INTERVIEW WITH...
“You have to respect a song’s weight-bearing column.”
American singer-songwriter Ben Folds is coming back to Belgium on 1 December 2023 to formally introduce us to his new album ‘What Matters Most’ (and perhaps he’ll even play some most requested vintage tracks). A most excellent excuse for an interview with the talented and accomplished musician, who kindly donated thirty minutes of his time to us.
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Julian De Backer: ‘Hi, Mr. Folds, I’m Julian De Backer from Belgium.’
Ben Folds: ‘Good to meet you. I’m Ben from … somewhere.’ Julian: ‘South-Carolina, if I’m not mistaken. Your new record is called ‘What Matters Most’. I’m assuming that ‘music is what matters most in your life.’ Ben: ‘Oh, uhm, well, I think, what I got out of it after making the album and especially the song, is that ‘what matters most’ is always on people’s minds. Whatever you’re doing is probably what matters most, because you’re doing it. It’s a moving target, right? If you’re hungry, then a bowl of soup is what matters most. If you trip and fall down a flight of stairs, what matters most is that you’ve broken your toe and you need to go to a doctor. You can’t pin it down. After the pandemic, a lot of confused people stopped working their jobs. They changed careers because they realized the job they had been doing for the last ten years wasn’t what mattered most to them anymore.’ Julian: ‘On a normal day, music would be at least in your top-5 of things that matter, right?’ Ben: ‘Oh, yeah, it might be in the top-5. When I’m working on my songs, it’s number one. When I’m making music, I do it very seriously, you know? Play it like your fucking mean it. Don’t waste my time, don’t waste your time. Mean it, or not. When I’m making music, I’m a life-support for music. It doesn’t mean that it’s the most important thing in the world, it’s just that I don’t do it halfway. That should be true of everything that you do. Whatever matters. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how I didn’t want to play music anymore.’ Julian: ‘You did?’ Ben: ‘Absolutely. I had times where I thought ‘Well, I can’t quit, ‘cause all I know how to do is make music and wait tables’ I don’t want to wait tables, so I gotta play music! We all go through phases.’ Julian: ‘Up and down, like waves.’ Ben: ‘It’s like ‘I don’t wanna see that son of bitch ever again, and the next week, you’re best friends’.’ Julian: ‘You’ve been a musician for more than forty years now. Do you still remember the very first song you ever wrote?’ Ben: ‘I had a lot of songs in my head from before I was playing piano. I was aware that I was making them up. I was really young, and I would make up a song for anything. It wouldn’t necessarily have to be a song, it could be a quick melody or an idea. I would imagine it being performed sometimes. I don’t know if they were any good, they probably weren’t. But they were coming out of my head.’ |
Julian: ‘You can’t trust everything you read on the internet …’
Ben: ‘Wait a minute. What!?’ (laughs)
Julian: ‘Allow me to check. I read online that you could recite Elton John’s music after you had heard it once. Is that true?’
Ben: ‘Oh, I doubt that. I’d sat in with Elton a few times, and he was going to return the favour in a show that I was going to play in Sydney. So Elton was coming to the show, but then the show got cancelled under really unusual circumstances. It wasn’t me, I don’t know why it was cancelled, I can’t remember. But I had to learn ‘Tiny Dancer’ for it, and I hadn’t had time. So I was in the cab on the way to the gig (that was cancelled) and I was thinking of the song and I played it in my head until I knew what it was, and then I played that one kind of by ear. But it was gonna be super dodgy. Because I was going to be sitting there with the guy that wrote the song, and I didn’t really know it that well.’
Julian: ‘You don’t wanna mess up in front of the songwriter.’
Ben: ‘Not that he doesn’t care, but (laughs) he’s pretty easy-going about stuff like that. The band and everything sounded like a mess to me. It was energic and classy and great, but it wasn’t neat. It wasn’t put together neatly. It was fun, whoo!, rock ‘n roll, all over the place.’
