Radio Interview with Ben Folds
90.7 WFUV
December 10, 2001
Interviewer: Dennis Elsas

[Annie Waits (album version) is played.]

Dennis:  But not for him. But not for Ben.  You got here.  Thank you so much for coming up.

Ben:  No problem.

Dennis:  Annie Waits is the one that leads off this album, Ben Folds' Rockin' the Suburbs, the new Ben Folds album that we've been playing quite a bit, and um, is just one of many songs on this album that has somebody's name on it.

Ben: Yeah.

Dennis:  There's Annie, there's Zak, there's Sara, there's Fred, there's Stan, there's Lisa, there's Cathy. That's a lot of folks.

Ben:  Yeah. [Laughs]

Dennis:  Some of them real, some of them not real?

Ben:  There were two songs recorded for the album that I didn't put on the album.  There was, uh,  Hiro's Song.  Hiro like a Japanese man's name, so that was called Hiro, and then um, Morgan Davis.  So I had some more names that I left off. Um, I had plenty of 'em.  I don't know, you know, I think I got—um, the last album I did with the band, uh was um pretty much lyrically, it was about me. An uh, I just kind of uh—for the moment I'm just more interested in talking about somebody else, I guess, you know?

Dennis:  And then there was the moment, too, when you—when the band Ben Folds Five named that album Reinhold Messner...

Ben: Yeah

Dennis:  ...which was like a joke, because they thought it was somebody's ID—fake ID.

Ben:  Yeah, we didn't know.  We didn't know that he was actually famous.  And it was in an interview when we found out, and we were like, "Oh man, we gotta get permission from this guy."  'Cause he's the first, um, mountain climber to successfully, uh, climb Mount Everest with no oxygen.

Dennis:  Right.

Ben:  Legend has it that he went up there and smoked a doob when he got to the top, but I don't know about that.

Dennis:  [Laughs] But Ben Folds is now "Ben Folds"; there are some other folks with you in the band.  Last night was a special night... totally Ben at the piano downtown at the Bowery Ballroom.  What was that all about?

Ben:  Ah, that was me going to the mountain, as it were.  I never have faced doing a total solo show.  Um... I mean, actually, I might have done that once when I was like 12 years old at this chicken dinner at a uh, at a church.  Maybe that was why I never did it since then; it was miserable.  But uh, yeah, so it was something I'd never... never done before.  And uh, it was cool; it was really great.  You can control your own dynamics, you know, it felt like the crowd was just in my living room.  And they're talking to me, I'm talking to them; we're just working things out and playing songs, and it was a neat event.

Dennis:  Alright, well this is not the Bowery Ballroom.  This is Studio A at WFUV, but I've got you alone, I've got a piano, which looks very nice...

Ben:  Yeah... ?? [muffled]

Dennis:  And uh, you know, let's- whatever you feel like playing from whatever album, let's hear something.

Ben:  This is a song about a guy who - one of the names on the album.

[Ben plays Fred Jones Part 2 live.]

Dennis:  WFUV, this is Dennis Elsas, in the studio with Ben with one of the tracks from Rockin' the Suburbs.  You know, when I first was able to absorb the song—'cause hearing the song is one thing, and then you hear a few more times and you take it in... and there were two thoughts I had about it.  One, of course, is the sadness of the story of this guy that's been working there for so long, and it's time.  It's time.  This is gonna be the end of his time; I'm sorry but it's time.

Ben: Yeah.

Dennis: And the other thing was whether he was part of that—there's a bunch of Mr. Joneses in uh, in my head, in rock and roll music... uh, Dylan's Mr. Jones, You don't know what's happening, The Beegees' Mr. Jones, have you seen my wife...

Ben: Oh yeah. [Laughs]

Dennis: And of course more recently Counting Crows.  This Jones related to any of those people?

