A Dream About Lightning Bugs

by Ben Folds

  * * *

  —

  Frally and I were married in June, and the twins arrived in July. As the first single, “Army,” was struggling on the radio back in the States, I was eleven thousand miles away, sorting my passport and moving things into a small house in Hyde Park, a quiet suburb of Adelaide. I welcomed this new chapter of my life and took special joy in watching the twins as they learned to crawl, make noises and all kinds of faces, and finally to get the fuck to sleep! Being a new parent does little to help the sleep deprivation of rock touring, but I felt great relief in getting the spotlight off myself. I was happy tending to someone else for a change. Too much “me” had made Ben a dull boy.

  The news of the album sales, the airplay numbers, and the reviews weren’t particularly positive. It wasn’t awful, but we weren’t scoring big prizes anymore. And no wonder. It wasn’t a big prize kind of album. It wasn’t really a pop album at all, so what did we expect? I was relatively disconnected to the progress of the record, with baby spew on each shoulder and a VHS of Teletubbies on repeat. I decided to tune it all out until I was called to tour duty again.

  Adelaide, Australia, with twins, 1999

  We began touring with some scheduled breaks in between gigs so that I could fly back to Australia, finally hitting the big venues we had always been aiming for. But with no real radio buzz to kick it off, we only half-sold most of them. And we had gone big this time, spending oodles on production, with official big-ass lights and a larger crew. I carried two baby grand pianos, one of them with tacks in the hammers for a different sound. I sometimes played both pianos at the same time. Robert had an array of synthesizers, and Darren had timpani and gong in his setup. Musically, it made for an interesting tour. We had grown more confident and could sit inside ballads and the introspective songs without having to make a joke every other moment. But with no radio hit, we had suddenly dipped back into unsustainable territory. The expense, the distance, my parental requirements, began to wear on all of us. The squeeze was immediate.

  * * *

  —

  There’s an insane video from that era that made the rounds. It’s from a live nationally televised concert in Japan, in a sold-out five-thousand-seat arena. The video was dubbed the “Freaking Out DVD.” Indeed, Ben Folds was Freaking Out, and doing so for a confused Japanese audience. Returning for our encore in official Japanese police uniforms, Robert, Darren, and I broke into faux Rage Against the Machine meets Black Sabbath meets Weird Al as I ran around the stage shouting and rapping like an idiot. That much had become routine, but this one went way over the mountain. Darren took part in the tantrum, beating the living fuck out of a gong as I screamed, “Thank you, sir, may I have another!” repeatedly. I mean, way too many times. It’s damned uncomfortable to watch. I told a lot of very sweet Japanese fans that they were all going to prison to be “fucked up the ass.”

  But we love Ben Folds Five! Why would they want to hurt us?

  I find it simultaneously funny and alarming. Because it’s a real tantrum. It’s profane, angry, and childish, and it was on mainstream Japanese TV. Our album was tanking. We had been told the only chance to get a video for “Magic” was on this filmed performance, and we’d just bungled that. The first two singles had broken the bank for Sony. Especially “Don’t Change Your Plans,” with its three-hundred-thousand-dollar video directed by the brilliant filmmaker Abel Ferrara. Making a cheap video for “Magic” might have persuaded the label to give that song a chance, because we all thought it was a hit. But that was it for Reinhold’s promotion budget, and the door was shut. I was raising a family and needed this album to succeed more than ever. The arc of my marriage was also following a familiar pattern, in the shape of a spiral pointed downward.

  When I’m struggling emotionally or I’m stressed, I act up, especially onstage. I go too far in nearly everything. It’s the same thing I did when I was in school, except that instead of being sent home, I get paid. I throw childish tantrums, which I more or less pass off as humor. Hopefully they have provided someone with entertainment. They’re certainly good for blowing off steam. But I knew something had to give soon, because inwardly I was freaking out. I was spinning way too many plates, and some of them were now hitting the floor.

  STOP THE BUS!

