The Big Picture - Beastie Boys Made a Movie. We Made a Beastie Boys Podcast. | The Big Picture

Episode Date: April 27, 2020

That's right, Mike D and Ad-Rock have teamed up with Spike Jonze to make a movie chronicling the history of one of the most important bands of all time: Beastie Boys. Chris Ryan joins the show to talk about the group's history and rank their top-five songs. Then Sean interviews Mike D and Ad-Rock about the film, what late band member Adam Yauch would have thought about the movie, and their favorite fruits during quarantine. Waxin' and milkin'!  Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz, Michael "Mike D" Diamond, and Chris Ryan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Big Picture on the Ringer Podcast Network is brought to you by World Central Kitchen. Their relief team is working across America to safely distribute individually packaged fresh meals in communities that need support. They're now serving tens of thousands of meals daily in some of our biggest cities like New York and LA. They're launching initiatives across America to deliver fresh, hot meals to hospitals and clinics, fighting on the front lines while keeping local restaurants and business as well. You can directly help the heroes in hospitals and clinics who are fighting for us,

and you can keep your local restaurants alive. Please go to theringer.com backslash WCK to donate. We're trying to raise $250,000, and if you have the means, it's an unbelievably great and useful cause that helps our hospital heroes, emergency workers,

and local restaurants. Please give whatever you can. The money goes directly to World Central Kitchen, and it's a charitable donation. Once again, that's theringer.com backslash WCK. I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Beastie Boys.

That's right. Beastie Boys made a movie, Beastie Boys Story, which is directed by Spike Jonze and available to watch right now on Apple TV+. If you are like me and worship Beastie Boys, you need to watch this movie. Later in the show, I'll be talking to Ad-Rock and Mike D of Beastie Boys about their movie, their history, their favorite fruits, how they're doing in quarantine, the New York Knicks documentaries that they want to see, a bunch of other stuff as I try to keep them focused on our conversation. I really love these guys. Beastie Boys are my

favorite band ever, and it isn't even really close. So to talk about them before we get to them, I asked the Vic Colfari to my Alessandro Allegri to join me. It's Chris Ryan. Hi, Chris. I've always seen myself more as a Nathan Wind guy. Cochise. Yeah. No, I've been waiting my whole dumb life to do this podcast. So let's go. I'm very glad you're here with me. I can't think of anybody else I'd want to have here other than you, except maybe Mike D and Ad Rock and they're coming later. So when I say Beastie Boys, what's the first thing that pops in your head, Chris?

Probably the invention of cool. So I think one thing that we've talked about a lot over the last like 12 to 18 months we've done a lot of Quentin Tarantino podcasts we've celebrated a lot of his movies on the rewatchables we've talked about them on big picture done podcasts with him and something that comes up a lot is kind of how

he gave us like a vocabulary or language through which to understand culture and understand the world. And I think the Beastie Boys are equally responsible for that in both of our lives in terms of introducing us to so much music

and so much other culture that wound up becoming just part of our way in which we relate to the rest of the world through these Kung Fu and exploitation movies, through rap, reggae, punk rock, weird funk, you know, like it just basically made collectors and fans out of us. At the risk of stepping on music exists, I wanted to ask you why you think you and I,

to some extent, too, are so interested in figures who are all about basically like recombinant culture you know who take all the disparate parts of stuff that they love and smash it all together because that is the thing that the movie and then returning to all of this music that i've listened to over and over and over and over again in my life that i have thought about is like wow they really just jammed all the stuff they like together to make something new like what is it about that the second part of what you said is the most important thing. You think about the people that we really respond to, Wu-Tang Clan, Quentin Tarantino, Beastie Boys. A, it means we're very

basic and very predictable. And B, it's the most important part is finding the second thing, the thing that you're going to make out of all this shit. And that's what makes me so excited is when someone uses all these postmodern tools and reconstructs all these things out of this cultural ephemera to say something else. Wu-Tang Clan took all those Kung Fu movies and took all those samples, but made something that could only have been made in Staten Island. Beck could only have made the music he made with the experience that he had. And the Beastie Boys could only have made the music he made with the experience that he had. And the Beastie Boys could only have been the Beastie Boys by combining bad brains with Run DMC. Yeah. And I feel like it's not a mistake that so much of what we do at The Ringer and so much of what you and I have been trying to do in our lives is basically celebrate and be enthusiastic

about the things that we care about. And I feel like these artists are the same way. If you think about Beastie Boys and you even look at the way that they tell their story in the movie, it's just, what we really liked was the Clash and Grandmaster Flash and Cheech and Chong. And we were trying to find a way to make all those things make sense together. And I feel the same way about what we do every day. I feel the same way. You and I love the NBA and we love Top Gun and we love, well, I love devs. I don't know how you feel about devs, but, you know,

and just trying to find a way to make all those things fit together. So I feel like I have aped and tried to copy a lot of what those guys do. And I feel like a kinship to their mission, their creative project. I mean, like you and I, I don't mean to make it sound like you and I are the Beastie Boys here, but you and I... I don't mean to make it sound like you and I are the Beastie Boys here, but you and I, I think that we use the internet the way other people would use a sampler. And we draw in all these different media. We take YouTube videos, we take a picture. And I think it was probably more the case before we started working professionally together in an editorial capacity. But we would have tumblers and blog spots.

And you would just throw a picture of Steve McQueen up in an article you were writing about Ghostface. And it would have some sort of relationship. And I think that that was our way of continuing along this tradition of mixing and matching different pieces of culture to say something about yourself. The thing that you said that I think is probably to me one of the most important parts of the movie that will not go very remarked upon because a lot of it is going to be spent talking about Yauch, and it should be because this is very much, I think, an homage to him and a real moving tribute to their friend. But when Mike D says in the beginning of the movie that he was just this weird kid who found the Clash, not only is that the origin story for a lot of people who find that one band, whether it's The Dead or The Clash or Run DMC or whoever it is, that makes them think that they are now all

of a sudden not alone in the world. The Clash is a really, really important template for the Beastie Boys because they are basically a crossroads group, a marketplace at a crossroads group. It's where all these different cultures are coming and they're setting up their wares and you can pick and choose off of these tables and then you go home and you make something out of it. And that's what The Clash did too.

I mean, you can make a lot of arguments about appropriation and whether or not the people who The Clash were taking from or paying homage to were properly compensated for the work that they did. And the same thing could go for the Beastie Boys. But I think a lot more people know about Lee Perry

because of the Beastie Boys than not. And that's a really, really important act in culture. Everything is about timing too. I think about when they hit the scene and who they were working with. And on the one hand, I guess there's an appropriation question. I think that they've moved past that so effectively because they were just literally there with Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin and Run DMC making music together. And they were a part of something that was essentially punk

at the end of its first true lightning rod phase at the end of the first decade. Yeah. And rap at the dawn. I mean, they weren't there necessarily in the end of the first decade. Yeah. And, and rap at the dawn, you know, I mean, they weren't there necessarily in, in the parks in the South Bronx,

but you know, 1983, 1984. But Cookie Puss was getting played on the radio. Yeah. Yes. Yes. And there's that great moment in the movie where Africa Bambada is asked about Cookie Puss by one of the members of the Beastie Boys.

