23rd & 24th October, 2006
Details of Rod at The
Luckman in November - click here
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Photo by
Edward Habib McKuen. ©2006 by Stanyan Audio Video Archives
A Thought for Today
If you insist on walking around with a
bull’s-eye on your back, expect the occasional wound.
How I Spent My Summer Vacation: Part 1
Some vacation! I really thought this year I would have one . . .it was
all planned out. I’d drive up to the high desert, find a motel in some
little town when the gas started running low and just spend a few weeks
incommunicado. No laptop, no telephone or newspapers, just some brain
rest time. A visit with a few of the groundhogs and lizards. So much for
summer sunshine plans.
As summer was a-comin’ in I received an e-mail from the head bear at
Bear Family Records. The long planned Bear Box containing 7 CD’s (each
80 minutes plus) with everything I recorded released and unreleased for
RCA was finally on again. They needed a couple of dozen more unpublished
photos from the archives and a 14,000 (yep, FOURTEEN THOUSAND) word
essay from me covering each of the couple hundred tracks. And they
needed it yesterday. A week or two of yesterday’s later I completed it.
Here is the introduction.
Some thoughts on words and music of a time gone
by…
My years under contract to RCA were some of the most productive of my
career. I met and worked with the best arrangers and musicians in
Hollywood, London and Paris, and I could not have asked for a better,
more knowledgeable producer than Neely Plumb.
Neely was not just accommodating and supportive but 'hands on' all the
way. He never let me get away with anything less than the best
performance he felt I was able to give. If it wasn't there on the first
take, he'd pull it out of me by the fifth; tenth if necessary. He loved
my songs and appreciated my vocal quality. We bonded immediately.
Early on, he learned that -- unlike some of his other artists -- I
preferred a sustained performance, meaning that splices and bouncing
snippets of vocals from track to track on the tape was pretty much out
of the question. Good or bad, I wanted my vocals to have a beginning,
middle, and an end. Songs are stories; you don't interrupt them at bar
#44 on the first take with a phrase from take six.
My own production instincts have always led me to concentrate on getting
the perfect instrumental backing track while the orchestra was assembled
in the studio, and going for the vocal later. The musicians' union
frowned on overdubbing, but the rule was seldom enforced. I liked to
overdub because it allowed me to concentrate on shading the vocal once
the band track was complete. If Neely and I had done our job correctly
(listened hard enough), the instrumental tracks were as close as we
could get to perfection and I would have laid down an acceptable guide
(or scratch) vocal track. Later, in a booth by myself with earphones on,
low lights for atmosphere, and Neely policing my voice from the control
room, I could concentrate on singing the song the way I meant it to be
sung.
Rod and brother Edward prior to an RCA session. Photo by Rick Strauss,
1967
If you write your own material, you have a built-in feeling of how it
should be performed, and Neely and I were always on the same page
concerning interpretation. The demos I did for artists of the period,
Sinatra, Mathis, The Kingston Trio, Johnny Cash, Bobby Goldsboro, Waylon
Jennings, Johnny Desmond, Glenn Yarbrough, Jimmie Rodgers and others
nearly always ended up being the basis for their finished arrangements.
I confess to being proud of that.
Songwriters can be a grumpy lot; complaining about how singers glide
over a line or swallow an important word or just don't get it as far as
a lyric is concerned. I'm pretty touchy about how a song of mine is
treated the first time out, after all my songs are indeed my kids. But
after a work has been done well a few times by singers who got it, I can
smile at some of the whippings a line or a musical phrase receives at
the hands of those uncaring or in a hurry.
Changing the words or music, that's another matter. Frank Sinatra, the
singer who appreciated songwriters more than any vocalist I ever met,
was also the hippest of all singers. Despite his love of words and
wordsmiths, he was famous for substituting ‘ring-a-ding-dings’ and other
things where the author had indicated something else. He once showed me
the perfect rejoinder to this practice, a telegram from Cole Porter. The
message consisted of a single six-word phrase, "I'll write 'em, you sing
'em." It was signed, "Love, Cole." Whoops. Frank told me he carried the
Porter wire with him all the time. "It keeps me straight," he said.
