Lugging a baby grand piano onto a punk club stage in the ’90s was about conspicuous as bringing a baby elephant—and twice as inconvenient. But any patrons who feared that they were about to endure a Gershwin recital were soon set straight by Ben Folds, frontman and primary songwriter of Chapel Hill, North Carolina’s Ben Folds Five.
Flanked by an explosive rhythm section in the form of stickman Darren Jessee and bassist Robert Sledge, Folds earned a reputation as the Jimi Hendrix of the piano—a violent virtuoso who punished all 88 keys like they stole his girlfriend and his favorite black t-shirt. After unleashing an onslaught of energetically-uptempo-yet-unerringly-tuneful numbers, he’d throw in a tricky riff from “Rhapsody in Blue” just to show you that he could.
Folds, with a mix of trademark self-deprecation and accuracy, later dubbed the act “punk rock for sissies,” yet the melodies were far more sophisticated, the harmonies tighter, and the wise-ass lyrics way more cutting than your average three-chord jam. Ben Folds Five’s 1995 self-titled debut allowed them to broaden their sonic range, but their follow up, 1997’s Whatever and Ever Amen, would be their breakthrough.
Ironically, the song that took them out of the clubs and into the global charts was not one of their hard driving, ivory bashing anthems or skewered caricatures of whatever sap managed to get on Folds’ bad side. Instead it was “Brick,” a mournful, deeply personal ballad stemming from his experience accompanying a high school girlfriend to have an abortion. Hinting at Folds’ vulnerability, the song resonated with millions and became a Top 20 hit around the world.
The reputation of “Brick” ran the risk of overshadowing the rest of the songs on the exceedingly strong album, which threw in unusual jazz time signatures, heavy metal distortion, vocal arrangements worthy of Brian Wilson, and a rowdy eastern European Klezmer section—and make it look easy. Even 20 years later, it represents pop music craftsmanship at its finest.
Folds, a passionate photographer—he recently served as a guest editor for National Geographic‘s Your Shots web community—is similarly adept with his lyrics, creating portraits of friends (and enemies), and evocative scenes drawn from his life, the lives of others, or his imagination. In honor of Whatever and Ever Amen‘s 20th anniversary, the maestro offered People verbal snapshots detailing the production of each track on Ben Folds Five’s beloved classic.
1. “One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces”
“I had a scenario in mind, and the scenario was a guy had made a shit-ton of money, become famous and successful in some way, and used that to summon all of his enemies to his basement. He’s got his enemies in the basement and he’s going past them one at a time. I imagined him sort of pacing and they’re all tied up like a gimp.
That’s what I had in mind, and I realized how ambitious that was. I had only written a couple hundred songs in my life at that point and was still trying to rein in certain things. I remember playing it for a friend and my friend saying, ‘You told me that song was this, and I don’t get that from what you’re saying.’ I remember the frustration of that and I worked on it ‘til I got closer.”
From: https://people.com/music/ben-folds-five-whatever-and-ever-amen-20th-anniversary-track-commentary/