Julian: ‘Has someone ever mediocrely performed a Ben Folds song in front of you?’
Ben: ‘Uhm, yeah, but you have to understand, if I put out a song, and I’ve got a band that records the album with me or is touring with me, ten years later it’s probably a different band! So in a way I’m playing in a cover band of my own music. I’ve gotten good at steering new players to the way that I want to hear the material played. And I’m also open to something different happening. I think that you should always stay open to something that can be an improvement. But you do acquire the skill of rehearsing a band. Also, I play with orchestras all the time, and they’re always playing your music for the first time. Side-reading it during the rehearsal. I help fool them into playing it right, playing it the way I want.’
Julian: ‘Chris Rea once re-recorded his old songs for an album called ‘New Light Through Old Windows’. Would you ever consider doing something like that?’
Ben: ‘I wouldn’t disguise that notion. I’d call it a live version or a soundtrack. Something different, because a lot of people that come to my shows know songs of mine through a non-studio version. I made a solo piano record that became popular with a certain portion of my audience. The things that happened on that solo live album were the things that they knew, and that they came to expect. My wife doesn’t really know my records. When she listens to my music, she’s used to hearing it how I played it then, well, ‘now’. Sometimes, hearing the old record is a disappointment, because she likes it the way I play it nowadays.’
Ben: ‘Wait a minute. What!?’ (laughs)
Julian: ‘Allow me to check. I read online that you could recite Elton John’s music after you had heard it once. Is that true?’
Ben: ‘Oh, I doubt that. I’d sat in with Elton a few times, and he was going to return the favour in a show that I was going to play in Sydney. So Elton was coming to the show, but then the show got cancelled under really unusual circumstances. It wasn’t me, I don’t know why it was cancelled, I can’t remember. But I had to learn ‘Tiny Dancer’ for it, and I hadn’t had time. So I was in the cab on the way to the gig (that was cancelled) and I was thinking of the song and I played it in my head until I knew what it was, and then I played that one kind of by ear. But it was gonna be super dodgy. Because I was going to be sitting there with the guy that wrote the song, and I didn’t really know it that well.’
Julian: ‘You don’t wanna mess up in front of the songwriter.’
Ben: ‘Not that he doesn’t care, but (laughs) he’s pretty easy-going about stuff like that. The band and everything sounded like a mess to me. It was energic and classy and great, but it wasn’t neat. It wasn’t put together neatly. It was fun, whoo!, rock ‘n roll, all over the place.’
Julian: ‘Has someone ever mediocrely performed a Ben Folds song in front of you?’
Ben: ‘Uhm, yeah, but you have to understand, if I put out a song, and I’ve got a band that records the album with me or is touring with me, ten years later it’s probably a different band! So in a way I’m playing in a cover band of my own music. I’ve gotten good at steering new players to the way that I want to hear the material played. And I’m also open to something different happening. I think that you should always stay open to something that can be an improvement. But you do acquire the skill of rehearsing a band. Also, I play with orchestras all the time, and they’re always playing your music for the first time. Side-reading it during the rehearsal. I help fool them into playing it right, playing it the way I want.’
Julian: ‘Chris Rea once re-recorded his old songs for an album called ‘New Light Through Old Windows’. Would you ever consider doing something like that?’
Ben: ‘I wouldn’t disguise that notion. I’d call it a live version or a soundtrack. Something different, because a lot of people that come to my shows know songs of mine through a non-studio version. I made a solo piano record that became popular with a certain portion of my audience. The things that happened on that solo live album were the things that they knew, and that they came to expect. My wife doesn’t really know my records. When she listens to my music, she’s used to hearing it how I played it then, well, ‘now’. Sometimes, hearing the old record is a disappointment, because she likes it the way I play it nowadays.’
