Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Ben Folds

Transcript

Ben Folds · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is broken record liner notes for the Digital Age.
0:26
Speaker 1: I'm justin Richmondson. Hey y'all. We'll be back on our
0:34
Speaker 1: normal schedule next week, dropping new episodes on Tuesday, but
0:38
Speaker 1: we wanted to share with you an episode we didn't
0:39
Speaker 1: get a chance to run last year but still really enjoyed.
0:43
Speaker 1: It's Bruce Headlam speaking to singer, songwriter, pianist nineties alt
0:46
Speaker 1: rocker Ben Folds. Folds is best known for the music
0:50
Speaker 1: he put out with The ben Folds Five in the
0:52
Speaker 1: mid nineties, particularly for the song Brick, which was a
0:55
Speaker 1: bit of a surprise hit in nineteen ninety eight. Who
0:58
Speaker 1: was also known for his onstage antics, like smashing a
1:01
Speaker 1: priceless Steinway piano on national TV in Australia that got
1:04
Speaker 1: him dropped from a Steinway endorsement. Folds talks with Bruce
1:08
Speaker 1: about the genesis of these angsty stage antics, and also
1:11
Speaker 1: about the making of the song Brick, and other anecdotes
1:13
Speaker 1: gleaned from the book he wrote about his life and craft,
1:16
Speaker 1: called A Dream About Lightning Books. Enjoy this episode. It
1:20
Speaker 1: was taped pre pandemic, so Bruce and Folds are on
1:22
Speaker 1: the same studio and we'll see you next week. You
1:25
Speaker 1: mentioned in the book that you are both a hard
1:28
Speaker 1: worker and completely undisciplined. Right now, you've written an enormous
1:32
Speaker 1: number of songs. Your last record also had a piano concerto.
1:36
Speaker 1: You've written different kinds of music. What was it like
1:39
Speaker 1: writing a book as opposed to writing songs? Interestingly, I
1:44
Speaker 1: found discipline writing the book that I hadn't found in
1:47
Speaker 1: writing songs. And I think it actually came down to
1:51
Speaker 1: something I had read Stephen King said about if you
1:53
Speaker 1: want to write a book, sit down in the morning,
1:57
Speaker 1: shut the door and write two or three thousand words
2:01
Speaker 1: that should get chupped about two o'clock, go get lunch
2:03
Speaker 1: and forget about it. And I thought, oh, well, he
2:06
Speaker 1: knows how to write a book. I'll just do that.
2:09
Speaker 1: And I went to my office, shut the door, and
2:12
Speaker 1: I wrote for three or four hours, like Stephen King said. Now,
2:14
Speaker 1: I've never written music that way. So that is discipline
2:16
Speaker 1: that I found. But I think it is a distinction.
2:20
Speaker 1: I work hard, not because I was taught discipline or
2:23
Speaker 1: I have a good knack for discipline. I'm just simply driven.
2:27
Speaker 1: And I think that's a harder way to do it.
2:28
Speaker 1: I think it's better if you have a Sergeant Rock
2:30
Speaker 1: inside guilting the hell out of you if you're not
2:33
Speaker 1: getting up early in the morning and doing your sit
2:35
Speaker 1: ups in your meditation and then going straight into the
2:38
Speaker 1: room right in your morning page. It's not all that stuff.
2:40
Speaker 1: I think that's a that's an enviable thing. But when
2:43
Speaker 1: it comes to music, I'm awful. I have to have
2:45
Speaker 1: the deadline after have people breathing down my knack. That
2:47
Speaker 1: has to be a drama about I'm not going to
2:49
Speaker 1: turn it in on time. And it's the worst thing
2:51
Speaker 1: I've ever written, and you can't make me turn it
2:53
Speaker 1: in on time. And I'm going to take this from
2:55
Speaker 1: my goal. Cold dead fingers and all this. I just
2:58
Speaker 1: you know, but the book everything I got in before time.
3:02
Speaker 1: I drove the project and I was disciplined. Have you
3:06
Speaker 1: tried to apply that to music since or just it
3:08
Speaker 1: does just a different thing doesn't work. I don't know.
3:11
Speaker 1: It's it's hard to it's hard to turn that around.
3:13
Speaker 1: It's hard to turn you know, like not spring Chicken.
3:18
Speaker 1: I've got my drama habits. I have to be late
3:20
Speaker 1: with my projects and all this stuff. It's just the
3:22
Speaker 1: way I seem to roll. I did try. I mean
3:25
Speaker 1: I put in my calendar, I'll put a little music signs.
3:28
Speaker 1: I drew them all over my calendar for this year.
3:30
Speaker 1: These are the days I'm going to write music because
3:32
Speaker 1: I thought I would learn from my book writing that
3:34
Speaker 1: I've done it. Now that done nothing. No, I'm terrible. Okay, yeah,
3:39
Speaker 1: well it's different. It's not terrible. Trying to say terrible.
3:41
Speaker 1: I find it. I judge it terrible, but thank you.
3:46
Speaker 1: I'll take that in Speaking of judging. Uh, you know,
3:49
Speaker 1: I remember when you first came out with a lot
3:50
Speaker 1: of people thought, well, you know, he's like a college guy. Yeah,
3:54
Speaker 1: which was It is never a compliment when it comes
3:56
Speaker 1: to rock music because people somehow think college it's rock
3:59
Speaker 1: music out of you. But you would have really chaotic
4:03
Speaker 1: yeah upbringing, you know, and your family head chaos. Going back,
4:08
Speaker 1: your your and your grandmother were both left at orphanages
4:11
Speaker 1: for a time. Your grandfather threatened to kill your father
4:14
Speaker 1: at some point. What was it like growing up in
4:18
Speaker 1: that kind of atmosphere. Well, you know, the reason that
4:21
Speaker 1: I put a lot of that stuff in was if
4:24
Speaker 1: I was going to say, I would like to teach
4:27
Speaker 1: people about creativity, but I'm not an expert on creativity
4:31
Speaker 1: outside of my own. So it's like, Okay, well, the
4:33
Speaker 1: best way to do this is to tell how I
4:36
Speaker 1: did it. But then it's like you almost kind of
4:39
Speaker 1: want to do a little almost ethnographic study of how
4:42
Speaker 1: did I get there? And so I looked back at
4:45
Speaker 1: the momentum that had propelled me into being a person
4:50
Speaker 1: that that how I was born, what I was born into,
4:53
Speaker 1: and what I see is an incredible firewall that my
4:58
Speaker 1: parents threw up between their abusive upbringings and mine. Incredible.
5:07
Speaker 1: I mean, they say the cycles is impossible to breakers,
5:10
Speaker 1: very difficult break. My parents show that to be wrong,
5:13
Speaker 1: I mean, and they had me very young, and it's
5:16
Speaker 1: the clean slate which is part of the part of
5:21
Speaker 1: the chaos of my upbringing. So the fact that all
5:23
Speaker 1: that stuff happened and was of interest in all this
5:26
Speaker 1: energy of craziness in my parents upbringing and then boom
5:30
Speaker 1: it comes to my brother and I are are born,
5:34
Speaker 1: and they just played it all by ear and cut
5:36
Speaker 1: all that off. And I think that that I felt
5:38
Speaker 1: that like I've felt the upbringings of my father being
5:41
Speaker 1: held up at knife point and gunpoint, and my grandfather
5:44
Speaker 1: killed himself. But I never really met my grandfather, and
5:46
Speaker 1: I wasn't around for those things, but it does by
5:49
Speaker 1: osmosis sink in, and you know that that we moved
5:52
Speaker 1: every years. You know, my father just probably clean slate
5:57
Speaker 1: in it every year, trying to survive, you know. I
5:59
Speaker 1: mean a lot of people don't survive mentally what he
6:02
Speaker 1: went through and he did so, like amazingly. Was it
6:07
Speaker 1: responsible for a bit of your a year drive and
6:09
Speaker 1: be on the other hand, your lack of discipline, Well,
6:12
Speaker 1: I think my lack of discipline was the trade off
6:16
Speaker 1: for my parents being so open minded. So, like, what's
6:20
Speaker 1: today going to be? I don't know, it's no schedule.
