BB relationship with Van Dyke Parks
Rich E P:
Ignore this post. Sorry.
Uncomfortable Seat:
Quote from: c-man on October 20, 2007, 07:41:30 AM
he and Mike shared a plane ride out
I thought it was a helicopter
the captain:
Here is the cost-sharing-flight story, discussed in this thread mostly from recollections, as told in the April 6, 2000, issue of the New York Times (copied and pasted from vandykeparks.com). I figured it's worth having on the record.
..............
"Many years later, when [producer] Terry Melcher wanted to take the song 'Kokomo' to the tropical islands, he called me and wanted to use my Rolodex, so to speak. So, I brought some great musician friends -- people who'd played with Sinatra, Fitzgerald, Cecil Taylor -- to play with me on that session. I was paid well for my work, although it was a nonunion session -- no hospitalization, no dental, nothing extra if it went commercial. The Beach Boys, after all, were Republicans -- unions weren't something to mention to them. We weren't dealing with Studs Terkel. We were dealing with Bruce Johnston and Mike Love, who'd become the entity known as the Beach Boys. Of course, the song went to number one, and Mike Love always made a very big deal out of the fact that it was made without Brian Wilson. And that was always very alarming to me because beyond the Beach Boys' beautiful music, my allegiance has always been to Brian Wilson, who hired me years ago and told me he'd give me 50 percent of anything we wrote together. He said that speaking from his throne at a time when I was nobody. Isn't that the sign of a marvelous person?"
Parks recalls he saw Love one final time when Melcher called him to Monterey to play synthesizer on the Beach Boys' final album, recorded without Brian, 1992's dreadful Summer in Paradise. A neighbor offered to fly the musician to Monterey in his one-engine plane if Parks agreed to cover gas and other expenses. When he got there, Love was meditating in Melcher's living room. "For the first time in 30 years, he was able to ask me directly, once again, 'What do those lyrics -- Over and over the crow flies, uncover the cornfield -- mean?'" Parks said about that meeting in '95. "And I was able to tell him, once again, 'I don't know.' I have no idea what those words mean. I was perhaps thinking of Van Gogh's wheat field or an idealized agrarian environment. Maybe I meant nothing, but I was trying to follow Brian Wilson's vision at that time." Parks says Love asked if he could fly back to L.A. in the plane with him. "We had a nice chat and he insisted that he wanted to split the cost of the flight with me, so he gave me a card with his number on it. The next morning, I called to discover it was a disconnected number. And that was the last time I saw Mike Love."
Magic Transistor Radio:
Maybe Van Dyke should sue Mike and give him a taste of his own medicine.
Dancing Bear:
Quote from: Rich E P on October 21, 2007, 12:40:44 PM
it is no secret that his version of events are what you see in the TV movie.
I've never read Mike admiting he was a wife beater in any interview. ;)
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