When Ben Folds and his oddly-named trio crashed
the guitar-heavy grunge party dominating the early
part of the '90s, he did so by melding unerring pop
sensibilities with acerbic lyrics. REINHOLD
MEISSNER finds Folds using more orchestrations on
a record full of pop confections that was unknowingly
named for the first man to climb Mt. Everest without
an oxygen tank. "Don't Change Your Plans" includes
a flugelhorn section reminiscent of any classic
Bacharach/David composition, whereas the slightly
more uptempo "Mess" carries a breeziness that has
Elton John's influence all over it. Folds avoids filling
REINHOLD solely with such nakedly emotive
numbers like "Magic" and "Hospital Song" by fiercely
rocking the '88s.
The semi-autobiographical "Army" bubbles over with
Robert Sledge's unmistakable fuzz bass and help
from the Squirrel Nut Zipper's horn section. Folds
throws in a semi-rap and electronic sound effects to
poke fun at his southern upbringing in "Your Redneck
Past" and uses an answering machine message left
by his dad as the vocal track for the coffee-house jazz
of "Your Most Valuable Possession." Folds wraps
everything up with the mid-tempoed "Lullabye," a
song whose combination of orchestral arrangements
and soulful piano playing bring to mind Ray Charles.
Old Biography
BEN FOLDS: This is the first record we've said, you
know, let's go into a nice studio and let's take the time
and let's do it right. Make it big. We had time and we
had money and we were excited about going into a
studio. We wrote most of the record in the studio. At
Sound City in California. Pretty much on the 101
Freeway on the way to the studio. We got one every
morning.
About the title: DARREN JESSEE: "Reinhold
Messner" is the name that me and my friends in high
school used on fake IDs. We had this poster board of
an Arizona driver's license when we were 17, and the
name was Reinhold Messner, who was actually born
in ' 62 or something absurd. We all had it. And so it
would be a chain of five 17-year old guys going to
bars at night with the same name. That's where the
name comes from. Reinhold Messner is the patron
saint of underage drinking.
"Narcolepsy"
BEN: We've been touring for four or five years. You
so look forward to sleep because you don't get it very
often. The same way you check out. I mean, you can
be enjoying the biggest things in your life and you
can't register it, and your mind goes to sleep. Or if
you're going through a break-up, or if you're happy
about things, you just can't enjoy them--because
you're not aware, you have no awareness.
"Don't Change Your Plans"
BEN: I was writing a much slower song, and it was
the chorus. The instrumental part with the fluegelhorn
was probably the only thing that we were really
excited about when we left North Carolina. We'd been
playing that together and it sounded finished and
tight. There was a lot of editing going on in that song.
It took a lot of turns and was a real evolution. There's
a total Burt Bacharach rip-off section in it,
fluegelhorns and the whole thing. I would admit it. It
was just a tip of the hat to him.
"Mess"
BEN: It's a cowboy song. There's a little "woe is me"
going on there. I saw it going both ways. This jerk's
just feeling sorry for himself and deserves the mess
he's in, but I also saw it as kind of redemptive,
working his way through it, trying to understand it.
And you know, anything that happens to you, well,
that's the way you think. It's your fault too. There's a
little bit of "it's your fault" in it. There's a line about not
believing in God, which just means "Well, that's not
my thing, so I can't use that. It's my fault."
"Magic"
DARREN: That song is kind of a composite of people
that I've known that have died. It's also a love song.
It's not very complex.
"Hospital Song"
BEN: I don't know why I wrote that. It just fit the music.
The funny thing is, the second verse was about being
married in the hospital room. But we cut that part of
the song out of there. I'd never been in a hospital in
my life before my girlfriend got really, really sick and
went in the hospital. I decided then that the song was
legitimate. Because it sounded right in a hospital. It
felt right.
"Army"
BEN: I'm just sitting around the house, freaking out
because I don't have any songs and we spent
something like $250,000 on the studio already. And
then I was thinking...well, I guess you just think about
stuff. What do I think about? Well, I remember I was
going to join the army to get through school. And I told
my father that, and he said, "You're fucking high."
That's exactly what he said...It's neat, because the
guy in that song so badly wants to take a left. His dad
so badly wants him to go straight, 'cause it like, ruins
his life. And the kid's right all along.
"Your Redneck Past"
BEN: I grew up right in the sticks with a bunch of kids
soupin' up their cars and stuff like that. It's probably
the only song in the album that really doesn't have a
real heartfelt point to it. It's a lot of fun, and it's a relief
to have fun like that without a point in it. The coolest
thing about the song is the synth bass. It sounds like
scratching.
"Your Most Valuable Possession"
ROBERT: Ben's in LA, and his dad calls him up and
leaves him this message on his voicemail. His dad's
just waking up, too early in the morning for him to
know even what he's talking about. And I think he's
still, like caught in a dream, and he's thinking about
John Glenn, and he's probably worrying about his
son's health at the same time. Wondering if Ben's
going crazy, you know. So he just kind of drops this
funny idea in about being in space and losing your
body mass and your most valuable possession
becomes your mind.
BEN: I listened to that message so many times, and I
played it for almost everybody. We were in the studio
one night, and that's where I played it on the speaker
phone, and Caleb's like, "oh, let's record that." So he
records it, and then we had hours of jams that we'd
been doing, so we just put 30 seconds of our best
moment on there.
"Regrets"
BEN: That was actually began as a bridge for "Army."
It was the easiest thing on the record to write for me. I
just sat out in the break room at Sound City, and just
knocked 'em out in about five minutes
"Lullabye"
BEN: It's got swing in it. You can put heart into every
single note of that song; it's super fun to play. We
were gonna play it every night, after we were done
recording all this serious brainy stuff. We were gonna
record that song and take the best take of all those
nights.
