UHF: A lot of time has passed since Mellow Gold came out.

Beck: I finished Odelay last year. It was going to come out last Fall, but Lollapalooza took up five months of my life and kind of slowed the thing down. The way it works in record companies is you put out a record every two years. That era of putting out two albums a year, which I think is really healthy musically, Is long gone. It would be better if you didn't need to sell a million records, If you just sold a handful, then put out another record in six months and sold another handful. I can put out
other records on the side on smaller labels. I plan to put out another record this year. maybe two.

Odelay is similar to Mellow Gold in some ways but overall seems more evolved and polished.

Yeah. The earlier stuff is a little more spastic because everything was done on a shortage of time. When we were recording Mellow Gold in 1992, we were recording in my friend Karl's living room/kitchen area, and we'd usually have about three or four hours to work before his girlfriend came home to make herself some food. So a lot of those songs, the impetus behind them, is this mad dash to finish and get all the parts down before his girlfriend was coming back.

Do you prefer being spastic or perfectionist?

I'm not really a perfectionist, 'cause i keep recording something until i get a mistake. As a musician, my first instinct is to play it good, and that always comes off kind of stiff. The when it loosens up, the mistakes start happening. That's when it starts workin' out. Mistakes lead you to where you're supposed to go.

How do you like touring?

There's god things about it, but mostly it's draining. I'm someone who likes to do creative things every day, writing songs, something more new and interesting, instead of playing the same stuff every day. When I was playing around in L.A., once I had played a song live, i wouldn' play it anymore. I was playing at Al's Bar on Friday, then on Tuesday at the Pik-Me-Up I'd have all new songs. So i had this weird songwriting ethic that's been totally varied by months and months of touring. You've got an album. You've got to play the stuff people know.

How would you format a tour for yourself?

I originally wanted to do a flatbed tour of unemployment offices and Ross Dress For Less. Something like that. My other idea is to have a band of old men in their eighties, which I did on Top of the Pops in England. I performed "Loser" on TV there, and I had the old man from Benny Hill playing drums. We had to send him home, though. He was 98. He would have died.

You've had lots of support from other L.A. bands.

A couple bands, like Ethyl Metaplow and Possum Dixon, just took me under their wing. Nobody would take me seriously or give me shows. I would just show up and jump onstage while the other band was setting up. But Carla Bozulich of the Geraldine Fibbers and Possum Dixon were really receptive, which is really a hard thing to find in L.A. Most of the time there isn't any kind of musical community, there isn't any kind of a connection between bands, so when i met those people it was
more of a family. Carla called me up before Mellow Gold came out - she had written some songs with a country flavor - and we got together and did some stuff on a four-track at my house. Some of those songs turned out to be Geraldine Fibbers songs.

Where did the funk come from?

It comes from being 11 years old on a Saturday night hanging out on Hollywood Boulevard with all the break dancers. It comes from everywhere - out of car stereos. That music's everywhere. It's urban music. I grew up around downtown L.A., so that's the kind of music you heard.

How did you find your way toward folk music?

By being a kid in the 80's and seeing how fake and articficial all the music was, and feeling disconnected from it - all this Huey Lewis and the news stuff didn't make an impression on me - and stumbling across Blind Willie Johnson, Woody Guthrie. This kind of stuff is really potent and pure. It kind of shook me up. It also seemed possible. None of the pop music in the 80's seemed like you could be part of it. You just had it inflict on you. Now I hear music on the radio, and it's guitars. It sounds a little more possible. Hearing Woody Guthrie, it's like "Oh, that's guitar." He's just sort of talking. He's just a person.

What changes have you had to make as a result of your fame?

None. I don't really think in terms of fame or any of that stuff. Maybe you're on TV for a few months. I don't get recognized. When I was playing Lollapalooza last summer, I'd be playing 20,000 people. Then I'd get off the stage and go in the audience and watch the next band and nobody noticed me, and i had just been playing (laughs). I'm just invisible I guess. Musically, I've never thought in terms of fleeting popularity 'cause that's what popularity is. Playing folk music, I've always
thought in terms of contributing to a longer tradition. I think that's what attracted me originally to folk music. It had a timelessness to it. As far as being flavor of the month, that just kind of seems distant to me. It's a postcard from somewhere. It isn't a place you live. There is an element of attaching yourself to a certain time. The whole thing is going to seem old in 10 years anyway.

Your grandfather was part of the Fluxus art movement, which conveyed the same message: everything exists for a short amount of time so take advantage of it while it's there.

I have a lot of general attachments to that - embracing that sort of dada, anti-reason. I think my grandfather influenced me like anybody in your life influences you. People's charachter and ideas tend to rub off on you, whoever you're around. I remember him wanting to buy my old plastic rocking horse when I was a kid. It was sitting in the garage all covered with dust. He gave me $5 dollars for it, and when i came home from school later that day the thing was decapitated and covered in cigarette butts and spray painted silver. I was horrified but also electrified at the possibility of taking something that was useless and turning it into a beautiful monstrosity.

Where do you seek inspiration?

People always ask me what my favorite records are, and I don't really have any. I learn from things that are flawed. To me, bad music is inspiring than a masterpiece just because something that's perfect is invisible. It's canceled itself out. Stuff that is refuse, be it music or art or a movie or a TV show, there's still a chance to take it and use it even as an inspiration and come up with something, take it closer to being perfect.

I understand you don't have a television. Do you listen to radio?

I love listening to the beat stations, Power 106 and all that. It's always been over the top, the super R&B shit which is so slick, but I'm addicted to it. It's so evil, but so unbelievable - the production, the slickness and the commerciality. You can plug right into that culture by hearing those songs, the sexuality. Last year, when Montell Jordan came out, it was like, "What the hell is this?" He's singing gangbanger lyrics, but it's sort of lightweight R&B singing. It's kind of twisted that way.

Do you see yourself as part of folk, indie rock, hip hop..?

I'm not involved in the hip-hop community. In some ways I'd rather be a part of that world 'cause it seems more fun. When people are singing, they're actually singing. You turn on this alternative music station and you can't hear what the hell these bands are saying. There's no charachter. The voice is the charachter of the song. Maybe R&B song is cheesy and slicked up, but at least you can hear the voice and there's some emotion in it. Somebody's committung themselves to it. I grew up pretty
near where the Cypress Hill guys grew up. We had a lot of things in common that way.

Can you look down the line and see where you're headed?

I have no idea. It's all a chance thing. It's a chance that I got home early from work one day, and that a friend called and told me to go to this other guy's house, and that i came down and he had this drum machine and an eight-track, and we did "Loser" in three hours. I could have just as easily gone out and got a beer with a friend and that would have never happened. All of these things are just kind of chance. I'll be making banda music down in Mexico City hopefully. Something like that.