Van Dyke Parks Interview

VAN DYKE PARKS

Orchestrating The Street

Introduction

A theme of organic inspiration runs through Van Dyke Parks' music, arising through his love of music of the street, that is, folk music and the ever-present refreshment, as he calls it, of world beat. It is also through the use of vinyl, which is (as he says) necessary to capture all the nuances created by the musicians. All this is combined with the point of a song (the "shortest through-line, that is, a short story" in music), namely, to address reality and serve a purpose. In this, he highlights one of his pivotal inspirations, Bob Dylan, who began in 1963 to deliver his message via his, if you will, "three chords and the truth".

Coming from essentially a classical music background, Parks also sees the richness of the folk music that often resides in "serious music", such as in the works of the Czech composer Antonin Dvorak, the American nineteenth century classical composer Louis Moreau Gottshalk (like Parks, strongly exposed to New Orleans) and Australian composer and arranger Percy Grainger. Grainger, in Parks' words "elevated" the street to the parlor. Grainger was, in addition, a pioneer in electronic music, a field that Parks himself was also quick to investigate.

Despite making several ground-breaking albums, exploring folk, fusing orchestral forces and melody, impressionism and world music, Parks has made much of his living as an arranger, that is, an orchestrator. He is very in demand from younger musicians, having made major contributions to the work of bands such as Silverchair and singers like Rufus Wainwright. He has recently been working with "pop art" dance artist Skrillex. Parks is now also touring frequently for the first time, following his recent opportunity to finish the legendary Beach Boys album "Smile" with Brian Wilson ( 2004). In his lyrics for Wilson's music, such as the extraordinary "Surf's Up" and "Cabin Essence" and in his first album "Song Cycle" (Warner Brothers, 1968), Parks swiftly made immortal contributions to popular music. It was also Parks who, in the late '90s, encouraged Wilson to perform again (with stunning results). After a series of albums exploring world music and world issues, Parks is now releasing a series of brand new singles on his own Bananastan label, many of which address currently pressing world issues.

Parks is firm in his irrefutable opinion of analog sound and vinyl recordings as the most superior, by far, sound reproduction medium. He stresses the word (hi) fidelity. Afterall, fidelity means "faithful": it is only with vinyl that you will have the most faithful sound re-production of what the musicians have played in the studio. Musicians take note.

The Song: A Purpose

Having recently toured Australia as a double bill with the country singer and story teller Kinky Friedman, Parks was keen to remark how the Australian city of Adelaide, the last date on his tour, was the cleanest town he had ever been in. He expressed the opinion that the air from the rest of the world had not "slipped around the girdle of the earth" to the city, with the glowing result of "pure atmosphere". He also noted how you could see the ocean floor from the airplane as you come in to land.

At the suggestion that, nevertheless, multinationals may be attempting to tighten their grip on the continent, he raised a major purpose of the song form itself, a subject in which, of course, he is an expert: "The multinationals, we're watching them like a hawk," he said. "That's how songs are born, songs are to born to come to grips with reality and to serve a purpose."

Q At a rock festival in Denmark (Roskilde), you said to an interviewer that "The answers are in the arts." Are you saying that art can teach people what is right and morally correct?

A "We should leave the planet as we found it. We've got to keep it clean. Songs are one way to highlight the issues. I try not to be dead-on in the process, and try to keep the 'b' in 'subtle'!
That's what I try to do.. . Songs should work on a subtle level as well as on a conscious level.
They should work on a conscious level, (but) leave room for inference.

"A song that's a good example of that is the song I finally decided to utter from my reaction to 9/11 ["Wall Street", which 'commemorates the fallen of 9/11', and which is one of Parks' six new vinyl 7 inch single releases on his Bananastan Label--bananastan.com]. Neil Young wrote a song called "Let's Roll". "Let's Roll" was his answer to 9/11. That was a song calling for revenge. Well I also wrote a song after 9/11 and that song did not call for revenge. I wanted to keep it close to my chest because I thought if I didn't, I might profit from disaster. My song more than anything alludes to the question 'Why did it happen?' 'What can we do to keep it from happening again? Why are they so pissed off at us? I'm talking about my country! What can we do to change, to bring peace to our times without surrendering the very essence of who we are, and maybe just re-addressing just how much space we've taken up of the world's resources?'

"There might be plenty of reasons why Islam would be pissed at Christianity. But then again, I come from a country where only thirty five per cent of the people believe Charles Darwin's theory... only thirty five per cent of Americans believe in it. The rest of them think God Almighty did it all in seven days.

