I call up the Tokyo hotel, give the desk clerk the correct alias, then wait for her to ring the room.
It's 7am and Adam Yauch, whose been a Beastie Boy since the band was formed 22 years ago, wants to do the interview an hour early. His young daughter has gotten him up -- his PR agent tells me -- and he wants to get the day started. He's a 38-year-old father with, apparently, a 38-year-old father's schedule.
Like the two Tibetan Freedom Concerts he has to play this weekend. The first is in Tokyo on Saturday and the second a day later here in Taipei.
Yauch is indeed a 38-year-old father. And an MC and bass player from the band that bridged the New York City divide from punk rock to hip-hop and defined a generation. He's been doing this since he was 16. Now, at this moment, he's with the others, the Beastie Boys, in Tokyo, where they've come out of a hibernation of sorts for this weekend's two shows.
"I've picked Tokyo -- well, we're all coming from different parts of the country, so we all have to meet up somewhere anyway. And we like it here. This works well for us," says Yauch.
In the interview Yauch, stage name MCA, gives no outstanding impression. He's just another reasonable, mature adult. And, as such he has his own private space, so he doesn't really care for you getting deep in his business, which in his case also includes his band's business. But he tolerates the questions because he's a spokesman for a group that's sold more than 21 million albums. The price of fame.
"Are you still on track to release a new album -- the first real new album since 1998 -- by early 2004?"
"We're working on it. We'll see how it goes."
"Can we expect more activity from the Beastie Boys in the way of touring or releases anytime soon?"
"I don't know."
He's actually more into the responsibility of fame. Or to put it another way, he's more forthcoming on the state of the world, politics, his own causes and crusades. He's the one who's consistently directed the Beastie Boys towards philanthropy and political activism: a 1999 benefit for the jailed Afro-American journalist and alleged cop-killer Abu Jamal; in the wake of Sept. 11, a benefit for two (especially at that time) underfunded charities, the New York Association for New Americans and the New York Women's Foundation; and later this month, a benefit for the family of slain New York hip-hop legend Jam Master Jay.
The most consistent cause, though, has been human rights and religious freedom for Tibetans. The groundwork was laid when Yauch first came into contact with Tibetan Buddhism in the early 1990s on visits to Kathmandu, Nepal. By 1994 his interest in the religion, as well as his budding interaction with the Dalai Lama, came out into the open with the release of Ill Communication, which featured the track Bodhisattva Vow and a few others sampling Tibetan Buddhist chants. The first Tibetan Freedom Concert followed in 1996. The tenth takes place in Taipei on Sunday.
Talking to Yauch about Tibet gets him rattling on:
"There were something like 6,000 monasteries destroyed by the Chinese -- around a million Tibetans were slaughtered by the Chinese."
It's all basically true, and stale. Yauch speaks repeatedly about Tibetan issues, and there have been consequences, though not always what you'd think. As a rally cry for the Beastie Boys -- not to mention Richard Gere, Brad Pitt, Harrison Ford, and plenty of other big names in Hollywood -- some see "Free Tibet" as an empty slogan, or as Columbia University professor Robert Thurman once put it, Tibetans have become, "the baby seals of the human rights movement."
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