Ben and Jason
Ben and Jason make a nice couple indeed.
They come to the interview with two glasses of Lambrusco and
a good reserve of Italian bad words. They haven't yet introduced
themselves that two of my girl friends have already asked
me for Ben's phone number. Before they went to play a nice
acoustic show amidst the incredible noise of MEI (in Faenza)
they've been able to talk a while, for ehat seems to be their
last interview as a twosome.
They've been in Italy for a week now, pretty
much travelling and playing, but they're very satisfied with
the way their shows have been received. They are going back
to UK this evening and after a week they'll embark on their
last Uk tour. We ask them about the split-up first.
Ben: We did our first two albums with a label in Britain called
"Go!Beat", then we did a third album for them. When we got
to our third album they decided they wanted to try and make
us big. They put a lot of money on things we didn't need:
we had a video for a single which costs more than our first
three album cost to make. And it didn't work, it didn't take
off, we didn't go big (pretty much as we'd expected). We were
quite crushed after that, but we went away and wrote again,
tried to pick things up, and then the label folded, expired,
shut down, so we were left without a record label. So we thought:
maybe now it's time to put out this album and make it our
last one, so we could go on and do other things.
So the album was already written when the label folded?
Ben: We had written pretty much half of it, and then the rest
came when we already knew what was happening.
That's the curse of any big major: they expect you to play
their game and sell a lot. The problem is when a major decides
to sign smaller, more cult acts. As soon as they see a glimpse
of something happening they go in there and spend lots of
money, and if it doesn't work, they drop it. So it's their
decision.
But we're not bitter about what happened: it was a necessity
and the label folded anyway (it's been absorbed back into
Universal) so we couldn't have stayed.
Still, "Goodbye" is your best album to date.
Jason: Do you think? A lot of people think our first album
is our best. I don't know which one is, to be honest. I'm
very pleased with this one.
Were you trying to do something different from the last
album?
Jason: Not too different. We wanted to get back to the spirit
of our first album, "Hello". Because it was done very cheaply
and quickly and so when we decided we'd call it a day we though
we'd better call it "Goodbye"
Ben: I've just discovered today that Cream's last album is
called Goodbye, which I didn't know.
"Goodbye" Is the one of our albums which actually, having
finished it, I'm really satisfied with. I am able to listen
to it just to enjoy it, rather than listening to and saying
"oh, I should have changed that, I should have put an F in
there instead of a G". And it's very gratifying.
When we write about your albums we always make comparisons
to artists like Nick Drake, John Martyn, Joni Mitchell. but
is there any artist that have inspired you to play?
Ben: The Beatles made me wanna sing songs, and early Eric
Clapton stuff, the stuff he did with Cream, made me want to
play guitar, so that kind of got the ball rolling. And then
when we came to do this project I think the inspirations where
a lot more specific.
I think you use different types of music as you go along with
your creative processing; some things I like and don't inspire
me to write and some things I like and I can't help wanting
to write after hearing it. It goes both ways.
 And
what about Nick Drake?
Jason: He was definitely a big influence on B&J, especially
when we started writing together.
He's just a remarkable one-off, a very clever, very humble
guy, with a very unassuming voice and an absolutely stunning
guitar style. And the songs are very very beautiful and they
sound very english, for reasons I can't quite work out to
be honest, but there's something very homegrown about it.
He's definitely inspired the way that.. you know, things like
just tuning the guitar differently, and the strings. And then
we got Robert Kirby who did the strings arrangements for him..
We worked with him a couple of times. One song on "Hello"
and one song on "Ten Songs About You".
How was it? How did you get in touch with him?
Jason: It was a brilliant pleasure. He's a terribly nice guy.
We got hold of him just by pestering people. We thought: "someone
must have his phone number, he must still be alive, where
is he, come on", and we found him. He was running a business
in London, something to do with marketing, he didn't do any
music at all anymore, and we said to him "would you do a string
arrangements for us?" and he told "well, send me the song
and I'll think about it. I'm very busy but.". We sent him
the song, and we went and had a drink with him and he said
"I'll definitely do it, I'd love to", and so we managed to
get him out of retirement.
Ben: It was a great pleasure to hear it when he finished it
in the rehearsal room and the string quartet started playing
it, it was really great.
Jason, you did the arrangments on the last album:
did you steal something from him?
Jason: (laughs) Probably, yes. He and I swapped ideas. When
we recorded the songs he did the string arrangements for,
we were recording another one that I did the string arrangements
for, and we were looking at each other's scores saying "that's
good, I wouldn't have done that", "I like that bit! that's
clever" "your bit's clever than that" "nooo, your's." (laughs)
Ben: They were mutual fans
Ok, we've talked about the music of the past. But what
music do you like right now? Two years ago there was this
NAM scene...
Jason: Yeah. I didn't listen to much of that. At the moment
I'm listening to a lot of Ravel, and I'm listening to Lemon
Jelly and Carina Round.
She's half italian, right?
Jason: And she's very beautiful too.
Ben: I'm listening to old Fleetwood Mac albums, I'm into quite
a lot of indie stuff, bands like Franz Ferdinand, they're
signed to Domino in the UK. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs I really like,
and the new Strokes records, I really like that, I wasn't
so into their first album but...
Come on, you mean they're not identical?
Ben: I think this one's better! The songs are better, melodies
are stronger... And so I'm listening to a lot of independent/garage
stuff. And the new Rufus Wainwright album. So it's just a
broad spectrum really.
I think you've played some dates with Elliott Smith. Do
you have any memories of him you would like to share?
