A chance to talk with the man who penned the line ācolumnated ruins dominoā in the Beach Boysā epic song āSurfās Upā? Yes, please. His recent collaboration, Van Dyke Parks orchestrates VerĆ³nica Valerio: Only in America ā Solo en AmĆ©rica, is a sonic treat, featuring VerĆ³nicaās vocals and harp and Van Dykeās unique arrangements, and is well worth checking out. A conversation with Van Dyke is a rollicking affair of big words, grand statements, history lessons, piano tinkling, and unabashed humanitarian positivity.
Weāve seen so many changes in music technology over the last 50 years. How does this impact you?
Iām into a lot of geek stuff. It makes me feel good to read the ads in Scientific American and see whatās happening to us as we plunge into space. Weāre all in this together. Being a musician, or in any way involved in the arts, to me is a crucible. Itās a very difficult task. When this battle is over of the pandemonium and so forth, weāll all wear a crown; but I think Iād give a special salute to anybody in music.
We always have to pivot a little to see where the work is, as well as constantly learning different ways of working.
When the Governor declared a state of quarantine I had to escape my cabin fever, and get out of the box. I did it with a novel experience for me, that long-distance love personified in what we did. Connecting the string players. Making sure that I had the right vector to a studio I couldnāt go to. I was forbidden to do that in quarantine. Everything was either FaceTime or displaced time. It was all remote, truly. And monastic as it could possibly be. And yet, in spite of that, this pandemic produced a great deal of musical invention for the survival skills that were necessary to do an album; a short one, like we have done with Only in America.
I assumed working remotely on VerĆ³nicaās record was a challenge. Thatās an amazing, beautiful release. Certainly, sheās got the voice and the talent.
Well, I think so. You notice thereās a certain amount of rustication in her voice and the music of the Mestiza/Mestizo culture that comes down. It has a hierarchy. Pre-Colombian culture. Rhythms. Images. And, of course, the amazing geometry of their aquifers; the rivers that run beneath them that the Mayans knew so well how to profit from and keep clean. They didnāt have the toilet training problems that industry has today; for example of oil and other grime that weāve managed to tar the earth with. This was a civilization worth exploring, the one that made pyramids thousands of years before the Egyptians. Here I was. I got an invitation to do a project with basically a solo harpist. Sometimes she would have maybe a fiddler come in for a solo, or not. Or maybe she would have a percussionist, which, by the way, all percussion was done in Mexico. I wasnāt about to tell anybody how to beat a bongo south of the border! So, there is a very controlled, disciplinedā¦ you might even say circumspect for me. Why use a small word when a diminutive one will suffice? To be circumspect about the amount of Yankee doggerel that is the way I would orchestrate around this woman. Hereās the bit. Who asked me to do an album? She asked me. Long distance. I have never met her.
Many of us work remotely these days.
Here I am. Music is my passion. I have hyperboles that I still stand by. A day without Bach is a barren day for me. I really look for the lingo of music. That is my understanding. Thatās all church means to me. Itās not the bubblegum that some chorister put under the pew. No, itās the music youāre listening to. This is what got me in touch with the immovable dough, the nature of who we are, beyond. The unanswered question. This was the solution for me. Music. And I keep at it every day. Iām just admitting. Iām 78, and I feel very fortunate to have somehow gotten past the mix, the investment of people. I want to speak to a universal theme here, without immodesty or fear of condemnation. I am one of a sea of very able musicians who are investing their own money to make music that hopefully will be to some common good.
Thatās lovely.
Thatās what itās all about. These people arenāt in munitions. Iām in their numbers, and weāre all struggling. What I did was I decided one way to help this girl is to give her seven string players. Put seven string players around this solo harp and pick up what sheās putting down. Surround her with this most modest orchestral accompaniment to give her a pedestal. Something to work on. Weāre not talking Madonna here. What weāre talking about is something as transitory and as temporary as a butterfly corridor from MichoacĆ”n of the Monarch. This is fragile stuff. Soon it will be gone with what is allowed in the first world. The world we inhabit, that first world, has a pop culture which has, pardon me, come up short. I realize that. Iāve been part of it. Iām complicit. Iāve been with the fat and sassy. Yeah, what Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the late great author, might have commented on when he wrote, āPity the nation that knows no other language but its own.ā This is the way I feel myself. I agree with that man who wrote that poem when he was 98. What a treasure that San Francisco beat poet was.
Certainly. We are lucky to have his words.
