“No guilt, all pleasure,” sings Ben Lee on his forthcoming album, The Rebirth Of Venus (due April 28 on New West). Lately, the 30-year-old Australian singer/songwriter has been on a mission to deliver radio-ready pop songs for the rest of us, mixing up hooks and politics and letting it all hang out. Shortly before he appeared on Jay Leno last week, Lee did a Q&A with MAGNET on the topics of Venus, his recent marriage to Ione Skye and the “mistake-pop” of his past and future.
As guest editor of magnetmagazine.com this week, the world’s most enlightened pop star shares thoughts about his latest revelations—from music to monkey gods.
Lee: Christopher Isherwood was a wonderful British writer from the ’40s and ’50s who is most famous for the short story “I Am A Camera” (from his Berlin Stories collection), in which he introduced the world to the character of Sally Bowles, the blueprint for Cabaret and even Holly Golightly from Breakfast At Tiffany’s. All of his stories are fantastic. They’re descriptive and insightful but also incredibly sensitive. Two of my favorite works by him are his novels A Single Man and My Guru And His Disciple. He moved to Los Angeles in the ’50s and became a disciple of the guru Swami Prabhavananda. One of his great accomplishments was he managed to write about spirituality in a very articulate and non-mushy way. Whether writing about vows of abstinence in Hollywood or the decadence of Nazi Germany, he always managed to hit a very human, wildly intelligent and compassionate tone.
