Arranged & conducted by Anita Kerr.

It's happening now for Rod McKuen, and it's happening big. His songs are being recorded by nearly everyone that makes records. He turns down more nightclub engagements and college concerts than many top performers are offered, and he has almost single handedly managed to turn the pop song into an art form. Even his poetry, read against lush instrumental backgrounds, has started a new trend in recording. His book Stanyan Street & Other Sorrows has sold more than thirty-thousand copies in a little over six months, making it the largest-selling book of poems in more than twenty years; and, incidentally, causing Random House to take on his latest book, sight unseen. All well and good - but the current attitude toward the work and works of Rod McKuen has taken more than ten years of hard and very often unrewarding effort. Rod was born in a Salvation Army hospital in Oakland, California, thirty three years ago - with nothing. Today, he claims, he has enough money to buy candy bars when he wants them and take plane rides when he likes. He made it by himself. There weren't many who even wanted to help - or, if they did, they didn't seem to know how to go about it.

When he came to Hollywood after an Army stint, an agent thought he looked a little like the late James Dean and wanted to rename him Dean James. After Hollywood came New York and a manager that pushed him into rock-and-roll and had him screaming over a rock band for more than a year. That gave him the husky voice that's now his trademark. He doesn't have a manager or an agent now, which deprives him of someone to run interference but makes him more or less his own master. Now he does pretty much what he likes, which means spending most of his eighteen-hour day working.

When Rod gets fed up with work or harassed by the demands of his growing success, he usually takes off for Europe. More than just a change, it offers him a chance to work with some of the top composers on the continent. These collaborations have produced one of 1966's biggest songs If You Go Away, Seasons in the Sun, and more than a dozen other songs Rod has written with Jacques Brel. He was, in fact, the first writer to successfully translate Brel's songs in this country, and Rod is the only writer Brel has elected to translate into French. In the short time that Rod has been adapting and translating the songs of Gilbert Becaud, several of their joint efforts have begun the road to becoming standards. A goodly share of the Brel-McKuen and Becaud-McKuen songs are included in this album.

The material here includes ballads, songs with a beat, songs that are happy and sad, poetic and humorous. Here are some of the best works of Rod McKuen; they afford a closer look at the man himself as seen THROUGH EUROPEAN WINDOWS that look out on his own special world.

Ed Habib, Stanyan Music

It would seem I have the best of all possible worlds being able to work with each of them individually; however, they are as hard to please as I am. Since Brel writes Iyrics, I try to stay as faithful to his original idea as possible, in the manner of Gene Lees and Aznavour. Often Becaud's melodies turn me on to a Iyric line far from the original in meaning.

Nathalie and I'll Say Goodbye are the most literal translations of the Becaud melodies I've added words to. I'll Say Goodbye was written in a bathtub at the Hotel Crystal in Paris one morning. Nathalie was more difficult to adapt, and took longer; since it deals with East-West relations it had to be just right. My version is a little less East-West and a little more me-she than the original.

There is a point in every Brel concert where he brings out his guitar and accompanies himself on a ballad, usually Le plat pays, which literally means "the flat lands," and it's a hymn to the countryside he knew as a boy. I have adapted it into The Far West where I grew up. Both Brel and I have felt the need to run, only to discover that once away we were unable to hide from ourselves. To this end Brel has given up performing altogether in order to concentrate on writing and recording. It is hoped that his retirement will be like Betty Hutton's - frequent, but never permanent. For he is undoubtedly the world's greatest living entertainer.

Brel is able to put his finger on a particular kind of bourgeoisie living in Belgium, his home. As a result many of his songs are banned there. My translation of Le bourgeois is pretty faithful. Since it is neither anti-Vietnam nor pro-Republican it can be played in this country in Boston as well as in Berkeley.

Like a Child was written with affection for Petula Clark. I listen to more Pet Clark records than those made by any other popular entertainer. To hear her sing the Lennon-McCartney song Here, There, Everywhere is to go instant bananas. As a matter of fact, the first time I heard the French version of Brel's Like a Child (Un enfant) it was sung by Miss Clark. Petula is a marvelous writer. She wrote both the words and music to Two Rivers and has collaborated on many songs with England's Tony Hatch and France's Pierre Delanoe. My favorite Clark song is called, incongruously, Plastic Rose.

I have changed Louis Amade's Mon arbre (My Tree) to Paris. The two Iyrics have absolutely nothing in common; I hope Monsieur Amade doesn't mind since, in addition to being an extraordinary Iyricist, he is also the Paris Prefect of Police. The melody is by Becaud.

On the Road Again has a contemporary theme. La mer sans soleil is a bit baroque, and Jacques Brel's Song Without Words (Chanson sans paroles) is ageless in its description of lovers taking one another for grantedÑuntil one gets bored and moves on.
L'amour avec toi was the Number 1 selling record for many weeks in France by its author Michel Polnareff. It's what the French call a "yeh-yeh" song. I've renamed it Baby Be My Love.

The epic song intrigues me. By epic, I mean longer than the standard thirty-two bar phrase. The Lovers, The Women, The Hunters, If You Go Away and Reflections are among those works of mine that fall within this framework. Through European Windows changes tempo seven times and has a continuing story to tell, so it is longer than most songs. It was a verse and chorus longer, until we edited it. The idea of doing everything in your lifetime and finding in the end that you've done nothing is not a new one, but it's seldom employed in song form.

The Ever Constant Sea, Pushing the Clouds Away, Do You Like the Rain? and Gifts from the Sea have my words and Anita Kerr's music.

The arrangements in this album are also the work of Anita. Being a singer herself she knows how to frame a vocal, never crowding the frame with excess notes. Her charts always complement and never detract from the vocalist. To that end, she is the most gifted arranger I've yet had the good fortune to work with, and this is the first album I've recorded in a long time for which all the arrange ments were done by one individual.

I like these recordings because they bring to mind some recent and happy experiences and because they chronicle a particular time in my life. Maybe this isn't a very commercial album, so I give thanks to RCA Yictor and Neely Plumb for their indulgence in letting me do something I've really wanted to do for a long time.

Rod McKuen