Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon has paid tribute to Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch and said he was a "great rapper and lyricist".
The bassist has shared her memories of Yauch, who passed away on Friday (May 4) after a three-year battle with cancer, with NME and hailed the rapper's lyrics.
She said: "He told me once that he really liked the lyrics to 'Bull In The Heather'. It surprised me that he had even listened to it. It meant a lot to me that he went out of his way to tell me that, coming from such a great rapper and lyricist."
Before the rampant egomania, before the bloated double albums, before the mass band purgings and the hagiographic documentary in which Billy Corgan, saintly in white bathrobe, sits in a hotel room writing songs about Nazi Germany and receiving a pair of fans who present him with a huge plaster model of his own head… yeah, it’s easy to forget that before all that stuff, the Smashing Pumpkins used to be a pretty great rock band.
Much as I like a fair bit of hardcore, there’s a slightly dim earnestness surrounding some contemporary bands on the scene (like the musically quite interesting Gallows, I suppose) that can sometimes be irritating. Obviously I can sympathise with the ideology, but I guess I’ve reached a point in life where I don’t need to be lectured on the multifarious iniquities of the music business - or the iniquities of life, come to that - in such artless terms.