6:22
Speaker 1: Did you get to school? You got to school. That's good. Oh,
6:26
Speaker 1: you liked that song on the radio. Well, you don't
6:28
Speaker 1: have to go to school until noon. You can listen
6:30
Speaker 1: to that song. You liked that song. Yeah, you told
6:32
Speaker 1: the story. Your mother let you stay late because you
6:35
Speaker 1: liked the song in the ray Paul Simon song called
6:37
Speaker 1: love Me Like a Rock. I love that song. I
6:40
Speaker 1: was waiting for that to come on since six in
6:41
Speaker 1: the morning. I woke up early, had my transistor radio
6:44
Speaker 1: on the ear. I had requested at the radio station.
6:46
Speaker 1: They said they were going to play it. Seven o'clock
6:48
Speaker 1: rolled around, they still hadn't played it. Eight o'clock and
6:51
Speaker 1: then I'm like, they haven't played the song, but they're
6:53
Speaker 1: gonna play it after commercial ms. I find I don't
6:56
Speaker 1: have to go to school. It's wonderful, it's great, but
6:58
Speaker 1: it's not exactly a discipline lifestyle. No, But you were
7:01
Speaker 1: very driven from an early age on the piano. Yeah. Yeah,
7:06
Speaker 1: And as you describe it in the book, you would
7:09
Speaker 1: listen to your radio at night, yeah, and then you
7:12
Speaker 1: would get up and you didn't I don't quite understand.
7:16
Speaker 1: You said you didn't play by ear, but you somehow
7:18
Speaker 1: fumbled through to figure out the song. So what was that? Well,
7:21
Speaker 1: I didn't really get there. That's the problem is that
7:24
Speaker 1: that's not where I arrived. Like I listened to the
7:26
Speaker 1: radio and I would hear these songs like a real
7:28
Speaker 1: simple one, that lou Rawl song that goes you'll never
7:31
Speaker 1: find simple all that is is. But I couldn't find it,
7:40
Speaker 1: you know, because you don't know what you're looking for.
7:41
Speaker 1: As a kid, I never had a vocabulary early on
7:45
Speaker 1: to learn other people's songs. So even though I wanted to,
7:47
Speaker 1: and I mentioned that in the book, that. Yeah, I'm
7:49
Speaker 1: going to play all these songs when I wake up.
7:51
Speaker 1: There is actually a method. I believe you should learn
7:55
Speaker 1: to play by ear. It's not something that just happens
7:58
Speaker 1: out of thin air. And I found it very frustrating.
8:01
Speaker 1: That's why I broke a lot of stuff growing up.
8:02
Speaker 1: I threw a lot of fits when I was a kid.
8:05
Speaker 1: I threw my punched holes in walls, I broke furniture
8:09
Speaker 1: in trouble constantly for it. Because I couldn't play something
8:12
Speaker 1: on the piano. I would listen to it and go, oh,
8:13
Speaker 1: I should be able to play that. Well, where do
8:16
Speaker 1: you start? I never knew, And so what were you
8:19
Speaker 1: playing in those days you weren't playing? I would find
8:22
Speaker 1: that was the song lou roll song. That's right, you're
8:25
Speaker 1: gonna miss my singing. I love that song? Yeah, um yeah,
8:31
Speaker 1: I mean I ended up finding my own songs, you know.
8:35
Speaker 1: I would search for things and try to play. Started
8:38
Speaker 1: off doing a lot of noise, you know, which I
8:40
Speaker 1: would recommend for kids. I actually think it's really good.
8:43
Speaker 1: It's like throwing your food or putting your hands in
8:45
Speaker 1: food when you were like, you know, eighteen months old
8:47
Speaker 1: or something. That's something you should probably do um. And
8:51
Speaker 1: then I would, you know, I would start to find
8:53
Speaker 1: things that I could that I could play it, and
8:55
Speaker 1: I made them up, like I remember one that went
9:04
Speaker 1: that's really it was based around a little theme like
9:07
Speaker 1: that I'm trying to play like a child. And I
9:23
Speaker 1: mean I made that up when I was about eight
9:25
Speaker 1: or nine, and it's got interesting chords in it and
9:27
Speaker 1: it's cool. But I wasn't finding I wasn't able to find,
9:31
Speaker 1: you know, the Elton John song I might want to find.
9:34
Speaker 1: To this day, I can play one of his songs
9:37
Speaker 1: on the pianos because I learned it to play with him,
9:39
Speaker 1: and I had to really work at it. I don't
9:41
Speaker 1: learn other people's stuff very well. I found my own stuff,
9:45
Speaker 1: and I found years later Elton John talked to you
9:48
Speaker 1: how to play one of his songs. Now I learned
9:50
Speaker 1: it myself. I was just like, we're He's like, let's
9:52
Speaker 1: play a tiny dancer together, and so I learned it.
9:56
Speaker 1: I learned a couple other of his songs actually, come
9:58
Speaker 1: to think of it, because I did a couple of
9:59
Speaker 1: gigs with him, but they were always really had to
10:01
Speaker 1: put the time into it, because you know, like someone
10:05
Speaker 1: like Rufus wain Rice is really really confident about his singing.
10:10
Speaker 1: You know, he's such a great singer. And I remember
10:12
Speaker 1: we both did a thing with Elton in a Broadway
10:15
Speaker 1: theater where we were playing Goodbye Yell Brick Road in
10:19
Speaker 1: his entirety and Jake from Scissor Sisters, and there's a
10:22
Speaker 1: couple of things, a really neat little show, and I
10:25
Speaker 1: was to sign two of his songs, and I worked
10:28
Speaker 1: on it for two days, all day long in the hotel,
10:31
Speaker 1: and then when I got there, I realized that all
10:34
Speaker 1: all Rufus was doing it was just reading off the teleprompter.
10:37
Speaker 1: He didn't really know the song. Rufus didn't know the
10:40
Speaker 1: song Goodbye Yell Brick Road. He just kind of didn't
10:43
Speaker 1: know it. He was just reading the words and his
10:45
Speaker 1: melody was coming out as he just kind of thought
10:47
Speaker 1: he should do it. And I remember thinking, God, I
10:50
Speaker 1: worked so hard. They're trying to find that and he's
10:53
Speaker 1: killing it. But he's just doing his own thing. You know,
10:56
Speaker 1: even though I seem cavalier as a musician, when there's
11:00
Speaker 1: something I need to do, i'd really try hard to
11:02
Speaker 1: find it, and I work hard to find it, you know, right,
11:04
Speaker 1: this is the hard worker. The hard work necessarily discipline.
11:08
Speaker 1: If I had been disciplined, I would have learned how
11:10
Speaker 1: to actually learn. But I didn't learn how to learn.
11:12
Speaker 1: I have to like sit down and figure that out.
11:15
Speaker 1: You were also a drummer when you were young. Yea,
11:17
Speaker 1: and you say at some point in the book that
11:19
Speaker 1: you you sort of played the piano like a drummer. Yes.
11:23
Speaker 1: Can you show me what you mean by that? Yeah? Well,
11:25
Speaker 1: there's two things that are really lucky about the way
11:29
Speaker 1: my piano playing developed. Because I was I did have
11:33
Speaker 1: a lot of lessons, and I did study percussion, So
11:38
Speaker 1: my percussion chops pretty real. My piano stuff is really spotty.
11:43
Speaker 1: Think why when I start to talk about my development
11:45
Speaker 1: on the piano, I really kind of go into outer space.
11:49
Speaker 1: I can't really explain it, you know, like we've been
11:51
Speaker 1: talking about it. I'd say I've the least articulate about that.
11:53
Speaker 1: If I'm if I'm explaining percussion drums, Oh yeah, I
11:56
Speaker 1: can do that. What I play and what's common from
12:00
Speaker 1: my eras as a battery percussionist is called left hand lead,
12:04
Speaker 1: and it's left hand lead because people marched, so all
12:08
Speaker 1: of the what they call the rudiments of percussion called
12:13
Speaker 1: funny things like radom accuse and paradiddles. I don't know
12:16
Speaker 1: if you've heard flamma diddles. All this stuff is all military,
12:21
Speaker 1: but it's actually really good for putting you through the paces.
