Matthew Greenwald

Van Dyke Parks: singer, songwriter, arranger, session musician, producer, creator of soundtracks, music video audio-visual pioneer...raconteur, (I'm sure I'm missing a few)...and above all, an artist. I can't think of another figure in recorded music for whom the title "Renaissance Man" would be more fitting.

MG: Jumping back into some old groups that you recorded, Brazil 66....

BB: I really loved that time. That was for Herb Alpert, who was the producer. I prefer Brazil 66, the first album, over Equinox, sonically, because that was another case where it was done on four-track, tube all the way. Also the fact that it was all new to us and it was a big sound, I really liked it.

MG: Was that done at Gold Star Studios?

BMG’s 2003 Jefferson Airplane Reissues

Q: Is this, in fact, the very first time the albums have been digitally re-mastered from the original multi-track masters?

A: No, but I’ll tell you what they are. There were some mixes that I used the multi-tracks for and I’ll get to that, but these are re-mastered from the original two-track masters. In all honesty, I’d love to put that feather in my cap, but those masters have been used before; although I can’t speak for the very first editions of CD’s that came out in the ‘80’s…

“Canvas the town and brush the backdrop…”

Brian was already smoking pot by late 1964, and his first efforts combining reefer and music were promising: most of the songs on side two of The Beach Boys Today, particularly “Please Let Me Wander”, showed Brian expanding on the beautiful, innocent vulnerability which began with “Surfer Girl”. His arranging skills in particular were growing into something completely different by this time, and culminated with the burnished spiritual gauze of Pet Sounds. Brian later revealed that the gleaming introduction to “California Girls” was composed following his maiden L.S.D. voyage. But, Brian Wilson, a man of delicate psyche to begin with, was probably not someone who should have taken large amounts of psychedelics. But along with this, speed - especially a compound called Desputol (sic) - was becoming more and more prevalent in Brian's world. The result was a man with many of the casebook symptoms of abusing the drug, the biggest and most obvious being overwhelming paranoia. Brian began talking about Murry bugging his house, Phil Spector (and his 'mind gangsters') attempting to freak Brian out via director John Frankenheimer's film “Seconds”. Brian's mind must have been like a spooky house of mirrors at the time. Van Dyke later commented, “If you go to the dark side of the moon, you're lucky that you don't get burned up on re-entry…”