by Ben Folds
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Within the first couple weeks of January, Robert and I had found a suitable small brick shitbox on Isley Street, within walking distance of everything. We outfitted it with as much padding and soundproofing as we could manage—blankets, old mattresses from a dump. I even walked around the neighborhood, knocking on doors, explaining we’d be practicing. I gave the whole neighborhood my number and told them the phone sat right next to the piano. All they had to do was just give us a buzz and we’d stop. But, of course, after a few rehearsals, some asshole had already called the cops instead of the number I’d given them.
Seeing the squad car pulling up into the driveway, we toned it down and quickly segued into some cocktail jazz—a spotty, quiet version of “The Girl from Ipanema,” which we let go on a few bars too long after the first knock at the door. The officer apologized for having to bother us. After all, the rest of the town was full of loud rock bands. The policeman said he found our cocktail music refreshing. He didn’t see any reason we couldn’t continue, as long as we kept it down. When his car was out of sight, we cranked it all back up. We’d just spontaneously and seamlessly gone from an early version of “Jackson Cannery” to smooth jazz via a sort of mind meld. We didn’t need to telegraph anything to make sudden musical changes together. It seemed there might actually be something special about this band.
* * *
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Robert’s musical personality, which was an important key to the sound of our band, took a few rehearsals to reveal itself. Having spent years playing heavy distorted music, Robert had turned his interest to jazz. I guess this piano band seemed an opportunity for him to class up his musicianship some. I tried to egg him on to play the way I’d heard him play before, distorted with a guitar pick, but he remained stubborn for a few rehearsals, playing a traditional tone with his fingers. But soon he cut the easy-listening crap, put some Satan back into his playing, and settled into the Sledge™ I associate with our albums. And once unleashed, his sound turned out to be way bigger and crazier than anything I’d imagined. Nobody sounds like Robert. He’s capable of great sensitivity too, but even in a ballad his playing holds a certain tension. It bursts at the seams, often bordering on musical antagonism, as if the bass guitar were strutting around the arrangement thrusting its chest, threatening to beat the other sounds up. That makes things happen! Robert’s bass-playing wakes a song up like I’ve never heard.
Darren brought an organic lyricism that dignified my songs in a way I hadn’t considered. There was Max Roach in there, Charlie Watts. He grooved, but he wasn’t the band timekeeper. None of us were. We slowed and sped, maybe more than any commercial band I’ve ever heard. You could never get away with that these days, in an era where everyone seems to have been born with a Pro Tools grid ticking robotically just inside their sphincter.
I was the one who often wanted to push the concept of Piano-Band-That-Rocks™ to the point of breaking the songs. It’s ironic because these were my songs I was willing to trod on, and I was probably the most old-fashioned in the band. My songs bordered on Broadway style when arranged and performed “normally.” Maybe I was compensating for that by asking for distortion and bashing cymbals. Darren was always reminding me about lyrics and dynamics, by playing, not explaining. Robert worked to animate and energize the arrangements.
Fortunately, the two had very different vocal qualities and ranges, which is actually ideal for group vocals. Darren’s voice was deeper and more resonant, Robert’s more cutting and higher. Mine was right in the middle, and our blend was immediate. I soon found that we could get a few distinct alternate vocal timbres by trading positions and placing Darren’s falsetto above Robert’s chest voice. My lead vocal could segue into a backing vocal between lyrics, making it sound like we had more singers that we actually did.
Everything seemed to be falling into place. I’d call it 25 percent idiocy, 25 percent intuition, and 50 percent luck. I felt the window of opportunity might be short and so I was going for it at a cavalier, breakneck pace.
* * *
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So let’s wheel out that line from “Phone in a Pool” once more:
What’s been good for the music hasn’t always been so good for the life.
* * *
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These hasty decisions were obviously very good for the music, and that was invigorating and inspiring musically. But when the dust settled at night, I found myself personally overwhelmed, a bit confused and blue, thinking of that little fellow frozen on the suitcase. This was not at all what I would’ve envisioned just a month before. What was ahead? What had I left behind? One of my first nights in our rental/rehearsal home, I sat for a while at the piano in the kind of silence I’ve always been so uncomfortable with. Then I filled that silence by softly repeating a middle C and the F above, in a perfect fourth, simultaneously and hypnotically, perhaps to soothe myself. It might have been for an hour, I’m not sure. I don’t normally write songs in one sitting, but this one was finished before I went to bed. It was called “Sad and Free,” but when the sun came up I decided I’d instead call it “Evaporated.”
Woke up way too late feeling hungover and old
And the sun was shining bright and I walked barefoot down the road
Started thinking about my old man
It seems that all men wanna get into a car and go—anywhere
Here I stand, sad and free
I can’t cry and I can’t see
What I’ve done
God, what have I done?
