Feature Articles

BEN HARPER: WILL = POWER

by Randy Grimmett

In the fall of 1995, the poet Maya Angelou did a reading of her work to an overflowing house at the University of California at Berkeley. Any Angelou reading is a very special thing -- few could hope to capture the essence, inflection, joy, sadness, loss and love in her words as well as she does.

Later that same fall, Ben Harper closed his show at Los Angeles' House of Blues with an a capellaversion of Angelou's poem "And Still I Rise," to which he wrote a melody and recorded for his first album, 1994's Welcome To The Cruel World. Angelou's words are no less stirring in Harper's gospel-influenced tune.

As the song draws to a close, Ben Harper lifts his clenched fist in the air and stands. (For most of the evening, he had been seated, playing a lap slide guitar.) His microphone is positioned for a seated performance; when he stands, his unamplified voice rings through the air.

"You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lies/But still, like dust, I rise." It is a touching shared moment between Harper and his audience: the poet's words and Harper's raised fist speak for everyone, evoking word power, human power and will power.

Despite the differences in mediums, Harper seems a logical successor to poets of the people like Angelou, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and even Walt Whitman, yet his inventive fusion of blues, reggae, rock, gospel, folk and acoustic roots music adds multiple meanings and dimensions to his lyrics. At 27, this native of Southern California's "Inland Empire" has three albums under his belt and has toured ceaselessly with a mind-bogglingly diverse array of artists, including Pearl Jam, Dave Mathews Band, the Fugees, P.J. Harvey, as well as legends like John Lee Hooker and Ray Charles. Like his earlier efforts, his latest album, The Will To Live, was co-produced by Harper and his creative collaborator J.P. Plunier.

Each year ASCAP's West Coast Membership Department holds a songwriter's workshop at which songwriters and music industry professionals share their insights with up-and-coming songwriters about the industry or the art and craft of songwriting. The 1997 ASCAP/Lester Sill West Coast Writer's Workshop was pleased to have Ben share his experiences at the final session of the workshop. Ben's thoughts have been recollected in the following article.

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What influences your songwriting?

Ben Harper: Really having a passion for music and loving music. Listening to a lot of music never hurts. People ask, "How do you learn to write songs?" I learn from my own life and from other people's lives around me. But you can learn as much from other songs, I think -- how to go about songwriting and how to apply other sounds to what you do. You can hear another style and say "Okay, I can bring something to that that's unique."

Your style is reminiscent of some of your influences, but also uniquely your own. On The Will To Live, it's evident from a first listen that "Jah Work" is influenced by Bob Marley. Have you developed a process that conscientiously taps into those influences or is it subconscious?

BH: My parents and grandparents have a music store. I was raised there, and that's really been a large part of my roots and foundation as far as my musical growth. But it also hasn't.

During my musical formative years, in my early teens, I was listening to all hip-hop music. I didn't go back to working in my folks' store until I was in my late teens, and then I really started getting into blues and slide guitar. The more I played blues, the more I realized that doing other people's songs and traditional blues music wasn't my voice, so I [learned to write songs] out of necessity. I didn't feel comfortable singing [blues] songs, even though I loved them. I had started really learning Robert Johnson songs pretty close to how he played and sang them -- no one can ever really sound like Robert Johnson, but to have that as inspiration allowed my own voice to get stronger.

How does that process help you today?

BH: The stronger your voice gets, the more that will reflect in your writing process. It's just sort of a natural growth. I couldn't work on my voice and songwriting at the same time, so there were times when I liked my voice, but my writing was still a little behind. Eventually they catch up to each other.

How much traditional music do you hear in your sound today?

As I started growing musically and really started getting comfortable, I spent a couple of years playing slide guitar only, just really woodshedding on it. Then a friend of mine put a lap slide guitar in my hands, and when I started playing, I was able to apply fast blues riffs and stuff onto a lap slide guitar that sounded totally different and unique. I thought, 'This is cool, I can play soulful, maybe blues-based music, but with a different voice,' because there had not been a lot of soul and blues music on lap slide guitar. From there, I just started writing and finding a voice for songwriting, which everyone really has.

