The only secret I can ever impart to anybody about what makes a marriage long lasting,
I think the willingness of the two people to make it work is all that's needed.
Because marriages fall apart or relationships fall apart when at least one person stops
wanting it to work. And if you want it to work, you will find a way to make it work.
Hi, I'm Jess Rowe and this is the Jess Rowe Big Talk Show, a podcast that skips the small talk
and goes big and deep. From love to loss and everything in between, I want to show you a
different side of people who seem to have it all together in these raw and honest conversations
about the things that matter. I don't know about you, but I really crave connector conversations,
so I'm going to dig deep to give you a new window into the souls of the people we're curious to get
to know and understand. There might be tears as well as laughter as we celebrate the real-life
flaws and vulnerabilities that make us human. Musician Ben Lee has been entertaining audiences
for 30 years and his quirky talent has stood out since he was a teenager. Now I'm someone who's
drawn to eccentric creative souls as I adore how they're true to themselves. I'm a big fan of
Ben's music. His new single, Parents Get High, is out next week from his album I'm Fun and I wanted
to talk to Ben about his sense of fun and if that's changed now that he's so-called grown-up.
I'm here. You are here and you are the ultimate groover. Oh really? Yes. I like that. Yeah,
you are groovy, you are cool and you've got a new album coming out and I've always loved your music
and what I love about your music is that it's cheeky, it's exuberant and it's positive.
Yeah, I think that's all true. I guess the essence of what I've always wanted to do
creatively and then even not just with my music but in terms of like the way I interact with
media and with my audience is a sense of playfulness and it's been interesting because
the world has become more conducive to having being able to convey subtler tones through like
podcasts and social media and stuff whereas before the media was a lot more, it was just
two-dimensional because it was basically print or you went on a road or whatever. It's kind of nice
to be able to play now because there's so many outlets that you can sort of weave different
types of cheekiness which is the essence of what I want to do. And as you even say the word
cheekiness, I have to tell our listeners you have this lovely kind of cheeky smile on your face
and with your new music too you talk about it wanting to be fun. Life's got to be fun.
Has that changed though for you as you've gotten older? I think in some ways I've become more
resolute in my belief that the creation of genuine fun and when I say fun, I don't mean
that like forced New Year's Eve thing where like there's all this pressure to have the best night
of your life and I also don't mean something that's sort of self-destructive and debauched
to the point of like annihilation of the self but just like staying connected to that part of you
that's a kid. As you get older and you get more aware of the challenges facing the world and our
civilization, our planet, you realize that we need human ingenuity and creativity more than ever
before. So what is the best atmosphere from which to come up with solutions? And so I think contributing
a genuine fun playful atmosphere is perhaps the best contribution that creative people can do
to solving world problems because I don't have any of the big solutions but I do think I can
help foster an atmosphere in which other people can hopefully come up with some. I think that's
very important point that you make. I'm a huge believer in fun and connecting with that playful
side of ourselves that often we do forget as we grow up you know we think we have to be grown up
and serious and we lose that sense of when you are a kid chasing joy. Absolutely and I think it's
to the detriment of a lot of big ideas is they get conveyed with zero sense of play and fun.
I think one of the reasons that progressive politics have sort of become like a target of
like people going oh the woke crowd they're so overly earnest and overly seriousness is that like
when you especially if you are an empathetic person and compassionate and concerned with human
suffering you can lose the sense of communicating your ideas with a sense of play and joy and I
think then you leave space for cheekier troll-like atmosphere to come from the opponents and to
capture a generation of people that don't believe in taking politics so seriously and all that kind
of thing. I was really inspired by the 60s activists like um the yippies and like people
that were yippie what's a yippie um the yippies were like they were hippies but they were sort
of like activists they weren't chill so they did things like establishing free stores which we have
in Australia now with like Oz Harvest that is a yippie principle it's a lot of a sense of like
cheeky playfulness and particularly with environmentalism and all that kind of stuff
it's just like really important to engage people's sense of joy because ultimately
what kind of world are we creating if we find the solutions but they're not enjoyable to implement?
