Van Dyke Parks

Van Dyke Parks should need no introduction; his work with Brian Wilson on the legendary, finally-released Smile! is in itself enough to earn the man a place in music history, but Van Dyke has also made a series of wonderful solo albums, done arranging for a who's who of contemporary music, written numerous film scores, he even played keyboards for Kinky Friedman & the Texas Jew bows. His magnificent solo career started with Song Cycle in 1968, just after the Smile project fell apart, and continued through the seventies with the calypso-inflected Discover America and Clang of the Yankee Reaper, the eighties saw the release of the Brer-Rabbit rethink Jump!, and Tokyo Rose. California concept album Orange Crate Art was released in 1995 and features vocals by Brian Wilson. It was followed by an excellent live album in 1997 entitled Live at the Ash Grove. Those unfamiliar with his solo work would do well to well to start with Song Cycle, Discover America, Jump! and Orange Crate Art. Clang of the Yankee Reaper is another personal favorite. Smile! is also, of course, required listening. Van Dyke is an extremely elegant and intelligent speaker (he lectured at Harvard), a very modest and likable man, a pleasure to interview. This interview was conducted way back in 1997 for issue #7 of the old print incarnation of Left Hip. Zines were dying out around that time and this never saw proper distribution so I wanted it to be the first interview for the print version of Left Hip.

Where do we begin?

Maybe you could talk about how you got started in music?

I think, like anyone who has musical parents, I’ve received some musical genes. My father was a clarinetist; he had a dance band which supported his schooling...He went to medical school and became a doctor... He came from a very musical family; the Parks’ were from Pennsylvania, centered in a place called Lechburg, Pennsylvania at the heart of a ten square mile area seated to them by William Pitt the Elder in a land grant from George II. They stayed there and many of them live there to this day. There are many Parks’ in Parks Township which is at the headwaters of the Kisskaminitus River which leads into the Ochagheny River from there the Monongahela, the Allegheny and the Ohio. That’s the pattern of rivers.

My mother’s family which also has a lot of Dutch blood, has been in Pennsylvania for two centuries. They came from the area around what is now known as New Kensington and were also quite musical. The Parks’ at one time had forty members in a single band. My father played with Sousa’s Sixty Silver Trumpets and in the big band era he loved popular music like my mother did. My mother’s family came from a more patrician background; they were less countrified... They had high brow tastes in music.

These forces created a home in which I, as the youngest of four boys, participated in a lot of musical diversions. Music had been a diversion for my family for many years. That’s in evidence today as I have a Steinway bought on March 11, 1911 at my father’s birthday for his mother by my grandfather. I have that Steinway O model. I have two batons, one which was held by my great grandfather, made of ebony and ivory and macrea inlay with a silver banding, and another which is made of pewter; a less heavy instrument. That baton was used by my Great Uncle John . Both signs, these batons, of a sense of musical leadership and understanding and it’s very inspiring to have them here as I doggedly pursue my occupational interest in music.

I go way back in musical discipline. I started playing clarinet at a very early age and it was to be my instrument until I went to Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh and majored in piano with an eye to a graduate study in composition, which I never got to. I came to California before I had a chance to really have an immersion in composition. That was a slow course, basically dictated by need rather than by inclination. So, that’s the back story of the accident of my musical profession.

In terms of other composers, who’s been influential to you? Who continues to be influential?

My composers... My favorite composers are the most profound; to me, the finest composers are the composers capable of contemplative work....People such as J.S. Bach. I love early music, the early choral music which I was well schooled in, at what is now known as the American Boychoir School; a boarding school with musical training.
I learned a lot of old madrigals of the Elizabethan age and a lot of the church liturgy. This past week we had birthdays of Samuel Barber, Arthur Honneger, Henry Cowell,. Hugo Wolf, one of the great songwriters of the nineteenth centuryb and a contemporary of Schubert and George Philip Telemann, was born yesterday, as was my son and Albert Einstein. I see that in my calendar which marks famous composers birthdays.

I love all the great old composers. The serious music, what you call classical music, from all of its different ages. I lost interest in twentieth century music as it experimented with what they call atonal music, or row music. Music that seemed to have a personal code; a vocabulary that had progressed beyond the common ability to understand it.
20th century serious music went through a change and lost it’s audience; it was too codified.I think people wanted a sense of melody. They weren’t ready to abandon melody as a force and that can be seen with the death of opera in the 1920’s, which was exactly coincidental to the emergence of the American musical as a form of musical theater entertainment.