Ben: You know, it was actually kind of an accident but it works; it works well because I guess there's the institution of the Mr. Jones now, so you can kinda group him in there.  Um, I wrote a song that um, actually it was a collaboration um, with a run on sentence in the uh, in a newspaper on Whatever and Ever Amen and the song was called Cigarette, and uh, it came from the first sentence of this story, and it was a about a man named Fred Jones.  And uh, Fred Jones, uh, his wife had some kind of brain disorder.  They got married, and  then she had some—I don't know what happened, I can't remember, but um after like six months, you know,  the honeymoon was definitely over... she was screaming in the middle of the night, the house burned down at one point because she left - she never smoked and she started smoking all of sudden with this brain problem, and the house caught on fire from a cigarette, and it was a horrible time, but they were talking about the conditions.  And the sentence was, if I can remember, um... "Fred Jones was worn out from caring for his screaming and crying wife during the day but he couldn't sleep at night for fear that she, in a stupor from the drugs that wouldn't ease the pain, would set the house ablaze with a cigarette."  That was the first sentence of this article, and I was like, "Who is the writer?  This guy is..."

Dennis: [Laughs]

Ben:  And I cut it out, I just cut that one sentence out, and I glued it in my notebook, and one day I sat down and wrote this song around it.  And then for some reason I chose his name for this uh, for this uh, this retiring character.

Dennis:  It's such a beautiful song.  And you had, and you worked with one of the guy's from Cake on this, right?

Ben: Yeah, yeah, John McCrea, a good bud of mine. Yeah, yeah, he really liked—he wanted to work on that song because he likes—he's a real—have you met him?

Dennis:  No.

Ben: He's a real dry person, and he doesn't have - he's just like his records.  Doesn't have that much to say, and when he does...  and, and, I said, "So what do you think of this song?" because we were going through songs I wanted him to think about doing and he goes, "I like that song. That song is sad. Life is sad." [Laughs]

Dennis: [Laughs]

Ben: I was like, ok, that's your song, then.

Dennis: That's your song. You'll help me out on this.  The album is - the album has some - I mean, Annie Waits, Zak and Sara kick it off, and it's all up here; it's rollicking piano, whether the lyrics are happy or sad, the sound is that wonderful pop sensibility that I've always loved in your music. And then, and then we come down a little bit with Still Fighting It, which you know, I want to talk about in a little while.  And moves on, and um Fred Jones is I guess what about midway through it—ends with a really beautiful song, too, called The Luckiest, which is just a gorgeous love song.  I am not here to uh, analyze Ben Folds and understand...

Ben: [Laughs]

Dennis:  ...but in listening to the Ben Folds Five records and in listening to the Ben Folds first, I guess solo album, there seems to be a little bit more sentimentality on here, would that be fair to say, you think?

Ben:  I think so.  Yeah.  I've always dabbled with it, I guess.  I just - I don't know, I have to be pretty comfortable with myself to be completely earnest.  You know, it's easier for me, like with communication in general, when I was in high school you couldn't get a straight answer from me at all. I was always-

Dennis: Why am I not surprised? [Laughs]

Ben: [Laughs] And this is a big trip for me like over, you know,  my last however many years to kinda try to get more and more to the point and not try to cover myself so much.  I mean sometimes it's nice to be a smartass, but...

Dennis:  Right, sometimes.

Ben: Sometimes, but like, that really was all day long.  And that's just a matter of confidence, I think, you see someone who's just like, doesn't have a straight answer for you ever, they don't want you to... talk to them.

Dennis: Well, I don't need a straight answer on this question.

Ben: [Laughs] That's okay.

Dennis:  All I need is a short answer here, because your fans would be angry with me if I didn't ask the question.  This is Ben Folds on his own.  Ben Folds Five, which was actually three guys, but we won't—we don't have to explain all of that.  Um, short version of why it was time to move on and go solo.

Ben:  I knew it was time when, um,  we were working on our feature film, and um, I went out to the trailer and Robert was passed out in a big pile of coke, and uh, Darren was in the bathroom with some stuntman, and I don't know what they were doing.  And I was like, "This is disgusting, what have we become?"  No, we uh...

Dennis: [Laughs] Taking the tongue out of his cheek... and not holding us for any libel.

Ben:  [Laughs] As he takes me out of the radio station...

Dennis:  [Announcer voice] Behind the Music, Ben Folds Five. And just before he went solo, the band...

