Interview with Ben Jelen

Ramone: Hi Ben, how was your rehearsal?

Ben Jelen: Good. I love my sound right now and I love the band I'm playing with. They're staying with me for the Pete Yorn Tour that we're doing. The music just sounds so cool live. On the first album I had so many synthetic bells and whistles and this one is just the band. It's really cool how close we can get to the sound of the record.

Is that the biggest difference between this album Ex-Sensitive and the last?

Yes, this album is much more cohesive. I felt that the last album was a bit more of a hodge-podge of songs. We threw it all on an album and called it a record; where this [album] had one band, one producer and the same studio all the way through. It made a big difference.

If I were a musician and Linda Perry walked in and said, I want you, I'd probably pass out like one of those die hard Michael Jackson fans. What was going through your head?

[Ben laughs] It didn't really happen like that. I would've also just passed out. It happened in baby steps. Based on my first album, Give It All Away, she wasn't really that interested in even saying Hi to me. She felt like it was over-produced and over-marketed. So, finally we wouldn't take no for an answer and we got an appointment to come in. I played her a couple of songs and everything changed. She started really diggin' it. She's such an amazing person and the experience of working with her changed my life. I've been given such a cool album with such a cool sound and she had a lot to do with that.

She does have a knack for bringing out individual talent.

Rather than being scared and trying to come up with something quick so we can record, she really spends time figuring out what the artist is all about. That's where her success comes from. She actually cares about what the artists want and I think that pays off.

What was the hardest song to write on Ex-Sensitive?

Actually, "Pulse" had an interesting conception. It was one of the very first things that happened when [Linda and I] worked together. She was playing the electric guitar and I had my violin She started playing this pulsating kind of riff and I started ooing and ahhing over it and singing nonsensical gibberish just to fill in the melody. We ended up with this very strange ghostly track, but it had no words. Yet we were so attached to this track we even called it "Pulse." It basically sat for about a year until after all the other songs were finished. Then we sat down and had a long philosophical conversation and started to put together what the song was going to be about. Once we had words we tried it again in the studio with a band and it just all came together. We were really happy when we finished "Pulse."

So you take more of an experimental approach to writing music?

I have so many ideas, it's just a question of what comes together. I don't try and get stuck to any ideas either. I like to be able to step away if something's not working.

Do you ever have a Katie Couric moment when you think, what am I doing here?

[Ben Laughs] Plenty of times. To give you an idea of what you hear percentage-wise of Ben Jelen's writing, you probably get about one out of every twenty songs. When I went in to Linda I had thirty songs on a CD and I was going to Linda not to help me write, but to give me some direction. I needed a friend; someone to say, Do this.

You lose perspective as an artist sometimes. You write so much and become attached to your own set of songs; and then you start over-emphasizing the opinions of your friends or whoever makes a comment. You drive yourself mad with it. So, it was great to be able to have someone who was confident enough to say, I want this song, this song and this song, and I don't like this song.

Does that mean we can anticipate a CD of Ben Jelen's unreleased B-sides in the future?

There's plenty of material for it.

Recently I've been shuffling 1960's Aretha, Tina Turner and The Supremes in my iPod. The music is pure lyrics to lungs to mic and yet so much of today's music is created by digital masters. Have we seen the end of pure recording?

When I started this album, I did what you did: I basically rehashed everything I was listening to. I got all the Beatles catalogue and all of Pink Floyd's stuff and listened to it way more in-depth than I ever had before.

That's the music that turns me on. The 60's and 70's music is what musically inspired most of Ex-Sensitive. So, I don't think it's the end of that music. I think at the end of the day the power's going to run out on our planet anyway and the only thing that's working is an acoustic guitar.

And you sitting on a mountain top, right?

Yeah. [We both laugh]

Your home is in New York, which was hit by a terrorist attack. You're also of Scottish heritage and recently the Glaskow airport was hit by an attack. How has global terrorism affected you and your music?

Since September 11th I've become ten times more politically minded than I was before. I was in Manhattan on September 11th and I actually saw the towers fall. At the time, I remember hoping that America would have the right reaction and that we wouldn't just go dropping bombs. It's changed things and I've been way more politically minded and far more aware of global policy.

Much of that is reflected in Ex-Sensitive.

I've always been one to care a lot about the environment and how we treat and protect it. That is such a global issue, too. Take the conflict in Darfur for example: It's not just a racial conflict; there are big environmental problems over there which aren't helping. This is what happens when the environment collapses. I think if we have some foresight we can all learn an important lesson from these stories.

I was also in Manhattan on 9/11. I didn't see the first plane hit, but I remember looking up at a cloud of smoke. The lady next to me and I both looked up and brushed it off as some crop duster accident from Jersey. It was only later, after we saw the second plane, that we realized it wasn't an accident or a crop duster at all. It reminded me of how desensitized we become to the events surrounding us. So many Americans have become desensitized to environmental issues; so many gays have become desensitized to HIV... (more)