I was tending to my flowers this morning and was struck by how beautiful they looked holding the beads of water. Thought I’d share this small moment, which has that intimate vibe of Smile, not the towering grandiosity of Sgt. Pepper.
Out of the sandbox
At the beginning of 1967, Brian Wilson was on top of the pyramid.
In the previous year, he’d made Pet Sounds, one of the most influential albums in recorded history, then produced a stunning, shimmering song called “Good Vibrations.” With Brian Wilson as producer-arranger-composer, the Beach Boys had become America’s pre-eminent rock band.
The word was that Brian Wilson was a genius and that he was to American music what Magellan was to world travel.
Most of this ‘genius’ speculation was based on Brian’s work-in-progress, an album to be called Smile that would serve as his “teen-age symphony to God.” Brian’s idiosyncratic music, paired with the intense and playful lyrics of Van Dyke Parks, were the stuff of rock-critic legend. Reporters chronicling the making of Smile gorged on Brian’s eccentricities, including his filling his dining room with sand, so he could move his piano into the room and wiggle his toes as he composed.
As I say: at the beginning of 1967, he was on the top of the pyramid. By the end of the year, he’d tumbled from those staggering heights.
Lots of reasons, but the one that seems to have earned the most favor over the years: The Beatles surpassed him. The British group produced Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and left the Beach Boys in their stellar wake. Since Sgt. Pepper strove for — and achieved — grandiosity, Brian probably thought Smile — with its celebration of small moments of joy — might not stand up.
Whatever the case, he cancelled the album after Pepper‘s release and withdrew the band from the Monterrey International Pop Festival. Those two events are seen as crippling the Beach Boys as a significant rock’n’roll band.
(Though tragically unhip in America, they remained revered in Great Britain, where they were arguably more popular than the Beatles.)
To recover, other members of the band coaxed Brian back to life on the ground. They built a studio in Brian’s house and cocooned him, which kept him away from the great studios — Western Recorders or Gold Star — and the session players history has dubbed the Wrecking Crew.
Instead, Carl Wilson helped his big brother to make “music to cool out by.” The other members pitched in. If their musicianship was not at the level of the session pros in the Wrecking Crew, then so be it. They worked toward a simpler sound. For some reason, Brian had his piano detuned, so it sounded like the kind of thing you’d heard when friends got together in the basement after a few beers.
In place of Smile, the Beach Boys produced Smiley Smile in September 1967 and Wild Honey in December 1967. And ‘produced’ is a key word there. The earlier Beach Boys albums bore the ‘Produced by BRIAN WILSON’ credit. Now the jacket said, ‘Produced by THE BEACH BOYS.’
This music was the antithesis of Sgt. Pepper or The Notorious Byrd Brothers or anything by Jimi Hendrix (who sealed the doom of the band’s hipness with his “may you never hear surf music again” hidden lyric on “Third Stone from the Sun”). As Roger McGuinn of the Byrds said of 1967, all the artists were trying to out-weird each other.
The Beach Boys had done weird, with Smile, and found it not to be suitable.
They never tried to be something they were not. And what they were was three brothers and a cousin from the suburbs. So the heavy intellectual stuff and pomposity didn’t fit well. Years ago, a writer put it nicely. Wish I could remember his name or the correct phrasing, but it was something like “We are a confounding country. We can put a man on the moon but we can’t stop people from wearing spandex pants to the mall. The Beach Boys will drive you crazy that way too.”
In short, you’ve got to be willing to take the goofy with the great.
When Smiley Smile came out, it was largely panned, though it’s an excellent album. But since it was the ‘Instead of Smile‘ album, it was held to an impossible standard. As Carl Wilson said, “It was a bunt instead of a grand slam.”
The recorded-in-the-living-room vibe gave Smiley Smile a wholly original sound. After a live album in Hawaii was discovered to have been poorly recorded, the Beach Boys took this new homegrown work ethic into a studio where they tried to fix the live album with some live-in-studio recordings. They abandoned that project and instead went back to the living room and made Wild Honey, the closest thing the group ever recorded to a rhythm and blues album.
This has always marked the beginning of my favorite period in Beach Boys music. When the mass audience and the new ruling class of rock intelligentsia looked elsewhere, the Beach Boys made music for themselves. This wonderful era is now chronicled in the two-disc history 1967: Sunshine Tomorrow (come on boys, pick a title).
