Piano Punk: Ben Folds Talks the End of Ambition and the Imminent Death of the Industry
In the blog age, legacy musicians are an uncommon commodity, so how did Ben Folds carve a career?
Best known in the ’90s for dour radio hit “Brick,” Folds could have easily clocked out a one-hit wonder, but the long-time piano man has only gained momentum since parting ways with Ben Folds Five. That’s not to say he hasn’t been burned. While Folds’ trademark mash of hard-driving piano plunkers and introspective ballads remains the same, his recent albums betray a more weathered edge. As he describes it, he’s stopped catering to an industry that doesn’t necessarily understand itself.
And that’s opened him up to uncommon opportunities. Whether collaborating with spazzy screen star William Shatner, turning down John Mayer tunes, coordinating an a capella ensemble, going viral with Chatroulette vids, snapping photos for charity, or producing the likes of Amanda Palmer, Folds is increasingly all-consuming in his interests. Along that line, his newest album, Lonely Avenue, is a collaboration featuring lyrics by High Fidelity guru and literary sensation Nick Hornby
On the eve of the album’s release, MMN’s Andrew Phillips caught up with Folds for a candid, pleasantly winding conversation about the dark side of the music industry, the differences (and surprising similarities) between Nick Hornby and Willliam Shatner, and the (actual?) possibility of a Ben Folds Five reunion.
MMN: You’ve always had more of an organic fan base than big hits. Do you see a difference in the way you approach letting your fans know about a record like this, as opposed to the way you would have done in Ben Folds Five?
Ben Folds: You had to state your case and get jury approval just to put the record out to begin with. Some of us had more instant sway or intimidation power than others did. I know some artists got fucked with a lot more than others. It was like, “God this guy can’t even finish his record when his record company is in there changing the mix and adding musicians and changing producers.” Others like us just went in and recorded and they didn’t say anything.
MMN: Yeah?
BF: Still, even with that, you had a jury there and a committee and you had to pass it by all this stuff. But that’s what I always liked about live shows. As soon as the gig came we knew inherently what was right for us and what would work, and we just did it. And we got patted on the back for it every night. And you’d go into the meeting and they’d say, “That will never work.” “Yeah, but it worked every night.” “That’s different; it’s a live show…. You’re not going to be able to sell it to radio.” I never understood what they were talking about. And now you find out that actually they didn’t know what they were talking about because the industry is all in pieces and all the things that people said wouldn’t work, they work.
MMN: Maybe this is not just a one-off, but I know you’ve done a lot of collaboration and multi-disciplinary projects. Why have you been branching out so much. Is music losing some of the fulfillment?
BF: I suspect we will [do it again] because it was such a fun, easy thing for us. It didn’t hit a hitch or anything. I think we should do it… There’s something about making your first record that works. I put myself in the position of making my first record as much as I can. You’re slightly off balance but you’re excited about what’s gonna come out. It’s nice to do it and be able to stand sort of at the speakers and go, “Listen to that. Listen to what we just did. I can’t believe that’s come out. THAT WORKED!” You should be a little bit like that.
MMN: Was it not like that before?
BF: You make five records and you do what you did before and before and before. You’re gonna stand at the speakers and go, “Yep, that’s what I expected. That’s pretty good… or it’s not, whatever.” But doing things where you can jump up and down a little bit. A little bit of fear before you press play and hear it is good… I don’t expect anything to come of anything anymore. I do it and I don’t have an expectation. I don’t think. I mean, I expect to get to do the next thing. I think I’d be let down if someone knocked on my door and said, “You know, Folds, we just took your pass away because you just really need to shut the fuck up.” [laughing] That would bum me out. But I don’t have like commercially, critically – I don’t know.
MMN: Sort of art for art sake… Is this new for you?
BF: The waters were choppier to navigate artistically 15 years ago. It was harder. The reason was because as soon as someone said this guy or this girl could make a lot of money, they went into a system where everyone in their periphery in front of them, behind them was all focused on selling to the next person in the system, and there was no light at the end of the tunnel. So then you’re surrounded suddenly by people who you are dependent upon, whose feedback comes from some person in distribution or a radio consultant or someone who’s down the line and needs to make it a priority on some record chain or promoter.
MMN: Did that get to you?
BF: That really resonated with bands. At some point, you realized that most of your day was taken up trying to get through this system to finally reach that person at the end. The ambition is like being bottled up and the velocity is greater when it comes out. It was very difficult to navigate all that to me. Now it’s like, “Is that going to work?” “I’m not sure; let’s put it on the Internet and find out.” No one seems to know. That Chatroulette I did; I edited it on my laptop right after the show. I had 15 minutes worth of usable stuff. I edited down to five minutes, uploaded it on the bus, and woke up the next morning and it had 500,000 hits. Can you imagine the meeting that I would have had to have to get Sony to put that out?
MMN: Speaking of that, I always find it interesting to see you put out songs that are so serious, and then something like Fear of Pop is so jaunty and silly, or celebratory. Do you ever worry about the contradiction in that dynamic?
