lonesome Beck<\/a>? Mazzini
Probably lonesome. But the other side of things gets me out of my shell, stops me from being a little too ponderous, which I\u2019m apt to do. The other side of what I do \u2013 Loser or Odelay \u2013 was more of a fluke. At the time that was what people liked. Now it\u2019s kind of reversed \u2013 they prefer the more introspective, quiet songs, and stuff that\u2019s a little more genreless. I don\u2019t have any songs that they play at weddings, like Uptown Funk. I remember telling Mark Ronson, \u201cHey, you made a wedding song.\u201d He was like, \u201cYeah, finally.\u201d That\u2019s a very elite category of song.<\/p>\nYour interview with Thurston Moore on MTV in 1994 is one of the most gloriously ramshackle interviews ever. Were you both doing a bit? LoftyDog<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
We filmed a bunch of things they wouldn\u2019t air because they thought they would get in trouble or get sued by people. I\u2019d brought an old-fashioned telephone and at one point we pulled out some baseball bats and destroyed the phone. I don\u2019t remember what the bit was \u2013 who was calling us? Whatever it was, we decided to smash the phone in reaction to a call. We were kind of doing performance art. I met a lot of resistance and ridicule for being like that on my first album. I would do interviews and say wild things because so much of it was boring, just rote questions \u2013 and I thought if my friends are reading this, they\u2019d be bored to death.<\/p>\n
A lot of the things on TV were just going through the motions. As a kid, every once in a while I\u2019d see something that jarred me. Like, wow, there was a glitch in the system and something real broke through. Something genuine that reminded us that this is all a construct, this smooth oiled machine that provides content for us. It was a very youthfully exuberant attempt to try to disrupt everything that was very pre-programmed and uninteresting. Thurston and I both came from underground art backgrounds, so it was preposterous to be allowed on mainstream TV. We were like, let\u2019s seize the moment and do something.<\/p>\n
\u2018Let\u2019s seize the moment\u2019 \u2026 Beck at the Troubadour in West Hollywood in 1994. Photograph: Lindsay Brice\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Given how productive you were right from the start of your career, how did you feel about being tagged with the \u201cslacker rock\u201d label? SalfordianBlue
I thought it was a reductive term. There was this influx of all this underground music that had been bubbling through the 80s and early 90s, and it all hit the mainstream at once. One day it was Vanilla Ice and hair metal and Whitney Houston, and then the next day it was Nirvana and all the stuff that you would see at your local dive bar. The 80s had been very curated and airbrushed and brightly coloured \u2013 I remember the first time I went to a record label, they told me I looked messy and rough, and it would never work. Whoever that was missed the point. We were reacting to how cleaned up everything was, and going back to something a little more raw and real.<\/p>\n
To many, Loser felt like a classic one-hit wonder. Did you always have faith that you\u2019d have a long career in music? StayPositive
I never had any expectations. I think the thing that supersedes everything is whether you are writing good songs. The people I came up with who wrote good songs \u2013 they\u2019re the ones that are still around and playing arenas and stadiums. And it was tricky when I was coming up, writing a catchy song was frowned upon. If you had anything that was too poppy or catchy, you were selling out, it wasn\u2019t real art. What\u2019s funny is the catchiest, poppiest songs from that time are the ones that everybody loves now.<\/p>\n
What would a devil\u2019s haircut look like, and have you ever seen someone sporting one? StayPositive<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Beck: Devils Haircut \u2013 ideo<\/p>\n
It\u2019d probably have a little bit of a rockabilly edge. Somebody showed me a video once of these proto-punk type people in Australia called sharpies, and they had a bizarre version of a mullet. It was really short bangs and kind of draped in the back. Something like that, maybe. I have a book of hairstyle photos that they would use in 80s hair salons \u2013 there are a lot of devil\u2019s haircuts. I think any haircut that has a lot of architecture to it, with wild flights of fancy.<\/p>\n
In their 1998 hit You Get What You Give the New Radicals threatened to kick the asses of Hanson, Courtney Love, Marilyn Manson \u2013 and Beck. Did they ever catch up with you? Dave_Rowlinson
