O: "What are your influences?"BF: That one's a real drag. It's dumb, because influences are by nature subconscious; you're not aware of them. You don't know. Say I'm the biggest, well, Joni Mitchell fan. Maybe not the biggest, but I love Joni Mitchell. I'm not gonna sound like Joni Mitchell. [Laughs.] Why would I want to sound like Joni Mitchell? I've got Joni Mitchell records, and they're great, and I couldn't possibly be that good. If I love her, that's what I'm gonna think, right? So maybe I'll pull influences from things I'm not aware of, things I've heard on the radio, maybe the Bee Gees. Now, I don't own a Bee Gees record—I don't care about owning a f*cking Bee Gees record—but I know that we sound like the Bee Gees sometimes when we're joking around. And that must be where it came from. I don't own any Carole King records, but I think there's influences there. Todd Rundgren... A lot of '70s stuff that I heard on the radio, I don't buy those records. But that's part of your sensibility, so those are influences, but you don't want to sit there and rattle them off, because you find yourself not being able to hold a conversation with someone about it. It's like, "Yeah, The Beatles, big influence," and I can't tell 'em five f*ckin' Beatles songs. Influences are subconscious, and when people ask that, I'm like, "Uhhhhh, I don't know."
He didn't seem like much of a Beatles fan in 1997:QuoteO: "What are your influences?"BF: That one's a real drag. It's dumb, because influences are by nature subconscious; you're not aware of them. You don't know. Say I'm the biggest, well, Joni Mitchell fan. Maybe not the biggest, but I love Joni Mitchell. I'm not gonna sound like Joni Mitchell. [Laughs.] Why would I want to sound like Joni Mitchell? I've got Joni Mitchell records, and they're great, and I couldn't possibly be that good. If I love her, that's what I'm gonna think, right? So maybe I'll pull influences from things I'm not aware of, things I've heard on the radio, maybe the Bee Gees. Now, I don't own a Bee Gees record—I don't care about owning a f*cking Bee Gees record—but I know that we sound like the Bee Gees sometimes when we're joking around. And that must be where it came from. I don't own any Carole King records, but I think there's influences there. Todd Rundgren... A lot of '70s stuff that I heard on the radio, I don't buy those records. But that's part of your sensibility, so those are influences, but you don't want to sit there and rattle them off, because you find yourself not being able to hold a conversation with someone about it. It's like, "Yeah, The Beatles, big influence," and I can't tell 'em five f*ckin' Beatles songs. Influences are subconscious, and when people ask that, I'm like, "Uhhhhh, I don't know."http://www.avclub.com/article/ben-folds-five-13467