I went along with the crowd in this. I became disenchanted with the glacial severity of classical music and I will say that with few exceptions, those exceptions being people like Charles Ives and the latest exponents of music which kept melody in play and for that reason has a memorable or repetitive value, a residual... A melodic force can walk away with the listener in the music that I love.

You might say that I’m a low-brow type of guy. I haven’t gone along with music that was ‘too hip for the room,’ as one might say. I’ve kept a pretty fundamental love for traditional forms of both serious and completely unserious music, too. I love folk music, always have. Course it was a means of introduction into the music business. I’m 54 now, so when I came out here in 1962, folk music was an institutionalized, commercial venture.

I got into this business professionally by playing guitar. I had a crash course in guitar. My first study was the old Mexican boleros and all of the Latin American influences that were available in California. I studied hard in through the early 60’s and committed myself to nylon string guitar which was the wrong way to go.As music became electrified, the approach came through steel string guitars and I had no knowledge of that approach to guitar, so I abandoned guitar, certainly by 1965; in 1964, I was still playing guitar. Bob Dylan and 12x5 of the Rollling Stones...The writing was on the wall. I should have known a little earlier, but I caught on pretty quick that I wasn’t built for this age of centrally guitar music. I had an incidental role to play in popular music because of its’ emphasis on guitar.

I struggled on in a career that was basically informed by the piano and that led me into being an accompanist rather than a great artist and, I tell you the truth, I’m not sure if I would’ve survived in the competitive field if piano had become the focus of instrumentation the way it had in the 20’s and 30’s and in the age of Gerswhin and the Bryll Building and so forth. I’m not sure what my success would have been, but I’d like to think I would have had a more prominent role. As it is, I was a supporting cast member, and I’ve been very happy in that.

To date what has happened, after all has been said and done, is that I’ve become an arranger, if you take a look at the number of jobs that I’ve done arranging. I’m very happy in that role, I love arranging. I came back last week from New York, I was in New York for 6 days and provided 5 arrangements in two of those days for Carly Simons’ new record which is fundamentally music drawn from film noir; American romantic murder mysteries and so forth. Her album comes out, in August, I think. It was produced by Jimmy Webb, the great American songwriter.

The artists that I’ve served come from many different areas of music and wouldn’t fit in one room. I guess you would say they’re non competitive. I get into a lot of different areas by being an arranger and it’s terrifically entertaining and, I hope, informative. I hope it shows in my work that I get better, as my adaptability is always challenged by a new job. I always go in knowing nothing... I always have to start from scratch with each new job and I think that’s a healthy sign.

You mentioned an interest in madrigals and early music. I was wondering if you ever envisioned your solo albums taking on that sort of image or influence?

Do you mean do I have an interest in thematic writing?

Or just exploring those influences....

I provided some songs for a new theater piece for New York, for a show that’s going up later this fall.

Was that something to do with Brecht?

No, it’s not Brecht. It ‘s Morriveau, the French farcist of the 18th century. He wrote a bauble, a bijou, a small comedic thing... He actually wrote a book, which has been translated for theatrical exploitation. My role is totally marginal in this. I did this to add some additional material to an already composed score that’s a work in progress. I did three tunes but maybe I’ll be drawn in to do some more.

I’ve been working on another musical as the sole composer about Amy Semple MacPherson. Amy Semple MacPherson was a charismatic media artist she was in the dawn of radio in Los Angeles and she became an international superstar and had a fascinating life. They’re working on developing it as a piece for the theater, so I’m getting my feet wet in that area of theater.

None of the theater things that I hear are of any interest to me; I detest the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber, and I detest what has happened to theater basically, both in dramatic terms and especially in the musicals. The music is so godawful and self-congratulatory,basically what it’s done is emasculate what theater could be.

Theater to me has a very important social function and should be a commentary on our times, have a political forcefulness and pursue a reason for being. I’ve read some Shakespeare and can appreciate what an incredible artform and political force theater has been.

Whether I can do as well as these big boys with all their pneumatics and orchestrations and, let’s face it, money, I don’t know. I hope there’s room for me in the field. I hope that there’s room for Randy Newman, too, who I understand has been working very hard, but it’s a closed and intensely guarded area; the last thing those New Yorkers want is to let those California boys into the cookie jar... so it’s a very guarded, oligarchic and intensely jealous area.

Whether that picture will change, we’ll see. It’s something that I’d like to get involved with because the record business...what they used to call the record business, I don’t know what it’s called now... the CD reissue business? It’s an entirely different game now then the game that I came into in the late 60’s. It’s language has changed considerably and it’s a little more fad-centered. It seems to me there’s less room for serious record packaging, for freestanding songs that don’t fit into radio format. This is my impression.

