by Roni Sarig
Whatever the reason these artists never became popular, their music lives on and thrives as part of a pop tradition that continues today, in both independent and some mainstream music. Unlike jazz or blues or even rock ‘n’ roll, this Pop is not exclusively American in origin, and it’s certainly not culturally pure. Rather, it’s an endearing musical mutt that’s claimed by the entire modern world.
VAN DYKE PARKS
Scan O’Hagen, High Llamas:
I was as influenced and as obsessed with Van Dyke Parks as I was with the Beach Boys. I loved that you could be avant-garde with traditional instruments and tunes. Some would say avant-garde is for the elite, it’s introverted, it happens in small rooms, it’s subversive, but Cabinessense is a very strange piece of music that’s melodically heartwarming and has a skip in its step. [Parks’ influence] was definitely there in the back of mind [on the High Llamas’ Hawaii], this bloody thing I wanted to get out of my system. It’s derivative, I guess. I thought I was putting together a record that Van Dyke would’ve done.”
Van Dyke Parks draws on the entire American musical heritage, from 19th-century minstrelsy to psychedelic pop. While he has worked for decades just under the surface of our musical culture and his distinctive stamp can be heard in everything from film music to orchestral pop to experimental sounds, only a small cult of fans cherish him as a true American original. His influence can be heard both in bands like the High Llamas – who create lush, dizzyingly exaggerated pop – and more art-minded composers who work with pop idioms. Through his solo material – and through his ill-fated collaboration with Brian Wilson on the Beach Boys’ aborted Smile album – Parks has elevated the modern pop tune into the world of the art song.
Parks was born in 1943 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, the son of a distinguished doctor who had played in John Philip Sousa’s band. Van Dyke played clarinet at age four, and sang in operas and choruses conducted by Arturo Toscanini before he’d reached his teens. He was also a child actor who appeared on Broadway and had bit parts on television and in films. After studying music composition in college, Parks played in a folk group called the Greenwood County Singers (with his brother Carson, who later wrote Frank Sinatra’s hit “Something Stupid”), and worked as a session musician at Disney.
In his early twenties, Parks shifted his focus toward pop music. He became a songwriter (penning the often-recorded High Coin), session pianist (on records by the Byrds and Grateful Dead), and producer (for Judy Collins, Randy Newman, Arlo Guthrie, and others). In 1966, Parks met the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, who had recently produced his most ambitious work, his band’s Pet Sounds album. Wilson hoped his follow-up, Smile, would be far more sophisticated even than Pet Sounds, and invited Parks to collaborate with him.
In the face of growing national turmoil, Wilson wanted to explore innocence lost in America – a prevalent theme in Parks’ own work – and create what he called “a teenage symphony to God.” As promised, the first song Parks and Wilson wrote together, Surf’s up (which was not a surf song at all – note the title’s double meaning), was miles beyond the band’s signature beach music. Parks’ lyrics – with surreal, deeply evocative lines like, “Columnated ruins domino / canvas the town and brush the backdrop” – were the perfect match for Wilson’s music.
Tony Goddess, Papas Fritas:
They really took a literal picture of the sound. Like the song Vegetables, where the downbeat would be accented by the sound of them biting through a carrot, or Cabinessence, where they use rustic sounds like a banjo and a harmonica. Nothing we do is as developed as those guys, but like with “Live By the Water,” I tried to make an island, calypso rhythm. I think Van Dyke Parks was directly responsible for pushing Brian Wilson toward that stuff. Some people really think he fucked up Brian Wilson, but I really like his lyrics. That’s why we named our studio Columnated Ruins, from the lyrics to Surf’s up.
Smile, though, was plagued with difficulties. Brian’s increasing mental instability and drug use were turning the recording process into a bottomless pit of expense that produced brilliant musical fragments but little completed work. The album was hyped as a masterpiece, but months passed without a release. It soon became clear Wilson was losing touch with reality. Meanwhile, the other Beach Boys wanted nothing to do with Parks’ “incomprehensible” lyrics. When tensions mounted between Wilson and the band, Parks bowed out and Smile was abandoned altogether. Never officially released (though bits have shown up on later Beach Boys albums and on bootlegs), the legend of Smile has since assumed mythic proportions as pop’s great lost album.
