest:You feel like dancing, woo, dancing.

00:25:15Guest:Yeah.

00:25:15Guest:He definitely had a slow one.

00:25:16Guest:Yeah, I can't remember what it was.

00:25:17Guest:He must have had a slow jam.

00:25:18Guest:I mean, that high voice.

00:25:19Marc:Do something.

00:25:20Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:25:21Guest:That high voice would be a waste if he didn't have a slow jam.

00:25:23Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:25:24Marc:I remember those songs that like, even like Harry Nilsson songs, like-

00:25:27Guest:Oh, yeah, me and my arrow.

00:25:28Guest:But that's the point of AM radio.

00:25:30Guest:I remember vividly as a kid, I'd wake up.

00:25:33Guest:I had the clock radio by my bed because I was the youngest of three kids.

00:25:39Guest:So my mom, at a point, for me, I had to get my own shit together to get to school on time.

00:25:44Guest:My mom was over it by then.

00:25:45Guest:So I had the clock radio.

00:25:47Guest:AM radio, you'd hear what Adam was saying.

00:25:50Guest:Paul Simon would come on 50 Ways to Love Her, then some disco song like Boogie Oogie Woogie.

00:25:56Guest:So that was the backdrop.

00:25:57Guest:Disco song would come and then Wild Cherry, play that funky music.

00:26:01Guest:So it was like this weirdly, even though it was all pop music, but it was weirdly wide open, I think, in a way.

00:26:10Guest:So when you're young and then when you get to be, when you start to form your own sort of identity, that's when you gravitate towards the thing that's you.

00:26:19Guest:And I feel like pop music in 1979,

00:26:24Guest:I don't know what it was.

00:26:25Guest:It was kind of disco, wasn't it?

00:26:27Guest:Well, disco was definitely part of the element.

00:26:28Guest:Cocaine had really taken its effect on popular music.

00:26:32Guest:Shit was just weird.

00:26:33Guest:And punk rock just... And Mike and I were lucky that we had older siblings.

00:26:37Guest:And so they kind of introduced us to some things that we really gravitated towards.

00:26:42Guest:Like what?

00:26:43Guest:The Clash.

00:26:44Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:26:44Guest:The Clash, for sure.

00:26:45Guest:Or I had the older brothers that brought home Devo records.

00:26:47Marc:i was like what is this is the weirdest fucking thing i have ever seen i still to this day like what do you compare devo to nothing like yeah they're a singular so there's that moment where you realize there's something else going on out there that is not in the periphery yeah this is from these this is what i want to be yeah this is who i am what's your older siblings turning on to

00:27:08Guest:No, I think The Clash was it.

00:27:09Guest:When we were little kids, me and my brother and sister would listen to the same thing with Mike, Jackson 5 and all of that great stuff when we were kids.

00:27:16Guest:And then as you get older, you want to choose the thing that you're going to be, that you are interested in.

00:27:21Guest:And for us, it just sort of happened that punk rock in 77 blew up enough to come over to America and then bands in America and the Ramones, and it just sort of was all happening.

00:27:32Guest:that we got in touch with that at a young age.

00:27:35Marc:The whole New York punk scene sort of came up when you were like 15, 16?

00:27:39Marc:Well, no, we are too young.

00:27:40Marc:Too young for that?

00:27:41Guest:Again, I'm noticing a trend here of some advanced aging techniques.

00:27:46Guest:I'm three years older.

00:27:47Guest:I apologize.

00:27:48Guest:No, yeah, we were too young for that initial CBGBs, Ramones, definitely New York Dolls, but even the Ramones, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, that era, we were still, whatever, 10 years old, so we were, even in all our freedom, we weren't going to CBGBs as 10-year-olds like that.

00:28:05Guest:We were at 13 and 14.

00:28:07Guest:Yeah, at 14, we were.

00:28:08Marc:Yeah, they would let you in at 10, right?

00:28:10Guest:Yeah, no, they probably would have.

00:28:12Marc:You might have, depending on who you were with, yeah.

00:28:14Guest:I mean, but certainly as 13 and 14-year-olds, we went everywhere, and that included bars, whatever, because that was another aspect to New York then.

00:28:23Guest:You could do that, yeah.

00:28:24Guest:You could do that, and the drinking age was 18, so it was kind of like, yeah, basically they were like, the myth was always if you could reach the bar, you could get a drink.

00:28:32Marc:So where did you all meet?

00:28:35Yeah.

00:28:35Guest:Well, I met Adam Yauch, MCA, at a Bad Brains show.

00:28:41Guest:So Bad Brains were like this weirdly incredible hardcore band from Washington, D.C., but then moved to New York and they were faster.

00:28:49Guest:And for us, that was next level exciting to the punk rock.

00:28:54Guest:And I just happened to go to this teeny...

00:28:57Guest:I saw an ad for them playing.

00:28:59Guest:This is boys and girls way before there were things called smartphones.

00:29:04Guest:Adam likes me to show the phone.

00:29:06Guest:I actually hate it.

00:29:08Guest:Mike normally would take the phone out of his pocket.

00:29:10Guest:I'm illustrating the point, Adam.

00:29:13Guest:That's what I'm doing.

00:29:14Guest:I saw an ad and went with my one other punk rock friend from high school who was named John Barry, who was the first guitar player in Beastie Boys.

00:29:25Guest:We go to the show and there's like 12 people there and there's only one other like young teenager, one other teenager period.

00:29:33Guest:And it was Yauk.

00:29:34Guest:And so I was way too scared to start talking to him.

00:29:37Guest:But John, our guitar player, he was more socially skilled than...

00:29:43Guest:Oh, it wasn't because Yao had an aura or a presence?

00:29:45Guest:No, well, Yao was cool because he was wearing this trench coat and a couple of homemade buttons on it.

00:29:51Guest:He was more advanced and more skilled in punk rock looking than I would.

00:29:55Guest:I still looked like this schlubby Jewish kid from the Upper West Side.

00:30:00Guest:I didn't have it all down yet.

00:30:02Guest:Certainly not the chiseled, hunkish look you have now.

00:30:07Guest:And where did you guys meet you?

00:30:09Guest:Oh, man.

00:30:10Guest:It was Milan.

00:30:11Guest:72.

00:30:13Guest:Must have been.

00:30:14Guest:On a film set.

00:30:15Guest:Yeah.

00:30:16Guest:We were listening to some metallo disco.

00:30:17Guest:It was like 5 a.m.

00:30:19Guest:Sun was coming up.

00:30:20Guest:You know, that slow, sleazy disco.

00:30:23Guest:Yeah.

00:30:24Guest:I think I met Adam and Mike for the first time at the Black Flag at Petman Lounge.

00:30:31Guest:I think.

00:30:32Guest:I'm not 100% sure.

00:30:33Guest:I kind of remember Rat Cage.

00:30:35Guest:This is a record store we'd all hang out at.

00:30:37Guest:But the basement one on Avenue A.

00:30:40Marc:That was like the rat cage was sort of your second older sibling thing in terms of turning you on to stuff, right?

00:30:45Guest:Yeah, there was this record store that we would all sort of cut school and go and hang out at.

00:30:50Guest:Some of us would go after school, Adam, like having completed a school day.

00:30:55Guest:And then take the subway there.

00:30:57Guest:I'm just saying.

00:30:57Guest:No, I know.

00:30:58Guest:I didn't mean to implicate you.

00:31:00Guest:Anyway, it was like our hangout.

00:31:02Guest:It was really cool to have a hangout.

00:31:04Guest:It's the best.

00:31:05Guest:Punk hangout.

00:31:06Guest:It's the best.

00:31:06Guest:And it's also that thing we try to get across in the book.

00:31:09Guest:At that time in New York, to find out what was going on, you had to go to point A to run into...

00:31:16Guest:this friend or that friend or just even somebody you don't know that's like, oh yeah, you guys should go to this thing tonight.

00:31:23Guest:Otherwise you have no freaking idea like what is going on.

00:31:26Marc:Yeah, because it wasn't mainstream and you didn't even know if the bands were playing and you had to sort of be in the loop to figure out what was going on or even get the records at that point.

00:31:32Guest:I just got sidetracked thinking about our circle of friends in 1982 and how we all sort of gravitated.

00:31:38Guest:Because Manhattan's an island, right?

00:31:39Guest:Yeah.

00:31:40Guest:But some of us were in Brooklyn Heights, a little deeper into Brooklyn.

00:31:43Guest:Yeah.

00:31:44Guest:Then Mike's uptown.

00:31:44Guest:Mike and John were way uptown.

00:31:46Guest:And we're in the village.

00:31:47Guest:But like...

00:31:48Guest:So you and John came down because you met Yauk and Arabella, right?

00:31:53Guest:And then Yauk went to school with Matty Ginsburg.

00:31:57Guest:No, he was still going to school way out in Brooklyn.

00:32:00Guest:Not way, way out, but pretty far.

00:32:01Guest:It's pretty far.

00:32:02Guest:Pretty deep, like Murrow.

00:32:04Guest:And yeah, he was the one punk rock kid at Murrow.

00:32:07Guest:Which must have been tough.

00:32:08Guest:It was hell.

00:32:09Guest:That was hell for him to be in deep Brooklyn and just have all these... Buttons.

00:32:15Guest:These ID Guido dudes yell at you every day because you were the weird freak looking kid.

00:32:21Marc:Yeah, there's never a shortage of commentary in New York on the street about how you look or what you are.

00:32:27Guest:Oh, definitely.

00:32:28Guest:And much more then, I feel.

00:32:29Guest:I feel like now people are probably reasonably polite.

00:32:33Guest:Like then it was, like that was normal.

00:32:37Guest:If I was going to walk by the Hayden Planetarium, which is where the subways, and it was like a Friday or Saturday night, and that's when laser rock was going on.

00:32:45Guest:It was like all these guys getting wasted to go see laser Zeppelin or whatever.

00:32:50Guest:It was normal that they would yell, should it be, and basically want to kill me.

00:32:54Marc:When you guys started, did you take lessons?

00:32:56Marc:Did you play?

00:32:57Marc:Did you just learn to play your instruments just by getting them?

00:33:01Marc:Actually, well, basically by getting them.

00:33:03Guest:Somehow I had a really sweet, I called her the last living bohemian in Greenwich Village.

00:33:10Guest:I had this very lovely and out there godmother.

00:33:15Guest:Yeah.

00:33:15Guest:It was almost like a fairy godmother.

00:33:16Guest:She convinced, I don't know, she convinced my mom to get me a drum set.

00:33:21Guest:And my mom said, yes.

00:33:22Guest:I can't believe- It's really cool having a child with a drum kit in an apartment.

00:33:28Guest:Yeah.

00:33:28Guest:I'm in an apartment on the Upper West Side with a drum set.

00:33:32Guest:Yeah.

00:33:33Guest:And I was able to play it after school.

00:33:35Guest:It's pretty crazy.

00:33:37Guest:And how'd you start playing guitar?

00:33:39Guest:My mom and her friends bought me a guitar for my 12th birthday.

