recordings
I Guess I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times
David Garland performs Brian Wilson
CD released in Japan 1993
Cover art by Rodney Alan Greenblat.
songs | musicians | label/distributor | liner notes | reviews
songs
I Went to Sleep
I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times (mp3 available on the downloads page)
In My Room (mp3 available on the downloads page)
Cabinessence
Guess I’m Dumb
In the Back of My Mind
Fall Breaks and Back to Winter (W. Woodpecker Symphony) (mp3 available on
the downloads page)
I Wanna Pick You Up
You’re So Good to Me
Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)
Mt. Vernon and Fairway-Theme
Sweet Mountain
Wonderful
’Til I Die
Meant for You
musicians
David Garland: voice, piano, DX7II, accordion, pro-one, guitar, flute,
acoustic percussion
Ikue Mori: voice, electronic percussion
Cinnie Cole: voice, banjo
Gene Bryan Johnson: voice on “Cabinessence” finale
Chris Cochrane: electric guitar and voice on ”Wonderful” interlude
Anne Garland: voice on ”I Wanna Pick You Up”
Kenji Garland: voice on ”I Wanna Pick You Up” finale
All string parts played by members of the Akoshia String Quartet: Kate Light,
Diane Bruce, Leslie Tomkins, and Allen Whear.
Produced, transcribed, arranged, recorded, and mixed by David Garland.
label/distributor
released in Japan by
MSI
Music-Scene, Inc.
Musashiya Building
1-29-7 Kamiochiai
Shinjuku-ku
Tokyo 161
Japan
liner notes
Writing From the Heart
by David Garland
Here are some dark songs. Most are about being helpless and hopeless, passive and lonely—and yet they’re lushly beautiful. Who would put such bold ingenuity, effort, and craft into writing ornate songs about uncertainty? Brian Wilson did. Brian Wilson was the leader of The Beach Boys, the creator of their sound and the composer of their biggest hits during their heyday in the 1960s. The songs in this album were not hits. They don’t even mention surfboards or cars. Brian Wilson was not a surfer, and I think that when he wrote his wonderful surfing songs he was an eloquent poseur. But when he wrote about yearning for oblivion, he was writing from his heart.
Each song in this collection bypasses conventional song-writing paths, and instead blazes its own trail into unusual musical territory. It’s very easy to write a weird song. It’s much harder (and much more interesting) to make music that’s full of surprises, but also logical; unpredictable, but also makes sense; and which invents its own musical vocabulary, but can still communicate.
These were the song-writing priorities I was pursuing myself (for example on my 1986 LP “Control Songs,” Review Records, Germany), when I began listening to Beach Boys’ records. I discovered that the songs that interested me most were by Brian Wilson, who has been able to be inventive with every aspect of his music: melodies, harmonies, lyrics, textures, and even the recording process. His experimentations were not ironic or flippant, but rather always in the service of making the song feel right. It’s very honest music. The sentiments are peculiar, but easy to feel empathy for, and somehow, despite its extreme originality, it’s still pop music. (Wilson in his liner notes to Capitol’s CD reissue of Friends: “...I try to keep it sounding simple, no matter how complex it really is.”) In order to understand these songs better, and to help bring them out into the active repertoir of great American songs, I decided to transcribe them and record my own arrangements of some of Brian Wilson’s more personal and unusual material.
Despite the fact that most of these songs are between 25 and 30 years old, they have no nostalgia value for me (except “In My Room,” which was the first song I felt a personal identification with as a kid). First of all, they are timeless—so inventive that they had nothing to do with musical trends or fads, so they still sound fresh and inventive. And the other thing is, I hadn’t even heard most of these songs until a few years ago. Unfortunately, they are rather obscure, and prior to the flood of Beach Boys CD reissues, finding the LPs, and the musical gems scattered through them, was like hunting for treasure.
