Christine wrote with Dennis

[michelej1]

Originally Posted by vivfox

he reportedly smashed onetime girlfriend Christine McVie's Rolls Royce over and over, but also had a heart-shaped garden built for the Fleetwood Mac singer.)

With her money.

Michele

[bucklind17]

Just picked up this wonderful package. There is a picture of Christine and Dennis working together at the piano as part of the lovely liner notes/booklet. There's also a paragraph in one of the two essays about Christine's involvement in "Love Surrounds Me". She's also mentioned as an backup vocalist, obviously. So excited to spend some time with this!

[michelej1]

Originally Posted by bucklind17

There's also a paragraph in one of the two essays about Christine's involvement in "Love Surrounds Me".

Oh, that's more than I expected. Sounds good.

This OC Weekly Review from June 12 doesn't mention Chris, but it mentions Lindsey:

BYLINE: JUSTIN F. FARRAR

BODY:


A Lost Classic Resurfaces

Beach Boy Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue is finally reissued-but is it as good as Pet Sounds?

The late Dennis Wilson's only solo album, Pacific Ocean Blue, was perhaps the last great out-of-print record from the Beach Boys universe. It's finally being remastered and reissued, along with a second disc of tracks originally intended for Bambu, his aborted follow-up. This means that for the next several months, Rolling Stone and MOJO and a gazillion blogs lifting quotes from those venerable mags will regale us with the Story of Dennis: ladies' man, surfer dude and serviceable drummer slips out from under his big bro's massive shadow and delivers a song cycle about love, spirituality and the environment.

"Dennis deserves to have some sort of recognition," says close friend and fellow surf-rock icon Dean Torrence (of Jan & Dean), who also co-designed Pacific's layout. "Brian kind of sucked the air out of everybody. He is probably one of the most talented and prolific songwriters of our time, so it would have been hard for anybody around him to get any recognition. And Dennis did a fairly good job putting together his music, especially for somebody who had never done it before."

Dennis' first songs, Brian-inspired nursery rhymes such as "Little Bird" and "Be Still," started popping up on Beach Boys albums in the late '60s. At the time, practically nobody, outside of maybe a young Lindsey Buckingham, cared about one of pop's great acts. Flash forward just six or seven years to 1977, when Caribou released Pacific Ocean Blue to an always-attentive Buckingham and more deaf ears (some things never change), and Dennis was his own man, employing synthesizers and a black gospel choir while fusing lush, Isaac Hayes-inspired soul to ambient pop from somewhere near the dark side of the moon.

So, yeah, Dennis' evolution as a songwriter, musician and producer is indeed mind-blowing. But let's not kid ourselves. What you really want to know before dropping $35 on mid-'70s soft rock instead of gasoline is this: Will I dig Pacific Ocean Blue as much as I do Pet Sounds? The group's masterwork, Pet Sounds is the record to which all Wilson-related output is inevitably compared. So here's your answer: You will-but first you'll have to tweak your expectations. While Pacific is obviously the product of a Wilson brother (those layered harmonies don't lie), it's just as radical of a break with what came before as Pet Sounds was to its predecessors ("Fun, Fun, Fun," "I Get Around," etc.).

Beginning with the album's bombastic opener, "River Song," and following through to the end, Dennis echoes Brian's love for Phil Spector. "He had a genius brother for a teacher," explains Gregg Jakobson, who co-produced Pacific Ocean Blue, as well as wrote a good chunk of its lyrics. "There's definitely a Spector influence there, but instead of a wall of sound, it's more of a wash in the background-total and big."

The Beach Boys released a slew of classic albums, but Pacific Ocean Blue (which contains uncredited assistance from Dennis' mates) is really the only record besides Pet Sounds to fully embody that "total and big" aesthetic, as if its creator somehow cracked open his heart and allowed its contents to drip onto magnetic tape. The music is really that far removed from the methodical, detail-oriented studio work that bore it.

Yet Jakobson is right. Pet Sounds is finely cut Swarovski shimmering with sharp angles and bold lines, while Pacific ripples like a lazy, ocean-fed lagoon just before high tide. And, of course, these contrasting qualities reflect the fundamental differences in character between the two brothers. "Brian was ethereal, very much up in his head," says Jakobson. "But Dennis was on the ground. He was a real street person. He was a tough guy."

