Hollywood Goes Tibet
"YO, AD MAN!" A Hispanic teen on a bike screeches to a halt in front of Adam Yauch, who is standing outside his apartment building in Manhattan. "Saw your movie's coming out, man, but you ain't in it! What's up with that?" Yauch smiles shyly, knowing full well the kid is referring to Seven Years in Tibet. After explaining that just because it's about Tibet doesn't mean he's in it, he reassures the skeptical kid that despite it's matinee-idol star, Brad Pitt, the film is historically accurate, and he urges him to see it.
Later, at a Vietnamese restaurant, the 33-year-old Beastie Boy launches into a mournful recounting of the atrocities that have been visited upon the Tibetan people in the past 40 years, from "forced abortions and sterilizations of women" to "monks and nuns who are in prison right now being horribly tortured for refusing to sign a piece of paper renouncing the Dalai Lama as their leader."
The soft spoken rapper admits that transplanting hus spirituality from the meditation-room to the rock 'n' roll stage isn't always easy. Since Yauch became a committed activist in 1993, he has become a kind of Richard Gere for Gen-Xers. His annual Tibetan Freedom Concerts have raised more than $1.5 million to date, and brought the cause to a young audience.
Yauch acknowledges that the mixing of rap and religion can get a little hairy sometimes, especially when you take a dozen monks on a Lollapalooza tour featuring the likes of A Tribe Called Quest and the Smashing Pumpkins. "We were careful with that stuff as much as possible," he says, referring to the monk's exposure to the excesses of backstage life. "But they knew what they were doing there, and their intentions were very strong." The monks would open each concert with a blessing, perform native dances on an additional stage and operate information booths.
As for himself, Yauch says that it was simple to let go of accouterments of the rock & roll lifestyle, such as groupies. "You can see that that stuff can bring a person a lot more unhappiness on a long-term basis than happiness on a short-term. Look, I still have a good time," adds Yauch, who says he'll probably become a monk someday. "I still like to joke around and laugh and stuff, but I just try to be aware of where it may be destructive to other people. And I think I still have a huge ego to get over--I think everyone does. That's what we need to come to grips with in society: the fact that we're all ego-maniacs."
Go to MCA's biography
by Tom O'Neill
from January 1998 issue of US magazine
See some MCA pics
Interested in learining about Tibet?