His poetry so corrected me in my youthful folly. Heās a lovely man. I miss him, and I agree with him that it would be boring just to be stuck in our hall of mirrors. Finally, Iām there. Itās not 1964. Itās not 1963 when my brother [Benjamin] died; the man, my brother, who served the United States so beautifully in the Cold War. When Kennedy passed, and the Beach Boys arrived with their first album, and the [Rolling] Stones with 12 X 5; all of this revolutionary stuff. This was like a benchmark. The year of 1963 was a benchmark. I think we are coming into that reawakening, that reinvention ā hopefully ā that will get beyond this hall of mirrors and this pop sensibility which is so immersed in self-adoration. And, to me, it feels unapologetic in a way, and just plain loud, and itās lost its teeth. This record that I just did; on a first blush, it might look like I wasnāt doing anything. āBoy, what are these songs? I want to hear about it. I want him to make James Taylor weep. I want real first world problems.ā Well, youāre not getting it on this record. Youāre not getting any first world problems. What youāre getting is something of supreme unimportance. A parallel universe. A different feeling. One song, for example, talks about what she looks at outside her window. Itās a simple idea for a song. Thatās as good a discipline in songwriting as Iāve ever heard. She approaches it and starts it with a little poetry here. She says that sheās looking out her window and can see a mountain, and down the mountain runs a beautiful river thatās coursing like a snake, and itās filled with blood, the blood of her ancestors; her father and brothers. Down here, past the window walk, these people are walking north with their contraband. They have no shoes on. Their shoes are useless, because theyāve come so far. Theyāre going north. Then she breaks into her chorus. Thatās all in 7/4. I look at this thing, the girl gives me a harp loop. The Italians call them ostinatos. Obstinate. This one is in 3/4, 4/4. So, itās a 7/4 reality. This is not something that little honky hopefuls are going to immediately want to tap their feet to. They might want to listen to the scansion of the poetry. The geometry of the songwriting and how itās constructed. Itās very wonderful. Then she breaks into that four on the floor. Itās a beautiful sky. And everything is so ironic in this unimportance, and so pronounced; yet it suggests large social events beyond the intimacies of her poetry. I was quite taken in. On that, you can hear the electric guitar does four notes. Iāve got four notes there. In anthropology they have a way of measuring how long weāve been there and what effect itās had on the environment. I think very much about how I have presented something for the global village to satisfy my appetite to get a confection in our struggle for multiculturalism. Hereās a clue. When you go to the ATM at your Bank of America, you go to put your card in there, and it asks you one question, āDo you want it in English or Spanish?ā So, letās get the clue! Thereās nothing wrong with embracing the concept of multiculturalism. Thatās what Iām saying here. This is just wonderful. Letās do it. Letās learn whatās on the menu. Iām doing more work with VerĆ³nica today. More construction. Iām providing the carriage for her. All the lyrics are hers, and Iām doing all the music. This is different. Yeah, I think this is a very good leavening. I enjoy it. I know that as I slug my way forwards on records, and I havenāt done a record in some time. It takes a lot of work and stamina to do a record, and I plan to do another one; probably solo on a piano, to be me. This is not about me. Iāll tell you how it served me.
Yes, please! I would love to hear more.
You look at your work in a disciplined, organized way. Youāve got people dependent upon your rationale. Well, I have one too. Thereās always a backstory. In every album Iāve done, there are people who hunger, or maybe died. Each one of them is an epic tale, an Odyssean voyage for me. I started my first one in 1967. I had no idea how to do a record. I still donāt! Iām not a Presbyterian. I canāt tell you what itās going to be, boss. All I know is that I have to work. In this album, and I would say the only exemplar, besides this one, that does so much to embrace another culture and try to look at America outside of the box was Discover America [his second album, 1972 -ed.]. I get here, to this album, and not really as a documentarian, but a participant observer. What it is is my laughing place. This is where I want to be, because of my modest skills as a musician, which I worked very hard to do what I do. I work very hard, and I love it. This is more redeeming to me than Will Shortz and his New York Times crosswords. This is the ultimate enigma. This is beautiful, this stuff called music construction and arranging. Iāve noticed it all my life, from [plays melody on keyboard] as a young child. I heard the music. I heard the Spanish upstart in Domenico Scarlatti of Vienna. I heard the kid who couldnāt stand being in the shadow of his father, who left Italy and went to Spain. I heard that. [piano playing] You know. I heard [piano playing]. I mean, I heard all this. Parlor piano music from Spain. I