"Fundamentalism troubles me. I deal with it as best I can in a song form. So songs can leave more questions than provide answers, and I think it's very stange to me that I haven't developed a formula for song-writing. A genre, as it were. But I've left a series of questions that I hope do agitate. I see so much smug satisfaction and it really troubles me because I'm 68 now, and I have very little time to suffer fools."

Q With your new singles, you have a great opportunity to make some statements, right now.

A This is the problem. I've waited around for an invitation to record, and the song call didn't come. As a matter of fact, the business collapsed--that thing called the music business. It's still there with a skeleton crew. Basically the party's over. So it fell on my shoulders to release my own works, and to hope that I would do more than serve my own vanity. So here I am putting out these singles, at 45 rpm, hi fi stereo signals. They're downloadable, of course. But the singles are what matter. They are what brought me to this racket we call music. You can touch them, you can see them. They're decorated and they sound good!"

The Vinyl World

Q LPs and 45 rpm singles are analog, while digital music quite literally has bits missing. Even the most sampled CD with bit rates to the max, it's still missing bits. It's like with digital photos, they are basically overlays of lots of circles--it's not a properly "analogous" (as in analog) reproduction. What do you say about the need for people to listen to vinyl?

A "Well I think there were two pressing plants in the United States-we were down to two. Now there are five, and that's because there's a niche market that's growing. It's a growing market in vinyl. In fact, vinyl is the finest. This word is so beautiful to me. It's the finest fidelity, the most faithful, the best representation of sound that happens.

"And the thing is, through no fault of my own, really, I ended up as an arranger. That's basically what I've done to support my family. To the point of ostentation not, but generally a very well-provided family. It all came to arranging!

"The CD is a brittle sound. There's not enough sample to gather the nuances that are on the takes that we faithfully recorded, these analog events. So most of my work has not been an attempt to play piano with the charisma of a Billy Joel or an Elton John. I don't have that ability. I'm not an entertainer.

"It has been through the recording sessions, with musicians blowing their brains out to bring new adventure to orchestral (and) to ensemble playing, and that's what I've done. I've tried to make a living out of arranging and so I think, when I think about the CD era, I really think we've been had bad. And a lot of people are now finding agreement that the vinyl experience, and just the whole idea of holding onto something and being able to see it (is better). It's a tactile object offering superior sound environment. To me that's all very retro, but that's what I am. This is what I am comfortable (with) in my "end game" of life.

Q I have always thought that you can see behind the note of a CD!

A That's accurate. It's like a stage: it's all very fine but if you just step a little to the side you'll see that there is no "there" there! I think that that's the problem. And I'm just talking about the fidelity of the sound. The CD was really a clumsy product!

Q Some people, record to analog 2 inch tape and then mix it in a digital program, then send it back to analog. But that's still not proper analog.

A "There are all kinds of estoppels. I (have just) put out this compilation of early arrangements, circa "the '60s", on CD. It's also on vinyl. In the '60s, I was fascinated by the Moog synthesiser. And I did some Moog work and you see in those days, starting with white noise (there was no keyboard, so it wasn't easy as it is now.) it's not like sitting down at a computer and putting your hands on a note. There were no notes. You made notes. You made notes out of sound waves. I got involved with electronic music quite heavily. I went so far as to independently start to develop artificial speech and I did this seriously. I had these phone-banks filled with wires--photogenic cables were going everywhere!

"I studied electronic music. Then everybody got interested in it. And I thought I'd go back to the streets, the things that glow with the acoustic information, and let everybody else go forward to the abattoir of synthetic music. Anyway they all went to that!

"Now my area of creative opportunity in music is to combine those events, to take the bluffings of synthetic music where they cannot be replicated acoustically. For example, string pizziccati are always the same volume--or what they call 'velocity' (i.e.: the same loudness).

"So, there are certain things that you can do with a synthesizer that are actually a great blessing musically.

"But the big problem is, that with the age of the CD and with the provenance of digital storage and memories, we're losing a lot of subtlety. And the greatest offense--requiring the estoppel of that bottle--is the CD itself.

"I'm wrestling with it the best I can. I'm putting out vinyl, because that's who I am. That's what I want to be. That's my environment, my bailiwick, my bag. That's where I want to live. But also, as a nicety, I'm making the music available on download. I know you can get music from the computer--I know that! I don't do it. I've heard that it's possible. You can e-mail, or you can put it on Amazon."

Q I feel that you can see through mp3s, as it were, that it's like listening to water.