  THE EUROPEAN TOUR IN SUPPORT of Reinhold was the baseball bat that broke the camel’s back. The record was dead and we knew we were wasting our time.

  This tour was particularly dark. It was a version of This Is Spinal Tap without the funny parts. The bus driver was on uppers to stay awake and he drove in a manner that kept the rest of us that way as well. He was morbidly obese and always left his pants unbuttoned while driving. I don’t believe I ever even saw him stand. He certainly never got himself up to empty the bus toilet tank, which overflowed as he took excessively fast turns, wandering from lane to lane across the highway. The funk of forty thousand tours trickled from the toilet, oozing beneath the bunks. Not that it was easy to spot beneath the trash, beer cans, and excessive drug paraphernalia. We weren’t a druggie bunch, but this tour was as close as we got to Mötley Crüe.

  The bus driver thought he had a girlfriend, but she turned out to be a prostitute who was using him and the bus for a free ride. She would crawl around and knock on all our bunks during the night, asking, “Do you want me to do your laundry?” I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but I had a feeling I was better off declining. There was one crew member who I imagine probably did let her do his laundry. Finally the bus driver did what I didn’t think was possible and got a traffic ticket on the Autobahn. I mean, there’s no speed limit on the Autobahn, right? I called Alan and insisted that we get another bus somehow, because I had to survive to be a good father. We fired the bus driver, who sued and won for unfair dismissal. Another pay-to-play tour. For some in my crew, like Leo, who’d been with us since near the beginning, the heaviness of the vibe on that tour, the awful and uncomfortable living conditions, and the toll of the past few years of grind were all too much. He took a break from my touring until well into my solo years and then returned once he’d recovered. He’s still with me these days. In fact, he just showed me which Griswold pan to buy on eBay.

  * * *

  —

  It was obvious the end was near. Robert, Darren, and I were on such different pages. We sat side by side on the bus, as they read cool biographies of sixties’ Beat poets and On the Road and I sat with my highlighter and a book about child development. I was no fun. And how do you even get together for practice when you live eleven thousand miles away?

  *Cue the Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin classic, “Separate Lives.”*

  I don’t really recall much about our last gig, at the Summer Sonic Festival 2000 in Japan, except that Robert spent much of the time walking around the stage holding his bass up and not playing it, trying to get the attention of the crew. And I remember some big hairy Americans, who I figured worked on Green Day’s or Weezer’s crew, heckling us from the side of the stage.

  The next two shows were canceled due to a typhoon in Okinawa and political unrest in South Korea, so the tour ended early and I got to come home and surprise my kids. I was excited for them to try Pop Rocks, which I hadn’t seen since the seventies. Pop Rocks are a fizzy crackling packet of sugar candy that sort of explodes in your mouth. I was stoked to have procured two packs in Tokyo. The twins were not so stoked and there were tears. Wait until your kids are at least five before you give them exploding candy. #ProParentTips.

  The twins were now walking, just well enough to get themselves in trouble. And they were now talking well enough to say all kinds of crazy shit. I was glad I wouldn’t be missing any more of that for a while.

  * * *

  —

  Getting back into my domestic life, a few days after the tour, the familiar old school AOL, “You’ve Got Mail!” summoned me to the office, which doubled as a baby-changing clo
set. It was an email from Darren, and it wasn’t exactly a surprise. He had aspirations to write and sing his own material, and none of us was getting any younger. The email was a brief one, which just said he was done and out of the band. Before I could respond, my computer dinged again, “You’ve Got Mail!” This one was from Robert, who quickly replied that “It’s only a band if it’s the three of us. If Darren is out, then I’m out too.”

  I had one child over my right shoulder and the other playing with my shoestrings. I don’t recall how I responded, but it was as brief as the two emails I’d just received. I just acknowledged that we would no longer be a band. I forwarded the emails to Alan, shut my phone off, took the twins for a stroll, and that was that.

