The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner

The booklet included in the CD packaging includes a section about the title, where the band states they were "unaware of the existence of a living, breathing, and famous Reinhold Messner." During an interview with DJ Bruce Warren of WXPN radio{{cite web |date= |title=Ben Folds Five - Truth & Rumors |url=http://www.exit13.net/bff/truth.htm |accessdate=December 26, 2011 |publisher=exit 13}} shortly before the album's release, it was revealed to the band that he was real and that he was the first person to climb Mount Everest alone, as well as one member of the first two-man team to reach the summit without the use of bottled oxygen. They further stated in the booklet that "the credit goes to our cosmic collaborator on this album; coincidence."

The title of the album actually refers to a name used by the band's drummer Darren Jessee and his friends on fake IDs as teenagers—"Allegedly there were many 27 year old Reinholds who looked suspiciously adolescent, inhabiting the bars of Charlotte, North Carolina in the late eighties." This is even referenced in the lyrics of the song "Regrets": "Seems the police had made a computer mistake; said there must be thousands like me with the same name."

Jessee was also the source of the visual identity of the album and its singles, with photography being credited to "The Jessee Archive". The album's packaging is styled after a biography, with the cover featuring a minimalist design of a man in sunglasses and a white suit and the booklet emulating yellow, tattered pages. Combined with the title, this has led to fans and reviewers viewing the album as a fictional biography about a character named Reinhold Messner,{{Cite magazine |last=Browne |first=David |date=May 7, 1999 |title=The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner |url=https://ew.com/article/1999/05/07/unauthorized-biography-reinhold-messner-2/ |access-date=May 16, 2021 |magazine=Entertainment Weekly |language=en}} which is supported by the very introspective lyrics featured on the album.

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. Bassist Robert Sledge stated in an interview with MySpace's Front to Back that this fatigue naturally led to the band playing lighter material.{{Cite AV media |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvZvBE0EMac |title=Ben Folds Five - Live at UNC Memorial Hall, 2008 ('Front to Back' Reunion) |date=2021-05-27 |last=Silver St. |access-date=2024-05-25 |via=YouTube}}

Lead singer and songwriter Ben Folds recalls being "tired of writing pop songs" and it led to changes in his writing style. 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. 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. 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."

While split into three separate tracks on the album, the songs "Hospital Song," "Army," and "Regrets" were originally written as a multi-part suite. The ending of "Hospital Song" leads directly into the beginning of "Army," whose final chords and lyrics are in turn used as the basis of the melody and chord progression in the verses of "Regrets." In addition, the final minute of "Regrets" reprises the solo in "Hospital Song."

The album also featured the first track where the songwriting was solely credited to the band's drummer, Darren Jessee, in the song "Magic".{{Citation |title=Ben Folds Five – Magic |url=https://genius.com/Ben-folds-five-magic-lyrics |access-date=2024-05-25}} He contributed a demo of the song to a compilation album the year prior under the title "The Magic That Holds the Sky Up from the Ground"{{Citation |title=The Garden Place - Songs By Our Friends - Vari... {{!}} AllMusic |url=https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-garden-place-songs-by-our-friends-mw0000044438 |access-date=2024-05-25 |language=en}} before the song was reworked into the piano trio format for the album.

The album was recorded in a three-month span. 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. It features a notable amount of overdubs on nearly every song, such as a heavy use of string sections, french horns, and a dual horn section in the lead single "Army". The album's tracklist was nearly final, but the label requested that the album have at least one 'fun song', so the band recorded "Your Redneck Past" to fulfill the label's request.

Due to the more considered approach of recording and arranging the album, the band left many songs on the cutting room floor. These songs included "Break Up at Food Court" and "Carrying Cathy".MTV News article: "[https://web.archive.org/web/20070911020011/http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1425670/19990203/folds_ben.jhtml Ben Folds Five Fields Fan Queries While Working On New Album]." They also recorded an unfinished, Jessee-penned song entitled "Leather Jacket", which would later be contributed to a benefit album for Kosovar Refugees.{{Citation |title=Leather Jacket by Ben Folds Five on Apple Music |date=1999-06-06 |url=https://music.apple.com/in/song/leather-jacket/471190153 |access-date=2024-05-25 |language=en-GB}} Originally, "Don't Change Your Plans" was preceded by a long instrumental passage; Folds credits the album's late producer, Caleb Southern for helping edit down the song to its final product. He told an interviewer that Southern, "just cut it away and then all of a sudden it was this pop song . . . I didn't hear it like that at all, I just heard it as this little masterpiece thing.” In a Reddit AMA, he claimed Southern "cut the parts he didn't like and literally left the unwanted bits on the floor. I imagine the floor was cleaned and the recording went into the trash."{{Cite web |title=I am Ben Folds. I play piano. AMA! |url=https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3kflto/i_am_ben_folds_i_play_piano_ama/ |access-date=May 16, 2021 |website=Reddit |date=10 September 2015 |language=en}}

