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The Beastie Boys have revealed how Adam "MCA" Yauch's cancer made the hip-hop trio appreciate their time together.
Some 25 years after their debut, the band have recorded their new album, Hot Sauce Committee Part Two.
Adam is still undergoing treatment after discovering he had cancer of the salivary gland in 2009.
Michael "Mike D" Diamond said: "It's hard that he's not here, but it'd be harder for him to be here."
"It is what is," Adam "Ad-Rock" Horowitz said. "You deal with it. He's getting treatment. That's the most important thing. We've been friends since 1980. All of this doesn't matter.
"If we go on tour, we go on tour. If don't go, we don't go. We'll figure it out. Yauch getting better is the most important thing right now."
The illness didn't influence their new music because recording was mostly finished before Adam was diagnosed.
However, the bad news made the group, whose ages now range from 44 to 46, more appreciative of their time together when they returned to the studio.
"It made us enjoy sticking with the vibe that we had already established," Michael said. "It was that much more of a relief for us."
"Ultimately, we just realised that we wanted to enjoy ourselves while we were making this record. That became a fun thing for us, and hopefully when people interact with this record, they will be enjoying themselves, too."
