Van Dyke Parks

Van Dyke Parks: Clang Of The Yankee Reaper (Warner Bros.)

Review by Penny Valentine, Street Life, November 1975

ONE DAY I got this strange note from America. It said: "Thanks for the review of my single. It is the first good review I've ...

Van Dyke Parks: The Greatest Collaborator

Profile and Interview by Nick Hasted, Independent, The, July 1999

VAN DYKE PARKS knows people who know. He always has. He has the CV of Woody Allen's Zelig, is in the corner of the picture ...

AUDIO: Van Dyke Parks, part 1 (1993)

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, June 1993

Van Dyke Parks talks of his early days in Los Angeles, the folk scene, and the deaths of both his brother and John F. Kennedy

File format: mp3 File size: 32.4mb Interview length: 35 minutes 21 seconds Sound quality: ****

AUDIO: Van Dyke Parks, part 2 (1993)

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, June 1993

On becoming an arranger and songwriter, the effects of the '60s British Invasion, the counterculture and the death of the hippie dream.

File format: mp3 File size: 25.9mb Interview length: 28 minutes 18 seconds Sound quality: ****

AUDIO: Van Dyke Parks, part 3 (1993)

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, June 1993

Van Dyke Parks talks about being in the studio with Brian Wilson, the legendary Smile project, his own Song Cycle and much more

File format: mp3 File size: 34.7mb Interview length: 37 minutes 56 seconds Sound quality: ****

Van Dyke Parks: Discover America

Review by John Mendelsohn, Rolling Stone, August 1972

VAN DYKE PARKS' first album, Song Cycle, released in 1968, was a dizzyingly eclexoteric work that had the critics alternately gushing, "The emergence of a ...

Van Dyke Parks: Discover America

Review by Mark Leviton, Words & Music, September 1972

Van Dyke Parks, surely one of the most inventive musical minds in the business, is definitely not for everybody. His first album Song Cycle came ...

Van Dyke Parks: Discover America

Review by Gene Sculatti, Creem, October 1972

WHATEVER BECAME of Ars Nova, the United States of America. Neon Philharmonic or the Fifty Foot Hose? Less than five years ago, "art-rock" projects like ...

Van Dyke Parks

Interview by John Tobler, Hot Wacks, November 1973

...with contributions from Lowell George and Pete Frame. ...

Van Dyke Parks: Clang Of The Yankee Reaper

Review by Miles, NME, January 1976

VAN DYKE PARKS is one of those people who are usually regarded as either genius or idiot. ...

Van Dyke Parks: The Clang of the Yankee Reaper

Review by Ben Edmonds, Rolling Stone, January 1976

In rootless Southern California, the only cultural traditions are those which you create for yourself. Maybe that's why Van Dyke Parks is much beloved of ...

Van Dyke Parks: The Clang of Van Dyke Parks

Profile by Penny Valentine, Street Life, February 1976

"He deals in streams of consciousness and clicks someone’s brain on to accepting an abstract concept... he can grab those feelings and wrench them out ...

Van Dyke Parks: A Yen for Japan

Interview by Richard Gehr, Village Voice, October 1989

Studiously blasé vibes radiate from within the overlit television studio on West 25th Street. Van Dyke Parks, our downwardly mobile country’s greatest unstaged musical-theater composer, ...

Van Dyke Parks: California Dreamer

Interview by Erik Himmelsbach, LA Reader, November 1995

THE KITCHEN door swings open, and a tiny voice wafts into the dining room, warbling with gusto "...are the luckiest people in the world." Suddenly, ...

Brian Wilson And Van Dyke Parks: Orange Crate Art

Interview by Bill Holdship, MOJO, December 1995

BH: Was it hard getting Brian involved in the making of Orange Crate Art? ...

Discover Van Dyke Parks

Interview by Robin Platts, Goldmine, February 1996

AFTER 30 YEARS in the music business, Van Dyke Parks is not a household name. ...

Wouldn't It Have Been Nice: An Interview with Van Dyke Parks

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, January 2002

VAN DYKE PARKS was the intellectual southerner who penned the baroque, cryptic lyrics for 'Surf's Up', 'Heroes and Villains' and other Brian Wilson masterpieces. He ...

Van Dyke Parks

Profile and Interview by Joel Selvin, San Francisco Chronicle, February 2010

Eccentric Van Dyke Parks finally reaches S.F. ...

Parks Life: An Interview with Van Dyke Parks

Interview by Terry Staunton, Record Collector, May 2011

The next few months will see the release of a series of vinyl singles by celebrated writer, arranger and producer VAN DYKE PARKS, plus the ...

Van Dyke Parks: Return of a Musical Maverick

Profile by Richard Williams, Guardian, The, June 2012

AS THE SMALL, white-haired, bespectacled man in a sleeveless cardigan took his seat a few rows from the front of the stalls in London's Royal ...