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So, what are we doing here?
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Let me put this in context.
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We're here for Capital Congress, and this part of this event is to honor you guys for various reasons.
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Um, it falls beautifully around some very important occasions.
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26th anniversary of Paul's Boutique, which of course heralded your arrival to Capital Records, but also because it falls on the birthday of uh the incredible inspiration and much missed Adam Yao.
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So, it's great to be here.
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It's great to see you guys, and thanks for taking the time.
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First things first, you came off the back of License to Ill.
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You were the biggest group on the planet.
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You sold a lot of records, caused a lot of mayhem, had a lot of fun.
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And the next we heard from you, you at a new label.
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You were living in California and the sound had changed dramatically.
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There was a lot for fans to take in and we were excited by it.
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But what prompted the move to LA?
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What prompted the move West Coast? Heavy to start.
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Got to cover a lot of ground.
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We didn't plan on moving out here.
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We just as things happen, things get weird back home.
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And so you want to go somewhere else.
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I'm sure we that's all happened to all of us here.
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Is that a weird thing to say?
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Sometimes you got to just leave.
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And so I was here, Adam and Mike came out and we were like, "This is kind of nice out here."
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And we were hanging out and then we met the Dust Brothers who had some demo tapes.
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Is this what I'm supposed to be saying?
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I mean, that's kind of the whole thing.
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So slow down a little bit, maybe.
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I mean, you're covering a lot of ground, Adam. Okay, good. Thanks for coming.
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And um well what happened was anybody watch judge shows because that's what somebody says when they're about to lie.
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They go well what happened was um no but what happened was we were at this party right. But that's true though. No but for real. Happened for real.
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And we met the Dust Brothers and they were playing these demo tapes that were really good this great music.
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We like we should maybe make some music with these guys and hang out in LA.
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And so I don't know if some of you are from here or not, but the people are not.
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Like you come here and then the next thing you know it's like a decade later and you're still here.
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Well, especially when you grew up in New York City our whole lives.
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We've been there, our whole universe was there and then like all these people we around and then you know things get funny with the money and people you trust and thought were your friends then are focusing on Donnie Osmond and it all gets weird. Stop.
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So this is where it gets serious and this is where everybody who's here at Capital needs to hold on to their seats.
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Uh there was difficult times in terms of that transition from Def Jam to Capital because we heard rumors as fans about big checks for Beasty Boys on the back of License to Ill.
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And then we heard stories about how records weren't being promoted.
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And what's the truth about the Capital Records time?
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for us like we were lucky to have all the success of License to Ill and all that but I think like many groups before us and many many groups after us and we found ourselves in the position of being expected to do this one thing and being kind of strangled by it and being kids or people that came out of like punk rock and hip-hop and always listening different kinds of music.
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We weren't really about that about repeating ourselves and wanting I mean there's a lot of groups that have done that well in history. Kiss. Yes. Being amongst them.
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AC/DC being the greatest of all time. Yeah.
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They and they do it damn well. But anyway, no.
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So, we weren't about to repeat ourselves or whatever or that's not where our heads were at.
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We kind of wanted to do some other stuff.
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And also, we just got to this weird place on tour where we were kind of like I think Adam talks about it a lot as like the become what you hate thing.
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You kind of like whatever.
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We at a place where we just needed to take a break and then make something actually totally new.
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And you know, Def Jam wasn't really feeling that.
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And so things got a little funny.
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You could look to the label Death Jam and you could say, "We're sharing resources with Public Enemy.
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We're sharing resources with LL CoolJ.
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We're now going to go to Los Angeles.
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We're going to share resources with Donnie Osman.
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Yeah, that's that's about that's about if you put it like that.
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Adam, did it backfire at one point or another?"
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Oh, you don't like Donnie Osman? I'm not saying that.
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I'm just saying that when it comes to buying one of two records, I know where I'd put my money.
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He's a little bit rock and roll.
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So you clearly you don't get it. Um, no.
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What happened was we had a we put out License to Ill on Def Jam and things were great and then they weren't great and so we left and we're trying to find a new record label and Capital was really cool and signed us.
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You know, just sort of say little footnote is from the beginning till now like they've never put pressure on us to make a specific thing for all of our records we made.
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they've left us to do what we want, which I don't believe happens in like the record industry.
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So, when the album came out for me and my friends, the only way I can relate to it at that time was it was a triumph.
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You know, we loved the sound of it.
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We loved the bully bass at the end, like so many ideas coming at you left and right, so many samples.
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We were all getting into sample culture at that time.
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So, this just seemed like it was the holy grail of sample culture.
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Like, there's so many good ideas and breaks going into it.
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How was the initial time for you?
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Was it freeing that it didn't come with the same level of like as license to ill you know that huge sales and overnight thing because it it's gone to be very successful over time but it's taken its time.