00:33:44Guest:They decided that I was going to be a guitar player.

00:33:46Guest:And somehow, I guess my mom hooked it up.

00:33:49Guest:She knew someone who knew a guitar teacher who happened to be Laurie Anderson's sister.

00:33:54Guest:Yeah.

00:33:54Guest:So I took a couple of guitars.

00:33:55Guest:That's New York, right?

00:33:56Guest:I never, I didn't know.

00:33:57Guest:Mike, I told you that like maybe once a long, long time ago.

00:33:59Guest:You know, I'm a huge Laurie Anderson fan.

00:34:02Guest:Yeah.

00:34:03Guest:You isn't, but I'm just saying, like when I saw United States- No, I know, but this is Laura.

00:34:07Guest:I'm talking to Laurie Anderson's sister.

00:34:09Guest:Yeah.

00:34:09Guest:The guitar teacher.

00:34:11Guest:Yes.

00:34:12Guest:Well, she taught me how to play, my first song I ever learned on guitar was Mystery Dance by Elvis.

00:34:17Guest:Oh, that's great.

00:34:18Guest:Really?

00:34:18Guest:Yeah.

00:34:19Guest:I want to learn it.

00:34:20Guest:That's a fucking hip guitar player.

00:34:22Guest:That's a great song.

00:34:22Guest:So I asked her to teach me that song.

00:34:24Guest:She's like, what song do you want to learn?

00:34:25Marc:So you earned the essential rock and roll thing.

00:34:28Marc:The mystery dance.

00:34:31Marc:I want to tell you about the mystery dance.

00:34:34Guest:Great song.

00:34:35Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:34:37Guest:So I only took a couple of lessons with her and then Adam Yauk gave me a couple of guitar lessons.

00:34:41Guest:He was like, this is how you do this and that.

00:34:43Guest:So he was a good guitar player as well?

00:34:44Guest:And I don't think he ever had lessons.

00:34:46Marc:Uh-huh.

00:34:47Marc:That's the sort of like the feeling about Yauk's absence in this book is that he was this almost mystical, all knowing kind of dude who understood things innately and was there always for you guys to sort of show you and keep you pushing you ahead into things.

00:35:03Marc:He seemed to know things that no one else knew in a way.

00:35:05Guest:Well, I knew things at a time when I don't ... Still to this day, we're misty.

00:35:09Guest:How did he know this?

00:35:11Guest:Because you don't have YouTube.

00:35:15Guest:It wasn't like in his bedroom, there was this stack of textbooks of how to rewire a guitar amp.

00:35:22Guest:He just knew how to do it.

00:35:23Marc:He was the kind of guy who would take things apart and put them back together.

00:35:27Marc:Yeah.

00:35:28Guest:Well, I mean- No, he literally would take stuff apart and put it back together for fun.

00:35:32Guest:Right.

00:35:32Guest:And like stuff that you would see in his room.

00:35:34Guest:Like he'd literally have- Well, that's how he figured it out probably.

00:35:36Guest:He'd be like, what's going on there?

00:35:37Guest:He's like, oh, I wanted to see, I was curious I took it apart and I'm just putting it back together.

00:35:42Marc:So the punk rock thing, what, lasted a couple of years for you guys?

00:35:46Marc:Like seriously?

00:35:47Marc:When you were playing punk before hip hop came in?

00:35:49Marc:I mean, I think it lasted for our entire lives, really.

00:35:50Marc:Well, yeah.

00:35:50Marc:No, I know.

00:35:51Marc:The spirit of it, but actually being a punk band- Well, being a punk band, I think you get tired of it after a bit.

00:35:56Guest:Sure.

00:35:56Guest:Because the hardcore is great in terms of the access point.

00:35:59Guest:Like, okay, well, here's the A part, here's the B part, you know a few chords-

00:36:04Guest:Yeah.

00:36:05Guest:Write a few stupid words.

00:36:06Guest:It's like you get it together.

00:36:08Guest:So it has a great and also you're able to then book gigs and make your own flyers.

00:36:13Guest:It's all you can do it all yourself.

00:36:15Guest:And also all your friends are doing something that's related to.

00:36:18Guest:So everybody's doing stuff and it's really exciting.

00:36:21Guest:But making your own clothes.

00:36:23Guest:Yeah, that too.

00:36:24Guest:But musically, it kind of runs its core.

00:36:27Guest:It's just limiting after a little bit.

00:36:29Guest:For us.

00:36:30Guest:Yeah.

00:36:31Guest:For us.

00:36:31Guest:That's just how we felt about it.

00:36:33Guest:And that's not punk rock in general.

00:36:34Guest:That's specific hardcore punk rock.

00:36:36Guest:Hardcore, yeah.

00:36:36Guest:American hardcore, yeah.

00:36:37Guest:And we, you know, after a while-

00:36:39Guest:Yeah, we got sort of tired of it.

00:36:42Guest:We wanted to do different things, and we did try to play.

00:36:44Guest:We can't sing.

00:36:46Guest:Right.

00:36:46Guest:I think that's a major thing that held us back, that if any one of us could have- They're still holding you back, Adam, with that not singing stuff.

00:36:53Guest:It sucks.

00:36:55Guest:It sucks.

00:36:56Guest:We could have been contenders.

00:36:58Guest:We could have done something.

00:36:59Marc:You did something.

00:37:00Guest:But I'm just saying, we actually wrote and recorded some songs where Mike was singing, and it was like, we suck.

00:37:05Guest:Yeah.

00:37:05Guest:And that's not a slight... I'm worse than Mike.

00:37:08Guest:Yauk's worse than me, and Yauk's worse than... We're all terrible.

00:37:12Guest:Right.

00:37:13Guest:And at the same time, as kids, when rap was getting played on the... Right when rap was sort of starting to come out of the Bronx and downtown, we loved listening to rap records.

00:37:24Guest:And that was something that we could kind of do.

00:37:27Guest:Right.

00:37:27Guest:True.

00:37:27Guest:And that was more inspiring.

00:37:29Guest:Yeah.

00:37:29Guest:Well, I would also say rap was more inspiring, but it also seemed more, at least to me, it seemed more radical at the time.

00:37:35Guest:Like it just was more, there was no precedent to it in my world.

00:37:40Guest:Like there was nothing, there's nothing that prepared me to hear something, especially when rap changed, like when records like

00:37:48Guest:Run Deep Sea Sucker MCs came out and things were kind of reduced down and more minimal and just a drum machine and rapping.

00:37:54Guest:Yeah.

00:37:55Guest:That was so just completely different and radical to anything.

00:38:00Guest:It felt more punk than like.

00:38:02Guest:Yeah.

00:38:02Guest:Than punk.

00:38:03Guest:Chromags or whatever.

00:38:04Guest:Not to say, I'm definitely not saying anything negative against the Chromags.

00:38:08Guest:This is a controversial podcast.

00:38:10Guest:Please.

00:38:10Guest:First we went in on Migos, now Chromags.

00:38:12Guest:I'm not saying anything against the Chromags.

00:38:14Guest:Send an armored vehicle for us, please, after this.

00:38:17Guest:Right.

00:38:18Marc:I just don't want to get beat up.

00:38:20Marc:Please.

00:38:20Marc:Well, I think also when you talk to people like Watt, who we talked about earlier, the idea of punk initially, it wasn't a sound.

00:38:29Marc:It was just the ability to do whatever the fuck you wanted and make your own thing.

00:38:32Guest:I retract that.

00:38:33Guest:It sounded more punk than, say, rap music in 83 sounded more punk than the Minutemen.

00:38:36Marc:Right.

00:38:37Marc:I get it.

00:38:38Marc:Right.

00:38:38Marc:But it spoke to you in a way where you saw possibilities.

00:38:41Marc:You were like, this is like, it moved you and you were like, holy shit, what is this?

00:38:45Guest:And we just loved it.

00:38:46Guest:It was like this thing where I just loved it.

00:38:48Guest:And not unlike when I'm talking earlier, like being...

00:38:51Guest:younger kids in a household when we heard the clash was like okay that's for me but then hip-hop was like exponential with that like as soon as we heard rap records and rap music it was like wait we can do that and then like what adam said when those those hip-hop artists started coming downtown from the bronx from harlem whatever and you saw everything kind of just unfolded in

00:39:11Guest:front of you again, which is another thing about growing up in New York.

00:39:13Guest:You can go to this club, Negril, where all of a sudden the very first downtown hip hop nights had happened.

00:39:18Guest:Or then that moved to Roxy because it got too big.

00:39:21Guest:And you go to Roxy, it was packed with B-boys and B-girls from all over.

00:39:28Guest:And dudes were doing cocaine in the bathrooms.

00:39:30Guest:And it was this whole crazy... And people were getting robbed in the bathrooms.

00:39:33Guest:Mike, again, I was not doing cocaine in the bathroom.

00:39:35Guest:I'm not implicating you.

00:39:37Guest:Okay.

00:39:37Guest:But you're also... No, but that's the point.

00:39:39Guest:We were kids that we didn't actually even know what was going... I was just like, whoa, this is what's going on?

00:39:44Guest:We had no idea.

00:39:44Guest:This was also before hip hop.

00:39:46Guest:This is like when rap was just... When because of these places, break dancers were there, graffiti writers were there, rappers were there, DJs were there, and they were like just sort of formed into this thing.

00:39:55Guest:Oh, quick side note.

00:39:55Guest:I want to go back.

00:39:56Guest:This goes back to Laurie Anderson's... I have another side note.

00:39:57Guest:I want to borrow that book over there.

00:39:58Guest:Which one?

00:39:59Guest:The Wrecking Crew.

00:40:00Guest:Okay.

00:40:00Guest:I'll return it.

00:40:01Guest:Okay.

00:40:02Guest:You can.

00:40:03Guest:You've seen the documentary.

00:40:04Guest:I haven't, but I'm going to read the book.

00:40:05Guest:Oh, you should see the- I know.

00:40:07Guest:I haven't seen Titanic either.

00:40:09Guest:I like that you put them in the same category.

00:40:12Guest:Oh, wait, my footnote, though, is back to Laurie Anderson's sister as a guitar teacher.

00:40:17Guest:This is another footnote of us growing up in New York at the time we did.

00:40:20Guest:Somehow, we were exposed to all this freak show that our various parents had in their homes.

00:40:28Guest:We were never kept out of it.

00:40:29Guest:It was always integrated-

00:40:31Guest:Like what do you mean?

00:40:32Marc:Which part of the freak show?

00:40:34Guest:It was just whatever.

00:40:34Guest:It was all artists, music, like all these like super strongly opinioned.

00:40:39Guest:Yeah.

00:40:40Guest:These are people who had chosen to be in New York for a reason.

00:40:43Guest:And that's because they were going to have their say in what they made and in what they said every single day of their lives.

00:40:50Guest:And that just seemed normal to us.

00:40:52Marc:Right.

00:40:53Marc:But you guys were tapped into the whole sort of like dance thing too, right?

00:40:56Marc:The club thing outside of the rap.

