Folds, drummer Darren Jessee (who, judging from his answers in this interview, is the class clown of group), and bassist Robert Sledge sat down with LAUNCH's executive editor Dave DiMartino during a recent tour stop in L.A. Video excerpts of the following conversation can be found in Issue No. 29 of LAUNCH on CD-ROM. That same disc includes a live, exclusive performance of "Don't Change Your Plans."
LAUNCH:
You experienced some nice success with the last album, Whatever And Ever Amen. What kind of an impact did that have on you guys when you went in to record The Unauthorized Biography Of Reinhold Messner?
BEN:
It basically gave us more money to work with. We were going to do what we were going to do anyway. Knowing there was an audience out there too, the feeling that there is a forum, makes a difference.
DARREN:
First of all, getting to and from the studio in a stretch limo can be expensive and having a full bar stocked with brandy can be costly, but we managed to make enough money last year to afford those simple things which make the recording so much better.
ROBERT:
The last album was made in Ben's house. He moved out, we moved the studio in. It was made kind of haphazardly and kind of under painful conditions. We knew we only had a certain amount of time to do it, so we had to do it that way. But it was more comfortable for us than dealing with big-name, big-money producers. Selling a whole lot of copies raised the budget, so we went to a big studio in L.A. and did it the proper way. We wanted to make a record that was sonically rich and fun. It was inspirational to be in a place where all these great records were made. Everyday I would go get coffee and I would pass all these gold records on the wall and each one had a song on it that I really liked.
LAUNCH:
The last record certainly had an informal atmosphere to it, with the banter in between songs and such. Did you feel any need to make this new record more formal?
DARREN:
A lot of people thought that we were just having fun and we left that stuff in there because we are just a bunch of crazy guys. But no, we recorded all that banter six months after we finished the recording and flew it in between the songs. On this record we didn't really feel the need--there is a little, but we didn't feel the need to put that in for some reason.
LAUNCH:
It seems like as you progress there could be an increased need for strings and horns and certain arrangements. How do you feel about that?
ROBERT:
The arrangements are where we wanted to take them for a long time; we wanted to take a lot of the harmonic responsibility off the three members and spread things out. We allude to string parts with the piano, and the bass playing a whole section of cellos and basses. Then, we'll imitate campy horn parts with our voices and stuff. It's something we've been interested in doing for awhile. It may become a burden and we may decide to just become a rock band again, but we're not really sure.
BEN:
I think we were just into that. We played dress-up on the album. It kind of reminded me of going to one of those booths where you get your picture taken dressed up in old Western outfits. Something about playing with big orchestration feels like that to me--it's like pasting the "Where's Waldo?" photo in the middle of the orchestra.
DARREN:
I think we just thought it would be exciting to hear those textures happening. Strings are such an old instrument and you get those around piano, bass and drums and it creates a really classy sound. It's the progression that most bands take throughout their careers--at first you're against production, then you warm up to it, until you're in the middle of it. We're in the middle of it right now.
LAUNCH:
The new album is a great headphone record. Would you have liked to use strings and horns earlier if you had the money?
BEN:
It is a headphone record. I've always been into orchestration. I love the sound of a lot of people singing or playing together. Given the time and the money, I probably would have done that when I was nine years old. I'm really happy to have arrived here. The guys are getting more into it. They come from more of a rock band outlook. I wanted to put strings on the first record and they were like, "No f--king way!"
LAUNCH:
Who is Reinhold Messner? And how did that become the album title?
BEN:
I just liked the name. Darren was making fake IDs when he was in high school. He used the name Reinhold Messner. Darren walked around for years with this story, with this name, having no idea who this guy was. I just liked the energy of the name. It sounded exceptional, but sort of dorky. Then we find out he's huge. He's the Muhammad Ali of Europe or something. He's a big deal.
ROBERT:
Reinhold Messner is a really famous mountain climber from Austria. You can't open a book about climbing Mount Everest without his name popping up. He's a total daredevil and completely insane. We had no idea who he was when we named the album. Once we were in an interview and somebody brought it up and that's how we found out that it really was someone's name. Then of course we had to ask his permission and he was pretty cool about it.