Jeff Tweedy, Wilco:
His contribution to the Beach Boys is surreal, it’s unbelievable. I’m a big fan of Smile. To me, it’s not a record that could’ve become one of the best records ever made if it was finished, I think it is one of the best records ever made, unfinished. In a conceptual way, the idea of using strange instruments and intervals, horn and string parts, just an overall textural thing, was influential.
After his break with the Beach Boys, Parks set out to explore his own pop artistry (as well as audition for The Monkees). Following a single he recorded under the alias George Washington Brown, Parks released his first album in 1968. Reputedly four years in the works, Song Cycle was a unified collection of richly orchestrated songs that drew from traditional music and themes. It was in many ways what Smile aspired to be – an American equivalent to Sgt. Pepper’s. Though somewhat rambling and difficult, Song Cycle is full of great musical ideas. As with Smile, Parks’ lyrics are rich in wordplay and explore Parks’ own past as folklore. Song Cycle, however, was clearly not rock music, and so it isn’t surprising the record sold dismally (despite its record company’s considerable promotional backing). What Parks had created was an entirely unique chamber pop that drew freely from jazz, cabaret, show tunes, vaudeville, Tin Pan Alley, and the music of Stephen Foster, George Gershwin, and Charles Ives.
Jim O’Rourke, solo / Gastr del Sol:
Song Cycle is without doubt the greatest record ever made. At the time the guy was absolutely the greatest musical genius to walk the planet. It’s my Holy Grail, everything I’d ever want is there. It’s music made by someone who’s not dumb! There are great songs with the best damn lyrics he ever wrote, so incredibly articulate. Every bit of instrumentation makes sense, both musically and programmatically. It’s the only thing I know of that’s the logical extension of Charles Ives [early 20th-century American composer]. Van Dyke’s records are the only link between the old way of Americana and the modern days.
Parks’ later albums explored similar territory, both thematically and in their highly intricate orchestrations. Discover America, in 1972, featured Van Dyke’s arrangement of Stars and Stripes Forever, but also added to the mix of styles, including steel drums and calypso songs. Clang of the Yankee Reaper, a 1975 collection of Parks’ reworking other composer’s music, also revealed a love for Caribbean music. Between solo recordings, Parks has worked as arranger for everyone from the Everly Brothers and Tim Buckley to Bruce Springsteen and U2, to Toad the Wet Sprocket and Fiona Apple. He also has scored films (including Popeye, Bastard out of Carolina, Private Parts), played bit parts in movies, and even spent some time as a visiting lecturer at Harvard.
Parks’ 1984 release, Jump!, based on the Brer Rabbit tales, simultaneously invoked his roots in Southern folklore and the bygone era of Hollywood musicals. Tokyo Rose, released in 1989, concerned itself with U.S.-Japanese trade relations, a somewhat bizarre, but nevertheless fascinating subject for a pop album.
Eric Matthews:
Parks was another confirmation of what I wanted to do, or try to achieve. He introduced me to some instrument combinations that I hadn’t even thought about before.
In 1995, almost 30 years after Smile, Van Dyke reunited with Brian Wilson to create an album called Orange Crate Art. Featuring songs written by Parks and sung by Wilson, the album attempted to evoke the romantic image of California as a paradise that had drawn so many people
there earlier in the century. Parks was still largely unsung, but still weaving his way through his American cultural heritage. And finally, he and Wilson had put a record out.
DISCOGRAPHY
Song Cycle (Warner Bros., 1968); his best known record, a classic ‘60s album encompassing entire traditions of both pop and art music.
Discover America (Warner Bros., 1972); further cultural explorations, including the sounds of the Caribbean.
Clang of the Yankee Reaper (Warner Bros., 1975); featuring mostly covers reworked in Parks’ unique orchestration style.
Jump! (Warner Bros., 1984); a show-tuney collection based on the Brer Rabbit folk tales.
Tokyo Rose (Warner Bros., 1989); a pop operetta on U.S.-Japan trade relations.