A Mp3s are so destructive.

Q The danger I see is that future musicians might be listening to something that they don't properly appreciate, as they're not hearing the sound that, as Keith Richards once said about him listening to Chuck Berry as a teenager, the sound zipping off the needle of the LP. If you don't have that proper sonic inspiration, you may not be able to produce proper music, yourself, later on. So future composers may be compromised. And also, with CDs, as they are usually about fifty or sixty minutes, the people making the "album" may be writing diluted music because they think they have to fill up fifty or sixty minutes, whereas with an LP it has to be 42 to 45 minutes, so they are more concise or intense in what they write to fill that length. Do you think there is an optimum length for an album where after that dilution may set in?

A Well there are so many variables of course. The variables have to do with the level of the sound, how loud it is. That will also affect the density of the signal.

I think about that, how much can be fitted in a groove. I've thought about that all my life. I brought out the first stereo single at Warner Brothers Records. It was 6:45 in length. I worked hard to maintain fidelity."

Early Career

Q You worked at MGM first, then were signed to Warner Brothers.

A Yes I worked at MGM in '63.

Q When you were at MGM, were you writing both music and words?

A I wrote music and words, yes I did. In 1963, Bob Dylan came out with the Freewheelin'" (CBS, 1963) record, the Rolling Stones (with) "12 X 5", and that started a sea-change in music. Many people thought they could be song-writers, singer/songwriters. I was one of them, I fear! So I did that, and I wrote, yes. And it was the encouragement of Bob Dylan.

Dylan made that much of an impression because his voice was definitely an untrained voice. It was almost as if I looked at Bob Dylan and I thought to myself, 'If he can get away with it so can I'. A few years ago somebody said that they read (something about me) in David Crosby's autobiography (he's written two!). In one of them he said that he and his friend David Lindley, a great musician, came to a coffee house where my brother and I were performing in 1963. David Crosby looked at Lindley, and said 'If they can get away with it so can we.'
That's very funny!

I think the encouragement of Bob Dylan was pivotal. He made a sea-change in the number of people who would think up a tune and slide words on it. The melodies were just bare with words attached. And that happened to me.

Q And your brother wrote "Something Stupid"!

A Well, when anybody tells me about 'Something Stupid', I just have to correct them. I wrote stupid things! He wrote something very smart! Very much a one-trick pony, but bless him I love him. Even after his death I think of him all the time. He had different kinds of songs. As my brother was seven years older than I, he didn't really feel part of the '60s like I did. He didn't participate in this new kind of culture that I was a part of.

Q When you were growing up--you have a strong link to New Orleans--you were born in Hattiesburg then you moved to Lake Charles, so you were kind of circumnavigating New Orleans, if you like. And then you have the Trinidadian albums and working with Lowell George. So what were the influences when you were first growing up? What was on the radio and what were your parents listening to?

A Oh no, it wasn't through radio. I was the youngest of four boys so my influences (were their records).

I was well aware of Les Paul in 1948, Spike Jones. I was born in '43. I can remember the hits of 1948 and through the '50s. I went to a barber's shop and had a haircut and there would be music playing. The world I inhabited was the world of what they used to call 'serious music'. That was the world I lived in, and I loved all those dead white guys. I love Bach. Bach is better than Mick Jagger. Bach is better than Mick or Elton. Nothing is sexier than JS Bach--(not) Celine Dion, or a whole bunch of people! I'll take Bach any day. So I never had any problem with what's good. And the stuff that is from the dead white guys, I learn more from that--and from what is hot off the wires from world beat. I love it all.

World Beat

Q I listen to a lot of "world beat" music too. A lot of people are listening to it.

A Yes. To me this is more refreshment. This is what we should be doing. This is why I used to think that the way to meet a culture is to sit down in one of their restaurants. And it's true.
edit

I've learned as much about Vietnam just intuitively, just sitting down at a Vietnamese restaurant or a Chinese restaurant, just looking through the food, learning. That happens, no kidding, it does, but I also think it does through the music. Absolutely. The world beat is to me the spawning ground.

My favorite artist truly, and I'm talking about piano/vocal production, lyrics, melodies, chords, everything, my favorite artist, in general in pop music, is Paolo Conte. I don't speak his language! He's Italian so that's a little problem for me! But it's amazing to me that his feeling and his humanity just spills over, despite the language barrier. It's just so full and beautiful. Just another example of what "world beat" can supply. It's almost like, I buy world beat records that have English translations of the lyrics. That means so much to me, to learn what's being said.

