Ben Folds
Beat Magazine
April 17, 2002
By Andrew Tijs

Ben Folds is a warm, effusive yet cynical 30-something teenager. The type of guy who revels in the absurdity that his bittersweet odes to suburbia would actually rock the suburbs.

I think it was news to Ben Folds that in Melbourne, his song Rockin’ the Suburbs was used by a radio station to sell rock to suburbanites. He laughs “Well, good.” Didn’t have to authorise these things? It seems he doesn’t mind the irony. This was the case when Brick, a song about the travails of a couple going to have an abortion, was huge on popular radio. Do people get the lyrics?

“I guess not. I used to be more frustrated about that sort of thing. It’s kind funny too. If you ask to be misunderstood a little bit and you get misunderstood, then you can’t get too upset about it. Did you ever see Andy Kaufman, he was great.” Ben stops. I’m slightly gobsmacked by the blunt subject change. Ben muses slowly. “Yeah, Andy Kaufman was great.” Okay. He continues, “Andy Kaufman was all about being misunderstood and the funny thing was I think it personally upset him. Trying to be misunderstood was the art, and when he was, it really hurt his feelings. It’s a thing that everyone wants to be understood but when you’re a creative person, part of you enjoys the effect of not being understood. I mean, that’s funny.” He doesn’t mean strange but amusing.

“It kinda blew me away that the people who were listening were like (assumes ‘gnarly dude’ tone of voice) ‘Oh, man, now he’s rocking the suburbs’.” He continues to encourage me to buy and Andy Kaufman video sometime, seeming amazed by scene that was a precursor to Pee Wee Herman’s show.

I change tack to note that the singles released from his band Ben Folds Five and on the latest record in solo guise are very different the other songs on the records. “That’s definitely the case with the new record,” he’s happy to admit. “With the singles and the songs before it’s just a matter of a certain number of people getting attached to one aspect of the band. Whatever and Ever Amen has Brick and before the cymbals even fade, we’re screaming ‘Give me my money back you bitch’. Anything that you would have chosen from that album would have been a misrepresentation. But this (record) is a complete ripoff.” He half-jokes, admitting that, “people didn’t buy it. ” The amount of success on radio didn’t translate into sales because the general public couldn’t place the album. “They didn’t know who it was or where it was coming from. That’s the majority. Construction workers and secretaries, they might hear Rockin’ the Suburbs and think ‘That’s cool’ but they get the record and they’re like (he adopts a stumbling tone) ‘That’s not what I was buying...’”

“When I was writing the album I thought it was a very interesting take to put really ordinary, suburban, very uncool themes into rock music. It’s really unsung. Your average suburban person is the person who actually buys the record, or they’re the person who everybody wants to buy their record.”

With record company pressures for mainstream rock artists, Ben is of the opinion that rock has become more about a look and a story. “Like Everclear. The guy used to be a heroin addict and he peroxides his hair like the guys on his crew do. That’s interesting to people who buy those kind of record.” But he thinks no one in wider public apparently cares about Ben Folds.

Fold’s still writes love songs, which seem to sit awkwardly with his public persona of a married-man and father who has settled down in sleepy Adelaide. “People close to you just have to accept what you write.” “Sometimes you write something that’s completely from your past or that’s complete and utter bullshit. Just because it feels right. In Songwriter World with everything you write, people are going to give you the hairy eyeball. The point is, the people who are close to you... they just have to accept what you write. ”

Over the years, Folds had a fondness for not-so-subtle critiques of a lot of contemporry music styles, from Underground to the title track of the latest album.  What is he getting his two year old boy/girl twins to listen to? “Louie’s got pretty good taste.” At two and a half? “He had pretty good taste a year ago. Maybe it’s kind of modeled on what he hears around the house.” He goes on to say that he lets Louie play with  CD demos that he’s been sent, “I’m going to hell for this,” he laughs. “If Louie puts something in the CD player and I hear it cross the house, I’m more likely to hear the CD that way. He’ll put on something that’s just crap and he’ll listen to it for two minutes then take it off and never put it back in again. It’s cool.” As the kids gurgle in the background Ben tells me he digs Elliot Smith and hates Blood, Sweat and Tears. 

Another CD the kid likes is by a musician who, in order to pay off a law suit, offered investors a song on his new album with their name as the title for a thousand dollars. Do any of the characters that feature in Ben Folds song titles get recompense? “This record I considered making (the song titles) all characters, to keep with a theme. It’d be funny even if the song didn’t mention anything more about the person.”

“I’ve actually written a song called Bob Seger, it’s just the story of his life set to music.” Ben sounds sincere as he sings some obscure Bob Seger song to me to end the interview. And it’s just now I understand his skewed sense of humour.

 

Thank you to Andrew Tijs and Mary Mihelakos of Beat Magazine for permission to reprint this article.