features

The musicangle Interview: Song Cyclist and Brian Wilson Collaborator Speaks

Van Dyke Parks (Interview (reprinted from The Tracking Angle October 1996))

Matthew' Greenwald Sparks Van Dyke Parks

MG: Well, let's first hit that great rewind button in the sky... After you attended Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh, I believe that one of the first professional jobs that you got as a musician was playing clarinet on Art Linkletter's television show, "House Party"...

Van Dyke Parks: (Laughter) No, I came out to California expecting that job to be waiting for me... It didn't happen. (Laughter)

MG: So, you came out here and lived with your older brother, Carson?

VDP: Yeah, we lived in Seal Beach.

MG: So I guess at that time you kind of set the clarinet aside and learned 'Raquinto' style guitar... Did the two of you play coffee houses?

VDP: Well, we played all of the hip places to play. We played all the way from San Diego to Santa Barbara. We went up and down the coast and played all these places.

MG: Did you pass the basket for the money?

VDP: Well, it changed by degrees. It went for two years... It changed from taking day-old vegetables from behind supermarkets. We were competing for day-old vegetables. We got paid $7.50 a night at some events. That's what I got... My brother got $7.50 as well! That was like that until we got a stand-up bass player and we went up to $20 a night, that was with Terry Gilbert. Then we played at the Troubadour in 1963 and we got $750 a week.

MG: Big change...

VDP: Big change! We added a percussionist for that event.

MG: Well, I guess you could afford it by then...

VDP: (Laughter) Yeah! So you know, it changed... We played The Ash Grove, The Insomniac in Hermosa Beach, across the street from The Lighthouse... We saw the end of the Beat Generation and its dreams. I saw all of those folks snaking around heroin dens. I saw Lenny Bruce and met him at Pandora's Box. I saw the end of an era and the beginning of another era... I got enough caché and got offered jobs in emerging groups in rock 'n roll. I had one of the hottest dens of iniquity at my apartment. Everybody from New York came out and visited. People like Peter, Paul and Mary; members of The Byrds; David Crosby; and people like Roger Miller. All of these people that would come into town... Country artists...

MG: Did you know Loren Schwartz at this time (1) ?

VDP: I didn't meet Loren until '65... I forget who I met Loren through.

MG: Is he still around?

VDP: I've heard that Loren Schwartz is in Carmel or somewhere - Lauren and Linda Schwartz.

MG: Did he play?

VDP: I wouldn't think so...

MG: But his apartment was kind of a gathering place for a lot of musicians in L.A. at this time, from what I understand.

VDP: Yeah... But, I don't know who I met Loren through...

MG: I've heard that Brian Wilson met Tony Asher through him.

VDP: Did he? I have never figured how Loren came into that situation, whether he sold marijuana or what was happening... Someday I'd like to see how this group dynamic developed. You know, some of the people

1) Schwartz was an assistant at William Morris and a music biz hanger-on-er who Brian Wilson says turned him on to marijuana in 1964- MF

who are credited with a great deal, to me, did very little... Movers and shakers from the top to the bottom... The drug dealers, as far as I'm

concerned, are the record magnates, o.k.? Those are the dope dealers. Those are the people to point the finger at to talk about the smoking gun... Those are the people who are responsible for the untimely deaths of so many great musical talents, who threw them out on the road with impossible schedules... Those are the people who should be chastised and those are the people who survived, whose wives own all those collections of dressing rooms with dancing shoes. Those are the people who ought to be brought to trial... Loren Schwartz probably skulked out of town with no reputation - and residual problems from that era, the same as Brian Wilson has... That I pretty much escaped from because I never really made my mark in the era. But, if I'd made a bigger mark, I would have been a bigger target for the accusations that pursued many others. But, I must say that I have enjoyed every minute of it - with its excesses - and I wouldn't change anything, except I'd rather do it again in half the time. I wouldn't want to spend as much time at this reckless falling... We thought we were immortal, of course. That's the problem. It took too damn long.

MG: To jump back a bit, there was a songwriter named Terry Gilkyson who later co-wrote some things with you on the Jump LP. Did he lead you to the session work that you did for Disney films, Jungle Book and The Moonspinners?

VDP: Terry wrote the songs for those movies. Terry was a generation ahead of me, but he was like a pal. I had met Terry through my brother's group, The Easy Riders, and I came in to play in the last of the golden years of that group that had started in the early 50s. When I was a child, I had bought into that campaign. I put a nickel into a jukebox and played "Memories Are Made Of This" with Dean Martin backed by The Easy Riders: Terry Gilkyson and his friends. They had been glorious back in the days of Woody Guthrie. They had hung around with Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly in the pre-McCarthy hearing era.