00:40:58Marc:Because I remember dancing, Terry.

00:40:59Marc:I remember going there once.

00:41:01Marc:But you guys had a real experience with that place.

00:41:03Guest:We lived there.

00:41:04Guest:It was just so exciting to go to the club where there's all this different music happening.

00:41:08Guest:It was all mixed together and you loved it all.

00:41:10Guest:And then also, whatever, teenagers, all of a sudden you realize there's girls dancing.

00:41:15Guest:Yeah.

00:41:16Guest:You might be able to actually...

00:41:18Guest:Well, we couldn't really dance with girls because that just wouldn't really go down like that.

00:41:23Guest:Then that would be way too normal.

00:41:24Guest:Right, right.

00:41:25Guest:But you could actually just talk to girls was pretty exciting.

00:41:30Marc:And so what was the first – because I know you made a punk record, right, that you guys sort of pressed yourself or that Dave Parsons helped you out with.

00:41:40Guest:From the rat cage.

00:41:41Marc:Yeah.

00:41:42Marc:And then what was the – was the Cookie Puss song the first sort of rap song-ish?

00:41:49Guest:Yeah.

00:41:50Guest:Oh, so yeah.

00:41:51Guest:We actually went and recorded some songs, kind of more punk.

00:41:55Guest:Right.

00:41:55Guest:Well, like Adam said, we were kind of trying to sing a little bit, which was terrible, terrible idea.

00:42:00Guest:And everything we made kind of sucked.

00:42:02Guest:We went into the studio.

00:42:03Guest:It was this friend of Yauk's parents that hooked us up with studio time.

00:42:09Guest:But the one thing we made that we liked were two things.

00:42:11Guest:It was Cookie Puss and this other song,

00:42:13Guest:Beastie Revolution where both we were just like screwing around kind of making fun of music that we actually loved.

00:42:19Guest:Yeah.

00:42:19Guest:Which is a weird New York kid thing to do maybe.

00:42:23Guest:Right.

00:42:24Guest:But yeah, Cookie Buzz comes out and it's kind of like, I don't know, I guess us trying to do, we loved like world famous Supreme Team Buffalo Gals.

00:42:34Guest:Yeah.

00:42:34Guest:So, we wanted to make our thing and all of a sudden at this club, Danceteria, they started playing that.

00:42:41Guest:So, that was like the most thrilling thing ever as a teenager.

00:42:45Guest:They started playing your song.

00:42:45Guest:They started playing Cookie Puss, exactly mixed in with these other records.

00:42:48Guest:So, to have that as a teenager, then you're kind of like, whoa, things are really happening for us now.

00:42:55Guest:It was kind of.

00:42:56Guest:And then we were on the Joe Franklin show.

00:42:58Guest:Joe Franklin.

00:43:00Guest:Yeah, that made me spill more water on myself.

00:43:04Guest:Yeah, that was a little bit later.

00:43:07Guest:I know, but I was just timing that one.

00:43:08Guest:Yeah, you got me on that one.

00:43:11Guest:You got me on that one, Joe.

00:43:12Marc:I like that Crazy Eddie plays an important part in the story somewhat.

00:43:15Marc:Right?

00:43:16Marc:Yeah.

00:43:16Marc:Because when you grow up on the East Coast, because when I go visit my grandmother and shit, I mean, they had those stations.

00:43:21Marc:Crazy Eddie was everywhere.

00:43:23Marc:And then there was like those two stations that only ran like the Bowery Boys and the Laurel and Hardy movies.

00:43:28Marc:I can't remember, like Channel 11 or something.

00:43:30Guest:That was so good.

00:43:31Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:43:32Guest:And Little Rascals.

00:43:33Marc:Right, Little Rascals.

00:43:34Marc:Exactly.

00:43:35Guest:All day long.

00:43:36Guest:They're not showing that anymore.

00:43:38Marc:No, man.

00:43:38Marc:They're not showing Little Rascals and Bowery Boys.

00:43:40Marc:Wait till you see that new movie with the Laurel and Hardy movie.

00:43:43Marc:I know.

00:43:43Guest:Tomorrow.

00:43:44Guest:Oh, I'm supposed to go?

00:43:44Guest:Yeah, but you're not going to be here.

00:43:45Guest:Okay, go tomorrow.

00:43:46Marc:Oh, it's so good, you guys.

00:43:47Guest:It's tomorrow.

00:43:48Guest:It's so good.

00:43:49Guest:I didn't RSVP.

00:43:49Guest:I think it's I can't go.

00:43:52Marc:It's so good.

00:43:52Marc:I know.

00:43:53Guest:You've seen it already?

00:43:54Marc:Yeah, I saw a screener because I interviewed Coogan.

00:43:57Marc:It was great.

00:43:58Marc:It's really touching.

00:43:59Guest:I don't know though, but John Riley, he's in Laurel and Hardy, but he's also in Holmes and Watson.

00:44:07Guest:Yeah, Holmes and Watson.

00:44:08Marc:Two historical couplings.

00:44:10Marc:No, he's great as Hardy.

00:44:12Marc:It's astounding.

00:44:12Marc:He's kind of one of my heroes.

00:44:14Marc:It's really a stunning movie.

00:44:16Marc:Shout out to John C. Reilly for that.

00:44:18Marc:Let's try to do some history here.

00:44:20Marc:I thought that's all we've been doing.

00:44:23Marc:It is kind of, but isn't that what you've been doing?

00:44:25Marc:Yeah, I know.

00:44:26Marc:We're stuck in the past.

00:44:27Marc:Are you tired?

00:44:28Marc:Are you tired of it?

00:44:28Marc:Are you tired?

00:44:29Marc:No.

00:44:30Marc:You should get a dog.

00:44:31Marc:I feel all right.

00:44:31Marc:I got cats.

00:44:32Marc:I got three cats.

00:44:34Marc:I don't need a dog.

00:44:35Marc:Three.

00:44:36Marc:You went with a third one?

00:44:37Marc:I have a third cat.

00:44:38Marc:After two?

00:44:38Marc:Yeah, I had two and then I found one.

00:44:39Marc:He found me.

00:44:40Marc:Showed up.

00:44:41Marc:I took him in.

00:44:42Guest:I had no choice.

00:44:42Guest:How do the other cats feel about that?

00:44:43Marc:It was rough because they're old and this guy's driving them nuts.

00:44:46Marc:They were in their retirement enjoying their later years.

00:44:48Marc:Now they got this fucking lunatic bottle.

00:44:51Marc:Where's the pan?

00:44:51Marc:Where do you keep the pan?

00:44:52Marc:In the house outside the house?

00:44:53Marc:What, the kitty box?

00:44:53Marc:Yeah, the cat box.

00:44:54Marc:There's three of them now.

00:44:55Marc:I got two.

00:44:56Guest:Do they each have their own kitty box?

00:44:57Marc:Well, you got to because it's a lot of shit, man.

00:44:59Marc:Cats, they run the house.

00:45:01Marc:I went through a thing this morning.

00:45:02Marc:I can't deal with it.

00:45:03Marc:I got the house clean and they get the litter all over everything.

00:45:05Marc:There's nothing you can fucking do about it.

00:45:07Marc:There's a lot of things that aren't cool about cats, but you have them?

00:45:10Guest:Uh-huh.

00:45:11Marc:What happened?

00:45:12Marc:You let it outside?

00:45:13Marc:I can't.

00:45:14Marc:You can't go into it?

00:45:16Guest:I can't go back there.

00:45:17Guest:That's what you can't kick.

00:45:19Guest:Psychologically.

00:45:20Marc:Let's just say they're dead.

00:45:21Marc:Okay.

00:45:23Marc:Yeah.

00:45:24Marc:Well, you got to keep them inside out here.

00:45:26Guest:All right.

00:45:27Guest:Anyway, sorry.

00:45:28Guest:Back to history.

00:45:29Guest:We went to feline history.

00:45:31Marc:But so after Cookie Puss, what's sort of fascinating to me, even though there seems to be no shortage of resentment and bad blood there, is that I really had no idea that you guys sort of, in a sense, found Rick Rubin or you were brought into him and that he was sort of integral in helping you define who you were at the time.

00:45:53Marc:How did that happen?

00:45:55Guest:Well, again, that goes back to Cookie Puss.

00:45:57Guest:We made Cookie Puss and we had this idea like, okay, we couldn't replicate that song live because it's a crank phone call and whatever.

00:46:07Guest:But we love, there are all these rap songs we've memorized every word to, so we'll just start.

00:46:12Guest:doing that we needed a dj so this friend of ours like here i'll take you over to the the this dorm room this guy i know right he's got all the equipment yeah and supposedly he had a bubble machine although we never saw it with our naked a bubble machine the bubble machine but he did in his dorm room his little teeny nyu dorm room he had a full pa with all dj equipment and and it was like i guess he was the first person we knew with a drum machine

00:46:37Guest:Two.

00:46:38Guest:So it was like, you know, he was the kid that had all the equipment.

00:46:41Guest:So it was like, you're hired.

00:46:43Guest:Right.

00:46:43Guest:You got all the shit, you're hired.

00:46:44Marc:He was just some weird kid at a dorm, sort of a stoner kid who had all this shit.

00:46:48Guest:Definitely not a stoner kid, but he was definitely, he was very strange.

00:46:51Guest:He's like just a couple years older, but he just...

00:46:54Guest:I don't know.

00:46:55Guest:He just was very intense and very ambitious.

00:47:00Guest:Right.

00:47:01Guest:And you wouldn't put it like that when you're a kid because you don't understand what that means, but he was just making it happen.

00:47:05Guest:Right.

00:47:06Guest:And he had all the equipment, so you hired him.

00:47:07Guest:And his parents were somehow, yeah, his parents were like, here, little Ricky, you want drum machine, here's budget.

00:47:12Guest:You want a PA, fine.

00:47:15Guest:And somehow also in the dorm, it was great.

00:47:17Guest:This PA was...

00:47:18Guest:Fucking loud.

00:47:20Guest:And it was in his dorm room.

00:47:21Guest:I feel like now, wouldn't you get kicked out of a dorm for having that?

00:47:25Guest:But anyway.

00:47:25Marc:He'd be in some kind of trouble, maybe.

00:47:27Guest:Yeah.

00:47:27Marc:But he was a rap fan and a hard rock fan.

00:47:31Guest:Yeah.

00:47:31Guest:Well, he came from... Unlike us, he came from... So he came from this Long Island heavy metal...

00:47:38Guest:thing that we rebelled against.

00:47:41Guest:Right.

00:47:41Guest:But then he got into hardcore and then he got into rap.

00:47:44Guest:So we kind of had that shared.

00:47:46Guest:And then he started playing like ACDC and stuff and Zeppelin and all this stuff.

00:47:50Guest:So we were like, oh, actually, you know what?

00:47:53Guest:Not bad.

00:47:53Guest:This is actually kind of cool.

00:47:55Guest:Well, the interesting thing at that time was that...

00:47:58Guest:At least for me, personally, I never really thought about production.