Ben: we did three dates in the UK. And he's.he was a very
very shy man. And so the few conversations we had with him
were very strange, he spent most of the time looking at his
feet and mumbling, he had this charachter. But I love, I adore
his music, I really hope they'll do something with the album
he was working on.
Jason: He had about fourty songs ready for his new album.
Did he?
Jason: Yeah, I was in America when I heard about it, and it
upset me probably more than anything else this year, apart
from the bomb in Turkey a while ago. I was really really upset
by it, because he killed himself and he stabbed himself in
the heart, which is just an incredible violent way to do it.
if you're gonna commit sucide you take pills, or you hang
yourself, but he did this and it would have taken 20 minutes
to die, and that's very upsetting.
I met up with his agent in the States, and he said he'd been
very very unhappy for a long while. He was gonna do a tour
in the UK a couple of years ago, and he canceled it because
he was ill; and his agent said to me "actually he wasn't ill,
he had run off the edge of a cliff and tried to kill himself,
but got caught in the branches of a tree and so he survived".
Ben: So it wasn't his first suicide attempt. He was very very
depressed.
they both smile when I tell them his last single was titled
"Pretty (ugly before)".
 Back
to Ben and Jason: your favourite song of B&J. And you favourite
of the last album.
Ben: At the moment my favourite from all the albums is a song
we just started playing live, from the Emoticons album, called
"Cartoon Heart", it seems to have a real life and a spirit
in it, and when played live comes across really good. And
on the new album. it's very difficult.
Jason: Mine's easy, 'cause my favourite Ben and Jason song
is on our last album, and it's the very last one, "When to
laugh", very very simple.
Ben: I don't think I've got an answer to that, it's very difficult,
because it's quite close.
Jason: "$10 Miracle" is a pretty close second to me. Is that
one you're particularly touched by?
Ben : I don't really know... When you create something on
your own you don't really got much of a perspective on it,
especially this close in time.
Can you tell me something about the lyrics on "Mr America"?
Are you being ironic on that song?
Ben: In a way yes I am, with what happened to America in the
last couple of years, and the way Bush has gone about his
business, which made me think that maybe America isn't golden
and shiny as it's seen on the movies. I was more thinking
about me being a young child when I was obsessed with America
and then actually finding out the truth, so it's a kind of
a struggle.
Plus, at the time I was quite unhappy, I was trying to find
out what was going on in my own life, and I put the two things
together. So it's not clear what it's about but I think what
I was trying to do was put enough imagery in, for people to
find out and imagine some kind of.
Jason: There's a sense of disappointment, about the reality
of finding something isn't anywhere near as glamorous as you'd
think it was.
So it can be intended both ways
Ben: Absolutely. it's about problems in my own life that matched
with how I see America as a nation, cause when I was young
I had all these dreams and I thought about life there in a
certain way, and instead I found out that life goes the way
that it goes...
Jason: When I was in America, the single thing that I noticed
is just how disappointed they are in George Bush. They just
think he's a fucking pig, and he is. It's terrible, terrible.
What may happen to a country that has a person like that is
representing it. it's very distressing.
Well, you could say the same thing about italy I guess
Ben: Yes, but at least Berlusconi is quite funny, at the same
time...
It's funny if you live in England, believe me
Yeah, you're right, mi dispiace (laughs)
Jason: I didn't know that his party was called "Forza Italia"..
Come on Italy! (laughs) a football chant!
Ben: We've been dedicating one of our songs to Sabina Guzzanti,
because of RAIOT.
Pardon me if I come back to this question, but you seem
to go along pretty well together, you still write wonderful
songs.. are you really splitting up? Are you sure about that?
Ben: Yeah, we are sure. It's not that we don't want to work
together anymore, I think it's that we want to do other things
and try other types of music.
And what now? I know Jason has played with Beth Gibbons.
Jason: Yeah, I've been playing in her band, which is great.
We did a year of touring and it's just finished, so I don't
think there will be anymore, but I think she's gonna go and
do another Portishead album, so hopefully they'll ask me to
play on that. They're very lovely people.
Ben: I've already started doing another project. I'm trying
not to call it a solo project, 'cause there's going to be
a band involved, we've alredy played together and every musician
involved helps create the sound. We're gonna release a single,
early in 2004 to see how things go.
Have you already a label?
No, actually. A few labels are interested in the single. At
the moment people in the industry want to test round everything
before signing you. So we'll release the single and see what
happens.
Last question: your favourite indiepop record of 2003.
Jason: Mine is an album called "one", by a guy called Simple
Kid. I don't think it's releaded down here but he's extremely
good, extremely corky and silly and noisy.. very funny. It
came out about two months ago. What's your favourite, Ben?
Ben: All I've been really listening to this year is Nirvana.
it's terrible, I can't answer to these questions, I never
remember.
Jason: Make something up! "Wings of the ostrich", by. (laughs)
Ben: Wait. is the Strokes indiepop?
Jason: Come on, it's on major label, they're sell-out rock!
Ben: Oh well. I bought a Domino compilation, a double album
called "Rose of possibility", it's been brilliantly marketed
in the UK, it's 4 pounds for thirteen songs
So you only go for indiepop music if it's on budget price?
Ben: (laughs) Oh, vaffanculo!
Jason: We've been learning a lot of italian bad words. We
came here with "sė, no, grazie, prego", and now we've got
cazzo, stronzo, vaffanculo, sega.
And after my contribution to their vucabulary ("Che palle")
we part ways.
Salvatore
and Alessandro
Links:
Ben and Jason@indiepop.it: bands/benandjason.htm
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