Playing support for Rolling Stones
WHILE most Jews were sitting in shul on Yom Kippur this year, 27-year-old Gideon Bensen was performing on one of the world’s most sought-after stages in Texas.
His band, The Preatures, had scored a spot at the Austin City Limits Music Festival. And although fasting, he rocked two sets.
“I try and be as observant as possible. I do what I can when I can,” says Bensen.
Things got even better last month when The Preatures played support to the Rolling Stones at a concert at Hope Estate in the Hunter Valley.
Interestingly, it was while Bensen was learning for his bar mitzvah that he began to realise that music was something he ought to pursue.
“When I was about 12, Edward Belfer, who taught me at the Great Synagogue, mentioned that I had a voice that he thought was quite good,” Bensen recalls.
He has certainly come a long way from a shining performance in front of family and friends 14 years ago. Bensen, who is largely self-taught, plays guitar and performs vocals in one of Australia’s most up-and-coming bands, which was formed in 2010 and following two EPs have recently released their debut album, Blue Planet Eyes.
“As I was growing up, music was always something I was drawn to. However I didn’t always think it was a possibility to make it a full-time job,” he says.
Bensen says making the Blue Planet Eyes album was challenging and a learning curve for the band. There were plenty of disagreements along the way between band members Isabella Manfredi, Jack Moffitt, Thomas Champion, Luke Davison and Bensen.
“But that’s what makes it a good album,” Bensen insists. “If you’ve got five people all in agreement on things, you sometimes have to question it, and say what aren’t we being stringent enough on?”
Their hard work paid off, with the album catapulting into the charts and reaching number four – behind only the likes of Barbra Streisand and the soundtrack to Disney’s Frozen.
“That was a really big surprise for us,” Bensen admits of the chart
success. He notes that they’ve made bass and guitar a focal point in their music, at a time when many popular artists are electronic. “We’re still a harder band which rests on five people working together playing their instruments in a live situation,” he says.
“For us it’s always been about what the song means, how to serve the song best. That’s always been the ethos.”
Their music has taken them to some of the world’s most reputed music festivals, including Glastonbury, Coachella and the Falls Festival.
“Probably the past two years as a whole have been quite a whirlwind, travelling everywhere. It’s quite an honour and a privilege,” says Bensen.
“From going from playing small clubs a year earlier, to then playing places like that, it’s quite a jump.”
He says walking around backstage at these events and having some of music’s greatest names “just hanging about” is a surreal experience.
“I wasn’t daunted by the experience, but in awe of what was going on,” he says, particularly of the overseas festivals.
“Playing in front of thousands of people that supposedly don’t know your music, but are singing along to all your songs. It’s a weird feeling.”
Bensen says that performing in support of the Rolling Stones in the Hunter Valley last month and having the opportunity to spend some time with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and other band members was “something I’ll probably never forget”.
“It was like everything I knew about those guys was brought to life. It was like reading a book and then seeing the film … I kind of got this flashback to growing up, learning the songs, and then there, in front of me, the band playing that song.”
Unfortunately, The Preatures were also booked for the Rolling Stones concert at Hanging Rock in Victoria on November 8 which had to be cancelled due to Jagger’s throat illness.
Currently, The Preatures are undertaking their biggest national tour to date with Blue Planet Eyes.
When he happens to be home in Sydney on a Friday night, Bensen’s mother will always make sure he comes to dinner at their north shore home.
“Growing up, I appreciated the intimacy of the religion and the importance of it in keeping people together. Because let’s face it, there aren’t many of us in comparison to the rest of the world, so we have to stick together.”
A Masada College graduate, Bensen tried out various university courses, but none of them stuck.
“You go through schooling and you question whether this is something you should be doing, rather than going to uni, or something like that,” he says.
“When there’s only two of you in a music class, you might think perhaps I shouldn’t be doing music. But you do it because you love it.”
Bensen hopes to be able to stay in the music industry as long as he can, with view to doing more songwriting, and perhaps even production work at some point in the future.
“Music gives me an outlet to be creative. I’m not someone who can sit at a desk. I’ve tried that, I didn’t like it.”
REPORT by Phoebe Roth
PHOTO of singer/guitarist Gideon Bensen in his Surry Hills studio. Photo by Noel Kessel
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