12:23
Speaker 1: But it's a left hand lead when most people aren't
12:26
Speaker 1: left handed. That's because you march left right, left right,
12:29
Speaker 1: and that's why we do that. So I was learning
12:32
Speaker 1: percussion totally left hand lead like I was supposed to,
12:36
Speaker 1: which has really great benefit for the piano. For for instance,
12:41
Speaker 1: you know, just going left or right, it's like just
12:46
Speaker 1: to play rock and roll music, I'm not grounded at
12:48
Speaker 1: the top of the piano. It's always going to happen
12:50
Speaker 1: at the bottom first. And that might seem small, but
12:53
Speaker 1: you know, to me, to hear my groove on the piano,
12:57
Speaker 1: well it's much better than most piano players, just because
13:00
Speaker 1: even if they were drummers, they might be more right handed,
13:03
Speaker 1: but because I was trained that way. So on the piano,
13:06
Speaker 1: for instance, if you're if you're a common right handed drummer,
13:11
Speaker 1: you're working against the left handed lead method, which means
13:15
Speaker 1: a lot of drum set players actually aren't. They're right handed,
13:18
Speaker 1: they're not exactly uh trained or skilled at at sort
13:25
Speaker 1: of stick control. Like most professional drummers I see, even
13:28
Speaker 1: really great ones. If you have them do a buzz role,
13:30
Speaker 1: it's really sketchy. It's not that good. Mine was kind
13:33
Speaker 1: of perfect after the first year of of of playing
13:36
Speaker 1: acause that was really serious about anyway. So so when
13:39
Speaker 1: when they when they go to play a ride pattern, okay, uh,
13:43
Speaker 1: this is all gonna get out of out when this
13:46
Speaker 1: is the stuff we love really Okay, if you're playing
13:49
Speaker 1: a ride pattern, you're a right handed drummer, you know
13:52
Speaker 1: that your right hand is going on the symbol or
13:54
Speaker 1: the high is going and then your left hand is
14:00
Speaker 1: on the snare drunk going to dot and you're let's see,
14:05
Speaker 1: it's your right foot is playing the bass drums. You're
14:08
Speaker 1: leading with your right foot right, left, right, left right,
14:12
Speaker 1: staring kick, staring right left. You're not going left, right,
14:16
Speaker 1: left right. I enjoyed already going left right, left, right
14:20
Speaker 1: because I had that old school stuff in my training,
14:22
Speaker 1: which was kind of unusual for said drummer. Then when
14:25
Speaker 1: you translate that to piano, then my left hand is
14:28
Speaker 1: the ride symbol right. So when I play a left
14:30
Speaker 1: handed kit, which is what I do, I'm a left
14:32
Speaker 1: handed drummer, my left hand is riding, which is very unusual,
14:36
Speaker 1: But for a piano player, it's a dream because I'm
14:38
Speaker 1: going with my left hand and I'm completely grounded that way,
14:44
Speaker 1: and if I wanted to go, I can. I can
14:52
Speaker 1: play syncope because I always have a root in my
14:55
Speaker 1: right hand hitting the downbeat. And most piano players are
15:00
Speaker 1: viewing this as a lot of different events like they're
15:03
Speaker 1: they're they're viewing it. That's one event. To me, just
15:07
Speaker 1: land on my left foot and I'm fine. That's That's
15:17
Speaker 1: easy for me because I've played left hand lead, left
15:21
Speaker 1: hand drums set and when I applied that to piano.
15:23
Speaker 1: With my piano concerto, the hardest things to do in
15:26
Speaker 1: it are just simply drummer things, left right rhythm things.
15:30
Speaker 1: You know, a piano player might find the piece difficult
15:32
Speaker 1: sometimes only because of the left right, left right stuff.
15:39
Speaker 1: For a piano player, they would expect more beautiful runs. Well,
15:43
Speaker 1: I don't really have an articulate beautiful run. I'm a
15:46
Speaker 1: percussive piano player. So my piano concerto starts with this
15:53
Speaker 1: and that, and all that is is just playing drums.
15:56
Speaker 1: I'm just going and it doesn't take much for me,
16:07
Speaker 1: but if I had to go, it's not a good scale.
16:13
Speaker 1: I'm not very good at that. Wow. Now, when you
16:17
Speaker 1: listen to other players, can you hear are there other
16:19
Speaker 1: left handed piano players you can hear and see? There
16:23
Speaker 1: are some piano players that are just more rooted in
16:27
Speaker 1: a drum set and they sound like that to me too.
16:30
Speaker 1: That come hit me from the top of head. Are
16:34
Speaker 1: Stevie Wonder when he plays drums and he plays piano
16:39
Speaker 1: that sounds very similar to me. And he said, and
16:42
Speaker 1: I don't think he probably plays left handed, but I
16:45
Speaker 1: suppose and from what I've heard, I've never seen him
16:47
Speaker 1: play drums that he's all over the shop because he
16:51
Speaker 1: can't see what he's doing. So he don't think he
16:54
Speaker 1: plays like a left or right handed drummer. So the
16:56
Speaker 1: left handed thing wouldn't come in, but the drum set
16:58
Speaker 1: thing definitely like you hear him play piano that sounds
17:01
Speaker 1: like a drum set. And I don't know if Billy
17:03
Speaker 1: Preston played drums or not, but he had a relentless
17:09
Speaker 1: groove at the keyboard, the kind that you don't hear
17:12
Speaker 1: many players these days have. And and I hate to
17:16
Speaker 1: you know I'm a different style and everything, and this
17:19
Speaker 1: is gonna sound very cocky, but I would place myself
17:21
Speaker 1: in that kind of in that small group of keyboard
17:26
Speaker 1: players that can actually play in time. If I would
17:29
Speaker 1: talk to people who played with you, what would they
17:32
Speaker 1: say about your sense of timing. Well, everyone's so damn opinionated.
17:37
Speaker 1: They think their time is perfect, So no one's going
17:40
Speaker 1: to completely agree with me. But I think most musicians
17:43
Speaker 1: would say I have good time as a As a
17:47
Speaker 1: piano player, I probably lean forward a little bit, so
17:50
Speaker 1: you're you're on top of the beating. I think I'm
17:52
Speaker 1: a little bit on top of the beat. But it
17:54
Speaker 1: depends on the song. I mean, I play solo piano
17:57
Speaker 1: so much, I'm allowed to play with the time, and
17:59
Speaker 1: I know that sometimes I choose to really pull it back.
18:02
Speaker 1: There's a song called still Finding It. When I get
18:04
Speaker 1: to the chorus and it's like, it's been about this
18:09
Speaker 1: tempo everybody. Oh, it's gone through this. Sorry, it's gone
18:15
Speaker 1: through that. Everybody established to get to the course. I'm
18:31
Speaker 1: just pulling back, especially on the twos and fours. That's
18:33
Speaker 1: just down right weird. Uh, That that one. I played
18:37
Speaker 1: all the instruments on the record, and I had a
18:39
Speaker 1: very concerned producers like, you're dragging so bad. So we
18:43
Speaker 1: re reprogrammed, you know, the grid to slow it down
18:50
Speaker 1: like five clicks. So it had to be programmed into
18:53
Speaker 1: the computer that I insisted at the computer following me
18:56
Speaker 1: and slow down. I like a time map like that.
18:58
Speaker 1: I think it is smart. We'll be right back with
19:01
Speaker 1: more from Ben Folds. We're back with Bruce Hedland's converse
19:09
Speaker 1: with Ben Folds, So I want to switch a little
19:13
Speaker 1: bit and talk about your lyrics. We haven't exhausted rhythm rhythm, uh,
19:22
Speaker 1: and we'll come back to it. But it's interesting you're
19:25
Speaker 1: We've talked a lot to a lot of singer songwriters
19:29
Speaker 1: on this show who hate the kind of label the
19:32
Speaker 1: confessional singer songwriter. No one's hung that on you, but
19:38
Speaker 1: you've written some incredibly deeply personal lyrics. Yeah. I think
19:47
Speaker 1: maybe part of the reason that hasn't been hung on
19:48
Speaker 1: me is I don't even think until recently, the words
19:52
Speaker 1: songwriter has been hung on me a lot. I think
19:55
Speaker 1: that I started off by treating the songs with almost disrespect,
19:59
Speaker 1: that my band distorted over them. We played too fast,
20:03
Speaker 1: we covered things up, we over arranged kind of because
20:07
Speaker 1: that was exciting to us. Saw that would have been
20:11
Speaker 1: if they were a Barry Manilow song or an Elton
20:13
Speaker 1: Johnson we were very seventies kind of those songs would
20:17
Speaker 1: have been treated with such respect, space for the vocal,
20:21
Speaker 1: you know, proper, proper production treatment. But we just stopped
20:24
Speaker 1: through them because that was the punk rock era and
20:27
Speaker 1: in a way we were maybe ashamed of the of
20:30
Speaker 1: the overthinking of the songs as a result. Kind of,
20:34
Speaker 1: I feel like in my career people didn't. Really my
20:36
Speaker 1: fans did, but in general I never really saw myself
20:40
Speaker 1: mentioned that often kind of as a songwriter. First usually
20:45
Speaker 1: it was about the showmanship or my piano playing, or
20:48
Speaker 1: the band, the fact that we didn't have a guitar.