played [Enrique] Granados. Iāve got all this shit, all of it beyond the alpine winds. This is Southern stuff. These are zephyrs. This is warm wind. This is what I wanted. Look at the composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and youāll know what Iām talking about. Of course, there is no one who precedes him, in terms of signature; his vernacular that is, of American music of New Orleans. He made this thing happen for Professor Longhair and Allen Toussaint. I arranged a few instruments around a Gottschalk piece for Allen. I introduced him to Gottschalk, someone whose legacy he enjoyed, whom he had not heard of. That was great. Folk music, that is; music from the street to the elite. Music that mattered. Music that had some social or societal significance or was representative and emblematic of an era. Gottschalk did that. Thereāre so many other people. Thomas Tallis did it, or Ralph Vaughan Williams did it when he went into those medieval modes to do his incredible variations. Percy Grainger, the Australian composer who picked up that piece and made it for piano and a piano roll call, a theme from āLondonderry Airā (or āAir from County Derryā). And you know something? He called it āDanny Boy,ā and he sold millions. Folk music has always been written in literature. It has been a phenomenon to me. The idea is, of course, because itās so transitory; we canāt just rely on Alan Lomax to get this down. We need more. The stuff thatās permanent press has been brought into literature. The French Nation Anthem, āLa Marseillaise.ā The Israeli National Anthem, āHatikvah.ā I mean, we have āWe Shall Overcome,ā and āThis Land Is Your Land.ā This is the way we preserve these things. Another way to archive these things is with the convenience of literature. Here I am. Iām 78, and Iāve been wobbling between these loyalties. One of them to extemporaneous processes. The other to the premeditated rationale to support what is in the heart of the artist or the singer. Thatās my racket. I seek transparency, where I love being, admitting that Iām just in a reflected glory. I love being the narrative force. Iād be the Greek chorus if I could shine the light on people, because this has been my good fortune, to be around people whose abilities far excelled my own. I had some great obligation to give my best.
So much of your career has been collaboration. Through collaboration, you can show support for things
that youād like to see happen in the world, and, like you say, shine a light on them.
I think so. I think itās good. The point is this: it should be entertaining to the ear. Itās the Phil Ochs maxim, āIn such ugly times, the only true protest is beauty.ā I believe that. That it is mawkish to say, āHave a nice day,ā and be gone. No, I donāt do that. I went into a hotel lobby with a guy by the name of Graham Chapman. He was in Monty Python. Some elevator operator opened the door, and as we were going in, he said, āHave a nice day,ā and Graham said, āI have other plans.ā I always like to start my day with a smile and get it over with!
Thatās too funny.
The thing that interests me about your habitation is that itās so interesting to me how I dreamt. I miss rewind. I miss that. Wally Heider showed us the [Eltro] Information Rate Changer? I remember that. I see how weāve struggled into pitch correction. Iāve wrestled with it. If theyāve done it with Pavarotti, I can say Iāve had to do it with Brian [Wilson]. Itās what the casual observer demands now that you do, spot-on. Iām very fastidious in my work. Iāll tell you something. I think I talked about this VerĆ³nica project to a good benefit. This is my best work. This record represents a triumph of the human spirit to me. It is outside the box, and anyone who wants to get outside the box and just relax with this dream escape that has nothing to do with the rapidity of the progress of profit. This is time off for good behavior. I hope I meet the artist someday.
Eventually!
What I hope will happen is either I will get a chance to go to Barcelona, for some fine Mediterranean finger food after a concert, when I get to do maybe a piano solo for one of the numbers. Iāll have to go with my wife on that trip and stay married for another 40 years. But you know, the time is tight. I urge anybody who can to support this record to remember this: If you donāt spin vinyl, I donāt understand you, because thereās nothing more superior. The only estoppel being that stylus, of the fantastic reiteration of what just happened live. I just think that it would be stupid to throw this out. Itād be like throwing away the brains just to eat the blubber. The real info is in vinyl. But if you donāt have a vinyl player, and you want to justify buying our record ā me and VerĆ³nica Valerio called Only in America ā what you do is unwrap it and youāve got a great frisbee. [laughter] This thing can sail. Iām serious, man!
Iāve listened to your arrangements for years. I love how your arrangements can be very light and not dense. You donāt end up with huge, blundering chords filling up space. Thereās an incredible sense of playfulness with ostinato, pizzicato, and little parts that keep space in the music but keep it moving. They play with whatās happening at the core of the song.
