I do have that mindset – that most good art comes from some turmoil, from someone trying to come to some equilibrium, or come up and get a breath.
BEN FOLDSI do have that mindset – that most good art comes from some turmoil, from someone trying to come to some equilibrium, or come up and get a breath.
BEN FOLDSThe music business is a weird business. Sometimes licensing doesn’t happen because some business component that you never knew about stops it.
BEN FOLDSI think a lot of good directors listen to music while they’re working. The songs just don’t become a part of the film. They’re replaced.
BEN FOLDSThe less I talk in bars, write emails, express myself in an emotionally lewd way outside of my songwriting, the more I have to do it through my music.
BEN FOLDSPeople learn at the rate they are going to learn.
BEN FOLDSI used to do this big rant at the end of some gigs with Ben Folds Five. The band broke into this big heavy metal thing and I started as a joke to scream in a heavy metal falsetto. I found myself saying things like: Feel my pain, I am white, feel my pain.
BEN FOLDSBilly Joel and Joe Jackson were both great, and they both play piano.
BEN FOLDSThe piano is just a different animal. It’s expensive, it’s big, it’s heavy, and it doesn’t fit in the mix easily.
BEN FOLDSI want people to listen to my lyrics and be okay with themselves. The people who have it the roughest are homosexuals who come out of the closet.
BEN FOLDSThe nature of honesty is that if someone has information or knows something about you that you don’t want heard, then they have power over you.
BEN FOLDSIt’s a tough thing to know that when you’re making your album, you’re going to end up collaborating with, say, Wal-Mart, on your artwork. That just sucks. And the pressure behind getting the numbers real fast is, to me, dizzying.
BEN FOLDSIf you’re afraid they might discover your redneck past, there are a hundred ways to cover your redneck past.
BEN FOLDSI’m older than I was, and I’m still washed-up, and I haven’t changed my music one iota. It’s just much easier to do this when people are being nice to you.
BEN FOLDSMy parents told me I must get married. I was seen as a failure if I didn’t do it.
BEN FOLDSEveryone, when you’re a teenager and you’re growing up, you do feel like your life is dramatic enough to be on a TV screen, but we know that it’s not.
BEN FOLDSI drink a lot, probably too much. My scene while writing lyrics is always a bottle of scotch and stacks of note cards, pencil and pencil sharpener. I throw around note cards and drink.
BEN FOLDS