Both critics and the band members themselves have described The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner as, at least in part, a loose concept album,{{Cite magazine|last=Kemp|first=Mark|date=September 19, 2008|title=Ben Folds Five Revive "Reinhold Messner" at Inaugural MySpace "Front to Back" Show|url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/ben-folds-five-revive-reinhold-messner-at-inaugural-myspace-front-to-back-show-254989/|access-date=May 16, 2021|magazine=Rolling Stone|language=en-US}}{{Cite news |title=Review - The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner |url=https://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/1999/05/12/review-the-unauthorized-biography-of-reinhold-messner-2314361 |url-status=dead |access-date=May 16, 2021 |newspaper=Orlando Weekly |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210516225216/https://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/1999/05/12/review-the-unauthorized-biography-of-reinhold-messner-2314361 |archive-date=2021-05-16 |language=en}} following the Reinhold Messner character through his life, heartache, hospitalization, and childhood memories.

In an interview with WXPN, Ben described how the album originally followed a more direct concept centered around sleep. Several sleep-related songs were cut off the final tracklist, but a few remained on the final album. During the WASO Live in Perth concert, Folds describes the song "Narcolepsy" as "about going to sleep, but it's about the kind of going to sleep that you can't help. 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 are lots of guys out there that do this emotionally, including myself."{{Cite AV media |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiWu_0Yio0E |title=Ben Folds - Narcolepsy (Live In Perth, 2005) |date=2019-07-22 |last=BenFoldsVEVO |access-date=2024-05-25 |via=YouTube}} 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 album's final song "Lullabye" also describes the narrator's childhood experiences through the framing device of a lullaby, book-ending the album with songs about sleep.

On the Ben Folds iTunes Originals album,{{Citation |title=A New Clean Slate by Ben Folds on Apple Music |date=2005-08-30 |url=https://music.apple.com/us/album/itunes-originals-ben-folds/192703434 |access-date=2024-05-25 |language=en-US}} 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." The song follows a breakup, possibly the one that occurs in the previous track on the album, "Don't Change Your Plans", as the narrator refers to his ex's new partner, saying "he'll never care for you more than I do". Darren Jessee described his lyrics for the song "Magic" as a love song written to either a good friend{{Cite web |date=2002-10-03 |title=Darren's mother speaks |url=http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Lot/5009/darrenmom.html |access-date=2024-05-25 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20021003033817/http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Lot/5009/darrenmom.html |archive-date=2002-10-03 }} or a composite of several people{{Citation |title=Ben Folds Five – Magic |url=https://genius.com/Ben-folds-five-magic-lyrics |access-date=2024-05-25}} he knew who passed away.

"Your Redneck Past" is an entire song that was spun off from a throwaway lyric in Army about the narrator's redneck past. "Regrets" then follows up both tracks with the narrator spiraling further down into recalling memories and regrets all the way back to childhood. "Hospital Song", which refers to a real hospital: Forsyth Medical Center, located on Silas Creek Parkway in Winston-Salem; features the narrator lying awake in a hospital bed, depressed at the news that the doctor just gave him, crying "I don't believe that it's true." In the context of the album having a loose concept, this re-contextualizes many other songs on the album as the narrator simply revisiting memories from his past before an unspecified illness takes his life.

