Background Image

...

The Late '90s Were A Really Bad Time For People Trying To Be Rock Stars, You Know What I Mean? It Seemed Like Everyone Was A One-hit Wonder On The Radio. We Had Friends Who Had A Hit Single On The Radio And Sold 500,000 Records, And Then They Couldn't Get Arrested A Year Later. I Had This Feeling At The Time That That Was Not Possible Anymore, So The Idea Of Becoming The Biggest Band In The Country—it Seemed Laughable. I Felt That Having Those Sort Of Ambitions Was Foolish, Because There Was No Way That Was Going To Be Possible. If You Saw It That Way, You Were Just Deluding Yourself.

-Ben Gibbard

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The Late '90s Were

Ben Gibbard

...

The Late '90s Were A Really Bad Time For People Trying To Be Rock Stars, You Know What I Mean? It Seemed Like Everyone Was A One-hit Wonder On The Radio. We Had Friends Who Had A Hit Single On The Radio And Sold 500,000 Records, And Then They Couldn't Get Arrested A Year Later. I Had This Feeling At The Time That That Was Not Possible Anymore, So The Idea Of Becoming The Biggest Band In The Country—it Seemed Laughable. I Felt That Having Those Sort Of Ambitions Was Foolish, Because There Was No Way That Was Going To Be Possible. If You Saw It That Way, You Were Just Deluding Yourself.

Views: 14833

Topic

More From Ben Gibbard

I Take Things A Little Bit More Critically Now, Like, "what Did I Think I Was Saying In That Song? What Is This Song About?" I Thought The Lyrics Were Incredibly Descriptive, And Now They Sound Really Cryptic And Weird. I'd Like To Also Think That When I Listen To Songs From Something About Airplanes That I'm Proud Of My Development As A Writer. I Don't Think I Was Doing Anything Poorly At That Time, But I Can Certainly See How My Writing Has Changed.

I'm Not Like A 90-mph Fastball Kind Of Guy, But I Can Hit 70 On Radar Gun.

Every Record We Do There Are Always Two Camps. There's The Camp That's Like, "i Love It. It Sounds Different Than The Last One." There Are The People That Are Like, "i Want It To Sound Like The Last One." You Can't Please Everybody All The Time, But I Think For The Most Part We Tend To Maintain A Healthy Level Of Self-reference To Kind Of Make Sure We Continue To Push Things Forward.

There Were Two Recording Studios In Bellingham. One Was Really Expensive, A "nice Studio." We Were At The Point Where We Were Young And Irreverent. We Would Scoff At The Idea Of A Nice Studio. "why Would You Want To Go To A Nice Studio? Oh Wow, They Have Really Expensive Gear. Ooh, That's Really Fancy. Well We've Got An Eight-track. We've Got It Going On Here." Now That We Have The Resources, We're Like, "oh Wow, A Nice Studio Is Pretty Nice! They Do Have Nice Outboards Here. It's Actually A Pretty Good Place." It's Funny How Much Changes So Quickly.

Death Cab Is A Militantly Analog Band. We'll Continue Moving Forward With Our Sound, But There Will Be No Crossover.

The Songwriting Of Hall & Oates Is Deceptively Complex. There Are A Number Of Key Changes That Pass You By As You're Listening To The Song Because They're So Seamless And Clever.

Between Every Record, We All Split Off In Our Own World And We All End Up Listening To Usually Pretty Different Music On Our Own. We Come Together Not Really Knowing What The Other People Having Been Really Listening To And What's Been Influencing Them.

The Late '90s Were A Really Bad Time For People Trying To Be Rock Stars, You Know What I Mean? It Seemed Like Everyone Was A One-hit Wonder On The Radio. We Had Friends Who Had A Hit Single On The Radio And Sold 500,000 Records, And Then They Couldn't Get Arrested A Year Later. I Had This Feeling At The Time That That Was Not Possible Anymore, So The Idea Of Becoming The Biggest Band In The Country—it Seemed Laughable. I Felt That Having Those Sort Of Ambitions Was Foolish, Because There Was No Way That Was Going To Be Possible. If You Saw It That Way, You Were Just Deluding Yourself.