  ROCKIN’ THE SUBURBS

  I WAS A NEW PARENT, in a new country, at the dawn of a new century, and I thought that Rockin’ the Suburbs should be a musical document of that moment. It should be memorialized with the musical stenographic equipment of the day, which meant using computers. Ugh. My comfort zone had always been the methods and sounds of good old-fashioned twentieth-century recording, but this was clean-slate time again, so I set my fears of twenty-first-century technology and all its evil editing ability aside. I wanted a time stamp on this one: Class of 2001.

  Some producer with computers fixes all my shitty tracks

  —From “Rockin’ the Suburbs,” Rockin’ the Suburbs, 2001

  I sent a demo of the song “Rockin’ the Suburbs” to Ben Grosse when I asked him to produce my first solo record. He said, “About that line with the ‘shitty track fixing,’ you know that’s what I do, right? I record on a computer and fix everything. It’s the way I work.” I told him that’s precisely why I wanted him. He was a virtuoso in computer recording, and his records sounded very “now.” He had a few albums at the top of the modern-rock charts. It wasn’t music I cared for, but he knew exactly how to present it, how to dress it. We set up a digital recording studio in a church in Adelaide and I played all the instruments, even electric guitar, with the exception of a few overdubs here and there. I had spent the previous six months writing these songs and had demo’d them already. I put in more time writing and preparing for this album than I ever had before. I knew I had to make a great first solo album, or perish.

  One of the first songs we recorded was “Still Fighting It,” the lyrical spark of which had come to me after witnessing the birth of my twins.

  You’re so much like me—I’m sorry…

  —From “Still Fighting It,” Rockin’ the Suburbs, 2001

  People say your life flashes before you when you think you’re going to die, but that’s never been true for me. The few times I’ve thought it was lights-out time, nothing really flashed before my eyes, except for weird thoughts like, I wish I hadn’t eaten, because I’d like to die on an empty stomach. That would be more dignified. And I hope this doesn’t hurt for long. I found myself on a plane once that seemed certain to crash, and there was no time for sentimentality. The pilot was obviously convinced we were going down, as hard as he tried to sound cool. CNN was even waiting when we miraculously landed! But nope. During that flight, with loose objects and unbuckled people being tossed over seats, I had no deep thoughts, no flashing of my life before my eyes. But the birth of my children? Seeing two new lives as they came into the world, struggling for breath, shocked by light and sound, crying and scared, did bring it all back in a flash. It was profound and I wanted it in a song.

  It sucks to grow up

  And everybody does

  It’s so weird to be back here

  —From “Still Fighting It”

  I suddenly saw life as a series of scary challenges in an exponential incline. One that never ends. You’re always fighting against something, facing challenges, for which you’re not quite prepared. Birth, then your first sickness, your first rejection, first humiliation, first breakup, first fight, first bad grade, first firing, a heart attack or cancer, and then you shit the bed and die. And who knows what lies beyond that. But once you’ve surmounted each new obstacle, you can live in some calm temporarily. Those problems become old hat, not so scary, until the next unknown storm. But still, life is wonderful, and I wanted that in my song too. It had never occurred to me that I would live my life a second time—its ups and downs, joys and fears—by having children. But my life has flashed before my eyes every day since.

  * * *

  —

  I tried to hang on to the emotional weight of this as we recorded the first track of “Still Fighting It,” late one night with just piano. We got into a vibe and laid something simple down that felt special. Listening to the piano track the next morning, I thought it sounded like a classic track but…it was too slow. Maybe I had been a little too into my midnight vibe. No problem, I thought. It would be easy enough to record again.

  “No,” Ben Grosse told me, “that piano track is magic. Let’s keep it. We can speed it up on the computer. There’s a program that will do that without also raising the pitch.”

  Fine. I went to lunch to let him do his tricks. Hours later it became obvious it wasn’t going to be so simple. When Ben Grosse sped the track up but left the pitch the same, the piano suffered from what is known as “digital artifacts.” Subtle but nasty ticks and flutter trashing up the sound. The piano lost its luster. Soon, Ben Grosse was auditioning various “pitch and time” plug-ins from the internet. The hours turned into days. He had put so much energy into this, and we were not going to give up now. I was desperately trying to hang on to the feeling of this song about the miracle of childbirth and the challenges of life, but I kept having to reach for my credit card repeatedly as Ben downloaded trial versions of plug-ins and we compared the artifacts.