Ben:  [Laughs] That's right. [stage whisper] But then it turned ugly...

Um, we just... we were tired.  I've come to the conclusion that we were just tired... as a three person, um, entity.  Ah, Robert the bass player and I hung out a few nights ago for a long time, had a good laugh.  It was great. It was good to see him. I hung out with Darren before; it was good.  We all get along, two of us at a time.  But put three people in a room and put us through the music business, and all of sudden, it's not worth living.

Dennis:  Okay, I can appreciate that.  If we can go back to Whatever and Ever-

Ben:  Yeah.

Dennis:  -Amen, and either do something live or do something from the disc.

Ben:  Oh, okay, yeah. You know, I can do Brick or Dwarf, either one.  Brick's not one that was ever performed that much.  It's funny; it was hit, but we never, we never did it, except for when we had to do it.

Dennis:  Whatever you feel like playing.

Ben:  Well, we're in flex lock now, which one do you want me to do?

Dennis:  Well, I love Brick.

Ben:  Okay, why don't I do that one then, because-

Dennis:  Good.

Ben:  That'll probably make more sense on the piano.

Dennis:  Okay good.  Ben Folds getting ready, here at 90.7 WFUV.

[Ben plays Brick live.]

Dennis:  Ben Folds here at 90.7 WFUV, and another spectacular live treat for us.  This is Dennis Elsas in the studio with Ben and his piano.  Listening to that song and a lot of the softer more ballady songs, um... when you were learning as a kid, did you learn, originally, classical piano; 'cause there's so much of that, almost...

Ben:  Actually, I didn't.  I took a year of um, of piano lessons, and I learned,  you know, real important basics, and I played a recital, and then I went straight back to going... [Plays a piano riff].

Dennis:  Yeah! [Laughs]

Ben: ...which I used to do all day long, and my parents were going nuts, cause I didn't—it's not like I...

Dennis:  You're sitting almost trying to do Moonlight Sonata and then suddenly, it's...

Ben:  Yeah, cause I learned a couple of those things, but I was - you know, my parents had all these Little Richard records.

Dennis:  Ah, so it's their...

Ben:  I was very into those... so I wanted to to, you know all his songs are in the same key, so um, I just learned those.

Dennis:  Cause you were just doing your Jerry Lewis kind of riff for me.

Ben:  Yeah, it's kinda the white guys' version of if you tried to do, um, Little Richard, it's what comes out.

Dennis:  Can we hear a little more of that? I love that.

Ben:  Yeah, I mean Little Richard has this way of doing it, it's like these big hands, I don't know, he's just  great. But I end up sounding more like Jerry Lewis, Jerry Lee Lewis. [Plays more] And after I while I got to where I could go... [Plays more].

Dennis:  And, you know, you talk about other songwriters... it would be—it's hard not to hear, for my ear, the Elton John vibe, or the Todd vibe, or the Billy Joel vibe.  Is that a compliment, or is it after a while, hey don't compare me to anybody, I'm my own guy?

Ben:  As I get older, it's a compliment.  When you start out, it's like, "Nah, man, I'm me."  And that's when you're drawing the most, and that's why it hits close to home, and it's hard to admit that.  But when you have an interview, you know, someone'd say, "Yeah, what do you think of Billy Joel?", You know, when we started out I was like, "Man, if I write a Billy Joel song, I'm gonna change every note.  I don't want to sound like that guy."  But you know, as I get older, I go... well one he was great. He still is great, and I got a lot from him.  And, I probably got more from Elton um, than Billy Joel.  More people seem to draw the Billy Joel... and Todd Rundren.  Absolutely.  He was a total inspiration; I feel like I probably have more in common with him than the other two.  But I got a really nice compliment from Elton John.  He called me up and said some really nice things about my record, and then he busted me on stealing one of his riffs.  [Laughs]

Dennis: The grey seal riff? Which one?

Ben:  No, it's a song called um, Teacher I Need You...

Dennis:  Right!  Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only... you know, appropriately from Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only the Piano Player.

