Forbes Ideasicle Podcast - Beck Hansen

7/30/2019 Forbes Ideasicle Podcast - Beck Hansen

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THEBECK INTERVIEW

12/7/12 THE IDEASICLE PODCAST BECK HANSEN

date what who brought to you by


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m Will Burns, CEO of Ideasicle and Forbes

ontributor. Today I am very excited to bring

ou a rock star with an amazing idea.

eck, aka Beck Hansen, is famous for his

nderground, anti-folk, yet alternative, yet

eamy, yet hook-driven, music. His first big-

e was the song Loser, way back in 1994.

ut his ability to understand and reach his

udience just went cosmic, in my opinion.

m in the idea business and Becks idea

oored me to the point where I wrote about it

n Forbes.com, and it quickly got over

50,000 hits. Beck has released a new al-

um, but its not a record, its not a CD, its

ot a series of MP3 files, its something way

etter. And he calls it Song Reader.

e recorded our interview. But I was inspired

y the idea behind Song Reader, so, like

eck, am issuing this Ideasicle Podcast in

ritten form only. You will quickly understand

hy.

ets get into the interview, which took place

4:00 EST on October 18, 2012.

Beck Hanse

IDEASICLE PODCAST
http://www.ideasicle.com/http://www.ideasicle.com/http://www.ideasicle.com/


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Beck, welcome to the Ideasicle Podcast. Beck: Thank you.

Well its great to have you. I have seen

the sampler of your new album, Song

Reader. But can you tell our listeners

what Song Reader is in broad strokes?

Beck: Its essentially a songbook. Its a collec-

tion of songs in notated form and sheet music

form. And the idea came about 15 years ago. I

was sent a sheet music version of one of my

first records and I was looking it over. The re-

cord that I had recorded, I think it was Odelay,

or maybe my first one, had not been conceived

with sheet music in mind at all. You know, there

was a lot of experimentation, noises, screeches

feedback, you know, sound collage. So the idea

of notating it just seemed kind of backwards. So

I remember looking it over and thinking, you

know, its a shame that were trying to fit these

songs into this notated form. It would probably

make more sense to do it the other way around.

You know, where you write the songs for the

book. And so I had that idea sitting around for

years.

I actually forgot about it for a long time, and then

about ten years ago I was reading a book about

jazz singers and jazz crooners, and they had

mentioned that a certain song in the 1930s that

Bing Crosby had popularized sold over 50 mil-

lion copies of sheet music, in a time where there

was about 130 million people in the entire coun-

try. And that number was just staggering to me.

You know, the biggest phenomenon, musical

phenomenon, I had known in my life, was

maybe Michael Jacksons Thriller, and I think

at the height it had sold maybe 15-20 million

copies. So the complete, seemingly seismic,

magnitude of the song Sweet Leilani was a

kind of a Hawaiian ballad that Bing Crosby

Ideasicle Podcast: The Beck Interview

The idea came about 15 years ago


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Yeah, its a very cool, sort of retro but

new thing at the same time. Now, from a

creative perspective, did you approach

the songwriting differently knowing that it

would not be a recording from you, but

instead releasing them to the world to

record?

Beck: Yeah, well initially I thought that I just

wanted this to be a record, like any of my re-

cords, except in written form, where one has to

play it to hear it. And the idea I think got a little

more...it evolved after I had read that thing

about the sheet music, and I had no idea how

prevalent sheet music was and home played

music was, there was a time where that was the

way most people heard music. You heard your

neighbor, or your aunt, or whoever had some

musical talent, playing the songs of the day, and

that interaction, that kind of relationship to music

and songs is so fundamentally different from ou

relationship now, where songs are these MP3s

that pop up on a blog, or posted somewhere

and you hear it once, and then the next day

theres another 200 songs.

You know, to answer your question, I did think

about what these songs could be or should be,

and I had a lot of different thoughts over the

years about how I could approach it, ultimately.