What we have in Sunshine Tomorrow isn’t a collection of snippets and scraps. Producer Mark Linnett has taken these old pieces and put together a new piece of work — not just a document of a creative period in the band’s life, but something that stands up today. This is a glorious album.
Linnett sets the stage by starting with Wild Honey in a new stereo mix. He then works through some session outtakes and live performances. As brilliant as that is — and Wild Honey has some of the best Beach Boys songs ever — it’s the Smiley Smile sessions that provide some of the great delights.
Wisely, Linnett leaves off “Good Vibrations” (Brian didn’t want it on the original album anyway) and he uses the backing tracks of “Heroes and Villains,” instead of the vocal, which would have contained those wonderful but overwhelming lyrics. Linnett eases into the Smiley Smile material with revelatory backing tracks, gradually building to the wonderfully weird and stoned-out “Wind Chimes,” “Cool, Cool Water,” “Vegetables” and “Little Pad.”
From there, Linnett goes into the faux-concert album as the scaled-back homegrown Beach Boys recreate their Hawaii setlist from the poorly-taped concerts on Oahu. (Brian had come out of performing retirement to join the band on stage.) These quiet versions of “California Girls,” “Help Me Rhonda” and “Surfer Girl” are wonderful reinterpretations.
If I never hear “Surfer Girl” again, I’d be okay. But here, it’s done in a laid-back style that renders it a whole new song. Mike Love loses his usual braggadocio and “California Girls” becomes a gentle lament. (Love’s singing throughout is reserved. He pulls back on the usual swaggering bullshit and sings with tenderness.) Alan Jardine changes the perspective of “Help Me, Rhonda,” turning the story around, so it’s more of a “Help You, Rhonda” now. They sound remarkably like the Ramones doing “Beat on the Brat.”
The real surprise is the concert-in-the-studio version of “You’re So Good to Me,” from the 1965 album Summer Days. Brian Wilson’s new arrangement is much richer than the shrill chant from two years (and a lifetime) before. If only the music business still revolved around singles, this would be a good one.
The group also does some then-current songs by other groups: “With A Little Help From My Friends,” “The Letter” and “Game of Love.” The combined Carl-Brian-Mike shared lead vocal on “The Letter” is particularly fun. (By the way, the set ends with a thrilling a cappella “Surfer Girl.”)
This was a great period for the group and to hear them and marks Carl Wilson’s emergence. Though in retrospect we can see he had the best solo voice, he was not eager to sing lead vocals. He carried “Pom Pom Play Girl,” but it was “Girl, Don’t Tell Me” from 1965 that he considered his first lead. Then big brother entrusted him with “God Only Knows” and “Good Vibrations.” If that doesn’t demonstrate trust and respect, I’ll eat my Volkswagen.
Carl is all over Wild Honey and his love of rhythm and blues comes out in his unrestrained, fluid vocals. He does a tremendous cover of Stevie Wonder’s “I Was Made to Love Her” (listen for the you-son-of-a-bitch hidden lyric) and “Darlin'” is irresistible.
As McGuinn said, everyone was trying to out-weird each other, but the Beach Boys were hanging out in Brian’s living room, singing rhythm and blues around that deliberately detuned piano. The slightly off sound of the music — and the overall dominance of the piano — gives the music of this era a resonance.
Who knew that the Beach Boys would be the harbingers of what would start happening that very month Wild Honey was released.
Tired of the grandiose bullshit (he thought Sgt. Pepper was a piece of crap), Bob Dylan came out of his 18-month seclusion and produced the quiet masterpiece, John Wesley Harding. It was Dylan’s way of grabbing rock’n’roll by the lapels and saying, “Pull yourself together!”
Soon, the Beatles were cutting out all of the studio gimmickry and promising to ‘get back.’ Meanwhile, the Byrds and the Band were discovering what today we call roots music and Americana.
In a way, the Beach Boys were there first.
Going off the cliff
If anything good has come out of our culture in the last 18 months, maybe it’s that us Clueless White Guys are beginning to understand the problem.
To many of us, the election of the Pussygrabber in Chief was like sticking our heads in a sink full of ice cubes. And not long before that, there was that viral video showing a woman walking around the Five Boroughs getting catcalled by everything male.