Bands Who Are In Their Early 20s Today, They Are Living In Their Own Time And They Have A Series Of Parameters They Have To Work Around. Ten Years Ago, Our Reality Was Spending A Lot More Time In Obscurity Before Anyone Really Knew Who We Were. I Don't Feel Like I Have Any Real Advice To Give Anybody Who Is Starting A Band Today. As Mike Watt Said, "you Know, Not Everyone Has The Ability To Be Born At The Same Time." We Wanted To Be Like R.e.m., But The Reality Is That 15 Years After R.e.m. Was Putting Out Those Records, The Playing Field Had Changed Drastically As Well.

Anything Was Better Than Going To Work. All Those Early Tours Before We Made Any Money Were More Like Vacations. I Don't Think It Was Until 2001 That We Pulled Our Heads Out Of The Sand And Were Like, "what Are We Doing?" I Don't Think Chris Realized He Was In A Band Until 2001. He All Of A Sudden Woke Up One Day And Realized He Was In A Band. He Thought He Was Just Recording My Solo Project. Three Albums Later, We're In Baltimore Trying To Figure Out What To Do With Ourselves.

I Was Literally Just Going And Applying For Jobs, And I Couldn't Get A Job, And I Was Getting More And More Broke, And You Find Yourself Groveling For Jobs You Don't Even Want.

Finding Yourself

Nada Surf And Harvey Danger Are Good Bands. I Think They've Just Stayed True To Why They Play Music In The First Place, It's Just Because They Love Doing It And They Love Each Other And That's The Impetus For Doing It, Not Trying To Keep Singles On The Radio And On Mtv.

I Kind Of Dropped A Lot Of Bad Habits About Three Years Ago And Became Kind Of Accidentally Straight-edge. I Don't Have Xs On My Hands, But I Guess If I Wanted To Go Back To Calling Myself Straight-edge, I Could. Around That Same Time I Started Running. I Never Saw Myself As The Kind Of Person Who Would Become A Runner. It Seemed Unfathomable To Me That I Would Ever Run Three Miles, Let Alone 26.2.

I've Always Had A Soft Spot For Phil Collins. He's A Great Vocalist.

Hall & Oates Is One Of The Few Musical Groups As Satisfying Now As It Was Back Then. There's Something Incredibly Musically Satisfying About Their Songs. Nothing Has Diminished My Love For Them.

Everybody Has A Language Or Code That They Use With Their Wife Or Their Girlfriend Or Boyfriend Or What Have You. It’s A Language Aside From The Language They Have With Strangers. I’ve Always Been Maybe An Abuser Of Alliteration, But I’ve Always Loved It And I Like How Those Words Sound Together.

I Don't Spend My Time Perusing Message Boards To Find Out What People Think About Me Or If People Think My Songs Are Good Or If People Love That Lyric Or This Or That. I Just Want To Be Happy With It Myself - And If Other People Like It, That's Great.

A Lot Of The Material Is About The Inevitable Disappointment People Feel As They Move Through Life, And Things Don't Feel The Way They Expect. No Experience Will Ever Match Up To The Idealized Version In Your Mind.

There Were A Lot Of Fences And Walls Existing In My Life, Literally And Figuratively, And That Was Really Not Indicative Of The Kind Of Person That I'd Always Been. So, When I Moved Back To Seattle, The First Thing I Said Was, "i Will Never Live In Fear Again."

Our Band Is Very Polarizing. There Are People Who Absolutely Can't Stand Us, And People Who Absolutely Can't Live Without Us. I'd Rather Spark Those Kind Of Polar-opposite Feelings Than Have People Be Indifferent.

You Spend Hours Alone, Only With Your Thoughts, And You Torture Yourself. It's A Tendency Of Many Writers To Temper The Self-destructive Act Of Writing With Other Self-destructive Acts. I Certainly Was One Of Those People For A Long Time.

Keeping Fans Loyal Is A Delicate Balance. Therein Lies The Challenge For Any Band That's More Than A Couple Albums Deep. It's Like, How Do You Continue To Make Records That Are Representative Of Who You Are That Your Fans Will Recognize As Your Band, While Still Trying To Push Things Forward And Present New Sounds For People.