Brian is the sensitive, very eccentric Californian suburbanite. Dennis, however, urbanized himself over the years. He was a funky beach rat too in love with booze who lived borderline homeless in Santa Monica (which, according to Jakobson, isn't romanticizing his daily existence in the mid '70s). The guy didn't croon about spectral insecurities; he grunted and moaned about life's base needs, as on "Pacific Ocean Blue": "We live on the edge of a body of water/Warmed by the blood of the cold-hearted/Slaughter of the otter."

Ultimately, Dennis sounds like one of those LA characters from a Tom Waits or Warren Zevon song (good-natured, but coarse and flawed) who somehow found himself in a foreign part of the city-that is, in the Beach Boys' studio, backed by the legendary Wrecking Crew.

Then again, even if you accept Dennis as an artist in his own right, Pacific Ocean Blue still might not blow you away, as it strays far from Brian's concept of West Coast pop. But while Pacific Ocean Blue probably isn't Pet Sounds' equal, it undoubtedly is, along with such cultish albums as Fleetwood Mac's Tusk and Gene Clark's No Other, one of the most profound and distinctive musical statements to come out of 1970s California.

Not bad for a dude who was "just the drummer."

Pacific Ocean Blue is released June 17 on Epic/Caribou/Legacy.

[bucklind17]

It's more that Dennis met Christine after he wrote the song and then they ended up working together/moving in together and even created a setlist to perform as a duo then about the actual creation of the song, but it's nice regardless!

[michelej1]

Originally Posted by bucklind17

It's more that Dennis met Christine after he wrote the song and then they ended up working together/moving in together and even created a setlist to perform as a duo then about the actual creation of the song, but it's nice regardless!

That's interesting about the setlist they created. I'd love to see it and imagine then doing it together. Howard Cohen wrote that Dennis' relationship with Chris was tumultuous, but musically inspiring, while Dennis was cutting Bambu. Michele

[macfan 57]

I just got an e-mail from Amazon that my copy of this album is in the mail.

By that way, there is a pretty good promo video for this album on Amazon. It's already out of stock according to their site.

http://www.amazon.com/Pacific-Ocean-...3787296&sr=1-1

[vivfox]

Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue finally is in the mainstream today. There is a nice review in Paste magazine this month and the original Rolling Stone review of this album was perfect. He was in the biggest band in the US as a teenager, he picked up the songwriting slack when his brother Brian had big problems, he flirted with the Manson family, dated Christine McVie for two years when Fleetwood Mac was the most popular band in the world, and then drowned before he was 40. At least he left us some music that makes me wonder where the Beach Boys could have gone if they were not so tied to the concert circuit which paid the bills. He remains "the hard workin' drummer -- Denny Wilson."




Email Post
Posted on 06/17/2008

Comments

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My Trusted MOGs ted baylis says:


Nice scream’n by Dennis…Cool arrangement

Posted12 hours ago
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My Trusted MOGs funoka says:
Very layered production on this number and the first track on this called River Song. It's really a hardcore fan record, but I still think it holds up today.

Posted12 hours ago
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My Trusted MOGs Lester Jonze says:
Word I just grabbed this off Itunes and am excited to listen to it.

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My Trusted MOGs Petey Lapides says:
Striking album cover.

So much is written about Brian. Maybe it's time more is written about Dennis. I like what I hear so far.

There's a touch of "trance" to this track, which I tend to be drawn to.

My Trusted MOGs Petey Lapides says:
According to the Wik, the 2008 re-release includes material recorded for the projected follow-up to Pacific Ocean Blue. Entitled Bambu, it was left uncompleted by Wilson's death.

http://mog.com/funoka/blog/168160

[michelej1]

This is an excerpt from the Guardian Observer:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/s...103842,00.html

Yet cruelly it was Dennis who would self-destruct. The efforts that went into making Pacific Ocean Blue effectively set him adrift from the band that had made him. His relationship with Karen burned out; without finances the studio and the boat soon followed. With the Beach Boys reverting to the clean-cut caricatures of 1964 Dennis went off the rails. His drinking became excessive and, through an ill-fated relationship with Fleetwood Mac's Christine McVie, he entered the cocaine blizzard that was the making of Tusk and never really came out. The last time Sterling Smith saw Dennis he was drinking with a group of hobos.