As a Clueless White Guy, I’ve got to tell you how much those two events affected me. When I saw the catcalling video, I asked my adult daughters if that’s really what it was like to be a woman. Yes, they said, and worse.
And then that vile, groping guy got elected president.
This is all heavy on my mind as I read Becky Aikman’s new book, Off the Cliff. Aikman tells the story of the making of Thelma & Louise, and all of the behind-the-scenes battles to get the story on screen. The story of two renegades from sexual oppression and violence, it was the work of Callie Khouri, who became the first woman in 60 years to win a solo Oscar for screenwriting.
Since the film became such a touchstone of popular culture – 25 years ago now! – it might come as a surprise to Clueless White Guys what a struggle it was to make.
The lead roles were played by women! That’s as rare as frost on a frying pan! A story about women — note plural — that did not cast them in the standard roles of “mom” or “hooker” (or perhaps both at once).
The script was by a woman! Great mother of jabbering Jesus! Since when does that stuff happen?
And, of course, the director was the guy who made Alien. Yes! This makes perfect sense!
Off the Cliff doesn’t tell a story that merely pits women against men. The director, Ridley Scott, is as much of a horndog as the rest of us, but he is drawn to the story and making Thelma & Louise was his education and consciousness raising.
Studio head Alan Ladd Jr. also pushed the film, and we learn how he was the rare executive to move into production films with strong female leads. It was Laddie (as he was called), who suggested to director Scott during that earlier collaboration on Alien, “Say, why don’t we make a woman be the hero?”
Sigourney Weaver, here is your career.
The two stars of the film, Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, were not the first choices. It was going to be Jodie Foster and Michelle Pfeiffer. Then it was Meryl and Goldie.
Sarandon is the hero of the book, both for her principled character as an actor and in the role she played, but also as a mentor to younger artists such as Geena Davis and … well, and nearly everyone else she comes across. She understands the characters and knows the power of the story. And she stands up for Davis when she catches the slightest whiff of exploitation.
And who better than Susan Sarandon to be charged with consciousness raising?
(Offscreen tidbit: George Clooney was turned down for the role that Brad Pitt got. This is the film that made Pitt into a star. Would the cosmos have evolved differently if Clooney had gotten the part? Discuss.)
There are a lot of great making-of-the-film books out there, dating from Lillian Ross’s magnificent Picture (about John Huston’s struggle to make The Red Badge of Courage in 1952). Later entries included John Gregory Dunne’s The Studio (about the horrifying Rex Harrison version of Doctor Doolittle), and Julie Salamon’s The Devil’s Candy (about turning The Bonfire of the Vanities into a film).
Aikman’s book is one of the best of the making-of subgenre and certainly one of the best books about filmmaking since Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.
But Off the Cliff is not just a book about making a movie. It’s about the culture that so devalues the contributions of the majority of its citizens. Aikman doesn’t preach; she doesn’t need to. The story is up on the screen.
Masshole
When I drive, I become a beast. I swear nonstop and call fellow drivers a number of unattractive words. For the good of all humanity — and my blood pressure — I take the train to work. This is the design I proposed for Massachusetts plates a few years back. Sorry to report that the Commonwealth has yet to adopt it.
Care for a slice?
Dream of a different Stipe
I had a two-part dream last night.
Michael Stipe approached me, asking if he could teach a section of our beginning writing class at BU. I said sure, and we began working out a teaching schedule.
Then I woke up, went to the biffy, and then when I returned to sleep the dream resumed. That doesn’t happen to me very often.
Michael and his people (two or three, far short of an entourage) and my colleague Sarah and I were never able to work out a schedule because of his other commitments, but he kept gripping the edge of the table, saying, “Dammit! I am determined to make this work!”
Then I woke up again. Michael, if you’re out there, we would love to have you teach for us.
Rosie the Riveter reboot
Millions of women entered the work force during the Second World War and the ‘We Can Do It’ image of Rosie the Riveter became a frequent symbol of that change.
Saturday Evening Post illustrator Norman Rockwell made a couple versions of Rosie on his own — one modeled after Michelangelo.
But the image has persisted long after that war, even as American women were encouraged to vacate the workplace and return to the kitchens of post-war America.