BF: When Whatever came along and I was writing more, there was a little bit, “This is a little weird. How are we going to deal with this?” because we don’t have anything in the middle. It’s either, “Wheeee!” or, “Oh my god the end is near.” I think we had sort of discussion that sort of went like this: “That’s the way life is, so why can’t it be like that on the record?” Cause it is, you make these jokes, then something horrible happens two seconds later. Or you’re in a very serous mood and you confess something, and then your friend starts laughing his ass off. It’s real. I don’t think that means people want to hear it on records, but I guess that’s just where I’ve stuck.
MMN: Your collaborators are pretty all over the map. Nick Hornby versus working with, say, William Shatner. Is there something similar that you find attractive? Or were you attracted by the differences?
BF: I perceive them both to be islands. I don’t see that either one of them are in something you could call a scene. That’s attractive to me because it’s just fierce individualism. Like Al Yankovic. He is an island. There is no one else doing that. It’s hard to understand how much of a liability someone’s uniqueness really is. Because especially when you’re starting out – I’m sure Al’s career was pronounced dead every time he came out with a record. Then he’s huge and no one remembers that he might have been worried that he was going to have to go back to a day job after the record. Because who would have thought that was going to last? The same for Shatner.
MMN: Every time Shatner goes down, he pops up in 20 other ways.
BF: That’s right. He just can’t help it. He’s just who he is. I think what drew me to Nick and what drew me to Shatner are kind of actually similar in some ways in that Shatner hadn’t told his story. He’d told everyone else’s story. He’d been cops and captain and lawyers and all kinds of shit, but he hadn’t really been himself. To me, when he came to me and said, “I want to make a record and here’s what they want to do” – it was covering Madonna songs and stuff and being silly – I just said, “well listen, I’m not involved in this record, but I really think you should just tell the truth and be yourself. I think that’s more interesting at 75 years old, to take the power of your career, you celebrity, you life, your talent and let it all come out for the first time.” He gets to make his first record and that’s triple powerful. And the same with Nick. He’s making his first record. Amanda Palmer was embarking on a solo career which she found scary.
MMN: I spoke with her as well, and she was very frightened of that leap.
BF: Yeah, and those are all things that I’m drawn to. I’ve had a lot of kind and flattering offers to produce stuff that I just didn’t – I’ve never really analyzed why I said no and why I said yes to different things. For awhile, the joke was that if I turned your song down, it was going to be a huge international hit. John Mayer’s people called up on his first record and said, “Could you play piano on this one song?” I listened to it and said, “It’s not my cup of tea.” And then it was huge. I was on tour and I heard it in every single country I played in. I thought, “Well I guess it’s probably my cup of tea now.” [laughing]. I don’t know what it is. I guess I have no gauge for what’s going to be successful, but I do have a gauge for what’s going to be exciting.
MMN: I’ve been listening to you for a long time, but I can’t believe I’ve had never come across the wording exactly like this. In this old quote you explained the Ben Folds days as punk rock for sissies. I wonder if you still think in that way….
BF: The discussion was about punk rock, but I was like, “We’re kind of like that, but it’s punk rock for sissies.” We felt a lot of pressure to be the piano band that rocked so much that I think that we all became slightly depressed at the way we approached our instruments by the time we finished the band. Darren, the drummer, was just bashing to cymbals trying to make as much noise as he could, and Robert was sticking to his fuzz tone a lot, and I was playing every note on the piano. And we all sort of felt like we were never relaxing. It was all just sort of drowning musically. That’s the way we felt.
MMN: That’s interesting because it didn’t necessarily sound that way…
BF: I listen to it and I don’t hear it that way anymore, but that’s the way it felt. There was always the pressure of the performance. The era was about ambition; “We came to rock GOD DAMNIT!” The ’90s was like, “Hit it as hard as you could” — a lot of really loud musicianship and a lot of really unhappy, fucked up people. And mean stuff. Then guys came along that started something like Sufjan Stevens in another wave afterward, and it’s just so much kinder and quieter. Elliott Smith was one of the turning points there. “Actually, you know what. Shhhhhh. Be quiet. I can’t think.” Then you couldn’t say anything. My last record had some edgy bits to it sometimes – they were done in humor. That would have been a great record to have come out five-to-10 years before or five-to-10 years after. But it’s like, “Chill duuuuude. Everyone’s cool. Just be nice.”
MMN: I got very excited when you guys did the one-off reunion show [a full performance of The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner]. Is that something that could happen again?
BF: The politics of recording artists, it’s pretty tough to balance. Someone asked me, “Why on earth did you play that thing for Hillary Clinton?” I was like, “Well She asked me.” Giuliani wasn’t gonna ask me. I have the same answer, which is the Ben Folds Five thing. Fans say it, but MySpace called up and asked if we’d do it. I thought, “Oh, I hadn’t thought about that.” I got right on the phone and called Robert and Darren, and they were like, “Yeah, that’s cool, when is it?” We showed up and played. [laughing] We haven’t talked about doing anything since, but it was a lot of fun. We played our asses off actually. We may do something like that again some day. I don’t know. If something comes up that makes sense, and they have time and I have time. There’s no grudges or anything.