{{Music ratings

| rev1 = AllMusic

| rev1Score = {{Rating|4|5}}{{cite web |url=https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-unauthorized-biography-of-reinhold-messner-mw0000238736 |title=The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner – Ben Folds Five |publisher=AllMusic |accessdate=December 16, 2018 |last=Kurutz |first=Steve}}

| rev2 = Entertainment Weekly

| rev2Score = B−{{cite magazine |url=https://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20052140,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081203010909/http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20052140,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=December 3, 2008 |title=The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner / Return to the Centre of the Earth |magazine=Entertainment Weekly |date=May 7, 1999 |accessdate=April 5, 2013 |last=Browne |first=David |authorlink=David Browne (journalist)}}

| rev3 = The Guardian

| rev3Score = {{Rating|4|5}}{{cite news |title=Ben Folds Five: The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner (Epic) |work=The Guardian |date=April 30, 1999 |last=Sweeting |first=Adam}}

| rev4 = Melody Maker

| rev4Score = {{Rating|4|5}}{{cite magazine |title=Ben Folds Five: The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner |magazine=Melody Maker |date=May 8, 1999 |page=46}}

| rev5 = NME

| rev5Score = 7/10{{cite magazine |url=https://www.nme.com:80/reviews/reviews/19990404112846reviews.html |title=Ben Folds Five – The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner |magazine=NME |date=May 4, 1999 |accessdate=December 16, 2018 |last=Long |first=April |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20000817221846/http://www.nme.com/reviews/reviews/19990404112846reviews.html |archivedate=August 17, 2000 |url-status=dead}}

| rev6 = Pitchfork

| rev6Score = 3.3/10{{cite web |url=https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/645-the-unauthorized-biography-of-reinhold-messner |title=Ben Folds Five: The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner |work=Pitchfork |date=April 27, 1999 |accessdate=January 16, 2013 |last=DiCrescenzo |first=Brent}}

| rev7 = Q

| rev7Score = {{Rating|4|5}}{{cite magazine |title=Ben Folds Five: The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner |magazine=Q |issue=153 |date=June 1999 |page=102}}

| rev8 = Rolling Stone

| rev8Score = {{Rating|3.5|5}}{{cite magazine |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/artists/benfolds/albums/album/178578/review/6212863/the_unauthorized_biography_of_reinhold_messner |title=Ben Folds: The Unauthorized Biography Of Reinhold Messner |magazine=Rolling Stone |date=May 13, 1999 |accessdate=April 5, 2013 |last=DeCurtis |first=Anthony |authorlink=Anthony DeCurtis |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20071026050520/http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/benfolds/albums/album/178578/review/6212863/the_unauthorized_biography_of_reinhold_messner |archivedate=October 26, 2007 |url-status=dead}}

| rev9 = Spin

| rev9Score = 8/10{{cite magazine |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xY9xO99TYMYC&pg=PA140 |title=Ben Folds Five: The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner |magazine=Spin |volume=15 |issue=6 |date=June 1999 |accessdate=December 16, 2018 |last=Himmelsbach |first=Erik |page=140}}

| rev10 = The Village Voice

| rev10Score = B{{cite news |url=https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/cg/cgv1199-99.php |title=African Connection II |work=The Village Voice |date=November 16, 1999 |accessdate=December 16, 2018 |last=Christgau |first=Robert |author-link=Robert Christgau}}

}}

The record was given generally positive reviews, with Allmusic saying that it's the band's willingness "to forge a unique sound that makes The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner such an interesting album to listen to. There is care to these songs and, what's even more significant and fresh, there is also intelligence." Robert Christgau gave the album a B in his Consumer Guide. Brent DiCrescenzo of Pitchfork notably gave the album a significantly more negative review than other publications, rating it a 3.3/10{{cite web |last=DiCrescenzo |first=Brent |date=April 27, 1999 |title=Ben Folds Five: The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner |url=https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/645-the-unauthorized-biography-of-reinhold-messner |accessdate=January 16, 2013 |work=Pitchfork}} and saying "this trio has run out of ideas."

Speaking in 2005, six years after its release, Folds partially attributed the album to the initial break-up of Ben Folds Five, stating: "We were having a really hard time before we split, the Reinhold Messner period was financially and career-wise a disaster."{{Cite web |date=2005-04-01 |title=Ben with the breeze |url=https://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/music/ben-with-the-breeze-20050401-gdzvy0.html |access-date=2021-10-28 |website=The Age |language=en}} Folds stated in the iTunes Originals interview about the album: "The 'Reinhold Messner' record was – I think in a way it shows how naïve we were, and idealistic we were as a band to think that the music business would care about us extending ourselves and developing and being something different; because that record was a failure – in almost every way that you can fail. As a commercial release it didn't sell up to anybody’s expectations, critically it got sort of lukewarm reviews; and yet, I think that was our best work. I think it's a great record."