It’s good to see the Rosie symbol returning in the aftermath of the Women’s March of January 21, 2017, and the comments by Senate leader Mitch McConnell, made in an attempt to shut down Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
Let us now praise baseball nicknames
Pitchers and catchers reported this week for spring training, the annual ritual I miss so dearly since moving from Florida. Baseball has been much on my mind.
File this under “library, treasures of the.”
Whenever I’m blue, I get a book down from the shelf, turn to page 78 and begin to laugh.
It’s The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book and it’s one of those things available by special order. You can also find a used copy online, often for assloads of money.
Whatever the cost, it’s worth every penny.
You can also find it at the library, which is a pretty cool place. It’s like the Internet, only with stuff printed out.
On page 78, the authors simply list their favorite nicknames of ballplayers. I’ve never needed more than five bites of the first column before I begin to feel better.
I present this selection of names as a public service to all humanity. If only the United Nations General Assembly would join me in my mission to bring peace to the world . . . .
I love this book. I have the original, from 1973. This is the cover of the 1991 reprint. Click on the cover to see if you can track down this book through third-party sellers. It is a treasured part of my home library.If this was read aloud before that body, in all the languages of earth, we could achieve a just and lasting peace.
It’s hard to fight when you’re laughing.
(I use the Rocky Bridges card as an illustration above. The nickname ‘Rocky’ isn’t nearly as funny as his real name — Everett. But Boyd and Harris write an essay on every baseball card in their book and the essay on Bridges is probably the funniest.)
Unfortunately, the tradition of baseball nicknames seems to have been lost. Since Boyd and Harris compiled this list four decades ago, there haven’t been too many colorful additions. Chris Berman does his part on ESPN. There was a player on the University of Florida baseball team some years back named Dave Majeski. I tried to get one of my sportswriter friends to work Purple Mountains Majeski into his story one day. He did, but it didn’t catch on.
The baseball nickname is the entymological equivalent of the dodo. So appreciate these names while you can.
Bless you, Brendan Boyd and Fred Harris. Your book is a treasure.
(Insert drum roll . . . )
Read this aloud at the office. Suggest new names for your pals. Fuck bringing sexy back. Let’s bring nicknames back.
(Big rimshot here . . . )
And now, broken down into alphabetical order, the silliest baseball nicknames we can find:
A: Wagon Tongue Adams, Snitz Applegate, Bow Wow Arft.
B: Bee Bee Babe, Sweetbreads Bailey, Rattlesnake Baker, Belve Bean, Bananas Beans, Desperate Beatty, Boom Boom Beck, Jittery Joe Berry, Hillbilly Bildilli, Red Bird, The Darling Booth, Goobers Bratcher, Bunny Brief, Chops Broskie, Turkeyfoot Brower, Oyster Burns.
C: Scoops Carey, Ding-a-Ling Clay, Whoops Creeden, Crunchy Cronin, Dingle Croucher.
D: Daffy Dean, Peaceful Valley Deizer, Hickory Dickson, Bullfrog Dietrich, Buttermilk Dow, Pea Soup Dumont.
E: Piccolo Pete Elko, Slippery Ellam.
F: Broadway Flair, Sleuth Fleming, Suds Fodge.
G: Inch Gleich, Gabber Glenn.
H: Snags Heidrick, Bunny High, Bootnose Hofman, Herky Jerky Horton, Twinkles Host, Highpockets Hunt.
J: Bear Tracks Javery.
L: Candy LaChance, Whoop LaWhite, Bevo LeBourveau, Razor Ledbetter, Grasshopper Lillie, Memo Luna.
M: Cuddles Marshall, Humpty McElveen, Beauty McGowan, Sadie McMahon, Boob McNair, Spinach Melillo, Earache Meyer.
O: Peach Pie O’Connor, Orval Overall.
P: Pretzels Pezzullo, Cotton Pippen, Pinky Pittinger, Primo Preibisch, Truckhorse Pratt, Lumber Price, Shucks Pruett, Shadow Pyle.
Q: Wimpy Quinn.
R: Icicle Reeder, Raw Meat Rodgers, Half-Pint Rye.