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Julian: ‘As a fan of a band, you can dig a live version, but sometimes, you just want to hear the album version. The Rolling Stones can’t play ‘Satisfaction’ without the fuzz guitar. Some elements need to be heard live.’
Ben: ‘You have to respect a song’s weight-bearing column. Things that are in the orchestration, rather than in the production. If you hear flutes instead of strings in Van Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, you’d be like: ‘This fucking sucks! Ludwig sucks, I hate this song!’ Some things need to be in the orchestration, I guess. I always respect the weight-bearing columns. I don’t wish to fuck with that. If you do it right, some of your best versions need to be left on the stage, and no one will know. I don’t think that I play a concert where someone is disappointed that it doesn’t sound like the album. More often, people are disappointed with the album after they’ve heard me live. There are artists and times like that. I remember hearing Paul McCartney’s kind-of obscure hit called ‘Coming Up’ from 1980. I really liked the live-version, the studio version took me a long time to warm up to. Live, it sound spontaneous, in the studio, it sounded stiff. Now I like the stiffness, but it takes a while.’ Julian: ‘I’m a huge Springsteen fan, and I first heard ‘Born to Run’ on the ‘Live/1975-85’ box set. Max Weinberg’s drums are a lot more intense, energetic, and urgent on the live version, and I missed said intensity on the studio edit, on which Ernest ‘Boom’ Carter played the drums.’ Ben: ‘There’s a certain kind of artist, and a lot of them are probably American, that’s upper and/or lower class. If you’re an upper-class American, you’re very likely to make artsy, experimental music. You can afford people not coming to your shows. You don’t have to make anybody happy to create interesting, experimental art. If you’re a lower-class American band, it’s really about the live experience. Bruce Springsteen is very much like that, and I’m in that camp. I do like the studio, and Bruce likes the studio as well, but it’s actually a career-long frustration that you can’t get that feel in the studio. It goes both ways. People that are very studio-oriented, very detail-oriented, with perfect production and sound, then it is disappointing to see them live and hear them change something that you don’t want them to change, like the distorted guitar. I had this funny gig, where I was judging a singing show in America for five seasons. When a capella groups would do a song and change it, I was okay with it as long as they were not changing the main thing. I remember a group doing a Jackson Five song and it sucked. They fucked it up. You need the ‘I want you back, tu-tu-tu-tu’. They just decided they didn’t need it. They were even defensive about it, they wanted to find another angle to the song. Yeah, the one that sucks! The one we don’t wanna hear! (laughs)’ |
Photo Alysse Gafkjen
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Julian: ‘Did recording ‘What Matters Most’ take a long time, or was it a spontaneous three weeks in the studio?’
Ben: ‘The studio process was fast, yeah, it was three weeks maybe. The writing of it was a longer process, because I wrote things, threw them away, wrote new things, changed my mind, you know. I wanted to go into the studio with completely finished songs. I didn’t want to go in and record songs that I was going to throw away. I ended up shitcanning a couple of songs, but I had a good batting average. I think the way that I feel working right now, is prepare a lot and then blaze through it. Just fucking do it. Make it an event, so that you know where you were on that day. People that hear the beginning and the end of the record need to know that you were somewhere else, went to the studio, and when the song’s over, you imagine that the songwriter DID go somewhere else. As opposed to an idea that’s floating in the air and hovering above like a theory or a ghost. My favourite old albums are events. I was just listening to ‘Ooh La La’ by The Faces, you know that song?’
Julian: ‘Yeah, it’s great.’
Ben: ‘Listen to the way the first guitar comes in, you’re like, God, that guy just came in from the cold. The next guy starts playing in the other speaker, and you’re like ‘He just came from the bathroom, this is amazing, the whole band’s here!’ You feel like you’re really there, it’s so great. You can’t make that kind of album and take too long. You’ll lose that. You’ll gain other things, though.’