00:48:02Guest:Yeah.

00:48:03Guest:Like, the first record I ever made was with my band, The Young and the Useless.

00:48:08Guest:And it's great.

00:48:10Guest:A hardcore band.

00:48:10Guest:Yeah, a hardcore band.

00:48:11Guest:But, I mean, it's so bad that at one song, the drummer just stops.

00:48:16Guest:And there's, like, we just keep playing.

00:48:18Guest:And then he starts kind of back playing again.

00:48:20Guest:And then at some point, we finish the song.

00:48:21Guest:It's like, we weren't thinking about production, certainly.

00:48:24Guest:Yeah.

00:48:24Guest:Wasn't that part of it?

00:48:25Guest:As well as, like, skill level or any of that stuff.

00:48:27Guest:Yeah.

00:48:27Guest:And then Rick...

00:48:28Guest:was a producer.

00:48:30Guest:I don't know.

00:48:30Guest:He just decided at a young age, I'm a record producer, which was inspiring.

00:48:36Guest:Yeah.

00:48:36Guest:But yeah, Rick had this thing with me.

00:48:38Guest:He's like, no, no, Mikey, you're going to sound like you're working hard.

00:48:41Guest:Right.

00:48:41Guest:Don't try to make it sound like you're smooth because you're not.

00:48:44Guest:Yeah.

00:48:45Guest:He had that identity and that sense of being a producer.

00:48:49Guest:That was beyond our... Right.

00:48:53Guest:And it was funny, after he went to see the show that we did here in L.A., and he said something kind of interesting.

00:49:00Guest:Recently?

00:49:00Guest:Yeah, we were texting back and forth.

00:49:02Marc:You guys are okay now?

00:49:04Guest:Yeah.

00:49:04Guest:Well, I mean, look, there's a lot of fucked up shit that happened, but we were all really young and all handled stuff really, really badly when you get down to it.

00:49:11Guest:And I think we can all look at it.

00:49:13Guest:But I think we're able to be okay because we all came out of it all right.

00:49:17Guest:Okay.

00:49:17Guest:It's not like we're starving.

00:49:19Guest:It would be a different story if we were like...

00:49:22Guest:never got paid for our license and we were just working at the car wash.

00:49:27Marc:I don't think we'd be quite so forgiving.

00:49:31Marc:The cliffhangers in the book that made me angry.

00:49:34Marc:Did you ever get restitution?

00:49:37Guest:No, but I think we got freedom.

00:49:38Guest:It was more than that.

00:49:39Guest:We got freedom.

00:49:40Guest:We were allowed to be who we wanted to be.

00:49:43Guest:And that's the text that he said.

00:49:45Guest:He was like, you know what?

00:49:46Guest:And he's like, this weird way everybody got what they wanted.

00:49:51Guest:That doesn't mean that's not at the expense of somebody else, right?

00:49:54Guest:But he's like, look, I got to produce lots of different artists, which is what I always wanted.

00:49:58Guest:You guys got to, I mean, this is his words.

00:50:00Guest:I wouldn't call this it.

00:50:01Guest:But he's like, you got to go on and become an iconic group and do exactly what you wanted.

00:50:05Guest:And he's like, and Russell got a check.

00:50:07Guest:And that's all Russell wanted.

00:50:09Marc:All right.

00:50:10Marc:All right.

00:50:10Marc:Well, you seem to be handling it better.

00:50:12Guest:No, Mike.

00:50:13Marc:See, Mike is a jerk, right?

00:50:16Guest:And everybody knows it.

00:50:17Guest:But he is much more forgiving.

00:50:18Guest:Most people.

00:50:19Guest:I don't know everyone.

00:50:20Guest:There are a couple of people I've fooled.

00:50:22Guest:But he is much more forgiving than I am.

00:50:24Guest:Right.

00:50:25Marc:ultimately i'm fine i'm happy we're happy we're all doing things in the world right we're healthy yeah okay got it no problems i got it but uh so can we just talk for a minute run dmc change your life yeah in terms of like you know in a lot of ways yeah like when did you first meet them and how did that happen

00:50:48Guest:We met them through Rick Rubin and made a record called It's Yours.

00:50:53Guest:He meets Russell Simmons who had heard It's Yours and Russell's DJ Run from Run DMC's brother and also the manager of Run DMC.

00:51:03Guest:Meets Rick at dance interior where we go all the time and I can't believe, okay, wait, you made It's Yours?

00:51:08Guest:You're this white guy with long hair?

00:51:10Guest:This is really weird.

00:51:11Guest:Yeah.

00:51:12Guest:Somebody outside of my, rap at that time was such a small universe.

00:51:16Guest:It was like, there was only one, there was like two producers, whatever.

00:51:20Guest:Yeah.

00:51:21Guest:Then they started talking and they were like, okay, we're going to work together.

00:51:25Guest:And then Rick told Russell about us, about Beastie Boys.

00:51:28Guest:Like, here, I got these white guys.

00:51:32Guest:Love the rap.

00:51:33Guest:Anyway, so that.

00:51:37Guest:So then Russell introduced us.

00:51:41Guest:I mean, obviously, we are already huge, huge Run DMC fans.

00:51:44Guest:Right.

00:51:44Guest:I mean, Sucker MCs, that was 80...

00:51:48Guest:83, 84, yeah.

00:51:49Guest:So that was before your New York park.

00:51:52Guest:But it was like that was one of those records like the same way after it, Public Enemy, Bring the Noise.

00:51:58Guest:There's certain songs that like summertime in New York that would just take over.

00:52:02Guest:You'd hear out of every car driving by, every boombox, every open window, you would hear that song all the time.

00:52:09Guest:It's like when Sorry dropped.

00:52:10Guest:Justin Bieber's Sorry.

00:52:11Guest:It was like that moment.

00:52:12Guest:I'd like to say Dispacio more.

00:52:14Oof.

00:52:14Guest:Like you heard it everywhere.

00:52:16Guest:That's next level, but that's international.

00:52:18Guest:You heard it everywhere.

00:52:19Guest:It was just everywhere.

00:52:20Guest:Not really everywhere, but kind of everywhere.

00:52:22Guest:Well, within New York, within the island of Manhattan, it's everywhere and it's really dense.

00:52:27Guest:You can walk down one block and then...

00:52:29Guest:30 seconds later on the next block, you're hearing another part of the same song from a different radio station or different whatever.

00:52:37Guest:And it was just completely revolutionary.

00:52:41Guest:We loved it.

00:52:42Guest:And so then when all of a sudden we meet, it really was meeting our heroes.

00:52:46Guest:It really was like, whoa, these guys are doing it.

00:52:49Guest:They know what they're doing.

00:52:51Marc:Yeah.

00:52:52Marc:And then you guys, you opened for them and now you're on the same label as them.

00:52:56Marc:That all happened.

00:52:57Guest:Not same label, same management.

00:52:58Marc:Yeah.

00:53:00Guest:Russell Simmons is run from Run DMC's brother.

00:53:03Guest:Yeah.

00:53:04Guest:And so he managed, Russell managed Run DMC and then he managed us.

00:53:08Guest:Yeah.

00:53:08Guest:And so he ended up, we ended up opening for Run DMC on a tour with

00:53:14Guest:us, Timex Social Club, LL Cool J, and the group Houdini and Run DMC, and we all spent a magical summer together.

00:53:23Guest:Yeah, that was your first tour?

00:53:25Guest:That was not our first tour, but it was our first time playing shows with them.

00:53:29Guest:We were on a tour with an esteemed artist before that, Madonna.

00:53:33Marc:Oh, the Madonna tour that, yeah, you wrote about that.

00:53:35Marc:That was a year before that.

00:53:36Guest:But anyway, just being on tour with Run DMC, for us, it was kind of amazing.

00:53:40Guest:It was like three of them, three of us,

00:53:42Guest:They were a little bit older and they were definitely way cooler than us.

00:53:45Guest:Yeah.

00:53:46Guest:And just, and way better than us, like as a rap group.

00:53:49Guest:And so it was just like education every night and just the way they commanded the stage, how they worked their set list, how they're like, we learned so much.

00:53:57Guest:Right.

00:53:57Guest:From them.

00:53:58Guest:Yeah.

00:53:58Guest:And as, you know, as just, just people hanging out in the summertime, like we just, dude.

00:54:04Guest:Can't thank them enough.

00:54:06Guest:Yeah.

00:54:06Guest:No, I mean, it literally was the blueprint.

00:54:07Guest:Like, they gave us the blueprint of, okay, this is how you do it.

00:54:11Guest:And especially, I mean, Jam Master Jay, R.I.P., he... Jay had this wave.

00:54:15Guest:Like, he really saw how they were going to present themselves.

00:54:18Guest:Yeah.

00:54:19Guest:How the show was going to look...

00:54:21Guest:None of that stuff was even on the table to us.

00:54:24Guest:None of it had occurred to us.

00:54:26Marc:To be a showman, how to put on a show and how to arrange your stuff.

00:54:29Guest:Well, I mean, so the year before that, the summer before that, we had opened for Madonna on tour.

00:54:36Guest:And so that was like next level show.

00:54:38Guest:That was like real showbiz.

00:54:39Guest:That was like showbiz, showbiz, which was awesome.

00:54:42Guest:But it would be crazy to think that we could do that.

00:54:47Guest:How were you received on that tour?

00:54:48Guest:Oh, they fucking hated us.

00:54:50Guest:It was awesome.

00:54:50Guest:Yeah.

00:54:50Guest:literally booed off the stage night after night.

00:54:53Guest:Well, we didn't, well, booed as we were leaving.

00:54:55Guest:Well, we didn't get off the stage because we would stay on the stage despite the booing.

00:54:59Guest:It was just a 10 minute, maybe eight minute boo fest.

00:55:03Guest:It was pretty great.

00:55:03Guest:It was all little girls too.

00:55:04Guest:So it was like high pitch boos.

00:55:06Guest:Well, it was, it was young, you know, like eight to 11 year old girls in their pants.

00:55:10Guest:Well, their parents.

00:55:11Guest:Remember, they're young.

00:55:12Guest:They can't go to the show themselves, but the parents bring them.

00:55:14Guest:And it's like, yeah, it's all young girls with the Madonna bracelets and the mesh, everything.

00:55:20Guest:And Madonna makeup.

00:55:22Marc:And you're just up there being the raw beastie boys.

00:55:25Guest:Yeah, we're basically making them cry.

00:55:27Guest:And yeah, they didn't think that was funny or ironic or like cool in a New York City kind of way at all.

00:55:34Guest:They just wanted those assholes to get off stage.

00:55:37Guest:Right.

00:55:37Guest:But you saw a real show business.

00:55:39Guest:From Madonna.

00:55:40Guest:We did, but there was nothing we could really take away from it because we're not capable of that.

00:55:44Guest:We can't sing, dance, and look beautiful.

00:55:49Guest:But still, just to be on a real stage.

00:55:50Guest:We had been on stage at CBGB's, just punk clubs or whatever.