And you can see like, they're there, they're there in the moment and they're going to Danceteria and, you know, performing for white people, introducing them to rap in a way. a way and yeah that couldn't have happened if they if it was just five years earlier or five years later the same is true for the clash you know it's like they arrived at a time when the world was ready to hear a rock band try to play reggae and what that means for what the future of reggae um there's something also about this specific approach to the

world though that jumps out to me which is it's not just this is what we like. It's this is what we like, and I don't care if you don't like it, and I actually don't care if you don't get it. Because when I think about the things that I knew when I first heard the band, you could fit it inside of a very small box. I just did my

cultural reference points, the music that I knew about, the records, the comedy, everything that they were throwing in, I wouldn the music that I knew about, the records, the comedy, everything that they were throwing in. I wouldn't say that I discovered them because they were sampled for three seconds on a record on Paul's Boutique, but they were a window. I had never heard of Sadahara O until I heard the Beastie Boys rap about him. There's so much in their music, the sampling, the lyric writing, even if it isn't... Their songs are very rarely high-minded. They're not necessarily pursuits of big ideas, but they put big ideas in

front of you just by dint of what they were interested in. And I liked that kind of take it or leave it quality that they bring to it. And I feel like that really comes out in the movie too, don't you think? Yeah. Only a couple of people are lucky enough to have other people care about the thing that they care about. You can play the game and you can try to ride the wave of what's popular at any given moment, but it's so weird because what the Beastie Boys did, especially once they moved to LA, I think wound up having such an incredibly profound formative effect on all the culture that comes after it. So it winds up being underrated as to what a zag that was, how crazy it was for those guys to be like, yeah, we're going to leave New York. We're going to leave behind rap. We're going to go to Capitol from Def Jam. And we're going to work with these two producers that basically no one's ever heard of and assemble these really out there incongruous samples to build together a new sound that we're going to use

to define us for the next couple of decades. The other thing I wanted to talk about, because I think is probably also a reason why you and I like them so much is that, and this comes across very much in the movie, is how much they combine the personal and the professional and how much their work was an extension of their friendship. And I like to think of a lot of my work as an extension of my friendship with you. And I really loved the amount that they would reference. The Beastie Boys were essentially about getting together, talking shit, getting some takeout, talking some more shit, skating, and then making music. And that's great. That's the project. The project was their friendship together and the music was the result. Yeah. And it was not strategy. When you talk to them, they're kind of blissfully unaware of how it worked out the way that it did.

And I don't think it's false modesty. They're just like, we literally were just doing what we thought was cool and fun. And we were not market testing our approach to the world. I mean, a lot of this is obviously happening at the beginning of a lot of cultural changes. So there was nothing to really measure it against in the first place. But even beyond that, even as they got more and more success and they started moving into the 90s and even the 2000s, you just get the impression that they were such a self-contained and self-involved in the good way kind of unit that I don't know. I always, I just really looked up to that.

I really looked up to the idea of saying like, this may not be fashionable or it may just seem a little bit left of center or even it might be deemed like somewhat inappropriate at times, but they were, they were trying to find ways to do it in ways that were meaningful and true to them. That I think is, I don't know.

It's, it's very, a very, very intoxicating concept to me. It remains that even to this day. I think a lot of my favorite people who make shit are ones who are very, very competitive, but very, very skeptical of fame. And the Beastie Boys, I think, were making their best music at a time when a lot of mainstream artists were still really uneasy about their relationship to corporations and about their relationship to

advertising and about their relationship to politics and a lot of those other things, and especially uneasy about their relationship to celebrity and fame. Yet they were super competitive. They wanted to make really important records. When they made videos, they wanted their videos to be the best. When they performed at Lollapalooza or if they went on the MTV Video Music Awards, they were like, we wanted people to be like the Beastie Boys house that shit. And it was that kind of ethic of really badass Yorker with like somewhat indie rocker aversion to any kind of like responsibility that I really responded to. Me too.

We're going to talk about our top five favorite songs. Before we get into that, I think we should talk about the videos and we should talk about the albums very briefly. So you mentioned, you know, when they made videos, they wanted to make the best videos. Their videos were always very handmade. They were always very clever. It seemed like similarly, they were following their own wanted to make the best videos. Their videos were always very handmade. They were always very clever. It seemed like similarly they were following their own path in a discreet way. I think of them really as a very, very important MTV band.

I'm not sure if they would have worked as a band at large without the visual, almost like comic aspect of their persona. And that includes Fight for Your Right to Party, but it also includes so what you want. And then of course, sabotage and the way that they kind of marked, forgive this phrase, but like hipster cinema over time in the way that they made movies and

collaborating with Spike Jones. And I mean, what do you think about them as, as visual artists before this movie? It's so weird. Cause it's like everybody's buddy had the high, like the, had that high eight camera It's so weird because it's like everybody's buddy had that high eight camera who was like,

and let's make a movie on the weekend. Imagine if your buddy was Spike Jonze. That's so annoying. It's one thing to just be like, yeah, it's cool. Jump in the shopping cart and we'll do a dolly shot with it. It's really frustrating to be like,

man, I wonder if my friend had been Spike Jonze, would I be sitting here with you today? But I think two times in my life, I've seen a Beastie Boys video and been like, that's the coolest thing I've ever seen. So what you want in Sabotage. And Sabotage, I don't even know if... I don't know if there's a proper way to contextualize like how important the sabotage video was because it was it hit on the deepest possible comedy level. And also was like, that is actually super dope. I wish me and my friends could go play 70s cop TV show dress up. Yeah, I completely agree. I think it's like the purest distillation of irony that I've ever seen, but also totally sincere.

Like, I don't know. I don't know how something like that can possibly be true. If you can come up with a name like Vic Colfari, you've seen fucking 170s crime movies. Yes, 100%. What about albums? Because I feel like a lot of people, you're just a few years older than I am. And then I think there are people who are probably a few years older than you who have a similar obsession with the group. I don't know how many people younger than me have quite the same emotional commitment to them. I'd actually be curious to know generationally how they track. But I do think people tend to chart their life by when they discovered Beastie Boys, if they're fans of the group. What is the album where you were like, oh, this is a thing I have to be close to?

Well, I mean mean it's hard you can't overstate the importance of license to ill and like my my childhood um it became my generation's first favorite album i think for a lot of people and also for a young pubescent prepubescent boys like essentially the dictionary for better or for worse. My favorite records by them were very much Check Your Head and No Communication though. I look at them as a piece almost. The LA records. I know that they

made Paul's Boutique there too, but I think that those two records are their artistic peak and there's so much interesting music being made in there and also feature their most absolutely raw, pure songwriting, like their best songs. Yeah, I have a similar experience on favorite albums. I'm given my age.

I think I was aware of Fight for Your Right to Party at a very young age because it was so anthemic and inescapable even at five or six or seven years old but i think the so what you want video if you're i was probably nine when it came out was transportive was yeah did you ever know what a fisheye lens was before that yeah no no like it totally captured my attention as a kid it probably is one of the significant things that got me hooked on mtv in the first place i wait I would wait hours watching 120 minutes waiting for them to play that video. And all that stuff predates what we view as like alternative culture. It predates Cameron Crowe making singles and grunge and rap rock. And they're like so far ahead of the curve on all of that like you know for lack

of a better term like white culture white alternative culture it's so funny to think about how they and they always kind of operated in their own orbit their own stratosphere in a lot of ways they were uncategorizable in many ways but still i think they were the introduction to rap along with um the chronic which is also you know celebrating a kind of anniversary this week because it's been added to streaming platforms. Those two things hand in hand in 91, 92, I just think broke a lot of people's minds. But I'm with you. Ill communication, I think, is like a perfect, perfect thing.

Just like a perfect object that will be with me until I die. And that goes for the visuals, too. And the story that they're telling and the way that you can see them evolving as people the way you've gotten close to them and that that's talked about a little bit in the film um the other thing that goes pretty much unremarked upon in the movie that i wanted to hit on quickly is like the yada yada the fact that being a beastie boys fan from 1993 to 1999 was like being a fan of mc the m. There was like a label of other artists you could get excited about. There was a magazine that you could buy and read,

which was a really cool magazine that had great writing and great taste. Amazing magazine, yeah. Called Grand Royal. And there was a clothing line. There was this whole world. And this was at a time when rap groups, Wu-Tang, like you mentioned before,

also did this sort of thing. They kind of spun up the business of their art into profit but with beastie boys it always felt a little bit less accessible a little more undiscovered a little bit more like a clubhouse kind of approach to stuff i always just loved that specific aspect of what they were doing yeah that comes across really well in the movie where they talk about g-sun studios which is the place they built an outwater village in east la or like you know across really well in the movie where they talk about G-Sun Studios, which is the place they built in Atwater Village in East LA, in the east side of Los Angeles, I don't know if it's East LA. And they talk about Christian Hisoi and Jason Lee coming over and skating their half pipe, guys playing basketball. I think there's a bonus track on one of the albums

where it's just the sound of people playing basketball in their studio. It's like the Atwater Village Basketball Association or something. His name is Song. And it's great. I mean, you just really feel like friends are hanging out. And you're right. You used to just be like, you would find out about skateboarders. You would find out about other musicians. You would find out about shopping at thrift stores. I remember when Ad-Rock started wearing way too small t-shirts with ironic Mount Vernon girls lacrosse logos or whatever. And that was how dudes just dressed for the rest of the 90s. It was kind of wild. You would just be in one video and that was it.

