Wouldnt It Be Nice | Page 4

with
Van Dyke. That's a solo album."
As for one with songs that he's written on it, "No," he says, with a short
laugh. "Not really." Words come easily enough for Wilson, sometimes
great rushes of them, but it's easy to see in his face that they're not
getting at what he wants to express. Only his songs are able to do that.
"It's not so hard to do an album with Van Dyke, say. But where does
that put my head, you know? I was frightened of the idea of doing all
standards. If you get into that, it would be..." He lets out a
weight-of-the-world sigh. "You'd have to make a decision. You've got
to make a decision whether you're going to go into it, or you're not
going to go into it, you know what I mean? I believe I have made that
decision, and it...that decision took a lot out of me."
And suddenly it's clear what Wilson means. It is scary. You make a
decision to make a revolutionary, unheardof record like Smile, and
suddenly your group doesn't want to sing it, your record company
doesn't want you to take the time you need to finish it, and even the
musicians in the studio are telling you, "You're crazy, Brian. You're out
of your mind."
You make a decision to work with the Beach Boys again. ("Was it
Mozart they had to invent the piano for?" David Leaf says after the
interview. "Brian Wilson invented an instrument called the Beach Boys,
and now he wants to play that instrument again.") The band's
popularity is sagging, they need you as they've always needed you. But
when you reach out to them they turn away.
Being a singer is much less scary. It's a way back in. "Orange crate art
was a place to start," begins the opening track of the new album.
"Orange crate art was a world apart."

*
Parks remembers the gradual way that Wilson became emotionally
involved in the album. One line in "Sail Away" nearly provoked a crisis,
when it was time for Wilson to sing "We'll raise a toast to what's left of
my memory."
"I was thinking of me when I wrote that," Parks says. "Memory to me
is always such an incredible thing. Perhaps the principal purpose of
DNA. I think this is a natural function of evolved life on earth: to
discover the reason for the big bang, what happened, where's my wallet,
who am I with--memory's big, put it in the piece. When Brian sang that
line, I remember thinking, 'Uh oh. I shouldn't have said that.' But you
know something? He saw it right away. And we decided not to let it be
uncomfortable for either of us. I think it's because I decided not to take
it out.
"There were some other things. He couldn't stand the politics, the third
world I mentioned in that piece. There were lyrics he didn't like, and he
played his power of veto with the ease that a veteran like him is
allowed to. As he got more interested in veto, my feelings got less hurt,
because I realized that he was starting to get possessive about the
project.
"What was happening in the process was that it was creating someone
that doesn't exist, a single character that we developed. We were trying
to conjure up a personality that would govern this record from top to
bottom.
"This is a person who's lived a while. It does look like time has become
a consideration in these lyrics, that this is not from the perspective of
someone who is too young either to disappoint or have been
disappointed. He's a person who's old enough to have done both."
*
Everything about the album has this sort of reflexivity and layered
meaning, some of it intentional, some of it evolved. It started with a

single song, "Orange Crate Art." And although he is likely to "sweat
bullets" over his lyrics, it's the melody that comes first for Parks.
"I don't make up melodies. Melodies occur to me. They come from
somewhere else. The melodies that I hear come to me while I'm
cooking, thinking about nothing but what's on the stove."
"Orange Crate Art" started with just a melody line. "I got the piece
down, it's a lovely little piece, I decided to slap some lyrics on it, just
for fun, because I like to write songs for fun. It's a diversion. And in the
process--although I wouldn't intend this, ever--it reveals something
about myself. It helps me...maintain an elasticity. I amass these songs,
and about once every five years I put them on a record."
Because Parks makes a living "with very low-profile musical
endeavors"--film music, hired-gun producing and arranging--it gives
him