Beck has reflected on the infamous incident at the Grammy awards back in 2015 that saw Kanye West rush the stage whilst Beck accepted his Album of the Year award for Morning Phase.
In a recent interview with Zane Low, Beck shared that he was “a little confused” by the whole palaver, revealing that West had a studio session booked in with Beck’s father David Campbell, four days after the ceremony.
“At the Grammys when he came up on the stage to kind of make that point about when I won the award. He was disappointed about that, which I respected and I was fine with,” Beck said. “Later on, I’ve run into him since, and I ran into him earlier this year, and he just turned around and pointed at me and said, ‘I like your music’ and smiled and then walked away.”
West’s stage invasion was a perhaps self-referential nod to his interruption of Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV VMAs, with the rapper arguing that Beyoncé’s self-titled record should have taken home the Album of the Year accolade.
Beck shared that though he understood where West was coming from, he was confused by “the human side of it.” The alt-rock legend disclosed that the music industry is smaller than people may believe.
“So, he came up on stage and made that point, and it was upsetting to a lot of people,” Beck continued. “To me, I was a little confused. I hold his music in high regard, but on the human side of it, he was doing a recording session four days later with my dad. My dad was doing all the strings.
“So, he can walk up on that stage, but then he’s making a record with my dad four days later … The music business, it’s small, and so I think of us as a family. I don’t really think of us as divided, and fair enough if he was disappointed that I won an award. I was just as surprised as anybody to win, and I’ve lost far more than I’ve won, and that’s great, you know?”
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Though Beck doesn’t think the importance of awards ceremonies should be held in such high regard.
“A lot of times people don’t remember the awards,” he said. “They’ll remember the music. We’re all doing the same thing, we’re all in a room with a microphone trying to come up with something that articulates something that we feel inside and that maybe connects with a few other people. Maybe it connects with a lot of people. We’re all kind of an army sort of fighting for the same thing.”
You can listen to the interview in entirety here.
