Ben Lee On Pretty Much Everything

Ben Lee doesn't do small talk. Twelve seconds into conversation with him and he's already riffing on the notion of freedom, "a misunderstood word overall" says Lee. "But it's such a beautiful ideal and I think that we should strive for freedom, like the quest for liberty, even if it's just financial freedom, like, that's a noble goal to be self-sufficient, to be able to look after your family. Then we move into these higher philosophical realms, the urge to be free of certain kinds of intellectual strangleholds that systems can put on us. It's so noble."

Lee is a man of big ideas and big actions. The name of his new record is Freedom, Love & The Recuperation Of The Human Mind, a long title with, Lee admits, "A hint of an epic quality to it, only that stretching the human mind gives some context that there are many levels of reality and many minds we could be speaking about. You can live in a very free society and still not have developed the ability to think outside of whatever level of conformity you're dealing with. So the freedom that I'm talking about is definitely much more psychological."

"Perhaps easily I could have gone and become a monk or something, and just retreated from the world into a life of contemplation."

While addressing big philosophical ideas of freedom and love, the album has a very personal, family-oriented feel. And that, says Lee, has always been his strength, tackling universal concerns but grounding them in extremely personal details. "For me that has been the journey that my life has been on. Perhaps easily I could have gone and become a monk or something, and just retreated from the world into a life of contemplation, but I'm really glad that wasn't the path for me because there's been a whole host of lessons that have to do with intimacy and family and connection and responsibility that have been huge growth accelerators for me. When I look at this idea of liberation or enlightenment or psychological health, these are ideas that used to be principally spoken of in these places that were removed from society. And for me that's not my reality and that's not my life and I'm interested in seeking liberation within the family home."

The epic quality to the way Lee speaks is reflected in the way he lives his life, and no matter what you may think of him, there's no doubt he leads an interesting one. Now, at the age of 38, he has been making music for 25 years, having started out in Noise Addict in Sydney at the age of 14, self-producing a four-track demo which led him to be signed to Steve Pavlovic's Fellaheen Records. Pavlovic's connections brought him to the attention of Thurston Moore and The Beastie Boys, who put out several of his releases on their own Grand Royal Records. Lee is now married to Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz' ex-wife, actor Ione Skye, and they live together in LA with their seven-year-old daughter Goldie.

Punk kid, Beastie Boy darling, actor, philosopher, pop kid, Ayahuasca expounder, The Voice judge - Lee has gone through some very distinctive, very public phases, all driven by a seemingly unshakeable self confidence and creative ambition that has, at times, rubbed people up the wrong way. Not surprisingly, Lee has his own philosophical take on it. "That is definitely one of the interesting aspects of having a long and public history of being an artist, that there are all kinds of assumptions and narratives that people bring to meeting you. It doesn't happen as much anymore, certainly after Breathing Tornados, when I was going through such a volatile public persona, I'd meet people with assumptions about me, and that was a little heartbreaking at times. But that's also how you learn your lesson. To some degree you have to take responsibility for your past actions and the ramifications of them, in a more real way than a lot of people do."

"It's been a really interesting life so far. And you can pick these moments that you can pull out to make it look more glamorous or sensational, and there are glamorous moments, but overall what I've been is a musician and someone really hungry to learn. That's been probably my most defining factor of my personality and of this life. So yeah, there have been moments where like, the Beastie Boys said, 'Do you want to put out records on our label?' That was great. But more than anything I've been someone reading books and taking classes and doing weird things, and meditating and praying and trying to understand what is this human mind thing that's on my shoulders here? So the story from the outside and the story from the inside can be a little divergent when you start looking at them in detail."