I heard you were talking about touring with the Orange Crate Art album, and I was wondering if anything every came of that?

We can’t tour. We can’t tour. I can’t tour with it because Brian can’t tour with it. Now that Brian is a father once again, I thank the chances of his wanting to tour are a lot diminished .

The fact is, Brian has done little work to great effect. I think Brian has a standard for excellence in his work, proven from his early youth. He has had a great deal of control over the ultimate sound and you lose that, to some degree, in performance. I believe we could replicate the album very easily and we had contemplated going to Japan and doing a show.

We were offered a great opportunity, but it was a really punishing schedule. It was a lot of work in a short time and, any musician will tell you, promotional tours are punishing at best. They really demand a lot... they’re very athletic experiences. Everything considered, it turned out to be an unrealistic ambition.

There was an area that I was interested in, that would have kept both the standards of audio fidelity that I have, and that Brian certainly has (my standards were influenced by his, is the way I look at it.) We could have some very imaginative video, as the album seemed to suggest visual development.

Warner Bros. was not interested in doing it for us, so we took it on the chin. It would have been a great way to exploit the album and I think we could have come up with something that would have enhanced it’s general identity but Warner’s decided that Brian Wilson was a backburner issue. Too bad.

Did you live in Japan?

I’ve worked there. I wouldn’t mind living in some parts of Japan, the people are so polite to one another. There’s a built in degree of mutual respect and cooperation. A lot of people in a little land produces something like that. It’s a beautiful place to be, but I’ve only visited there.

To cap that area of the exploitation of Orange Crate Art, I’m somewhat relieved that we didn’t find a sensible promotional performance opportunity. It saves me a lot of work of course and it would be a labor of love. It doesn’t take much to get me out of the house, financially. I just enjoy being involved with music. I’m not so particular about who I’m playing to or how many. It’s a lot of fun for me.

I’m satisfied with Orange Crate Art, the only thing I regret is that there’s no video record of the effort. I thought the album deserved that and could have benefited from it on some music channel or public broadcasting, as they call it in the states, would have been very good for it.

Speaking of finances, I had heard something to the effect that you don’t have an interest as much anymore in using live musicians perhaps because of economics and because technology is so good now.

I love acoustic instruments and I use them as much as I can. If I get a package deal, for example, for a score and have to deliver it, I’m more concerned about the excellence of the sound than I am of the profitability. I’ve done a lot to maintain acoustic instruments in my every effort.

The album I have coming out later this year has live instruments. It’s a live show with string instruments and percussion and it shows that I love and want to be associated with live musicians. There isn’t a synthesizer in sight on the record and I think it’s my best record to date, certainly for reasons of accessibility. It’s not a produced album, it’s an intimate album. It’s so damn small, it’s the smallest thought I’ve ever thunk and I think it stands up well on its own terms.

What style will the album be? I notice that you go from style to style very fluently.

This record takes a sampling from all the records I’ve done and includes new tunes that I have loved but never recorded. I think it gives me a chance to put out a record with singular arrangement, shows that I’m interested in arranging, that I’m interested still in music that isn’t of my own authorship and that I like to frame music that other people have composed with arranging.

Are these your compositions or is it entirely...

Both... Both my compositions and arrangements of public domain and authored material. I think it’s a great album, to tell you the truth, I’m very happy with it. It was done at the Ash Grove.

The Ash Grove was once, in the early 60’s from the end of the beat era through the infusion of a new interest in folk music, the place where people like Lightnin’ Hopkins, Brownie & Sonny and all of the great old groups, the Staples Singers and so forth, all these wonderful Delta blues artists all came through this place. This is where Ry Cooder learned to play guitar and first went up on a stage.That club burned down and recently was resurrected by the same owner, out on the Santa Monica pier.

The album was recorded there?

I did the album on September 12th, then I took that music paper and the next day I went to a place called Den Hague in the Netherlands and did the same show there for my first concert in Europe, to great personal satisfaction.It was a lot of fun to take that trip and to try my wings in front of a European audience.

When that show went well I thought it was appropriate that we put this record out that we recorded at the Ash Grove because I thought that it would fly. It was fun stuff, there were a lot of good laughs at the right places and some where I didn’t expect any. It’s funny.

Is it going to be on Warner Brothers?

That’ll be on Warner Brothers.

It’s a live album?

It’s live!

And it includes tunes of yours from past albums?

From Song Cycle forward. I was thinking that perhaps I’d been squandering a great opportunity just by trying to make each record a conscientious production effort.Perhaps I should have just been walking into a room, playing some pieces and coming out with a record.It would have taken a lot less money to provide quicker results and would have been a lot easier for me. But I think that its clear value is that it seems to be terrifically accessible. It’s right there in the face, warts and all. I think it’s a refreshment. I enjoyed it.

