“F***ing play it! We’re musicians. We’re
in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Play your
f***ing guitars!” legendary keyboardist Benmont
Tench cries out to his fellow bandmates
in a scene from the recent four-hour,
career-spanning Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
documentary Running Down A
Dream. One visit to Tench’s discography
page at allmusic.com, and you’ll quickly
understand why he continually decries even
the slightest scent of mediocrity, laying his
musical, (as well as his verbal) heart on the
line. In his nearly four-decade career, Tench
has not only anchored Tom Petty and the
Heartbreakers from their very inception,
he’s lent his soulful stew of Americanameets-
unabashed-rock keyboard wizardry
to countless albums by a few artists you
just may have heard of: Bob Dylan, the
Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash, Aretha
Franklin, U2, Don Henley, Roy Orbison, Neil
Diamond, Joe Cocker, Warren Zevon,
Randy Newman, Marc Cohn, Bonnie Raitt,
Elvis Costello — and the list goes on.
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A longtime hero to both musicians and
listeners alike, Tench’s rare blend of raucous,
rollicking piano and soaring Hammond
organ has been a staple of rock
music for over 30 years. Much more than
just a founding Heartbreaker, he has long
been music’s secret keyboard weapon,
injecting soul-drenched, scintillating parts
into every session, song, and tour to
which he lends his talents. Songs simply
sound better because of Benmont Tench;
imagine the Heartbreakers’ classic
“Refugee” without Benmont’s blistering
B-3 organ, and you’ll begin to understand
just how integral his playing is.
Tench is busier than ever these days,
touring and recording with a wide array of
gifted artists, including the WPA (featuring
Toad The Wet Sprocket’s Glen Phillips,
and Sean and Sara Watkins of Nickel
Creek), the Big Surprise Tour (with Justin
Townes Earle, David Rawlings, Gillian
Welch, the Old Crow Medicine Show, and
the Felice Brothers), and countless others.
As of publication, he’s also prepping for
the release of the long-awaited Tom Petty
and the Heartbreakers Live Anthology box
set, featuring rare performances of covers
and Heartbreakers originals culled from the
rock legend’s archives.
Following a sold out stop on the Big
Surprise Tour at New York’s famed Beacon
Theater, Tench and I sat down to talk
about his search for music that matters,
and his singular place in the pantheon of
keyboard greats.
In an interview years ago, you said
that painters and jazz musicians
always strive to get better, and your
sentiment was “Why shouldn’t we?” —
that rock and pop music can
sometimes become a haven for nondevelopment.
You seem to have been
fighting that trend since the
beginning.
Keith Richards said it, actually, about the
Rolling Stones, when they came off their long
hiatus, that he wanted to continue to grow it.
And it’s true. You know, I saw McCoy Tyner
play three or four years ago. He’s still going.
Muddy Waters passed away at 67, Jerry Lee
Lewis is still going — he still plays even his
hits with a lot of passion and fire. So I just
don’t want to ever stop trying to see what I
can do that’s different. But not different for
the sake of different. Different and as good,
or better, than what I’ve been playing.
People want to hear the hits, and if you
go out on tour, you want to play what people
want to hear. But you can’t stagnate.
I’m definitely a better musician than I was
when I was 26, but I have to try to keep the
mental freshness and naiveté that I had
then, and put in something of what I’ve
learned since.
The great fortune right now for me is
that I’m playing with a lot of younger musicians
who sing any genre of music. They
understand, they strive, and they keep
going, whether they’re in their 20s, 30s, or
40s. And it’s really cool and encouraging.
What I think is really important, and
something that Matisse and Bo Diddley
had, is the idea that you’re still young in
the sense that you’re still present. You’re
still spirited. Your best days are not
behind you. This is still new and exciting
to you.
So that’s what you’re still looking for
these days — that sense of adventure
and growth?
Yeah. I want to play with people who are
better than I am, or different than I am.
And with the Heartbreakers, that’s the
case. I play with [guitarist] Mike Campbell
and [bassist] Ron Blair all the bloody
time. These are people that I learn from
every time I play with them. And outside
of that, Dave Rawlings, Gillian Welch, Jon
Brion, Sean and Sara Watkins, Fiona
Apple, who’s remarkable — these are people
that just bring my heart alive, and that
I listen to and I go blind, and I fall into
that space where everything disappears.