I've been on some trails that have led me to my sense of scent, following my nose. I find myself in some great places. For perhaps ten years I've had a great refreshment from
Fado. I love that genre!

But you see, in 1963 I was listening to a lot of Latin-American music, a lot of French music. (And) when I was playing coffee houses out in California, what we played, we called that folk music. That's still with me. It's where I get my refreshment. I'm more than ever always thinking about getting out of the box. I want to get beyond the box so badly, I really make every effort to do that.

My mother once observed, I'd put my retirement before my career! I never went out on the road. I was mostly the man behind the curtain. I'm very happy there, behind the curtain. I don't need to be clapped at. I just want the opportunity to work in music. That's why I'm putting out my own records, going out on the road.

Touring And New Records

Q So going on the road now, which you started last year and have continued this year, is essentially a new career, is that right?

A Last year was the first year I did it. I would go in a small place, a small town in America. Forty ladies showed up at The Grand Rapids Ladies' Literary Clubhouse. Forty people!

Later, on July 4th, I find myself headlining at Roskilde, Denmark, Denmark's largest rock festival with a fifty piece orchestra in front of 17,500 people who've never heard of me! It was a serious case of contrast.

At the age of 68, the hand is a little further from the head. It takes great mettle to face the keyboard. I do it with a great effort somehow amazed that I haven't lost the ability. Forgive me, but I don't know any pop star who plays as well as I do. I play well. I worked so hard to get here. Now I'm getting to share that. You know the old expression "use it or lose it"? I haven't lost that yet. I'm doing my best work now.

Q You have just toured Australia, and you were saying that you wanted to play the Sydney Opera house next time.

A I want to! (I was in) Australia, four weeks. I played just about every phone booth that can hold a performer and a keyboard! I decided that if I'm going to come back I will play fewer jobs. I don't want to do with a larger arena--I don't want to play for thousands and I don't want to look like a red ant on a watermelon. I'd want to do it in rooms. Sydney Opera House or Adelaide's Festival would be good ones.

I want to bring Rupert Murdoch back to hound Australia! Australia has other things than Murdoch to explore. I prefer Australia's music to its newspapermen.

Q On your label Bananastan, you've been releasing both new singles and older music. And you've also got a best of your arrangements.

Q Yes I have, there's a compilation. It's called "Arrangements, Volume One". It is
available on CD and LP vinyl. There are six singles. They'll be presented with beautiful visual sleeve art. I made a decision to do this with singles. Part of that was the fear that I've lost the public who once would have tolerated a two part "through-line" that was called side A and side B, that was on an LP.

(It) was kind of like a ritual of looking at the cover, reading the liner notes, getting up in the middle of the record and turning it over. That has been lost to the ages! The public has a short attention span. They don't want a long story to bore them. Gone is the age of the Bard, when a musician would tell a tale that lasted a week!

When I was a brunette, (when) I arrived in the music industry, two and a half minutes was the preferred length. We tolerated albums. Now we're back to a kind of a shuffle mentality. I'm trying to serve that. "Singles" don't demand a lot of time from the casual observer.

Q Do you think that you will in time look at a theme, or something similar, that can sustain over the length of an album?

A I'm not a Presbyterian so I don't know the future. Yet, I suspect that my mind will get to that place. But in the meantime, I'm enjoying the short form. The 'single' represents the shortest form of the through-line, that is, a short story. It's more a novella than a novel. It's a short story.

Arranging: Bringing Folk Songs Into The Parlor

Q You've been orchestrating with Shortwave Set, and, earlier, on a more vertical and lengthy basis, Silverchair.

A A marvelous experience! (Silverchair) didn't want "wall paper". They wanted me to participate with them. But it just keeps on getting more abstract all the time. A couple of weeks ago I was in Capitol Records Studio with a fella by the name of Skrillex. I had to find out who he is on You Tube.

This (music like Skrillex being an example) is the street sensibility that I've always wanted to focus on. I'm not interested in the parlor! I'm interested in what the street will bring to the parlor. It was one of the most imaginative sessions I have ever had. I was absolutely thrilled with it. It all serves to further that if you don't go in armed with blinding opinions but you go in to learn something, to actually serve and give a damn about somebody other than your very precious self, you come out winning every time.

I feel like a winner because, in an age where arrangements seem almost like a thing of the past, I'm finding a supply of curious young musicians who want to explore how it feels to create music for the people. Pretty lucky guy, I am!

