9. Beastie BoysCheck Your Head
This is a record that I’ve known for a long, long time. I quite liked their first album when it came out, and I think the whole world was aware of it. Then the second album came out and I didn’t really notice it. Lots of people revere it now, say it’s a masterpiece and all that, but I don’t think people really talked about it at the time.
I heard one of the tracks from Check Your Head, I think it was ‘So What’cha Want’ when I was in America, and we were on our second album, and there were lots of parallels with my band – lots of people had heard of the first album and not so many of the second album.
I walked into a radio station and the guy had a pile of CDs next to him, and I saw the Beastie Boys there and I asked him what it was like, the album – and he said “Oh, I don’t know shit about that. You can have it if you want.” I thought “You wanker! But yes please.” I took it and I played it on the bus, and the whole band…it just re-ignited all of our friendships, and brought anything that was disappearing perhaps, with our difficult second album – this brought everything back to being the band again.
The album after, Ill Communication, went into the stratosphere. But this is the album for me because they had nothing but each other – and thought well, this is our last chance, we’re gonna make a record that we’re really proud of, we’re gonna make it cheaply, and they made a record. And then it healed The Charlatans [laughs].
