BONJOUR, BEN

Ben Harper speaks with strength and distinction. But that’s not so surprising coming from a well-traveled, seasoned musician whose discography includes nine full-length albums. Harper’s seen and absorbed the world over the past 15 years as a recording artist, and his experiences seep through every pore of his — and the Innocent Criminals’ — album, Lifeline (Virgin).Influenced by Paris and the city’s creative energy, the man and his music are nothing short of inspiring. Harper wanted to make a record right after coming off tour, and he got his wish. “It just makes sense,” he said in a personal statement. “You’ve got all your best equipment, and your musical abilities are never as sharp or as heightened as when you’ve been consistently on the road.” The album was recorded in a mere seven days on a 16-track analog tape machine with no computer alteration. He’s that good.

Harper’s not only a prolific songwriter and prodigious guitarist, but he’s also a longtime skater and surfer. He is ever inspired by the ocean, which comes easy living by the beach in his California home with his wife, actress Laura Dern, and their two children, Ellery and Jaya. Here, Harper talks to Foam about fatherhood, the recording of Lifeline, and how he never gets writer’s block.

NC: Why did you choose “Lifeline” as the title track?

BH: A title will just stand out, and that never has not been the case. I don’t always just instantly exhaust the title, even if I think I’ve found it. I always try to dig deeper in titling a record, but so far I haven’t come up with anything that trumps one of the songs that stands up. “Lifeline” is kind of a piece of each of the other songs, so it represents a collective of the best.

I hear you recorded that song in one take.

Yeah, “Paris Sunrise #7″ is an instrumental. I knew I wanted to do an instrumental and wanted it to segue into “Lifeline,” but I also wanted it to be its own separate song and so I played the whole thing down into “Lifeline” and that was it. I’ve never played that piece of music, and I’ll probably never play it that way again, but at the moment it was improvised, and it went right into “Lifeline.” That was all in one take. Not to brag or anything, but you asked.

You said this album is like a “traveling musician’s journal”…the songs on it seem less aggressive and political than those on Both Sides of the Gun. Was that a conscious decision?

[I hope] it’s part journal and part someone else’s journal. Records are like musical time capsules that encapsulate a specific period of inspiration and then you move on from there.

How has fatherhood changed you as a musician?

It definitely opens you wide up. It heightens your sensitivity and awareness of things in a whole new way. It kind of drives me nuts when people talk about parenthood as some sort of private, exclusive club. It’s not. It’s a lot of work and it will kick your ass up and down the street, but it’s also one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever been a part of. It’s brought so much to my music-lyrically, personally, and on every level.

Do you ever get writer’s block?

Those words sound like Greek to me. It sounds like something my kids would play with. I mean, I’ve heard about it. Sometimes I’ll have this great idea in my head and then I’ll go to play it and it won’t come out. That’s frustrating sometimes, but there’s always something there to write about.

How do you think your music has evolved since Welcome to the Cruel World?

I’m the worst person to ask when it comes to self-objectivity and analysis, only because I can’t really hear the difference between “Walk Away” and “Morning Yearning,” for instance. I don’t know if one’s better or worse, or one’s more emotional or less emotional. I don’t analyze it or critique it because if I did that, I’d become too self-obsessed. I’m always looking for the next and best song I’ve ever written. Not what I’ve already written. Maybe someday I’ll have a better perspective on what I’ve done, but at the moment I have close to none.

You must have a plethora of songs. How do you choose which ones you want to put together to make an album?

There were a couple of ideas that we were kicking around for this record that didn’t make it, and you have to have a creative person’s intuition to get the whole thing jump-started to begin with. With that intuition you can put songs together that you think will work and build from there. That’s the responsibility of the specific artist, to know what can and will potentially work together. Sometimes you have to adjust on the fly and sometimes you write from the get-go.

Do you work toward a specific concept on each record?

Not so much. This record stands out in that way because we knew exactly where we wanted to take it stylewise, but on other records it’s mainly been songs of different styles that I felt would go together and that I could weave together whether through my voice or lyrically.

Tell me about your past with skating and surfing. I hear you’re an avid skateboard collector.

Yeah, I am, and that’s sort of spilled over into surfboard collecting. I’ve skated all my life and surfed off and on for the past 10 years or so. Surfing has become a passion of mine. I have a lot of room to grow, and I’m still not where I should be, but I’ve taken to it more than I ever have.

And do you find the ocean inspiring?

Oh, the ocean…your entire perspective on life instantly changes when you’re near the ocean, and anything that has that kind of power is going to inspire you in any number of ways. And what I love about the ocean the most is that they can’t own it. The Man can’t have it. The Man owns all of this other business, but they haven’t quite found a way to own the ocean. And that’s why I love it.

- words by Nadine Cheung, image by Scott Soens