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Ben Folds Five - Charm issue 30, January 2000 They seem so pop.
They seem so clever. In an age when the charts and intelligence have
suffered a complete divorce just where are Ben Folds Five coming from?
Charm's James Littlewood talked to Ben Folds himself before this American
trio's gig at the T&C in Leeds. Ben Folds: Erm? not really actually, except I think that with any given generation or age you see the same symbols popping up but they just have different meanings. A Mohawk would have meant something different in the late 1770's than it does in the 90's. Everything is a reaction to what happened before. Up until the last three months which have been for me so absolutely packed and really not that much fun. I generally like and hear new music and not old music, so sometimes you'll reinvent the wheel in a situation like ours or do some thing and someone will say "hey! That's very reminiscent of so and so from the 70's" and I go "yeah? I guess it is, it makes sense that it would be" James: So looking in to the future in your present situation do you consider the idea of making another album and touring as boring or acceptable? or do you want to do something entirely different. Ben: Yeah I'm pretty cool with that but I do have other stuff I wanna do besides that James: Would you be allowed to pursue those ideas? Ben: We're basically allowed to do everything including hanging ourselves, which we do from time to time. The music industry doesn't really understand much beyond record, tour, record, tour, as soon as you talking about doing something else they're "huh?" you just get blank looks, it's like "you record and tour whadaya talkin' about?" When you see any band historically like The Who with Tommy, or anybody that's done something different you know that heads were rolling while it was happening, it was fuckin' insane, you don't pull that stuff off easily. James: So would Ben Folds rather be playing the Royal Albert Hall, or Las Vegas? Ben: Oh I'm much more interested in playing Albert Hall James: Why? Ben: Because I think I know too much about Vegas, I know what that is, nothing new happens in Vegas, just rehash, it's just the cheapest kind of entertainment there is, and that's OK but the Albert Hall is somewhere that's traditionally been about something new, it has been about orchestras, but when you think about the legacy its like almost like the Ed Sullivan Show? James: Forgive the next question, but believe me it does lead somewhere. Ben: Right, go ahead James: If your band were a film would you be Die Hard II or The Last Days of Disco? Ben: I haven't seen either, but I have a feeling that I know what Die Hard II is about. James: It's a question of degrees of immediacy and subtlety, can a record tell me as much as the most obvious movie can? Ben: Oh I understand what you meant, yes to a fault, I think we try to make an attempt to be both and that's a dangerous place to be for a band because what you can potentially do is scare off the thinkers, no that's the wrong word, not 'thinkers', the people who don't just watch 30 second commercials on TV all the time. A lot of us and me included, when we hear something that's like Oh La La and shit, the first time it's candy, I assume there's nothing underneath and sometimes people think that when they here us, but with us there's a lot more on underneath. We're somehow really dead set on making people like it the first few times. If you have something important that you think you're doing you put enough of a sheen on it then it'll bring people in, but I do think that you stand a chance of alienating two audiences at once. James: Ok so how do explain the thinking for the design for your latest album The Unauthorised Biography of Rheinold Messner, because in a way it is disarming, inside you've got tuneful pop but what you have on top looks like a poster for a German arthouse film? Ben: (long pause) Uh-huh right... James: Do you think maybe you're trying to hit a specific listener? Ben: Nah, it's really not trying not hit anybody at all James: Or make a record that you'd perhaps like yourself? Ben: Yeah that's basically it, I feel like the two don't seem to be marrying much right now. You've got Ricky Spears and Britney Martin over here on one side and that's done really well, they have great teeth, and on the other side you've got people who're down trodden, there is a beat now, there are artists who can't make a living and they do great stuff and my favourite records don't sell more than 30,000 and in the United States that's not many. James: You relate to that world more readily? Ben: That's what I usually like and I feel that we're this position where we can take things that we like about that and make it accessible, but its really difficult, we were definitely cocked to be the next big thing on this album, and the fact that it's a short album with a lot of things that are off putting about it is not the best way to put yourself up in Ricky Martin territory but what I felt was that it might help bridge the two. I think that critics, musicians everyone have probably gotten the message pretty clearly that people don't wanna see those two things mixed. That doesn't mean that I won't do it, it makes me happy personally but its not quite what I hoped would be. People these days if they're gonna hear pop, they're interested in it being over the top, they are not interested in their fun being interrupted at all, these days that's just a pain in the ass, and even the smart people in the world go "listen, if I really wanna get smart I'll read my Tolstoy, I don't need your little fake fuckin' half cheese American art here in the middle of it, and if I want pop music I'll listen to disco and that's it, and mixing the two is weird" James: Although I wouldn't venture as far as to say that the latest record is a concept album, but there are certain themes that crop up repeatedly, childhood being one, was there a period where you thought about those things and sat down and wrote about them? Ben: Yeah, so much so that its almost literal with, me there's the whole song with "I thought about. . ." on Army, its just where my head was at the time. I don't think that much when I'm writing, I'm writing what's in my head, and we're playing it, but when I see it in retrospect I realise that was where my head was at, its going for a personal but universal level. I've always thought that when you shoot small you end up bigger as far as emotions go. James: As an American songwriter what sense do you get when you come to Britain, is our musical history as immediate in the surroundings as it is in New York for example? Ben: Yeah absolutely all the time James: Really?
Ben: Well its such a small place, my most recent
driver used to drive for The Beatles, he's like "yeah I see Paul now and
again". For instance I've seen McCartney on TV here and his way of talking
was so different from the way it would be in the US where there's this big
fuckin' arena where its like "Sir Paul, you be funny right now!" here in
Britain you get a feeling like you're all in it together and that's where
you get your history from, your past is all around. |
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