Beck trades rock ‘n’ roll chaos for orchestra’s ‘peak music experience’ at the Hollywood Bowl
When Beck starts to sing on stage at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Saturday, July 6, he’s confident that you’re going to love these orchestral versions of songs from across his career as one of L.A.’s most restlessly creative singer-songwriters.
He just wishes you could hear it like he will.
“I feel bad for you guys in the audience, because it’s not even close to what I’m hearing,” Beck says and laughs. “You know, it’s the only time in all my music-making that that’s the case. Because typically, when you’re playing with a rock band, I’m just hearing cacophony. I can barely hear myself.
“Like, one of the things you learn in a rock band is that it’s just chaos,” he says. “You’re just hanging on for life. You might not even hear the drummer. You might just hear a wall of noise.
“This is pure, pristine, powerful. like being in the center of this engine of sound that’s inspiring and emotional,” Beck continues. “I mean, I have a great sound man who will try to get to everyone else. But standing in the middle of it, unamplified, just hearing the sound coming directly out of the instruments, it’s pretty rarified.
“It’s a peak music experience.”
Beck isn’t a stranger to orchestral accompaniment. Albums such as “Sea Change” and “Morning Phase” have featured classical backing thanks to his arranger-conductor father David Campbell. In 2008, Campbell conducted the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra Strings for a Beck concert at the Bowl, the orchestra playing half a dozen or so songs in the middle of an otherwise rock ‘n’ roll concert.
But Beck’s show at the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday will be much more fully orchestral, his band absent until a not-quite-a-surprise set that follows conductor Steven Reineke and the L.A. Phil’s 90 minutes or so on stage with Beck.
In an interview edited for length and clarity, Beck talks about why he decided to make this summer tour an orchestral outing, how he chose the songs to perform with the L.A. Phil, and why his mother is particularly excited about one show on the tour.
Q: How did you decide that this summer you wanted to play orchestral arrangements of your songs with orchestras across the country?
A: After my tour last summer with Phoenix, I got asked to do a one-off with the Royal Philharmonic (at the Residency Festival in Orlando). We just put that together quickly and it was such a great experience. And I think the promoters like it so much that they proposed we do more of these shows this year.
I hope it’s not a one-off thing. It’s something I’d like to do more often. I think it allows a whole other body of work that’s kind of dormant in my live shows to really come to life and get it’s proper due. Because I have a body or two or three dozen songs that really need something like an orchestra to give them their full measure. It’s something you can do in a studio, obviously, but it’s impossible to take them on the road with you.
Q: So how did you decide which songs to include? I’m thinking slower, softer albums like ‘Sea Change’ or ‘Morning Phase,’ maybe?
A: Well as I started to dig around I started to realize there was quite a lot of work and songs on these records that had orchestra on them. You don’t really notice this as the years go by. You’re just doing your thing. But yes, I started to look back.
A lot of it was from those two records you mentioned, but there’s also a lot of strings on ‘Mutations.’ There’s strings on ‘Guero.’ There’s soundtrack songs that had songs. This is just kind of a thing I’ve been doing in the background of all the other music I’ve made for years. And there’s been a collaboration with my father, David Campbell, who’s an arranger, and we work on these things together.
It’s an aspect of record-making I’ve done and it’s gratifying to get to do it and kind of get a little spotlight shone on it because some of it’s really great work. Especially some of the stuff on ‘Sea Change.’ We kind of dug in with that one. And more recently we did a song for the ‘Roma’ soundtrack called ‘Tarantula.’ It has beautiful strings on it.
It’s kind of a difficult choice because there’s a lot of songs that get left out. But I think there were certain ones that will be surprising for people to hear live.
Q: What does a classical arrangement played live add to the experience of your songs?
A: I spent a lot of time listening to orchestras. And you can listen to classical music at home, but it just doesn’t remotely capture the sort of overtone of frequency that comes from 80 people playing together. Something you can’t capture on any recording. It’s like trying to take a photo of the Grand Canyon with your iPhone. Just to see it, just to hear it, it’s one of the great things that we have come up with to entertain ourselves. This idea of a huge group of people playing together one piece of music.
You know, we’re kind of in a reductive time (in music) in that sense that the nature, whatever, tastes or economics, we’re in this time of DJs and electronic-backed music, whether it’s even a band anymore. So this kind of feels like this luxurious indulgence, just having a huge amount of people in this effort to make a sound.
Q: I want to ask you about getting the right balance between a rock band and an orchestra. I’ve seen a lot of bands play with orchestras at the Bowl and sometimes one overpowers the other.
A: Yeah, it’s really important for (the band) to play quietly. And I’ve been to those shows that you’re talking about where the band completely drowns out the orchestra. What this is is a wasted opportunity. So when we did this in 2008 we worked a lot with the sound so that the orchestra would be center, and luckily, I work with musicians who get it, and it’s not about who plays loudest.
There’s a whole other approach and technique to set it up with the orchestra. But I’m not bringing a full band (for the orchestral set). I just have a rhythm section.
I remember my dad telling a story about, at the Bowl, working with a band, and the drummer came out, hitting so loud and hard that the orchestra just got up and went home. The artist showed up, said, ‘Where’s the orchestra?’ ‘Went home.’ There’s just no point, you know.
These are people who exist in this alternate universe of music where there’s so much nuance and subtlety in color and dynamics. Most of the rest of us musicians exist in this world of like hit them as hard as you can, make it really powerful, visceral. There’s no room for nuance. So it’s a whole other ethos.
Q: What work was needed to get the orchestral arrangements ready for these shows?
A: I think most of them were just already as written on the albums. So it already had been done. But we’ve added a few things that we filled out with the orchestra. When we did the show last year we did all the songs that already had orchestrations, and they were mostly very slow and more somber or reflective.
I really enjoyed that show. It was pretty dreamy. But for this one we added a few other things to add different dynamics and energy. A couple of the more known songs. So it’ll be pretty varied.
Q: And you’ve got your best-known band back together for the rock set that follows the orchestral? [The band includes bassist Justin Meldal-Johnson, guitarist Jason Falkner, keyboardist Roger Joseph Manning Jr., and drummer Joey Waronker.]
A: We’ve gotten back together a few times like 2014. Last summer we got back together. So this will be a one-time special thing for this tour, having the guys who played on ‘Sea Change’ and ‘Morning Phase’ and ‘Mutations.’
Q: You’re playing a lot of classical music venues this time, like Wolf Trap and Ravinia and Carnegie Hall. Have you played any of those before?
A: I’ve been to those venues but I haven’t played them so, yeah, I’m pretty thrilled. I think my mother’s the most thrilled. She’s a native New Yorker so Carnegie Hall is a big deal.