Idiosyncratic Path: The Best of Van Dyke Parks (Diablo, 1994); a compilation spanning Parks’ work up until then.
Orange Crate Art (Warner Bros., 1995); a rumination on California’s pastoral dream, featuring the vocals of Brian Wilson.
Moonlighting: Live at the Ash Grove (Warner Bros., 1998); a recently recorded live album.
SCOTT WALKER
Eric Matthews:
Scott Walker is awesome. He’s just got one of the biggest voices, and such a musical touch. I always think about Scott 3 as being the accelerated, futuristic version of what Sinatra and Nat King Cole were doing. It’s the music of tomorrow in the old style. And if I put it on today, it’s still the music of the future.
If only for his seemingly backward career path – from ‘60s teen idol and cabaret crooner to his more recent underground experiments – Scott Walker would qualify as a unique and worthy cult hero. His reputation, though, can also proudly rest on his brilliant late ‘60s recordings, through which he carved his niche as a Sinatra-styled pop singer who could also handle – both as composer and performer – thoroughly contemporary, thoughtful, and engaging material. His unique style and abilities made him one of the few acts in post-Beatles rock to earn commercial and critical success in a “song interpreter” role that had essentially become outdated.
Walker’s enigmatic reclusiveness and artistic eccentricities have only added to his myth. As his cult grows, his influence on modern music becomes more and more apparent: In the deep, showy vocals of David Bowie (who once tried to work with Walker), the eccentric pop of Julian Cope (who compiled a Walker retrospective), the dark swoon of Nick Cave (who included Walker in his recent soundtrack work), the pop fetishism of Marshall Crenshaw (who co-wrote liner notes for a Walker compilation), the mopey meanderings of Mark Eitzel (who had Walker Brothers songs played before shows), or the lush orchestral pop of acts such as Divine Comedy, Pulp, Eric Matthews, and Space.
Chris Connelly, the Belts / Ministry / Revolting Cocks:
He had a huge impact on David Bowie. When Bowie was first starting, the Walker Brothers were having hits and with all credit to Bowie, he recognized the darker and more experimental side of the band. What Bowie did with Scott Walker’s music was drag out this sense of theater... The way Scott Walker used the orchestra to play dissonance really appealed to me, because you don’t find that in pop music, back then it was unlistenable. He was shamefully ignored at the time, but you can’t really blame the public. He was Scott Walker, a pop figure, not someone you’d expect to experiment. It’s like if somebody left the Spice Girls and went on to do a really radical, experimental record.
Born in Ohio as Noel Scott Engel, the future Scott Walker moved around as a child before settling in Los Angeles in the early ‘50s. In his teens, he briefly fell under the tutelage of popular singer Eddie Fisher, who was interested in crafting young Scott into the latest teen sensation. When that failed to materialize, he began working as a bassist-for-hire for acts such as Ike and Tina Turner and lesser-knowns in the L.A. music scene. There, he met guitarist John Maus, who was performing under the name John Walker. They decided to team up, and with the addition of drummer Gary Leeds in 1964, the Walker Brothers were born. Originally styled after the Righteous Brothers (who weren’t brothers either), with close harmonies and Phil Spector-like orchestration, the Walker Brothers recorded a few singles with Maus singing lead, but these failed to gain much attention. By the end of the year, the British Invasion was in full swing, and the band decided to head where the action was, so they moved to London.
Before long their single Love Her, which featured Scott’s operatic baritone as the lead voice, became a hit in the U.K. The Walker Brothers decided to stay, and signed with a British record label. With the help of producer Johnny Franz (who created a similarly orchestrated pop sound for Dusty Springfield), the Walker Brothers scored a string of big hits through 1965 and ‘66, including the #1 single Make It Easy on Yourself, as well as My Ship Coming in, as well as The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore (which was also a Top Twenty hit in the U.S.), and Deadlier than the Male. For a brief run, they were the biggest teen idols in Britain, complete with screaming mobs and fan-clubs, but the hysteria died off quickly, and in 1967 the Walker Brothers decided to disband. On their farewell tour of the U.K., they brought along Cat Stevens and Jimi Hendrix as supporting acts.
