Mixtape #118: There's a chill in the air

Fall hymns for the autumn soul

9th October 2022

Side A

1. Rubin and Cherise by Bonnie Prince Billy
2. Wakin On A Pretty Day by Kurt Vile
3. Red Eyes by The War On Drugs
4. Shark Smile by Big Thief
5. Whiskey Woman by Flamin’ Groovies

Side B

6. Albatross by Fleetwood Mac
7. Song for Zula by Phosphorescent
8. Good Thing by Michael Nau
9. In Care of 8675309 by Lambchop
10. Holy Man (Instrumental) by Dennis Wilson

Spotify

Liner notes

I’ve been reading a lot about Dennis Wilson, the Beach Boy, whose solo work I’ve been really into recently, his songs kicked up by Spotify and implanted somewhere deep, as if I’ve always known them. Songs like Rainbows. Piano Variations on Thoughts of You. Mexico. River Song. And Holy Man – Instrumental.

Wilson drowned, mid-bender, while diving off a boat in Marina del Rey, Los Angeles. He’d been abusing alcohol, cocaine, and heroin. It was 28 December 1983. He was 39. I would have been 9 months old at the time. I’m 39 now. For a time in my early 20s I lived down the street from Marina del Rey. The bike path that leads up to Venice and Santa Monica passes that way. I’ve ridden through on a borrowed beach cruiser a few times.

I wasn’t seeking it out. It’s not a hobby of mine. It’s just if you know where to look you can see the ghosts. Like when I stood on the spot on Sunset Boulevard where River Phoenix collapsed and died in 1993, on a patch of pavement outside The Viper Room. He’d been mixing alcohol, cocaine and heroin. I was there because I saw a lot of live music in those days and The Viper Room was a regular haunt. You can’t spill out of the club without toeing that spot and, if you know the story, reflecting on it.

There’s no larger connection here, just coincidence. River Phoenix. River Song. Patterns and parallels form themselves.

Some years ago I sought out the film Two-Lane Blacktop, a cult classic which stars Dennis Wilson and fellow musician James Taylor as characters named the Mechanic and the Driver who drift around the country making money in drag races. So I’d seen Dennis, at least. Knew of him. I wish I’d known about the other cult classic he’d left behind, his solo album Pacific Ocean Blue. But perhaps it found me when it meant to, at 39, a few hard miles behind me, some open road ahead.

There’s an aching apparent in his music. An open wound, bright red, beautifully raw. Listening to his music is to have him hand his heart to you to hold. Just for a little while. His painful insecurity, born from living in the shadow of his older brothers Carl and Brian, is the reason Holy Man is an instrumental. He recorded a vocal but made the engineer delete it immediately on playback.

Taylor Hawkins, the late drummer of Foo Fighters, himself enamoured with Wilson, recorded a version of Holy Man with lyrics in 2009, providing the vocals himself in a reasonable imitation of Dennis’ fraught timbre. Hawkins died in 2022 while on tour, a cocktail of drugs in his system. Patterns and parallels. Another one gone too soon.

Dennis Wilson isn’t the theme of this playlist. This is music made for thinking and these are just the things I’ve been thinking about.

It’s autumn. The sun casts long shadows this time of year.

“Killed the man, but you couldn’t kill the dream.” – Dennis Wilson