Pop Music: October 2004 Archives

The vast myth of Van Dyke Parks is a difficult one to summarize. Historically speaking, Parks has been a child actor, classical composer, record producer, famed lyricist, pop musician, arranger, film scorer, and--very briefly--an adult actor. Despite his sweeping accomplishments, Parks is largely acknowledged in the annuls of pop history for one of his failed works, the Beach Boys' unfinished masterpiece, Smile. With Brian Wilson's "finished" version of Smile released last month, a good deal of attention has been cast upon Van Dyke Parks' relationship with Wilson and the eventual reworking of the project--and though an important part of the Parks mythos, Smile is only really the beginning.

In 1966, after a few years working nebulously in L.A.'s music industry (his first paying job was arranging "The Bear Necessities" for Disney's the Jungle Book, and work with Harper's Bizzare) Van Dyke Parks was introduced to Brian Wilson who--impressed with little more than Parks' wit and intelligence--decided he would make an apt lyricist for the album Dennis Wilson claimed would make Pet Sounds "stink." The pair only properly "finished" one complete production at that time--the epic "heroes & villains"--along with a number of other fragments in various stages of completion. The story of Smile has been incredibly well-documented (check out this short history, for example)--but shorthand, the usual Beach Boys subjects (read: Mike Love and Al Jardine) began to voice their dissent, attacking the project's lyrics, and so Van Dyke Parks bailed.

Two years later, Warner Brothers took an unbelievably ridiculous gamble, producing the then-most expensive record of all time (over 48 thousand dollars) for a largely unknown artist whom they banked would be on par with the Beatles' recent Sgt. Pepper's success. Van Dyke Parks' Song Cycle was an unprecedented success. Artistically. Some months after the record was released, Warner Brothers began running ads suggesting that they "lost $35,509 on the album of the year"--encouraging people to send in their copies of Song Cycle to Warner Brothers in return for a second copy--"one to educate a friend with."

Song Cycle is an amazing web of Americana--a densely integrated vision of hundreds of years of the nation's song craft. With nearly 40 years of retrospect, the relationship between Parks and Wilson makes a good deal of sense: Parks an Americana obsessive, Wilson the voice of what would become the new Americana. Not too many hooks, of course, but as one of the most intellectually challenging pop records of all time, Song Cycle runs scholastic laps around anything the Beach Boys ever touched--which, admittedly, wouldn't take a rocket scientist.

After Song Cycle, Van Dyke spent five-years time working on other people's records (sessions with the Byrds and Judy Collins, and producing Randy Newman's first album) before recording his sophomore record, the considerably more accessible Discover America. Another stroll through 19th and 20th century Americana--this time through the, um... music of Trinidad of the 1940s--Discover might be more sonically accessible, but no less far reaching. With tomes to Jack Palance, Bing Crosby, Franklin Roosevelt the Mills Brothers, and J. Edgar Hoover, the record is both manic and manically focused--a cross-cultural weave of collegiate wit and brilliant arrangement.

Another four years brought Clang of the Yankee Reaper, a disappointing collection of songs largely not written by Parks, and gill-stuffed with sickly sonics. In the twenty-eight years since, Van Dyke Parks has released five additional records (including Orange Crate Art with Brian Wilson), none really measuring up to the first couple. His day job has also proved quite fruitful however, playing, producing, and arranging for countless musicians (Harry Nilsson, U2, Rufus Wainwright, Fiona Apple) and composing for film and television (Popeye, Brave Little Toaster, Bastard Out of Carolina). And, of course, that whole Smile thing.

For a lifetime of relative obscurity, Van Dyke Parks spent his twenties making what should have been the most important records of the 60s and 70s--shelved or otherwise. Instead, Van Dyke "I had a cameo on Twin Peaks" Parks will have to settle for his place as the Greatest Band of All Time.