Two years after the Beastie Boys‘ Adam Yauch was diagnosed with throat cancer, the signs have been that he is making a good recovery. But it seems he is not out of the woods yet, and the band aren’t about to go out on tour until Yauch, aka MCA, is completely better.
Life for the Beastie Boys got complicated in 2009 when Yauch received his diagnosis, which forced the band to postpone all their activity indefinitely. That meant pulling the release of what was supposed to be their new album, Hot Sauce Committee Part One. And now with the latest LP, Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, fresh from the factory the band are riding the promotion bandwagon doing interviews and putting out the impressive long-form music video for Make Some Noise, starring Elijah Wood, Seth Rogan, Steve Buscemi, Chloe Sevigny, Will Ferrell and other large Hollywood names.
However, in a new interview with the Guardian, the band say Yauch has not fully escaped the claws of his illness just yet, although it hopefully won’t be too long now. Bandmate Adam Horowitz, aka Ad-Rock, said, “He’s doin’ OK… he’s still in treatment, so it’s not 100%. But things are lookin’ good. We’re not touring, we’re just getting the record out – and we’re not making any plans until he is better. Which is definitely gonna happen.”
The third Beastie Boy, Mike Diamond, aka Mike D, went on to note the sobering effect of their long-time friend’s life being suddenly being at stake, saying, “It’s a very strange thing … unfortunately, we’ve had a high attrition rate of friends growing up in New York, but more from drug overdoses and crazy shit like that. This is, actually, the first time that a friend who is a contemporary – basically one of my best friends for life – called me up to say: ‘Hey, I’ve got some really bad news,’ and having a really serious illness. And when you’re friends for a long time, and one of that group of friends gets a very serious, potentially terminal illness, it’s just kind of like … it’s a game-changer, if you will.”
