Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 135

Record label: Columbia

Produced: Curt Boettcher and Keith Olsen

Recorded: Columbia Studios, Los Angeles; early 1967 to mid-1968

Released: July 1968

Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)

Personnel: Curt Boettcher (v, g); Lee Mallory (v, g); Doug Rhodes (b, tuba, p, o, harpsichord, v); Ron Edgar (d, pc, v); Michael Fennelly (v, g); Joey Stec (v, g); Sandy Salisbury (v); Michelle O’Malley (v); Red Rhodes (ps); Mike Deasy (g); Toxie French (d); Jerry Scheff (b); Pat Shanahan (d) Paulinho DaCosta (pc)

Track listing: Prelude; To Claudia On Thursday; I Just Want To Be Your Friend; 5am; I’m With You; The Island; Sing To Me; It’s You; Some Sunny Day; It Won’t Always Be The Same; The Know It All; Karmic Dream Sequence #1; There Is Nothing More To Say; Anthem (Begin)

Running time: 43.15

Current CD: Rev-Ola CREV052 adds: Just About The Same; Blight

Further listening: The album made by Curt Boettcher and various Millennium personnel as Sagittarius, Present Tense (1968)

Further reading: www.geocities.com/Hollywood/ 3218 (fan site)

Download: Not currently legally available

The Millennium were the brainchild of LA-based producer Curt Boettcher (1943–1987), whose work on The Association’s 1966 debut album had yielded the hits Along Comes Mary and Cherish. Seeing himself as an auteur in the Phil Spector mould, Boettcher sought a broad canvas for his outpouring of ideas. His production partner was Keith Olsen, a whiz-kid engineer who quit his gig as bass player in the Music Machine to follow Boettcher’s lead. (Olsen would later become a hit producer himself for Fleetwood Mac, The Grateful Dead and others.)

Armed with a concept and a partner, all Boettcher needed was an angel. He found one in the form of Brian Wilson’s former writing partner, Gary Usher. A staff producer at Columbia, Usher first learned of Boettcher in 1966, when he heard strange sounds wafting down the hall at Studio Three West. As Usher (who died in 1990) later recalled, he was not the only one who was impressed; ‘Brian Wilson said, “What is that?”’ It was Boettcher doing a single with future Millennium member Lee Mallory. ‘That record stunned Brian. He’s doing little surfer music, and here comes this kid who is light years ahead of him. I had never seen Brian turn white. All he could talk about for a week was that song and that kid. Brian sensed that that was where it was at, that’s where it was going.’

Although The Millennium was conceived as a studio group, its line-up was solid. In addition to Mallory, Salisbury and Boettcher, it included former Music Machine members Ron Edgar and Doug Rhodes, newcomer Joey Stec and future Crabby Appleton leader Michael Fennelly.

Begin was recorded on two jerryrigged 8-track machines, making it only the second album to use 16-track technology. (Simon & Garfunkel’s Bookends was the first.) The sound is dense; Boettcher’s philosophy could be summed up as,‘16 tracks and every one of them has to be filled!’ At the same time, it escapes being a Wall of Mush; in fact, it sounds strikingly modern, rendering the West Coast vocal-harmony sound of the time with a lush intricacy. The songs are as strong as the production, too: Fennelly-Stec composition It’s You presages ’70s power pop, while Boettcher’s The Island sparkles like beach glass in the sun. It’s no surprise that the album is a favourite of contemporary pop confectioners such as Belle And Sebastian, Saint Etienne and The High Llamas. Even in 1968, when Begin died a commercial death, there were people who knew that it pointed towards the sound of the next millennium. And then, there were also those who didn’t want to know. ‘I sent Brian [Wilson] a copy of The Millennium album,’ Usher recalled. ‘Freaked him out. He never called me back.’