I’ve noticed that when musicians “cover” Brian Wilson songs, they tend to imitate, recreating Beach Boys-style vocal harmonies, Wilson’s arranging style, and Brianesque falsetto vocal leads. I can understand that—the sound of the original songs as recordings is so powerful, it’s hard to imagine it any other way. But I think the songs themselves are stronger than that. They deserve the chance to be interpreted and rearranged. Listeners familiar with the Beach Boys’ recordings of the songs in this collection will recognize that while I sometimes evoke the sound of the originals, I also sometimes go my own way (never just to be contrary; always in pursuit of my own understanding of the song). I got to know the original recordings very well, but after a point I stopped studying them and started bringing my own ideas to the basic musical material.
Transcribing these songs brought me some musical thrills, such as the fun of identifying some of those improbable chord changes that Wilson can make seem inevitable. (It’s my impression now that Wilson was probably most often thinking in terms of the movement of melody and harmony—contrapuntally—rather than in terms of chord progressions, and that the naming of chords came after the fact.)
In the original recordings of these very personal songs they are not sung by a single person. They are sung by groups of people—either various combinations of the Boys, or one of them doubling his own voice through overdubs. Now, I love the originals as they are, but I felt that this was an area where an interpreter could serve the songs in a different way. On “In My Room,” for example, Wilson’s arrangement actually undermines the loneliness of the lyrics because of its lush multiple-voice harmony. It’s a song that celebrates a kind of constructive escapism, and it’s both comforting and desolate. For my version I created a stark arrangement to emphasize the personal, confessional quality that’s already built into the lyrics. I don’t kid myself that I have improved on the originals, but I hope I have brought in a different perspective that in some way serves the songs.
As I learned to admire Brian Wilson the composer, I also recalled that his personal troubles had received a lot of publicity. At first I thought that his mental confusion, self-destructiveness, and years in bed might be irrelevant to his accomplishments as an artist. But, in fact, most of the songs in this collection, along with a few others, were his eloquent—but unheeded—cries of despair and for help, before his creativity was temporarily disabled by drug use and mental illness. Wilson is currently active in music again, and his first solo album, released in 1988, showed that despite his difficult years, his musical ingenuity can still be applied with thrilling results. I am comforted by the idea that Brian Wilson is at work.
Incredible Hooks and Deep Feelings
by David Leaf
Ever since I first became a devotee of Brian Wilson’s music, people unfamiliar with his wonderful body of work—those who have dismissed Beach Boys records as a very popular but not particularly significant chapter of music history—have asked me why I love it so much.
While I could, and have, written a book on the subject, the most direct answer to that question is on the records. Brian’s powerful compositions—those magical melodies that are full of both incredible hooks and deep feelings—are emotional tunes that I never tire of, sensitive songs that touch me like no other music I know. Pop symphonies.
For the listeners who have been paying attention to Brian Wilson’s works (and that legion of admirers ranges from the late Leonard Bernstein to Paul McCartney), there is no question that Brian’s music is classical in the best sense of the word. Brian has been compared to Mozart and Gershwin, and my limited knowledge of those two men and their work makes me believe that the analogy is accurate.
What I really never knew, until I heard David Garland’s record, was how I would feel about Brian’s songs outside of the harmonic bed that Brian created. Were these melodies hot-house orchids that only Brian’s vocal arrangements and production skills could breathe life into? Or would they stand on their own, regardless of the singer?
The good news is that David Garland has done a great service to Brian Wilson, one of the most gifted and important composers of our century. For people who can’t get past the Beach Boys’ image, this album should serve as an effective introduction to Brian’s music. Garland has chosen a fascinating and revealing sample of Brian’s non-surf, car, and “fun in the sun” songs, most of which (like the LP’s opener, 1968’s “I Went To Sleep”) are the frank, personal statements that Brian’s most ardent admirers cherish.
The Pet Sounds album is Wilson’s most complete and famous work in that same autobiographical vein. Of all the songs from that much-acclaimed classic LP (from which “Don’t Talk...” is also taken), “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” might be the saddest: the honest and frightening admission of an artist who knew he didn’t belong where he was, yet didn’t know what to do about it. In happy contrast to the two Pet Sounds tunes is “You’re So Good to Me,” from 1965’s Summer Days... LP. It’s one of the most joyous and upbeat songs of Brian’s career, a nice counterpoint to Wilson’s usual broken-heart tales.
