The Smiley Smile Message Board

No it hasn't run but it's in preparation, to appear very shortly. I have been in contact with the obituarist since yesterday.  He just asked me about the toughies - just what is known about Brian's relationship with Tandyn, recording or writing or otherwise, and about the composition of SOS.

I gave him the emails of:
AGD
Peter Reum
Andrew Sandoval
Peter Ames Carlin

Can y'all suggest anyone else?

I told him to get in touch with all the Almer associates of the '60s that came to mind - Eddie Hodges, Billy Elder, Jules Alexander, Terry Kirkman, Ruthann Friedman, Nurit Wilde, some others - and from the BBs period I gave him the email of Billy Hinsche's movie company.

But how about Stanley Shapiro who worked with Tandyn and Brian on those rewritten lyrics? Where he at?  Or anyone else you can think of the reporter should talk to?

Tell him to ask Marilyn Wilson for her recollections.

Hooo, boy - just what she'd love to talk about after a hectic day in the world of real estate.

If he's asking specifically about Sail On Sailor, then VDP would be the obvious...

Well - Van Dyke is pretty busy right now. When someone from that time period like Tandyn Almer died it reminds him that he's got to get stuff done and then get the next thing done. Especially past four score and seven now. I believe Van Dyke's parents were in their late seventies when they died. His brother Carson who wrote "Somethin' Stupid" died at 69. There's an older brother in his mid-seventies, as I remember. So now that old Van's got the time to do his own stuff instead of work for hire to get his kids thru college like before, his time to straighten out the record is limited.

Especially when he already did that with SOS. I understand he simply informed the obituarist he never worked directly with Tandyn on SOS or anything else. Which given what he has said before must be true.

Van Dyke's spelled out in some interview online what percentage of the words and music he estimated was his - I think he came up with the title itself too. I was trying to find that this afternoon but no luck.

Like I said, I sent him to the experts - but my understanding is that, so far as is known, this song started with Brian playing the chords in that opening verse, then after a while Tandyn next to him supplying words. (And, I dunno, maybe a chord change? I always thought the changes at "often frightened, unenlightened" could be either Van Dyke's or Tandyn's contribution - I can point to similar changes here and there in their own oeuvre.)

Then Ray Kennedy cooked up some words when Brian was playing it again....then it got set aside....then Van Dyke's got to hypnotize Brian, and Tandyn is not there to hold the watch, y'know. Then Jack Rieley starts censoring stuff. Or I thought that was one way it was supposed to be sequenced. It's been hashed out on the board before.

And the result is the only song with a five-writer credit, not a credit for most or all members of an existing group, not a foreign-language tune with English-language lyricist(s) credited alongside the original writer(s), that could be called a classic - one recorded by Ray Charles no less.

But good luck untangling that.  As I think I said, I never asked Tandyn about it via Facebook. He was not in good shape and anyway SOS was from a time probably much less well remembered by him than his '60s work. I guess Rieley must have been in less of a fog than the other guys....but when he starts talking about what he contributed, more problems come in.

Case in point: Marcella. Co-credited to Tandyn on all the labels and credits except the original CATP - I can't remember if Tandyn's name is on that record with the Captain at the wheel. On the sheet music. Tandyn plays on the damn thing, studio version that is.

 But if you look at those ancient writings of Jack's which can be found someplace on the board, he speaks of Marcella as if he'd written every word of it. And if you go to BMI's database, the credits read Brian Wilson and Jack Rieley period - Andrew Sandoval pointed this out in his Tandyn tribute broadcast the other night.

I saw with my own eyes, at Tandyn's service, two beaten up paper grocery bags filled with his financial documents - we're not talking about a guy with a cozy little office in Nashville or out off Wilshire. I got the feeling that some stuff involving the assignment of credits might be in there. But it's up to his people - not as in "my people will call your people," but the old fashioned kind, family - to get it sorted out.

Maybe, hopefully, when they go thru all his stuiff, they'll find him doing some demos for SOS and Marcella

And far from it for me to rustle the shade of OSD - but I am going to advise this obituarist to talk to Mike Love and get him on the record this once.

We all know about Mike's side and Van Dyke's side of their respective stories.