20:51
Speaker 1: And then there was you know, a brick as brick
20:54
Speaker 1: as a hit, maybe about the fact that it was
20:55
Speaker 1: about an abortion, but not about the writing of it.
20:59
Speaker 1: Then you'd see someone I don't know, like like ohmy
21:02
Speaker 1: have mine, like Ryan Adams always talking about a songwriting,
21:05
Speaker 1: or Jeff Tweedy and always talking about their songwriting. So
21:08
Speaker 1: I don't really I think maybe some of it is
21:10
Speaker 1: because I was so cavalier about it that no matter
21:13
Speaker 1: what kind of song I wrote, that wasn't front and
21:16
Speaker 1: center of what people have talked about, So that that
21:18
Speaker 1: does make a difference, I think in perception. Also, my
21:22
Speaker 1: instinct was that if you're writing a song, and this
21:24
Speaker 1: is where I do a lot of thinking, if you're
21:26
Speaker 1: writing a song that is against someone like you did
21:30
Speaker 1: this and you did that, it's a real finger pointy song.
21:34
Speaker 1: We all way too often we demonize the person we're
21:39
Speaker 1: pointing the finger at. There are no redeeming qualities that person.
21:42
Speaker 1: And I love Fiona Apple, but like listening to a
21:44
Speaker 1: lot of songs, I mean the person she's singing about
21:47
Speaker 1: half the time that this maybe may as well be satan.
21:49
Speaker 1: I have a feeling if I met the guy, I
21:51
Speaker 1: could have a beer with him and actually find redeeming qualities.
21:54
Speaker 1: So although I think she's amazing at writing that I
21:57
Speaker 1: never personally wanted to do that, I think that that
22:00
Speaker 1: that you will get looked at more as a confessional
22:02
Speaker 1: singer songwriter. If you make a cartoon out of yourself,
22:06
Speaker 1: I should say in the book you explained people though
22:09
Speaker 1: the song Brick that it really was it was based
22:11
Speaker 1: on her. Yes, a real time in your life, your
22:14
Speaker 1: girlfriend and senior year high school was pregnant. Ye, you
22:18
Speaker 1: decided having abortions very troubling time for you, awful. I
22:23
Speaker 1: didn't realize the degree to which a lot of the
22:27
Speaker 1: writing was taken from real life. But I don't know
22:30
Speaker 1: how you came up with it. Musically, that's an interesting one.
22:34
Speaker 1: It goes against and that's why I said, I don't
22:36
Speaker 1: know what the hell I'm talking about. When I try
22:37
Speaker 1: to describe myself. It's the opposite of what I've been saying.
22:41
Speaker 1: I mean, brick is is exactly what happened in high
22:45
Speaker 1: school with a rhyme to it. So I just did
22:47
Speaker 1: the opposite with them. But as I say, the couple
22:49
Speaker 1: times i've I've been very sort of literal and more confessional.
22:53
Speaker 1: They have been successful. You know. A song like Brick
22:57
Speaker 1: was about sitting down my my my friend, the drummer
23:00
Speaker 1: Darren Jesse had the chorus, which is a brick and
23:04
Speaker 1: I'm drawn it. He had that and he was like,
23:07
Speaker 1: I think that's a good churuse, what do you think.
23:08
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, I think it's great. What does it mean?
23:10
Speaker 1: Because I have no idea? Huh okay? And I literally
23:14
Speaker 1: heat the lyrics as well. Head lyrics as well. It
23:15
Speaker 1: was just She's a brick and I'm drowned slowly off
23:19
Speaker 1: the coast, headed nowhere. That was four short lines. That's
23:24
Speaker 1: the whole song that he had written, or that's the
23:25
Speaker 1: whole contribution. Happens to be the chorus, happens to have
23:29
Speaker 1: made it a hit, huge contribution. But then I thought,
23:33
Speaker 1: what does this make me feel? Like? I felt like that,
23:40
Speaker 1: you know, slowed down a little bit, and then you
23:42
Speaker 1: know his and so this occurred to me, and then
23:56
Speaker 1: I just felt like telling the story of what happened
23:58
Speaker 1: in high school. It just all came to me really
23:59
Speaker 1: really fast, like the story of what happened. I almost
24:03
Speaker 1: considered an experiment, I think, to to write bone headed
24:09
Speaker 1: about what happened. But I didn't see any other way
24:11
Speaker 1: to do that song. And I had cover now because
24:13
Speaker 1: I had this ambiguous chorus. It's funny that a lot
24:17
Speaker 1: of times I'll have like suddenly i'll see my Twitter
24:20
Speaker 1: blow up and it'll be all these people who have
24:23
Speaker 1: like maybe the topic of the day's abortion, and they're
24:29
Speaker 1: pretty critical of me. They're pretty mean, actually, people I
24:33
Speaker 1: don't know saying ky this guy made a million bucks
24:36
Speaker 1: singing about his girlfriend's abortion. He made her do and
24:39
Speaker 1: he hates her guts, and he's sending her out to
24:41
Speaker 1: the ocean and all this stuff. And they've read all
24:43
Speaker 1: this stuff into the lyrics, and I think about the
24:45
Speaker 1: actual circumstances and how much care there was between the
24:50
Speaker 1: two of us, and what a decision that was, and
24:51
Speaker 1: how not black and white the world is, and I
24:54
Speaker 1: see this come through. But often what seems to bother
25:00
Speaker 1: than the most is the chorus. Well, Darren wrote the
25:03
Speaker 1: chorus in a vacuum, and I just took the feeling
25:06
Speaker 1: of it and went with it. It's actually probably a
25:09
Speaker 1: pretty seemful bad method of throwing a song together. It's
25:17
Speaker 1: very haphazard. I just took that chorus, which I don't
25:20
Speaker 1: still even understand, but it made me feel something, so
25:23
Speaker 1: I went with that. As a songwriter, sometimes where you know,
25:26
Speaker 1: they say, you know, you don't learn how to write
25:28
Speaker 1: a book, You learn how to write the book you're on.
25:30
Speaker 1: So on that song, I'm like, how do you write
25:32
Speaker 1: a song? Well, I don't know. This makes me feel this,
25:34
Speaker 1: and I'll just go with it. It was on the
25:35
Speaker 1: record before I could even really protest the idea that
25:39
Speaker 1: I had written something so personal. I just needed another
25:41
Speaker 1: song for the record, and I felt that out of
25:43
Speaker 1: that and there you go. Luckily, I feel like the
25:46
Speaker 1: song lyrics that are in the verse are so true
25:50
Speaker 1: to what happened that I feel like I don't feel
25:53
Speaker 1: like I'm going to be sent to some some some
25:56
Speaker 1: kind of you know, social movement, hell or anything for
26:00
Speaker 1: that song at this point, just simply because I was
26:03
Speaker 1: just telling the truth. And I feel like at the
26:05
Speaker 1: end of the day that that does weigh something. You
26:09
Speaker 1: have a great quote which I want to read. There's many,
26:12
Speaker 1: many great parts of this book. I encourage everybody to
26:15
Speaker 1: read it. I'm going to read just a couple of
26:19
Speaker 1: lines which I think to me really jumped out. From
26:23
Speaker 1: time to time, we all catch a split second glance
26:27
Speaker 1: of a stranger in a storefront window before realizing it's
26:30
Speaker 1: our own reflection. A songwriter's job is to see that guy,
26:35
Speaker 1: not the one posing straight on in the bathroom mirror.
26:38
Speaker 1: I feel like a song has to have moments that
26:42
Speaker 1: snuck up on you the way that I described it,
26:44
Speaker 1: That's the way I see it. Because you'll see someone
26:46
Speaker 1: in a storefront, you will think, you'll think something about them.
26:50
Speaker 1: You might think Kyle, what's that guy wearing? Or there's
26:54
Speaker 1: a handsome motherfucker there. You'll think something, but you're not
26:57
Speaker 1: placing your own self awareness on to it. And it's
27:01
Speaker 1: so rare. We hear our voices inside our own heads.
