"Leather Jacket" would also later appear on the charity compilation No Boundaries: A Benefit for the Kosovar Refugees.Īt least two songs, "Break Up at Food Court" and "Carrying Cathy", were played during these sessions, but were neither released nor played live by the band. The band recorded the songs "Leather Jacket" (written by Jessee) and "Birds" (an instrumental written by Sledge) during the Reinhold Messner sessions the songs were not included on the album, but were released as b-sides on the "Army" and "Don't Change Your Plans" singles. The vocal portion of "Your Most Valuable Possession" consists of a message left on Folds' answering machine by his father, Dean Folds, while he was partially asleep. The hospital referred to in "Hospital Song" is a real hospital: Forsyth Medical Center, located on Silas Creek Parkway in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
On the Ben Folds iTunes Originals, Folds explains that the song "Mess" is a "loss of innocence song" about having so much baggage that now you are unable to completely explain your history "you've made a mess." I imagine the floor was cleaned and the recording went into the trash." I just heard it as this little masterpiece thing.” In a Reddit AMA, Folds claims Southern "cut the parts he didn't like and literally left the unwanted bits on the floor. I see what you’re talking about.’ Cause I didn't hear it like that at all. Originally, "Don't Change Your Plans" was preceded by a long instrumental passage Folds credits Southern for helping edit down the song to its final product, and told an interviewer that Southern, "just cut it away and then all of a sudden it was this pop song. I always related it to – there's a kind of narcolepsy where you're overstimulated in any kind of way, if you get really happy or excited or sad or whatever, you just go right to sleep I realized that there's lots of guys out there that do this emotionally, including myself." It features a notable amount of overdubs such as a heavy use of string sections, french horns, and a prominent horn section in the lead single " Army".īoth critics and the band members themselves have described The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner to be a loose concept album, following the Reinhold Messner character through his life, heartache, hospitalization, and childhood memories.ĭuring the WASO Live in Perth concert, Folds describes the song "Narcolepsy" as "about going to sleep, but it's the about the kind of going to sleep that you can't help. Unlike its predecessor, Whatever and Ever Amen, which was recorded at Folds's house in Chapel Hill, Reinhold Messner was recorded at several recording studios. The album was recorded in a three-month span. After some concerns from the label, Folds says, "everyone took me out to lunch and asked me to split it up into separate songs instead of being one, and I remember Caleb saying – kind of implying that we were sort of in trouble pretty soon because nobody was hearing anything that sounded like real songs on the record." Naturally, the original demo for the album did not have traditional songs, but rather was one long track containing all the musical ideas as a cohesive narrative. As the new material was being written, Folds was "really into" chord progressions and voice leadings that he says kept finding their way into what he was writing. Lead singer and songwriter Ben Folds recalls being "tired of writing pop songs" and it led to changes in his writing style. Bassist Robert Sledge stated in an interview with Front to Back that this fatigue naturally led to the band playing lighter material. The writing style of the album has been described by the band as a reactionary process, a result of the fatigue from playing in a bombastic rock band. In the record's liner notes, Messner is thanked for his understanding and cooperation. They were informed of his existence in 1999 during an interview with DJ Bruce Warren of WXPN radio.
The band was unaware of the existence of the real Reinhold Messner, the first man to climb Mount Everest solo, and the first to do so without the aid of bottled oxygen, until work on the album had already progressed.
The title of the album refers to a name used by the band's drummer Darren Jessee and his friends on fake IDs as teenagers.
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