Interview with VDP on "Smile and Other Difficulties" in the NY Times

[PS]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/arts/music/smile-and-other-difficulties.html?ref=arts&_r=0

"I believe that anything worth its salt in the arts must create a wobble. We are not polestars We are here struggling in the dynamics of justice, between the absolutism of faith and reasonable doubt. That’s what I want my work to do."

[Smilin Ed H]

"Also, by 1967 I had been through eight months of Beach Boys experience — or Brian Wilson, really, with one short conversation with one or two of the other Beach Boys."

Is this another re-write?

[leggo of my ego]

Sometimes I want to dislike this guy but he is just too damn smart to hate.

And I feel he is genuine and not pompous. Like him or not Van Dyke has got the goods.

[filledeplage]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/arts/music/smile-and-other-difficulties.html?ref=arts&_r=0

"I believe that anything worth its salt in the arts must create a wobble. We are not polestars We are here struggling in the dynamics of justice, between the absolutism of faith and reasonable doubt. That’s what I want my work to do."

Thanks for posting that. One section, not concerning the Boys, dealing with Parks' epiphany of turning "anger into activism" with regard an oil spill got my attention.  And cultivating art to be used as a vehicle for raising awareness impressed me as pretty responsible.

One or two BB conversations...not so credible. I was impressed that he was "around the scene" for some duration.

But, his Disney "Bare Necessities" work is impressive.  I kept a complete Disney anthology on my piano, always at school.  The best stuff in the world for young kids to listen to.  Great composers and lyricists. You can't go wrong with Disney.

Hope his hand mobility improves.  

[Rocky Raccoon]

I never knew he arranged "The Bare Necessities."  I wonder if that went into Brian choosing to cover that on his Disney album.

[rogerlancelot]

"I went everywhere to get a contract, to find a patron. But I couldn’t [have sex] in a women’s penitentiary with a fist full of pardons in the United States. I think it’s because I bring a degree of skepticism to my work that makes it truly unbrandable. And branding is what it’s all about."

Can anybody explain what this means? I even asked several of my friends (all of us live in the US) and nobody knows. I'll feel stupid later when I "get it" but right now I am not "getting it". 

[alf wiedersehen]

"I went everywhere to get a contract, to find a patron. But I couldn’t [have sex] in a women’s penitentiary with a fist full of pardons in the United States. I think it’s because I bring a degree of skepticism to my work that makes it truly unbrandable. And branding is what it’s all about."

Can anybody explain what this means? I even asked several of my friends (all of us live in the US) and nobody knows. I'll feel stupid later when I "get it" but right now I am not "getting it". 

I have solved the riddle.

What he's saying is this:
1) The fistful of pardons is symbolic for something that is wanted. In this situation, the women want to be exonerated and be free of their jail time.
2) The women in the penitentiary is a metaphor. Even with what the women wanted most, he couldn't get anything to happen.

He's saying that no one in the record business would touch him. In a very roundabout way, that is.

[leggo of my ego]

"I went everywhere to get a contract, to find a patron. But I couldn’t [have sex] in a women’s penitentiary with a fist full of pardons in the United States. I think it’s because I bring a degree of skepticism to my work that makes it truly unbrandable. And branding is what it’s all about."

Can anybody explain what this means? I even asked several of my friends (all of us live in the US) and nobody knows. I'll feel stupid later when I "get it" but right now I am not "getting it". 

He is comparing his failure to succeed (get a contract) in the US to someone that failed to intice women prisoners to have sex - even if he could get them set free from jail.

[rogerlancelot]

Thank you both. And one has to admit that it is a very roundabout statement.

 

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Thank you both. And one has to admit that it is a very roundabout statement.

 

Now you know how the Beach Boys felt having to sing his lyrics.

[?]

You guys need to watch more Women In Prison movies.  I'd recommend any of the ones starring Pam Grier.

[leggo of my ego]

Thank you both. And one has to admit that it is a very roundabout statement.

 

Now you know how the Beach Boys felt having to sing his lyrics.

The horror of it all - and right after they were voted #1 over the Beatles and conquered Japan as Samurais!

[rn57]

VDP's been doing a bunch of interviews. These are shorter but still have a couple of things of interest.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-van-dyke-parks-20130724,0,249492.story

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/07/16/after-a-two-decade-wait-listen-to-van-dyke-parks-songs-cycled/

http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/24/would-pop-music-be-different-if-van-dyke-parks-had-more-hits/
is a follow-up post about the NY Times interview which I'm linking to mainly because it links to the YouTube clip of "Opportunity For Two."

One thing that caught my eye in the Times interview was Van Dyke's statement that he performed Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire at the age of 12 and met the composer. In a 2009 interview he said he did Pierrot when at the American Boychoir School in Princeton. He didn't enroll in there until he was 8, in the fall of 1951 I think....and Schoenberg had died in LA a few months before, so I'd guess it's rather unlikely he had the chance to join Einstein, Sinatra, Ringo, and the other eminent folk of VDP's acquaintance.  But it could be VDP has gotten his recollections mixed up and he met a student or three of Schoenberg's - there were a ton of them around Princeton and New York in those days.

[guitarfool2002]

If there is one quote from the original NY Times article to place the Brian and the Smile era into a historical context beyond pop culture and more from a music industry perspective, it's this:

My opportunity at Warner Brothers came specifically from the fact that I had worked with Brian Wilson, and carried what they might have thought was a Rosetta stone to Brian’s thinking. I don’t think it’s sinister to suspect that they wanted to learn what Brian Wilson knew, because he was the most powerful commercial success as a singer and songwriter in the industry then.