27:04
Speaker 1: We never get to get out of that. But a
27:06
Speaker 1: songwriter really needs to have a moment to find that
27:10
Speaker 1: hook or crook. However you can find it, and it's
27:12
Speaker 1: probably brief and you probably have to remember that. Like
27:16
Speaker 1: to me, it feels like sometimes it's in a chill
27:22
Speaker 1: hair standing up that I get while building a song
27:27
Speaker 1: and it never comes back. It's not like that line
27:30
Speaker 1: does it to me anymore? But I have to remember
27:34
Speaker 1: that happened, you know, because as you start to craft
27:37
Speaker 1: a song, especially when you're crafting the extent that I do,
27:41
Speaker 1: you have to hang on to that little innocent moment
27:44
Speaker 1: that you weren't self aware, that you didn't know that
27:47
Speaker 1: was you, because now you're putting the microscope on it.
27:49
Speaker 1: So watch those edits, you know, watch the ones where
27:52
Speaker 1: you're trying to make yourself look better, or the ones
27:54
Speaker 1: where you're you know, aiming your head into the mirror
27:57
Speaker 1: just perfect so you get that perfect angle on your
27:59
Speaker 1: chin like you don't don't do that, Like you can't
28:02
Speaker 1: do that in a song and have it survive with honesty.
28:06
Speaker 1: Can you think of example songs that where you think
28:10
Speaker 1: you've had that moment you were able to hang onto it.
28:12
Speaker 1: I think every song that I've written has has them.
28:15
Speaker 1: That's why I that's why they have survived. Um. And
28:19
Speaker 1: it's not like you can say it's one line. It's
28:22
Speaker 1: something that it's a it's like an environment that is
28:26
Speaker 1: created by the song, where that that it seeps into
28:29
Speaker 1: the rest of the song. It's in its attitude, it's
28:31
Speaker 1: in the way the chords move. You may decide on
28:36
Speaker 1: a on a lilt or something that you don't know
28:39
Speaker 1: why you're doing that, like it's it's a cadence. I
28:42
Speaker 1: wish I could say. I mean sometimes they can be lines.
28:44
Speaker 1: There's a line that lines can surprise you with what
28:50
Speaker 1: was there that you didn't know and you can discover
28:53
Speaker 1: them later. Um. Very simple one was the song Phone
28:58
Speaker 1: in a Pool, which I use a lot in the book.
29:00
Speaker 1: It's not really that well known song of mine. It's
29:03
Speaker 1: in the later part of my catalog, which, um, you know,
29:06
Speaker 1: record sell fewer and fewer each time. I'm so probably
29:09
Speaker 1: fewer people know the song, but it's a moment where
29:14
Speaker 1: I said, what's what's been good for the music hasn't
29:17
Speaker 1: always been so good for the life. Kind of rhyme
29:21
Speaker 1: to kind of fit seemed right, gave me the little chill.
29:23
Speaker 1: Didn't think about it. When I was writing the book.
29:25
Speaker 1: It kept coming up. I could have used that like
29:27
Speaker 1: every other every other chapter pretty easily. Can you can
29:32
Speaker 1: you just play those lines from Phone in the Pool? Yeah,
29:36
Speaker 1: because it's, by the way, it was based on you
29:38
Speaker 1: actually throwing your phone in a pool. That's right, Yeah,
29:40
Speaker 1: I mean nothing nothing to the experience of the song. Really,
29:43
Speaker 1: that what what what inspired the song is really in
29:47
Speaker 1: there and would have been probably a good journal entry.
29:50
Speaker 1: You know, I was. I had so many competing phone calls.
29:55
Speaker 1: I was in the middle of one of those terrible
29:56
Speaker 1: texting shit shows with three parties, and I just walked
30:00
Speaker 1: off stage. I mean, I felt like, you know, I'm
30:03
Speaker 1: the least important person at this moment in this texting
30:05
Speaker 1: when I'm getting my ass kicked by three direct But
30:08
Speaker 1: I mean I have some respect. It's got awful work.
30:09
Speaker 1: Like I just kind of felt like, ah, sick of this.
30:12
Speaker 1: I hate phones and I was walking by the pool
30:16
Speaker 1: at the sunset Marquee in Los Angeles, and I just reflexively,
30:22
Speaker 1: no one else was there. I thought I threw it
30:24
Speaker 1: in the pool and it went then under the bottom.
30:27
Speaker 1: And then this voice comes out of the shadows. Ben
30:29
Speaker 1: is that you like? Looked over and it was Kesha
30:33
Speaker 1: and she was pulling off a hoodie. She's just been
30:35
Speaker 1: chased by paparazzi and came through the bush. So she goes,
30:39
Speaker 1: what did you just do? And I was like, I
30:41
Speaker 1: threw my phone in the pool. Why did you do that?
30:44
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm sick of it. And she's like,
30:47
Speaker 1: don't do that, and she jumped in with all her
30:49
Speaker 1: clothes on and she went under the bottom of the
30:51
Speaker 1: pool and got my phone. She's like, you know, you
30:53
Speaker 1: should put this in rice. That's you know, mine fell
30:55
Speaker 1: on the toilet and I looked on the internet. You
30:57
Speaker 1: put it in rice and then don't turn it on
30:59
Speaker 1: until it's dry and it'll fix the phone. That's where
31:02
Speaker 1: the song came from. Nothing about that in the actual song,
31:07
Speaker 1: because of course it's just like throw my phone in again.
31:20
Speaker 1: So that's the course of it. Uh, let's see what's
31:24
Speaker 1: what's been good for always been so good for the life.
31:30
Speaker 1: I guess I was kind of like, you know, throwing
31:32
Speaker 1: a phone in the pool. That has consequences, you know,
31:36
Speaker 1: like an I I have to go down to Verizon
31:38
Speaker 1: or whatever and staying in line with people and get
31:41
Speaker 1: a phone. It costs money. Someone built the phone. People
31:44
Speaker 1: can't get in touch with me anymore, you know, like
31:46
Speaker 1: like like in real life. I was thinking, you know,
31:49
Speaker 1: being a kamakage in your music, what's good for the music? Yeah? Sure,
31:52
Speaker 1: but you don't just walk by the pool and throw
31:55
Speaker 1: your phone in. That's not what grown ups do. So
31:57
Speaker 1: that's what I meant by the line. Well before you
31:59
Speaker 1: threw the phone in the pool, long before you used
32:03
Speaker 1: to throw your piano stool. Yeah, at your piano. You
32:06
Speaker 1: know you're sitting at a beautiful Yamaha. I think it's
32:08
Speaker 1: a having foot Yeah, um you we. I should mention
32:12
Speaker 1: you used to have a deal with Steinway. I did
32:15
Speaker 1: until you broke one of their pianos throwing her. Yeah
32:20
Speaker 1: I didn't. I I threw a stool as show biz
32:25
Speaker 1: on a television show. Um it was our debut on
32:28
Speaker 1: television in Australia, and um it very much, very much
32:34
Speaker 1: upset the host of the show, um whose piano it
32:38
Speaker 1: was go to figure. We thought it was a rental.
32:43
Speaker 1: We were always prepared to pay if I mess something up.
32:45
Speaker 1: But I really didn't break many pianos. I I told
32:47
Speaker 1: about the two times I did break pianos, I felt horrible.
32:50
Speaker 1: One was his grandmother's family heirloom stein away from the
32:55
Speaker 1: eight nineteenth century. And I was a jerk and I
32:58
Speaker 1: should have though I didn't think you got a lot
33:01
Speaker 1: of You acted out a lot on stage. I was
33:05
Speaker 1: a piano player totally, a lot of flipping off the audience,
33:09
Speaker 1: a lot of plants down, flip off the audience. I played.
33:12
Speaker 1: I remember playing a show we just started promoting Brick,
33:17
Speaker 1: and we were playing a pretty big sold out show
33:19
Speaker 1: in Princeton, and this was getting exciting. And I started
33:23
Speaker 1: playing Brick and some people were talking. So I could
33:25
Speaker 1: play that with one hand, play with one hand, and
33:27
Speaker 1: I sang the song and just with my middle finger
33:30
Speaker 1: in the air while while I did it. It's crazy,
33:33
Speaker 1: it's silly stuff like that. I remember playing the introduction
33:36
Speaker 1: to Brick one time for maybe twenty minutes till they
33:39
Speaker 1: cut the power off. I didn't even start the song.