Ben:  Yeah, and I gotta go back and listen to that.  I don't know how close it is, it was a subconscious thing.  And he thought it was great, he was like:  "[British accent]Yeah, I love that Teacher I Need You vibe in there."  I was like, "Oh man, that's probably note for note..." And he goes, "[British accent] Well, it was a couple notes different."

Dennis:  I wonder, is it Zak and Sara?

Ben:  Zak and Sara, yeah.

Dennis: That's where he says it? Maybe later this hour you'll get to play that for us, and we can, we can listen for the Teacher I Need You Elton John riff. 

You know, it's a long way from - I don't have to tell you this, but I am- it's a long way from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, which is I guess where you were raised...

Ben:  Yeah.

Dennis:  These days living in Adelaide, Australia?

Ben:  Yeah.

Dennis:  Culture shift?

Ben:  It's not as much as a culture shift - it happens to be as far away on the planet as you can get from Chapel Hill, like if you get any further you get closer.  It's 11,500 miles - you just draw a line straight through the globe. 

Dennis:  Really?

Ben:  Yeah, it's weird.  But, my wife's from there, and uh, we met over there while I was kind of on vacation driving around the country.  She stayed over here for a while, but it  just seemed more natural that we just had a twins - a boy a girl, and they're two and a half.  It seemed more natural to raise them in Adelaide.

Dennis:  The two and a half year old boy is the young man that's in the video for Still Fighting It?

Ben: Yeah.

Dennis: Now is his sister gonna be angry that she didn't get into the video, or is there another video...?

Ben:  We talked about that and decided that videos are so transient and uh, it's like, you do 'em and they seem like they're important for five minutes.  But I don't even have a copy of like, Brick, and that was up for an MTV award and stuff, and was a big deal for five seconds... they'll never see that.  I mean, they might dig it up one day, you know what I mean? And we'll do something for Gracie-

Dennis:  [Upset voice] Dad, look what I found! You didn't put me into the video, and... (Laughs).   So, the next video-

Ben:  The song is, had a lot to do with things that kinda popped into my head when my son was born.  To me, everyone has a different experience when they see—for men, because you don't have to actually do anything [Laughs].  But uh,  you're watching it happen, and it's pretty overwhelming.  Um, some people are like... like me, I just thought about all the tough things are about growing up.  But it became all of a sudden obvious to me too that it never gets any easier.  Um, like coming out's pretty tough.  I mean, they're pretty upset about that; they don't know where they are, there's all this light, they're having to use their lungs, they're upset.  They're basically scared, you know? But that's the way everything in life is.  It's like, by the time you're 85, 90 years old, if you make it that far, you know you've got a lot to face, you know.  And what can prepare you for that any better than what you went through before? And so the we're still fighting It, I suppose was just like, you know, if he's looking at me thinking I've got it all worked out... it's not, it's not worked out, you know?

Dennis:  Why don't we take a listen to uh, from the latest album Rockin' the Suburbs, Ben Folds Still Fighting It on WFUV.

[Still Fighting It (album version) is played.]

Dennis:  On WFUV, Ben Folds, uh, from Rockin the Suburbs, and Still Fighting It.  This is Dennis Elsas in the studio with Ben.  The video, which is just a beautiful video, has a look of almost being a home video with you and your son.

Ben:  That's exactly what it is.

Dennis:  Really?

Ben:  Yeah, it's uh... my wife filmed it; it's a Sony Mini DV, and we took a little trip to the beach on the tram in Adelaide and back, and filmed that.  Took a couple of days to get that, and then we decided this is looking pretty good, so we took a little more expensive camera out on the beach and put the piano on the beach.  It's amazing how cheap you can do stuff like that for... that day it was two thousand dollars to have them move the piano out and set up tracking with a gaffer and a grip.  And uh, and just film the song.  I had a jam box under my left foot, and that's how I was um, hearing the audio, was just by playing it on the CD.

Dennis:  And your son just figured he was taking a—kids love to go on the tram right? Train is fun, tram?

Ben:  Oh, he had a blast, yeah.  It was good.  And he's got a twin sister Gracie, and we did a lot of fiming of her too and played that at home as if it was a video.