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taken its time. uh freeing is a very generous way of looking at No, I mean honestly for us and I remember like Yao especially like you know we all put our so much work into the record and I mean yeah if you look back at it with a rational thought you'd be like well if
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somebody was really into License to Ill on Paul's Boutique that they would also be into it's a pretty radically different album or there's a it was a big departure whatever but at the time it was like we left it on the floor I think as They say in some Yeah, both teams played hard. Both teams definitely
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Both teams definitely played hard and then, you know, we were kind of bummed out that uh people were only feeling there was maybe one or two songs on the album. You guys got two songs.
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So after Pause with T came out, Mike ran into an old friend of ours in the neighborhood and he's like, "Yo, I heard your record. You got two songs."
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And Mike's like, "Wait, no, there's probably like 16 songs on the record."
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Anyway, um what happened was we were like this big group, Licensed to Ill.
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We're like internationally known and we're like 20 something years old.
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We were feeling ourselves and we thought we were a really big deal and then we get signed to a new record label and all this.
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We work on this crazy record and we're like this is it.
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We're like on top and all this stuff and then nothing. Crickets.
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It wasn't like billboards and all of this stuff. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. We got a flag, Adam. There's a flag. No, no, we got a flag.
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No, it was it was for momentarily, but then when the record came out, it was crickets.
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Like I went to Tower Records and they didn't even have it.
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Like I thought that was a little weird. Like we got a flag. We got a flag. No.
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And they gave us money to make, you know, like they I would assume they wanted their money back. So what happened?
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What happened was we made the Paul's Boutique and it came out and uh I guess the president of the label who had signed us got fired like for giving us a lot of money.
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Well, along with the head of ANR, there are a lot of people got fired.
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Tom Wall-E and they say because of us, but it probably was.
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People don't really point the finger at us, but they do point the finger at us.
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And so that there was a new guy, and I don't mean to like, you know, make fun of somebody, but I'm going to.
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And I'm not going to say Hail Mgrim.
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And he was the new president of the record label.
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And then the record was out that we had worked really hard on.
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We were like really excited about.
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excited about. and this was like our livelihood and all this stuff and you know and the record wasn't at Tower Records and it just wasn't being like promoted like we wanted to have a meeting with the president to be like hey like what can we do to make this a thing and he like was like a week later
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you can't meet him wasn't a week later you can't so finally we had a meeting with him in his office and he had like a a brand new tie-dyed Grateful Dead shirt on and he was like you guys look I get it you know like I'm a dead head so I know where you're coming from and I'm really not a dead head. Just to let you, you know, fun fact. And
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Just to let you, you know, fun fact.
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And so, so he was like, you know, I appreciate you worked really hard, but you know, you're gonna have to wait for the next time because the company's really getting behind the new Donnie Osman released and we didn't know what next time meant.
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And he was like, you know, next record.
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So, that like that was it.
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So, we're like sitting there like this guy we never met who's looking at us after we spent two years making this record telling us it's game over. Didn't feel very good.
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But also any if you get some time later like YouTube the Donnie Osmond desert video cuz that was like the video that was like being pushed by Capital at the time and it's I don't know. It's up.
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I don't know what to say. Big though. Was it big? I don't know.
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Did anybody I you know and you know he's not rock and roll.
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He's not even a little bit rock and roll.
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Look, he lets you know what he is. But he lied.
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What's he supposed to say?
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He's a little bit, you know, nice, family friendly. I don't know. But you got a flag. It's awesome.
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But the flag they took down.
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Here's here's about the flag.
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It was the day after George Bush, the original, made it legal to deface the American flag. And so for like Yes.
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For like a week in our country, like it was legal to deface the American flag.
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And so I'm sure it was YaK's idea like we should have a big Beasty Boys American flag on the roof of Capital Records and somebody that's probably why the guy got fired actually and they took it down like right away and then the law got you know overturned and that's actually what happened.
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So it really ties into George Bush Senior George W is what you're saying. Yes.
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I want to talk about the artwork and I want to talk about the videos because um and this might actually go some towards the the freedom point I was trying to make before the fact that you went out and you started making your own videos in some respects as well.
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You know, Nathaniel Hornblower at the start of the legacy with Shake Your Rump.
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Well, Shake Your Rump and then um I think Looking Down the Barrel. Looking down the barrel. Yes. Thanks. Look.
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I mean, it actually it started with when we had to do um still photographs for this record for Paul's Boutique.
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It was like we'd had that thing of we were so burnt out on a gazillion photo sessions with like European photographers with like 20 assistants that are telling us to stand on our heads while pouring a beard upside down or whatever.
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So, we're kind of over that.
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So, when it came time to doing photographs, Yak was like, "You know what? I'll just do it."
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And we kind of looked at each other and looked at him like, "What?
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You're going to be you're going to be in the photograph?"
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So, isn't this He's like, "No, no, no.