I Like Writing On Piano And A Computer, And A Lot Of 'plans' Came Out Of Samples And Vocal Lines.

I Have Always Been Very Open And Earnest About Some Things In My Life, Some Things That Are Not Directly In My Life, But They're Twirling Around Me At The Time.

Liking Interesting Things Doesn't Make You Interesting.

Interesting Things

If There Is One Thing I Think I Have Accomplished, It's That I Always Thought Of Myself As A Very Literal Songwriter, And As I Look At Some Of Those Older Records, I Don't Hear It Now The Way I Did When I Was 20. I Think It Is Undeniable That The Songs Have Become More Instantaneously Descriptive And Literal. I'd Like The Songs To Be More Storytelling, But Also Have The Turns Of Phrase Within Them That Would Hopefully Distance My Writing From The Pack. I Feel Like On Those Older Records There Are A Lot Of Attempts At Clever Turns Of Phrase.

I Feel That We Are Currently Living In A World That Is Similar To Late '50s, Early '60s Kind Of World.

There's A Cinematic Quality That Happens In My Mind When I Hear Something That Really Lands. An Album Is Just A Journal Of A Life Moving Through Time.

We Never Sit Down Before We Start Making A Record And Talk About This New Sonic Palette That We Are Going To Try To Explore. We Always Let The Record Kind Of Reveal Itself To Us Over Time.

I Feel Like There's A Lot Of Beauty In The Darkness Of 'narrow Stairs,' But That's Not Really A Place I'm Ready To Go To For A While. I'm Interested In Taking A Different Approach And Having The Next Record Be Different In Tone - I'm Just Not Interested In Making Another Dark, Dark Album.

To Set The Record Straight For The God Knows Millionth Time, We Certainly Didnt Sign To Atlantic Just For The Money.

More Times Than Not, It's A Failed Endeavor. You Will Fail More Times Than You Succeed. But I Think You Need Those Failed Endeavors.

The Story Of Our Band Is That We Were This Relentless Touring Band In Those Early Years. We Were Leaving Day Jobs And Going Off On The Road And Having Fun And Seeing The Country For The First Time. We Were Playing Chinese Restaurants And Basements And Record Stores And Houses. We Were Crashing On Floors And It Was All New And Exciting. It Was Like A Vacation. It Didn't Feel Like Work. I Couldn't Wait To Go On Tour Back Then. I Would Be Sitting At My Day Job Or My Apartment, Just Itching To Go. There Were So Many Adventures That Were About To Happen.

I Don't Want To Be Overdramatic About It, But I'm Starting To See A Lot Of My Bad Habits Get The Best Of Me.

And It Came To Me Then That Every Plan Is A Tiny Prayer To Father Time.

The Photo Album Is The Weakest Record. For The First Time In Our Careers, We Found Ourselves With An Economic Incentive To Be On The Road And To Be Making Albums. We Had Cut Ourselves Free From The Security Of Day-job Life. The Goals Became Primarily Financial, At Least For A While. That Was The Roughest Time We Had Ever Had As A Band, Because That Was The First Moment We Realized That This Was For Real. We Were Not Goofing Around Anymore. We All Threw Everything We Had Into This In A Way Where We All Found Ourselves Really Far From Home, And We Were Stuck With Each Other.

I Just Rediscovered My Guitar.

I've Covered Avril Lavigne. I Like Good Pop Songs, And I Don't Think There Should Be Any Kind Of Preconceptions About Where Good Pop Songs Come From.

As A Songwriter, I'm Not Necessarily Writing About Myself Or My Life.

If You Tell Certain People That You Like Kerouac, They Assume That's All You Read, Like You Don't Know Anything Else About Literature. I Recognize All The Things That People Dislike About The Way He Writes - His Tone And The Sentimentality Of It All. But Those Books Were There For Me At A Very Important Point In My Life.

You Can't Please Everybody All The Time, But I Think For The Most Part We Tend To Maintain A Healthy Level Of Self-reference To Kind Of Make Sure We Continue To Push Things Forward.