Something that could sit in the style of an

American songbook, of American popular song,

but could also have some element to it that is

modern as well. And the songs are kind of half

and half. You know, they do pay tribute to that

time, but I was very conscious of it not just be-

ing an experiment and pastiche. You know, and

Ive seen many times over the years with al-

bums and different recordings I have done,

where Ill be really struck by something of the

past and try to incorporate it in a new way, that i

can sometimes marginalize what youre doing

Beck (contd): popularized, storming the nation

in that way, I just couldnt really think of any cul-

tural happening that was that wide and far

reaching, in modern terms.

There was a time where that was the way mospeople heard music.


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You know, I wonder, you said you had

this idea a while ago. A lot of times ideas

need to be around at a certain time,

when the moment is right. What I wrote

on Forbes.com in my article, was that thegenius of this innovation is in your sensi-

tivity to the modern digital age, and find-

ing a novel way to light a viral fire. Was

that your intention behind this?

Beck (contd): as revivalist or retro, you know?

And that is a real pitfall, but it was pretty hard to

avoid this legacy of the sheet music. In putting

the book together - especially visually - to not

engage in that world, because it is such a visualworld. When you get these old pieces of sheet

music, you know you can find them in old thrift

stores. Its a complete world. Its a lost world.

Beck: Yeah, I mean the idea for this came

about before I had ever been on the Internet, or

really knew anything about it. So it does hap-

pen that its coming together in 2012, you

know? We were talking about myself and peo-ple at McSweeneys who are publishing the

book about the fact that there are so many peo-

ple on YouTube posting clips of themselves

playing songs. So there is a kind of home-

played music burgeoning at the moment, and in

an unexpected way. Im sure whoever was put-

ting together YouTube didnt have any idea that

12 year olds would be doing Elton John covers

or Britney Spears covers.

So, yeah it does lend a form to it, but for me my

main concern, you know, when I started working

on the book in 2004, was after I had written a

few of the songs, I was like how am I going to

ask people to play these songs? You know? If

youre going to ask somebody to learn a song, it

has got to be good. (laughter) Its a lot to ask of

somebody, to sit down and commit themselvesto a song, so back to the visual to the book, I

think we knew early on that a lot of people aren

going to be able to play these songs or care to,

so the book becomes an idea as well as a visua

experience that maybe engages ideas about

what songs are or could be, and you know the

If youre going to ask somebody to learn a songit has got to be good.


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So, Im a marketing guy and I noticed in

those old-school sheet-music books,

theres cross-selling going on. On every

other page, they have snippets of music

that you can go back to the store and

buy. And I think that you guys were in-

spired by that as well, with some really

funny little cutaways that are very em-

blematic of that.

Beck (contd): humor. And when you look at

this old sheet music theyre crammed, every

square inch is crammed with ads and proclama-

tions of new song wonders. Its a whole lan-

guage of visual style that is so American and nonecessarily subtle, you know? Its from a time

that precedes the Rock era. Its completely dif-

ferent, but its very, I dont know, something

American about it, very eccentric, very rich.

Beck: Yeah, so when you bought a piece of

sheet music, a song, there are maybe anywhere

from three to ten little snippets of other songs

you can buy. Almost like a clip when youre on-

line listening to a clip of a song of an album you

might download. Sometimes those little frag-

ments of songs were like these found poems, or

Haikus, or unintentional Haikus. That was the

kind of thing that the main songs were just an

excuse to get to play with that whole rope. That

was actually the most interesting part for me, all

the extra bits.

To me the genius of this whole thing is

not that youve made something tangible

in an otherwise intangible, digital world.

The genius, to me, is that its an invita-

tion to everybody to record these songs.

What do you hope to achieve?

Beck: Well, you know, I hope to be surprised.

Ultimately, as the person who wrote the songs,

know that there are people out there who can

take the songs and make them better then I

would. I know what I would do with them, but,

I hope to be surprised.


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Totally, and I can just imagine you going

on your computer and saying, So who

recorded my song today? And lets see

what they did with it.

Beck (contd): you know, that goes only so far.

I spent many, many months on the arrange-

ments of the songs. Much more time maybe

then any other aspect of the project. How to

present these songs in a way that was engag-ing, but still left them open for people to com-

pletely pull them apart.

So in the intro I encourage people to change the

chords, change the structure, change the phras-

ing of the melody or add notes. All the things

that people have done to songs over the years.