DARREN:
Now there's a little controversy. Some would say he's Austrian, others say Italian. He's the first man to climb Mount Everest without oxygen. He smoked hash on the top of one of these mountains. He's a pioneer, a mountain man; he's lost his toes in the ice. He claims to have seen a Yedi. He's a pretty interesting character.
LAUNCH:
Who are the people in the photos on the album, and how did they end up on the record?
DARREN:
The front is my grandfather. The back is my dad. You'd think I'd have to strangle the other guys to put my family photos on the album, but everyone naturally migrated toward those pictures. It seemed to really work with the music, so we kept them.
BEN:
I'm proud of the way all the decisions on this record were made. They weren't thought about that much. We thought this album feels biographical, so we went with that. We gave the art guy at the record company some ideas to work with. We had all these other pictures of family members. I had gone to a thrift shop and bought a bunch of black & white photos of people that I didn't know from the turn of the century, and we gave the guy some books. He came up with 10 things and this one just felt like the album.
ROBERT:
The back cover is Darren's father with all the little girls. Skinny, fat--you have a variety of different girls--that's just his style. He likes them all. It's funny because Darren's father told Darren once never to marry a short, mean woman. Darren's grandfather is on the front. He was a test pilot in the '40s. He died in a crash. It's a beautiful story. He told his partner, another daredevil pilot, "If anything ever happens to me, I want you to make sure my wife is taken care of," so his best friend married her. So Darren's other grandfather is also a test pilot guy.
LAUNCH:
The phone message guy…who is he and what's that song about?
ROBERT:
We were in L.A. and Ben was checking his messages, which he does about 12 or 15 times a day, and his father had left this insane message just straight out of bed at 6:30 in the morning. He'd been worried about Ben not getting enough exercise--using his brain too much. He left this whole long John Glenn analogy about being in space. Ben played us this insane message, he didn't know what to make of it, but we all just flipped out like it was pure genius. We immediately recorded it and put it to music.
BEN:
It was right when we were doing the album. I listened to it and I thought it sounded cool. I played it for some people at the studio over the speakerphone and we decided to put it on the record. We took some warm-up music that we'd already mixed, mistakes and all, we just played it behind it and it just worked. You can place it different parts of the sequence and it means something different. It has something to do with the theme of the record; using your mind, using your intuition, stumbling through life. Look after your mind, that's the most important thing. That's pretty Zen, you know?
DARREN:
Clearly, Ben's dad suffers from the high marijuana abuse. It shows in that little soliloquy about body mass in space. I can't give away any more than that. I hope he seeks help soon.
LAUNCH:
Being on the road and the success of the last record--has it taken a toll on your personal relationships?
BEN:
I guess it's like any career, because that's what it kind of turns into, is a career. It's almost cliché. It does take a toll on your personal life. I don't think anyone can have whatever someone might consider a "normal" personal life. Everyone around you has got to be pretty strong, and you've got to keep your head together. It's not the hardest thing in the world, but it is pretty hard to be normal.
DARREN:
It can create a strain when you're traveling with your girlfriend and you're in first class and she's in coach. That can divide your relationship. I think the main problem is that we're traveling so much and we're so busy, that it limits the time you can spend with someone. You have to have a strong bond and feel like you know someone really well. If you're away for eight or nine months per year, it's easy to forget that little patch of freckles or whatever. The strain comes in being away so much.
ROBERT:
Well, I don't know. It's not depressing at all to never see your girlfriend or family, and you see the same guys over and over again. Basically you live this submariner existence in a long tour bus. We just sit there and talk about the same thing over and over. Other than that, it's a fantastic life. Anyone that wants to go into rock 'n' roll should consider that.
LAUNCH:
Has the autobiographical nature of the lyrics resulted in people coming forward and claiming that a certain song was about them?
BEN:
Sometimes, it does happen. People are like, "I know what you're singing about." Most of the time if I'm going to get really specific about someone's personality, I mix it up with someone else's personality or twist it in a way that makes it not quite as recognizable to the source. I used to do that to protect myself from people who might be pissed. I still can't help it; my lyrics are usually specific and relate to something that's happened.
DARREN:
I think there are probably people out there who are guessing that one or two of the lyrical ideas are about them and they're probably right. In the end, everyone is flattered to have their name mentioned in a song or to have a song written about them. They seem to be okay with it. The best thing to do is to take the actual person you're writing about and remove their name from it and replace it with another name.