00:55:55Guest:And now we're at Radio City Music Hall, which was definitely a big lesson, because this is a huge stage, and we got winded really quick.

00:56:03Guest:We did not pace ourselves well.

00:56:04Guest:But no, we'd never... I barely ever saw a show like that, let alone be on the side of the stage watching it all the time.

00:56:11Guest:So we learned just a lot from Madonna.

00:56:14Guest:But from... Run DMC was like something more that we could do.

00:56:18Guest:Right.

00:56:19Guest:A template.

00:56:20Guest:Yeah.

00:56:20Guest:And was also just socially... We got...

00:56:23Guest:Oh, yeah, Madonna didn't hang out with us.

00:56:24Guest:Yeah, it's not like you were to hang out with Madonna.

00:56:26Guest:Right.

00:56:27Guest:Oh, no.

00:56:27Guest:I mean, we wanted to, but she, you know- You guys aren't pals now.

00:56:30Guest:She was smarter than that.

00:56:32Guest:She had stuff to do.

00:56:33Guest:Sure.

00:56:33Guest:But, you know, Run-N-C, where, like, they took us in, we'd hang out every day.

00:56:38Guest:She wasn't looking to drink 40s with us.

00:56:40Guest:Right.

00:56:40Guest:And, like, watch basketball games.

00:56:42Guest:No.

00:56:42Marc:not to say that she doesn't drink 40s and watch basketball games she does yeah but there's that nice story you tell about uh about run dmc coming up with that first line for the first record you know that he comes running around the corner i don't remember which one oh yeah for our song paul revere yeah yeah yeah um so that's that's a story in the book which is available in the marketplace i'll sell the book for you

00:57:06Guest:um as told by yeah snoop doggy dog on the audio book mike i'm working hard right now yeah really just checking all the boxes are you serious yeah we have we have an audio book for our book

00:57:20Guest:Star-studded.

00:57:21Guest:John C. Reilly.

00:57:22Guest:John C. Reilly.

00:57:23Guest:He has incredible readings on it.

00:57:24Guest:John C. Reilly, guest reader.

00:57:25Guest:Snoop Dogg, guest reader.

00:57:27Guest:Rachel Maddow.

00:57:28Guest:Bette Midler.

00:57:30Guest:Tim Meadows.

00:57:31Guest:Maya Rudolph.

00:57:32Guest:Goes on, goes on.

00:57:33Guest:Talib Kweli.

00:57:34Guest:Chuck D. LL Cool J. Jarvis Cocker.

00:57:36Guest:Jarvis Cocker.

00:57:37Guest:I'm just repeating words, names that Mike says.

00:57:40Guest:Our audio book is-

00:57:43Guest:I mean, it crushes the competition at Christmas time, Mike.

00:57:47Guest:Yeah, that's true.

00:57:47Guest:It really does.

00:57:48Guest:In terms of quality of- It kicks ass, Mike.

00:57:50Guest:How does that make you feel, though?

00:57:51Guest:Oh, Bobby Carnavale, great meeting.

00:57:52Guest:Bobby Carnavale.

00:57:53Marc:Yeah, that these people, they have this respect- Steve Buscemi, sorry.

00:57:56Marc:Steve Buscemi.

00:57:57Marc:They love you.

00:57:58Marc:All these people, you had such a profound influence on everybody.

00:58:01Marc:You have such amazing, eclectic fans.

00:58:03Marc:How does that make you feel?

00:58:04Marc:Great?

00:58:07Guest:Yeah, it's confusing.

00:58:08Guest:I would just assume that they had absolutely nothing else to do that day.

00:58:12Guest:No, no, no.

00:58:14Guest:Adam, these are busy, you know, accolade-filled people.

00:58:19Guest:No, it's weird.

00:58:20Guest:It's weird.

00:58:20Guest:If Steve Buscemi called you and was like, I want you to be in my movie for a day, you'd be like, of course.

00:58:25Guest:Yeah.

00:58:25Guest:But we did a video years ago that Yaak directed.

00:58:27Guest:It was the last video...

00:58:29Guest:Well, it wasn't the last video.

00:58:30Guest:It was the second to last video in this long video, and a lot of people are in it, and Steve Buscemi's in it.

00:58:35Guest:Yeah.

00:58:35Guest:And it is Buscemi, not Buscemi.

00:58:38Guest:Uh-huh.

00:58:39Guest:I always said Buscemi, but it's Buscemi.

00:58:40Guest:Yeah, I always made the same mistake.

00:58:43Guest:And I'd ask him.

00:58:43Guest:He was there.

00:58:44Guest:He was in our video, and I was like, why...

00:58:47Guest:Why are you here?

00:58:48Guest:And he's like, of course I'm here.

00:58:50Guest:Yal wrote to me and asked me to be an intern.

00:58:52Guest:Of course.

00:58:53Guest:And it doesn't make sense.

00:58:55Guest:I don't get it.

00:58:56Guest:It's awesome, but- You had a profound effect on so many lives.

00:58:59Marc:I'm working on a show right now with Alison Brie, and she said she went to see you on the Hello, Nasty tour at the Forum, and she was a teenager, and she fainted.

00:59:07Marc:she fainted alice and brie fainted at your show she's blaming us for her no i mean there's some kind of responsibility here no it's like beatlemania you know you had an effect i mean yeah put on a good show yeah i don't know how else to say it i mean you can go see other bands right yeah i mean bell biv devoe they would have that effect on people sometimes right okay but you know what i'm saying

00:59:30Marc:So we're going to be here all day.

00:59:33Marc:Yeah.

00:59:33Marc:So you make the first, let's get to the first record.

00:59:35Marc:Can we order in lunch?

00:59:36Marc:We are here all day.

00:59:37Marc:Sure, we could.

00:59:37Guest:Oh my God, I had soup dumplings last night.

00:59:39Guest:Where at?

00:59:40Guest:At a new place.

00:59:40Guest:Yeah.

00:59:41Guest:Where?

00:59:42Guest:Where?

00:59:42Guest:Yeah, you won't name where.

00:59:43Guest:In Pasadena Lake.

00:59:45Guest:It's called Dan Modern or some weird name.

00:59:47Guest:Great.

00:59:49Guest:It's the dude from Luscious Dumpling, I think, got his own spot on Lake Avenue.

00:59:53Marc:I also like you have a cookbook in your book.

00:59:56Marc:Roy Choi, LA Zone.

00:59:57Marc:Yeah.

00:59:58Marc:Roy Choi, who I imagined.

00:59:59Marc:Out of nowhere, here's a little reprieve.

01:00:00Marc:Here's some recipes.

01:00:01Guest:They're good.

01:00:02Marc:And they're good.

01:00:03Marc:Yeah, they look good.

01:00:04Guest:Well, we've mentioned food a lot in our songs.

01:00:06Guest:We also spent a lot of our time recording together, thinking about and ordering food.

01:00:11Guest:Yeah.

01:00:12Guest:That's the thing that I don't know if people know about bands, that the thing they do more than anything else, more than concerts or recording or whatever, is eating together or ordering food or talking about where to order food.

01:00:26Guest:That's the number one thing in a band.

01:00:28Marc:That's it?

01:00:29Marc:So after the first record, I liked how there's a couple things in the book that you do where you both comment on each other's essays in the side notes, which I think is funny.

01:00:38Marc:That was good.

01:00:39Marc:But also the way that, you know, because I even talking to my girlfriend and, you know, who I said loves your wife, who was a bikini kill.

01:00:50Marc:Mm-hmm.

01:00:50Marc:That how you kind of had to reconcile with this sort of thing you unleashed with License to Ill, that, you know, that you were doing this music, you were sort of elevated characters, you had a way of doing it, that, you know, and one day you're looking out at, you know, 20,000 bros who are not of necessarily your ilk.

01:01:10Marc:And then how you look back on that and kind of I think you're contrite about it, but you're also sort of you own it.

01:01:16Marc:But, you know, that was something you had to think about.

01:01:18Marc:Like, what how does this look now?

01:01:20Marc:Who were we then?

01:01:21Marc:And what does it mean to women?

01:01:23Marc:And, you know, because you actually have a feminist defense or two of your work in the book.

01:01:28Marc:There are other essays by other people in the book.

01:01:31Marc:Now, when you first started to realize that, was it just... Were you angry about it?

01:01:37Marc:That you had these fans that were alien to you?

01:01:39Marc:Because I hear that from a lot of bands.

01:01:40Marc:How did we attract these guys?

01:01:43Marc:No, you can't be mad at people coming.

01:01:45Guest:These are paying customers.

01:01:47Guest:These people can.

01:01:47Guest:They bought our record.

01:01:48Guest:They bought our tickets to come see us play.

01:01:50Guest:I'm not mad at them.

01:01:52Guest:We made this music that...

01:01:55Guest:If you're a ska band and a bunch of people that love ska music come to your concert, that makes sense.

01:02:03Guest:Sure.

01:02:04Guest:So if we make Fight Right to Party and a lot of party bros put money down to see you play, that makes sense.

01:02:09Guest:Yeah.

01:02:10Guest:So I'm not mad at them.

01:02:11Guest:Yeah.

01:02:12Guest:It makes you question what you're doing.

01:02:13Guest:It's a reflection.

01:02:16Guest:It's a mirror.

01:02:16Guest:You know what I'm saying?

01:02:18Guest:And so is that what we're doing here?

01:02:20Guest:Yeah.

01:02:20Guest:This is not what we should know.

01:02:21Guest:I thought, oh, wait.

01:02:23Guest:This was a joke, you guys.

01:02:24Guest:And now it's not a way of life.

01:02:27Guest:No, it's not funny.

01:02:29Guest:And there's a story in the book that's called Become What You Hate.

01:02:34Guest:And we basically became these jokes that we made.

01:02:40Marc:You had a persona and now you were like, am I that guy or am I not that?

01:02:45Marc:I was that guy, 100%.

01:02:47Guest:Well, we created it and it was really exciting when you do create it and it's working, right?

01:02:51Guest:And all of a sudden, thousands of people are paying to see you.

01:02:55Guest:Yeah.

01:02:56Guest:be that.

01:02:57Guest:There's a point in that arc where it's really, really exciting.

01:02:59Guest:But then there's this thing of like, then you wake up and it's your job.

01:03:04Guest:And it's also us coming, being like these New York punk rock kids that love rap music.

01:03:09Guest:It was like, this is not what we, we didn't sign on in our, we didn't see it that far down.

01:03:16Guest:We didn't see the timeline that far.

01:03:18Guest:It wasn't like, okay, we're going to do this and then we're going to become this.

01:03:22Guest:And then it was just,

01:03:23Guest:We're never good at making plans.

01:03:25Guest:It was just like, okay, this is funny to us.

01:03:28Guest:Then we're doing that.

01:03:29Guest:Oh, whoa, this is actually working.

01:03:30Guest:It's exciting.

01:03:30Guest:And then it's like, wait, you mean we have to be these people?

01:03:34Guest:And not only be these people, play to this audience every night.