That was a wrap. And even if you didn't really make the direct connection like those were the sort of touchstones the big bangs for a lot of a lot of different things like how people dressed how people talked how people moved how what kind of music they listened to what they pretended to listen to yeah mike d tells this story in beastie boy's book which is the the predecessor of the movie which a lot of the movie draws stories from the book. If you're a Beastie Boys fan and you haven't read the book, I would highly recommend it. It's a 600-page tome full of anecdotes, deep dives, analyses of the things that they've done. People who they're friends with write about the band.

There's tons of photos. There's mixtape playlists inside the book. There's so much cool stuff. But Mike D tells a story about loving wearing Carhartt one piece clothing items in the mid nineties and just feeling like, why can't we just make these? And then they just start making them. And that's the birth of X large there, their clothing line. And like,

they just, they would just spin stuff up like out of nothing. It was like, it's so amazing to think about how, how easy it seemed to come to them there are photos of of like yawk wearing champion sweatshirts in like 99 and like dudes are wearing champion sweatshirts now it's today yeah and i don't know whether or not that he he got that from someone else but yeah just like the the level of influence that they had over over that kind of extra musical stuff

was is just uh was so wild yeah the the movie is something interesting for us to talk about briefly because um i think that it's been received like very warmly but also with a little bit of skepticism because it's kind of bulletproof because yeah it's so sincere almost disarmingly so and even the uh the all the humor is self-effacing and it's it it's so it's kind of like hard to be like i wanted more from this beastie boys documentary when it's so obviously like a heartfelt gesture on these two guys's part yeah exactly and part of the complication is beastie boys have gone to great pains over the years to kind of self-analyze mistakes that they've made. There's obviously a lot of there's concern about like a kind of sexism and insensitivity, especially on License to Ill.

The band members are really progressive. And, you know, Ad-Rock is married to Kathleen Hanna and Yalc was, you know, hugely involved in the Free Tibet movement. I mean, these are guys who were very politically conscious by the time you get to the late 90s, but also are looking back on what they once perceived to be a kind of mocking of a certain prototype that then they kind of morphed into. And they talk about this in the book

and they talk about it in the movie. But I think you're right, Chris. The movie itself is so direct and straightforward and obviously such an ode to their pal who they lost that even if it isn't exactly the 10 hour mega doc that I wanted from Beastie Boys and I still would be love to have. I was just personally really gratified to have two hours of them talking about their lives and what they made. You know, I think that's that's probably more rare than we're willing to give it credit for so i appreciated it if you had to be greedy and you had to say i wanted a little bit more of x what is the one thing that you wanted to hear more about you know i i so we should say that the it's no spoiler to say that the sort of

the format that they use is uh adam and mike uh horowitz and diamond are doing the sort of the format that they use is Adam and Mike Horowitz and Diamond are doing this sort of kind of borscht belt routine like on the stage. So they're in front of

a live audience. They're reading from a teleprompter and they're essentially walking people through archival footage of the Beastie Boys that tells the story

of the band and it spends a tremendous amount of time on their early, early New York days and it spends a tremendous amount of time on their early, early New York days. And it spends a lot of time not deifying, but just really throwing a lot of credit and praise

on Yacht. Personally, I think it would have just been cool to get a couple of different settings for their reflections. Maybe have some one-on-one talking heads with Ad-Rock and Mike D, and also maybe to bring in some different voices. I would have been curious to see what, say,

like there's this really cool part right before, it's like what winds up being their last gig at Bonnaroo. And they're in Tennessee, we're filming a music video with Nas, and Roman Coppola is directing it. And I kind of was like, I have nowhere to go. So if Nas and Roman Coppola is directing it. And I kind of was like, I have nowhere to go. So if Nas and Roman Coppola wanted to weigh in here,

like I would have been fine with that. But you can't be greedy in a situation like this. Yeah, I thought of the same thing. I thought, wouldn't it be nice to hear from Matt Dyke and the Dust Brothers? Wouldn't it be nice

to hear from Spike himself? Not just as this sort of antic voice of God mismanaging the stage production that happens in the film but also to hear honestly what he thought about the group and how they connected and how they became friends I think it would be nice to have all of that stuff

alas we'll have to settle for this very cool thing they've always been so good about making neat stand alone objects for their fans they had the 100th edition of the Criterion Collection. It was a collection of all of their videos. I've got it right behind me on my shelf right now.

They have that book. They have this movie. I was reading in an interview with our old colleague Amos Barshad and GQ about how they have this huge raft of unreleased material. And they're kind of downplaying it and saying a lot of it is bad. But you just know, even if you just go listening to the EPs and the largely unheard stuff

that they put out over the years, their worst stuff is at worst interesting. Yeah, they actually are one of the groups where you're like, I would listen to you guys fuck around. There's plenty of times where you're just like, I don't need to hear Eric Clapton tuning on this 70th reissue

of Derek and the Dominoes. But I actually, especially because the Beastie Boys as musicians really didn't come into their own until the middle of their careers. It's kind of fascinating to hear them hit that point as artists. So, they're

not fucking around on our top fives. This is some of the most focused shit ever this is some of our favorite music ever um we'll try to do this in a concise way we'll try to not oversell our emotions on these shows but i asked you to give me five songs i'll give you five songs let's start with your number five beastie boys song ever so i went with sabrosa which is an instrumental cut and is basically my hat my cap tip to their musical ability and and their desire sometime in the early 90s to try and turn themselves into the meters. Yeah, it's kind of an amazing thing.

There's no small feat. DC Boys are actually pretty good background music. If you want, check out the In Sound from Way Out, which is their collection of instrumental tracks from, I think it's, I don't know if it goes back to Paul's Boutique,

but it's definitely the Check Your Head Elk Communication stuff on there. And them working with Money Mark and Mario Caldado. It's just,

it's just really deep, funky shit. It's good. I pick a So What You Want, which will not be a surprising entry a lot of my my choices are down the middle and i feel totally comfortable with that i know you also have so What You Want on your list. Yeah.

I think between the video and the introduction to it, and also there's a great story in the book that I think Adam tells about the A&R who was working on Check Your Head for Capitol at the time who seemed like a real asshole and a blowhard and who when they visited the offices to ask about the first single was insistent upon

Jimmy James and they were like that's cool Jimmy James is one of our favorite songs on the record but it has no hook no chorus makes no sense making that the first single what about So What You Want and he was like yeah I don't know So What You Want what number is that again and then they have to have a cassette tape and they have to rewind and then fast forward to where so what you want is on the record

and they press play and as soon as it starts he's like wait so what is this called again and they're like so what you want and he's like this is the one this is it guys and it dawns on them that he's not listening to the tape that he doesn't know anything and he only suggested jimmy james because jimmy james is the first song on the album um but so what you want is like it's infectious and it's one of those like it's a talisman i think for a lot of people my age like if you were into that you could be friends with a person you know yeah for sure and then and that video like you said um that video is just like there was black and white and then it was color when that video came out in terms of just like the way in which they captured what it was like to physically interact

with a song what's number four chris uh number four for me is shadrack which is um i think. Shadrack, which is, I think this is on Paul's Boutique. And I wanted to shout this out because I felt like this was a good example of their upping their game lyrically. So it's basically, for me, this is lyrically the version

of all the sampling that they do. They make all these little references that if you wanted to get nerdy about it and really break down what they were talking about, you'd see that they do. They make all these little references that if you wanted to get nerdy about it and really break down what they were talking about, you'd see that they were referencing the Book of Daniel, the Bible book. The band ACDC and a Brooklyn street fair in the same song.

And if you start to really get into the lines that they're doing, you start to just kind of put together this whole universe of constellation of references. I also picked Paul's Boutique song for number four. I picked Shake Your Rum. I picked it basically because I think that there should be a party record on this list. It's still one of the great party records to me, but it does do a lot of what you're talking about here too,

which is it collides so many of their interests and it shows a lot of depth lyrically. But also, you know, the Abbott and Costello, Three Stooges, Dean and martin finishing each other's sentences style of emceeing which is obviously it was very important and well known like great master flash the furious five did that a lot of other groups in the early 80s did that but it started to fade out as an approach for rap groups in the late 80s yeah epmD and De La Soul maybe a little bit would do it. But for the most part, they kind of like kept that tradition alive.