Julian: ‘Have you ever spent too much time in the studio? There’s the famous 10-year example of ‘Chinese Democracy’ by Guns N’ Roses, or Coldplay having a semi-meltdown during the recording of three different versions of ‘X&Y’.’
Ben: ‘I’ve gotten caught up with the details of things, but they weren’t necessary songs that were on an album. I’ve done soundtrack things for movies where - almost by necessity, especially when it’s animated – you have to revise, revise, revise. Even down to the production, because they add CGI, for instance. But I don’t think I’ve been too bad about overworking something in the studio. If I ever did, I think I’ve been pretty good at just throwing it away and doing it again. I’ve thrown away things the day before the mix, and just done it again in an hour. That could arguably been seen as ‘messing with it too much’, because I should have used the first take. It’s about where you spent your time, not how much you spend it. Your state of mind. We need to be resilient. If you’re going to do something ten thousand times … The Rolling Stones, since you brough them up, they had a lot of money, they had big budgets, because they were huge. They would burn up thirty rolls of tape on one song, over and over and over again. You could argue they spent too much time, but you could also argue that when they eventually got the take they liked, they did it in one pass. You have to be really smart about it. You spend as much time as you need to, aiming for something. And then, just do it. Just go. I don’t want to say ‘pull the trigger’, because I don’t think the world needs any more violent records. You make your decision quickly.’
Ben: ‘The studio process was fast, yeah, it was three weeks maybe. The writing of it was a longer process, because I wrote things, threw them away, wrote new things, changed my mind, you know. I wanted to go into the studio with completely finished songs. I didn’t want to go in and record songs that I was going to throw away. I ended up shitcanning a couple of songs, but I had a good batting average. I think the way that I feel working right now, is prepare a lot and then blaze through it. Just fucking do it. Make it an event, so that you know where you were on that day. People that hear the beginning and the end of the record need to know that you were somewhere else, went to the studio, and when the song’s over, you imagine that the songwriter DID go somewhere else. As opposed to an idea that’s floating in the air and hovering above like a theory or a ghost. My favourite old albums are events. I was just listening to ‘Ooh La La’ by The Faces, you know that song?’
Julian: ‘Yeah, it’s great.’
Ben: ‘Listen to the way the first guitar comes in, you’re like, God, that guy just came in from the cold. The next guy starts playing in the other speaker, and you’re like ‘He just came from the bathroom, this is amazing, the whole band’s here!’ You feel like you’re really there, it’s so great. You can’t make that kind of album and take too long. You’ll lose that. You’ll gain other things, though.’
Julian: ‘Have you ever spent too much time in the studio? There’s the famous 10-year example of ‘Chinese Democracy’ by Guns N’ Roses, or Coldplay having a semi-meltdown during the recording of three different versions of ‘X&Y’.’
Ben: ‘I’ve gotten caught up with the details of things, but they weren’t necessary songs that were on an album. I’ve done soundtrack things for movies where - almost by necessity, especially when it’s animated – you have to revise, revise, revise. Even down to the production, because they add CGI, for instance. But I don’t think I’ve been too bad about overworking something in the studio. If I ever did, I think I’ve been pretty good at just throwing it away and doing it again. I’ve thrown away things the day before the mix, and just done it again in an hour. That could arguably been seen as ‘messing with it too much’, because I should have used the first take. It’s about where you spent your time, not how much you spend it. Your state of mind. We need to be resilient. If you’re going to do something ten thousand times … The Rolling Stones, since you brough them up, they had a lot of money, they had big budgets, because they were huge. They would burn up thirty rolls of tape on one song, over and over and over again. You could argue they spent too much time, but you could also argue that when they eventually got the take they liked, they did it in one pass. You have to be really smart about it. You spend as much time as you need to, aiming for something. And then, just do it. Just go. I don’t want to say ‘pull the trigger’, because I don’t think the world needs any more violent records. You make your decision quickly.’
