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Beastie Boys Mike D And Ad-Rock Give First Interviews Since MCA's Death

John Del Signore

Published May 23, 2012

Modified May 23, 2012

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John Del Signore

Published May 23, 2012

Modified May 23, 2012

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The new issue of Rolling Stone is largely devoted to the recently-departed musician and filmmaker Adam "MCA" Yauch, who co-founded seminal hip hop act Beastie Boys way back in 1981. The issue features a long look at Yauch's career and "remarkable personal growth as he moved on from his band's loutish, hard-partying Licensed to Ill phase on to spiritual enlightenment in the latter half of his all-too-brief life." And it includes short but sweet interviews with surviving Beastie Boys Mike D and King Ad-Rock, who open up for the first time about their loss.

"I'm totally numb," says Horovitz, who made a surprise appearance at Saturday's informal MCA Day memorial in Union Square. "My wife is like, 'I want to make sure you're getting it out.' But then I'm walking the dog and I'll start crying on the street... It's pretty fucking crazy... He said, "I'm gonna be okay." He's been right about most shit so far. So I believe him. You would get swept up in his excitement and positivity." And Mike D tells the magazine:

He had us fooled in the most beautiful way. I believed, up to last week, that Adam was somehow coming back. But I wouldn't trade that optimism for anything. Because the other option is no fun... No matter how straight-up nuts an idea was, he had the ability to follow through on things he believed in. Like the cover of Paul's Boutique: "A 360-degree photo? You can't have a camera spin around." He researched it and found one. It was an innate thing for him.

Asked what Yauch's death means for his musical future, Diamond said, "I can see making music. I don't know about a band format. But Yauch would genuinely want us to try whatever crazy thing we wanted but never got around to." The issue also features an online photo gallery of terrific Beastie Boys photos over the years (it's wild to see how young they were when they got famous) and a moving tribute from columnist Rob Sheffield, who writes:

I will never forget him leading "Hello Brooklyn" at the Beasties' one and only Brooklyn gig, in August 2007, everyone bouncing along and losing their collective shit to sing along with the Johnny Cash line, or doing the wop at the New Yorkers Against Violence benefit concerts the Beasties organized in October 2001, where fellow musicians from Yoko to Bono to the Roots to the B-52's showed up for a intergalactic anti-war jam. And he was still king of the castle on the Beasties' final album, 2011's Hot Sauce Committee, rhyming and stealing in "Funky Donkey" and "Super Disco Powerpack."

But the MCA song I keep playing today is "I Don't Know," from Hello Nasty, an acoustic samba duet with Cibo Matto's Miho Hatori. He sings, for once, about reaching for the light: "I'm walking through time / Deluded as the next guy / Pretending and hoping to find / That distant peace of mind." He never claimed he found any final answers, but he never stopped moving.

Adam Horovitz embraces a tearful fan at the MCA Day memorial for the late great Adam Yauch. (Michelle Lawlor)

And this morning we received an email from the tearful fan seen in the photo above, getting some love from King Ad-Rock. His name is Matthew Hamilton, and here's his long but heartwarming story about his time with Horovitz on Saturday:

I'm the guy in the photo from MCA Day—the one who's crying like a schoolgirl and is about to get a big bro hug full of man love from Adam Horovitz. This day was a powerful and moving experience, and it's one that I'll never forget.

I left the house and drove to Poughkeepsie to catch the Metro North into the City. I couldn't really afford this trip, but I also couldn't NOT go. I knew that if I hadn't gone, I would have regretted it. I got into Grand Central, jumped on the 4 train, and got to Union Square at about noon-thirty. After the prerequisite iced venti Americano (with extra ice) from Starbucks, I made my way over to the park and looked for a giant boom box blaring Beastie Boys music. It only took about 3 seconds to find it. Mike, the guy who organized the event, had some bomb remixes playing, and there were books and pages where fans could sign and write notes to the guys. I wrote in the book and drew a couple of doodles on the pages, and just kind of hung out, taking in the scene, talking with people and digging the beats. It was cathartic.

So I'm just hanging out, drinking my iced espresso, looking down and rapping to myself along with a Beasties track, bopping along, and for no real reason I just kind of look up. I see Kathleen Hanna and... "Adam," I say. The motherfucking KING AD-ROCK looks at me and says, "What's up, man?" I extend my hand to shake his, and he gives me the bro hug. "I love you, man," I say. I don't know why I said that. Also, I know why I said that. "I love you too!" he replies. I show him the front of my shirt, lyrics which he is obviously familiar with. (the shirt that I had on had the first line of "Stand Together" on the front and the last line from the song on the back, and beneath that "Adam Yauch 1964 - 2012 R.I.P. MCA") "Uh huh, uh huh, nice." "Now check out the back." I turn around. "That is a fucking awesome shirt. Where did you get it?" "There's a guy I know who has a print shop, and I had him make it for me." "Nice."

I proceed to tell him how fucking awesome his band is, and how the loss of MCA has made me feel like I've lost a close friend or a member of my family, I thank him for the music, and having said my piece, I resolve to leave him be. I immediately realize that I'm missing the photo opportunity of a lifetime, and I'm also acutely aware of the fact that my phone is very nearly dead, and that the batteries in my camera are fully dead, even though I put fresh batteries in the damned thing on the train. I find him and ask, "I'm sorry dude, can I just get a picture?" "Of course, man."... We get the picture taken, and I thank him, resolving again to just leave him alone from here out.

