Beck - Morning Phase
On this week's episode, we discuss Beck and his twelfth studio album, 2014’s Morning Phase.
Beck is known for embracing a wide-range of genres, to include folk, lo-fi, funk, soul, hip hop, electronic, alternative rock, country, and psychedelia (just to name a few). He often glides between genres on the same album, and sometimes even on the same song. What makes Morning Phase stand out is Beck’s willingness to maintain a beautiful consistency throughout. Beck has traveled similar ground before with 2002’s Sea Change. Morning Phase is considered a companion piece to that album, even using most of the same personnel to record it. And while they are cut from the same cloth, Morning Phase seems a more mature effort that is lyrically melancholy, yet hopeful, and musically complex and utterly gorgeous.
Recommendation for this episode: The Rest is History by Thomas Walsh.
THINGS WE DISCUSSED ON THIS EPISODE
Becks mother was Bibbe Hansen, an artist and Andy Warhol scenester.
She was was Warhol’s youngest star when at thirteen she starred along with Edie Sedgwick in Warhol’s unreleased 1965 film Prison. She later moved to Los Angeles to be a part of the art scene there, where she also acted, founded a theater company, and documented the local punk scene in the mid 1970s.
Beck’s father is Canadian composer and conductor named David Campbell.
Campbell got interesting in pop music and received his big break when he he played viola on “Song for Adam,” on Jackson Brown’s debut. That led to him joining Carole King’s touring band and arranging strings on her Rhymes and Reasons album, which hit #2 and set him on the road to be a sought after arranger, having worked with Marvin Gaye, Bill Withers, Joe Cocker, Leonard Cohen, Green Day, Neil Diamond, R.E.M., Dolly Parton, Alanis Morissette, and Linda Ronstadt just to name a few.
Al Hanson, Beck’s maternal grandfather was a huge influence on the young musician. Al Hanson was avant-garde collage artist, and a member of the Fluxus art movement of the late 1960s, which challenged the boundaries of traditional art conventions. He was also into the punk scene in Los Angeles and is responsible for turning Beck’s mother onto it.
After spending the end of the 1970s in LA, he moved to Cologne, Germany, where a teenage Beck would visit from time to time, soaking up all that he could.
Here is a video of a sixteen year old Beck Hanson discussing an art and poetry magazine that he created with some friends called Youthless.
Beck’s big break came when Tom Rothrock, co-owner of Bong Load Records, introduces him to producer Carl Stephenson. While at Stephenson’s house, Beck and Stephenson work out what ends up being Beck’s first smash hit, “Loser.”
In 1995, Beck opened for Johnny Cash. The next year, Cash covered the Beck song “Rowboat” on his Unchained album. This was an obvious connection to a past podcast that we neglected to mention on this episode. Here is a clip form a 1997 European TV special where both Cash and Beck discuss the song.
The song “Wave” was issued as a promotional single prior to the release of Morning Phase. Although not released as an official single, it did peak at number 28 on the billboard rock chart.
Beck performed the song on Saturday Night Live in 2014.
In the following clip, Beck discusses Morning Phase and the song “Blue Moon.”
In the clip he states that the song was inspired by his reading Greil Marcus book Dead Elvis. He has also cited Peter Guralnick’s two-volume Elvis biography Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love as the inspiration.
Here is Beck performing “Blue Moon” on Austin City Limits.
