#306 - Beck - Odelay (1996)
MUSIC HISTORY COMPILED BY ADAM BERNARD:
BACKGROUND – BECK
Beck David Hansen (born Bek David Campbell) was born in 1970 in Los Angeles and mostly grew up there (besides some time spent in Kansas with his grandparents) . He is the son of artist Bibbe Hansen, who worked with Andy Warhol, and Canadian composer/arranger/conductor David Campbell. They divorced when he was 10. He was drawn to both hip-hop music and funk in his teens, as well as bands like Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore, and X. Feeling like "a total outcast", Beck dropped out of school after junior high. He later said that although he felt school was important, he felt unsafe there. After being rejected by the new performing arts high school downtown, his brother took him to post-Beat jazz places in Echo Park and Silver Lake. He hung out at the Los Angeles City College, perusing records, books and old sheet music in its library. He used a fake ID to sit in on classes there. When he was 17, Beck grew fascinated after hearing a Mississippi John Hurt record at a friend's house, and spent hours in his room trying to emulate Hurt's finger-picking techniques. Shortly thereafter, Beck explored blues and folk music further, discovering Woody Guthrie and Blind Willie Johnson.
Beck began as a folk musician, switching between country blues, Delta blues, and more traditional rural folk music in his teenage years. He began performing on city buses. In 1989, he took a bus to New York City with $8.00 and a guitar, and found his way into the East Village's Anti-Folk scene. He returned to Los Angeles in 1991, not wanting to deal with another cold NYC winter. He continued to perform where he could in L.A., and eventually made contact with someone at BMG Music Publishing, and then independent record label Bong Load Custom Records. In 1993, the now famous single "Loser" came out (off of the Mellow Gold album), and started received unexpected airplay. It started on a couple of college stations but made it's way onto the infamous KROQ's radar, and was played almost hourly. It's popularity soared and put him on the map. With quick popularity comes the eventual backlash of people wanting to see you get broken down, and Beck felt he was constantly trying to prove himself. He went back into the studio, working tirelessly for a year and a half, sometimes logging 16 hour days. A switch in producer's changed the direction of recording a bit, and leads us to today's album.
Beck has released a total of 14 studio albums, as well as several non-album singles and a book of sheet music. He has 8 Grammy Awards from 22 nominations. Besides accolades from today's album, he's also won Best Alternative Music Performance in 2000 for his Mutations album, as well as Album of the Year and Best Rock Album for Morning Phase in 2015, Best Alternative Music Album and Best Engineered Album-Non Classical for Colors in 2019, and took home the Best Engineering award last year for his 2021 release Hyperspace.
ALBUM BACKGROUND – ODELAY
This is the 5th studio album recorded by Beck, released in June 1996. The sessions for what would become Odelay originally began as a subdued, acoustic affair. In 1994, Beck started to record tracks for his follow-up to Mellow Gold with Bong Load producers Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf. Only the tracks "Ramshackle", "Feather in Your Cap", and "Brother" from these sessions have been released, all of which are acoustic, sparse, and melancholic. He would eventually abandon work with Rothrock and Schnapf, opting to work with the Dust Brothers instead. The Dust Brothers', who are Mike Simpson aka EZ Mike, and John King, aka King Gizmo, were known for their hip-hop focused production style but more layered. Their résumé included notable work with Beastie Boys, Tone Lōc and Young MC
Beck recorded part of Odelay before going on the 1995 Lollapalooza tour. He told Rolling Stone magazine "Everything we did before was very complex - we would spend weeks on each track. When I came back, we did a bunch of songs really quick in two weeks. We did 'Devil's Haircut' and 'New Pollution' back to back in two days.'
Because most thought Beck was destined to be a one-hit-wonder after "Loser," the Dust Brothers took their time perfecting Odelay without the pressure to produce a hit. "It was great to make a record with nobody looking over our shoulders, nobody anticipating what we were going to do, so we were freed up," said Simpson.