The band reunited to play the album in its entirety at the UNC Memorial Hall in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on September 18, 2008.The Suburbs.co.uk: [https://web.archive.org/web/20111004185208/http://www.thesuburbs.org.uk/news/Did_You_Just_Shit_Your_Pants__Cause_I_Sure_Did_Ben_Folds_Five_Reunion/ "Did You Just Shit Your Pants? Cause I Sure Did."] This one-off concert appearance was part of the MySpace "Front to Back" series, in which artists play an entire album live. The band were briefly joined on stage by Ben's father, Dean Folds, who read a transcript of his voice mail message that is used in the album song "Your Most Valuable Possession". A concert film of the show was later released on the Front to Back website, which spliced in new interviews from both the band and colleagues, discussing the album and their experience with MySpace.

The lead single, "Army", was featured in the Viceland comedy series Nirvanna the Band the Show as the end credits theme song.{{Cite web |title=Nirvanna The Band The Show (Season 2) by Andy McHaffie on Apple Music |url=https://music.apple.com/gb/playlist/nirvanna-the-band-the-show-season-2/pl.u-KLxLTZm8p3V |access-date=2024-05-25 |website=Apple Music - Web Player |language=en-GB}}

In 2017, the album was reissued on a 180-gram vinyl. The reissue was sourced from the original mix reels and sported a new master by Kevin Gray.{{Cite web |title=Ben Folds Five The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner 180g LP |url=https://elusivedisc.com/ben-folds-five-the-unauthorized-biography-of-reinhold-messner-180g-lp/ |access-date=2024-05-25 |website=Elusive Disc |language=en}}

{{Track listing

| all_writing = Ben Folds, except where noted

| headline = The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner track listing

| title1 = Narcolepsy

| length1 = 5:24

| writer1 =

| title2 = Don't Change Your Plans

| length2 = 5:11

| writer2 =

| title3 = Mess

| length3 = 4:03

| writer3 =

| title4 = Magic

| length4 = 4:02

| writer4 = Darren Jessee

| title5 = Hospital Song

| length5 = 2:05

| writer5 =

| title6 = Army

| length6 = 3:25

| writer6 =

| title7 = Your Redneck Past

| length7 = 3:43

| writer7 =

| title8 = Your Most Valuable Possession

| length8 = 1:55

| writer8 = Folds, Jessee, Robert Sledge, Dean Folds, Caleb Southern

| title9 = Regrets

| length9 = 4:07

| writer9 =

| title10 = Jane

| length10 = 2:42

| writer10 =

| title11 = Lullabye

| length11 = 3:53

| writer11 = Folds, Anna Goodman

| total_length = 40:30

}}

{{Track listing

| headline = The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner{{nobold| – Japanese edition (bonus track)}}

| extra_column =

| title12 = Birds

| note12 =

| length12 = 2:09

| writer12 = Robert Sledge

| total_length = 42:39

}}

{{Track listing

| headline = The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner{{nobold| – Australian edition (bonus track)}}

| extra_column =

| title12 = (Theme From) Dr. Pyser

| note12 =

| length12 = 3:14

| writer12 =

| total_length = 43:44

}}

;Ben Folds Five

• Ben Folds - vocals, piano and keyboards
• Robert Sledge - electric bass, synthesizer, double bass and background vocals
• Darren Jessee - drums, percussion and background vocals

;Additional personnel

• Antoine Silverman - violin on 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 11
• Mark Feldman - violin on 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 11
• Lorenza Ponce - violin on 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 11
• Jane Scarpantoni - cello on 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 11
• Ken Mosher - alto saxophone, baritone saxophone on 6, 11
• Tom Maxwell - tenor saxophone on 6, 11
• Paul Shapiro - tenor saxophone on 6
• Frank London - trumpet on 6
• John Mark Painter - flugelhorn on 1, 2, 6, valve trombone on 6
• Dean Folds - answering machine message on "Your Most Valuable Possession"

• Producer: Caleb Southern
• Mixing: Andy Wallace
• Additional Editing: Roger Lian

Album - Billboard (United States)

Singles - Billboard (United States)

{{Reflist}}

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Category:Ben Folds Five albums

Category:1999 albums

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