01:03:38Guest:How do we make this stop?

01:03:41Guest:But also, if you're a comedian and you're just making racist jokes, if you're just making sexist jokes and you're like, no, no, no, no, it's ironic.

01:03:49Guest:I'm not that, but these jokes are.

01:03:51Guest:Don't you get it?

01:03:52Guest:Yeah.

01:03:53Marc:You're going to get a bunch of people that don't get it.

01:03:54Guest:But you are that.

01:03:56Guest:If you make a bunch of sexist jokes and you stand behind them, then you are the sexist in the joke.

01:04:01Marc:Yeah.

01:04:02Marc:So your reaction to that was Paul's Boutique.

01:04:06Guest:Well, I think getting there, I don't think it was even a reaction.

01:04:09Guest:That was like the next- But right, but that was the way to elevate- That was the next evolutionary step because then with Paul's teeth, I mean, that was actually really the falling out with really more Russell and Rick.

01:04:20Guest:Rick could kind of bounce out.

01:04:22Guest:He wanted to do something totally different and produce Slayer records and whatever.

01:04:26Guest:Russell's like the business person and wanted money.

01:04:29Guest:He's like, well, you guys got to make-

01:04:31Guest:give me Fyfer at the party.

01:04:32Guest:You got to go back into part two.

01:04:34Guest:You got to go back into school.

01:04:35Guest:Be that guy.

01:04:35Guest:Be those guys you don't want to be.

01:04:36Guest:Be those guys and keep being that.

01:04:37Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:04:37Guest:And you're going to get paid, so just go and do it.

01:04:40Guest:And I think he misjudged us thoroughly because we came from this whole other, by being like these weird punk rock kids.

01:04:49Guest:We were just like, as soon as he said that, it was like, fuck you.

01:04:52Guest:Yeah.

01:04:52Guest:We're not going to just do this.

01:04:57Guest:We're not going to take it.

01:04:59Guest:No.

01:04:59Guest:We're not going to take it.

01:05:00Marc:And with Paul's Boutique.

01:05:01Marc:We're not going to take it anymore.

01:05:03Marc:You jumped record labels.

01:05:04Marc:You moved out here.

01:05:05Marc:Right?

01:05:06Marc:I want to see if you could do that once.

01:05:08Marc:It's a tough one, that thing.

01:05:10Guest:I don't think I could do it even once.

01:05:12Guest:You can.

01:05:13Guest:There's one of these grippy muscle things.

01:05:15Marc:Oh, my God.

01:05:16Guest:It's a hard one.

01:05:17Guest:Man, I'm so... No, that's a hard one, though.

01:05:20Marc:I have to do an exercise once.

01:05:21Marc:It's a hard one.

01:05:23Guest:So- Is it a stress reliever though?

01:05:25Guest:What does it get done?

01:05:26Guest:It's stressing me out.

01:05:27Marc:That just sounded like something you would sample.

01:05:30Guest:Right.

01:05:30Guest:But yes, Paul's critique was more a reaction of just everything that happened with Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons and the fallout and being sick of all of that, wanting to get out of New York, friends around in New York.

01:05:41Guest:Things were just getting fucking weird, so we wanted to get out of there.

01:05:43Guest:Yeah, it's that weird, that moment of like, wait, who is our friend?

01:05:45Guest:Who's not our friend?

01:05:46Guest:We can't really trust anybody in New York anymore.

01:05:48Guest:Oh, really?

01:05:48Guest:Yeah.

01:05:49Guest:Like Russell had given like friends of ours jobs.

01:05:52Guest:And it was like, wait, we need to get as flurry.

01:05:54Guest:You know, that's kind of like the amazing thing with LA.

01:05:57Guest:Like you can go across the country, get as far as you can within this country from New York and be in this completely other world.

01:06:05Guest:Yeah.

01:06:06Guest:And then start.

01:06:07Guest:Meet the Dust Brothers.

01:06:09Guest:Also, you know, Hollywood is calling me, Mike.

01:06:11Guest:I mean, let's be real about what's going on.

01:06:13Guest:That's true.

01:06:14Guest:Well, they really wanted your talent.

01:06:16Marc:Yeah.

01:06:17Marc:Yeah.

01:06:17Marc:And you made a masterpiece.

01:06:20Marc:That's what I say.

01:06:21Guest:You mean the motion picture of Lost Angels?

01:06:23Guest:That's what I'm talking about.

01:06:25Guest:Yeah, you were great in that.

01:06:26Marc:Terrific, yeah.

01:06:26Guest:Yeah.

01:06:27Guest:I'd say forgotten masterpiece, but I'm trying to forget it, but it keeps coming up.

01:06:33Marc:Don't you think Paul's Boutique sort of changed the game for everybody?

01:06:36Marc:I mean, I know I don't want you to be- Yeah, but we didn't know.

01:06:39Marc:Not at the time, no.

01:06:41Guest:Yeah, I mean, at the time, it was a commercial-

01:06:43Guest:How the fuck is that possible?

01:06:45Marc:I listened to it when it came out over and over again.

01:06:47Marc:The hooks aren't there.

01:06:48Guest:I mean, let's just be honest.

01:06:49Guest:The hooks aren't really right.

01:06:50Guest:Yeah, there was no... I mean, I think now we're able to talk about it.

01:06:54Marc:But it's almost like a psychedelic rap record.

01:06:56Marc:It's like fucking... Yeah, but who's buying that?

01:06:58Guest:I did.

01:06:58Guest:Everybody wanted... They wanted to hear what was going to come next for the Fight for Like a Party dudes.

01:07:03Guest:They wanted the hits, yeah.

01:07:04Guest:So there's nothing... You look at it, it's pretty simple, pretty basic.

01:07:07Guest:There's nothing on Paul's Boutique for that person.

01:07:10Marc:I know, but you also had trouble with the label, right?

01:07:12Marc:They kind of buried it.

01:07:14Guest:Yeah.

01:07:15Guest:They decided to sort of focus on other esteemed artists like Donny Osmond.

01:07:19Marc:That is fucking crazy.

01:07:20Marc:Out of all the people in the world that you- Big name in the game.

01:07:24Marc:What?

01:07:25Marc:What year was that?

01:07:26Guest:He had that one song.

01:07:27Guest:He had a TV show.

01:07:29Guest:Yeah, Donny Marie, big.

01:07:30Guest:He's got more than- Donny Osmond has probably played Las Vegas like a hundred times more than- Maybe 300 times more than we ever have.

01:07:38Guest:We've played Vegas-

01:07:39Guest:Three times?

01:07:40Guest:Right, so I'm saying he's probably played 330 times, I would imagine.

01:07:44Guest:Wow, that's a lot of times.

01:07:46Guest:It's a big name.

01:07:46Guest:No, no, no.

01:07:48Guest:Okay, so they got One Bad Apple.

01:07:51Marc:Is that Donnie Solo?

01:07:52Marc:That's Donnie Solo, or is that the Osmond?

01:07:54Marc:I think it's the Osmond Brothers.

01:07:56Marc:Okay.

01:07:56Guest:I can't name a single Osmond.

01:07:57Marc:I'm a little bit country, rock and roll.

01:07:58Guest:It wasn't really a song.

01:07:59Guest:It was just like a TV shtick.

01:08:01Marc:That's Donnie Marie, though.

01:08:02Marc:Name another song.

01:08:03Marc:Yeah, it was a song.

01:08:03Guest:Name another song.

01:08:04Guest:I don't know.

01:08:06Guest:They got nothing.

01:08:07Guest:So after Paul's routine, they got shit.

01:08:09Guest:How did Osmonds have such a big career off nothing?

01:08:12Guest:I feel confident in having a beef with Donny Osmond at this point.

01:08:15Guest:I think you're all right.

01:08:16Guest:I'd like to move away from Cro-Mags and Migos.

01:08:19Marc:Yeah.

01:08:19Marc:And go towards Donny.

01:08:21Guest:Open the door to Donny.

01:08:22Guest:Okay.

01:08:22Marc:Yeah.

01:08:23Marc:After Paul's Boutique, you were disappointed, angry, what?

01:08:26Marc:Lethargic, despondent, despairing?

01:08:28Guest:We were kind of good.

01:08:29Guest:I don't know.

01:08:30Marc:We were actually kind of feeling good, really.

01:08:32Guest:We were really good, but we were bummed out.

01:08:34Guest:When you go to the record company president dude's office and you're in the fancy office where the assistant shows you in and you're like, okay, we put all this work into making this record and-

01:08:47Guest:We were excited about it because we thought we loved De La Soul.

01:08:50Guest:We loved Public Enemy.

01:08:51Guest:We were like, okay, this is our place in this.

01:08:56Guest:We put all in.

01:08:56Guest:We went all in.

01:08:57Guest:We went for it.

01:08:58Guest:We sampled everything we could possibly think of and just layered sample after sample.

01:09:04Guest:Okay, this is going to be great.

01:09:06Guest:Then they're just like, oh, go make next time.

01:09:10Guest:Go make another record.

01:09:12Marc:How long did it take you to do Paul's?

01:09:13Marc:Like two years?

01:09:15Guest:Probably.

01:09:15Guest:I don't know.

01:09:17Guest:Really, it was a year.

01:09:18Guest:It was just that one year.

01:09:19Guest:It came out in 89.

01:09:20Guest:Oh, yeah.

01:09:22Guest:It was like a year and a half.

01:09:23Guest:It came out in 86, but then we were on tour for a year and a half.

01:09:27Guest:We started in early 88, and it came out in 89.

01:09:30Guest:It was like a year.

01:09:31Guest:Yeah, I guess a year.

01:09:32Guest:Why did it seem so much longer though?

01:09:34Guest:I don't know.

01:09:35Guest:Is that about right?

01:09:36Guest:I guess that's what happens when you're 19, 20 years old.

01:09:38Guest:Like a year seems like forever.

01:09:39Guest:So much pot.

01:09:40Guest:Yeah.

01:09:41Guest:It was actually, even though that we didn't tour, we didn't play any shows.

01:09:46Guest:Yeah.

01:09:46Guest:Because that was a whole other thing that we got this new manager that was, he was Kenny Rogers' manager.

01:09:53Guest:Yeah.

01:09:53Guest:No.

01:09:54Guest:Wait.

01:09:54Guest:Yeah.

01:09:55Guest:No.

01:09:55Guest:Cher?

01:09:56Guest:No.

01:09:57Guest:No, that would be really big.

01:09:59Guest:Yeah, but there was like Hart.

01:10:01Guest:No, it wasn't even- You're giving like A-list names.

01:10:04Guest:It was like Hart and like the Eagles or something.

01:10:06Guest:Those are pretty big.

01:10:07Guest:I'm going to show our big names in the game.

01:10:09Guest:Eagles is pretty big.

01:10:11Guest:But at that point, it was John Henley.

01:10:12Guest:The Eagles hadn't reunited yet.

01:10:14Guest:I'm telling you, there was some fucking Kenny Rogers motherfucker.

01:10:18Guest:I'm telling you.

