Last year's BIGSOUND made international headlines when keynote speaker Alan McGee called the PIAS warehouse fire a "result" and admitted he doesn't actually listen to music anymore. This year, the Brisbane music industry conference's keynote speaker is Ben Lee. He certainly seems to be a safer bet, but he's not exactly a stranger to controversy, either.
Just a few weeks out from the conference, I spoke to the preternaturally mellow singer-songwriter about his wild youth, his perspective on the Australian scene, and the rapidly evolving narrative at the heart of the music industry.
Ben, you're coming to Brisbane for BIGSOUND. You're the keynote speaker, following in the footsteps of Alan McGee. I don't know if you're aware, but his speech last year was pretty controversial.
I did hear about that! I did hear about that...
Do you feel pressure to follow that up, to be a little controversial yourself?
I mean, you know, an individual should always be slightly shocking in the sense that they never conform to your expectations of what the status quo is meant to do, but I'm certainly not trading on shock value at this point in my life and career. By the same token... I remember this thing Patti Smith said. Jim Carroll was asked to do a poetry reading in the '70s, and he came into the church and threw up on the pulpit. Everyone was complaining, and Patti Smith said, 'you asked for Jim Carroll to do a reading! He's a junkie!' The point was these creative minds can be volatile minds and can have unique perspectives. That seems like part of the enjoyment, if they give you something you weren't expecting.
BIGSOUND attracts a lot of international names, but it's essentially a gathering of Australian music industry types. Given that you've lived in America since you were 18, do you feel removed, in a sense, from the Australian music industry? Or do you feel like you just have a different perspective on it?
It's kind of a mixed one. I feel removed from anything, in that my career's existed on the peripheries of a lot of scenes. I've never felt fully a part of something, you know, like any kind of club. But so many people in the Australian music industry are people I've known since I was 13, 14 years old! I did my work experience at Half A Cow, you know? So many people in the industry have been my extended family, so I feel really connected to... I wouldn't say the industry as a whole, but to the individuals who make up the industry. I have a lot of history with them.
Yeah. You mentioned being on the periphery of a few different scenes, and you've spoken before about the difficulty of marketing your music because there's no other Ben Lees out there to look to; no model for you to follow...
Yeah!
Has that gotten easier for you? Are there universal lessons you've learnt that you can pass onto people now?
I don't know... you know, I'm making this new album, and I've found my music's getting weirder, in a sense. That requires more consideration of how I can bring my music directly to the attention of people who might be interested in it. That question... in a way, the more niche your work becomes, the more relevant that question is. Who's your audience? If you want to support yourself and have a decent quality of life, you have to make sure that even if there are only a few of them, the people that care know about your record. I think now, the way the industry works makes it more possible to have that type of career.
Because, firstly, you can make a record for nothing, which is what my record cost me to make. It cost me less than $5,000. Whereas before, when I was using studios and working with producers, it cost at least $30,000 to make a record, going all the way up to $100,000 to make a record, you know? So that, in a sense... the amount of people that have to 'get it' becomes much less. So that's the first thing, records are cheaper to make.
The other thing is that because of the nature of the internet and social networking and Twitter and all that, you're communicating directly with the people that get it. All the time! Not just when you have an album out, or when you go and play in your town. So, theoretically, that allows you... these kinds of things have made it a little bit more of a viable option to have the kind of career that I have and to continually feel supported by the people that dig it.
How do you define success now? Has it changed from when you were younger?
Yeah! Yeah, absolutely! If you'd have asked me that 15 years ago, it would have been very much the traditional archetype of the famous rock'n'roll musician, which is what I was sold in music videos and books, the images I was inundated with, that became part of my dream of what it meant. I think that's over. Not just for me, but culturally.
I think the relevance of the international pop superstar... I mean, yeah, look, Lady Gaga is still exciting, but for the most part, I think people are finding the real juice, the real interesting careers, are happening on the fringes of the mainstream. Big careers on the fringes of the mainstream, you know what I mean? Look at Arcade Fire, you know, these bands that don't have pop hits but they play Madison Square Garden. There are so many more types of careers you can have, successful careers, than there were when I was younger.
So I guess, for me, there's two sides of it. I need to feel artistically aligned with the work that I'm making, and fed and nourished by it. So that's a huge part of success — am I making work that feels exciting and vibrant, that feeds me? And then on the other side, do I feel some degree of dialogue with an audience? And it doesn't need to be a massive audience, you know, it can be a hundred people that the work is really meaningful to. And that becomes a conversation, which every artist wants. Nobody wants to do a monologue, you know? Everyone wants a conversation.