THE FIRST ALBUM—BOTH OF THEM
FROM JANUARY TO MARCH 1994, Robert, Darren, and I rehearsed like the wind. The songs I’d been bumbling around with for years were coming to life, one at a time, with each session. On one breakthrough rehearsal we looped the chorus of one of my older songs, “Eddie Walker, This Is Your Life,” playing it over and over. We’d discovered the power of pretty three-part harmony over a distorted rhythm section, which became a sort of trademark. The song had never sounded like that before. It was set free!
I likened our method of brutish musical arrangement to an American Tourister suitcase commercial I’d seen when I was a kid. It featured a gorilla jumping up and down on the luggage to show how tough the product was. I theorized, my songs would have to prove they could survive in this jungle of sound. The lyrics and the vocal would have to compete in the noise, rather than being coddled. If they were still intact, like the luggage, they were ready for consumption. This rough treatment of my old tunes created an interesting effect. Built on satisfying chords, well-thought-out arrangements, and centered at the piano, my songs could have easily been mistaken as undiscovered seventies’ pop songs. But we buried that gooey center inside a fashionable grungy structure. I exaggerated my wilder style of piano-playing, and it all became one big ball of sound. I found this exciting and liberating and I looked forward to writing new songs for this beast. But for now we were creating a set for our first gig in March, so we concentrated on putting our stamp on my existing catalog.
We didn’t yet have a band name, and Alan was calling every day to push that decision along because we would need to be called something for our first gig. We went through many cringeworthy ideas, as bands do. I think one of mine tops the list of god-awful band names: Dear Rosetta Stone. What? I also recall suggesting Uncle Plastic Bitch. A little better, but still. I still don’t know if inserting my name into the band name was the right thing to do, but at the last minute I told Alan, “Let’s go with Ben Folds Five,” at least to get through the gig. I had built momentum as a solo artist in Nashville and New York, where we would be doing many of the first gigs, and the band was an extension of my four-year story from Nashville to New York and now Chapel Hill. So it made a degree of sense.
Predictably, Alan asked, “Why five? There are three of you.” That became the leading interview que
stion we would have to answer for the next five years.
“I don’t know. I think it’s funny,” I answered, which became the answer I would always give.
“Well, I’ve got a great sense of humor,” Alan said (and I will never let him forget this), “and there’s nothing funny about that name!”
That settled it. Ben Folds Five it would be. I’m not sure Robert and Darren were quite convinced. Until now I had sold this whole venture to them as a band—all-for-one-and-one-for-all style. And here I was advocating for my name to be front and center. The tension that built between us over our time probably had some roots in this.
* * *
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We would need to have some music to sell at gigs, so we soon made a two-sided single on 45-rpm vinyl. We recorded “Jackson Cannery” and “Eddie Walker, This Is Your Life” on sixteen-track analog and mixed it all the same night with Caleb Southern, who had a little nighttime share with a studio that made advertisement music. Caleb, a soundman at the Chapel Hill (technically Carborro) rock club Cat’s Cradle, was becoming locally famous for his work with bands like Archers of Loaf, Metal Flake Mother, and Zen Frisbee. Great, simple production. We drove our two mixes to United Record Pressing in Nashville to have a few hundred seven-inch 45s pressed, creating the sleeve at Kinko’s from an old picture of my mother playing bongos when she was fifteen.
“Jackson Cannery” single cover art, self-released, 1994
By the summer of 1994 we had some gigs in New York that Alan had set up. Some interested label people from Caroline Records attended one at the Lion’s Den and asked for a copy of our demo. “We don’t have a demo,” I explained. “A demo is like a business card or a shameful eight-by-ten Hollywood headshot. We make records.” I told them we had a vinyl 45 (even though not many people in the nineties had a record player—it was all CDs) and he could pay two dollars for the record just like everyone else. I wasn’t kidding. I added that we would never record a song more than once because “it stole the soul of the song.” Alan ended up giving Caroline some of our rehearsal tapes, so they could actually hear our songs.
We soon signed with Caroline and settled on producer Dave “Stiff” Johnson. Approximately a year after I’d gotten up off that suitcase in New Jersey, we were in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, with a tiny budget, freezing our asses off and making our first record. Stiff Johnson, like any good producer, worked hard to rein in some of the insanity of our arrangements. We were rough around the edges and he worked to keep our tempos steady, to slow things down and keep us “in the pocket” when we got carried away. He got us to streamline our parts and placed us far away from each other so that piano mics didn’t pick up drums. He got me to sing more earnestly, and sometimes very softly, to highlight the lyrics. And in the end, he balanced us more correctly so that the bass wasn’t buzzing through the arrangements, the piano was simpler, and the drums less jazzy. He placed the music in the background and featured the voice. Sometimes he would suggest adding guitar. We certainly questioned this from time to time, but none of us had nearly his experience in the studio. We felt we should follow his lead.
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Kerry McCarthy, who had picked up my publishing contract in New York, was now helping navigate our career, and she came down to visit on the last day of our mix. She was very excited to hear what we had done, and I was excited for her to hear it. It had been an intense couple weeks of recording and learning. I still file those sessions under “damn good times.” Kerry listened to the first few songs and disappeared back into the tape room. When I caught up to her, she was crying. I’m pretty awkward at helping weeping friends with problems. I figured she’d just had a breakup. I took a deep breath and asked her what was wrong.
