Smile box is here. Wow.
And the booklet is the correct size!
I’ve skimmed through the lovely book a few times. Maybe my copy is missing some pages…there isn’t any contribution from Van Dyke Parks, bar one quote, and, uncharacteristically, he is talking about himself:
“The older I get“, he’s taken to saying onstage, “the better I was.“
Maybe some of the pages are stuck together. Better check again.
Nobody has spoken publicly about why VDP didn’t contribute to the book, but people in the know seem to think he was asked to contribute and refused to. Certainly right now he won’t discuss Smile at all – see the interview at http://www.emusic.com/listen/#/music-news/interview/emusic-qa-van-dyke-parks/ from Monday, where his only comment on Smile is “You must forgive me. I have no comment on Smile. I’m so sorry. “
I wasn’t actually surprised, more ‘well, fancy that’; when I saw the listing on Amazon weeks ago and his name was absent, I had a bit of an ‘aha!’ moment, and its been the partial impetus for everything I’ve done here since.. Seeing this for myself was just confirmation.
It’s odd, actually, because in the promotion for his London gig last May he was quite enthusiastic about it, talking about the box as being like a Fabergé egg. But apparently he wants nothing to do with any of it…
Indeed. Odd that, isn’t it…?