So it doesn't need to be huge, but I've realised that an element of success is that someone has to be interested. So, you know, you put those things together, and of course there's being a parent, and financially you want to be independent and able to support your family. That's another aspect that becomes increasingly a factor as you get older. You know, somewhere in the midst of all this stuff is a definition of success, but none of it equals Mötley Crüe. Not anymore.
You said once that being ambitious is seen as being traitorous in Australia. Obviously, that was something you found out the hard way when you were younger. Do you think the young bands playing at BIGSOUND should keep their ambitions a secret?
You'd probably have a better idea than I do, but it seems like that might have changed a bit, culturally.
Yeah.
It seems like bands now, when they come out... I see a lot of bands starting out in Australia and one of the first things they'll do is save up money and go to South by Southwest, or approach US labels. All of that has become very normal. Whereas, you know, back in the '90s, it was seen as... people thought you had outsized ambitions. I don't know how much of it is a cultural shift, that the world's gotten smaller with the internet and everything, and artists are discovered in Australia and break in other parts of the world all the time now. That was far less common then, and probably because it was so uncommon, there was a degree of threat when it did happen; a degree of, 'hang on, this band didn't come up through the RSLs!' You know what I mean? So I think there has been a change.
But by the same token, a lot of what I was exploring was about cultural gatekeepers and the boundaries of what's okay and what isn't. That was the fun I had, personally, in pushing some of those boundaries. I think part of the lesson I did learn is that you do risk alienating people. And look, some elements of music, particularly punk rock and performance art and fringe cultural stuff, need to elicit a hostile response. That's part of what it's designed for. Part of what I learned is that if you do express things that are taboo in a culture, you invoke hostility. That's sort of an interesting lesson. For some artists, that's an interesting thing, but for others, why not bypass that if you can?
Sure. If you could go back and give a keynote address to the teenage Ben Lee, the guy that was challenging those gatekeepers and putting himself out there, is there anything you'd tell yourself to do differently? Or would you just say, 'hey, you did good'?
It's really hard with that stuff. I don't know how you feel about it, that whole issue of regret. I do feel so happy and grounded creatively where I am now, so how could I really regret how I got here? But at the same time... I think sometimes I wasn't as articulate about my agenda as I could have been. What I mean is that there was a huge element of the way I interacted with the public and the media that was performance art, you know? But it was very emotionally charged and I found becoming a public enemy quite an unpleasant experience.
It pains me that people really think that I think I'm the greatest Australian artist of all time, that I'm that arrogant. That's not what my friends would say, that's not what they know about who I am. That's part of what happens when you try on different personas. I'm sure Marilyn Manson still has people who think he's a Satan worshipper. Part of what happens when you play with personas is that there are consequences. So it's not that I would do it differently, or that I'd tell myself not to say those things, but perhaps I would just impart to myself that the decisions you make about the way you present yourself... they linger for a long time. That becomes your story!
Yeah. You never know, do you, because when you came out and said you were the greatest Australian songwriter of all time, or whatever you said... as much as that might have put some people off, you probably made fans through that boldness. And it shapes the story of the later part of your career, so when Awake Is The New Sleep came out, people could say, 'oh, he once said this but he's so different now'...
Exactly! That's exactly what I'm saying, Rohan. It's so... how could I change anything? It's all been a very big learning experience. You know, if I really was still focussed on, 'how do I get the most people to like me?', I'd say that was a mistake. But I'm even less like that now. The thing I'm most proud of in my career is that I've always followed, very passionately, what I'm interested in and what was driving me at that time. So I still feel very aligned, not necessarily with the statements I made when I was in my early 20s, but the energy behind it of trying to do something 100 percent and trying to find out what lies on the other side of that gate. I still totally relate to that.
When your last album was out, you said it was about revealing your lack of confidence to people. You don't strike me as an unconfident guy. In a roundabout way, did coming out and admitting you lacked confidence make you more... confident?
Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure I lacked confidence, but vulnerability? Not knowing the answers? That, for sure, is what that last record was about. And yeah, it's powerful. Often as artists get older... you know, in their 20s they know everything, and all their music is, 'YEAH! We are gonna do this!' And then as you get older you deal with questions about mortality and life, you know, interdependence... young people often think older artists' music is boring, that they lose their edge. But maybe it just doesn't apply to young people at that time in their life when an artist is writing about being a 40-year-old, a 50-year-old, a 60-year-old... that's for other 40, 50 and 60-year-olds to hear that and understand what they're talking about, you know?
