Beck Interview

With his 45th birthday fast approaching and multiple millions in the bank, Beck could be forgiven for taking things a bit easier these days but, nope, after earlier in the week gracing the same Alabama festival stage as Foo Fighters and Skrillex, he’s off tomorrow to Boston for a co-headlining turn with the Pixies. There then follows a rigorous bout of UK and Irish gigging, including a bill-topping visit to Kilmainham on June 17, a date that’s circled in red on Mr. Hansen’s calendar.
“Shows in Ireland are always great... and crazy!” he enthuses. “I’ve witnessed some of the most incredible scenes of my touring career there. There was a festival a while back, Oxegen I think, where we played during the day and people formed themselves into these human pyramids. You had five on the bottom, then four, three, two and a little guy on top. It was like being in a field full of circus acts. The rest of the crowd were setting fire to their cups of beer or some other sort of madness!
“Another time I brought my family with me and between festivals spent four days visiting places in Wicklow like Glendalough, which is absolutely beautiful. We’re going to come over early in June, and see some more of the country.”
Cue reports of Beck buying a can of Coke and a packet of Tayto in Spars all over Ireland. 2015 got off to a rip-roaring for the Californian when, following a six year absence from the studio, Morning Phase earned him his first Album of the Year Grammy.
“I hadn’t won anything since the mid-’90s, and was up against Beyoncé and Sam Smith and all these biggest records of the year, so I was like, ‘Why will this be any different?’” he reflects. “Having lost 12 in a row or something like that, I was really shocked. This was a little record I’d done on my own. I didn’t even write a speech. I sat around for a couple of weeks thinking, ‘I should write something' but not doing so because it seemed like an exercise in futility.”
One imagines there was a good bit of celebrating afterwards.
“One imagines right!” he laughs. “It sort of felt like the last lap of the marathon; I was pretty much ready to fall over. Most of the guys on that show and the record have been playing with me for over 20 years. We’ve grown up together and it was great to have them there with me in The Staples Center.”
Beck refused to let his big Grammy night be spoiled by Kanye West who, in another display of immense boorishness, crashed the stage during his acceptance speech in protest at Beyoncé not winning.
“I was just so excited he was coming up,” is Mr. H’s reconciliatory take on matters. “(Kanye) deserves to be onstage as much as anybody. How many great records has he put out in the last five years, right?”
A far maturer reaction than mine, which would’ve been to follow Kanye into the Men’s and give him a great big wedgie. Any fears that Beck’s live powers might have waned were allayed by his all-singing, all-dancing turn last year at the Electric Picnic, which had a real James Brown Soul Revue vibe about it.
“That’s a compliment I’ll gladly accept because I was a massive James Brown fan growing up,” he enthuses. “I think our shows have been like that from the beginning; we were always having fun. Hopefully we can play a little bit better together than we did back in the day, but it’s always been about trying to break down some of the feeling of division between performer and the audience.
“I grew up in an era where artists were scary and just larger than life. Along with James Brown, there was Prince; The Clash whose last ever gig I was at and Nick Cave who I saw when I was 14. It was probably the most exciting thing I’ve ever witnessed. They were so visceral, and not the sort of guys you’d want to meet on a dark street. They were intimidating, and powerful and fun. I also stayed up at night to watch Devo and Kraftwerk on TV, so I was never in any doubt about the magical powers music possesses.”
Like many of the people he’s just mentioned, Beck has, through his numerous creative detours and reinventions, earned the right to do what the hell he pleases.
“If it is a right, it has to be paid for,” he reflects. “I’ve had other artists say, ‘Oh, it’s great you can put out an acoustic record’, but when I do and play those songs live, a hundred people leave and they’re not going to come back ever. I lose fans, which makes me sad. I could have made Odelay II, III and V but with five other people suddenly occupying that same sort of blues rock space it was time to move on. I prefer to operate where there’s a void.”
Beck’s career ground to what for a while looked like a permanent halt in 2005 when he suffered a severe spinal injury during the video shoot for Guero’s ‘E-Pro’.
“I thought, ‘This is it',” his drummer Joey Waronker told Rolling Stone. “There was this crazy choreography, where he was in a harness inside this moving wheel, being hit by sticks. In the footage, it looked like he was floating around. Somehow, he got seriously hurt.”
His boss, not wanting to sound “like the guy who won’t stop talking about his war wounds at the picnic”, is reluctant to go into the minutiae of the accident but admits that, “For about seven years I was pretty much resigned to the fact that I was done touring and other stuff that the doctors said wouldn’t be possible. I worked really hard, though, on my physical therapy, trying other modalities and generally trying to get back what I could. The splits are probably beyond me, but I can jump around now and get rowdy on stage!”
One of the things that shone through when I first interviewed Beck in 2000 backstage at Witnness was how massive a music fan he is. In the half-hour we spent together he managed to voice his approval for Neil Young, Black Sabbath, The Dust Brothers, Johnny Cash, Boxcar Willie, Moby, Kenny G, Kool Keith, Bjork, Air, Bruce Springsteen, The Gap Band, Woody Guthrie, Leonard Cohen, The Beatles, Sly & The Family Stone, Grandmaster Flash and Willie Nelson, which if nothing else would make for one hell of a compilation album!
“I got to play with Willie for the first time in 18-years in Kansas last week,” his young disciple beams. “He’s a rare example of somebody who’s been through so many eras and never changed what he does. It’s so pure and connects with people in a way that’s just incredible.”
The slickness of the performance - you can find it, natch, on YouTube - suggests lots of rehearsal time, but Beck insists that, "There was no preparation at all. For that reason we settled on two songs – Hank Williams’ ‘I Heard That Lonesome Whistle Blow’ and Jimmie Rodgers’ ‘Waiting For A Train’ – that we’ve both been listening to our entire lives.”
The biggest jam session Beck’s participated in was probably two years ago when Jarvis Cocker, Franz Ferdinand, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Beth Orton, The Staves, Guillemots, Villager-in-chief Conor J. O’Brien and others joined him in the London Barbican for the first live performance of his Song Reader sheet music album.
“That was really special,” he nods. “Those are the things that you can’t believe are happening and carry to the grave. That human beings can come together and let it all come out. It’s just joyous and reckless and incredible.
“There was another time when I got to do a photo-shoot with David Bowie, Stevie Wonder and Joni Mitchell. You just feel completely out of your league! One of the most engaging, alive conversations I’ve ever had was with David. It could have been 20 minutes or an hour, I can’t remember, but we touched on pretty much everything music culture-wise. It’s one of the many reasons I feel privileged to be doing what I do.”

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Beck plays the Royal Hospital Kilmainham on Wednesday June 17 with Jonny Greenwood & The London Contemporary Orchestra