But I have never seen Mike mention Tandyn in an interview or article.

I do know of one case where Tandyn spoke.  At one of the Youtube clips of Along Comes Mary, there's a comments section where, as I remember, a guy whose brother was in the DC chapter of the high-IQ Mensa society with Tandyn said he was introduced to him, said, "my brother says you were worked with the Beach Boys," and Tandyn answered, "for a while, then Mike Love decided I was a corrupting influence on Brian."

Which is to be expected, but I'd like to hear it in Mike's own words, and whatever else he says.

It could be more extensive than that. Some time back, before Tandyn died, I found something very remarkable online which hints - just hints - at what might be in some of the nearly thousand tapes he left. And it is relevant to his BBs period.  Will put up the link later this week.

Are there any members of The Association who would be good sources?

Well, I've read Jules Alexander was the Assn member who heard Curt and Tandyn's demo, took it to the other guys and said they should do it.  Terry Kirkman is the Assn member (ex now) who was one of Tandyn's friends on Facebook. Told the obituarist to reach Terry through there and try to get hold of the other guys thru the band site.

Maybe they could ask Mr Desper for his recollections...

Of course, SWD - didn't think of him. Will tell the obituarist to get in touch with him.

Hope you got the proper permission to give out those e-mail addresses. Just sayin'...

VDP is no spring chicken, but he not 87 either.

Whoa.  Awesome post, rn57.

Every email address I gave the guy is right on somebody's own site...And Andrew, I don't know where I got that four score and seven. OK, I know. At Tandyn's memorial service there was a  photo taken of him immediately after he moved to DC in 1977.  He had these gigantic muttonchop sideburns like Neil Young back then except bigger - they almost came together and touched at his chin. He looked just like Abe Lincoln letting out his inner caveman or something.

For those in America I should explain the explanation. Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address begins "Four score and seven years ago."

This morning, Tandyn's obit did not run in the Washington Post. I guess at the paper they have realized that this was a figure of real importance in American cultural history who breathed his last in a rented basement room in what newspaper guys used to call their "beat," and they want to get the whole story down.

You're doing the good work here, mate.

I'll get in touch with Stan, to see if he'd be willing to talk.

Much thanks.  I want to make sure this writer at the Post gets the Tandyn story told fully and accurately. Whenever Tandyn was contacted regarding questions about his career - and that did happen on occasion, for despite his mysterious and reclusive reputation he almost always had a listed telephone number - his habit was to be either terse and nonrevealing, or to tell some tall tale off the top of his head.  The conversation Dawn Eden describes at

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/feastofeden/2013/01/the-psychodramas-and-the-traumas-gone-the-songs-are-left-unsung-tandyn-almer-1942-2013/

where he told her that Johnny Walsh who co-wrote "Little Girl Lost And Found" with him was the same guy as the John Walsh who hosted the long running TV series America's Most Wanted, is a case in point.

I told the obituarist that his work isn't complete without asking Brian's manager if he had a statement - though I don't know if he'd have anything to say. Besides talking to Mike, I also pointed out that Al and Bruce were sober at the BBs sessions where Tandyn was present and could provide firsthand accounts.

Ed, thanks so much for doing that. The writer's email - this is at the paper's site, just so you know I'm mindin' the ps and qs Jay - is matt.schudel@washpost.com

Don't think I mentioned the paper has this scheduled to run Sunday - so Ed, tell Stan to email quick  if he'd like to contribute. Several of the Association members have already been interviewed, though I kind of hope the obit doesn't have a ton of words hashing over that age-old debate central to (Curt) Boettcher-ology.

Bear in mind that Mr Desper, if I recall correctly, was less than enthusiastic about Almer and the effect he had on Brian, so it'll be interesting to have his point of view.

If he bothers to give it

Interesting that Tandyn blamed Mike Love for his ending his relationship with Brian, but others around Brian (Marilyn, Steve D.) didn't have a very positive opinion of him, either. I'm guessing it was a case of drugs being involved, or the people around Brian believed that somehow Tandyn was leading Brian astray and using him.

Hi, folks, let me take this opportunity to introduce myself.  I'm Tandyn's sister-in-law, and I will be administering his estate. I'm married to Tandyn's brother, Nic Minetor (they have the same mother, but different fathers).  I want to let you know some things that are in progress already since Tandyn passed away on January 8.