Like the song I Only Have Eyes For You, had

many versions, and the definitive version camemaybe, 30 years after the original version. The

same thing happened with many Elvis Presley

songs. Hank Williams would take novelty songs

from the 1920s and redo them in the 1950s as

honky tonk music, and create these iconic per-

formances, of songs that were, before that, lan-

guishing for decades. Songs had a different life-

span; they had a different trajectory in previous

eras. So there was something about that that Ihave always thought about. Ive always thought

about what I can do, or what I can sing, I know

my limitations pretty well. But it must have been

very liberating for songwriters to be able to write

things that were just open for anybody to take

them as far as they wanted.

Beck: Yeah, I mean, Im sure therell be all

kinds of takes and versions. Certain ones

will...somebody will do something that nobody

thought of and will ultimately...I think thats why

this group of songs is really half done. Its how

I encourage people to change the chords, change the structure, change the phrasing of the melody or notes


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Wouldnt you say thats true about all

classical music, too?

Beck (contd): people interpret them that is

whats going to make them defined and thats

the way it was for a long time. Before recorded

music. Its so remote to us, its hard for us to

even imagine ourselves in that environment.

But there was a time when in order to hear a

song you had to know somebody who could

play it, or you had to go to a music hall, or you

know you were never going to hear the same

version twice. You can leave it at that.

Beck: Yeah, it invited a whole tradition of

stretching, and bending, and personalizing a

song. Maybe it did make the songs more per-

sonal in a way. I dont know, its a big idea to me

and its something that I dont even know if Ive

fully followed through to the end. It was really

something that I thought about for years, the dif-

ference and how we interact with music and

songs.

Yeah, well, two days after I wrote the

Forbes article a guys named Max Miller

dug up the promo visuals, when you had

that little website, and blew up the sheetmusic. There was just one tiny little vis-

ual of the music, but he blew it up

enough so we could read it. And it was

Do We, We Do, and he recorded it.

Beck: Yeah, and it didnt have the chorus yet.

He just had the verse. It was great.

It invited a whole tradition of stretching, and bending, andpersonalizing a song.


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And that was just one guy from a Forbes

article. Now imagine when you launch

this thing.

Now, shifting gears a bit, is this productin any way a statement against the digiti-

zation and piracy of the music industry,

or am I reading too much into it?

Beck: Well, you know Im not slanting it that

way at all. You know, because, like I said before

this could have come out fifteen years ago. I

have had this idea for ages and the people I

have worked with have known about it for yearsIts something that every couple years, Oh wha

about the songbook?, you know? It just kept

getting put off to the side. So the whole concept

has evolved around the evolution of all that.

In putting it together, I have thought a lot in re-

cent years about the way music is consumed

and how it can just appear on a computer, you

can listen to it once and then its gone. Youknow, and I think that you could argue sonically,

that the digital file is not an engaging experi-

ence, sonically. Its an approximation, and its a

complete reduction of the actual recording. Its

not human quality. And people hear audio files

and Neil Young is doing something interesting

with his own audio format - hes doing a high-

resolution audio format - which Ive heard and

its unbelievable. I mean it makes CDs soundlike AM radio.

Really? AM Radio? Beck: Yeah, really, its that striking. Even

though they tell you that you cannot hear a dif-

ference, I dare anybody not to hear a difference

So yeah, there is, you do wonder when youreworking on a song, as anybody would - like a

filmmaker or a painter - how this is going to be

seen and in what context. There is certain pow-

erlessness in how it is experienced and you just

kind of hope for the best.

The digital file is not an engaging experience, its an approximation, and its a complete reduction of the actual recording.


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Well thats what makes it so bold, in my

opinion. You dont know whats going to

happen. But its an experiment and

youre going to try it and see what hap-

pens. I applaud you for that. I think its avery bold move.

Was this a difficult thing to sell to the re-

cord label or did you go a different route?

Beck: You know, Im not even on a record label

I havent been in a record label in almost five

years.

Oh, really? I didnt know that. Beck: Yeah, no, Ive been working on this with

McSweeneys who are a publisher out of San

Francisco. Dave Eggers runs it and hes an in-

credible writer. Hes actually been a guest on

one of my records and what they do with print-

ing and with books visually is legendary, so they

were really instrumental in putting this all to-

gether, and making it what it is, as far as bring-

ing all the designs elements. And they com-pletely understood what it was trying to be, and,

yeah, I really applaud them for all their work on

this.