If you want to talk about any of your earlier works like Jump or Discover America... I was puzzled by Discover America. I was wondering if those were your tunes or if those were indeed other peoples’ tunes.

The tunes on Discover America came from a pantheon of Calypso writers, all of them, mostly avocational musicians who would show up seasonally to compete with one another at carnival; each year it produces another entirely new set of songs. I’d been interested in Calypso certainly from its inception in the early pre-WW1 through the present day. A lot of those tunes came from the 30’s. I knew the authors for each song. I went to Trinidad repeatedly and did what I could to promote Calypso.

Some of those writers are still alive. Coincidentally, last week I got a call from Calypso Rose, who was one of my favorite Calypsonians. She’s much older now, but in the mid 70’s I placed one of her songs with Bonnie Raitt on an album, much to Rose’s satisfaction. She was very happy with the economics and exposure.

Someone asked me in an email the other day if any of this music is available in literature so that you could read the music and play the piece. Most of these pieces have some fundamental wisdom. They’re all very clever lyrically and beautiful melodically and in fact, there is no music available on any of this stuff. I hope someday someone takes the time and makes the effort to fill this much overlooked niche industry. This is some of the great popular music of our century and it should be preserved and exonerated by finding itself in musical literature and print.

At the time I did the record Discover America, none of these people were signatory to A.S.C.A.P. or B.M.I. and for that reason would not have been paid anything by the record company unless they signed as members of those organizations. I thought it was an outrage and ultimately that problem was solved. I made a great effort around that time to get the ground rules changed so that people who were the Calypsonians and people who were members of the British Performing Rights Society would be introduced into our system and paid for their works every time they were played on the air.

In 1905 a songwriter and a publisher would split 2 cents for the mechanical reproduction of a composition. A loaf of bread cost 5 cents in 1905, a letter could be sent for 2 cents! Today, the record companies are holding all the cards. Today, a record company pays a six song cap. They only pay for six songs, you see, and people like Joni Mitchell know this. The veterans find it out. The new kids on the block, they don’t understand this. They think that it’s all hunky dory, that everything is just jake cause they get attention for their songs and they take what money comes without question.

There’s something terribly wrong in the way songwriters are underpaid. I’ve always found something to complain about with the record companies. I just find that these robber-barons get away with murder. It certainly was the fundamental reason that I distanced myself from the record companies and went out to find another way to make a living.

Which was through arranging?

It was through arranging and through job opportunities as a composer for television and film scores. I found other ways to support my children through their private schooling than just being a part of the machinery that treats its creative force with such disdain.I can’t stand it. I like to stay busy musically. I’ve done so in other areas where I’m a little more comfortable with the...

The economics?

Yeah... With the economics and with the way the game is played. So that’s just what’s happened in my life.

I still love to record...any aspect whether it’s production or arranging, it doesn’t matter to me... songwriting or just playing an instrument. I love freestanding audio results; they’re the most portable representation of a national identity. A song goes a long way. It’s the most portable cultural force there is. That’s why I’m interested in it. Didn’t mean to get serious here, I’m sorry.

No, that was a beautiful little passage.Do you have any new film scores in the works?

I’m going to be working on a score for a new film treatment of Oliver Twist and that comes within the month at Disney. I’m kind of hedging my bets, because I believe I will have more theater work to do soon and I want to keep that opportunity open.

But I’m certain that I’ll be doing more film work and this year I’m actively interested in it.

Jump was originally a play?

No, Jump was originally a collection of songs which I wrote as a reaction to getting invited to make a children’s concert for the North Carolina Symphony. I lived just west of Ashville, about 20 miles west of Ashville, in the smoky mountains, and I got an offer to make an evening for children. I thought that it should have a thematic base, so I took what Mark Twain called our most precious piece of stolen goods... the tales of Brer Rabbit. I illustrated them with songs and did a lot of research.

Unlike Joel Chandler Harris, who first brought this oral tradition of now peculiarly American folk tales to literature, and of course the later and most exquisite movie, Song of the South, I removed the black ex-slave; the apologetic, avuncular figure.

I removed Uncle Remus from the work because I felt that his time had passed as an interpreter of these songs.I focused on the tales themselves and got in a lot of trouble for doing it. It was at a time when Brer Rabbit was suffering at the library; they were removing these books because they used the wrong words.