You're so right so you obviously do it through your music because your music is joyful and
playful how though do you do it in your daily life you've got two kids you've got Goldie and
your stepdaughter how do you encourage them to be playful or do you find sometimes they're a little
bit more mature than you are? I mean I think it's to do with the way you look at decision making
that's what I've always tried to impart as a parent so for instance in 2020 you know we live
in LA and COVID was absolutely rampant and everything in Australia at that point was
you know in a much better position and we talked about the idea of coming out and spending a year
in Australia in 2021 and there were various tones we could have had that conversation with
and I just said guys what we're not going to do is make a fear-based decision right now
let's make a decision out of what we think is actually going to be nourishing and expansive
and enjoyable and in that way I think like I think of it as like the best thing you can do is teach
your kids to dance like with life you know because there's no answers that we know of there's no
correct or incorrect way of doing life and that's I think something that I'm noticing as a parent
I think the education system has like really failed young people and I think there's a reason
why tertiary education is becoming like more and more redundant in the world and in Australia we
still have basically an affordable university education system but in America where it's not
you rightfully have like a whole generation of kids going like why am I doing this just to set
myself up in debt for the rest of my life because you're not necessarily being taught a skill set
that has to do with problem solving and looking for opportunity you're still being taught a basic
type of like you know it's old-fashioned like rote learning of course and it's also trying to
fit everyone into a box exactly and as you know we all learn things differently we all respond to
information in different ways and there are only a certain number of people number of kids who can
sit in a classroom and absorb information in that quite boring way and you know I'm thinking again
of you as a parent and I remember I heard you say something about what was tricky for you was
realizing that your kids are actually different to who you are I know for me I used to expect that my
kids would think the same way that I did would have the same sorts of interests and talents
and it's quite revealing when you think oh no they're actually different very different
it's so confronting and there's the interest in all of that but then there's even just in
approach and pace and tone and the way they do life that like I don't know one of the biggest
gifts you can give a kid is letting them embrace their own approach and that might be trying lots
of different things or it might be being more cautious but whatever it is finding what's
natural and helping them do that and I just think like the one thing I've really wanted to impart
is the thing that has served me best in life beyond writing songs or music or whatever any of
that has been learning to see opportunity and then being brave enough to pursue it and understanding
that you know the doors of opportunity open briefly and if you don't step through them in those
moments they may not be open tomorrow and that's just the reality of the way nature seems to work
and it's the way that seduction works it's everything it's like if you wait to ask someone
out that you have a crush on someone else might ask about it next thing they're going to be married
to someone else and you missed it like I had an interesting moment with my daughter where she made
these like brooches or like hair clips or something and she was walking around our
neighborhood selling them to all our neighbors and it was really cute at the end of the day
I sat down she was like I'm gonna make more and I said which ones are you gonna make more of she's
like I'm gonna make more of all of them I was like but gods look there's only one of them that are
selling the other one people are buying this one there forget what it was it was like a type of
hair clip not a bracelet I was like I think hair clips are the way to go
and that type of thing it's like that's not something that you are going to learn in school
that's street smarts like that's basically going like yes it's not about pandering but understanding
that if you want to be a valuable member of a community or of the world learning to honestly
appraise what your gifts are and what is needed within your community is the way you're going to
become embedded within it. Let's talk about then embracing those opportunities seeing them
identifying them for you they came along when you were very young what were you 13 or 14 I mean your
music was coming to the fore and then you were part of a band and then the Beastie Boys embraced
you how does a teenage boy grab that opportunity um with desperate vigor so did you or were you
frightened um I don't think the two are mutually exclusive I don't think without being trite like
there's a reason that people say that feel the fear and do it anyway that fear is natural I mean
to some degree we are still like a cave dwelling species that anything that puts us out of our
comfort zone is a threat and there's a degree to which it isn't safe that's just the reality like
life isn't a safe container and there are new experiences that are going to be scary but that's
where our minds are quite brilliant and we are able to calm ourselves down and assess how much
of that is the primitive fear of things changing and the unknown and how much of it is genuine am
I unsafe so you're explaining that to me in a very sensible mature way but as a teenage boy
did you see it like that or how did you see it I can say it now articulating it but I would have
articulated it then by am I scared who cares that's the reality that like I knew enough to
knew that it wasn't going to stop me and then it's been you know life has been a series of those
things like every time I go into a collaboration or every time I go into a new medium or try
something there is a deep sense of the possibility of my own humiliation and failure and I don't I