  During recording of Rockin’ the Suburbs—waiting for hours on edits

  “Okay…which sounds better? This one…or…this one?” he asked, watching my expression for clues, his hand on a switch.

  “God, it’s hard to tell. They both sound weird. Play it back again?”

  “No, no, listen to the upper harmonics. Here’s choice A….All right, now here’s B….What do you think?”

  Where’s the fucking stash of razor blades? That’s what I thought.

  I just don’t know about these time-saving audio plug-ins. I’m not convinced they save time. I’m not quite convinced computers and cellphones save time in the end. But, hey, we got through. I wanted the Class of 2001, and the Class of 2001 is what I got. I’ll admit that I was uncomfortable with recording on computer because I worried all those digital seams would show through. Recording that way often seemed like a series of dental appointments, and I came home each night threatening to quit. But the computer is just another process, our era’s process. It’s the music that matters. I believe the album truly holds up. Ben Grosse taught me some important lessons in music, performance, and arrangement. You can indeed teach an old pianist some new tricks.

  * * *

  —

  The title Rockin’ the Suburbs struck many as silly and uncool. Especially the “suburbs” part and that’s exactly why I was attracted to it. Rock and roll was supposed to be about the darkest streets, not the cul-de-sacs with up-lighting. But I was interested in life in the suburbs, so why wasn’t it okay to write about it? Everyone in the nineties was so taken with the freaks, the losers, the weirdos, and the creeps. But I figure if you wanna talk to a real weirdo, just open the phone book, put your finger down somewhere in the suburban pages (if you can find a phone book), and call them up.

  I felt that rock music and popular culture took the middle class in the suburbs for granted. Stuck somewhere between the rural and the urban, just beyond the strip malls and before the pastures, the suburbanites were expected to buy all the CDs, but their stories weren’t supposed to be featured in them. The suburbs were so uncool that there was even a book (a very good one) in 2001 called Bomb the Suburbs, by a graffiti
artist named William Upski Wimsatt. (Interestingly, by 2010 Wimsatt had thought about it some more and followed it up with Please Don’t Bomb the Suburbs, around the same time that Arcade Fire chimed in with their wonderful album, The Suburbs.)

  On Rove in support of Rockin’ the Suburbs, with compulsory angry red backward baseball cap

  Y’all don’t know what it’s like, being male, middle class, and white

  —From “Rockin’ the Suburbs,” Rockin’ the Suburbs, 2001

  I thought it was notable that what most of the music middle-class suburban kids were listening to, and making, was aggressive, loud, and angry. Modern-rock radio was 24/7 middle-class anger. No sad songs, no happy songs, no love songs, just pissed-off songs. So I wanted to write a song about it, but I wanted my song to sound annoyingly happy. As it happens, I saw a Spin magazine with some oddly familiar faces on the cover. Remember those hairy roadies I mentioned heckling us at the last Ben Folds Five gig? It turns out that was a famous rock band called Korn. According to Spin, they were “taking on the wusses.” That sounded brave, so I read on, putting it all together when I saw Korn’s quote, in massive type, beneath their photo:

  BEN FOLDS FIVE ARE FUCKING PUSSIES. THEY PLAY FUCKING “CHEERS” MUSIC.

  This was a reference to the theme song of the TV show Cheers. Awesome. Good association, I thought. Good melody.

  It made me wonder, though. Why did the middle-class white suburbanites of that era consume so much anger rock? Why was Korn’s main mission that day taking on musicians with pretty chords and not-so-angry music? Were things really that bad? What exactly was in the air? I seemed to know as little about Korn as they did about me. Checking out their music, I had to admit it was pretty damn good. But it was striking how one-tracked it was emotionally, like the rest of the successful bands you heard pumping out of cars in the ’burbs. Something was definitely afoot.