At This Point In My Life, I Find Myself Obsessed With Alternate Paths I Could've Taken. I Don't Think About This With A Sense Of Regret, But With A Sense Of Wonder.

I Think Sometimes A Narrative Can Come Out Of A Single Word.

Everybody Has A Language Or Code That They Use With Their Wife Or Their Girlfriend Or Boyfriend Or What Have You. It's A Language Aside From The Language They Have With Strangers.

I Want To Write Songs With Complete Sentences. I Almos Have This Obsession With Short-changing Words. I Would Never Be So Pretentious To Say That My Lyrics Are Poetry. ... Poems Are Poems. Song Lyrics Are For Songs.

For Me, A Song Doesn't Really Take Flight Until It Has A Lyric On It. ...without A Lyric That I'm Happy With, It Could Be The Greatest Song Ever Melodically Or Arrangement-wise, But It Doesn't Have Any Resonance.

When I Listen To Airplanes Record, It Takes Me Back. I Remember A Lot Of My Thought Processes When I Was 20 Or 21, Writing Those Songs And Recording That Record. I Wonder What I Was Thinking When I Was Trying To Say A Particular Thing. I Hear Some Of The Weird Little Nuances In The Recording; I Can Hear What The Room Sounded Like. I Remember What It Smelled Like. I Can Remember Sitting Up In Guitarist Chris Walla's Bedroom And For The First Time In My Life Having This Realization Like, "maybe I Can Do This. Maybe I Can Make Music That In Some Capacity People Will Enjoy And Come See Me Play."

I Want So Badly To Believe That There Is Truth, That Love Is Real. And I Want Life In Every Word To The Extent That It's Absurd.

You Look Back At A Time You Idealize Now And You Only Remember The Good Stuff. You Tell The Stories About The Hard Stuff And Just Laugh About It Now. You Don't Remember How Difficult It Was To Be Stranded In Austin After Driving 52 Hours From Seattle In A Rainstorm And Having Nowhere To Stay For Five Hours. You Remember That Stuff And Laugh About It Now. You Don't Feel It The Way You Did Back Then When You Were So Scared And Nervous And Tired And Hungry. We Always Idealize The Past Because We Don't Feel The Painful Stuff The Way We Used To.

I Can Remember How I Sang - A Little More Nasal-y Back Then. Listening To Those Old Recordings Is Like Seeing A Photograph Of Yourself From 10 Years Ago. You're Wearing What You Thought Looked Cool At The Time. You Had Your Hair Styled The Particular Way You Thought Looked Cool. It's An Accurate Depiction Of Who You Were And What You Looked And Sounded Like At That Point In Your Life. It Doesn't Necessarily Mean That It Aged In A Way That It Feels As Cool Or Sounds As Good To You, Or Says What You Thought It Said, 10 Years Later. That's Just The Nature Of Growing Older.

I'm A War Of Head Versus Heart, It's Always This Way. My Head Is Weak, My Heart Always Speaks, Before I Know What It Will Say.

Because Of My Age And What I Do For A Living And The Amount Of Time That I've Spent Away From My Family And Loved Ones, I'm Starting To Relate More To The Late-period Kerouac Stuff In The Way That I Once Related To The Fun And Excitement Of The Early Material. There's A Darkness Inside Of Me That I'm Only Now Starting To Come To Grips With And Accept. And It's Starting To Scare Me.

An Ex-girlfriend Once Got Upset When I Told Her That Music Is The Most Important Thing In My Life. It's More Important Than Anyone Else Could Ever Be. I Don't Want To Be Overly Dramatic And Say It's The Only Thing That Gets Me Up And Keeps Me Going. But People In Your Life Come And Go. As You Go Through Your Life, You Make Friendships, You Break Friendships, You Have Relationships. Music Is The One Thing I've Always Been Able To Rely On.

The Second 'postal Service' Album Is Threatening To Become The 'chinese Democracy' Of Indie Rock. It Will Come Out Eventually, Or Maybe It Won't.

Trending Author

Giotto Di Bondone

Category