don't think people that aren't in the public eye or in you know entertainment or whatever understand
the degree of risk with every decision you make particularly when you have a long career and
people start perceiving you as like oh they'll be right we are improvising this entire thing
and it involves constant decision making for which there are no guarantees and having a bit of fear
under your belt and a fire under you is like it's not a bad thing you know because the stakes are
high and particularly as you have a family and you're trying to balance like having a family
and wanting to provide for them and all of that if you then allow yourself to become like a dead
professional you're not serving anybody because ultimately it's not going to work for you sort of
spiritually right you're going to like you may as well have just gone conservative and taken an
office job anyway you know what I mean of course it's not going to feed your soul and it's probably
not going to work as a result so you're constantly kind of just in the reality of like a tightrope
walk and the one thing that I've come to trust is the thing that excites me is the next right thing
and what is that now well at the moment you know me and my wife Ione we've just started a podcast
called weirder together and that's been really great
I had a fun listening to the episodes and one particular part that your wife was talking about
and I'd love to talk with you more about it is when you guys got married you got married in
India and she basically says she married someone who had a problem yeah yeah well don't we all
of course we all have problems and that's what makes us interesting I mean I've got a heap of
problems and I love that because it makes me who I am but when she was talking about the problem
that you had yeah that was with cults wasn't it this search for meaning yeah I would basically
phrase it as an inappropriate allocation of my personal energy right because at the end of the
day I am sort of an obsessive person who works incredibly hard at whatever I'm doing and there
have been times in my life where I've put that in places that are not as appropriate as into my
creativity so it's funny because when I'm obsessive about my creativity it creates a
very harmonious home like it's right you know what I mean like when I put it into these sort
of existential searches and different occult practices and all that it was like disharmonious
within our home you know and why did you do that was it because you felt creatively you couldn't
find what you wanted to be doing so you were searching somewhere else I think in some ways
what's simplest in life is hardest to accept and when I was 14 basically the sort of elders of
my lineage which is like alternative cultural thinkers scooped me up and were like you're one
of us get to work and that is very young for that to happen and when you say though elders
do you mean music mentors so the beastie boys yeah these are people who were cultural curators
who they pointed at things and said that's interesting what's happening over there and
the world would turn its head and pay attention to it and I think that happening to me like them
pointing at me and kick-starting a career the simplicity of that was hard for me to accept
and I think I continued to look for community and fraternity and these types of things
belonging when it had already happened like my community is the freaky thinkers and creators
within show business you know with the ones that have a good heart the ones that are expansive and
playful and want to make stuff to see what's going to happen you know not the people that
are like just chasing a bark or the you know it's like well the dreamers yeah there's a certain type
and it's not always within genres that are the same you know like I've just done this video
for parents get high for the new single I've seen on tiktok you with a pink cowboy hat and in the
news I know that was born for this bullshit yeah so the new one parents get high is like um all
these amazing cameos by like my people whether it's like felma plum or adam green or you know
lauren lapkus and abby chatfield and paul shear and megan washington emily weremora like people who
I feel like creative affinity with and I guess it took me some time to realize that both my community
was in show business but not everybody do you know what I mean because there are people that
have different value systems than I do the silly way I say it is if I email someone about
collaborating on something and they say let me loop you in with my manager or agent they're not
one of mine you know what I mean like there's a time for that if we're gonna have contracts or
something you can loop in your agent but when it comes to the creative spark people directly
connecting and going you want to play the people that say yes to that they're my kind of people
you know and um it's that type of um creating a tribe creating a family that I've learned over
30 years in the industry and realizing that being selective about who you trust and who you play
with and who you let in in that way you can have a very open heart but you can also say hey the
level of freedom I want to play at um you got to show up ready to be loose ready to have a sense
of humor about yourself you know what I mean that is essential yeah I think you have to be able to
laugh at yourself and not take yourself too seriously really exactly because there's enough
serious stuff that's going on in the world exactly would I be correct in saying because you're able
to embrace more of that and to think well my tribe's here I don't need to be searching
elsewhere I don't need to be listening for other gurus or people to give me the answers yeah
exactly I mean I also um in some ways I think I was one of the sort of pure intentioned people
that I'm like a sort of a perfect person to take advantage of because I'm idealistic right like
because I believe there is goodness and there is a right way forward just personally you know so
in that way that makes you if you're cynical so someone tells you hey this is a good way forward
you go no it's not fuck off right because you're cynical right yeah whereas because I believe there