So yeah, I just think increasing vulnerability and openness and not having the answer... I think that has been, interestingly, a refreshing persona for me to allow myself to write from and integrate into who I am.
Given the life you've been able to lead, and the lessons you've been able to learn, through a career in music... if your daughter came to you and said she wanted to be a musician, she wanted to have that career, would you be happy for her? Or would you think, 'no, go do something else'?
Look, I wouldn't have any issue with it as a career, it's about how someone does it. I would be concerned if she bought into this whole Disney thing of becoming Demi Lovato, this world where everyone has to be a reality star... I would be disturbed, probably. Well, not disturbed, but I would be concerned if she bought into that sort of propaganda. But that's not to say she wouldn't find her way out the other side of it. The actual act of making music, of making art, I still 100 percent believe in that as a powerful shifter of consciousness for the individual and society. I would have nothing but support for her if she wanted to do that.
Cool. On a 'macro' level, what do you think the biggest challenge is that the industry faces? Obviously people at BIGSOUND are going to be talking about all sorts of industry-wide issues. What's the big one?
Look, I think the biggest challenge that presents itself to any industry is allowing the story to change. For instance, with the music industry, the story was that we grow artists to become massive businesses on their own and to cater to everybody at once. That was the idea. That was the idea of U2 and Madonna. I think what's happening, in general, with people questioning that capitalist mindframe of 'growth, growth, growth!', 'bigger, bigger, bigger!', 'better, better, better!'... watching bands like the Arcade Fire, who seemed to get really big by not trying to get bigger, by just doing their thing... I guess we're moving into a different story.
Like you just said, what's success? I think that answer and that story is evolving. It's like anything, it's like being married or having kids, you have a fantasy of what it's going to be like and then you say, 'whoa, maybe this is actually going to be about a different set of feelings, a different set of experiences than what I pictured'. And I think it's very difficult for people to let go of old stories and allow new ones to form, but that really is what's going to keep pushing culture forward.
What if there's a different story being told now? What if the story isn't about getting famous and having mass appeal and running this big conglomerate? What if the act of being a musician and selling music is about something entirely different? Being open to being in that question, in that unknown, is a threatening space that people have to be willing to step into.
Do you think there's still a place for major labels in this new story? If you can record an album at home for $5,000, why do artists need to deal with huge record labels?
Well, for an artist like me that's probably true. But there's still Lady Gaga and Kanye West. Those artists would be doing themselves a disservice to be anywhere else but with a major company that can really put them everywhere all over the world at once. But yeah, I think there are more artists, especially if you look at Twitter and everything, that are really driving their own marketing and their own connections with fans. I think for some of those midlevel artists, like myself, it's a much more open playing field.
To be a high priority, running your own Twitter feed and connecting with your fans, feels much better — the emotional quality of it feels much better — than to be the lowest priority at a major label. You know? That's the reality of it! Unless you're Lady GaGa or Kanye, you're not a priority at those labels. You get overlooked and your needs don't get met. So why not just be a little cottage industry, where it's just you and your friends or your girlfriend, put together a real thing and just do it yourself? Work with people that are really passionate and you can absolutely make a living doing that. Everyone I know... I only know a few people who I would say really have 'mainstream success', and everyone else is really just making it work. Doing it in their own way.
If adapting to this new story is the biggest challenge the industry faces, what's the biggest ace it has up its sleeve?
Yeah, the biggest thing is that no matter how much the object of a piece of music is devalued — and the object that music sits in, whether it's an mp3 or a CD or a record, it has been devalued, it's radically lost its value for most people — the actual music hasn't lost any value. People still need music. It's very clear that that's part of our cultural story about ourselves. We need music. That doesn't seem to be changing.
Music, moreso than when I was starting out, music is the way companies are selling things. That's why there are all these sync opportunities, because all these companies realised that being aligned with the right music is how to get their message across. So all this stuff... music is highly valued, it's just the objects it comes in that have been devalued. And that's what the industry has to work out.
Cool. That's probably as good a place as any to let you go, but before we do, you're obviously coming out to BIGSOUND to talk. Is there any timeframe for when you might next be out here to play some shows?
Yeah, I do know that, because I'm going to launch my Pledgemusic campaign for my new album while I'm at BIGSOUND. It's called Ayahuasca: Welcome To The Work, and that's going to come out in February next year. So I'm probably going to tour in March or April next year.
Awesome. Well, we can't wait to see you out here for BIGSOUND. Thanks for taking the time to talk.
Alright, Rohan. Take it easy. Thank you!
BIGSOUND takes over Fortitude Valley from September 12-14.