Iāve been accused of everything. One of my favorite books I keep in my small library, we live in a small house, is called Musical Invective [Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethovenās Time, by Nicolas Slonimsky]. Itās a history of critics who have judged music; great artists like Bach, Beethoven, Robert Schumann, all the way down. Everybody. Brahms. They all got lambasted. I was called the āEdsel of pop music,ā somewhere in 1966. Of course, you can always remember the insults. But the thing is, Iām just so happy that I could do this work. Iāve seen so much change in the technology. Check it. The whole thing to me is colossal. Itās like being at [the Colossus of] Rhodes and connecting things. Youāre connecting the premeditated with the extemporaneous. You canāt lose your spirit! You have to keep running around that urn to catch that lover. You know? But the thing is, you need to face facts. What youāre dealing with here is basically in a binaural world, with a phantom there. Recentlyā¦ can I take it off on a vector here?
Yes.
I explored quad. Let me tell you how. I did Discover America in quad. It never came out that way, but I thought that people would one day be listening to music in their cars, and, if so, then quadraphonic was just the place to do it. But it didnāt happen. I was wrong. Thatās okay. Itās in the vault, unless theyāve thrown it away. Somebody asked me to do some music. This is maybe a lesson for musicians. You need income streams. There is the arena for The Eagles. Thereās the arena for a lot of British groups who do the blues. Thereās that. Then, away from the groups that look like red ants on watermelons, letās get up close and personal. Thereās the club flogging the merch after the show. I found one that interested me when a Professor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania emailed me out of the blue with no introduction. He said, āIām doing an installation at the Chicago Art Institute.ā Well, I happened to know that if youāre not playing L.A. or New York, Chicago is deep pocket; a big art scene. I got an offer to do music for an art installation. People are going to be there. All right. Theyāre going to be in a room, or rooms. Okay. So, itās not binaural? No. Itās quadrophonic? Okay, basically quadrophonic. There are just four different mixes. This is great, okay? So, dig it; I can put my woodwinds where I want. They can go here, and a little bit of strings here, and I can keep the bass in the center to keep things centered and not be loud. Allow a man to come in and look at a picture. If they want to talk intimately, allow people conversation. Couple a conversation pit with music that matters. That is coherent. Thatās glued to the art. And I did it. I pulled it off, and it was wonderful. It was a most profitable experience. And it suggested another museum here, The Hammer Museum. Itās a big museum in town. What Iām suggesting is this: go and find your galleries. Find four people who want to jam in an art gallery. I did it at conversation level. Thatās why I like the loop. I did a six-minute loop, with an occasional symphonic. It was lush and full, and, āWhoa!ā To announce the thunder of that lightning that just snaked through the chamber, and the thunder that rolled around. Iāve got it all. I can punctuate things. I can stay relevant and remind them that this is a musical composition. Itās a serious composition. And sometimes itās an insistent reality.
With the quad or the surround-type scenario you can provide a different experience, depending on where you are in the room.
Iām not bragging here. Iām not boasting. Iām saying, āWasnāt I lucky to get an offer to do a quadrophonic project in an entirely different income stream called the art world?ā Any young musician who wonders how to apply their talents, their great gift, to some opportunity, I say, āMake that opportunity!ā Go meet somebody else. Get interested in somebody elseās work. Start finding out what horizontal relationships mean, darn it!
Well, your whole career has been certain pivots, and looking at very different collaborations, whether itās writing lyrics with Brian Wilson, or putting out solo records, or writing music for film, or early music films that you did with Warner Bros. A bunch of very different things all relating back to music, of course.
Yeah. Weāre all trying to serve. I hate to be redundant, but I am, which is the danger of being 78 and having a limited memory. I donāt forget that President Truman dropped the atomic bomb. It was his decision. That created a new geological era called Anthropocene. But man, this country. We have multiplied and subdued the earth. Thatās how they demark this new geological era; the 1945 dropping of the bomb. I donāt forget that. But there was something which is, of course, I think a step of human hubris and a very sad thing that had to happen. But Truman said something that has stuck to me like needlepoint from some great aunt who left in the parlor somewhere, and here it is: āItās astonishing what can be accomplished if you do not care who gets the credit.ā So here I am. Really. And youāve got to know how to eat crow. I think it takes humility to be a shaker, and it takes humility to be a mover, and it takes humility to be a musician and really enjoy the distraction of collaboration.
Definitely.
Isnāt it terrible? [plays piano]
Well, it is a skill to build up to learn how to see what could be brought out in others with production, with arrangement, with recording, and all these things that we do.
Well, itās amazing to me. In 1966, I got that little Moog synthesizer, the phone jack patchbay, I got that thing to say the words āIce Capades.ā I got myself ten thousand dollars in a national commercial. I proved that I was commercial when I could do that. That sound interested me. Then we get to something like Orange Crate Art with Brian Wilson in ā95. They just came out with a reissue of it, which I recommend to you if you want to see somebodyās slip show, if you want to catch me at my most vulnerable. One of the discs is without Brian. I didnāt have the gauze of a vocal.
