by grand royal appointment
Omar Rodriguez-López on their label bosses, the Beastie Boys.
“WHEN I FIRST moved to the States [from Puerto Rico], I saw the Beasties on the TV, on tour. I didn’t even know what touring was – I was still learning English – but I told my dad, I want to go on tour with these Beastie Boys! He said, ‘Fine, but you have to write them a letter first, to ask them.’ So I sent them a drawing I’d done of their logo and said, ‘Maybe I could do art for you?’ After we signed to Grand Royal, I told Mike D this. He said, ‘Yeah… We never read any of our fan mail…’ (laughs) “The other Beasties were cool, but I had a chemistry with Mike D. He knew about De Facto, the other band Cedric and I had, and he said Grand Royal should do a DeFacto record, with [Beasties producer] Mario Caldato. To have someone like that take an interest and see the value in something like DeFacto, especially at a time when even our friends didn’t, was awesome. “By leaving At The Drive In the way I did in 2001, it was my responsibility to go tell Mike, face-to-face – especially as our break-up would mean Grand Royal losing its distribution deal with Virgin. I told Mike, I hope you won’t resent me for this. And he just said, ‘That’s not how I choose to live my life.’ He was completely supportive. He’s the only person who didn’t say, ‘That’s crazy.’ Even my dad was like, ‘That’s crazy, you worked all this time, stay in the band a little longer…’ Mike said, ‘Whatever you do next, let’s take a look at it.’ And it didn’t happen, because they never scored another distribution deal and ended up closing down, but they were going to sign The Mars Volta. I’ve lost contact with him now – but it was a very real relationship.”