Strange Tales with Ben Ely
“The weather was kinda getting to me in Melbourne and I just went, ‘I’m just gonna move back. I ended up packing up and selling all my stuff and moving up to Brisbane. It was quite weird when I got back there… it was like this weird memory of myself, like it was me but it wasn’t me.” After spending 16 years living between Melbourne and Sydney Regurgitator’s Ben Ely moved home to Brisbane. When he returned it was a surreal experience,
“I remembered this time of my life but it felt like it wasn’t. It was a completely different version of me and the going around the city to different locations was recalling all of these feelings and instances that happened to me when I was younger. The feelings were really strong and these ideas were just coming into my songs.”
These memories and feelings formed the catalyst for Ely’s new album Strange Tales of Drugs & Lost Love. Moody and reflective, the album is a departure from the sound of Regurgitator, with most tracks only featuring one guitar and Ely’s vocals.
The stories he tells on the album take place around the time when Ely finished high school and his formative years just before the formation of Regurgitator.
“I think back in the time of the late 80s, early 90s was a very, very different time for music and culture and the political landscape of South East Queensland, with the Joh Bjelke-Petersen era.”
“I remember the time being quite violent and quite aggressive at concerts. There was a lot of violence, skinheads would just turn up to a venue and start beating people up especially if they were of Asian descent.”
“I remember Quan was playing in a band, Zooerastia at the 4ZZZ market day and the skinheads would jump on stage and sieg heil him. It was a pretty intense time, I remember it being quite scary being in the music scene. Or being a person that stood out in South East Queensland at the time, you’re a target for the police and searches. I think I got searched by the cops at least twice a week where I lived.”
Ben’s new album focuses on the strangest events that occurred to him. “Some of the stories are just so bizarre, you just can’t make that shit up. Like my first girlfriend on the song Amada’s Lost It. She was my first girlfriend and I went to Melbourne to visit my Grandmother for the holidays and came back. She was this bright, shiny kinda surfy girl and then she turned into a goth. She dyed a wedding dress black and she said she was possessed by the devil and the devil was taking to her through a Stevie Nicks cassette tape. She was also talking to her through this old antique picture she had of this old woman that lived in Tasmania in the 1800s.”
“The she [his girlfriend] kinda got possessed and got a knife and tried to stab me, then she ran into the forest and she said that ‘the hell hounds are chasing me, the demons are chasing me’. I had to chase after her and tell her everything was ok and then she just wouldn’t buy it. I eventually got her home and I took the Stevie Nicks tape and the picture away and said ‘I’m taking the devil out of your house now’, and she was like ‘ok’ and she still wouldn’t buy that. So I had to break up with her after that.”
For Ely his solo project is very personal, “I think I just do my solo thing because I like the process of making music.” For him the project is an important contrast to the party vibes of Regurgitator, creating something mellow and introverted is his way of experiencing a different side of music, “It’s nice to experience music in different ways,” he says.
Ben says that he probably won’t just limit the project to one album, “There’s so many stories I could probably make four or five volumes of Strange Tales… because there’s a lot of weird stories.”