We have cleaned out his apartment—no small task—and hundreds of cassette tapes found there are now being digitized by a friend in the industry.  Many of these tapes are re-recordings of songs Tandyn was working on over the last several decades, as he strove to create demos that would sell.  Sadly, Tandyn was not a particularly good businessman, so many of these songs never received a hearing.  Many of them are also very exciting.  Once the tapes are digitized and we know what we have, I will begin looking for artists who may have an interest in recording these songs.

I am a published author with more than 30 books to my credit (http://www.amazon.com/Randi-Minetor/e/B001JSBNEO), so later this year (once the estate has been settled—an enormous job), I will begin work on a biography.  I would love to know all of the names of the people who knew Tandyn back in the 1960s and 1970s.  I have been following the discussion here since I first found it last week—it took a week for me to be approved to join Smiley Smile—so my list is growing quickly, but I want to be exhaustive in my interviews, so the more names the better.  If you don't want to clutter up this thread with this info, please feel free to email me directly at randi@minetor.com.

I'm so glad that some of you have talked to Matt Schudel at the WashPost.  I got an email from him yesterday telling me that he could not possibly interview everyone whose name he received, so he is not looking for more people at this point.  He was amazed at the number of people who knew Tandyn.

If you'd like me to add you to the email newsletter list I'm developing to keep in touch with Tandyn's friends and fans, please send me your email address.  I will not share it with anyone and I will never sell my list, so you are safe with me.  :)

I hope to hear from many of you soon.  Thank you all for your kind words about my brother-in-law's music.  Let's hope we can get some more of it out there in the near future.

Randi Minetor
randi@minetor.com

Good luck with your projects, Randi. Your brother-in-law was very talented and had a very interesting life during a period of time where a lot was happening on a cultural and social level. I'm sure there will be interest in it.

A couple of hours ago Matt Schudel of the Washington Post sent me an email saying that due to work on other projects his obit for Tandyn has been set aside for a while, and he'll resume work on it later next week.

Well - Tandyn misses his chance to have his obit run in the DC paper on Inauguration Day, except that because it is a Sunday this year President Obama is not actually being inaugurated for a second term tomorrow. (Instead they'll do it on Monday.) I think wherever he is he'll adjust to that disappointment. So there's still some time to think of people who should be interviewed or quoted for this.

If anybody is writing to Randi Minetor keep in mind that she and Tandyn's half-brother and mother have a lot on their plate at this point and are trying to find answers to a lot of questions. But certainly it would be great for people who knew him like Ed Roach and Stephen Desper to get in touch with her.

 
BUT isn't Monday Dr.Martin Luther King day? He can't get inaugurated on a Holiday, can he?

In 1997, Martin Luther King Day was observed on January 20 for the first time since the law enacting the holiday was passed.  At that time, Bill Clinton was to be inaugurated to serve his second term. Rather than set the precedent of being sworn in on Saturday or Tuesday, he decided to take the oath of office on Monday. (Traditionally, if Jan. 20 falls on a Sunday, the President takes a private oath quietly before two witnesses and the Chief Justice - just to make sure the Presidency is not in legal limbo for 24 hours - and then takes the oath publicly the next day.)

But would anyone notice ?  Regan was pres for eight years.

David M. Beard just Tweeted that he's just finished interviewing Mike about Holland's 40th and "some other topics." Wonder if Tandyn's death was among them. The Washington Post's reporter told me early last week that Tandyn's obit was to run last weekend, but it did not appear. I'm starting to wonder if the Post's editors have recalled the Paul Vance case from 2006 and are getting cold feet.

(That involved a Florida man who told his wife he had co-written Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini and other hit songs using the pen name Paul Vance. When he died she dutifully told this to the local paper and TV station and the story ended up on the AP wire and appearing in dozens of papers including the NY Times. This news much surprised the real Paul Vance, who lived 20 miles away from the dead impostor. He promised to sue all the papers that ran his obit if it messed up his flow of royalty checks. Yes, Tandyn is dead...but it may be that some people have trouble believing that a man who lived in rented rooms and basements in the Washington suburbs for 36 years could be the same person who wrote a million selling, million radio play song.)

