The return of Beck with the new Modern Guilt sends us back to the skinny wunderkind's arrival on the LA scene 14 years ago, when Gerrie Lim quizzed the "slacker Dylan" as "Loser" burst on to a post-grunge world in early '94. We excerpt from a conversation recorded for Singapore's Big O magazine.-- Barney Hoskyns, RBP Editorial Director

THOSE OPENING NOTES attempt to warn you: a slinky salvo of slide guitar and then some hip-hop percussion, and then some dude starts rapping, wending up to the chorus refrain: "I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me?" This is Beck, this is his single, "Loser," and this is the latest blue-chip A&R find of our historic year of slackerhood 1994.

Beck (real surname Hansen, first name not Jeff, don't ask why) is 23 years old and hails from Los Angeles by way of Kansas, New York and various other sites of existential displacement. A chronic wanderer by personality and persuasion, his music is a mélange of folk, blues, rap, punk and unadulterated noise, the highlight of his live shows being a segment where he performs "Loser" wearing a Star Wars Imperial Stormtrooper helmet and dances by himself to a boombox. (Trust me, I've seen it, and it's pretty deranged.)

"Loser" was recorded in January 1992 and then forgotten for an entire year, until indie label Bongload Records (home of debut albums by Mazza Chunka, Wool, Further and Carnival Of Souls) discovered it and issued it. The song was picked up by college radio stations (particularly KNDD in Seattle) and the suits came a-calling. Geffen won a bidding war, signing Beck last December to its hot alternative label DGC.

"Loser" was issued as a CD-5 EP in January and his DGC debut album, Mellow Gold, released in the U.S. March 1. But other alternative labels will still release his new recordings – Flipside Records issued in February an album, Stereopathetic Soul Manure, following-up his Flipside single, "MTV Makes Me Want To Smoke Crack," and Sonic Enemy Records issued a full-length cassette, Golden Feelings. Bong Load has released Mellow Gold exclusively on vinyl LP, hot on the heels of the current barfy Bong Load single "Steve Threw Up."

We talked by phone one cold, rainy morning in February from our respective 'hoods, me in West and he in East LA, and the interview proved as profound and strange and funny as I'd hoped, just like this man called Beck. Read on, punk, you've been warned.

*** 

Have you seen the new BAM magazine cover that just came out with you on it and the coverline: "Who is Beck?"

Yeah, I saw it yesterday, and my first reaction was: "Who cares?"

The crowd at Jabberjaw a few weeks ago seemed to. The feeling I got from that show was you're updating your own country blues influences, like updating Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family for today's Slacker Generation.

Actually, I'm sort of a Glen Campbell with his clothes on inside out. Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family inspired me to play music in the first place, but at the same time I was listening to Pussy Galore and playing shows in the punk rock scene.

Right, it's almost as though you're somewhere in between the folk scene and the punk scene.

Actually, probably somewhere between the speed-metal scene and the love-rock scene. I'm kinda like one of those free-form cancer antibodies. I'm a cloud form above a bunch of smog and the smog is getting sucked into a vacuum cleaner, and I'm sort of going along for the ride.

Why is your new album called Mellow Gold?

It's a tribute in a way to those Greatest Hits packaged records of the '70s, the "freedom rock" records, the easy-goin' rockin’ order-it-over-the-mail C.O.D. for $19.95, or $6.66 C.O.D - "Care of the Devil." It's sort of taking those songs, peeling the surface off and checking out the mixture of sausage and fiberglass.

A lot of your songs are parodies. Do you write with a determined effort to take the piss out of stuff?

No, it's a completely sincere effort to be real, but then it just sounds so bad we have to rewind the tape and play the whole thing backwards. I've been making these home tapes for years now, and some of them are backwards.

Actually, I think what you're really doing is reviving the troubadour tradition, the roving folksinger thing, which seems to be lost in today's hi-tech world.

Yeah. The troubadours were the original punk rockers. Because they could just pick it up, take it on the road, say whatever they wanted to say and change the whole thing in five minutes if they wanted. Nothing was rehearsed. I was always making up stuff. When I was 12, I had one of these Casio pocket calculators, and when you pressed each number it made a little tone. My first songs were written on that calculator. Then, I got into Woody Guthrie when I was 16 or 17 and got inspired to pick up the guitar and bang on it. And then I ended up living back in New York and seeing a lot of stuff and waking up to some different ideas. I started to put this together with the chords that I'd been bangin' on before. Whenever there was anyone playing a banjo or any kind of fiddling and stuff, ever since I was a kid, I would go crazy.

The BAM article called you "Woody Guthrie on LSD" and you replied by saying you were "the Bon Jovi of the '60s."

Right. Or Kip Winger with a protein shake.

I'm sure you get asked about it way more than you'd probably like. So, at the risk of adding one more such question to the list, I was wondering if you feel like you do sort of speak for this disaffected generation.

I don't know. That's a hard thing to say, because I'm not doing anything consciously like that. I didn't set out to do that. Most of the people I know are old people. I don't know too many people my age. They're all punching the clock working at video rental places and stuff like that, and I'm sort of in my helicopter but I'm flying underground. And sometimes we see each other but mostly I'm over at the picnic with the banjo players. I don't claim to represent any particular faction. That would be pretty pompous. I think it's kinda stupid to pigeonhole the spokesman, blah, blah, blah. When I play shows, I'm there to check out the other bands, too, because they're representing whatever my generation's supposed to represent as much as I am.

Hear an audio interview with Beck, and read lots more interviews and reviews with him, at www.rocksbackpages.com. Over 12,000 articles by the greatest writers from the finest rock publications of the last 40 years.