Speaker: Interviewer: Barney Hoskyns
Discover America with an American legend… If you’ve every heard the Disney song “The Bare Necessities”, from The Jungle Book, you’ll have heard the work of Van Dyke Parks – because he wrote the musical arrangement. But that’s just a minor detour in a long and fascinating journey that’s lasted more than four decades.
Van Dyke Parks is deeply immersed in America’s manifold song traditions of America, as demonstrated on his trio of acclaimed records, “Song Cycle” (1968), “Discover America” (1972) and “Clang Of The Yankee Reaper” (1975). These records defined Americana decades before the term was invented, an expansive Americana with an all-embracing vision that included ragtime, vaudeville, jazz, bluegrass, psychedelia, classical and calypso, unified by a singer-songwriter spirit.
There have been more albums since, plus film scores, children’s books and arrangements for a dizzying array of talent, and as a producer and arranger he has helped define the distinctive sounds of everyone from Ry Cooder, Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, Phil Ochs, Ringo Starr and The Mighty Sparrow, to recent future-classic albums by Joanna Newsom and Rufus Wainwright. But he’s most famous for his association with The Beach Boys, and in particular Brian Wilson. As lyricist on Wilson’s aborted (and recently completed) “SMiLE” project, and his more recent “That Lucky Old Sun”, Parks is the guiding light behind two of the most epic works of pop art.
This will be a once in a lifetime opportunity to hear this celebrated American legend, and superbly entertaining raconteur, discussing the key events in his career.
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