ROBERT:
Most people like songs to be written about them. When I was 16, I wrote this terrible song about this friend of mine who I thought was a loser. He thought it was fantastic. I basically accused him of being pretentious and how he wasn't really into the music that he said he was into and that he was just using it as a way to cover up his screwed-up home life. It was all true and I should have kept my mouth shut, but having written the song, he kind of felt even more important than he did before. You can write anything about anybody and they just love it.
LAUNCH:
In one of the songs on the new record you say, "I won't move to L.A." That brings to mind the stereotypes that people have about people from Los Angeles and other stereotypes. What kinds of stereotypes have you encountered from being from the South?
BEN:
I love stereotypes. I would, because I'm a middle-class white guy--I guess we get the big break. You know, but that's not even true. A middle-class white guy gets cracked on just as much as anybody! I like stereotypes because if you use them right, they also celebrate people's unique strengths, as well as their weaknesses. As far as the L.A. line, I don't personally love L.A. I've always had L.A. issues. I've had to choose whether or not to see people in my life who live in L.A. I usually choose not to. There is something very East Coast about the personality of Reinhold. Reinhold wouldn't be himself if he lived in Los Angeles.
ROBERT:
When you watch movies and anybody who's from the South is either a Southern cosmopolitan gentleman or gentlelady and they're kind of clueless and saying stuff like, "That there Internet, click, click, click. That's crazy." If you go to Europe and say you're from the South, they think you're really bummed out that you don't own slaves.
DARREN:
Whenever you see a movie and they need someone who's stupid, they have some Southern redneck accent. So you see that everywhere. But I love the South. I'm happy there. It's my home. I think it's a great place to live.
LAUNCH:
You mention the word "redneck" and it pops up as a lyric in a song and also a song title on the new record, "Your Redneck Past." Do you guys consider yourselves rednecks?
BEN:
I think most Americans are rednecks. And there's some strength and fiber to that. We don't have roots that go back thousands of years like the Europeans, but we do have that redneck vibe in common. Since I'm from the South, I don't feel particularly educated in world history and literature and things I'd like to be. It would be a shame to act like something I'm not to get ahead. I know people in the South take elocution lessons to get rid of their accent or learn how to dress or get cosmetic surgery. When you do that, you lose the things you should be hanging on to, which is you. "Your Redneck Past" is a fun way of just kind of looking at that. Peter Gabriel stated it more eloquently in "Big Time." Losing your identity to move forward, and I think that's what I was thinking of when I wrote that song.
DARREN:
You have to have a little bit of that in you. Everyone does. If I played that song for someone and they didn't chuckle or relate to it at all, they must come from a long line of family aristocracy. But most everyone can relate to it. We're all Americans, after all.
ROBERT:
Well, yeah. Pretty much anywhere you go in North Carolina is pretty rural compared to the industrial Northeast. There are geniuses down where I live, their brains are exploding with knowledge, but still their mannerisms are completely subhuman compared to what people consider intelligent in New York. So, I guess we do. You can lose your accent, but you can't really escape it.
LAUNCH:
Tell me about the song "Magic." How did that come about, and how did it end up on the record?
DARREN:
I wrote that song on my four-track when we were home from the tour. It was intended to be released on this benefit CD for a women's shelter where I live. Then the band got a hold of it, it sounded great, and we put it out on the record. That's why it exists in two forms.
BEN:
Darren writes a lot of songs, and they're really good. That one was just something that I could relate to. I guess Robert felt the same way and so we did that song. Robert and Darren are both really good songwriters. It's a tough balance and it takes a lot of trust. Darren is a great songwriter, or becoming one. Robert writes really interesting stuff. Their personalities are infused with the band. You have to have a pretty good relationship going, because a voice and perspective that comes from an album has to be collectively you, as a band. I come up with a lot of songs, a voice that we've been identified with. When Darren writes something that I feel is in that vein, then we perform it.
ROBERT:
It was obvious to us that the song really works and there was never any question that the song would appear on the record.
LAUNCH:
What's the story behind the Fear Of Pop record?
BEN:
It wasn't that Fear Of Pop was too weird, it just didn't represent our three personalities. The songs would have been shot down instantly, and rightly so. But it's also me. And I wanted to put it out there. It's a money-losing thing for me, but if I have a good idea, I think I have a responsibility to put it out there. It's out on the shelf if you want to buy it.