33:41
Speaker 1: I just did the introduction. I don't know why. I
33:43
Speaker 1: just come from I just you know, some of probably
33:50
Speaker 1: my let's say that I would say that that was
33:54
Speaker 1: the rest of the steam control of my parents. If
33:56
Speaker 1: I had to say my parents upbringing, you know, like
34:00
Speaker 1: that was my angry Yeah, I mean I was not
34:03
Speaker 1: that unusual for young men to be angry. I don't
34:06
Speaker 1: guess a angry young man like it's a cliche. That
34:09
Speaker 1: was me, you know when that was I was so
34:12
Speaker 1: fortunate to be able to do. I took it out
34:13
Speaker 1: in two ways, comically by acting like a complete clown
34:18
Speaker 1: and doing things that were totally self destructive. Remember doing
34:21
Speaker 1: a big interview on MTV where you can't see this
34:23
Speaker 1: over the radio or over a podcast, but I stuck
34:25
Speaker 1: the bottom of my jaw out. You know, I don't
34:30
Speaker 1: know why I did that. I couldn't tell you. I
34:32
Speaker 1: just I guess I didn't want to be on MTV
34:34
Speaker 1: that day, or I thought it was funny, or there
34:36
Speaker 1: was something self destructive about it. That kind of It's
34:38
Speaker 1: like pushing on a sore tooth, like he has sore tooth,
34:41
Speaker 1: and you just feel like, howd of curiosity you'll press
34:43
Speaker 1: on it? I think that makes for an attractive rock star,
34:47
Speaker 1: especially if you're playing piano. I mean, I can see
34:49
Speaker 1: the marketability in it too. Everyone likes the you know,
34:53
Speaker 1: we like that. And then I think at the point
34:55
Speaker 1: that those things snowball, you know, like if you start
34:58
Speaker 1: into a temper and then it just takes over. Needs
35:00
Speaker 1: to stop. You needed to stop it. Was there a
35:02
Speaker 1: point you thought, yeah, this needs to stop. Yes, I
35:05
Speaker 1: realized that many things about my life from my career
35:10
Speaker 1: weren't going my way, and I found myself in circumstances
35:14
Speaker 1: which were much more grown up, you know, like I'm
35:17
Speaker 1: really became concerned about music education for kids, Like, Wow,
35:21
Speaker 1: what I gained so much for having music in my class?
35:25
Speaker 1: Can I give back a little bit? Well, the more
35:27
Speaker 1: you do that, it's just kind of like not nice
35:30
Speaker 1: for me to walk on stage at the Kennedy Center
35:32
Speaker 1: and talk about music therapy, curate a night of symphonic music,
35:36
Speaker 1: and then go to the rock club next door and
35:38
Speaker 1: smash a bunch of shit, flip off the audience, and
35:41
Speaker 1: cuss all night. I just doesn't seem like the same person.
35:44
Speaker 1: I felt like I needed to grow up. I'm not
35:46
Speaker 1: precious about it. I'm quite happy to do any of
35:48
Speaker 1: that stuff. I thought it was funny, but it can
35:50
Speaker 1: become it's like a gag reflex. It's like once you
35:54
Speaker 1: start gagging, you know, like you need to kind of
35:56
Speaker 1: stop yourself. We'll be back with ben Folds after the break.
36:04
Speaker 1: We're back with the rest of Bruce's conversation with ben Folds.
36:07
Speaker 1: There's another theme in your book, which is about being cool.
36:12
Speaker 1: You never felt cool, and I think you always wrestled
36:16
Speaker 1: with what was cool, what wasn't cool? Should we be cool?
36:20
Speaker 1: I think you mentioned you mentioned some of your early
36:23
Speaker 1: albums you really almost played over the songs because you
36:26
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of and you wanted a punk rock
36:28
Speaker 1: attitude even though you were doing these kind of songs.
36:31
Speaker 1: And then, incredibly, the lesson is kind of crystallized by
36:35
Speaker 1: William Shatner. Yeah, can you just tell a little bit
36:39
Speaker 1: of that story because it's a great story. So in
36:42
Speaker 1: the studio it was Shatner and me and Joe Jackson
36:46
Speaker 1: for a lot of it. We're talking about Joe Jackson,
36:49
Speaker 1: the British singer. Jackson, the British sing not Michael's father. Right,
36:52
Speaker 1: that's great. Yeah, I didn't get anything from that guy. Um,
36:57
Speaker 1: I won't even make a joke there. Um, listen to
37:01
Speaker 1: ord Joe said. You know, I wasn't allowing myself to
37:04
Speaker 1: have a mentor. But here's another guy, you know, William Shatnell.
37:07
Speaker 1: He's not a musician, so it's not a threat. He
37:09
Speaker 1: in a He's in an industry where it's okay to
37:12
Speaker 1: be older as an actor, so maybe I was more
37:14
Speaker 1: open for whatever reason. He told me something I needed
37:17
Speaker 1: to hear, which he said, Benny, what is cool? And
37:21
Speaker 1: I was like, what do you mean? He goes, you
37:23
Speaker 1: have said the word cool? Oh the day long? Like
37:25
Speaker 1: he just like was pounding me about this cool thing.
37:28
Speaker 1: And I was like, well, why should explain? You were
37:30
Speaker 1: producing his record? Yeah, yeah, it's back up. I was
37:32
Speaker 1: producing William Shatner's record and writing a lot of the
37:35
Speaker 1: music for it and bringing the songs of his life
37:39
Speaker 1: to music. I think it's a great record. I say
37:42
Speaker 1: in the book, it's one of my proudest moments. You
37:44
Speaker 1: don't get the chance to make a record that's never
37:46
Speaker 1: been made. That record was never made before or after
37:48
Speaker 1: a beautiful record. And that's because of that's because of
37:52
Speaker 1: Shatner's willingness to be vulnerable and willingness to be for
37:57
Speaker 1: real and not worry about what was cool and what
37:59
Speaker 1: was not. You know if someone said was that take good?
38:01
Speaker 1: And said, yeah, cool, you want to go to dinner? Cool?
38:04
Speaker 1: I think that vocal was cooler than the other. Would
38:07
Speaker 1: it be cool if we did this? And it's like
38:10
Speaker 1: he's like, there's a lot of words in the English language, Benny,
38:12
Speaker 1: because you don't have to use that one for you.
38:14
Speaker 1: What's your what's your hang up with it? What is cool?
38:17
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, cools this or cools that?
38:19
Speaker 1: Because no, no, no, no, I need you to define
38:21
Speaker 1: the word that is so so such a wide net
38:25
Speaker 1: that it can mean everything that you made it mean today.
38:28
Speaker 1: Can you do that? No? I can't, because we'll think
38:31
Speaker 1: about using other words then and think about what your
38:33
Speaker 1: hang up with that word is? Why are you so
38:36
Speaker 1: hung up with that word? And I thought about It's like, well,
38:38
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that I was, but I guess I am.
38:41
Speaker 1: But I started noticing my my my peers were all
38:43
Speaker 1: the same. They're staying cool all day long too. I
38:46
Speaker 1: started to think that cool itself probably damn near ruined music.
38:50
Speaker 1: In my era, people were so much more concerned with
38:52
Speaker 1: being cool than they were like good music sometimes that
38:57
Speaker 1: you know, they often made music, good music despite it,
39:00
Speaker 1: No one talks about how incredibly I would say, I'm
39:06
Speaker 1: trying to choose a better word than cool, because honestly
39:09
Speaker 1: I just about say cool, How incredibly cool. Kirk Cobain's
39:13
Speaker 1: chords were, They're so interesting. His voice leading is very interesting. Well,
39:20
Speaker 1: no one ever talked about that. You know, he did
39:23
Speaker 1: the ultimate cool thing you could do in The Knights,
39:25
Speaker 1: which is he killed himself. What cooler? He put his
39:28
Speaker 1: money where his mouth was. We were also fucking miserable
39:31
Speaker 1: in the Nyes and he like did it. I think
39:33
Speaker 1: it's terrible. It's a terrible thing to celebrate the man for,
39:36
Speaker 1: to celebrate him for that. You know, I remember talking
39:38
Speaker 1: Dalliot Smith and he was horrified that people were celebrating
39:41
Speaker 1: the depressive part of his songs. He didn't seem as depressive.
39:47
Speaker 1: He was offended by that. It's like, these are songs
39:50
Speaker 1: that are getting me through. There's positivity in them. I'm
39:52
Speaker 1: going somewhere. I've written this song. It's a beautiful song.
39:55
Speaker 1: Why is that depressing? Hating when people call my songs depressing?
39:59
Speaker 1: Is That was his take on it. One day, and
40:01
Speaker 1: so I think we were so caught up with this
40:02
Speaker 1: being cool that it did get in the way sometimes
40:06
Speaker 1: of just judging something his music. But you know, my
40:10
Speaker 1: use of the word cool in songs probably a little
40:12
Speaker 1: more interesting because I think what I realized was what
40:15
Speaker 1: I didn't feel cool. But then I realized, no one does.
