From chart topper to death doula: Ben Lee's latest quirky career move
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"This is my studio," says Ben Lee, as he pushes his computer screen — we are speaking via FaceTime — so that it angles towards a table.
With a darkened computer monitor sitting on top of it and, above that, a multi-coloured robot made of construction paper by his step-daughter taped to the wall, the workspace looks like it could be that of your uncle who works in IT.
Could this really be where Lee works? The Ben Lee whose 2005 pop ditty, Catch My Disease, crept into every cultural crevasse, from being featured on Grey's Anatomy and Scrubs, to hitting number two in Triple J's Hottest 100?
The Ben Lee who's currently signed with Warner Bros Records and who is making an album with How I Met Your Mother actor Josh Radnor?
Yep.
"The whole album cost me less than $5,000, $6,000," he says of his eleventh solo album, Freedom, Love And The Recuperation of The Human Mind, which was released in October, with a gentle smile. (The Radnor album is due out this year.)
This studio, in Lee's home in Los Angeles' Laurel Canyon, may be unexpectedly modest for one of Australia's most well-known performers.
But then Lee, 38, has long been a fearless experimenter, and one who's historically been rewarded for it, with hits in various musical genres, big label signings and celebrity friends.
From Bondi Beach boy to indie heartthrob
A one-time Bondi Beach boy, Lee initially thrived in his Sydney-based punk band, Noise Addict, after being discovered at 14 by The Beastie Boys.
And when he later switched to penning sensitive and slightly melancholy hits, like Gamble Everything for Love, he evolved into an indie heartthrob.
(His ex-girlfriend, actress Claire Danes, once gushed that she was won over by his "confessional, beautiful pop songs about all the girls he was infatuated with. Of course I was absolutely convinced that I was that girl".)
And when previously he morphed into a ballsy, chest-thumping self-promoter, in the vein of Liam Gallagher from Oasis, by declaring his 1998 album Breathing Tornados was "the greatest album of all time"?
He not only weathered the public dressing down that followed, but went on to collaborate with a drum roll of high-profile musicians, from Sean Lennon to Zooey Deschanel (for a light 60s-esque ditty) and Mandy Moore (for a 50s-style duet).
But could Lee have gone too far with his latest batch of wacky moves?
Might his fans, once and for all, revolt, damaging his career? (After all, Lee is the first to admit his habit of jumping into projects, without first considering the potential consequences, has led to him making mistakes.)
Or is his unpredictable quirkiness a key part of being an artist and, as he suggests, something his disciples should embrace?
'Just what the hell is up with Ben Lee?'
Because, lately, Lee has not only studied and talked up the beauty of "death midwifery" — supporting people, emotionally, as they're dying — and volunteering at a hospice.
He has also begun to use his celebrity to sell essential oils for a company that has been accused of being a pyramid scheme, or something close to it.
They're the sort of offbeat interests that prompted online music magazine fasterlouder to ask in a 2013 headline: "Just what the hell is up with Ben Lee?"
Lee admits that he has only just realised that his unexpected foci might have a negative impact on his relationship with his fans.
"So last night I did a gig, and this guy goes, 'Hey, what have you been doing? I felt like I hadn't heard about you since Ripe' — Lee's sixth solo album, released nine years ago — 'I felt you went back to Australia.'
"It didn't upset me," Lee says, "but it made me realise that all the twists and turns I follow, I've never thought through, truly, the consequences of alienating my audience."
But following one's passion, and going against the grain, is a message that lies at the heart of his latest album, which encourages people to resist succumbing to "groupthink".
For instance, the song What's Good Is Good, a slightly melancholy lullaby, protests against the messages about sex and love that his daughter and stepdaughter receive from the mainstream media.
Lee is no stranger to falling victim to "groupthink". This tendency is responsible, he says, for one great stuff-up — what he calls his "I'm Australia's greatest performer 'performance art' [phase]" of the late 1990s.
"Everyone thought I was being arrogant" — indeed, Powderfinger front man Bernard Fanning called Lee a "precocious little c***" — "but I wasn't, I was just being a conformist", he says, gently.
"I thought that's how you had to behave to be a good rock star. I was copying Liam Gallagher and Andy Kaufman.
