Or he might have had to pee — the unmistakable sound of which could be heard in the background, complete with flush, as he spoke of getting a new band together with members of Jane’s Addiction and Pearl Jam.
The next time you called, you half-expected him to be sitting on the pot and forming a band with one of the guys from Nirvana.
But there’d be no next time for a long time. After 2001, Tilo Murray could’ve easily been reduced to a pop-culture footnote, the answer to the all-time hardest question in a possible Trivial Pursuit: Early ’00s Rap-Rock Edition.
“Name the rapper from Springfield, Ohio, who was one-half of the duo Methods of Mayhem with Motley Crue’s Tommy Lee.”
A decade later, when the homegrown rapper named Tim Murray gives you his new cell number via Facebook, you can’t dial fast enough.
And this is what you’ll get — a man who talks of visiting the Louvre; of looking at Van Goghs and touring the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam; of shopping at Whole Foods and making his own sushi and eating brie.
Uh. Tilo?
“Come to find out,” he explained, “I was allergic to weed. Can you (expletive) believe that?”
At 35, the man who once dismissed Springfield City Schools as “whack” has retained all that was cool about the old Tilo — dude would give you the goatee right off his chin — for the renaissance man that is the new Tilo.
“I know the difference between Parmesan cheese made in the United States or Parmesan Romano made in Italy,” he said.
Meet Tilo 2.0.
He still uses the word “gnarly” an awful lot, but the man never, ever disappeared.
For starters, he ended up starting his own company specializing in vaporizers.
Think of them as smokeless bongs.
“I always stayed in the mix,” he said. “I never burned any bridges with the people I met.”
With new music in his future and a new job in the marketing department of the Silver Star Casting Co., a southern California clothing line with close ties to the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Murray now regrets that he never made it past 11th grade.
“I went to the school of life,” Murray said recently, not long after ordering his breakfast from a taco wagon in perfect Spanish. “The accelerated, advanced program.”
A bang of cheddar
He said he’s a changed person from a decade ago, when he briefly was in the national spotlight as the Snoop Dogg to Lee’s Dr. Dre.
But he still has a way with words.
Back in December 1999, just days after the first (and so far only) Methods album came out, Murray summed up his rise from Ronez Manor.
“All of a sudden,” he said then, “I went from riding a skateboard to driving a luxury car. I’m getting paid a bang of cheddar.”
One must deduce that a “bang of cheddar” was quite, actually, a good deal of money.
After all, he was able to buy a Bentley Continental GT.
Now he alternates between a Jag and a Range Rover.
“We got some of the last big money in the music business,” Murray said.
Did he spend wisely?
“Some of it I didn’t,” he said, “but thank God there are residual checks.”
The Springfield native initially befriended Lee while touring with the Crue as a member of the band Hed PE.
“We didn’t expect it to do anything,” Murray said. “I was just Tommy’s best friend. I was his little buddy. We started making music because it made us feel good. The next thing I knew, the music turned into this gnarly roller coaster.”
Powered by the single “Get Naked,” the Methods album went gold within a month.
“The synergy,” he said, “was so magical I wouldn’t even try to recreate it.”
Lee is, however, about to try. He’s set to release a new Methods album on Sept. 21.
Murray said he opted not to take part, preferring to focus on his own project, Fyuzion NDX, a group that includes the rapper Roscoe, plus DJ Sid Wilson and Clown from Slipknot, Chester Bennington from Linkin Park and a true motley crew of characters.
“Even Bushwick Bill from the Geto Boys is on it,” he said. “It’s outlandish.”
He’ll also soon be heard, believe it or not, on Paula Abdul’s new workout video.
Murray’s the guy going, “Get it up! Get it up! Keep it goin’!”
“(Expletive) like that,” he said.
But, living in the same neighborhood as “The Real Housewives of Orange County” — not bad for a cat who spent his first three years in California semi-homeless, high on speed and “the fruits of herb” — Murray has a new priority.
“I just want to be a good dad,” he said.
He never met his own.
His mom, Shirley Murray, passed away four years ago from obesity-related health issues.
His own daughter, Unity, is now 10.
“I delivered my daughter at home in Newport Beach,” he said. “It was pretty punk-rock. Then I went on tour for three years.”
Gnarly organized
Naturally, it’s been to his advantage to give up “the fruits of herb.”
“Everybody knew I smoked a ton of weed,” he said. “That was my deal.”
And when he says a ton, he means, maybe literally, a ton.
“I probably spent 60 grand in one year on weed,” Murray said. “The best weed on the planet, though.”
He always had a backache and neck pain that he attributed to crowd-surfing and moshing while on tour — so he said he smoked to relieve the pain.
Turns out, though, smoking was actually causing the pain.
He quit three years ago, and also got out of the vaporizer biz.
“I’m gnarly organized now,” he bragged. “Before, I’d change my cell number every two weeks. I’d lose my phone. I’d never return messages.”
He joined Silver Star about a year ago as the lifestyle brand’s first celebrity and music marketing director.
“Dude, my job’s barely a job,” he said.
It’s his job to get celebs to wear Silver Star gear.
“My job is to just be in the mix,” he said. “Out of sight and out of mind. You’ve got to stay in the mix.”
One day, he might show up to where the rapper Kurupt is shooting a video and persuade him to wear a Silver Star shirt.
“I rolled up and he had something totally different on,” Murray said. “He put that on for the video. That’s the kind of stuff I’m able to do.”
The next day, he might be at a mansion in the Hollywood Hills with Zac Efron, Adrian Grenier from “Entourage” and UFC fighter Melvin Guillard “playing basketball with all these models in lingerie at 4 in the morning.”
Umm...
“That’s my job,” he said.
But the most amusing chapter in the saga of Tilo Murray is maybe yet to come.
A guy who hated the conformity of life growing up in Springfield, he now said he will “definitely” buy a house here.
“That way,” he said, “I can escape.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0352 or amcginn@coxohio.com.
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