Photo Alysse Gafkjen
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Julian: ‘You did the Dreamworks movie ‘Over the Hedge’. Can you recall the collaboration with Mr. Rupert Gregson-Williams? Was it fun?’
Ben: ‘I like Rupert. We didn’t really need to collaborate much, because I was just writing the songs, he was working on his score. At first, we thought we would trade notes but at the end of the day, he had to write score music. ‘Okay, the rabbit’s sad.’ Meanwhile, I was thinking ‘Oh, the rabbit’s life is changing, what’s his song, what does he need to do?’ I did spend a lot of time with Rupert. His brother is quite the famous music composer. And Hans Zimmer was our producer.’ Julian: ‘A question I ask in every interview: do you have your own vault of discarded material, just like Prince Rogers Nelson?’ Ben: ‘Yes, but they’re sort of released now. I made a retrospective record ten years ago. As part of that record, there were fifty unreleased songs called ‘The Vault I’, ‘II’ and ‘III’. It’s funny. There are good ideas. But there’s also a good reason why that shit never went on an album.’ Julian: ‘The limited edition of your new album includes three bonus tracks that normal record buyers won’t hear. Was it hard to decide which three were going to be bonus tracks, and which ten would constitute the normal album?’ Ben: ‘No, because I had already made the album. Once I’m in that gear, I just can’t stop. I was out of the studio, and I was doing some background sounds at home – where I’ve got a pretty good studio. When the studio sessions stopped, I still had ideas, so I just started recording stuff without a particular reason at all. The label called up in a panic: ‘We need extra songs!’ and I was like, well, I’ve got these three new things. ‘Great!’ All the instruments were recorded by myself in my garage.’ Julian: ‘My favourite song off of the new album is ‘Winslow Gardens’. I Googled it, and apparently it’s an apartment building in Australia. Is that a coincidence, or was it the actual inspiration for the song?’ Ben: ‘That’s where we lived. When the pandemic hit, I was on tour in Australia. My wife happened to be with me, she’s not often on tour with me, and she is Australian. Her mother looked in the paper, and found one apartment with an opening. Instead of going back to the US, where it was crazy, it happened just like in the song. We signed a line, walked in, looked around, we’ll take it. We stayed there for eighteen months. People can go to Winslow Gardens to stalk me, but I’m gone.’ Julian: ‘Perhaps there’s still a ‘Ben Fold Room’ they kept as a memento.’ Ben: ‘I don’t think they cared. It was like an old folks home, and I liked them. We made some good old friends. There was no one under the age of seventy.’ |
Julian: ‘Since your wife’s Australian, do you ever see yourself retiring to Oceania?’
Ben: ‘We have a place there now, and we stay there for four months a year. It’s a good place for me to write. Australia is where I wrote the album, and then I took it to America to record it.’
Julian: ‘On Reddit, a guy called doug_kaplan said: 'I know nothing about actually making music or music theory but I've always loved how Ben's music was always music for music nerds, not a lot of artists get appreciated for making a song in 7/4 like Ben's fans do. You've all been like this for ever and I love you all for it!' Has it ever occurred to you that you’re making music for ‘music nerds’?’
Ben: ‘We all underestimate the intelligence of listeners. I’m just doing what Benjamin Britten once said, I make music for human beings. That’s the way I feel about it. I don’t feel like I’m making music for a particularly literate musical audience. Even the most complex thing should be lifted off the shoulders of the listener. The listener shouldn’t have to listen and go ‘1-2-3-4-5-6-7/1-2-3-4-5-6-7’. Peter Gabriel has got that song from a long time ago, ‘Solbury Hill’. It’s in 5/4 or 7/4, I never fucking counted. It’s not in 4/4. Everyone was fine with that, because he writes it so effortlessly that you don’t have to worry about it. I have songs that are in crazy time signatures and I’m only doing it because I think it makes the song sound better. ‘Winslow Gardens’ just isn’t that interesting in 4/4. To me, it naturally came in, well, what is it (starts singing) 7/4, yeah, it’s in 7/4. I don’t care. I feel like that’s the tone of the song. If you’re just an average person, the song sounds like a rock song. If you know a little bit about music, you start going ‘Hey, wait a minute, I can’t get my head around that, this guy is getting all music weird on me’. But if you know a lot about music, you just don’t remember it anymore, you just go ‘It could be in 7/4, who’s counting?’ It’s important for me, and it always has been, both musically and lyrically, to not underestimate people. Part of the reason why we think the world’s been dumbed down, is because we allow it to be so. Don’t dumb stuff down. People understand it. If they don’t, they can fuck off.’