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I I just I'll use like the remote thing."
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And then we would like we were renting this crazy house in the hills behind uh Capital Records up by Mullhallen and we would kind of like go around to different spots and just set up and take photographs and he'd have the little clicker thing in his hand and that's how he he took the photo of the underwater shots in the gate fold.
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Well, no, he didn't have the clicker under.
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Glad he couldn't do the clicker cuz then you couldn't have the clicker under.
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Ya was like, "We should take our own pictures if we're going to take bands."
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Like when they're like a first time big band when you get big like you have to take, you know, thousands of photo things and like Kiss the Monkey.
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Kiss the Monkey like Kiss the Monkey on the Nose and bands like New Not New Edition.
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What's the other big the band? New Kids on the Block. Not New Kid. Yeah, we'll like that.
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The current New Kids on the Block. Whatever they're called. One Direction. New Edition. Number one.
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Wait, now let's get into that.
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Zayn, number one song on Beats One. I'm listening. One Direction.
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It's the worldwide chart.
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It's dictated to by the good people.
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I'm sure are really nice guys.
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I'm sure they're really nice guys.
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But really, but you see pictures of these bands and they're just hating being there.
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They're tired with pimples.
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So, Yak's like, I don't want to do those picture things anymore cuz it's embarrassing and stupid.
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So he got a his camera and a tripod and he got this little thing you screw into the camera and it's a wire and you hold this thing and you click it and it takes the picture and so the three of us would just drive around and take our own press pictures. Yeah.
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I mean way in a nutshell way pre-selfie I might add. This was early selfies. Yeah.
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You know, it's his birthday today and I wondered if you could share with us a story that you remember of hanging out at that time when you were making Paul's boutique, hanging out.
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It was the three of you that springs to mind because it looked like you were having a lot of fun when you were making that record in the videos, in the photos.
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It's like that with the camera thing.
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It was like we didn't know what we were doing.
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We were just a band and we were like a punk band, a hardcore band and doing stuff and so you always kind of make your own thing.
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And then you know all of a sudden we started working with Def Jam and it became a thing where like oh the record label is doing this stuff and the record labels making the artwork and these videos.
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It was just like a weird experience. I mean it was great.
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It was really great but it was sort of like got out of touch from just what we did.
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And then so Ya's just sort of more pushing it of like we need to do everything ourselves.
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And so, you know, he got the tripod and the thing and it was like just a little detail that's just kind of a nothing detail, but it was a big detail where it was just no outsiders.
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It was just insiders, just the three of us.
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He just always was doing and thinking stuff like that.
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Just like, oh, for the record cover, I heard somewhere where you can get this camera that shoots 360 pictures.
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And we're like, where the did you hear about that?
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Like he would always hear about these things.
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Like, where did you hear about that?
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And so somehow he got the camera and we he took the picture of the 360 thing.
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And from that record, my favorite thing is that he went to a thrift store and saw a an army helmet from like a the pilot of a airplane that had a microphone and he bought it at the thrift store and some I don't know how he did it.
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He fixed the microphone and got a quarterinch jack into it and plugged it in and recorded a song wearing the stupid helmet thing and it's on the record. Which one is it? Which which song is it? It's a year in a day.
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day. it's his own thing and he's like in his weird apartment with the army helmet on making a song and I thought that was pretty cool to add a little bit onto that story like it was kind of like with Yak he would push the envelope and push like whatever we were doing he'd be the one to be like all right we have to kind of bring it up to 11 so I remember with that song with a year and a day and
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actually a bunch of the stuff on Paul's Boutique when we started working with the Dust Brothers they kind of opened our minds to like we'd been before on licensed ill to sample stuff we literally had tape loops, you know, when we were working with Rick, we literally had tape loops like going around the studio and we had like 808 drum machines and DX drum machines and we didn't have sampling. That was our primitive
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That was our primitive sampling technology, right?
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And then also with the Dust Brothers, they had these actual digital samplers and they actually had to use two separate ones to do stereo, which now you could you could basically do it in your iPhone.
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But at the time they would say sample like two seconds or like half a bar of this and then stack it with another.
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And then we'd be like, well stack it with another half bar from another record.
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But the app would be like no no take two bars and then take another two bars of this.
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like he just would push it all to get so crazy, you know, kind of multiplied and exponential like.
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Well, the the flag flies again today.
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It's been uh it's been, you know, it's been put up on the top of Capital Records today because in the 26 years since you released that record genuinely as a fan, and I speak for millions of people around the world, that that that album just becomes more golden.
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You know, you find more things and more layers.
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all those layers that Ya applied and you guys applied, it's just you're constantly finding little frequencies and harmonies and details that it takes years to listen to.
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So, I go back to it all the time. A lot of people do.
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And congratulations and happy birthday, Yak.
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And thank you for your time. We appreciate it. Thanks to Adam and