'Dennis drowned before he ever hit the water,' says Stephen Kalinich. 'I think if he had had more outlets and encouragement with his creative expression he might have taken a less destructive path. That was his way out of it, but when that was blocked and he did not have the familiar tools and the studio around him, it was like a person without a country.'

Within a few years he would be excised from the band's history. It was as though Pacific Ocean Blue had never even existed. Once again he would be their no-talent drummer - the lothario who surfed. The Beach Boys continued without Dennis. They were on the way to 'Kokomo' and lucrative duets with The Fat Boys. For that journey they had no need of their soul.

[Richard B]

Originally Posted by bucklind17

Just picked up this wonderful package. So excited to spend some time with this!

I agree. Great CD package...its been good to hear it again.

[aleuzzi]

Originally Posted by michelej1

This is an excerpt from the Guardian Observer:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/s...103842,00.html

Yet cruelly it was Dennis who would self-destruct. The efforts that went into making Pacific Ocean Blue effectively set him adrift from the band that had made him. His relationship with Karen burned out; without finances the studio and the boat soon followed. With the Beach Boys reverting to the clean-cut caricatures of 1964 Dennis went off the rails. His drinking became excessive and, through an ill-fated relationship with Fleetwood Mac's Christine McVie, he entered the cocaine blizzard that was the making of Tusk and never really came out. The last time Sterling Smith saw Dennis he was drinking with a group of hobos.

'Dennis drowned before he ever hit the water,' says Stephen Kalinich. 'I think if he had had more outlets and encouragement with his creative expression he might have taken a less destructive path. That was his way out of it, but when that was blocked and he did not have the familiar tools and the studio around him, it was like a person without a country.'

Within a few years he would be excised from the band's history. It was as though Pacific Ocean Blue had never even existed. Once again he would be their no-talent drummer - the lothario who surfed. The Beach Boys continued without Dennis. They were on the way to 'Kokomo' and lucrative duets with The Fat Boys. For that journey they had no need of their soul.

This makes it sound as if Christine and bandmates were the bad influence on him, when perhaps the reverse is true?

[michelej1]

Originally Posted by aleuzzi

This makes it sound as if Christine and bandmates were the bad influence on him, when perhaps the reverse is true?

Yeah, like I'm so sure Dennis needed FM to introduce him to cocaine. He was no babe in the woods.

Michele

[aleuzzi]

Originally Posted by michelej1

Yeah, like I'm so sure Dennis needed FM to introduce him to cocaine. He was no babe in the woods.

Michele

And even if they (improbably) introduced him to cocaine, it was his decision to take it. No one was forcing him.

If someone crashed my cars and tore up my garden to put a tacky heart-shaped rose bed in, I'd kick him to the curb. No matter how good looking or skilled in bed.

[vivfox]

Originally Posted by aleuzzi

If someone crashed my cars and tore up my garden to put a tacky heart-shaped rose bed in, I'd kick him to the curb. No matter how good looking or skilled in bed.

Dennis was a drunk before he hooked up with Christine. I used to wonder how she could stand his breath. If someone did that to my garden I'd be very pissed just like you would. Chris looked happy about it in the picture though.

[macfan 57]

Originally Posted by aleuzzi

If someone crashed my cars and tore up my garden to put a tacky heart-shaped rose bed in, I'd kick him to the curb. No matter how good looking or skilled in bed.

And sending her the bill for the landscaping...

There's an interview from around the BTM era when Chris did say that she was obsessed with Dennis at the time. That might explain it a bit.

By the way, there is a previously unseen picture of Chris & Dennis in the booklet of the new release & Chris is mentioned in the liner notes. The album itself, Pacific Ocean Blue is terrific!

[DeeGeMe]

Fleetwood Mac introduced him to cocaine? Oh please! Dennis was WILD! The guy hooked up with some of the Manson girls back in the day and then graciously paid their doctors' bills for all the STD's they'd swapped! I hardly think that meeting Christine and hanging with the Mac launched him into the world of cocaine use/abuse.