01:10:19Guest:Michael Bolton, maybe?

01:10:21Guest:Massive.

01:10:23Yeah.

01:10:23Guest:At any rate, we played a few shows and they were terrible at these discos, but we did have fun.

01:10:29Guest:My man Rich.

01:10:32Guest:It was so bad that it was funny.

01:10:34Guest:It was really bad.

01:10:34Guest:But then we were in LA and we're like these New York dudes and we're hanging out and you go to The Source for breakfast.

01:10:42Guest:Hugos and shit.

01:10:43Guest:We're hanging out smoking pot.

01:10:44Guest:It's great.

01:10:45Guest:Driving a car.

01:10:46Guest:Living in a house together.

01:10:47Guest:But we also made every mistake.

01:10:50Guest:But there are happy mistakes.

01:10:52Guest:We spent all this money on these fancy studios making the record.

01:10:56Guest:And we hired these fancy managers who didn't understand what we were doing

01:11:01Guest:at all.

01:11:01Guest:It was the worst thing we could have done.

01:11:03Guest:Yeah.

01:11:04Guest:But, you know, that's, yeah, that's what happened.

01:11:06Guest:That's LA.

01:11:06Guest:Move to LA.

01:11:07Guest:Exactly.

01:11:07Guest:Story, textbook, LA.

01:11:09Guest:And then, you know, and then I guess, but then somehow we were lucky enough to realize like, wait, all right, so now, and that was also another part of sort of our freedom and being able to do what the fuck we wanted was that then we were basically, in terms of the record company, we had become a bag of dog shit.

01:11:25Guest:Like, you know, they do not want to touch this...

01:11:28Guest:bag of dog shit.

01:11:29Marc:But you stayed with them, right?

01:11:30Marc:No, I don't want to.

01:11:31Marc:And I've had dogs too.

01:11:33Guest:Right.

01:11:34Guest:So they want to keep us at arm's distance so nobody wants to touch it.

01:11:39Guest:It's like a Ziploc bag of dog shit.

01:11:41Guest:Yeah.

01:11:44Guest:So then they're like, well, just go make another record.

01:11:46Guest:So here we are.

01:11:47Guest:We're going to make another record and nobody from the record company wants to talk to us at all.

01:11:52Guest:So we have this wide open freedom.

01:11:54Guest:So we're like, all right, we'll...

01:11:56Guest:We started actually practicing at Adam's house.

01:11:59Guest:Then his neighbors were not so excited about that.

01:12:03Guest:Yeah.

01:12:04Guest:And then we moved into a Hollywood rehearsal studio.

01:12:08Guest:Again, very cliche, what happens in LA.

01:12:11Guest:And then we were like, wait, we should get our own- Yeah, exactly.

01:12:14Guest:It was Cole.

01:12:14Guest:It was Cole, that place.

01:12:16Guest:Exactly there.

01:12:16Guest:It's still there, yeah.

01:12:17Guest:And then-

01:12:18Guest:And then we were like, all right, we need to get, this kind of sucks to like go smoke pot, set up your stuff.

01:12:23Guest:And then second you kind of think you're doing something halfway decent, then you got to pack it back up.

01:12:28Guest:So then we were like, we got to find our own studio.

01:12:30Guest:And somehow through a friend, I'd never even been to Atwater.

01:12:33Guest:Like I was living in Silver Lake though, just over the bridge at the time.

01:12:36Marc:This is in the 80s, late 80s?

01:12:37Guest:Yeah.

01:12:38Guest:And so then this, or beginning of, yeah, late 80s, beginning of 90s.

01:12:41Guest:And this friend was like, oh, there's this place.

01:12:43Guest:There's like an old ballroom or something in the studio.

01:12:46Guest:In Atwater, you got to check it out.

01:12:47Guest:It's like really, really sleepy there.

01:12:49Guest:There's nothing much happening.

01:12:50Guest:And we're like, okay, perfect.

01:12:53Marc:And he built a studio.

01:12:54Marc:And that became, what was it called?

01:12:56Marc:G?

01:12:56Marc:G-Sun.

01:12:57Guest:Yeah.

01:12:57Guest:But that really became our, like we needed that.

01:13:01Guest:We needed to have like this headquarters, this place we could go every day and just listen to records, play music, have all our friends and just start.

01:13:08Marc:It's a clubhouse and a studio.

01:13:09Guest:It was a clubhouse.

01:13:10Marc:And you had a skate ramp in there and a basketball court and everything.

01:13:14Yeah.

01:13:14Guest:You know what?

01:13:14Marc:I should have moved closer there.

01:13:16Marc:Where were you?

01:13:17Guest:You and Yao should have.

01:13:18Marc:We should have just moved out.

01:13:19Guest:Why?

01:13:19Guest:Where were you?

01:13:20Guest:If you'd bought houses then, like in Sylvia, you would be like David Geffen right now.

01:13:26Guest:Where were you living?

01:13:27Guest:Hollywood?

01:13:28Guest:Maybe not like David Geffen, but-

01:13:29Guest:I was in Laurel Canyon.

01:13:30Guest:It was nice.

01:13:31Guest:I'm not saying it was ... I'd love the house that I used to live in.

01:13:34Guest:Yeah, it was nice where you guys were in Laurel Canyon, though.

01:13:35Guest:But I'm just saying it was a drag having to sober up and drive home at four in the morning every night.

01:13:42Marc:It seemed like at that point there was a crew that sort of developed around that space, right?

01:13:48Marc:Like Spike Jonze and Jason Lee and those cats and people started hanging around.

01:13:52Marc:And Christian Hosoi.

01:13:52Marc:We had a lot of people coming in and out of that place.

01:13:54Guest:I love it.

01:13:54Guest:Like Q-tip.

01:13:55Guest:And it was also the thing because it was like this certain time in rap music too where everybody from New York would have to be in LA to like whatever, do some promotional thing.

01:14:06Guest:Meetings and whatnot.

01:14:07Guest:For sure, meetings.

01:14:09Guest:And then they'd come by the studio because we had this place where you could smoke pot and play basketball and make a mixtape or do whatever.

01:14:17Guest:So, yeah, it was great.

01:14:19Guest:And it's interesting because it's not like we ever could have planned it.

01:14:22Guest:We were not... I'm still, to this day, are not good at planning.

01:14:25Guest:But this thing evolved or took place where exactly it was this place where a lot of stuff could get made because it was where all these different people could hang out.

01:14:33Marc:And you did three records there?

01:14:34Marc:You did Check Your Head and Ill Communication and... Yeah, and some of How Nasty there as well.

01:14:40Marc:And other things, right?

01:14:41Guest:We did other records there.

01:14:42Marc:Yeah, we did.

01:14:43Marc:Videos.

01:14:43Guest:Tons of videos.

01:14:44Guest:I did...

01:14:46Guest:DFL there.

01:14:47Guest:We did tons of other things and produced other ... I don't know what the ... Mike started the magazine there.

01:14:54Marc:Grand Royal magazine.

01:14:55Marc:And the label.

01:14:55Marc:And the record label.

01:14:56Marc:And tons of bands would come in and play.

01:14:59Marc:You were actually producing stuff in that space for other bands?

01:15:02Marc:I think so, right?

01:15:02Marc:Yeah.

01:15:03Guest:Someone brought up the song that I did with MC Milk the other day.

01:15:07Guest:You don't even remember that.

01:15:08Guest:Yeah, well, now that you mention it, I remember, but I had completely forgotten about it up until this moment.

01:15:12Marc:I had completely forgotten about it, too.

01:15:13Marc:And you did the clothing line for a while?

01:15:15Guest:Yeah, X-Large was kind of like that was a junk.

01:15:17Guest:Yeah, that was in the neighborhood.

01:15:18Marc:You guys are like full empire builders, entrepreneurs.

01:15:20Marc:Yeah.

01:15:21Guest:But unfortunately, we didn't have the Maybox to prove it or whatever you're supposed to have as an entrepreneur.

01:15:28Guest:Private jet?

01:15:28Guest:What happened to that space?

01:15:30Marc:What's in that space now?

01:15:32Guest:Oh, Adam was recently-

01:15:34Guest:There they're doing things.

01:15:36Guest:They're just doing things still a space.

01:15:38Guest:It's still a space.

01:15:39Guest:There's there's the actual I Wish I'm sorry to whoever this is I've forgotten your name But yeah the actual little small room where we did all the mixing of all of the songs I had the tape decks.

01:15:51Guest:Yeah where we did all the mixing and

01:15:53Guest:someone actually still has that and uses it to mix records or songs or commercials or something.

01:15:59Guest:So that actual room is still in use as a musical space.

01:16:02Guest:Well, actually, an interesting note, Diplo had the studio for a while, but then he became too big time.

01:16:08Marc:So it's still a studio.

01:16:09Marc:You guys built the studio and it's still a studio.

01:16:11Marc:Some of it is.

01:16:11Guest:And the rest is like businesses.

01:16:13Guest:It's like weird.

01:16:14Guest:Fun fact, Eli Bonners, who was one of my partners in X-Large, he owns the building now.

01:16:21Guest:or has for a while.

01:16:22Marc:And at some point you guys decided to just play your instruments for real.

01:16:27Marc:I love those records where you guys just play.

01:16:32Marc:Because you talk about in the book that there was this moment you had where you're like, I'm a musician.

01:16:35Marc:I can accept that.

01:16:36Guest:Yeah, but it took a while.

01:16:38Marc:That was not that long ago.

01:16:39Marc:No, I know, but it's an important moment.

01:16:40Guest:But it took a while.

01:16:41Guest:No, it is.

01:16:41Guest:I agree.

01:16:42Guest:But it took a while.

01:16:44Guest:Check your head.

01:16:44Guest:We weren't there.

01:16:45Guest:We couldn't say that.

01:16:46Guest:We were really excited to play our instruments.

01:16:49Guest:And we were excited to make music that was inspired by all these different records that we'd gotten to know actually from sampling and all this music that we love.

01:16:58Guest:But yeah, we...

01:16:59Marc:He just decided you could do it.

01:17:01Marc:And I listened to that this morning, the one, the later record where it's just- Oh, the mix-up?

01:17:06Marc:Oh, yeah.

01:17:07Marc:Yeah, it's great.

01:17:10Marc:Thank you.

01:17:10Guest:I like that one.

01:17:10Guest:Yeah, it was great for you guys.

01:17:12Marc:Did you have fun doing that?

01:17:14Guest:That one, yeah, that was fun.

01:17:15Guest:Mix-up was fun.

01:17:16Guest:I had more fun making it than the record is, than I like the record.

01:17:23Guest:Yeah.

01:17:24Guest:Well, I like how you're honest about- There's a couple moments on it, though.

01:17:26Guest:There's a couple moments I really like on that.

01:17:27Guest:There's a couple little breaks, a couple little things where we actually, we would talk about how we'd want to make something to sound like this, and we usually wouldn't get there, and mix up a couple- Couple nuggets.

01:17:39Guest:Couple bars.

01:17:40Guest:Yeah, you guys got two songs on that record.