I ran into [New Radicals songwriter Gregg Alexander] in an Erewhon [health food supermarket] at the time, and he said: \u201cI\u2019m a big fan. We should write together.\u201d And I just looked at him like, \u201cWhat do you \u2026? What\u2019s happening here?\u201d I thought the song was a little corny at the time, but it\u2019s probably a classic now. It\u2019s pretty catchy. I think the chords, to me, were a little too fancy for the aesthetic of the time.<\/p>\n
\u2018If you had anything that was too poppy or catchy, you were selling out\u2019 \u2026 performing at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, LA in 2017. Photograph: Chris Pizzello\/Invision\/AP<\/p>\n
Are you still in touch with [producer duo] the Dust Brothers? You\u2019re one of the last artists who worked with them, on Guero in 2005, before they vanished into thin air. I genuinely wonder what happened to them! Coopertapes
I did actually see them about a year ago. I see them from time to time. We have unfinished records that were never put out, so who knows? Maybe there\u2019ll be something down the road. I\u2019ve never asked, but I\u2019m guessing they don\u2019t really need to work in music, they\u2019re doing other things. They worked with Hanson right after Odelay \u2013 people thought we were related [Beck\u2019s surname is Hansen]. I remember they were working on that, the Rolling Stones and the Fight Club soundtrack. So that\u2019s why my next two albums were not fully produced by the Dust Brothers, after the success of Odelay they became too busy.<\/p>\n
\u2018You have to do it!\u2019 \u2026 Beck in Futurama. Photograph: 20th Century Fox<\/p>\n
Looking to the future, do you see yourself sharing the stage with a chain-smoking alcoholic robot? AKA how did you come to be a guest star on Futurama? vammyp
They wrote a script and sent it to me, and I said no. Through that whole era, I said no to pretty much everything. I was asked to do the theme for Austin Powers 2 and 3, and Shrek, and I was even saying no to, like, Amores Perros and Y Tu Mam\u00e1 Tambi\u00e9n and Run Lola Run, all these classic movies. They wanted me to act in High Fidelity and Ghost World, and I just decided that I didn\u2019t want to \u201cgo Hollywood\u201d.<\/p>\n
They sent me this cartoon and I thought, well, if I did something like this it would be The Simpsons \u2013 a lot of people have done that, Sonic Youth have done that. The script was sitting on the tour bus, and my band got a hold of it on a long drive and said, \u201cWhat is this?\u201d And I said, \u201cOh, it\u2019s this show, Futurama. I\u2019ve never heard of it, but they want me to do this ridiculous thing.\u201d And they said, \u201cYou have to do it!\u201d They all ganged up on me so I did it.<\/p>\n
Beercan is my go-to \u201cshake your ass\u201d number. What is yours? TeeDubyaBee
I would say anything from the early 80s funk era. Anything Sly Stone, James Brown \u2013 and early 80s Prince era, Talking Heads. Classics.<\/p>\n
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is one of my favourite films, and your recording of Everybody\u2019s Got to Learn Sometime is a sublime part of it. How did you get involved with the film, and why that song in particular? Cybillservice
I did a music video with Michel Gondry<\/a>, the director, and we became pals. I was having dinner over at his house one night, and he described this convoluted plot that I couldn\u2019t quite follow. I said, \u201cI don\u2019t totally understand what this is, but when you make it, I want to see it.\u201d Three or four years later, he called me up and said, \u201cI made the movie.\u201d My buddy Jon Brion was doing the score. It\u2019s one of the only things, again, that I said yes to. But it was because it was a personal relationship. It\u2019s become one of my songs that people love the most. I had just done Sea Change, which I think is one of the reasons they called me. That album had met so much shock from my fans that I swore to never make a record like that again. And now it\u2019s beloved. It\u2019s probably the main thing that people care about. I don\u2019t think anybody\u2019s mentioned Odelay to me in years, it\u2019s all Sea Change and Midnite Vultures.<\/p>\n Beck\u2019s new album Ride Lonesome is released 18 September via Iliad\/Capitol<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You\u2019ve been performing since the late 80s. What keeps you going? AmongstTheWaves It\u2019s a good question. I don\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":895587,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136],"class_list":["post-895586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=895586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/895587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=895586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=895586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=895586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}