“Cabinessence” (and the beautiful “Wonderful”) were orginally slated to appear on Brian’s legendary, never-released Smile album. As in the version of “Cabinessence” that was finally released in 1969, Garland has pieced together the title theme with fragments that were reportedly called “Grand Coulee Dam” and “Who Ran the Iron Horse.” This accomplished interpretation does justice to the ambition and scope that was Wilson and (renowned lyricist, arranger, orchestrator, and composer) Van Dyke Park’s unrealized goal for Smile back in the fall of 1966. While comparatively slight, “Fall Breaks...” (imitation Smile from 1967’s Smiley Smile LP), features the “Woody Woodpecker” theme. It should bring a smile to your face, which was probably Brian’s original intention. Garland’s use of the accordion and clever percussion only add to the enjoyment.
“In the Back of My Mind,” from the Today LP, shows not only how in control of his art and craft Brian was in 1965, but also that as a lyricist, he could express himself in a meaningful manner—something that’s been lost in all the talk of drug use and family tragedy. “Guess I’m Dumb,” an outtake from the Today sessions, was released in 1965 as a single by then-unknown studio musician Glen Campbell; it wasn’t a hit, but to me, it’s the best outside production of Brian’s career. It’s great that Garland has chosen to spotlight one of the most overlooked high-quality ballads in Brian’s catalogue.
Released in 1963, “In My Room” contains Brian’s first totally personal lyrics, ones that are terrifically self-aware, especially for a 21-year old, and particularly prophetic considering what lay in Brian’s future. As singularly relevant as the lyric is to Wilson, the song itself is so musically deep that Garland’s version works.
While on this LP, Garland primarily concentrates on Brian’s 1965Ð1968 material, this album does contain four Wilson songs from the 1970s: “Sweet Mountain,” from the obscure 1972 Spring LP, is indicative of Wilson’s post-“Good Vibrations,” less-is-more work, but for me, it’s a song that really only completely comes alive on the vocal tag and fade.
The “Mt. Vernon and Fairway” theme is from an autobiographical fairy tale that Brian wrote from the Beach Boys’ 1973 Holland album, Brian’s frustrating fable of the “Magic Transistor Radio” that is the source of his music.
The Beach Boys Love You, released in 1977, is perhaps the most underproduced and “unusually” sung record in the group’s catalogue, but it is full of good Brian Wilson songs, like “I Wanna Pick You Up.”
1971’s “’Til I Die” is the song that really kicked off my obsession with Brian Wilson. Until I heard “’Til I Die,” I knew that Brian had made great, important music, but I didn’t know that he still could. The melody and harmonies are mind-blowing, and the accomplished lyric shows what Brian can do when he takes the time to express verbally what comes so naturally in his music—the pure emotion of the moment.
“Meant for You” (the lead-off song on Brian’s favorite Beach Boys album, 1968’s Friends) marked the beginning of a trend in Brian’s work to spin out beautiful melody fragments that he didn’t take the time to develop. Regardless, its Bach-like feel was an effective, almost elegiac opening for the musical feelings he expressed on Friends. Here, Garland turns it into an album-ending lullaby, a perfectly sweet ending for this all-too-brief journey into the music of Brian Wilson.
I feel privileged to contribute these notes to David Garland’s album, a fascinating collection of some of Brian Wilson’s most unique work. I hope that after you listen to it, you’ll seek out the original recordings, both to better appreciate Garland’s clever interpretations and to hear the master’s own voice.
David Leaf, a television writer and producer, is the author of the critically acclaimed, definitive Brian Wilson biography, The Beach Boys & the California Myth (now out of print). In 1990, he wrote the award-winning liner notes for the CD release of Pet Sounds as well as for the entire Beach Boys’ Capitol Records catalogue. He recently co-produced and wrote the liner notes for a 5-CD Beach Boys career retrospective, Good Vibrations: 30 Years of the Beach Boys Best, which is scheduled for June, 1993 release. © 1993 David Leaf