01:17:42Guest:I don't even know.

01:17:44Guest:Are there any songs?

01:17:44Guest:I don't know, but there's some moments for sure.

01:17:46Marc:No, it's nice to have on.

01:17:48Marc:It's a nice to have on record.

01:17:49Marc:It is, but I thought it was very funny.

01:17:51Marc:The amount of time you put into the hot sauce committee part two and making up these samples and sort of meticulously recapturing sounds to make a bunch of fake samples in order to sort of baffle and confuse record nerds and the fact that you put all that effort into it and as you wrote in the book that it didn't really register to the people.

01:18:10Guest:Nobody cared.

01:18:11Guest:But that's why I feel like good about that in the sense that just, yeah, that's our story.

01:18:16Guest:But it's also, it's probably your story as a comedian at some point.

01:18:20Guest:It's any filmmaker's story.

01:18:22Guest:It's like anybody who does anything creative, there's these things that you just go down the hole and just spend all this effort and you're totally consumed by doing this thing.

01:18:32Guest:And you're like, oh, this is going to be the best thing ever.

01:18:34Guest:And nobody ever did.

01:18:35Marc:But I like that it was almost like it was a comedy bit.

01:18:38Marc:You did it so perfectly that it got by, like nobody picked up on it.

01:18:44Guest:Well, yes, I think so.

01:18:47Guest:That was the idea going in.

01:18:49Guest:And for me, I like it because we'd been a band for so long, and at that point, then we'd actually kind of figured out how to play our instruments, kind of figured out how to produce records, kind of figured out how to make these things that we never would have thought we could do that.

01:19:04Guest:And we kind of knew what we were doing, which is kind of cool.

01:19:07Guest:It doesn't mean you're good or bad at it, just we kind of knew how to do it.

01:19:11Guest:And that's the thing about the big ideas in pop songs.

01:19:16Guest:Nobody cares about a big idea in a pop song.

01:19:18Guest:That's why I love...

01:19:19Guest:Fucking Daft Punk around the world.

01:19:21Guest:It's just a dumb song that is awesome.

01:19:24Guest:Yeah.

01:19:24Guest:Nothing against Daft Punk.

01:19:25Guest:Yeah.

01:19:26Guest:How big are those guys?

01:19:27Guest:Are they big?

01:19:27Guest:They were for a little while.

01:19:29Guest:No, I mean physically.

01:19:30Guest:No, no, no, no.

01:19:32Guest:They're slight in build.

01:19:34Guest:Okay.

01:19:34Guest:Although, Guymon from Daft Punk, he was in a neck brace for a while from some martial arts.

01:19:43Guest:Jesus Christ.

01:19:45Guest:But you know what I'm saying?

01:19:46Guest:With popular music, you just want to fucking dance.

01:19:48Guest:You know what I'm saying?

01:19:49Guest:So you don't need the whole big idea.

01:19:50Guest:The brainiacs need to get off the dance floor.

01:19:52Guest:No, the brainiacs are usually pushed off the dance floor.

01:19:57Guest:Am I wrong with that?

01:19:58Guest:No, you guys are kind of brainiacs.

01:20:00Guest:But then Daft Punk are brainiacs that are on the dance floor.

01:20:03Guest:You guys just clearly don't get what I'm saying.

01:20:06Guest:I don't.

01:20:07Guest:Because I'm not a brainiac.

01:20:09Guest:I'm just saying you just want to, if popular music, you just want to listen to the song.

01:20:12Guest:Yeah, move.

01:20:13Guest:You just want to move.

01:20:14Guest:Move me.

01:20:15Guest:Don't fucking give me some, don't be clever at me.

01:20:18Guest:Yeah, but you're an obsessive guy, right?

01:20:20Guest:You're saying like Lakeside, Fantastic Voyage.

01:20:22Guest:That's what I'm saying.

01:20:23Guest:You don't want to overthink it.

01:20:24Guest:You just want to get on the floor.

01:20:26Guest:Around the world.

01:20:27Marc:They don't see anything else than around the world.

01:20:30Marc:But you don't regret doing it.

01:20:32Guest:no i love it that's what that's you know that's what unfortunately that's what we do but like it seemed like a real sort of obsessive kind of weird project that you just kind of kept going right you just you wanted those samples to sound perfect as if they were archival material you know honestly it was the the thing of us collect me personally collecting records and obsessing over 45s and rare records

01:20:55Guest:and searching and sifting in any kind of pawn shop or thrift store anywhere to find little rare records to sample and blah, blah, blah.

01:21:04Guest:That time had already kind of passed.

01:21:06Guest:So that obsession, I didn't really have that obsession anymore.

01:21:08Marc:You don't?

01:21:09Guest:Not anymore.

01:21:10Marc:Do you have the records still?

01:21:11Guest:Yeah, I still have the records.

01:21:12Guest:But...

01:21:14Guest:But so that album, Hot Sauce Committee, was kind of like that obsession twisted in this weird sort of way.

01:21:20Guest:Yeah, right.

01:21:21Guest:Yeah.

01:21:21Guest:And I really like it.

01:21:22Guest:Yeah.

01:21:22Guest:But my friend Dante Carfagna, big name in the record game, is mad at me because I don't have my records out.

01:21:28Guest:They're all in the storage.

01:21:30Guest:Right.

01:21:30Guest:How many you got?

01:21:31Guest:I know.

01:21:31Guest:I'm getting them.

01:21:32Guest:Thousands.

01:21:32Guest:I'm getting them.

01:21:33Guest:Because you may as well enjoy them.

01:21:34Guest:You got them.

01:21:35Guest:I'm going to get them in January, which is something else I need to talk to you about, which we don't need to talk about.

01:21:38Guest:You want me to help you schlep all these records?

01:21:40Guest:Yes.

01:21:40Guest:Could you carry me a record from New York?

01:21:43Marc:How many you got, thousands?

01:21:44Marc:Yeah, I got thousands of records.

01:21:46Guest:And that's what you do when you're consumed with records.

01:21:48Guest:I know, I love them.

01:21:49Guest:I've been getting records.

01:21:51Guest:But these are just records I got for a quarter, 50 cents a dollar.

01:21:55Guest:Yeah, for the samples.

01:21:57Marc:But through that process, you became very knowledgeable and open-minded.

01:22:03Marc:Well, your brain is out, right?

01:22:05Marc:By looking for samples, you learned about all these different kinds of music.

01:22:08Guest:Yeah.

01:22:10Guest:I got 15 different copies of the hair soundtrack.

01:22:14Guest:Different versions.

01:22:14Guest:Well, there's so many different versions of hair.

01:22:16Guest:How many covers of spinning wheels?

01:22:19Guest:I mean, how many versions?

01:22:20Guest:I've got like 20.

01:22:21Guest:Of spinning wheels?

01:22:22Guest:Put your hand in the hand.

01:22:23Guest:Has a breakbeat every cover version.

01:22:26Guest:It's 10 past 12.

01:22:28Marc:Okay, we're going.

01:22:28Marc:What are you guys doing now outside of pushing the book?

01:22:31Marc:What are you working on?

01:22:32Guest:I think we're going to work on lunch in the near future.

01:22:36Guest:Yeah.

01:22:38Guest:Coffee and lunch would be ... I'd love to have it in my future.

01:22:41Guest:You ever go to cacao?

01:22:43Guest:Cacao.

01:22:44Guest:Cacao?

01:22:44Guest:Wait, no.

01:22:44Guest:Where's cacao?

01:22:45Marc:You're in Pasadena now, right?

01:22:46Guest:I'm staying in Pasadena.

01:22:48Marc:I'm sorry.

01:22:49Guest:Well, cacao is like ... That's what New Yorkers say about LA.

01:22:51Marc:I'm staying in Pasadena for now.

01:22:53Marc:It's on Colorado next to the Trader Joe's in Eagle Rock.

01:22:56Marc:There's a little strip mall there and there's a place called Cacao Mexicatessen.

01:23:00Marc:It's great.

01:23:01Marc:It's great.

01:23:02Guest:Wow.

01:23:03Guest:Cacao.

01:23:03Guest:If I come visit you, which I rarely do, will you order cacao?

01:23:07Marc:You should check it out.

01:23:08Marc:You like Mexican food?

01:23:10Marc:I won't.

01:23:11Guest:Yeah, I'd rock.

01:23:11Guest:You like mustard, right?

01:23:12Guest:I don't.

01:23:13Guest:But I like tacos.

01:23:15Marc:Yeah, they do some real good shit there.

01:23:17Guest:Okay.

01:23:18Guest:Mason's Dumplings, Eagle Rock.

01:23:20Marc:Oh, that's good.

01:23:22Marc:I haven't been there yet.

01:23:24Guest:You like soup dumplings?

01:23:24Marc:I haven't really had them.

01:23:27Guest:Really?

01:23:28Guest:That's my new thing.

01:23:29Marc:And he's obsessed with this.

01:23:30Guest:No, but I have a new thing, and it's what?

01:23:34Guest:Do you like it?

01:23:35Guest:You hate it.

01:23:36Guest:It bothers you.

01:23:37Guest:I hate it.

01:23:37Guest:It irritates.

01:23:38Guest:It's like I get stressed in the root of my neck when you do it.

01:23:43Guest:It's like I can't even control my mental reaction to it.

01:23:46Marc:That's your new thing.

01:23:48Marc:All right, guys.

01:23:48Marc:That was great.

01:23:49Marc:I love the book.

01:23:50Marc:It was fun talking to you.

01:23:52Guest:Thank you.

01:23:53Marc:Thank you for tolerating us.

01:23:54Marc:No, I enjoyed the book a lot, and I like the music.

01:23:56Guest:There you go.

01:23:57Guest:Thank you.

01:23:57Marc:Take care.

01:23:59All right.

01:24:03Marc:That was it.

01:24:04Marc:That was what happened.

01:24:06Marc:It was... That's the Beastie Boys.

01:24:11Marc:It's a good book.

01:24:12Marc:The book is now available.

01:24:13Marc:So, yeah, I would recommend that.

01:24:15Marc:And there's never a bad time to listen to Paul's Boutique or Check Your Head or Ill Communication.

01:24:21Marc:Those are my Beastie records.

01:24:22Marc:Again, my tour dates.

01:24:24Marc:Wheeler Opera House.

01:24:25Marc:Wheeler Opera House in Aspen and the Boulder Theater in Boulder are happening in March, correct?

01:24:31Marc:Yes.

01:24:32Marc:March 23rd, Wheeler Opera House.

01:24:34Marc:March 24th, the Boulder Theater.

01:24:36Marc:Tickets available for that at wtfpod.com slash tour.

01:24:40Marc:You can get my...

01:24:43Marc:My last, my latest special, Too Real, in audio format on the homepage of WTFPod.com.

01:24:50Marc:And now I will play three to four chords for you with a wah-wah pedal and an echo box.

01:24:59Guest:Thank you.

01:25:22Guest:Boomer lives.

01:25:42Marc:Boomer lives.