40:19
Speaker 1: No one feels like the cool one. Maybe one motherfucker does,
40:22
Speaker 1: but mostly mostly people don't feel like they're the cool one. Right,
40:25
Speaker 1: So if you write a song where you admit, like
40:28
Speaker 1: the song Underground, which starts one of the first songs
40:31
Speaker 1: in my career, which goes, I was never cool in school,
40:35
Speaker 1: I'm sure you don't remember me. It's a little bit
40:38
Speaker 1: of a also a nod to Jesus Christ Superstar, which
40:41
Speaker 1: is quoting a musical in the nineties. Really, that's uncool.
40:47
Speaker 1: What was the part of Jesus Christ Superstar you acquitting? Oh, okay, fast,
40:54
Speaker 1: we have a problem here. Yeah, okay, don't don't get
40:58
Speaker 1: me started, because I think I can sing the whole
41:00
Speaker 1: Pharisee scene in the original voices, So don't get me
41:03
Speaker 1: going awesome. See, but this is that's where it's from,
41:06
Speaker 1: and it breaks into the what is it what miracle
41:11
Speaker 1: one ro fools. Yeah, that's right. It's no armies fighting,
41:16
Speaker 1: no slogans, totally. One thing I'll say for him, Jesus
41:20
Speaker 1: is cool at that we because I love that album.
41:27
Speaker 1: But that's OKAYO fans, we have a problem here. Yeah.
41:34
Speaker 1: I was never cool in school. I'm sure you don't
41:36
Speaker 1: remember me. That was where I was coming from. The
41:38
Speaker 1: reason that song did so well, especially in places like
41:42
Speaker 1: you know in the UK where it charted in the
41:45
Speaker 1: top forty, the top ten or something like that has
41:46
Speaker 1: a radio hit. Um it is because no one felt cool.
41:50
Speaker 1: That was my discovery. You know, like all the rock
41:54
Speaker 1: stars before my era came along, most of them were
41:57
Speaker 1: really really cool, Like they just seemed like the person
42:01
Speaker 1: you wanted to be, but you weren't that person. So
42:04
Speaker 1: there needed to be some balance. Who is the who
42:07
Speaker 1: is the me up there on the stage that can
42:10
Speaker 1: say that they're not cool and struggle with it publicly,
42:14
Speaker 1: with what they're gonna wear, not feel like they know
42:16
Speaker 1: what to say at the party, feel like they're not
42:18
Speaker 1: invited at the party. They're not cool. Those were big
42:20
Speaker 1: themes in the in the ben Folds five records, and
42:23
Speaker 1: then we played piano living room furniture. Piano's living room
42:27
Speaker 1: furniture was not a rock instrument. It's been a rock
42:29
Speaker 1: instrument one or two times. The guys had to light
42:31
Speaker 1: it on fire to prove that they were cool. I'd
42:33
Speaker 1: throw piano stools at to prove that I was cool.
42:36
Speaker 1: I mean, you've actually now had a long career. Did
42:39
Speaker 1: you always know it was going to work? You went
42:40
Speaker 1: through a lot of jobs. Yeah, you work in a
42:43
Speaker 1: grocery store, so did I? So I watch that part.
42:46
Speaker 1: I didn't work at a Hearty's. But you did a
42:50
Speaker 1: lot of stuff. You played. You were a solo polka
42:53
Speaker 1: band in a German restaurant. You did a lot of stuff.
42:57
Speaker 1: Did you know through all that that your songs were
43:00
Speaker 1: going to one day succeed? I think I did on
43:03
Speaker 1: some level. I was terminally frustrated and insulted by the
43:09
Speaker 1: universe that most of my twenties went by the radio
43:14
Speaker 1: played NonStop through the decade, and not a note of
43:17
Speaker 1: my music came out of it. I thought people were
43:19
Speaker 1: idiots for not putting my music there. That was my
43:24
Speaker 1: young man, you know, cockiness about it, And so I
43:28
Speaker 1: became pretty pretty bitter. I mean, I was that guy.
43:33
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, working these jobs like you know,
43:36
Speaker 1: waiting tables or something, or playing like a polka band
43:39
Speaker 1: like you said, and feeling like, you know, I deserved
43:44
Speaker 1: way more and my songs are the best songs ever written.
43:47
Speaker 1: And I thought all that stuff what happened. When it happened,
43:51
Speaker 1: then you know, I felt like, yeah, I probably, you know,
43:58
Speaker 1: I probably need to be here that so I feel
44:00
Speaker 1: more like myself now. I felt like I needed to
44:02
Speaker 1: have a voice at the table as it were, or
44:04
Speaker 1: whatever it is that they say, and you need to
44:06
Speaker 1: be on the same page or I need to come
44:10
Speaker 1: on board whatever pirate ship business language. I need to
44:13
Speaker 1: be at the party. But once I was, I found
44:17
Speaker 1: and I think I mentioned this briefly in the book
44:20
Speaker 1: because I've found that it's it's not satisfying ever because
44:24
Speaker 1: you become popular like you think that you should be,
44:26
Speaker 1: which as I remember sitting with a hero of mine
44:29
Speaker 1: from the Archers of Loaf Did you know that band?
44:32
Speaker 1: They were a punk band from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
44:34
Speaker 1: The probably sold about forty thousand records. I think Kurt
44:36
Speaker 1: Cobain was a big fan of them back in the day,
44:38
Speaker 1: and they lived in my neighborhood, you know, And I
44:40
Speaker 1: was sitting in the van with Eric, who was the
44:42
Speaker 1: main guy. I was like, how many records do you sell?
44:45
Speaker 1: Because I never even made a record before he goes
44:47
Speaker 1: we sold forty thousand records, like Jesus, forty thousand records.
44:50
Speaker 1: That's huge. I can't imagine doing that. Of course, when
44:53
Speaker 1: we were selling seventy thousand records a week in a
44:55
Speaker 1: couple of years and that wasn't enough, I thought, oh man,
44:58
Speaker 1: that's that's not enough. Because you can see these guys
45:01
Speaker 1: they got a commercial with that the Verve song. They
45:05
Speaker 1: got a Nike commercial. Damn we needed a Nike commercial.
45:08
Speaker 1: They just creamed us. Now they're selling two hundred thousand
45:11
Speaker 1: records a week and we're selling seventy. And my song
45:14
Speaker 1: is just as good as Sarah say. You go through
45:16
Speaker 1: that crap, and you know you have to best to
45:19
Speaker 1: admit it, best to admit that your ego was duped
45:21
Speaker 1: and you should get out of the business of that.
45:24
Speaker 1: So I try try not to really worry about it
45:26
Speaker 1: as much anymore. You're going to sometimes it's a business
45:29
Speaker 1: that is. Your life is affected by approval. You know,
45:35
Speaker 1: if people approve and they give me money, or they
45:37
Speaker 1: applaud my life is better, and I'm supposed to not
45:41
Speaker 1: read what's written about me, or I'm supposed to not
45:44
Speaker 1: notice what the sales are on something. It's hard to do.
45:48
Speaker 1: I think you candy couple of them. But I think
45:49
Speaker 1: it's best to admit instead of being so cool and saying, oh,
45:53
Speaker 1: I don't pay attention to my reviews. I don't care
45:55
Speaker 1: what anybody thinks. It's like, boy, you need to go
45:58
Speaker 1: some therapy. You do care what people think seriously, but
46:01
Speaker 1: you have to admit that first. I do want to
46:04
Speaker 1: ask you about one more thing speaking of being cocky,
46:06
Speaker 1: which is E've done this for years in concerts, even
46:09
Speaker 1: on it with orchestras, and I'm incurred everybody to go
46:12
Speaker 1: to YouTube and watch this. Uh you call it RTB yes,
46:17
Speaker 1: which is rock this bitch? You composed something on the spot?
46:24
Speaker 1: Is it? Is it from audience members? How do you?
46:27
Speaker 1: It can come in different forms? Basically the history of
46:32
Speaker 1: it is it was we were making a live piano
46:36
Speaker 1: solo piano record, one of my favorites. I think it's
46:39
Speaker 1: I don't know, I haven't done more of that, but
46:42
Speaker 1: um an audience guy, an audience yelled rock this Bitch.