"I thought, 'Those guys understand how to get across an idea or concept, or moment, or energetic principle.' I imitated it. So it's interesting how people still think of me as arrogant, instead of realising I was mistaken."
Natural health solutions are 'like punk rock'
But Lee, a father to daughter Goldie, seven, and a stepfather to Kate, 15, is now pushing a completely different message — about essential oils — with the same amount of passion as his big-noting days.
This time around, though, he's being a little more cautious, given their controversial nature.
"I have to be very delicate with language, as ... I'm not allowed to make health claims" — essential oils are not classified as medicine — "but I'll just say that the support offered by essential oils has been significant and meaningful," he says, when asked what he likes about the oils he sells from US brand, doTERRA.
(In the videos he and wife, actress Ione Skye, post regularly to their Skye Lee Oils Facebook page, they have said the oils are "supportive" in many ways, from aiding the respiratory system to helping quell anxiety.)
For Lee, "natural health solutions" are "like punk rock", because they are "on the fringes of accepted understanding".
The same could be said of his desire to practice "death midwifery", which came from his belief that it is "just a nice heart-centred skillset that we can all have for each other ... to learn to be there for each other ... because I realised that we're all dying, literally".
But unlike the Sex Pistols, who were famously unafraid to offend their fans (the band's bassist, Sid Vicious, used to blow snot out of his nose at them), Lee is still working out just how far he can take his larger message — that he is "suspicious of the pharmaceutical lobby" — to his fans.
In an email he sends me, a few days after we speak, he writes: "If you don't mind, let's go easy on the anti-big pharma lobby talk ... A bit of a mention is OK but I don't know if people are really ready for that conversation yet."
Lee admits that he initially queried his decision to start selling oils from doTERRA, saying to a friend: "'This is pretty weird, you know, for a musician to do this.' And she [the friend] said, 'But Ben, when have you ever done anything the way anyone told you to do it?'"
(Skye, too, has said that she initially thought the idea "sounded kind of cuckoo".)
But Lee was motivated, significantly, by a second income stream. In one video, Skye says it is "becoming impressive", although Lee declines to specify exactly how much he has made.
He will say that the extra money helps to keep his music "pure", by enabling him to write whatever he is passionate about, without having to worry about its commercial appeal.
Beyond caring what others think
Still, doTERRA has faced some heavy accusations. Some online critics have labelled it a "pyramid scheme", for example, while others have described it as a money-losing, rather than a money-making proposition.
The company is a multi-level marketing (MLM) company, which means that individuals sell the products, and then frequently recruit more members, with each level sharing profits from the levels below them.
One investigation claimed that "just under 8 per cent" of doTERRA sellers earn "enough to pay for their oils".
And, two years ago, the United States' Food and Drug Administration issued a warning letter to the company, after some sellers promoted some of the company's oils for conditions like cancer, autism, and Ebola.
Was Lee worried about getting involved?
"For me, as an artist, I am past the point of being afraid of what people think of me," he says.
"But in terms of these specific concerns, one of the things I like about the MLM structure is that it is wildly unfashionable, and when it's done properly, it's kind of radical.
"There are very few entrepreneurial experiences people can enter from nothing, and that's what separates MLMs from Pyramid Schemes.
"And," he adds, "I actually like the challenge of opening people to new ideas that they might have a knee-jerk reaction against."
Fans should just sit back and enjoy the show
Another part of its appeal, Lee says, is that doTERRA is a company with a philanthropic side. (The company says it helps fund projects for disadvantaged people in countries where it sources its plants.)
So far, his fans seem largely supportive of his venture, responding effusively, on Facebook, to his and Skye's instructional videos on, for instance, how to make wild orange and sandalwood bath bombs, and offers of a "community cleanse".
I've yet to see a post, on his page, criticising the "pharmaceutical lobby".
But, Lee maintains, if people are jarred by his side-projects, it is just a natural by-product of being an artist.
"If you, as an audience member, felt in control and able to anticipate the movement of an artist you were interested in, they would be totally failing you," he says.
"Like, I mean, artists, for better or for worse, they have to be visionary. They have to have something they're chasing that's incredibly personal, and then we settle into our chairs, watch the journey unfold...
"It's a great spectator sport, so they should just be happy that they don't know what's going on."
Topics: pop, popular-culture, people, social-media, australian-composers