With SO many one hit wonders out there, it's hard to believe they'd doubt this one! 
( now the guy I knew that claimed he wrote ALL of Neil Diamonds songs and sold his credit to Neil for $10K, THAT guy I would doubt....)   

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/2013/02/16/76d3ebba-5f44-11e2-a389-ee565c81c565_story.html

Pretty interesting info throughout it - and we finally learn just who it was that introduced Tandyn to Brian, a musician whose name I don't remember seeing mentioned on the board.

Schudel refers to the "internal rhymes" of SOS being characteristic of Tandyn's work as a lyricist. I can't recall if I directed him to the Copyright Office catalog card for SOS which reads: "music by Brian Wilson and Tandyn Almer; lyrics by Ray Kennedy, Jack Rieley and Van Dyke Parks."

Anyway, after this we should be seeing an obit in the LA Times afore long....and maybe even in the NY Times (which managed to publish Shadow Morton's obit within about 24 hours of his death Thursday night).

-according to the Washington Post obit is Joe DeAguero, who turns out to have been the vibes player for the Afro-Blues Quintet Plus One, an outfit that recorded a few albums under the auspices of that curious character Johnny Kitchen (one or two of which featured Almer compositions).

[brain fart]

Well, there could have been a lot more about the BBs in the obit. (I only found out last night Ray Kennedy has his own site which has his email address - I should have looked that up and sent that to Schudel weeks ago! Heck, maybe I should send a link to the obit to Kennedy and see if he'd care to explain who did what with the lyrics.)

And it didn't even get around to that sorta famous if little-seen bong he invented.

But I see on Twitter that the piece is causing nearly as much of a stir as Shadow Morton's obits did yesterday. And one of the tweets is from the music critic of NPR's Fresh Air, and NPR is based right in DC, so maybe we're gonna hear a segment there about Tandyn sometime. 

Thanks for sticking with this, rn, I'm sure your efforts were a significant reason for it being as extensive as it was. It would indeed be fascinating to hear from Ray Kennedy about the genesis of "Sail On Sailor"...I think we are all fascinated by the particularly inchoate nature of the creative process as it was manifested in the 67-73 time frame, where Brian and the band are on what might best be characterized as a series of collaborative roller coasters.

I also thought it was a nice touch for Schudel to provide a link to the Leonard Bernstein "Inside Pop" special which is up in its entirety at You Tube. Hadn't seen the complete show in many years, and it was extremely interesting (though I really wish that they'd replaced most of that Herman's Hermits footage!!).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afU76JJcquI

This was covered awhile back:
Ray, co-author of Sail on Sailor, has this to say in a recent newspaper article:

"On that note, tell me a Brian Wilson story."  "Danny Hutton, one of the original singers of Three Dog Night, called me in 1970 when I was singing with Jeff Beck and said, "Hey, we need a hit song." So I went over to his house, and Brian was there in a little room with a piano and they stuck me in that room with Brian. We were there for three days and ended up writing "Sail on Sailor," which was originally intended for Three Dog. We went in and cut the basic tracks with Three Dog Night; we hadn't slept in about a week. Then Brian got up with a razor blade and cut the tapes and said, "Only Ray Kennedy or Van Dyke Parks can do this song." And he left. We all stood there looking at each other going, "What?".  He called me every day after that, and I wouldn't talk to him. Three or four years later, I heard it on the radio and went, "Who's that?"  It turns out the song came out on the Beach Boys' "Holland" album. "

http://www.venturacountystar.com/vcs/entertainment_columnists/article/0,1375,VCS_4436_3465548,00.html

http://www.npr.org/2013/02/19/172431541/along-comes-mary-songwriter-was-a-lost-talent-of-the-1960s#

A segment of the flagship show of National Public Radio, in which Parke Puterbaugh, longtime Rolling Stone contributor and Phish's publicity director for years, discusses Tandyn. (Puterbaugh, as the Washington Post obit notes, was in frequent touch with Tandyn by phone over the last several years and wrote the liner notes to the upcoming Sundazed CD of Almer demos.)