Seven Strings & Inara George
On a break last week, my friend Inara George ā daughter of Lowell George, my dear late friend ā Iāve known her all her life, since the day she was born in Cockeysville, Maryland. We recorded with George Massenburg [Tape Op #54, 63]. A great engineer. She wrote a song about a red-tailed hawk. She got close range with an uncompromising red-tailed hawk on a limb of a tree in her yard when sheād gone outside. It stood there, the predator and the prey, with the prey within its claws. So, she wrote a song about it. A very small thing, supremely unimportant. This is the kind of stuff I love. Take me to a quiet place, please. So, we went there to this refuge in her yard. She spun a beautiful song. She sang it and played it with guitar, very simple. [plays piano] Something like that. Intimating, but not saying the chords. Theyāre there, but sheās not playing them. The melody, and her geometry in the song form; Iām talking about math, folks. Weāre all connected by these numbers. We see it! Iāve seen Chopin on an oscilloscope back in the ā60s. Wow, look at that geometry! Perfection! Iāve seen the synthesthetics of that, yeah. Music realizes sound, all my life. Inara said, āWould you put some strings around this?ā I said, āNo, Inara. You donāt need a thing. I wouldnāt.ā She said, āNo, youāve got to. Please? I told them I would do this song, if youāll do the arrangement.ā Some guy wants to do a project for the Audubon Society to give them a whole bunch of songs by singers about birds. So, I did an arrangement. I did what I was talking about. Seven strings. Thatās what I do. Three violins, two violas, one cello, and one bass. It took me years to learn that. I adopted that approach to orchestration in about 1964. Itās easier than quartet writing, for you folks who understand; you peers of mine. This is easier work if youāre under a tight schedule. If they want it good and they want it Monday, donāt give them the quartet. Give them the septet and dedicate the bass to pizzicato. Anyway, it was a triumph. What an opportunity for me!
I havenāt heard that yet!
Now weāre down to the primitive, whatever it is. Why was I using a [Fender] Rhodes on that? It has a certain era or mark of time, but it has valor. I was scared to death, because they said, āYeah, you can do it,ā and I allowed them, because I wanted to see it released. So, they released it. What it did was show how Iāve always struggled to get that 60/40 of the string section. Maybe I would bump up the live strings to articulate and enunciate, and, behind that bowing, maybe put a ghost that is MIDI-directed strings. Iāve always felt that. But the thing is, itās the proportionality of acoustic events, arranged or not, to the premeditated events that has been my nexus. This is where I work. This is my lab.
What do you consider your ālabā?
This is what I say. Iām 78. I went through McCarthyism. I went through the Cold War. Iāve seen so much. After this battle, weāll all wear a crown, really. But we do need to support the arts. I do deserve your attention. You and I face the same hegemonic enemy. It is not that the government should have the arts wagging their tail. No, it is the arts that are to wag the governmentsā tails. We are to tell the vox pop, all of us who support these aspects of the recorded arts. And, letās face it, sir; thatās why weāre here. Thatās really my desire. To somehow create something durable as denim thatās in the recorded arts. I hope that we can make that a conduit. Keep the conduits to high fidelity. I enjoy that expression. Itās not simply a matter of melancholy to me to want something thatās hi-fi. For seven years, I was the American advisor to a place called the House of the Worldās Cultures in Berlin. Itās the largest arts organization in Germany. Haus der Kulturen der Welt.
I was on their advisory board. There were eight people.
I had nothing to say. I donāt know enough. The only thing I did was one time make a speech about a century of music and its monetization. But it is a very interesting organization. They have over 100,000 wax cylinders of cultures which are dead and songs which havenāt been heard in our time. Over 100,000 waiting to be digitized. Theyāve probably got on to it now. They also have the Berliner Philharmoniker. Why do the Germans want a cultural institution to be so solid? Because they want to embrace multiculturalism. Theyāve got to invent it. They canāt let Hitlerian precepts and xenophobia ever destroy German logic and cultural appeal. Theyāre looking to regain their position. I learned so much. Multiculturalism; Iām not just trying to use big words. Big words mean nothing, folks. Weāve seen it. Whatās his name, that square who occupied the oval office, knew how to keep it simple so everybody could understand, what Frank Zappa called the āmass midget mind.ā I think weāre doing a good job. I hope people will get centered around the arts and start to give discretionary time to the arts, which are central to all I understand.
