thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I was reading Simple Dreams by Linda Ronstadt.  I have enjoyed the book and the behind the scenes stories that it contains.  A great example of those stories is Linda’s description of working with Brian Wilson who I think is one of the great musical geniuses of our generation.  Like all geniuses, Brian is a little eccentric and Linda captures that perfectly in the following story extracted from Simple Dreams……

When Peter Asher and I began to record the Cry Like a Rainbow album, our best collaboration, in my opinion.  Jimmy (Webb) wrote an orchestral arrangement for me of his wistful song “Adios,” with Brian Wilson singing the complex backing harmonies.  I had known Brian Wilson briefly in my Troubadour days, when he was separated for a time from his first wife.  He was always sweet and friendly, and never pressed any romantic agenda.  Several times I discovered him at my back door, studying a little pile of coins he held in his hand, which he said was ten or fifteen cents shy of the price for a bottle of grape juice.  He said it was important for him to drink grape juice in order to solve some health problem that was troubling him.  I would provide the remaining ten or fifteen cents, and we would climb into his huge convertible with the top always down, the back stuffed with a sizable accumulation of Brian’s dirty laundry.  As a bachelor, he seemed to have difficulty coping with domestic arrangements, so I would suggest a trip to the Laundromat, where we would fill an entire row of machines.  (I had a lot of quarters.)  Afterward we would sit in my living room, drink the grape juice, and listen to my small collection of Phil Spector records.  Brian really liked Phil Spector.

In the studio, under Brian’s direction, we recorded his harmony parts for “Adios” with five separate tracks of unison singing on each of the three parts, fifteen vocal tracks in all.  He didn’t seem concerned if some of the tracks veered slightly out of tune, but took advantage of the slight “chorused” effect it created when he came back into the control room to mix the harmony tracks into the creamy vocal smoothness instantly recognizable as the Beach Boys.

Brian was making up the harmonies as he went along, but sometimes, when he was having difficulty figuring out a complicated section, he would scold himself and say that he needed to work for a time at the piano.  However, when he sat down at the piano, he never played any part of “Adios,” but instead would play a boogie-woogie song, very loud in a different key.  After a few minutes of this he would go back to the microphone and sing the parts perfectly, without a trace of hesitation.

Let’s listen to the results of that collaboration……

A great Jimmy Webb song, a beautiful vocal by Linda, and unbelievable harmonies from Brian…..it doesn’t get any better than this!  If you are a Linda fan I encourage you to pickup Simple Dreams, you will really enjoy it.