‘Sociopath’ Folds hit the wrong note with maestro Harvey
When Ben Folds smashed a stool into Geoff Harvey’s Midday Show grand piano live on air in the 1990s, he was furious and it wouldn’t have just been because of the bratty behaviour.
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SINGER-songwriter Ben Folds has been rushed through his paces this past week while in Australia to promote his new memoir, A Dream About Lightning Bugs, at an appearance at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival this weekend.
Folds, a modern musical genius and the guy behind hits such as Brick, Rockin’ The Suburbs and The Luckiest, admits in his book to being something of a sociopath — “a songwriting sociopath”.
It’s a side of him older Australians saw first-hand in 1997 when the American provoked the fury of Aussie TV’s musical maestro Geoff Harvey on the Midday show after the rising star petulantly smashed a stool on Harvey’s baby grand piano — live on air.
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While the doddering studio audience was confounded by the rock ‘n’ roll stunt, Folds — thought to have been jet-lagged and unimpressed with the booking — went to work this weekend talking the incident down.
He has since said the two men later patched it up — with a beer at the Hilton Hotel — but as one who was at Nine that day, I can vividly recall Harvey’s fury and can’t believe he ever totally forgave Folds.
Harvey, no scrapper himself in the musical genius stakes, greatly respected talented artists but respected the pockets of his television boss, Kerry Packer, more and was mindful of not wasting the boss’s money.
The $20,000 for a new Yamaha piano would have been a criminal cost in Packer’s eyes, and something the TV tycoon and his lieutenants were inclined to hold over Harvey for years.
Last week, while Folds looked to have mellowed during press interviews that also plugged an Australian tour early in 2020, he looked ill-at-ease during a live TV interview on ABC Breakfast on Friday as he unsmilingly batted away soft questions from hosts Michael Rowland and Lisa Millar who revealed themselves to be largely unfamiliar with his work.
At 52, Folds may look like a musical nerd but within him clearly still beats the heart of the irascible punk rocker.