Hardcore bands were coming out with names like Urban Waste and The Mob, you know, a lot of kind of tough names. So Beastie Boys was the stupidest name we could come up with. And unfortunately, it stuck.
A lot of people are trying to get me to go solo. It's just a thing I have to deal with a lot. Record labels are always trying to get me to go solo.
Here's a thing that's going to drive me absolutely crazy: the trucks! They can put people on the moon, but they can't make a quiet truck!
I know Noah Baumbach from a long time ago. We were hanging out one night, and he asked if I wanted to be in his movie. If somebody whose stuff you really like says, 'Hey, you want to do it with me?,' you got to do it. I would like to say that I get these offers all the time, but I don't.
Mike is the craziest person. He's scattered; he's all over the place. When you hold him down and tell him, 'This is what you're doing,' he's fantastic. But you have to hold him down. Like, when he had to write his verse for 'Hello Nasty,' we had to take his phone away to get him to do it.
'Paul's Boutique' was a bust, right? That was a bummer. We didn't pause on it for a long time - we didn't go through therapy - but it was weird. And because it was a bust, we didn't go on tour.
You'd think that my acting in 'Lost Angels' would have been the reason why I gave up on it. But yeah, I'm just not that good at it. Auditioning is super weird, and I'm bad at it.
I guess I'm the guy from the Beastie Boys. I'm one of the guys from the Beastie Boys. I guess that's what I'll always identify myself as.
If I could sing, that would be cool. But I can't. I mean, I physically can, but I'm awful. It's weird to be really bad at singing.
'Alternative facts' is really one of the better things that's come out in a long time. 'Alternative facts?' It's brilliant! Really? Alternative facts? There are two different realities?
I don't really get a lot of stuff sent to me, but I do get things given to me in person. One of my favorites was from a kid in the mid-'90s. He gave us all a bunch of pants he made.
We were from downtown, so we were rapping in Danceteria, in these white downtown clubs, really. Nobody downtown was rapping. Nobody we knew was rapping. So we were like, 'We should do it.' We weren't making fun of it; we loved it, and we wanted to be part of it.
That's what real punk is about - doing it yourself and building a community where people share ideas and share creativity.
'Licensed to Ill' was like a cold, and we took so much vitamin C that we'd never get that cold again.
Champagne Jerry records are definitely, in one way, on the very far end of the weird spectrum of rap music, then, in another way, very far on the weird punk spectrum.
I head a Salt-n-Pepa song one time, where they named every rapper in New York. And they didn't name us!
I don't know why we sold a lot of records or why so many people came to see us. Like 'Sabotage' - would you put that song on, like, 'I'm gonna listen to that right now?' It's a weird choice.
The tapes we were making would jump around with different styles, just quick parts of different songs. Hip-hop to jazz to funk to whatever else. And in a way, 'Check Your Head' ended up being like one of those pause-tapes.
You know how there's all these rappers like Mike D and King T and Ice T and Cool C or something like that? Well, on Mayberry, on 'Andy Griffith,' they had Aunt B.
I would say think about the thing that makes you happiest, and do that. If it's drawing or dancing or listening to music or bowling, whatever it is that makes you happy, I would focus on that, and you'll definitely gain some confidence.
Stuff used to get me really crazy, touring stuff. I used to hide. I hid from everybody. Back in '87, when things were so hectic, I'd run away. There was so much pressure.
I grew up - my dad, every time I was with my dad, he was always - not always, but he wrote. He's a writer. So he was always in his office writing. He made a plan and, like, a point of, 'This is my work. I'm going to do this every day for these amount of hours.' So I think that's where I got, like, a work sort of ethic.