Is there a pattern to the way that you write?

No, I think nearly everyone who writes is always writing. Writing for me isn't about nine-to-five. It's not about day and night. It's just about what's going on at that moment and how you can put how you feel, or what you see, or what someone's going through, onto paper in the best possible way. The key to writing is not being too sensitive or overly sensitive, and you don't want to be overly clever. You -- or at least, I -- don't want to have to put a bridge in a song just because the industry tells you you have to. It's so easy to go overboard, because just one note of music can be so emotional.

Many of your songs are grounded in a moral viewpoint. A great number of them are about race relations, but as many are about spirituality and love. Do you feel you have a responsibility as a songwriter?

Yes. I do. I do. I didn't at first, but when you see the look in kids' eyes that love your music, and when they say that you're doing something that's helping them out, then I do. Because the music that I love the most has played a large role in inspiring me as a man, and as a social statement for strengthening the heart and spirit of humankind.

Is there a particular statement you're trying to get across, or a message you're trying to convey?

Don't get me wrong. Music doesn't have to be a statement through its lyrics only -- it can have a statement in its rhythm as well as its lyrics. It doesn't have to be political. It only really has to come from the heart, and -- somewhere -- make sense and connect.

It seems to me that the titles of your first two albums, Welcome To The Cruel World and Fight For Your Mind, reflect that one is a little more despondent and one is more hopeful, even though the songs on the two albums seem to be grouped from despair to hope. Is there anything to that?

There's both [hope and despondency] on both [records]. I like to have a title that will speak for the entire record. Music to me is not a joke. See, many people try to be so clever in songwriting, to the point of pretentiousness, that it's really frustrating. I just try to approach it differently because it's serious to me. I take songwriting and singing and playing really seriously because -- well, not that I didn't always love my day jobs, but I didn't like quite a few of them! So writing and singing is a blessing. I love it so much, and respect it so much, and I really want to bring something to songwriting that's fresh and new. I really respect the art of songwriting. Therefore the responsibility is within respecting that art.

You were signed to Virgin at 23 or 24. Do you think you were ready for a major label?

I know that [getting signed] is important to a lot of songwriters. It was to me, because it was about how to make the ends meet within that creative medium. First, though, I think you must stay true to what it is your goal is. It's also important to find good constructive criticism.

Why?

I've written quite a few songs, but I know to come to J.P. with only the cream of what I write. He'll let me hear about it if I don't. You can only be so objective about your own work, yet songwriters, including myself, have large egos and think, 'Oh, this is my gift and I'm going to share it.' But, you have to step away from your ego and any superiority complex that may exist in your heart and mind. With someone like J.P., he'll make suggestions, and I know I have the right to say, "Hey man, you're not listening to this right." But, it's really been so good to have a strong objective opinion about what it is I do, because I'm so deep in it.

What else can songwriters do to help themselves with their writing?

Songwriters aren't always producers, and if you want to produce, again, you should be ready to take good constructive criticism. Production and songwriting are different. I think I've surrounded myself with musical geniuses, and it's really helped me get to where I'm going. You need to do that. You owe it to your songs.

How did Virgin find you or you find them?

J.P. just got me playing out in the right places and got people down to see me. He would call everyone he knew, I mean everyone, and get them to come see me. I was from Claremont, I didn't know anyone in Los Angeles, but somehow he'd get thirty to forty people to a show of mine. It took some horn-blowing and kicking some doors down, and he kicked them down for me. I used to play any and every coffeehouse and open mic I could with a hat in front of me.

Because what you do is somewhat unique, was there hesitation on your part or on J.P.'s part that a mainstream record label might not 'get' you?