It’s true about jazz musicians. They keep
going and going, and trying something
new. And it’s true about somebody like
Elvis Costello. What I want to know is, can
you do it in three-chord rock ’n’ roll? In
three-chord, old-time music? In real country
music like they made in the ’60s? Can you
do it and keep it fresh? I want to hear that.
A lot of the time, the Heartbreakers
manage to do that. Live. We’ve always
been better live. But I think a lot of the time
we’ve managed to throw in a Muddy
Waters song. Or, on occasion, a Merle
Haggard song or a Van Morrison cover like
“Mystic Eyes.” And even our old stuff, I
think we still play it with presence.
The writer Barry Green quoted
[bassist] John Clayton in The Masters of
Music as saying, “When you’re playing,
listen to everybody but yourself, especially
when you’re soloing.” If you can get to the
point where you can do that. [Laughs.]
There was a PBS American Masters
episode on author Garrison Keillor
recently, and in it he said, “We see the
world perfectly when we’re children,
and we spend the rest of our lives trying
to remember what we saw.” As you
get older, it becomes harder to find
that wonderment that was there when
you were younger.
That’s a really good term for it. The wonderment
of it. The joy of it. That’s what I’m
looking for.
There were a lot of moments on your
Big Surprise Tour show at the Beacon
Theater that were like that. For
instance, I didn’t know Justin Townes
Earle, but when he sang “Mama’s
Eyes” I thought, “This is really the
heart of what I’m talking about.”
That’s the heart of what I’m talking about
too, and I hadn’t heard his record, but I had
met him before when his dad did a show or
two with us. But with Justin, it doesn’t
sound like a studied thing, like “I’m doing
revivalist country from the ’50s.” It sounds
like, “Well, this is where my heart is.” And
that’s what I always want to hear.
The best thing that Tom Petty does for me
is he says, “Quit thinking about it. Do you
want to rap about it, or do you want to play?”
And that’s really important, to keep yourself
from over-thinking and over-intellectualizing.
It’s just really so much fun. I’m having
such a good time. I’m playing with all these
wonderful people, and discovering somebody
like Justin. Everybody on that show
was having such a good time.
One of the things that’s so universally
heralded about your playing is what
you don’t play. You’re always serving
the song, and letting the music
breathe.
It’s a couple of things. My father told me
one day when I was maybe ten, just playing
the piano, “You’re playing too much.” He
said it kindly, and he was right. The Chuck
Berry line, “I lose the beauty of the melody
until it sounds just like a symphony” —
although I like symphonic music, I know
what he meant. It’s the same thing with
Tom Petty and Mike Campbell saying “play
less,” and the fact that some of my favorite
piano playing ever is on Beatles records.
And I don’t mean the solo on “In My Life,”
which is gorgeous. I mean that the piano
comes in on the chorus of “No Reply” and
plays those beautiful chords, all
compressed, and then it’s gone.
So you’ve always had an arranger’s
sense of “If I bring it in here, it means
more when it goes away” — that sense
of thinking orchestrally within a song?
I think I just felt it that way. But also, I had
really good people to learn from. The radio
when I was a kid was the Beatles, the
Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Who, James
Brown, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin,
Tammy Wynette, George Jones, Frank
Sinatra, the Zombies . . . on and on.
Also, Tom and Mike, and [producers]
Denny Cordell, Jimmy Iovine, and Rick
Rubin — I also learned a lot from them.
Cordell said to [original Heartbreakers
drummer] Stan Lynch, and I don’t know the
exact quote, but it was something along
the lines of, “Stanley, if you just don’t play
it, they’ll always misinterpret you as tasteful.”
I think that’s great, and it’s true. So a
lot of the time, I just don’t know what the
hell to play, and I decide not to play it.
I did a Saturday Night Live with Paul
Simon 15 years ago. It was Paul Simon and
Willie Nelson. And he hurt my feelings, but
he was right. We were rehearsing a song,
and he stopped the band and said, “What
are you playing? That’s meaningless.”
Paul Simon said that to you?
Yeah. And you know, it stung, because I was
still trying to figure out what to play. But he
was right. You don’t want to play something
that’s meaningless. I try to feel out what’s
missing, what would be good to have there,
instead of just filling something up.