Julian: ‘And when a song’s good, it doesn’t matter in what time it’s written.’
Ben: ‘Burt Bacharach is a great example of that. He made music in the sixties, when everything was about little shuffles and 4/4 time. The typical stuff. He was having radio hits in odd time signatures with all kinds of modulations and interesting chord progressions. He was like me in that way. Why shouldn’t he? Just do it.’
Julian: ‘I have to wrap it up. Thank you very much for your time. I have more questions, but perhaps there will be a next time.’
Ben: ‘Thank you very much.’
Ben: ‘We have a place there now, and we stay there for four months a year. It’s a good place for me to write. Australia is where I wrote the album, and then I took it to America to record it.’
Julian: ‘On Reddit, a guy called doug_kaplan said: 'I know nothing about actually making music or music theory but I've always loved how Ben's music was always music for music nerds, not a lot of artists get appreciated for making a song in 7/4 like Ben's fans do. You've all been like this for ever and I love you all for it!' Has it ever occurred to you that you’re making music for ‘music nerds’?’
Ben: ‘We all underestimate the intelligence of listeners. I’m just doing what Benjamin Britten once said, I make music for human beings. That’s the way I feel about it. I don’t feel like I’m making music for a particularly literate musical audience. Even the most complex thing should be lifted off the shoulders of the listener. The listener shouldn’t have to listen and go ‘1-2-3-4-5-6-7/1-2-3-4-5-6-7’. Peter Gabriel has got that song from a long time ago, ‘Solbury Hill’. It’s in 5/4 or 7/4, I never fucking counted. It’s not in 4/4. Everyone was fine with that, because he writes it so effortlessly that you don’t have to worry about it. I have songs that are in crazy time signatures and I’m only doing it because I think it makes the song sound better. ‘Winslow Gardens’ just isn’t that interesting in 4/4. To me, it naturally came in, well, what is it (starts singing) 7/4, yeah, it’s in 7/4. I don’t care. I feel like that’s the tone of the song. If you’re just an average person, the song sounds like a rock song. If you know a little bit about music, you start going ‘Hey, wait a minute, I can’t get my head around that, this guy is getting all music weird on me’. But if you know a lot about music, you just don’t remember it anymore, you just go ‘It could be in 7/4, who’s counting?’ It’s important for me, and it always has been, both musically and lyrically, to not underestimate people. Part of the reason why we think the world’s been dumbed down, is because we allow it to be so. Don’t dumb stuff down. People understand it. If they don’t, they can fuck off.’
Julian: ‘And when a song’s good, it doesn’t matter in what time it’s written.’
Ben: ‘Burt Bacharach is a great example of that. He made music in the sixties, when everything was about little shuffles and 4/4 time. The typical stuff. He was having radio hits in odd time signatures with all kinds of modulations and interesting chord progressions. He was like me in that way. Why shouldn’t he? Just do it.’
Julian: ‘I have to wrap it up. Thank you very much for your time. I have more questions, but perhaps there will be a next time.’
Ben: ‘Thank you very much.’
BEN FOLDS WILL BE PERFORMING IN THE ROMA (ANTWERP) ON 1 DECEMBER 2023. GET YOUR TICKETS NOW!
Julian De Backer © 2023 for Keys and Chords