One of the first songs I played for JP was "Like A King" [Harper's song from his first record about the Los Angeles Police Department's incident with Rodney King, and the contemporary need in society for a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.], and he really dug that. People at labels at first wanted to stick me on their little blues labels, but Virgin stepped up to the plate and gave us some money for a demo. We wanted to produce the music ourselves. In three days we produced and mixed six songs. All of those songs ended up straight from the demos on the first record. Virgin certainly got it more than anyone else.

And how did labels respond to what you were writing and singing?

At our earliest meetings with labels, J.P. and I were advised by many people not to play "Like A King" because it was too much of a social statement, and that it would scare people away. We were seeing this one record label, not Virgin, and we got onto the elevator with a guy in a suit who was humming "Like A King" on the way up to the executive floors. He must've heard the demos we sent over. A couple of days later we had a meeting set up with the head of the label. And again, we were advised not to play "Like A King" because it made the other A&R people nervous. So, of course, we get to the meeting and it's the first song I play. It turned out to be the song he liked the most.

And how have things been since then?

Today a lot of success is formulated by the name of the producer, so even after being signed, we still got a lot of resistance to producing the record ourselves.

How important is image to you?

It's interesting. On Fight For Your Mind, there isn't one clear picture of me on the album artwork -- the pictures could be of you as easily as me. I don't deal with images really. It's just about the music.

With your work schedule, is it hard to have a family?

It's challenging, but it's about the love that you feel for one another. If that person's willing to understand your lifestyle and loves you, then there will be challenges, but no challenge is greater than overcoming the loss of that love. Losing that love, and trying to find someone else to love me like my wife does, would be the biggest challenge. It couldn't happen, and we both know that, so it's really a lesser challenge to make it work than to try to replace that.

How autobiographical are your songs?

Some are and some aren't. You've really got to know a little bit about everybody to write good songs.

What do you think keeps you focused?

It's a drive. Music drives you. Your own music can push you and inspire you and when there's a clarity to your music it can push you forward.

In addition to Maya Angelou, are there other things, either poetry or other literature, that inspire you?

I am inspired by other people's work tremendously. That time [reading Angelou's "And Still I Rise"] was a great moment of inspiration for me. I changed the words a little bit. Poems aren't songs and songs aren't poems, no matter how poetic they are. To me, they are as far away from each other as apples and Fords.

Why?

Because a poem is phrased differently. Lyrics have to be joined to music.

In your writing, do the melody or the lyrics come first?

They both come. There are no rules to that, you just work it out. The best thing is to never finish a song until it's really done. Don't just say, "Okay, I need some songs," and force it to be done. You can't force it. Put it away before you do that. I haven't had a song that I've been patient with that didn't work itself out. But, I'm also not scared to write bad songs. If there's a bad song with one or two great ideas in it, you can snake it right out of there and put it on a tune that's waiting to be done.

How much do live performances help your songwriting? Even though Fight For Your Mind is not a live record, it has a live feel to it.

The more we play, the more confident we are about the songs and our instruments; and the more I sing, the better my voice feels to me. I find that when I have time off and I'm not touring, it takes me a second to get my voice back.

Are you happy to be a songwriter?

Songwriting is the scariest thing I've ever done, because you don't know when that next good one is gonna come. When I finished Welcome To The Cruel World, I didn't think I could top it. Songwriting is about just pure communication of how and what I'm feeling. I just want to make things that people understand. You know there's always a better song down there. Inspiration is timeless. If you can tap into timeless inspiration, then there's no greater spirit moving on earth than that.

A lot of your songs reflect a certain spirituality. Do you consider yourself a spiritual person?

Yes, just because I strongly believe in a God that has put us here in this room at this moment. And you know what, I'm not scared to say it: I believe in a Christ. I believe in a strong spirit that moves good and love, and a positive vibration on the earth. And that spirit can be whatever you do in your life. And, for me, that's music.

About the Interviewer
Randy Grimmett is part of ASCAP's West Coast Membership Department and the coordinator of the ASCAP/Lester Sill West Coast Songwriters' Workshop.

Photo by Annalisa

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