Thanks, rn, for the link to the segment on NPR. I know they weren't going to give it more than five minutes, but doubling the length could have gotten a bit more into Tandyn's relationship with BW and the contents of the upcoming CD. That would have been nice.

And thanks, c-man, for the info about Ray Kennedy. (That link didn't work for me, seems to date from 2005, which often means that stuff gets taken down, but the quote was intact elsewhere.) Has anyone tried to go through the songs written in this time frame to see how many of 'em stem from the type of arrangement that Ray describes--Brian stashed in a room over at Danny's house, banging out song ideas while in the middle of some level of la vida loca? And can anyone--aside from Alan Boyd, of course--pinpoint the date for the SOS baclking track that's featured on the Hawthorne compilation? Would it be 11/28/72 (as noted in ADG's logs, but not, IIRC, so designated in Alan's liner notes) or might it pre-date that session?

Final question: the boot that has the various versions of SOS that was mentioned in the earlier thread...does it provide any recording dates for that material? That's material that I've not yet come across, so any details would be appreciated.

Well, Tandyn's sister-in-law Randi Minetor tells me that the producer of the NPR segment (who wanted to have Tandyn's half-brother appear in it, but was not able to reach him in time) told her that NPR plans to do a segment on Sundazed's "Along Comes Tandyn" album when it's released next month.

(And - almost amazingly given the years of delays - Sundazed has sent out the promo CDs of it, because Bob Brainen on his show at WFMU-FM this morning, before playing a couple of Almer-penned tunes, mentioned he'd just gotten one in the mail.)

Since NPR's people will have more time to put this one together, I hope they can open it with Brian offering a few words, maybe about the time he and Tandyn spent a week listening to a recording of Rhapsody In Blue - playing a bar or two, lifting the needle, exploring the music on the piano, putting the needle back down, repeating the process. He mentioned this in an article a few years back in, I think the Ventura County Star.

Over the week since the Washington Post piece ran, several reminiscences Tandyn have shown up online. The one that sticks in my mind was at Google Plus, from one of the young musicians he mentored in his later days:

https://plus.google.com/105251619835490638700/posts/MrogK9QXz6b

In it, Tandyn is called...get ready for this...."approachable."  That's one word I never expected to see in the same sentence with his name! But then again, he was dealing with people who were curious about what he was doing in the here and now.  He probably figured that keeping up that aloof and unknowable rep was essential with most people trying to discuss his past, or else he'd never get Barney Hoskyns or someone like that off the phone so he could get to his keyboard.  (Though he did, quietly, stay in contact with some journalists and music historians in his last years.)

http://www.sundazed.com/shop/tandyn.php

Above, Sundazed Records' page for Along Comes Tandyn, which is to come out on CD and vinyl later this month. The page links to Parke Puterbaugh's liner notes for the release, which quote Tandyn extensively about his career. Just about all of it focuses on his life and work up to 1966 when the material on the album was recorded, and not beyond that, but a couple of things are worth noting.

One is that Tandyn refers to getting the keys to UCLA's music building - he says they could open the door of any room in the place. So he used this access, in the early '70s, to go with Brian up to a room where there were two Steinways alongside each other, and they'd sit down and start playing, just like Ferrante and Teicher, I guess. So if any of you SS'ers were at UCLA in the early '70s and thought you saw Brian walking in and out of the music building, it was him and not that wacky tobacky playin' tricks with you.

The other is quite intriguing. Tandyn states that around 1965 when he wrote Along Comes Mary, there was kind of a competition among the hipper Strip music folk to see who would be able to get a song alluding to marijuana use on the airwaves.  Kim Fowley, says Tandyn, was in on this...and he says Van Dyke Parks was too. Could "High Coin" be about pot? Well, y'know, back then many folk assumed that anything that had the word "high" in it was probably about Mary Jane - perhaps even the TV show Twelve O'Clock High.

 But I dunno if I'm ready just yet to ask Van Dyke if his charming debut song is about tokin' up. (Or his first song as an adult. He's talked in interviews about one he wrote when he was five or thereabouts that went, "Brown dog, brown dog, amen, amen."

Also, Tandyn states that he only dropped acid about ten times in his life. Over three times more than Brian, but by the standards of your average Strip druggie back then, pretty small potatoes.