“The whole thing,” she sobbed. “It doesn’t sound like you at all. It sounds like three old men. It’s awful.”
* * *
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A few days later, back in Chapel Hill, Robert, Darren, and I sat in the living room with a few beers, playing the studio mixes over and over, trying to convince ourselves the album was great. We theorized that Kerry must have been expecting our record to sound just like a gig. We assured ourselves that’s not the way it works in the studio. Studio and stage are two different animals. Besides, some of our favorite records of all time sounded more formal than the live performances.
Darren suggested we pop in a cassette recording from a recent show for perspective. Good idea, I thought. I expected the tape to sound like a bad live recording, which would strengthen our resolve to stick by the more restrained studio versions. But not so. Not at all! The performance on that cassette was on fire! Yes, it was low-fi fire. But it was unique, energetic, and it popped out of the speakers. Damn. Kerry had been right. The album we’d made didn’t capture who we were. What’s worse, we’d spent the entire budget on it. Playing our studio mixes back once more our hearts sank.
We considered the possibility of using that live cassette tape as the record, but Kerry had a better solution. She would get us three thousand dollars and we could record some more with Caleb Southern, who had produced our seven-inch single. To say that’s not a lot of money for a record would be a tremendous understatement. Under normal circumstances it might have paid for one day in the studio with a few extra expenses, but Caleb worked it out for us to get five days. The label insisted we stay focused and just concentrate on a couple of songs—a few of the up-tempo ones. Chaz Molins, our label rep, came down for a day to keep an eye on us, to make sure we stayed focused on the agreed-upon songs and got the right results. But as soon as he left, we went for it and recorded the entire album again, plus a few extras. All rhythm tracks and guide vocals were done in two days. Having spent a day putting on a show for the label, we had one day for the vocals and one to mix.
* * *
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The experience was the complete opposite of the Conshohocken sessions. This time, we embraced all the things that any proper producer would want to fix. I recall sweating like I was playing a basketball game, catching my breath between passes. The more we broke the law, the better it sounded when it came back through the speakers. Caleb worked to bridge the difference between our live sound and the more well-behaved album we’d just made in Conshohocken. He understood the upside-down balance that made us tick—too much distorted bass, too much background vocal, and a slightly buried lead. He came up with ways of capturing the uncapturable, and he nailed it. I’ve rarely been as inspired as I was hearing what we recorded with Caleb. It really seemed like something new.
The day of our marathon twenty-four-hour mix, neither Caleb nor I left the building or slept. When I finally hit the bed, for the first time in two days, I was struck with fear that I wouldn’t ever wake up. I was so tired, the pull of sleep was so hard, that I honestly believed I was going to die. I thought, At least I finally made a good album! Good night, world!
* * *
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Once they heard what we’d done, Caroline Records forgave us for recording more than was agreed upon. Our entire session with Stiff Johnson went on the pile with all my other demos and literally into a vault. And my theory on demos, and how you shouldn’t record songs more than once, went on that pile too. It turns out demos aren’t evil—recording songs multiple times doesn’t steal their soul. I just hadn’t been doing it right. I was playing it too safe when recording. I needed to break the law and I needed accomplices. In Robert, Darren, and Caleb, I’d finally found the dangerous co-conspirators with whom to collaborate.
I’m not suggesting that Ben Folds Five’s debut is a damn masterpiece. But I’m very proud of it. We were backed against the wall and went with our gut. It changed everything for us. From then on we would only do exactly what felt right. Too much compression, you say? Eh. Too many notes? Too much pounding? Out of tune? Speeding up? Actually yes, fuck it, why not? We decided we were allowed to do whatever the hell
made us happy. There’s no doubt in my mind—if Kerry hadn’t cried, if we hadn’t made the whole album again in such a frenzy, had we not cast all conventional wisdom aside in that last-ditch effort—the first Ben Folds Five album would have been our last.
WELCOME TO THE GODDAMN MUSIC BUSINESS
Called in sick one day
Stepped out my front door
Squinted up at the sky and strapped on my backpack
Got into a van
and when I returned I had ex-wives and children, boxes
of photographs
—From “Free Coffee,” Way to Normal, 2008
DELIVERING THE MASTER OF OUR first album was like tossing a grenade in slow motion. It was like we sailed it through an open window at Caroline Records in the dead of night and it landed with a light clink somewhere in their tiny New York City office—followed by a week of quiet…
Then.
Shit blew up. Things changed.
* * *
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If there was a Broadway musical of my life, the delivery of the first Ben Folds Five album would be the end of act one. Not because the success of that album was overwhelming, but because, as of that day, I was officially a recording artist, and that alone made me feel a little more at home in my skin. I could take “aspiring” off my job description. I wouldn’t have to hide the fact that I was a musician from prospective landlords and employers. That voice in the back of my mind that was concerned my parents would always worry about me could hush. I was no longer a tumbleweed with a demo tape begging to be heard.