S: Slim Sallee, Horse Belly Sargent, Skeeter Scalzi, Silk Stalking Schafer, Wildfire Schulte, Steeple Schultz, Blab Schwartz, Pius Scwert, Twinkletoes Selkirk, Colonel Bosco Snyder, Spook Speake, Fish Hook Stout, Inky Strange, Sleeper Sullivan, Homer Summa, Suds Sutherland, Ducky Swann.
T: Patsy Tebeau, Pussy Tebeau, White Wings Tebeau, Adonis Terry, Cannonball Titcomb, Turkey Tyson.
U: Dixie Upright.
V: Peak-a-Boo Veach.
W: Podgie Weihe, Icehouse Wilson, Kettle Wirtz, Chicken Wolf.
Z: Zip Zabel, Noodles Zupo.
For more fun along these lines, I heartily endorse The Outside Corner’s “All Innuendo Team,” featuring Rusty Kuntz, Stubby Clapp, Johnny Dickshot and many others.
I love baseball — Lord help me, I do.
Bob Dylan: a job description
These are Bob Dylan’s liner notes for his 1965 album Bringing it All Back Home. I used this as the opening piece in my book Rock and Roll is Here to Stay. This is my favorite piece of Dylan writing that has not been set to music.
i’m standing there watching the parade/ feeling combination of sleepy john estes. jayne mansfield. humphry bogart/mortimer snerd. murph the surf and so forth/ erotic hitchhiker wearing japanese blanket. gets my attention by asking didn’t he see me at this hootenanny down in puerto vallarta, mexico/i say no you must be mistaken. i happen to be one of the Supremes/then he rips off his blanket an’ suddenly becomes a middle-aged druggist. up for district attorney. he starts screaming at me you’re the one. you’re the one that’s been causing all them riots over in vietnam. immediately turns t’ a bunch of people an’ says if elected, he’ll have me electrocuted publicly on the next fourth of july. i look around an’ all these people he’s talking to are carrying blowtorches/ needless t’ say, i split fast go back t’ thenice quiet country. am standing there writing WHAAT? on my favorite wall when who should pass by in a jet plane but my recording engineer “i’m here t’ pick up you and your latest works of art. do you need any help with anything?”
(pause)
my songs’re written with the kettledrum 0in mind/a touch of any anxious color. unmentionable. obvious. an’ people perhaps like a soft brazilian singer . . . i have given up at making any attempt at perfection/ the fact that the white house is filled with leaders that’ve never been t’ the apollo theather amazes me. why allen ginsberg was not chosen t’ read poetry at the inauguration boggles my mind/if someone thinks norman mailer is more important than hank williams that’s fine. i have no arguments an’ i never drink milk. i would rather model harmonica holders than discuss aztec anthropology/ english literature. or history of the united nations. i accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me. i know there’re some people terrified of the bomb. but there are other people terrified t’ be seen carrying a modern screen magazine. experience teaches that silence terrifies people the most . . . i am convinced that all souls have some superior t’ deal with/like the school system, an invisible circle of which no one can think without consulting someone/in the face of this, responsibility/security, success mean absolutely nothing. . . i would not want t’ be bach. mozart. tolstoy. joe hill. gertrude stein or james dean/they are all dead. the Great books’ve been written. the Great sayings have all been said/I am about t’ sketch You a picture of what goes on around here sometimes. though I don’t understand too well myself what’s really happening. i do know that we’re all gonna die someday an’ that no death has ever stopped the world. my poems are written in a rhythm of unpoetic distortion/ divided by pierced ears. false eyelashes/subtracted by people constantly torturing each other. with a melodic purring line of descriptive hollowness — seen at times through dark sunglasses an’ other forms of psychic explosion. a song is anything that can walk by itself/i am called a songwriter. a poem is a naked person . . . some
people say that i am a poet
(end of pause)
an’ so i answer my recording engineer “yes. well i could use some help in getting this wall in the plane”
Some final words from David Carr
We are dealing with the second anniversary of David Carr’s death. There were so many tributes after this death, so maybe this ‘last interview’ (with Stefanie Friedhoff of the Boston Globe) got lost in the mix. Thought I’d reprint it. We were lucky to have David on the Boston University faculty. He was a gifted teacher and we all looked forward to many years of his friendship. This was published February 13, 2015.
