The interaction between US hip-hop and the GAA continues. Where once upon a time, Semple Stadium got the message from the likes of De La Soul and Cypress Hill at the Feile shebangs, the action has now switched to Galway. There, in a pokey clubhouse behind a big bare field a few miles out of the city, the threesome who have made one of the year's most exhilarating albums lounge around in one of the dressing-rooms. The Beastie Boys and hurling prowess - don't laugh, stranger things have happened.
Who could have imagined that the hip-hop brats who fought for their right to party and to wear Volkswagen badges as a sign of cool would still be rhyming 12 years later? The rapping is one thing; the elevation to iconic status, thanks to their run of extra-curricular activities, is quite something else. Hanging with the Dalai Lama and providing the dynamo behind the Free Tibet concerts and albums is an inter-planetary leap from stage shows featuring gyrating "lay-dees" in cages and much spilt beer on the floor.
What hasn't changed in the metamorphosis is the line-up. The Beastie three who produced Hello Nasty are still the snotty trio who emerged from New York as hardcore punk kids more interested in making a racket than helping a cause. Then, it was all Minor Threat poses and Black Flag ideas, the very essence of surly underground hardcore punk rock. Now, it's very different - in sound, attitude and style.
That said, Mike Diamond, Adam Yauch (aka Ad-Rock) and Adam Horovitz (aka MCA) can still goof with the best of them. Tangents taken over the course of the interview expand on such notions as why you never see Mike Brady's office in The Brady Bunch, what people see in fridge magnets and the attractions of Ray's Pizza. When all three Beasties are in one room, Mike D admits, it can get difficult. "When we're like this, we do fool around. We've known each other so long that it just happens. I can't see it changing now".
Of course, albums like Hello Nasty excuse most forms of goofing around. Swinging like Tiger Woods and swaggering like Mickey Rourke, it swoops on influences, turns them inside out and then reintroduces them to the world under a new identity. Jazzy flutes, steel-drum bands, bossa-nova breaks, ballads to make James Taylor go "ah shucks", Lee "Scratch" Perry lunacy, dynamite dub and hip-hop hurrahs: all merge into the Beastie mix.
You could say that it is a return to Paul's Boutique, their groundbreaking second album which put psychedelia, soul and super-fly funk in the tank and produced hip-hop's answer to Pet Sounds. While it may have been a commercial stiff, it brought new ideas and directions into the game and paved the way for the Beastie renaissance. Hello Nasty is the banker, the album which will reward their perseverance and risks with a large pay-day.
It's very much a record from the old school. "Yeah, it's where it's at for us now," agrees Adam Horovitz. "There are still a lot of guitars on the record, but the fact that we're also trying out other shit means you don't notice them as much. There are more beats, there's more hip-hop stuff and we ended up chopping up a lot of different sounds. It's not like Ill Communication or Check Your Head, which had loads of hardcore guitar, bass and drums. We could have done that again but that would have been too boring. For us, yeah - and probably for everyone else, too."
"Even the way we worked was different this time," says Diamond. "We were just hanging around with each other at home in New York and a lot of songs came out of that. It could be an idea from here that sets the ball rolling, or a sample from there, or just a lyric and then we just mess around with it. That's why it takes us so long to make and release records; we try so much stuff out. Sometimes you get a song like I Don't Know and it's fine, you don't have to mess with it." Horovitz adds "basically, we're an anarcho-situationalist commune".
They even take time on the album to look at themes the boys of Licensed To Ill would never have bothered with. Raps about techno-fear, non-violence, greed, insecurity and Buddhism can be found between lines like "I'm intercontinental when I eat French toast". The big issues are rolling this time round. "If you're not honest in what you write, people will only make up what you don't say," sighs Adam Yauch. "Making music is a real personal thing; it goes deep into your sub-conscious. It's easy to get ego-damaged and step on everyone's toes. When you start to get a lot of attention as a band, it's easy for tensions to rise. Over the years, we've got over that hump and we know what's what with each other."
Doing other things covers a lot of ground. For Diamond, this means marshalling the X-Large streetwear-with-a-twist label, the Grand Royal label (home to Sean Lennon, Lucious Jackson and cool Jap-poppers Buffalo Daughter) and overseeing the esteemed Grand Royal magazine (articles on lounging, golf, Miami bass, Lee Perry and chicken burritos). For Yauch, it's Buddhism, the Free Tibet movement and the annual concerts for that cause. For Horovitz, it's basketball and keyboards.
It sure sounds better than sitting around in a bleak GAA dressing-room. Mike D smiles. "I think people have the impression that what we do outside the band is more important to us. That's not how it is at all; this is what we've always done, the rest is not unimportant but it's not the main thing. Last year, all anyone wanted to talk about was the other stuff, but that's because there was nothing new from us to talk about. Now we've got this album and this tour, so the focus has changed for everyone."
They do realise, however, that they are in an enviable position to promote their other activities. "The more famous you are, the more amplified what you do and what you say becomes," believes Diamond. "Whatever you do has a huge effect, everything from a little joke to getting involved in stuff like Tibet or running a magazine. When all the stuff blew up on that first English tour [including Horovitz getting arrested for allegedly throwing a beer can at someone in the audience], it had an effect on us as a band. It made us think and realise that our actions do affect a lot of people. Looking back, I think that everything is meant to happen for a reason. That experience was part of the plan and maybe without that, we wouldn't be doing this in the same style that we are today."
"Yeah," interrupts Horovitz. "We'd probably have more jet-packs" [those personal propellors made famous on the futuristic Jetsons on TV]. Diamond looks up. "You know, I honestly thought there would be more jet-packs by now. When we were kids and they had The Jetsons on the TV, they always had jet-packs to get around. If we had jet-packs, we could have been here earlier today. Actually, we could have just put on our jet-packs after the gig last night and boom, away we go."
It's back to goofing around. Horovitz wishes to point out that they weren't actually wearing boiler suits on stage: "that's a fallacy, man, they are professional uniforms that we use to perform in, there's nothing silly about a man who is in the midst of doing a job up there on stage wearing a uniform". There are a couple of unrepeatable comments about Slayer, and Yauch starts talking about why he digs Ray's Pizza (a New York pizza chain) so much. The high fives and in-jokes begin again in earnest. It must be time to go.
Hello Nasty is out now on Capitol Records.