And it's a signature of all their songs. And the Shake Your Rump version of the like jumping from lyric to lyric to lyric to voice to voice to voice to figuring out, am I like an ad rock guy? Am I an MCA guy? Am I a Mike D guy? Whose references do I like the most? What are the most interesting? Did you ever figure it out? Well, I mean, I think there's like an unspoken acknowledgement that Ad-Rock is the coolest,

MCA is the wisest, and Mike D is the funniest, quote unquote, funniest. And I don't even know if that's accurate. And it probably changes every time you listen to a new song. But I kind of subscribe to that. What about you? I think it's Ad-Rock for me. It has the most memorable lines. And also, I just always just got like such a huge kick out of his personality and was

never really lost that punk rock shit like Ed Rock was definitely the dude who just like flipped off the VMAs after playing as Sabotage that's one of the best moments in the movie is getting a chance to see that VMAs performance again it's so great to see what a fucking

just like a little miscreant asshole you know invading this very stupid award and i just i think also it's just like his second life as noah bomback character actor and middle-aged just like new york dude is or or just middle-aged guy cool dad is is so funny to me yeah i mean i don't want to be a large aspirational yeah there's a couple of uh white guys approaching middle age telling the world that they think ad rock's the coolest guy of all time it's not like not exactly a shocking turn of events but yeah i mean he's like a role model for a certain kind of dude and i i always liked him as an mc because he could kind of cut through the noise too he He has that super adenoidal voice. Yeah, and just like,

I'm that kid in the corner. Like that is like, you just always remember his bars. I'm so glad we got you rhyming on this episode. That's right. You picked So What You Want at number three. Yeah. I chose Hold It Now, Hit It. This is my only licensed sale record.

Do you listen to licensed still very much? Only half of it. I only like the real rappy rap shit. I can't listen to Fight for Your Right or No Sleep Till Brooklyn. But Paul Revere, Slow and Low, Hold It Now, Hit It. And Rhymin and Stealing. Those are still my favorite songs. I don't listen to girls.

I'm 37 years old. There's definitely a time in my life where I feel like the only thing that my friends cared about were memorizing the lyrics of Paul Revere, which they did and which I did, and just watching Eddie Murphy concerts. That was like the boy brain for like

10 years. There's something, they're about even in the maturity scale too. They're operating in the same, with the same energy. It's like, do you want to listen to Beastie Boys or watch Raw? Yeah, and Hold It Now hit it, like the segment in the movie where they explain how it came about

is simultaneously the dumbest and smartest thing i've ever seen they're like you know on that uh leroy caster song where they just say hey leroy you know like that just like that knowing that they just wanted to grab a small piece of something they loved and then a small piece of something they loved and then a small piece of something they loved and put it together in a record it's so obvious yeah and yet i never really thought about it when i would listen to it like that was what they were thinking i thought that they were trying to construct some mozart style masterpiece of sonic integration and they were just like here's a cool sound i heard once i'd like it to be in my song and i we almost know too much about sampling now and the

difficulties of sampling and how you could never make License Tale. You could never make Paul's Boutique in 2020 because of how expensive it would be or how impossible it would be to gain the rights. And there was a Wild West aspect to it. But the actual creation of it is still what's so cool to me and still clicks so well. Yeah. And there was just this whole era where when it was still flying a little bit under the radar in terms of, of if it's litigiousness, the challenge was to do it more and more artfully. And guys really took that as,

okay, you're going to throw the gauntlet down and flip that sample this way. And you're going to do it this way. And now I think it's kind of more of a, like Kanye can afford to buy the Aretha Franklin tapes, you know? And that's how, and it's Kanye does fucking incredible stuff with samples, but when you listen to Large Professor

or Q-Tip or Havoc do something with a record, it just felt different back then. I completely agree with you. Let's go to number two. What's your number two, Chris? It's Sabotage. So... I mean, I don't even know what to say about this song other than the fact that it's definitely one of those songs that the second you hear it, the second you hear the opening seconds of it,

you're like, I'm in. Make this part of my life. Put this on my tombstone. Play this at my wedding. It immediately becomes an anthem for multiple generations of people who are fans of this band.

And I think that it's one of those perfect combinations of, like we talked about this already, but the marriage between the song, which is like, you know, like as Ad-Rock talks about, like he's like, I just basically went into a studio booth and a vocal booth and talked shit at the engineer and i didn't know it was going to become like our set closing number but then when they made the video it gave it like this whole new layer of hilarity and depth and spice and interest i i don't know it i've never been able to quite figure out like what how they figure they

decided to put 70s cop satire on top of this like essentially thrash punk song and then it just became a huge hit did you i feel like we've reached the moment now that my dad reached when i was 12 and he was like clapped in his God. And here's why I need to understand that. Right. And now I'm like, listen, children gather around while I tell you about sabotage and how sabotage changed it all. And like, I wonder if this music aside from the, like, let's say you're a young aspirant skater and you've got like a fuck you attitude and you're a slight, you cut school all the time, you could definitely get into Beastie Boys. There's something attitudinally there

that you get into. But if you're just like a sweet kid that's on TikTok all the time, does the sound of Beastie Boys, does the sound of sabotage make any sense to you? I think if you're a 12-year-old boy, it probably does.

I think that there's gotta be something destructively rebellious in people still. You know, I think times have changed and I don't know whether or not that sound really resonates with people as much anymore. The loud guitar, the attitude that they had, it doesn't seem... I think people express themselves in a lot different ways now, but I don't know. I'd be really curious to find out whether or not 13-year olds think sabotage is great or not. Bill always brings up Ben Simmons as the perfect focus group. I can't imagine Ben Simmons wouldn't love Sabotage, though. It's a great point. Well, let's bring on Ben Simmons.

Ben, what do you think? Ben's not here. My number two pick is also on ill communication. It's Sure Shot, which I think is basically column A, column B on ill communication. Sure Shot is that song, the I'm That Kid in the Corner song that you were referring to. It's got some of the best rhyming that they've ever done. It's got this kind of mesmerizing flute loop as the melodic counterpoint of the song. And it's the song that was played at every basketball practice I attended

between 1994 and 1996. It was on every warm-up tape for all of the suburban kids of Long Island. And I don't even know why that was. I think it was just aspirational. It was just like, if I can hear this song, I'm cool. And if I'm cool, I can be good at basketball. Yeah.

And that's like a magical power. And that's another song too that's like, Chris, you play that song at my funeral, okay? You got it. I'm going to do a solo version like Will Ferrell in old school. You're my boy, Blue! We got a deal. I love what you picked for number one Chris

what'd you pick for number one album openers what a fucking Ricky Henderson right out of the lead off spot man every album has a banger

even I think Paul's Boutique is like so Paul's Boutique is to all the girls so they go rhyming and stealing on Listen Still.

To all the girls on Paul's Boutique. And then a run of Jimmy James, Sure Shot. And Super Disco breaking through Hello Nasty. See, now there's two schools of thought. One is you open your album with something kind of epic and sweeping to introduce the concept. That would be like on, say, Jay-Z does the Rock Dynasty intro track on La Familia or something like that.

Or you put your number one single first and then go from there. They can do either one. They can do either one. But when you listen to these first tracks, if you're like, I'm going to listen to a Beast Boys record, never, ever, ever fucking put it on shuffle. If you can take anything from this podcast, they really meticulously assemble these albums. And those first songs are always like the absolute crankshot to the jugular. I love that. And I feel bad because we haven't talked about Hello Nasty at all. Hello Nasty, you know, it's considered their last great album.

