“He took chances”: The songwriter who became Beck’s ‘primary’ musical influence
There aren’t many greater mavericks in indie rock than Beck. Having first burst into the public eye in the early 1990s, his initial anti-folk stylings immediately grabbed the attention of fans and critics, and his prolific output during the period was nothing short of impressive, with him releasing his first four albums in the space of two years.
Despite the scrappiness of these early lo-fi recordings, he would then go on to achieve greater success with a series of radically different albums in the latter part of the decade, which would then go on to characterise his tendency to hop from style to style later on in his career. From the abstract white boy hip-hop of Odelay to the mellow psychedelic country of Mutations and the surreal funk rock of Midnite Vultures, his late ‘90s output is some of the most influential and impressive work that he has released to date.
Beck’s legacy as an artist still stands strong, and his daring ventures into wildly different musical spheres are something that many other artists who have come into the spotlight since his breakthrough often cite as inspiration. It’s hard to listen to the most recent Beck release and be able to predict his next move. Considering how his songs often materialise in a dreamlike fashion, it’s possible that he often doesn’t know where his impulses will be taking him, either for better or worse.
You have to admire his bravery as an artist and songwriter, but it’s not like he was the first to have ever crossed between genre boundaries, and there are plenty that Beck himself would often look up to as points of reference for his desire to take risks. In an interview with Dazed & Confused in 1996, released to coincide with his fifth album, Odelay, Beck spoke at length about the artists that he related to on a greater level due to their similar outlook on their own artistry.
While the interviewer acknowledged Beck’s prior dismissal of artists like Bob Dylan as being among his primary influences, he went on to suggest a couple of songwriters from prior decades that might have been more meaningful to his musical visions, asking whether the “outlaw appeal of characters like Woody Guthrie and Serge Gainsbourg” were more attractive to the artist.
Beck didn’t expressly mention Gainsbourg in his response but did begin by saying that he identified with both performers for how they “just said something to [him]” and were more aligned with who he perceived himself to be. “I was a small, skinny guy,” Beck explained. “I guess if I was a strapping, handsome brute, then I would identify with something else. You tend to be attracted to the things you can relate to, people who were outsiders.”
While both Guthrie and Gainsbourg certainly fit the bill as outsiders, Beck would proceed to speak about the former artist as the more important figure to him as a songwriter. “I think real working class people respect Woody Guthrie,” Beck continued before praising him for how “he was an outcast to the corporate music industry in America, and that was very rare at that time.”
With this glowing praise, it’s clear that Guthrie was a pivotal figure to whom Beck looked up. Wrapping up his argument for how crucial he was to his songwriting, he stated: “He was brave, he took chances. You don’t see very many brave people any more in music.” Ironically, Beck was just about to release one of the bravest records of his career and one of the most daring fusions of genres to come out of the decade altogether.