ROBERT:
Ben wanted to kill some time in the studio, and just mess around with some sounds and stuff. He wasn't avoiding anybody by doing that, not trying to escape his home life by doing that. Definitely not.
DARREN:
I've always told Ben, and he's confided in me many times late at night on the bus, that the size of his c-ck is not the most important thing that defines him as a writer and a person. Sometimes he loses sight of that. He really has no reason to feel inadequate. We've been on the road in Europe, taken group showers, gone skinny-dipping with strange girls. He's got a great unit. It's intact. So Fear Of Pop is a very courageous endeavor of instrumental music and it's an interesting record. It's very neat.
LAUNCH:
You guys participated in the Burt Bacharach tribute a while back. Since then it seems there has been a resurgence of interest in the works of Bacharach and in pop music in general. With your music, it could be said that you have contributed to the resurgence of pop music in its classic form. Do you agree?
DARREN:
I think you're right. There was a resurgence of Bacharach-esque music and in pop songs that are well-crafted. Also, songs that are sentimental in their lyrical content seem to be okay right now. It doesn't seem to be caught up in self-loathing and melodrama, which was how we've been the last seven years. I think Burt is really responsible for us in a lot of ways because when we were kids listening to FM radio and pop music in general, Burt Bacharach was a major player in what you would hear on the radio. I think he just shaped our minds more than we may even have realized at the time.
ROBERT:
I think there's a resurgence in craft. There are a lot of people who've made records recently who've had great indie success. They go in with a stark, honest approach to making records. And they get a bigger record deal and they go in with a bunch of strings and big-time producers, and they make a crappy record. There's a need for people who understand arrangement.
BEN:
People decided for a while that it was more important to be purely expressive--"take me as I am, au naturel"--which is fine. But if you're really going to be expressive, you may as well lay down in the parking lot and scream at the top of your lungs. I'm not sure if that's good music. There's a balance. Right now, it's going toward craft-driven, melodic writing. People are finding that it is a craft, and that you have to learn it and work at it some. There are some really great melodic songwriters out there. Elliott Smith is a great craftsman; Elvis Costello almost single-handedly kept the art form of pop songwriting alive. It's more than just throwing a bunch of minor four chords together. It's not easy. I'm glad that "Brick" was a hit. While it may have seemed like a simple song, there's more skill in that song than all the orchestration on this album.
LAUNCH:
You guys come from a region that has produced a lot of hard, loud rock bands. Have you ever had anyone say to you that the melodic pop music you play is a less-than-manly pursuit?
DARREN:
Yeah, it's funny, because now all of the punk bands are really interested in playing pop music. There was a time when that was not the best thing to do if you wanted to "eat with the cool kids" or "sit at the back of the bus." I don't think it really matters anymore. It seems like music is opening up, and that's good. It's about time. It's just music, after all.
BEN:
It was actually good for us, because it toughened us up a little bit. We needed to go out and play punk rock clubs, being the garage band that we were. If we were going to bring all our skill to what we do, it would be good to be preaching our case to teenagers. One, it's more novel for them to hear melody. I want to get Charlotte Church to do some openers--she's a 13-year-old Welsh opera singer. 18-year-olds will listen to that, but they would never listen to some old fat lady. I'm kind of glad we were beat about in Chapel Hill and forced to state our case to audiences our age and younger.
ROBERT:
I was sick of those people and they knew it. I'd been in one of the loudest fastest bands around that didn't get me anywhere. There's not enough melodic music in the South. It's all rhythm-based.
LAUNCH:
Since you have become more successful, your lifestyle has probably changed a great deal. What temptations do you find yourself encountering?
BEN:
I'm not used to getting the things I want. I'm used to being afraid to ask for things because I know I won't get them. I've just now realized I can spend money and get things for it. It blows my mind. I bought a car. I've never bought a car before. Well, I've bought a car, but it was $300 and I've had it for years. But I just wrote a check for a nice car. You get in it, it runs, and it doesn't break down. That's weird to me. I set myself up to be 50 years old, to be absolutely broke, and to be playing in the corner of a room. It's hard to accept that it's working for you. I'm always afraid that it will be taken away and I won't be able to take it when I have to go back and play the taco joint down the street.
