Thanks so much for the insights and I would love to hear more if you find
those notes. Here are some quotes I found from a Van Dyke Parks website:
"Van Dyke on Mike Love: 'Leonard Bernstein had just said that Surf's Up was
one of the greatest songs ever written, and Brian had made this moral
decision to work with me - not that I'm a particularly moral person, but he
was questioning the morality of back seats in fast cars as a staple, and he
wanted a companion in that new enquiry. What drove Mike Love into the back
seat of fast cars in the first place was that it was the only thing he
knew.'" (London Guardian, 12.10.99)
(ouch!) and
"Brian's perspective some twenty-five years after the demise of SMILE:'...I
made peace with the production and what might have been had SMILE turned
out, but I never got used to the way the haunting lyrics [of "Surf's Up'],
written years before, forecast my deterioration'"
To a song dissolved in the dawn
The music hall is a costly bow
The music all is lost for now
To a muted trumpeter's swan
Columnated ruins domino
(B. Wilson, 1991)
Kakki