46:47
Speaker 1: I think he meant he wanted me to play louder
46:49
Speaker 1: and faster. Maybe I was playing too slow, played too
46:51
Speaker 1: many ballads. The kid wanted to rock. And it's like, well,
46:54
Speaker 1: I don't, um, I don't know that one. UM. Let
46:57
Speaker 1: me see if I can make one up. And so
47:00
Speaker 1: I made up a song and it ended up on
47:02
Speaker 1: the live record called rock this Bitch. I was that
47:05
Speaker 1: was freestyle completely and it was kind of the revelation
47:09
Speaker 1: was it held up with other stuff on the record
47:11
Speaker 1: disturbingly well and people ask for it every night then,
47:17
Speaker 1: because then it became a thing. They say rock this Bitch,
47:19
Speaker 1: and I would have to make up a new one,
47:21
Speaker 1: and a new one, and a new one, a new one.
47:23
Speaker 1: All of them I think are probably different. They may
47:25
Speaker 1: overlap in some way, not on purpose. The idea is
47:30
Speaker 1: that when someone says rock this Bitch, then I have
47:32
Speaker 1: to do it. Let's start making up a song. I've
47:36
Speaker 1: learned so much about songwriting that way, and I tried
47:38
Speaker 1: to impart some of that the best I could. It's
47:40
Speaker 1: very difficult to articulate what I learned about songwriting, but
47:44
Speaker 1: one of the things I've learned is that a song
47:49
Speaker 1: is so wonderful If it sounds as though the singer
47:52
Speaker 1: and the audience are all discovering it together. It doesn't
47:56
Speaker 1: sound like it was there before. It sounds like it's
47:58
Speaker 1: coming out of the earth, which is a very Beethoven idea.
48:01
Speaker 1: You know that that it is there already, and it's
48:05
Speaker 1: just it's you're a font and it's coming out. When
48:08
Speaker 1: we d and paste form the first versus, let's say,
48:14
Speaker 1: is eight bars and has particular cadence. If we cut
48:17
Speaker 1: and paste that idea across the next two verses, that's normal.
48:21
Speaker 1: That's a normal form when you are rt being if
48:25
Speaker 1: you're a freestyle in a song, you can't really remember
48:28
Speaker 1: exactly what you did in the first verse, and you
48:31
Speaker 1: try to approximate it. But you're a new person and
48:33
Speaker 1: you're discovering a new thing, so you're it's a new
48:36
Speaker 1: take on that verse, and so it is unfolding in
48:39
Speaker 1: a way that songs normally don't unfold. And I find
48:43
Speaker 1: it very effective and I learned a lot from that
48:46
Speaker 1: all because you know, a song really could be seen
48:51
Speaker 1: if it's a three and a half minute song could
48:53
Speaker 1: be seen to have only taken three and a half
48:55
Speaker 1: minutes to actually invent the rest of it was all
48:59
Speaker 1: an editing process, stuff that you didn't use and thinking
49:02
Speaker 1: about it and stuff. But the actual song is three
49:03
Speaker 1: and a half minutes. It should sound like a discovery.
49:06
Speaker 1: And when you teach, you say it's a very effective
49:08
Speaker 1: thing to teach to make people do it. Very effective
49:11
Speaker 1: because one it keeps you from being precious also you want.
49:15
Speaker 1: The other thing you learn about it is that you know,
49:18
Speaker 1: like life, it's hills and valleys. It's not all like
49:21
Speaker 1: up up up up up, like like an American musical.
49:24
Speaker 1: It's like it doesn't all have to be better, better, better,
49:27
Speaker 1: better better. It can be like oops, snore, amazing snore.
49:34
Speaker 1: That's life. It works that way. Or mistakes. You make
49:37
Speaker 1: a mistake while you're writing a song, it's like, I
49:38
Speaker 1: really wish I hadn't gone here? How are you going
49:40
Speaker 1: to get out of this? In real time? Is actually
49:43
Speaker 1: of interest to the audience. It's also energy that that
49:47
Speaker 1: is compelling a song. I learn a lot. I think
49:49
Speaker 1: the songwriters ought to have to freestyle a song every night,
49:52
Speaker 1: I really do. I think they don't think they can
49:55
Speaker 1: do it. But something comes out. Something will always come out.
49:59
Speaker 1: And when you find yourself in the lull. Like I
50:00
Speaker 1: say in the book, the beauty of this exercise is
50:04
Speaker 1: you have to write yourself out of it. We edit
50:07
Speaker 1: those things out when you write a song, and we're
50:10
Speaker 1: crafting a song, and there's nothing really wrong with that.
50:12
Speaker 1: It's just that when you're more in control about it,
50:14
Speaker 1: that you want it all to be all killer or
50:16
Speaker 1: no filler. But that's not really what a good song is.
50:19
Speaker 1: You know, you ask someone like, what's what's two or
50:22
Speaker 1: three songs that you love. We're gonna listen to them tonight.
50:24
Speaker 1: You have a beer, listen to some great songs, and
50:26
Speaker 1: then you listen to him the guys going, I love
50:28
Speaker 1: this song. I love a song too. Why do you
50:30
Speaker 1: like it? I like it because of well, wait a minute,
50:34
Speaker 1: oh there was what we'll run it back. It was
50:37
Speaker 1: just a little moment sometimes and it was the getting there.
50:41
Speaker 1: They think it's the whole song that they liked, but
50:43
Speaker 1: it's like, what do you like about those words? Actually?
50:45
Speaker 1: I don't like the verse verse. I just like that
50:47
Speaker 1: part where he says this, I like this thing. It's like, well,
50:50
Speaker 1: those first words that he didn't care for got you there.
50:54
Speaker 1: And I think it's important not to write everyone like
50:58
Speaker 1: they have to be a punchline, not to write everyone,
51:00
Speaker 1: And so they have to mean anything. They have to
51:02
Speaker 1: be real, and they have to be getting you to
51:03
Speaker 1: the next moment and those moments in life where it's like,
51:06
Speaker 1: if you had a moment in your day, you had
51:08
Speaker 1: a good day. That's the way it should be in
51:10
Speaker 1: a song. But you can't have the moment in a vacuum.
51:12
Speaker 1: You have to get to the moment. And so when
51:14
Speaker 1: you learn freestyling, a song is all these things that
51:18
Speaker 1: you just don't put your mind to when you're really
51:19
Speaker 1: thinking about proper songwriting. And it has I don't know
51:23
Speaker 1: if it's improved my songwriting, but I've learned a lot
51:26
Speaker 1: by it. Okay, so before you go, yes, can I
51:29
Speaker 1: ask one more favorite? Sure? Can you rock this bitch? Oh?
51:35
Speaker 1: I guess so. I mean the first thing, it's just
51:41
Speaker 1: something comes out and you don't know where it's going.
51:47
Speaker 1: I didn't think then I would have to write a
51:53
Speaker 1: song in a podcast. That's okay, Well, I see there's
52:06
Speaker 1: a mistake, so I'll go with it. Five. I didn't
52:15
Speaker 1: know i'd have to see And now my voice is crusting.
52:23
Speaker 1: I just woke up. It's a day off. There are
52:29
Speaker 1: no days off when you're rocking this bitch in a podcast,
52:37
Speaker 1: rocking this Bitch with Bruce, I am rocking this bitch.
52:44
Speaker 1: They're gonna edit out the stupid ship and make me
52:48
Speaker 1: sound like I'm smart rockness. But it's a minor chord.
52:55
Speaker 1: We don't know what's going to go from there. Fabulous,
52:57
Speaker 1: Thank you, you rocked it. Thank you so much. It's
53:00
Speaker 1: been wonderful all right. Thanks to Ben Folds for sharing
53:07
Speaker 1: some incredible insights into his life in the world. You
53:10
Speaker 1: can hear all of our favorite Benfold songs on my
53:12
Speaker 1: playlist at Broken record podcast dot com, and be sure
53:15
Speaker 1: to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com
53:18
Speaker 1: slash broken record Podcast. There you can find extended cuts
53:21
Speaker 1: of our new and old episodes. Broken Record is produced
53:25
Speaker 1: with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, Eric
53:29
Speaker 1: Sandler in our new intern Jennifer Sanchez, and as executive
53:33
Speaker 1: producer find Me a Little Bit. Broken Record is a
53:36
Speaker 1: production of Pushkin Industries, and if you like Broken Record,
53:39
Speaker 1: please remember to share, rate, and review our show on
53:42
Speaker 1: your podcast. Our theme musics by Kenny Beats. I'm justin
53:45
Speaker 1: Richmond Bass