I felt a tremendous sense of frustration and some anger about it because I thought that the baby was being thrown out with the bath. So I put myself to work when I found that I couldn’t get these books in libraries...
a dismal event and, although politically correct, too dismissive.

I thought it was important to emphasize the values of these works. The first review I got for the record that came out of the songs was that the tales of Brer Rabbit should be a source of Black pride, which I agree with. That was from the St. Petersburg Times in Florida in the book review section.

The record came and went without much notice and then someone heard it who had produced many plays and musicals for Broadway and I was asked to continue the project with two people that I knew and loved: One was Tim Maher, who has recently died of cancer, and the other Michael O’Donohue.

I got the two lads together, Michael for his scatological humor and Tim Maher for his incredible theater literacy. I’d put some music on Henry the 4th Part II for him at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC and also worked on Mother Courage for him at the Boston Shakespeare Theater.

Both of these guys died after having written the treatment, which is the reduction of their plans for a script, or what they call a book in theater.Since both of them died with the project unfinished, I honestly... to tell you the truth, was just so heartbroken that these fellows died that it discouraged me from continuing to push the project.

I think the topic of Brer Rabbit is a terrific entertainment and would solve a lot of racial division because, to tell you the truth, it takes aim at all falsehoods and does it so effectively and with such affection that it would make great theater. I haven’t lost my interest in the subject matter, I just had to get my wind after I suffered because of these deaths.

I would be happy to throw out all those songs. I would be just be delighted to throw ‘em out and start from scratch, that’s my love for the topic of Brer Rabbit.

That’s what was good about the record, that it did something in a total field of forfeit. I was happy with it, I’m not sure as a record but certainly as a thought and also, I must say, that record was recorded in 2 days.

Wow.

It took a lot of work.

That’s incredible.

Yes it is. It was a lot of work. It took courage to do it on many levels.

That must have been completely scored and played through.

Oh, yeah! Yes, totally deliberated. After it was done Warner’s sat with it on the shelf for about a year and a half before releasing it, which put to rest any idea that Warner’s has been an easy utility for me.

I’ve fought my way through every possible opportunity. I fought hard to cultivate opportunities and have suggested projects that haven’t been done. It’s not all a bed of roses. They say the expression is, “99% of the job is just getting it.” Basically that’s the way records are too; you work hard in this business. My heart is in the work. I have no complaint. This is just part of the process, this is the way it is.

Do you think that you will work on an album again with Brian Wilson?

Again? With Brian? I would love to. It might happen. I think what we basically did is solve a lot of highly personal problems by doing that album. I was sitting here at the house and I had come up with the tune Orange Crate Art and I thought that he would be ideal to sing it and it seemed like I caught him at just the right moment when he wasn’t immersed in any other projects. I thought, “This is silly: This man is a giant and there’s one thing that I have always wanted in my projects, and that is the ability to use other singers so that I can get beyond my own vocal limitations.”

I have a hideous voice. I look at the sessions as an opportunity: You see these violinists bring in their great Italian timbre and you see some of these sessions that have a Stradivarius and an Imadi violin, you know, millions of dollars worth of Italian timbre and great musicians on every level; to limit that by having the songs that I can write reduced to my own vocal range, is an outrage and is something that offends me as a songwriter, so I look forward to collaborating with anyone that has a great vocal ability such as Brian.

On personal terms it would mean a great deal to me to be able to work with him again. I expect that we will do so....

You mentioned Suzie Ungerlieder the last time we spoke?

I’m interested in her ongoing saga, she’s a very fine craftsperson. I have never been able to separate a man from his muse. If someone is a creep, I don’t care how great the work is, I’m not interested in it. That goes for Franz Liszt and a lot of Wagner.

It’s not interesting to me to endorse somebody who is a creep. Suzie satisfies every personal quality. I would love to throw a lot of wind at her back to get her sails in full force. She deserves to be supported in personal terms and I think she has an inevitable place in songwriting.

On record, I think she’ll be a big success. I heard her work out of the blue on public radio in Los Angeles and when I heard that she didn’t have a contract, I tried to get in touch with her. I’ve given her some options that she’s considering, I’m sure.

People I know in the business could utilize her obvious musical gifts and I think that she’s inevitable. I’ll be in touch with her. Now that I’m back in LA, I’m going to rattle her cage again. I have a copy of her record right here on my easel.

What do we do? Should we conclude, because I should get ready to go to that big event...I guess we can end it there. Basically all I’m really interested in is I would love to not see sentences that don’t go anywhere, and a and umm have really no place in edited copy. (Laughs...)

Photos provided courtesy of Warner Bros. Records

http://www.vandykeparks.com

Gordon B. Isnor