Q With Silverchair's songs and in other band orchestrations, your orchestrations present the orchestra as a kind of "twin track" along which the song can travel. With one track by the Shortwave Set, the orchestra even comes in, again, at the end, after the rest of the music has finished. 1910s-style music suddenly flowers up at the end of the track. The orchestra is coming out to show itself at the end of the track! Do you discuss with the band these ideas or how else do you go about it?

A I don't know what I'm doing! "Not knowing" is essential to the artistic process. You have to let the madness (go) where it wants. Arranging is not collaborative at all. If you don't want to orchestrate yourself, you should trust someone to do it for you. It's about extending trust. If you can't find someone you can trust, you shouldn't have someone arranging. Arranging is a monastic process.

In the case of Silverchair, they had put all the "basic" tracks down. All the anecdotes were in place. It wasn't like I had to (invent anything). I gave clarity to what was there. It's more fun to work with a musician (like that). There are people I have arranged for that are pretty thin, have thin thoughts. That requires a lot more work.

Q In the Silverchair music from their last two albums, the ones that you arranged for, there are lots of sharpened dominants in the melodies, tempo changes and so on, things that provide scope for strings to fly off from.

A It was highly schizophrenic, really beautiful. That's good! Great art should be able to go places that are unexpected.

Q You did tracks for them over two albums, and the second of these albums ("Young Modern"), was named after a nickname that you had for Daniel Johns, "Young Modern". It seems to me that they developed from the first to the second of these albums.

A Well the point is, I saw that trio in live performance. They sure knew how to hold their mud. I've never seen a better entertainment in live performance. Incredibly hardball, hardball stuff. It's a funny thing about Daniel Johns. A governing maxim which has always guided me since I was a kid is never let your ambition outreach your ability! Well, that's a very important lesson to learn (to be able to chew what you bite off).

Those two Silverchair albums seem to me to be a total creative success from the intention.
The singer survives. The song survives! They both survive the musicians (of the orchestra).
They survive the heightened expectations. Daniel Johns and his team mates should be congratulated that they made a real moment in popular music history. They really brought an area of their (art) together successfully in an area that is very rarely tried well. Compare that to all those aging rock stars who hire orchestras who sit on whole notes while they recite their old musical victories.

Q In respect of what you said about holding a note and so on, your orchestrations and your arrangements have, to me, a vastly different sound as compared to say the arrangements when, for example, Elton John did his strings live album, and bands like Oasis have some orchestra on a record. It's exactly that--"some orchestra"--and nothing happens. But yours' have substance and life, and are, to me, completely different, and living.

A It's really kind of you to notice. My heart is in the work. I admit that I am less able than I should be. My ambition actually is greater than my ability [laughs], but I don't want it to show.

Q You have said that you want to bring the street into the parlor, the folk. Composers like Dvorak, Gottshalk.

A You've hit the nail on the head. I'll tell you, it was [Australian composer and pianist] Percy Grainger who turned me around a hundred and eighty degrees in my youth. He took what is so ordinary and he gave it elevation. That was the guy who really turned my head around.

People like Ry Cooder brought the workman's blue collar to the tux set, into the place of privilege. So this is what happened to the blues with Gershwin, for example. At first blush, it sounds like a silly thing to do, but you think about the tectonics (the division) between the rich and the poor! I think about that division all the time. It plagues me. The poor will always be with us. It keeps me asleep at night.

Greed! We expect signs of hope, but we get cosmetic festivals of self-congratulation, call it the Grammys or the Oscars, call it whatever you want. To me it's obscene. They are events to celebrate celebrity.

I prefer the life I've had without the inconvenience of fame. Reviews mean nothing! I was in the Mothers Of Invention once (with Frank Zappa). He [Zappa] said, "talking about music is like dancing about architecture". Frank was so right. "Criticism is the highest form of autobiography" (is how) Oscar Wilde (put it).

The song has the most potent political value.

Q You're touring next week with the Fleet Foxes?

A This is a beautiful time as well.

Q And a great time to get some inspiration for some more songs like "The All Golden" [perhaps the most famous song from "Song Cycle"]!

A [Laughs] (On my new single releases) I decided to put "The All Golden" just piano and vocal. Its cover was done by Klaus Voormann. [Voormann is, of course, the artist who designed the cover of The Beatles' album "Revolver"]. I wanted him to do the art work. He said he would, and he did it over night. And it's a dazzlingly brilliant piece of work. Another man, Sculotor Charles Ray, did two life size statues of me. Musical invention still takes me places I never dreamed of being.

Show the heathens to light.