They had a couple more after that. And it was probably like their apex in terms of like, everybody agreed that they were brilliant musicians, the most fun musicians we had. And I think that there was that run, that tour, I remember, it was just like,

it was kind of like you had to go see them. You had to go see the Beastie Boys. Totally. That was their sort of apex, maybe not commercially because Licensed Ale sold so well, but in terms of being universally beloved and almost like easing into Elder Statesman

of the thing. They were like adult adult ferris bueller's it was just like every single group of people liked them yeah and that record is really really good it's like way better than any rapper rap group's fifth or sixth album has any right to be um it gets a little bit of short shrift in the film they obviously have a lot of affection for it but by the time you get to, you know, the hundredth minute of the movie, you don't have a ton of time to spend on it. But it had a lot of big hits. It had a lot of successful videos and it was on MTV all the time. They were performing at the VMAs and they had that

huge tour and Superdisco break and also a jam. Also a jam I might have heard a few times warming up for basketball games. Yeah, the layup line, man. Right. Exactly. My number one pick is called looking down the barrel of a gun sean fennessey classic this is in the conversation for my favorite song of all time. There's an eggheaded reason that I like it, which is it's basically the introduction of what would become their sound, which is super sample heavy, super intense, but also live instrumentation. You know, there's, I think it's Ad-Rock who's playing guitar on this record. And it also features, you know,

this very, very heavy mountain sample. A couple of other, like, incredible bongo band sample. It's like the most propulsive song you'll ever hear in your life. If you ever need to soundtrack your next fist fight, put on looking down the barrel of a gun, it will work perfectly. Or if you ever need to drive from New York to California. Oh, so this is your cannonball run track.

Totally. This is what I'm doing the Vegas drive. We just put this on a loop, do 110. That's on the 15. That's how I live. It's really just one of my, it's one of my favorite things ever.

And it's like haunting and kind of like scary. It's an unusually, like it's not a happy song. Yeah. As Beastie Boys songs go, but it's like an amazing creation. Love listen to it um chris any any closing thoughts on beastie boys can i ask you a kind of like a weird hypothetical of course had mca not unfortunately left left us if he had not passed away do you think that they could have continued to make relevant records? Like how do you think like seeing those guys up on stage at their age, could you imagine

a Beastie Boys at middle age record? I mean, I think that they would have. What how relevant it would have been or what it would have evolved into would have been interesting because they kind of got to their dad phase a little early. You know, they became they a like a jazz samba band when they were in their early 30s mid 30s i mean i mean they really did move through the life cycle of musical creativity very quickly and so i don't know i don't know they strike me as the kind of guys who would have become like composers you know they would have worked on films together

obviously yowk was, Yauch owned a mini studio and was a film lover and a director himself. But I think that they probably would have just continued to do the elder statesman role of working to organize a concert of benefit. I don't actually know how much of this Mike and Adam do to this day, but it would have been interesting to

see them shepherd younger artists or work more. I didn't get a chance to ask them about what they think of rap right now but i am always interested in that and they tend to like blow off questions like that they're like oh we're like in our 50s it doesn't matter what we think but i do actually want to know what they think what did they think of juice world you know what i mean like what did they think of something like that like could they get into it do their kids listen to it how do they find themselves but as far as the records that they were making, I found the last two records

very sweet, more sincere than they had ever been. Right, To the Five Burrows. And what was the other one? It was To the Five Burrows and Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, which was sort of interrupted in their production because Yacht got sick and was released during a very complicated time

for the band. And there's some cool stuff on those records. Like there's a Sandy gold song. There's that Nas record that you talked about, but it's, it's definitely, you know, it's late period stuff. It's like a lot of great artists, late period stuff, which is like, you can hear them. It's them doing their thing still, but something has, has moved on. Um, yeah, I think they would have been a great every three to four years at Coachella band, um, come, come, come through, play the hits. Yeah, I think they would have been a great every three to four years a Coachella band come through, play the hits. And I would have been really curious because I guess the reason why I was even asking about or thinking about it was that in the last couple

of weeks, we've seen these different DJ battles on Instagram and some of the older faces from our youth, like Premier and Teddy Riley and people participating in these things and it reminded me that like rap, but you know, pop music in general, but rap in particular can sometimes be cruel to its elders. They kind of like outlive their usefulness in some ways and are kind

of shunted off and it's like, yeah, you can come, you can play your like five songs and maybe come out as like a guest appearance, but there's not a lot of room to keep making interesting rap music into your 50s or whatever. So I would have been curious to see them try. One of the great things about them is that they're not just rap, that they are punk and funk and jazz and calypso and sample stacked paraphernalia. They really were everything to me um and i think their music

is kind of foreverable you know it's like there's it doesn't have it it's not dated maybe with the exception of license to ill which feels very much like an early 80s rap record all of their records i think you could drop into the atmosphere right now and be like isn't this crazy how someone made this yeah i mean like that that was they made, they took some of the most timeless music ever made. Shout out to Black Oak, Arkansas. And they made timeless music out of it. And it still sounds as good to me today as it did when I was 13, which either means I'm old as shit or they made perfect songs.

I think both things can be true, Chris. Thank you for doing this with me. I appreciate it. Let's go to my chat now with Michael, Mike D. Diamond, and Adam, the King Ad Rock Horvitz. have a library of over 750,000 pods at this point. So let's say you're searching for the rewatchables or the Dave Chang show or the ringer NBA show. Once you find them, click on the follow button. That's how you subscribe. Then click on those letters near the top of the app. That's a podcast. All the pods you're following will pop up separated by episodes, downloads, and shows. Wait, it gets better. On Spotify, you can adjust the speed of the pods to seven different

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Adam and Mike, thank you for being here and doing this. I appreciate you both. How are you guys doing in quarantine? You holding up? Yeah, I feel we feel very grateful and lucky that we moved to, I mean i listen i hate to not try to sell out new york because we are new yorkers and we have family and friends there but we're also grateful we're not there we're in california we're in california me too i'm a new yorker who abandoned new york and moved to california and it's it's i feel good did you guys um what have you guys been watching i was wondering if you guys watched the last dance as i think about what's going on with you guys yeah definitely i was just talking about like i just last year just last night i was watching episode two um

i'm really enjoying it i mean i can't separate the fact that like you know that the time span of that documentary it's like, you know, we are, we are in New York city. We are in New York. We're putting out record after record. We're on tour. We're, we're, uh, you know, playing in a lot of these, you know, at that time, like we're playing in a lot of these buildings where the bulls were playing, we're going to Madison square garden and, uh, watching Michael Jordan crush the Knicks.

You know what? Give me a fucking Hubert Davis documentary. Fucking Trent Tucker or Hawthorne Wingo. I want to see fucking Michael Jordan. You really are becoming... No, I'm going to stop. Why are you so bitter right now about this

Jordan? Listen, a goat is a goat. Why do you have to be mad about it? Well, I'm Listen, the goat is a goat. Why do you have to be mad about it? Well, I'm waiting for the Chris Childs documentary. You guys did license a song. I've seen a future episode. We didn't ask about the best Christian basketball player, Adam. Oh yeah, that's right.

I shouldn't say that. The Christians will take my head off. Alan Houston probably still gets paid like $2 million a year by the Knicks, I bet. Just because. I was thinking a lot about it for the same reasons you guys, though, watching the documentary. And then here in the maestro,

in a later episode of the series, I was like, this is wild how much it closely mirrors the time when you guys were so active and getting so famous. So anyway, so yeah, so my point before Adam started hating on Michael Jordan for no good reason,

because the man is clearly one of our most talented athletes. I will never forget being at Yowk's house and we're watching a Knicks Bulls game and Scotty Pippen got a rebound and he didn't just get a rebound. He got the rebound and then tapped it on the backboard and came down and did an outlet. People play with our New York Knicks. It's not funny. They don't play against them. They just play with them. It's not, I don't like that. That is true. You're right on that. Cause you got something to prove.

You're in like the world's most famous arena. You're in Madison square garden. You could just beat the Knicks or you could be Michael Jordan and drop 55 on him. Or Scottie Pippen, whatever. And the only weapon we have, the only person who stood up for us during this whole little John Starks. That's it. I thought you were going to say Jeff Van Gundy. Jeff Van Gundy when he was holding onto Pat Ewing's leg. Miami. Wait, which? Was that Miami? When was holding onto Pat Ewing's leg. Miami.

Wait, which? Was that Miami? When that fight happened, that was a long time ago. That was in Miami. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. I mean, that's definitely Van Gundy highlight.