I was really impressed, aesthetically
probably, but also groove-wise, by the kind
of playing that Chris Stainton would do,
where he would just play eighth-notes up
high, all the way through “High Time We
Went” by Joe Cocker. There’s just eighthnote
playing in fifths, or something. So why
do anything else? And it’s also cool, like
“Look how cool I am. I’m only playing
eighths all the way through.”
Simplicity seems to be a real hallmark
of your organ and piano playing.
Well it’s ensemble playing. The Beatles
were an ensemble. The Rolling Stones
were an ensemble. And you listen to those
records and things work against each
other. I don’t want to cover up what Mike’s
doing. I want to hear the way the guitars
ring. And through working with the same
band for a long time, and through them
saying to me “Why don’t you leave that
out,” or “Why don’t you come in here,” I
learned so much. And I still do.
Also, I didn’t play organ as a kid. I
played Farfisa [organ] for a while, and
then I switched to Wurlitzer [electric
piano]. I didn’t like the sound of
Hammonds. I loved Matthew Fisher and
Booker T. Jones, but I didn’t like the “big
Hammond with a lot of tremolo” sound. It
seemed like it was trying too hard. So I
didn’t want to play Hammond.
In the Heartbreakers, I started playing a
little bit of organ, partly because, while I
sang back then, and Stan sang all the time,
my range was limited. So to fill in the parts
where we would have liked to have used
voices, I started trying to play the organ as
though it were background vocals.
That’s amazing, because you’re
thought of as such an iconic B-3 organ
player, but it really wasn’t intentional
from the start.
No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t at all. I shied away
from it, because there were so many organists
in Florida trying to play as well as
Gregg Allman, and so many bands in Florida
trying to be the Allman Brothers. The Allman
Brothers were great, but there were so
many poor imitations around, I think I came
to associate the Hammond with bad imitations
of Gregg. So it just turned me off.
So you initially came in playing Wurlitzer?
I played Farfisa the first time I played with
Mudcrutch, and then I played Wurlitzer. I
had a Wurlitzer with a Marshall stack. It
was fantastic — 100 watts of a Wurlitzer. It
got loud. We played some high school
auditorium and cracked the ceiling.
Jonathan Cain from Journey spoke
about how he and Steve Perry intentionally
tried to write songs that
would stand the test of time. Similarly,
your work in the Heartbreakers and
other projects forms the soundtrack to
many people’s lives. I was reading
your discography, and I kept saying,
“Wow, he’s on that record too.” It’s no
small achievement.
I’ve lucked out. I’ve met people who like
music that I like, and want me to play on
their records. And I don’t know how it happened.
I’ve really been in the right place at
the right time.
Benmont Tench’s Live Rig
“Benmont’s had the same Hammond C-3 organ for 35 years,” longtime keyboard tech Kevin Brown tells me. Brown, currently on tour with Phish, has been Tench’s
keyboard tech for 31 of those years, but has remarkably seen little change in the vintage-minded keyboardist’s live rig during that time.
“Facing the audience, Benmont uses a Yamaha C7 grand piano with a Helpenstill humbucking pickup inside,” says Brown. “Benmont actually had the first one
of those, and he uses it along with an Earthworks piano microphone system as well.” On top of the piano, Tench uses a Roland RS-5 synthesizer. “The Roland
replaces the old Oberheims [pictured] that wouldn’t stay in tune,” Brown continues. “Benmont uses it mainly for string pads with a hold pedal, and brings the
strings in and out with a volume pedal.” Tench also uses a Roland PC-200 Mk. II MIDI controller to trigger samples from a vintage Akai sampler.
To the left of the piano is Tench’s Hammond C-3 organ, “He uses it with a Leslie 147,” Brown tells me, “and on top is a Wurlitzer Student Electric Piano, modified
by [renowned keyboard restorer] Ken Rich.” On the right-hand side of the piano is Tench’s double-keyboard Farfisa organ. “On top is an original Yamaha DX7,”
Brown continues, “which he uses for the sitar sounds from ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More.’”
All Tench’s keyboards run through a JBL full range speaker cabinet (used as a monitor), with an 18-inch driver and a 12-inch horn. The speakers are powered
by Crown amplifiers, and the output runs through a mixer to the house.