I stand to the back of the crowd, just watching. I walk over to the table where people had been writing tributes, and draw a cartoon of a skateboarder doing a kickflip with "MCA" written on the bottom of his deck. A light bulb goes off. I pocket the Sharpie that I've been doodling with. Adam and Kathleen are mobbed now, pretty much everyone who is in the park for MCA Day has realized that they're here. I walk over sheepishly and say, "Hey man. Can I bug you for one more thing?" "Aw jeez, This guy again. I hope I don't see you again after this!" "Well I think it would be pretty awesome if you did, but that's beside the point," I say. Kathleen laughs. "We're going to see him at breakfast tomorrow!" "Yeah, 'Hey guys! What's for breakfast?' " Adam laughs. "What do you need, man?" I hold up the Sharpie. "Sign my shirt?" "Ahhh ok!"

He grabs me by the shoulder and yanks me over to him. He signs my shirt. I decide that now I really am going to leave him alone, for real this time, and I hang near the back of the crowd, watching Adam do his thing. He's gracious and patient with everyone. He gives out a million hugs, takes all kinds of pictures with people, autographs everything in sight. I gravitate toward him as the crowd thins out. I'd been talking with some folks, and our conversations sort of begin to blend together.

After a while it's me, Ad-Rock and a few others talking about MCA, and the Beastie Boys. Eventually it's just me and Adam talking. I tell him all of the things that I've been thinking and feeling since Yauch died. How when "Licensed to Ill" came out I was 13, and my friends and I completely WERE the skate rat punk rock kids who I felt like that record was for. How that record made me investigate hip hop deeper than "Walk This Way". I tell him about how when "Paul's Boutique" came out, for my friends and I, it was like a secret handshake. That album wasn't really promoted much, so when it was new, and for the first few years after it came out, familiarity with it was almost a Rorschach test of cool. You could put that record on and blow people's minds if they hadn't heard it before, and most people hadn't heard it before.

I tell him that I consider "Check Your Head" to be our generation's "Sgt. Pepper". (And it is. "Check Your Head" is a watershed album, and a work of genius, forever altering the musical landscape after it's release.) I start to get a little choked up. I tell him how lucky I now feel to have seen them play live, and how awful I feel for him, and for Mike D, and for all of Yauch's family and friends, the people who knew and loved him. I tell him how I even feel just a little bit silly for taking the news of MCA's loss so hard, and so personally, since I didn't actually know him.

I tell him about how I feel like as they grew, and considered their place in the world, and how they wanted to relate to it, we were all doing the same thing right along with them. I'm having a hard time holding back tears as I talk. He puts his hand on my shoulder, looks me dead in the eye, and says, "WE grew up together" motioning back and forth between him and me with his index finger. I'm wiping tears from my eyes. Here I am talking to him about what HIS band and HIS friend meant to ME. And here's Adam Horovitz consoling me. Offering me comfort. He talked for awhile about the band. He said that he had always wondered why people bought their records. When people laughed, he was like "No seriously!"

He said that he thought a large part of it was that they were such good friends, and had been since high school, that there was so much love between the three of them. He felt it was evident in their music, and that people connected with it. I agreed, but pointed out that their music was also incredible. I told him that from my perspective, speaking as the guy on the other side of the barricade, to me it was as though growing up we were all on this ship of life, and the Beastie Boys were up on the crow's nest hollering "LAND, HO!" He said he figured that it was closer to the truth to say that they were on the floor with lampshades on their heads, and that had they been in a crow's nest they'd have likely fallen out of it.

He asked me about me, where I was from, and I wasn't surprised that he hadn't heard of Jamestown, New York. I also wasn't surprised that he knew exactly where Hudson is, and wasn't surprised to hear him name drop Germantown, Clermont, and Red Hook - all towns a few miles south of Hudson. He was coincidentally wearing a baseball cap that said "Catskill Mountains" on it. We spent a good ten minutes or so after that just kind of bullshitting. Some more people came up, and since I had just spent like twenty minutes talking with Ad-Rock about MCA, the band, life in general, and other shit, I figured I really couldn't ask for anything more. I went back across the street to Starbucks for more iced espresso, and I stood in the ludicrously long line for the one bathroom in that place.

When I got back to the square, the event's organizer, Michael Kearney was flagging me down. "Yo, Ad-Rock is looking for you." "Ok..." "Theeere he is!" He said he wanted to thank me for coming out and for what I'd said about Yauch and the band. I thanked him for the music, and I thanked him for being a Beastie Boy. And I said, "I fucking LOVE you guys man. All three of you."

And finally, Mike Kearney, who organized MCA Day, tells us, "I think I just saw E.T. and Chewbacca playing dominoes on my way back to earth after what transpired in Union Square on Saturday. For me, the day was Perfect. I truly believe that Yauch's light was shining down on all of us who gathered. I kept finding myself standing behind the boombox trying to digest the scene in front of me... All in all, I saw that Subway car full of strangers singing Beastie Boys songs in unison that I had imagined a few weeks ago. It was an amazing experience, one that I was so incredibly honored to be a part of. I've got bushels of love and thanks for everybody that supported and participated in MCA DAY."

Tagged

adam yauch

beastie boys

mca

ripmca

John Del Signore

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Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.

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