But anyway, so what I was trying to say, yes, we had this overlapping parallel. But what I'm liking about watching The Last Dance is you just realize nothing's that simple it's like it's it's very complex and the bulls not you know there's the starting five of the bulls are these very complex very different personalities from very different backgrounds and then you have phil jackson and then you have the gm and you have the owner and the fact that he even could work as long as well as it did as long as it did is so miraculous you know and to me i guess i look at it like that there's a lot of similarity

uh to band life in that because ultimately with bands it's it is this really fragile thing you know where where you gotta get along but even if you're not getting along even though there's some friction between you that's also good because sometimes that feeds you know as long as your career as long as you're vital in terms of doing this thing together but you also really do have to have each other's backs at the end of the day for people to really push it because otherwise you're not going to feel comfortable really pushing yourself, whether you're in a band or you're on a team, unless you really feel secure that everybody else has got you. As I was watching The Last Dance and as I was watching Beastie Boys Story, I was thinking about just how powerful nostalgia is and what it's like to look back on your life. Are you guys comfortable with being a part of people's nostalgic experience at

this point after doing the book and doing the film, like the, the look back, how do you feel about engaging with that as part of your, as part of your life? Um, it's fantastic, you know, that we've made music that people enjoyed and, and meant something to them and keep it with them and they pass it down to friends or whatever, you know, that's fantastic. Well, I would say to put it in real terms, like I think I'm grateful because we're not, it's like our fans, it's different.

Like people really have this relationship with our music, which sometimes is a little weird because I think it means that they have a relationship with us. But it's really, they have this ongoing relationship with our music which which sometimes is a little weird because i think it means that they have a relationship with us but they but it's really they have this ongoing relationship with music and it's more about the music being a soundtrack for their lives in different times so it's not like you know i don't think it's like just this straight up like nostalgia in the past thing like say footloose no disrespect Kevin Bacon very nice guy other you know people love the film Footloose Adam you're probably a fan right you know I don't know that I've ever actually seen the whole movie I remember Chris Penn breakdancing on the street

but I don't really remember much I'm just saying you know i i guess what i'm trying to say is like falooz is a moment in time and we have like we had we have this time this like shared arc of time and shared like span of history somehow with our fans so that i i don't know kind of we're kind of uh grateful for and the fact that we were like totally we were like totally 80s and totally 90s right yeah well yeah no i agree with that but then also the fact that i think that was one of the things that felt good about being on the stage in a town hall or here in los angeles or at king's theater in brooklyn is that somehow we we get to do this over all these decades. And now here we are. And now we get to stand on stage and talk about it all and try to make sense of it all and try to figure it out. Hey, Mike, can you tell your kid to stop walking around naked behind you?

He's not. He's just topless. He's fully out of the warm day. He's an athlete. And you're telling him. Keep your shirt on. You think, hey, Mike, talking about Davis and his kids, you think they're locker room guys or glue guys?

What do you think? No. Skyler is, let me tell you, and actually it was this, it was literally this way when I coached him in rec league basketball and even a, like he's a kid that like, he's just, he can't take it. If you're not as good or as serious as him, he has just no tolerance for you.

So it was like, you either have to step up as his teammate. You have to step into his world. Oh my God. I'm going to say real quick. Cause we're on the ringer sports network. Mike sent me a video of his kid, showed me a video years ago when he was like eight playing in a little basketball team, you know, his thing. And Tamara was filming it. His wife was filming it. He looks at his mom in the crowd. Someone passes him the ball. He hits a deep shot for like an eight yearyear-old, turns around, does one of these to his mom, and then heads up court. It was amazing.

Amazing. Yeah, well, there's also the time that as soon as Davis made it on an AAU team, he, of course, as the guard started bringing the ball up court, scissored three times, and the coach immediately called a timeout it's like yeah no nutmegs just no yeah no hot dog and son do they does he get that from you does he get that performative instinct from from knowing what his dad does i don't know i don't think i mean maybe listen maybe there is something to like d influence or whatever. And certainly in my kids, actually, it's interesting. They are really comfortable making music. They love working on songs all the time

and just finding music and making music. But also, that's the world that they've grown up in. So it kind of makes sense, right? That to them is normal. Did you guys like movies about bands going through the stages of their career before you guys embarked on this was that something you actually were into this is a great question all right well first off i have two two categories for this since we're on the ringer one dramatized movies that involve music, especially like a

subculture of music, almost universally, almost without exception, suck. There are the exceptions. There's the harder they come. Wow, it's going to be a very short list. Spinal tap.

Spinal tap. Incredible. So there's a few, but in terms of dramatized music stories, especially around a subgenre, if you want an example of a not-so-good one, a film

that we are in, Crush Groove. Ooh, really? It's okay. Crush Groove, I bet you. No, I'm betting you. If you were to watch Crush Groove right now, I bet you it's got i bet you no i'm you if you were to watch crush groove right now i bet i mean i don't we've seen it pretty bad i would think i have a soft spot for it but i know what you're saying like there's never been a great movie about like punk and the creation of punk yeah i think it's hard to do honestly i mean there are great there's great documentaries like there's there's the Sex Pistols.

The Filth and the Fury, yeah. Really great doc, and I felt really in it, and it was really satisfying. It was about something that I loved, and I felt like I knew about, and I felt it was very genuine. Oh, I never saw the Manchester one. Oh, actually, that's a really good film,

24-Hour Party people that really interesting film and really it's funny that's that's a film like spike and us like we actually that was on your homework list adam to watch you never i don't think you ever watched it you're not great with homework not so much but selectively it's worth actually it's worth in this quarantine time uh to do to catch up on that homework and and no seriously it's worth, actually it's worth in this quarantine time, uh, do to catch up on that homework. And, and no, seriously,

it's really, that is, I put in the category of, you know, we, it's funny. Like we, that was something we put in our pile of like something we aspired to,

but this, who first kicked the idea of doing a movie? Um, it kind of, well, it came out at first. We, we,

you know, we'd done our book and then we had to go out and promote the book. And so we, we came up with, along with spike, with this idea of doing these shows to promote, um, to promote the book.

Um, and so we tried to, you know, the book is whatever, 500 something pages. And we tried to like create this like two hour, more concise arc, um, 500 something pages. And we tried to like create this like two hour more concise arc out of that and started performing it. And as we did it, we realized that there was a lot that was hard for us and that was not necessarily comfortable.

But we actually liked, A, we liked doing it while we were doing it. And mostly just like that, I guess just in the theater, it felt good. Like it felt like with the audience, they connected with it. And it was something real that was happening there. And it's like more like we were all looking at each other like, wow, we should have been filming this, shouldn't we? And we didn't film it. So our bad. Um, and then we, so then we got together and I was like, say it like the end of 2018. And then we got

together at the beginning of 2019 and just started, uh, started rewriting and writing and writing and rewriting, um, towards the goal of then doing it, going back on stage and then filming it. And then honestly, it wasn't, we thought even when we, after we left, got off stage, like that final night, and I think Spike too, I wish he was on this call.

I think we all like kind of like left the theater that night thinking that the film was just going to be a document sort of documenting that what what was happening on stage and what that uh was and then once spike and chef buchanan and zoe are editors and they got in the into the editing room i think they they realized they had to go exponential with it and kind of like i i use the analogy of like going from, from two dimension to three dimension because they are integrating sort of so much archival material. It really just like, why not bring people into this thing? They're not,

people aren't in the theater anymore so that they don't, it's not like they, there isn't this, this vibe of us telling the story. So we have to go exponential that way because we can. What was it like for you guys to perform your lives? And not just once, but a few times in that live setting. Was that weird or different from doing a show? I don't know. If you think about it, I don't know if you are. I don't know like if you think about it i don't know if you are i don't know you

but you know most of us tell the same stories over and over and over again right you just so you you just oh that time that time that this thing happened or yeah oh then i was with this person so that part was kind of easy in a way right thinking about it and being like oh these are the stories that we should tell because this is people might want to know about this in the in the history of our band right but then actually writing it down and like reading a script out loud of the story that you've probably told 50 different times it was weird it was weird but the thing weird. But the thing about talking about your life, for the most part, is what we all do. Or a lot of us do. Or maybe I just do that and I'm an asshole and everybody's like, oh my God, stop doing that.

I've heard that stupid fucking ring story already. Mike, why are you silent right now? Because I farted. I farted and I was wondering if you guys heard it. Here's my question. That is actually the truth, Adam. I was telling the truth. Here's my question.

Lately, Mike, are you a more loud fart or like silent but deadly fart? Because you used to be a loud fart. This is important. Used to be loud. Then I feel like I segued into sort of silent but deadly. And then I got to a point where there's something, you know, I was going through some stuff and I would really crop dust a room. And that's not, that's not cool.

