So Whatch'a Want to know about MCA?
As for his personal life, Adam is an only child who grew up in an upper middle-class family, in Brooklyn Heights. His father was Jewish; a painter and an architect; his mother, Jean, was Catholic and a social worker. Religion was not discussed as much as Adam would have liked in his house. When he posed questions to his mother, he would recieve open responses that only made him question things more. After an aptitude test in high school, Adam learned that he would probably be successful in anything other than music-however, music was his dream. He almost considered taking another path down the road of life, but a friend told him to think otherwise. So, Adam told his mom that he would end up as a rock star, and taught himself music. He started playing bass after seeing one of his friend's, and pushed himself to learn it, even though he didn't seem to have a natural musical knack. Today, he is probably the most talented and versatile musician out of the Beastie Boys.
A very very very cool MCA article
*MCA is not the first rock star to have a concert for human rights... George Harrison had the Concert for Bangladesh in 1971
Born Adam Nathaniel Yauch on 5 August 1964, in Brooklyn, NY, MCA is probably one of the most human rights concerned musicians of our time.* As Mike D said, "now clearly thousands of people have embraced Tibet's situation as something that's got to change. They are being activists themselves." As a founder of the successful Tibetan Freedom Concert series, (which have taken place over the last 4 years in such places as San Franciso, New York, Washington D.C, and this year in Chicago), he also is now a dedicated Buddhist and Tibetan rights activist. 
Adam started the Beastie Boys with Mike D. (If you want to see the full Beastie history, see my Beastie Bio... coming soon!) Adam says that the idea behind the Beastie Boys was "'let's start a hardcore band,' kind of as a joke. We called it the Beastie Boys. We were trying to think of the stupidest name, something that maybe sounded like the Angry Samoans." John Berry, a former Beastie Boy, once noted that MCA was the funniest person that he'd ever met. "He had this incredible knack for picking somebody's voice. He was really into Monty Python, especially the 'Silly Walk' skit." (Which incidentally is my personal favorite MP sketch of all time.)
An interesting tidbit about the Beastie Boys is that they lived together in Chinatown when they were just starting out. According to SPIN, Adam described their palatial abode in this quote: "The floor was blacktop. Somebody had actually rolled out tar across it, like a street. One time we were hanging out in the living room and we heard this really explosion in the kitchen. Our toaster oven had a hole in the top and a hole in the back. There was a hole behind it, and a hole in the ceiling. Apparently, somebody upstairs had fired a gun through the floor. We ran up there and there was nobody in the room except for this old woman. We were like, 'What happened?' and she didn't speak English. You know some crazy stuff had happened in that sweatshop and they had quickly covered it up. Dragged the body out."
Adam also spent a great deal of time snowboarding in Utah, and shared a house with his friends. He and other members of the Beastie Boys, and other friends in his circle would sometimes perform under the name of "Quasar," a hard core outfit, which eventually headed south since everyone figured out who was in it--the crowd's were too big. Adam became interested in the Tibet cause during a snowboarding trip to Nepal. He visited a Tibetan area, and was astonished when he met Tibetans crossing the border, into freedom, butleaving behind their lives, families, and homes. He began his studies earnestly with a spiritual healer, who taught him meditation, massage work, and energy fields. "Now he feels as though he's 'a little closer to leaving this dimension.'" It seems as though Yauch has worked through his insecurities and can get through a day without being upset; and perhaps he has also come ot terms with not being so materialistic. During the Ill Communication era, the Beastie Boys temporarily relocated to Los Angeles, where MCA lived in a log cabin. Apparently, snowboarding is a thing of the past, but he still has a "big-screen TV."
Adam has settled down a little bit in SoHo, in NYC; he married Dechen Wangdu on May 31, 1998, in a building on Bleecker St., Greenwich Village, NYC. (According to some of his Tibetan friends who were in attendance.) He and Dechen, (see a pic at Yauch pics page), a Tibetan-American activist, met at a Tibet rally-ish meeting. His daughter, Tenzin, was recently born on 31 September 1998.
"A Tribute to Adam's Hair," by my dear Beastie confidante, Crystal... the greatest thing I have ever seen online!
Want to see Yauch pics?
Read up on MCA in his words at quotes or the MCA interview
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