are good choices you can make I'm then found myself susceptible to people's sales pitches
before I realized that I'm the best judge you know what I mean that's good you do that go
down the path you want to you yeah but you know who gave me an amazing lesson about that
was Baz Luhrmann when I was about 19 I was having lunch with him and he was telling me a story of
at that time these Danish directors um had started this thing called dogma
and it was Lars Von Trier and Thomas Winterberg and you know and they had this whole style of
cinema there was very no frills like no arbitrary sound and lights and action it was all about like
boiling cinema down to its essence and Baz was saying he'd been having dinner with Lars Von Trier
and Lars said to him Baz I challenge you to make a dogma film and Baz turned and go
Lars I've got my own dogma and I thought that was the best story but he was also
look he was probably my age now when he said that and it does take a certain type of confidence
that you have to like you kind of got to get there often I mean there are some unique people like
Jimi Hendrix or whatever who like had it from their early 20s but for most of us it's a journey
where you can kind of look at others and go I've got my own dogma thanks
and to have that confidence and that sense of self to say I'm enough yeah not just from a place
of like arrogance or rebelliousness or something like where you go oh not gonna listen to anybody
that's just like being a teenager but being an adult and going that's actually really cool and
it's not for me that requires maturity and let's talk a little bit more about that and especially
in terms of partnerships you've been married now for 13 years tell me how did you meet your wife
I met Ioni so when I was 18 and I just finished my HSC went to LA to make my second solo album
something to remember me by as you do yeah yeah so I already my career was going already you know so
so I went over there and then what struck me was something I wasn't familiar with at all in
American culture was like everyone lives away from their families there's a lot of traveling
at Christmas so literally everyone I knew left town in LA except one person this guy Ian Rogers
who was a friend of mine who was the Beastie Boys web guy at that time and so I called him I was
like dude you're the only person I know in town like the people I was staying with were gone
all I was doing was just like ordering Domino's pizza and watching Donahue I had no plans you
know and so Ian was like oh come my girlfriend's best friend is having a little party and why don't
you come for Christmas I said great so I went on Christmas Eve and it was Ioni's house you know
I was 18 and they were 26 year old women which like I mean mind-blowing you know for an 18 year
old Aussie boy to be around like 26 year old women in the Hollywood Hills it was just awesome
and then she's sort of from rock star royalty in a sense her dad is Donovan the folk singer she
didn't grow up with him she didn't meet him till she was 16 but very much like she grew up in
Hollywood like her best friend is Carys Jagger who is Mick's oldest kid another daughter is
Amy Fleetwood who is Mick Fleetwood's daughter so they that world was very much a world she's
used to which you know in Australia like it's now I guess if you're like Banzi one of Banzi's kids
it's like it's now more like a known thing like but there it's more like the generations continue
to play out um so yeah I met all of them and her family and we all took magic mushrooms on Christmas
day and I just sort of I did have this feeling of like whatever this is this is how I want to live
Did you kind of pinch yourself and think how has this 18 year old Bondi boy ended up here?
The thing about LA that's so amazing is like and the reason people hate it is because it's a secret
it's a city full of secrets like if you show up as a tourist in LA you don't know where to go
you don't know all you can do is like go to Hollywood Boulevard or go to Venice Beach
you don't know what is happening because everything's happening in people's houses
you have to be invited into worlds to see them otherwise you remain an outsider to it so it was
like this entry into a world that was like kind of bohemian but fun and loving and sexy and
just sort of like it was just very different from my you know middle-class Jewish upbringing
but we didn't get together until 10 years after that you know we knew each other we stayed friends
but lightly you know we were lightly friends but it is amazing and that house is the house I live
in now that we live in together no way so when I um isn't that beautiful that full circle it's crazy
so when uh we got together it was like oh I'll sell my place you sell your place we'll start fresh
and then we were like looking around just going like how much like macho pride do I need to like
on principle sell a house that like this is like the dream in Laurel Canyon it's like a beautiful
creative house that's like been a container for so many experiences and it's been more for us just
continuing that and so we always have like jam sessions and parties and people over and if people
are heartbroken they come and stay and it's like those houses are rare you know they're like sort
of these magic sanctuaries and being married for 13 years has your relationship got better
oh yeah in what way I mean in some ways you know I don't know like when you're in a long relationship
you kind of can't even believe that it was the same people that started the relationship and
it sort of wasn't like you're looking at each other seeing potential I think and though you
might convince yourself that yes you're in love with the perfect person you're not like I mean
there's a long way to go the journey is a long journey of maturing and becoming
fully just like realized within the world and I don't mean to make it sound so esoteric but
just being an effective human being the kind of person that has integrity says what they're going
to do and does it is accountable when they make mistakes like that is like that's a real journey
and it takes work doesn't it yeah but I think the number one thing it takes and literally the