Dennis:  Well, we will see eventually a Gracie—that's Louis your son, right?

Ben: Yeah. Gracie's too smart for stuff like that, though.  I'll have to write a song or do something different cause she'll know we were just trying to placate her. 

Dennis:  [Laughs] Ben Folds here at 90.7 WFUV, Rockin' the Suburbs.  I had a chance to watch the DVD over the weekend, Sessions at West 54th Street, which um, is I guess... Well, it's the Ben Folds Five performance of Sessions along with all of the um, all those, well they're not really outtakes. It's just there's another short film - bonus footage - that comes with it.

Ben:  Yeah.

Dennis:  And I was intruiged when I was watching Ben Folds Five perform how you used to put that piano- the vocal- the extra mike in the top of the piano and you'd be playing...

Ben:  Oh, yeah, yeah, for Smoke.  Um, yeah, I was um, I was strumming the strings, and I would attach uh,  the uh... it's kind of hard to describe over the radio, but the mouthpiece of a mellodica, which is a little keyboard...

Dennis: Oh, that's what it was... okay.

Ben: Yeah, and I would attach it to the mike, so after I finished going, "Smoooke..." and then [makes a wind-like sound] and then I could get over to the little mouthpeice and play that at the same time as I was playing the piano.  It was the only way we could work it out.

Dennis:  Well that's on the DVD or VHS or whatever it is, but... We were talking earlier about the song that Elton was convinced was Teacher I Need You...

Ben:  Yeah, that's right...

Dennis: ... the riff of that, Zak and Sara, which is another one of my—I keep saying one of my favorites, but I really happen to love this album.  Um, voice okay to give us another loud one?

Ben:  Oh yeah, I'm fine.

Dennis:  Okay.  So Teacher I Need—I mean Zak and Sara...

Ben:  [Laughs] At least I know I'm not going to get sued for it.

[Ben plays Zak and Sara live.]

Dennis:  Ben Folds, and “Zak and Sara” and Dennis Elsas here at 90.7 WFUV.  You don’t know how hard it was for me not to [claps] you; if you hear the song, and the hand claps…

Ben:  That would have been funny…

Dennis:  …whose hand claps in there?

Ben:  Oh, that’s me.  I did every note on that album, except for the uh, the strings.

Dennis:  Really?

Ben:  Yeah.

Dennis:  Because the video, for “Rockin’ the Suburbs” the title track, which your friend “Weird” Al did, uh, which is very funny—the song’s very funny—and so’s the video—but you are playing every instrument.  How many instruments do you play?

Ben:  Uh…oh, the rock instruments.  Piano, bass, drum, guitar, keyboards, yeah.  Yeah-yeah, Al thought it would be a good idea to you know, highlight that, and make a joke out of it, so that it gets unveiled.

Dennis:  When you can play all these different instruments, and then you’re listening back; so now, you’re not just critiquing your voice and your piano-playing, but, “God!  That guy playing the guitar!  What? What’s wrong?”  It must be hard.  You have to edit yourself six different ways there, and make all those judgments.

Ben:  It’s hard to, um, hard to be able to see, uh, the forest for the trees, when you’re doing it that way; so many details.  It’s cool, because you don’t have to talk.  I like not having to communicate.  “Hey, the reason I want to do this is this.”  And then have to lobby like you’re a politician to make everything work.  You just do it, which is great, but making a record—you know, I got really ambitious.  I wanted to make this record a really tight pop record.  Just because I feel like that’s the kind of records people are good at making these days.  You know, when you look back in 50 years, I think one of the things you’ll notice is how well organized our records are right now.  Every track is so well organized because we’ve just discovered how to use a computer and make it sound like analog, and it’s all done so perfectly.  And I just thought, “I to be a part of that and do it that way.”  And you know, I’ve caught a little flack for it you know, because it’s very produced-sounding.  But that was the point; that’s what I wanted to do.  And that’s what was the difficult thing.

Dennis:  You are part of the soundtrack that’s coming out for a film called, “I Am Sam” which is using all Beatles songs. Different artists are interpreting different Beatles songs; did you get to pick the one that you wanted to play?