By the time I arrived at RCA in 1965, I had begun to do concept albums.
I enjoy order in everything except my surroundings. My room, like my
personal life, is a wreck, but enough about that. One day, I'll clean
the house and surprise everybody. By 'concept,' I don't necessarily mean
format, but a premise – like day always following night.
Until we started putting this box together, I never realized that having
a concept mind set could get me into trouble. Assembling this collection
wasn't made any easier by being a record collector who already owned and
loved dozens of Bear Family sets. Each of them has a prescribed order
and the one rule that nearly always applies is to master the tracks
session by session in chronological order. This always makes sense from
the historical point of view, and more often than not it's an added
treat for the fan and listener who is given the rare chance to hear his
favourite artist grow.
The singer has a voice but no set style, and then gradually as you
listen you hear a unique sound begin to develop. For that kind of thrill
try listening to the Hank Snow, Doris Day or Frankie Laine Bear Family
collections in sequence.
Spectacular performances, hidden gems, wrong turns, sometimes less than
serviceable material, big hits, followed by a disc not quite dross and
the final recovery and triumph is all part of the fun that rests inside
a Bear Family Box. It's as if the compact disc format was invented by
bears for bears.
Richard Weize & Rod discuss the RCA/Bear Box over dinner in Los Angeles.
Photo by Paul Surratt circa 2001
Richard Weize, the chief bear and take-no-prisoners producer/
discographer is a collector himself, so how could I possibly be accorded
my own Bear Family Box without conforming to his regimen? Without
belabouring the point any longer I hope it's enough to say we arrived at
a sensible solution. We would retain the original programming on each of
the RCA albums and then add the supplemental material from the period to
the remainder of each disc. Separating the album and the unused masters,
out-takes, alternate takes and demos would be an Entre' acte consisting
of one of my instrumental compositions. It works for us; we hope it
works for you.
Finally, I often feel like the luckiest man alive. For more decades than
I can count on a single hand I have been able to make a living at what I
love and do best, writing and performing my own work. All along the way
great artists have found many of my songs and made them their own. The
treats in my life continue to far outnumber the tricks.
A few weeks ago a good friend e-mailed me Johnny Cash’s newly released
recording of “Love’s Been Good to Me.” It was one of the last songs
Johnny ever recorded and his reading of it nearly broke my heart but it
left me smiling, grateful and humbled.
Johnny Cash & Rod in Nashville during rehearsal for an episode of Cash’s
TV series. Photo by M. James, ABC-TV.
Lately one of the most all encompassing projects to fill up my life has
been producing an album of my songs thoughtfully rendered by an old
friend Petula Clark. It will come as no surprise to friends or fans that
my admiration for Petula has no boundaries. She recorded more than two
dozen tracks for this project and I am
wrestling with the unenviable task of narrowing that number down to 14
or 15 for her tentatively titled Sunshine & Solitude CD. All day I have
been listening to the final track she laid down. “Seasons in the Sun”,
my adaptation of Jacques Brel’s Le Moribond is perhaps one of my best
known and most recorded works, so let me go on record as saying that her
remarkable, restrained and knowing rendition of it is definitive. She
got it, she nailed it.
Rod and Petula Clark
Yes, the treats and
unexpected presents keep arriving and certainly not the least of them is
my very own Bear Box containing all of my output beside the wagging tail
of one of my favorite animals, Nipper the RCA mascot.
Rod McKuen, Sunday 5:40Am August 20th, 2006 Holmby Hills, California
Now then do I know the exact date the Bear/RCA Box will be available? I
do not, but I am told it will be soon. Stay tuned. I can tell you that
in a couple of weeks you will be able to order Petula Clark’s new
Christmas single. “Simple Gifts” & “Thank You for Christmas” from
Stanyan House.
Petula’s “Sunshine & Solitude, The Songs of Rod McKuen” will be issued
on CD in January. More about that in “How I Spent My Summer Vacation,
Part 2.
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