Do you plan to ever record these songs

yourself in the future? After, you know,

you let the sheet music run its natural

course?

Beck: I dont know. Possibly. Some of these

songs have been sitting around for ten years.

Some, more. I have recorded some of them,

you know, and I probably will, yeah. Or maybeIll play them live. Im kind of waiting to see what

happens with them. It may come out and no-

body cares, you know. So whatever the out-

come. I hope that other artists take some of the

songs and do something with them.

I hope that other artists take some of the songs and dosomething with them.


11/12

It is definitely going to be fun for us mar-

keting wonks to watch, and even for mu-

sicians to watch, just to see what hap-

pens.

Are you happy with the end product?

Beck: I actually just saw the book for the first

time yesterday. Its pretty substantial. Its about

coffee table book sized. Theres a lot in there. I

forgot how much is in there. I was worried that it

wasnt going to be substantial enough. But it is alittle world. Its like what someone said at

McSweeneys, Its like ten gatefold LPs, visu-

ally.

Well thats the other thing. LPs used to

be a wonderful, tactical experience with

the music that no longer exists in the

digital world. So I was sort of interested

in Song Reader as well because its

really a way to experience Beckness, if

you will. You know, from page to page to

page, because you have so artistically

crafted every page.

Beck: Well, I mean, there are only certain

things that I can take credit for, the art was all

done by other artists, about ten or fifteen artists

that worked on those. And, so, there are a lot of

different visual ideas and covers. Its a pretty

massive collaboration.

And I was going to say just that it sort of felt like

a pile of sheet music at an old antique store or

something, and you know they could be from

different eras, and its something about the vari-

ety of the way they look and the size and

shapes, and the styles of songs. Thats some-

thing that I wanted to recreate.

Yeah, well, Im almost giddy to see what

people do with this out in the social

spheres. I think its going to light it up.

And Im going to report on it next year tosee how its doing.

Well, Beck, thanks so much for taking

time with us at Forbes.com and the

Ideasicle Podcast. Good luck with Song

Reader.

Beck: Yeah, it was great talking to you. I hope

that people will find these songs and that some-

thing happens with them. Thats the unknown

quality, which is very interesting for me. Thanksagain, though.


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Click here to buy Becks Song Reader at

Amazon.com.

The Ideasicle Podcast (audio) can be found here on iTunes.

Will Burns is a Contributor to Forbes.com. You can read all of Wills articles

about creativity in modern branding here.

Ideasicle is a marketing ideas company that uses technology to unite some of

the worlds greatest creative Experts in a virtual environment, where the Experts

work together in teams of four to come up with ideas for our clients.

Learn more here.

Special thanks to Alyson Sinclair, Publicity Director at McSweenys and Jesse

Silbermann from SAM/Silva Artist Management, for helping coordinate the inter-

view with Beck.

Credits:

Beck cover image: Gina Ribisi

We All Wear Cloaks image: Kyle Pellet

Don't Act image: Josh Cochran

Do We? We Do image: Sergio MembrillasDesign inspiration: Alyssa Toro
http://www.sammusicbiz.com/http://www.sammusicbiz.com/http://www.mcsweeneys.net/http://www.sammusicbiz.com/http://www.sammusicbiz.com/http://www.mcsweeneys.net/http://www.mcsweeneys.net/http://www.ideasicle.com/http://www.ideasicle.com/http://www.ideasicle.com/http://www.ideasicle.com/http://blogs.forbes.com/willburns/http://blogs.forbes.com/willburns/https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ideasicle-podcast/id381143395https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ideasicle-podcast/id381143395http://www.amazon.com/Song-Reader-Beck/dp/193807338X/ref=as_li_wdgt_ex?&linkCode=wey&tag=wwwideasiclec-20http://www.amazon.com/Song-Reader-Beck/dp/193807338X/ref=as_li_wdgt_ex?&linkCode=wey&tag=wwwideasiclec-20

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Forbes Ideasicle Podcast - Beck Hansen