DARREN:
Well, I've got a fondness for traveling and staying in places that I wouldn't have had the opportunity to see. And going back and vacationing. But, you know, the one thing that always goes along with success in any career is desire, and you find yourself with more spending cash, and maybe you want to go get things and purchase things more than you ought to. You have to keep that in check.
ROBERT:
I've always been a big fan of water sports and boating. So I don't consider those cigar boats I bought to be risky or exorbitant or anything. I'll probably make the same amount next year that I spent on the boats last year. Once the music gets boring you can always go 150 mph in a boat.
LAUNCH:
If time and money weren't an issue, if you had an unlimited recording budget, what kind of record do you think you guys would make?
DARREN:
A terrible record. A worthless record. I think deadlines are what keep us focused. And although we push deadlines back, if you go in there and get lost, you lose track of what you were going for in the first place, you get hung up on something that doesn't matter. I like deadlines, because it signifies that you get to start again.
ROBERT:
I don't know. I think being in the studio is about capturing a moment. So if you had to capture every moment, it would be the most boring record ever made. But I could see taking a whole lot of time off to write a record. There's so much energy required to capture a two-year period, a six-month period. I can't imagine working too long. It would be too polished.
BEN:
I can't take time and money out of the process of making a record. Record-making is about surrendering to collaborating with your limitations. You can be intellectual about it and cause your own limitations if you want to. But the god of music and budgets--it's the same god--will come in and change something else for you. You can't have total control. Albums where people have more than 50% control over their own destiny are usually horrible. The best records are like Robert Johnson getting his last words out on a wire recorder in a hotel room.
LAUNCH:
In your travels, do you notice any similarities in your fans and how they respond to your music?
BEN:
For the most part, they're kind of like me. We have a very informal vibe about us; I think the people that connect, connect for the reason that they can identify. The most important thing it to just be yourself. When people come up and talk to me, I feel like I totally see myself in people. I remember a really cool Bruce Springsteen interview when he said the day you can't look in the audience and see yourself down there, you're washed-up. More and more I understand that.
ROBERT:
We have a fringe audience. It's not a rock audience. They're normal people culled from some fringe CD-buying club and they come out and see our shows. They're very aware of rock clichés and no matter how old they are, they still have this 15-year-old fear of rock clichés and groupiness. They stand around going, "Oh! Am I a groupie?"
DARREN:
I have noticed that most of the people who like our music have spent some time in a correctional facility. That seems to be the common thread. Outside of that, they seem like they might abuse drugs. But I'm not sure. They have that glazed-over look sometimes. I worry about them.
LAUNCH:
A lot has been written about you. Are there any misperceptions in the press about Ben Folds Five that you want to clear up now?
BEN:
I'm not comfortable with the amount of focus that inevitably has to go to me. I know that my name is in the band and I write the songs. It would totally be a different thing if it were me doing a solo thing. That's always a sore point. With this interview, you are talking to all three of us, which is cool, but normally people don't take the time to do that. I've had some specific misquotes that bothered me a lot, but I don't know about any misperceptions. I think there's more to what we do than even what's come close to being put on the bumper sticker. With us, a lot of people think we're some kind of Dead band, cabaret band, swing revival band, or we're like Jellyfish. Or we're "that 'Brick' band," which is cool.
ROBERT:
The greatest misconception of this band is that we're all enigmatic, fun-loving, very intelligent kids who graduated from college early on with honors scholarships, but we all just basically have attention deficit disorder. We're trying to be as sexy as possible. And we're trying to be as "in" and as cool as possible. But people have gotten that totally wrong. People think we're against everything that's cool, but we just want to hang out with people who are cool. Nobody's ever going to invite us to their crash pad to hang out on pillows to listen to Warren Zevon and Dionne Warwick records.
DARREN:
Well, yeah, there is one that's been weighing me down for years, and I'm glad you've given me the opportunity to speak about it. Because, in fact, I couldn't sleep last night thinking about it. We never, ever hit a cat and barbecued it before a gig in St. Louis. That never happened and I don't know who started that rumor. But it was a possum. They are edible if you like that. It's a little tough, but you don't just leave it sitting there. That's the main one I'd like to clear up for the record.