Ron Sexsmith:
I love Scott Walker. Just the idea of Scott Walker – this guy who has a beautiful voice and puts out a record every ten years or something. There’s your alternative artist for you, not that he sets out to be. His whole career is incredible, to be able to touch people that way, without touring, without anything, and keep growing as an artist. He’s an influence in that he doesn’t follow any trends, he’s always himself, and it’s inspiring...
Though each of the Walker Brothers pursued solo careers, only Scott had success (and only in the U.K.). Still working with producer Franz, between 1967 and 1969 Walker churned out a series of four landmark solo records – Scott, Scott 2, Scott 3, Scott 4 – that remain his most enduring creations. Singing material that included works by the songwriting teams of Bacharach & David and Weill & Mann, as well as by renowned Belgian writer Jacques Brel, Scott established himself as a premier song stylist – a darker, more introspective Tom Jones; a Tony Bennett for the Age of Aquarius.
Scott restored Walker as a teen idol and made him a top draw in the cabarets of Europe. The record also featured, for the first time, Scott’s own compositions. Even next to Brel’s richly drawn pieces, songs such as Montague Terrace (in Blue) hold their own. But while Walker seemed to be growing as an artist, he remained firmly entrenched in an old-style career as a middle-of-the-road singer. For at least another year, Walker pursued a sort of musical double life; while he explored his more challenging material on increasingly artistic albums, he continued to please the masses (and his record company) with commercial singles such as Johanna and Lights of Cincinnati.
With Scott 2, Walker had become the premier English interpreter of Brel’s songs (which were translated by American songwriter Mort Shuman) and he enjoyed success with the somewhat unusual and risque single Jackie. By Scott 3, his own compositions filled the majority of the album. Songs like Big Louise, Rosemary, and in particular, It’s Raining Today – with its dissonant string orchestrations – showed that Walker was continuing to develop and stretch the boundaries of what was acceptable in pop music.
When Walker released Scott 4 in 1969 (under the name Noel Scott Engel), though, it seemed he had pushed a little too far. Consisting of all originals, the record contained challenging material such as the Ingmar Bergman-inspired The Seventh Seal and The Old Man’s Back Again (Dedicated to the Neo-Stalinist Regime), a commentary on the recent Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. The British public rejected the album, and Walker’s stature quickly fell from marquee star to cult artist. And apart from his brief return to the pop charts, it was there it stayed.
In the ‘70s, Walker half-heartedly explored light country pop on forgotten records such as The Moviegoer and We Had It All. He briefly re-formed the Walker Brothers for three albums in the mid-‘70s, and scored a U.K. hit with Tom Rush’s No Regrets. Tracks like The Electrician, a 1978 song about the
torture of prisoners in South Africa, proved Scott’s songwriting as strong as ever and marked his advance into a more Bowie/Roxy Music mold.
For most of the past two decades, though, Walker has quietly concentrated on the solitary art of painting, away from public life. Twice, though, he has emerged with a new recording, and both have been as opaque and unorthodox as any music being currently produced. Climate of Hunter, in 1984, put Walker’s moody, expressive vocals to use in a series of nebulous, ambient songs. And in 1995, Tilt came out of nowhere with an experimental pop opus – at times cinematic, at others industrial – that proves Scott Walker has not yet ceased to develop artistically.
Will Oldham, Palace:
Tilt hardly even has a tangential relationship to any thing you could describe in real life, which is pretty cool. It exists absolutely on a plane of its own, but it helps you recognize that there is a musical plane that doesn’t have anything to do with any physical activity, or almost even with the medium itself.
DISCOGRAPHY
Scott (Philips [UK], 1967); the solo debut, full of terrific material and great singing.
Scott 2 (Philips [UK], 1968); a record that further solidifies Walker as a first-rate song stylist and composer.
Scott 3 (Philips [UK], 1969); an album coming at the peak of his success, but alluding to a more experimental direction.
Scott 4 (Philips [UK], 1969); the start of Walker’s slide toward obscurity, and his most challenging of the early solo albums.