So good. And thankfully now I think I've really dialed some things that are a lot more dialed up my digestion, honestly. And yeah, you know, just the farting straight up is a lot more under without you don't actually ask the topless 15 year old Scarlet Diamond he'll weigh in very candidly I saw him with a bass behind you what is he doing no guitar okay looked like a well he's been he's been teaching himself a song that's part of his quarantine routine which I'm impressed

with. He teaches himself, he learns a new song every day on guitar. You mean one song a night? One song a night, yes. I'm kind of amazed that the farting question didn't make it into the show or the book or

any of the other jams. Yeah, well, again again if it were if it were just adam and i and spike weren't involved it probably would have all right here's a question mike number one fruit go well that's hard that depends on your mood and also there's you know there's a big debate around my house the fact that avocado is a fruit like i love avocados not a question my favorite is it technically avocados i don't consider it a fruit because of its savory nature but technically isn't it a fruit there's a pit really i'm asking siri hey siri is avocado a fruit? Let's see. Here's what I found from Wikipedia. Like the banana, the avocado is a climacteric fruit,

which matures on a tree but ripens off the tree. I don't think you've answered the question. Is avocado the answer? He's just dodging the question. Okay, so favorite fruit. You tell me, what's your favorite fruit? I don't want to say avocado is my favorite fruit. I'm going to say um this is really tricky a really good blueberry i was gonna say that

really fucking blueberries like i'm not talking about like a blueberry from another continent i'm talking about like when the blueberry near you has ripened and really good like when you're yeah when you're on like a local like when you're on the East coast or even here in California with certain like when it's really in season and ripened, it really actually tastes like a blueberry. I don't know. I don't know if there's anything better in the fruit world. Adam,

you have to tell us what your favorite. I don't eat fruit. I set up for that. That's some vaudeville shit right there. That is a great, that was a great routine um uh tangelo orange absolutely now you're just stunting on everybody um all right ten everybody adam you mean like tangelo instead of the graham n. Yeah. Guys, what else did, what else did, did Spike bring to the movie for you? Um,

linear, linear thinking, linear thought, you know, Adam and I would have been, I'm, I'm not good at, um,

I don't, I don't corral myself. I'm a, I'm a bit all over the place. So Spike kind of rained, rained, uh, certainly rained me in, but we, yeah, we would have been all over the place. So Spike kind of reigned, reigned, certainly reigned me in, but we, yeah, we would have been all over the,

we'd have been all over the map and kind of telling it would have stuck to his timeline, but we would have been telling stories all over the place. And he kind of would, he would keep kind of like looking us in the face and saying like, all right, what does that mean? Where's this going? Like, what are you trying to say? What were you feeling at the time? he he like sort of he would drag that out of us one of the things that i really like is like like the origin story of hold it now hit it where you guys are literally saying i liked this and i liked this and i put it together and this is how we made stuff that we like

and made something new that's something that you could write down in the book. But then when you see you guys on stage doing that and hearing all the sounds and hearing the samples, it gives it just like a totally new energy. When you were writing the book where you're like, shit, I wish there could be like a, an audio component or a visual component that blended all this shit together.

Or is it just in the process of making this, you found that you were doing those things? We had a lot of ideas for the book that had things popping out of the book that were audio and visual and all kinds of stuff like that. But, you know, cost-wise, those things didn't happen. And then we were going to do a version of the book that had like tons of links and all of this stuff, like a real internet version of the book that had tons of links and all of this stuff, like a real internet version of the book.

We just got lazy to do that. Well, not only that, basically, we were excited about that idea. I think it turns out people are like, no, people want to read. They're going to read a book. They want to read a book. This might be really interesting to you, but

people will buy a book if really we'll buy a book. They want to buy. Yes. I know though. Like I was looking at the book again last night and Adam, you have like one of the mixtapes you had from when you were living in LA. And I just started going through it and just adding those records to playlists that I have.

I feel like if you had an all internet version of a book, the same way that the movie pulls that off, I feel like that would have worked. I know. I agree with you. I just, um, all right well uh www uh or go to info at random house and um please email them that because uh yeah but anyway but i honestly i don't think i think the show it was like it was very similar to us in terms of making, making any of our records, I think. And same with the book, actually.

But in that, when I say that, it's like with our records, we weren't great about planning in advance. And it's not like we were, we were never the most prepared band. I know that sounds shocking, but what we're good at is kind of like talking about influences and we'd start pretty much every record off with making each other a mixtape or a playlist or later on playlists or whatever, of just stuff that we're listening to and inspired by and kind of with this what if.

Like what if we did something like this combined with this and let's try and make that work um so we were good at having like that starting point and it was the same thing with this show it was kind of like all right what if we could how do we can we bring these these stories that happen again like two-dimensionally in the book and and and have them be next level either by us telling it or being in the theater or what we're the video we're showing or the the the music that's playing or whatever when i was growing up everything you guys were doing always seemed effortless and like spontaneous to me and the movie shows that it wasn't always that way, but it also seems like it kind of was. Looking back on all this stuff,

did it feel like it was hard when you were 21 making something as complicated and meaningful to people? Or was it just like, this is what we like, this is what we're doing. We create.

When you do it as hard as a job, when you think about what people do for jobs it was very easy i mean that's what we that was our job just to go fuck around it's a pretty easy job well also i think the i think that i mean we're not tarring roofs or helping anyone physically you know what i mean yes it's certainly right. We're not, we're not laboring away in the hot sun, whatever, but it was, uh, it was a pleasure, Michael, go ahead. No, it wasn't. It wasn't not always, but it was a pleasure. But I think the, I think the thing is, especially when we're younger,

and that's, I think what we tried to get across in the book is that because of where we came from, both in terms of just being kids in New York like literally being little kids in New York City in the 1970s where things were so out of control that somehow like your parents decided to raise you in New York City you had there was all this freedom that came along with that and so out of that freedom we got to go see and you had with music and culture and art like happening all around us and we got to go see, and you had music and culture and art like happening all around us. And we got to go to all these clubs and all these shows and see all this stuff. So we always felt like we could just do any of it.

We always felt like we could do it. And then, you know, it's funny. I think actually, when I look back at it, say like when we were making Paul's Boutique and we're just in the studio like for endless hours, no, we never thought it was like too hard or whatever we just were just completely consumed like that's that was we were completely consumed with what we're doing that was the only thing we were gonna do is the only thing that mattered which which era do you did you guys most like revisiting talking about writing

about like what was the time when you had the most fun thinking back on it uh we had a lot of fun i don't know how i don't know what else to say there was no one time no one specific time where i was like oh man if i could just go back i would be there oh but then i would like to be there too but then that time was really that other time though right that was i'm not that other time a lot of times but a lot of times fun times right well i do agree i do agree with adam because i do agree i think like oh we looked at when we first came out to la like that was so fun or like even when we were first on tour with run dmc like we're opening up from run dmc we're totally accepted into their world we're we're actually now we've become a. Like we're opening up for Run DMC. We're totally accepted into their world. We're actually now, we've become a rap group.

We're making rap records. Run DMC, our favorite group, and we're opening up for them. Like there couldn't have been anything more exciting in the world. But then, I don't know, but then I also, so it's hard, but then I also think that that whole period of time

when we built our own studio in Los Angeles called G-Sun on the east side of LA in a neighborhood called Atwater. And literally, it was more than a studio. It was like our clubhouse. And we'd go there every day, and we'd just put a record on, and we'd roll a joint. This is our work process. We'd put whatever records on.

We had a whole PA in the live room and a basketball court and a skateboard ramp. And we were just there every day, hanging out with each other, literally having fun. I just saw my baby boy walk by, Mike. What? I just saw my baby boy walk by. What's he doing? Was he still topless?

No, Davis walked by. Oh, Davis walked by. He wasn't paying attention to where he was going. No. Oh, I see. I see him now. He looks like he's got a pillow in his hand.