Ben:  No, because I dragged my feet on whether or not I wanted to do it until there was only one song left [Laughs].  I just didn’t dig the idea of a bunch of people doing Beatles songs, because I don’t think that’s usually very successful.  They were done so well the first time; it had so much to do with everything.  It’s so hard to block the Beatles out of your mind no matter who you are, and to continue making music, so I’ve never really wanted to be part of that kind of thing.  But that movie is so good; I mean that movie is so moving.  I mean from the first second.  That has to be my favorite movie that I’ve seen in forever.  And that it was so good compelled me to do it, and then I realized the wisdom to it all being Beatles songs.  When you see the movie it’s really moving, and it makes sense, so I wanted to be a part of it.

Dennis:  Let’s take a listen to Ben’s contribution.  This is his take on a Beatles favorite, “Golden Slumbers."

[Golden Slumbers (studio track) is played.]

Dennis:  On 90.7, WFUV; I don’t know if that is the final take, but I know that is one of the versions, on version of that will be, uh, on “I Am Sam” the new collection of songs from the film where different artists, including my guest this afternoon, Ben Folds, uh, interprets in that case, “Golden Slumbers.”

Now, you’re a married man now, you’ve got twins, and if we look at the lyrics in the latest album, there is a lot more…sort of serenity, and peace, but you gotta go back into some angry places to play a lot of the Ben Folds Five music.  I mean…

Ben:  [Laughs] Yeah! It’s __________

Dennis:  I mean those are some angry guys there!  That’s a lot of angst!  That’s a lot of growing up; going through that stuff.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah.  [Laughs]  You throw temper tantrums more when you’re younger, don’t you?

Dennis:  Well…

Ben:  You get older; then, you know, but it is still my job like you say, to go back and throw a couple.  It’s fun.

Dennis:  I can imagine if you just sat down, and played, like, two hours of ballads; that’s not what everybody—it’s probably not really what you want to do either.

Ben:  Naw, man, that’s what so great about music and rock and roll.   It is such a good steam valve for when you’re growing up.  God, if I hadn’t had that, I’d have gotten in trouble.  It’s good for you, you know?

Dennis:  What’s next?  What happens, um, I don’t know—thinking about new albums, or new projects?

Ben:  I want to make the next record quickly.  I’m really in a very immediate kind of mood right now.  I feel like I want it all at my fingertips, so once I write the album—and I don’t know how long it’ll take me to write—I’ve got a bunch of songs already, but once I have the album written I expect to record it in two or three weeks. 

Dennis:  Really?

Ben:  And do a quick one.  So that’s there.  Um, I want to do a Broadway musical—very, very, seriously; I’m going to start working on that soon.  And uh, that’s something that I’ve always wanted to do.  And as far as touring goes, I really want to do something different.  I want every tour to be a little different, and I’ve got a few ideas; I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do yet.  But, um, I don’t expect I’ll be that predictable, the format of the touring next couple of years. I’ve got a lot of ideas.

Dennis:  Great, great. I can’t thank you enough for spending this time with us.  It has been you know, a live performance and, you’ve got so many fans out there who were very excited at the thought that you’d be coming up today.  The name of the album is “Rockin’ the Suburbs,” right?  Let’s talk a little bit about the title track, “Rockin’ the Suburbs.”

Ben:  Yeah.  Ah, it’s that ridiculous genre of white guys—you know, I just imagine them kind of, in their, um, in their SUV for some reason—but yeah, I don’t know.  It’s just, you know, every kind of music should be represented.  And there’s great music out there, and that’s totally cool.  And I think Rage Against the Machine rocks; they’re one of my favorite bands.  They’re great.  But, for a whole genre of music about these guys who’re making a laundry list of things they’re upset about—you know, I’m just not into it.  I think it’s just funny, and it makes me laugh.  And that’s why I did this song, because I was just doing something that made me laugh.

Dennis:  It made me laugh too.  Ben Folds, thank you so much for coming up.  We’re 90.7 WFUV, this is Dennis Elsas.

[Thanks to Greyseal for transcribing portions of this interview.]