only the only secret I can ever impart to anybody about what makes a marriage long lasting and not
that ours is like there's way longer marriages but we're you know coming up to 15 years that's
pretty good innings in Hollywood you know we like each other still but uh I think the willingness
of the two people to make it work is all that's needed because marriages fall apart or relationships
fall apart when at least one person stops wanting it to work and if you want it to work you will
find a way to make it work so everything we've been through we always wanted to make it work
and we've hit bumpy points and you hit challenges some you could foresee some you can't
but we wanted to make it work and so we did and you know I've had a friend say to me once the
trick to staying married is not getting divorced and it's kind of true it's like at the end of the
day it's like you keep it going if you want to keep it going and you will but and that is really
a beautiful thing and the point you make too about both people have to be invested if someone starts
to check out that's one person checks out it's over sometimes someone checks out temporarily and
goes through a crisis and realizes you know and people even have affairs and there's all kinds
of things that marriages actually can recover from but still the point of healing only starts
when both people are willing to really be there again talking to you I don't think you're square
at all but your wife described you as square yeah but she apologized after we stopped rolling
oh did she look it's a little bit like you know in marriages there's like
the roles you play like the characters you play like I'm the person who's going to book the flights
seriously so you're the organizer I'm the person who looks at the apple iCal and actually knows
what's going to happen that day like Ione is like much more macro and she's much more like
where Ione's strengths in our marriage are is she'll say I think we need to check in with Kate
she seems stressed about something there's something a bit off with this can we talk about
it like her perceptiveness to just the larger way the family is moving and the way we're moving
is unparalleled in our house like it's very sensitive and very accurate so in that way I
think she perceives me as you know more square or whatever but it's also I think where we come from
that for me I was brought up in sort of a more conservative environment so for me
things that are out there hold more tantalizing appeal whereas for her she comes from sort of
Hollywood hippie chaos like her biggest sexual fantasy would be to open her linen cupboards
and has everything perfectly folded and organized in pillowcases and you know like like that to her
would be the biggest turn-on I should do that for like you do that I hope you do that I should I
should I should that should be a surprise where she just comes in it's like all new linens for
her birthday um so things like that it's really about the fetishization of the other like whatever
it is that you didn't grow up with is like hot to you you know it's so true now Ben I could talk to
you for weeks you're an oracle I don't know about that you are but finally you've got this amazing
album that's coming out what do you want to do next do you ever think something apart from music
or is it always you're going to be making records when you're 80 well I genuinely always said like
I would look at like Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson and now like Bonnie Raitt and Tom Waits
and I would look at artists that have these like dynamic creative careers in their 70s and say I
want that so I hope my goal has always been to do my best work in my 70s that it's a story that keeps
getting better but I think what I'm realizing there's the collaborating with Ioni and in
different ways is and what Weirder Together is it's interesting because um even just the name
Weirder Together it's a night we had that was like a variety show that we did at Giant Dwarf in
Sydney and at Lago in LA and it embodies both having an offbeat sensibility but also community
and I think that can make all sorts of things happen and I prefer not to put um a limit on that
like what types of projects we can tackle together but I do think that um as I get older
uh my curation talents are something I want to invest more energy into and that can be anything
from producing a record and picking the people to play on it to helping people launch their
podcasts to developing some film and tv stuff to throwing great parties whatever it is it's all
about the same thing it's all about creating a space setting an atmosphere and deciding what
and who is going to be in that space and I think that to me is like the broad stroke essence of
where I want to be creatively moving in this next chapter I want to come to one of your parties
right on man I think we're in one right now thank you so much thanks for having me how amazing would
it be to go to one of Ben's parties to sit around and jam or even pretend to jam I mean I'd love to
I could maybe do air guitar that's what I could do something else that I'm really looking forward
to doing is bopping away in the audience at one of his concerts because he is going to be touring
around the country and we've put a link to his tour dates in our show notes so head there
if you want to head to one of his concerts now for more big conversations like this search the
jessro big talk show podcast and while you're there please push the follow button make me a
favorite so you'll never ever miss an episode and if you like today's chat why not check out my chat
with Keith Urban you know golly gee the amount of times I'm making things so hard for myself and
like what am I doing this I should be like supporting myself here like I should be the
first person to believe in what I'm doing or have a listen to Osher Ginsburg
I just woke up and went that's it I'm done I can't I can't ever do that again
the jessro big talk show was presented by me jessro executive producer Nick McClure audio
producer Nicky Sitch supervising producer Sam Kavanagh until next time remember to live big
life is just too crazy and glorious to waste time on the stuff that doesn't matter