Is he going for like a slumber party? What the fuck is he doing? He's going to go fall asleep somewhere. He's going to go hide under your car and fall asleep. Strange things that happened during quarantine with teens during quarantine. Was there anything that you guys didn't like going back to and revisiting that, you know, because obviously there's some very personal, very emotional stuff, obviously everything you guys talk about with Yauch and his life and influence. And then obviously the controversies and the license to ill and that you guys have reflected on that a lot and talked

about a lot during the book tour and everything. But was there anything, even if it wasn't controversial per se, that you were just like, like man this period was challenging and we were not happy we didn't want to talk about this no i mean you know it's tough um just go revisiting things mistakes that you made right and then to really really think about those things and then to actually write them down and then to actually say them out loud and then rehearse saying them a bunch of times and then to actually write them down and then to actually say them out loud and then rehearse saying them a bunch of times and then film yourself saying it was you know it's it ultimately it's good to do that you got to face you know your mistakes the only way you're going to learn so it was nice to do it sucked in the moment but important for all of those i would say yeah

the way you put it there adam was good it's like a lot of layers of cringe would say that the way you put it there, Adam, was good. It's like a lot of layers of cringe. I said that? No, because you're like, it's true. That's what it was, a lot of layers of cringe. We had to write the story again. We wrote it in the book, and then we had to kind of rewrite it again for the stage play,

and then perform it in that theater, and then watch it back projected on a screen. So it was, yeah, multiple, multi-layered. I got a kick out of seeing the Lost Angels clip in the movie. And Adam, you've been... Me? Oh, me too. Yeah, I bet. And Adam, you've done a couple movies in the last few years.

But Mike, you're not as much of a movie star as your bandmate. No, clearly. Are you comfortable in that in that role in that universe now i'm i'm comfortable seating the role of thespian to adam um do you want to talk about how you how you really feel mike is there i feel like there's a little bit of it's not competition it's more jealous oh i'm jealous because I can't do it. I'm not, you know, you're a born natural jealous. The jealous one's envy. You know, you're like the...

I don't think you'll be comfortable with this analogy, but you know, a lot of people talk about you being the... Oh shit, Debbie D! What's up? A lot of people talk about you being the Michael Jordan of acting. Really? Who says that?

I want to... Someone saying that? I mean... No, but come on, Mike. We're on the sports network. I think of you a little bit more as like the Steve Kerr of acting. Hey, I'm not mad at that. What did Biz Marquis say?

What did Biz Marquis say about me, Mike? Come on. Again, I have to say this again all right well well you said it wrong yesterday you have van exels he did say you have van exels no ll said no he was like all right he's like he's like he's oh he's like ad-hoc had handle biz mark was talking about playing basketball with us in the 90s at our studio where

i talked about my records and play basketball all the time and and this still like fondly remembers coming to the studio and playing basketball with us and he's like yo remember of course first he started talking about his shots adam let's remember he started talking about some hook shot definitely never happened i remember i was making like the hook shot. I was calling Kareem. And we were both like, oh, no, no. It wasn't a hook shot. I was saying off the backboard. Right.

But then he did say, you have handle like Iverson. Wow. And Iverson, truthfully, though I think Jordan's obviously one of the greatest players of all time. Iverson, and I think a lot of people would say the same thing, one of my favorite, favorite players of all time. Probably my favorite. Incredible. Yeah. That's bold stuff from a Knicks fan, though.

Yeah, but I don't feel like we hated, there's always this like Philly, New York thing, but I don't, I don't know. I don't feel. You want to say Charles Smith? Philly, New York thing, but I don't I don't know. I don't feel Maybe it's just because Philly wasn't competitive in those like in the Ewing glory years. They rose and we died. I love Walt Frazier.

I love Patrick Ewing. But I'm just saying like, you know, Indiana daggers. Indiana, you know, we had to hate Indiana because of Reggie Miller and because it was just, you know, we'd only get so deep in the playoffs and we'd lose. But with Philly in those years, we just

didn't, they weren't in that discussion the way that Indiana, Chicago, and even Miami was. It's true. I wanted to ask you guys a little bit about Yauch, who is obviously a massive movie fan and a filmmaker and had you know has his own movie production studio um what do you think he'd

make of beastie boy story and you know what do you think he would have brought to it it's but we we've talked about it i think he you know he was always a fan always loved spike and was like a fan of what spike would do but i think he would it would be like an hour long we both we've talked about this it would be an hour longer and even crazier and it would probably like include it would include uh several i think uh completely like biopics that don't even exist or you know it would be like you know an eight minute animated foray off into somewhere they would never quite come back from you know yeah i would have pushed it even more uh no there would have been we would have been flying there would have been seals there would have been flying. There would have been seals. There would have been, you know, a lot.

There's a lot of, it's just so much. Would have been seven hours. True. I didn't think about that. There would have been like some CGI animals, maybe like a scene of us like riding dolphins. Yeah. Babies typing on typewriters that, you know, whatever. What is, what does Hornblower say about the movie?

Adam, wait, hold on. Here's, here's a pitch. We haven't talked to him in years. Can I just, oh, Hornblower, we haven't, he's, unfortunately, Hornblower say about the movie? Oh, cool. Adam, wait, hold on. Here's a pitch. Can I just... Oh, Hornblower, yeah, we have a... He's... Unfortunately, Hornblower hits the wineskin and he makes his behavior very erratic. And though he's a creative genius,

it's very difficult to work with him or even interact with him. Now, here's my pitch. There hasn't been the baby look who's talking to movie franchise. Adam, what about you and me doing as the

co-parents? Uh-huh. With the talking babies? Bring that idea back? Are you guys the babies or the parents? Great question. We can go either way. We can be the gay couple parents.

One of you is the parent and one of you is the kid. I should say same-sex parent couple. One of us is the parent, one of us is the kid. What if we both were the parents and the kids? See, I thought you were going to say What if we did like a throwback 40s, like, newspaper colonist baby Right?

His girl baby, yeah I gotta get the story out No? No, that's good Alright, but hold on, wait Here's another important part of the pitch. Pete Smith, Dwayne,

the rock Johnson is the neighbor next door. He's always, and he's always telling us that we're like parenting wrong. Like he's like, what are you guys doing? You're not doing, you're doing it all wrong. You're not doing it right.

I love the rock. Whatever. If he wants to get involved, that'd be great. I would wrap so much rather co-parent with him than you since we're talking about movies guys let's wrap up can you just tell me what else you guys have been watching and listening to since you've been in this in these circumstances all right uh music a lot of sweet soul music as i played earlier. Also, I've been going back to a lot of different West African music.

This guy, Kay Frimpong and his Cubano Fiestas. And he is from Africa, so I need someone to explain to me why his backing band are called the Cubano Fiestas. I have friends who will explain that to me. Movie-wise, as you brought up and i talked about uh definitely the last dance uh i've been watching most recently we i have to say with my teens we've gone we've been and it just seems to work really well in these times uh with my team with my teens we've been binge watching uh on teen comedies like we sort of or i shouldn't say teen they're they're let's just say not the most mature comedies like pineapple

express holds up so well stepbrothers still a classic tropic thunder we all watch well i mean tropic letter was so amazing because of course because of course there's so many levels in which it couldn't be made now. Today? Yeah. And then they really went for it and it really was hilarious. But anyway, that Superbad we also watched.

It's funny, I think it's just I was too uncomfortable watching it with teenagers. That's why it was less enjoyable to me. If I weren't with my teenagers, it probably would have been more enjoyable. Adam, what about you? What are you checking out right now? I'm just doing puzzles.

Are you finishing puzzles? Yeah. Oh, shit. I have a good puzzle that I'll show you guys, but it'll take two and a half hours to find the photo. Am I finishing? Yes, I'm'm finishing check this shit out oh i just did this one oh wow is that who is that i can't is it is it clive it's it's walt frazier and pistol pete maravich oh that's it on ebay yeah nice no no movies no shows come

on you there's got to a show that you're watching. Well, I'm trying to think of something funny. I don't, I don't know what the fuck is going on, man. I'm this whole fucking situation is freaking me out. I don't know. I don't even remember what happened yesterday. I'm just trying to keep my hands clean. You're doing a good job. I feel like like I feel like the movie is going to make people

happy and chill them out a little bit I hope so that's that's a that's a good thing so y'all have a lot to be proud of I appreciate you guys both doing this man thank you thank you very muchie boys thank you to chris ryan thank you bobby wagner please tune into the big picture later this week i think we're going to be talking about the top 10 courtroom dramas of all time should be a fun episode me and amanda dobb. See you then.