New York Times columnist David Carr, who died Thursday at the age of 58, had a reputation for going after his own tribe with bracing honesty and clarity. With his unusual past as a crack addict, a distinctive scratchy voice, and quirky character, he had become a media figure in his own right as he chronicled journalism’s struggle to reinvent itself in the digital age. Carr shuttled to Boston once a week to teach journalism at Boston University, a routine he had started last fall. In one of the last interviews he gave before his death, Carr talked with Globe correspondent Stefanie Friedhoff in late January about his rookie teacher mistakes and the future of writing.
[Friedhoff’s questions are in bold italic. Carr’s answers are in regular type.]
What was it like, working with this next generation?
The first time they said, ‘Here comes the professor,’ I turned around looking for him, then realized, oh, that was me. I asked them to call me David. I did not feel a huge generational divide. I was not parenting or patronizing them. As long as they didn’t call me professor.
One generational difference is that they rely on texting, which is not a good business or academic application. I much prefer e-mail, which allows you to keep an archive, send attachments. I also made it clear that there was no texting or Facebooking during class. When someone did it, I would stop and say: ‘Do you need a few moments so you can finish what seems so important?’
The platform you used, Medium, allows for storytelling in all media. Did students experiment with different forms?
Some students included extensive video and audio, and some built stories around photographs, but writing played a distinctive role. Students were far more traditional than I thought they’d be, they were extremely animated by idea of longform narrative. I weighed heavily on blended content but they were not as interested as in big narratives.
Is there a future for writing, for the careful crafting of sentences and narratives, in the digital age?
Well, there are two problems with it. One, if you look at The New Yorker, GQ, and the Atavist or Longreads, there is a good supply of deep immersive writing, but there is an audience problem, in terms of what people are willing to commit to. And two, there is a business problem: getting paid enough to do what may pass for literary journalism.
Some signs are encouraging: Engagement levels, people staying until the end of the story, are quite high. But you have to earn the readers’ interest. Turns out that the phone, which was thought of as the enemy of longform — people read a lot on phones, they have become used to the infinite scroll. I read a lot on my phone, and I am old as dirt.
Did you like teaching?
Oh, this class was like a bomb going off in my life. I thought I could zoom up on an airplane on Monday, teach the class, do office hours, go to sleep, take the train back in the morning and be fine.
That is not how it went. There was a lot of steady communication with students. We produced a lot. Sixteen students wrote over 60 pieces, published in four collections on Medium. Four articles are on their way into the commercial market.
I enjoyed it all. The truth about teaching is, whatever you expect from them, you should be ready to give back. I’m glad I’m like a vampire. I still keep college hours and stay up late.
You have guest taught a lot. What surprised you about teaching a semester-long course?
I made a fair amount of rookie teacher mistakes. I brought in too many guest speakers.
I said ‘I love your personal essays, I will put comments in’ and then I had to really do that. It took me five seconds to say in class but 12 hours to finish.
I learned I talk too much. Every time I went quiet and solicited discussion, wonderful things were said and I thought, ‘Duh, of course.’ Part of the reason was that I wanted to look like a serious academic. I did not want to be one of these newspaper people who show up and tell stories.
There was also an important business lesson: My teaching assistant insisted I give students some class time to collaborate on their projects. I asked, ‘Why? They are doing this online all the time.’ But she was right — face-to-face time led to amazing cross-team collaboration and improvements. We think online communication works, but a well-run meeting has a lot of value.”
Are you a tough grader?
Not as tough as I thought I would be! When I was an editor, my office was known as Cape Fear. I did give out some rough grades to start with, but if kids demonstrated improvement, I gave them better grades. I was kind of torn about what to do when someone was a good writer but didn’t try very hard, versus someone who tried hard but wasn’t so gifted. It was very much a learning curve.
What did you tell students about their future in journalism?
I told them it’s a good time to be looking for a job. There is a lot of money in content in New York. You can’t be too picky about what you want to do initially. And you need to make your own judgments about where you want to [go] — regardless of where you went to school or who you know.
There is no doubt students will be walking into a news ecosystem that has more information, more sources, more providers, and more clutter. And they have to think about what value are they adding that will make them a signal above the noise and make their work stick out and have value — both in terms of who they work for and the kind of work they do. They have to [go] from creating commodities and toward creating things of value.”