Millennium

In a famous interview given to Oriana Fallaci in 1963, the great Totò explained what happiness meant to him: "Perhaps there are tiny little moments of happiness, and they're the moments when you forget the bad things. Happiness, my dear, is made of moments of forgetting." It sounds like Leopardi in prose ("escaping pain is delight, for us"), yet it's the prince of laughter speaking. If you didn't know better, you'd never guess these were the words of a man who spent his acting career trying to give others joy, cheer and a reason to smile. As music lovers, we often look to music for the catharsis of the abyss, the anabasis that purifies pain. Because deep down, the pain being sung about doesn't really belong to us, even if it resembles our own. The truth is it's easier to empathize with sadness than with happiness, which is why musicians who try to spread molecules of good cheer face the harder task: that of giving us moments of forgetting. Then again, some have chosen to play intimate folk, others sunshine pop. As voracious music lovers, we need both. But when summer is around the corner, all we want is a time machine to take us back to the second half of the Sixties, in California, so we can sing our lungs out to sun-drenched tunes wrapped in pyrotechnic vocal harmonies.

Sunshine pop is a retrospective genre, identified and codified only later by critics who managed to pinpoint the common traits of a scene that existed almost in spite of itself, as far removed from the mind-altering digressions of psychedelia as from the sedate adult-oriented pop of the radio. Around the mid-Sixties, in California, a handful of bands - starting out from typical sounds like surf rock - began developing a more ambitious pop song form, with decidedly elaborate arrangements and a strong baroque streak, especially in the vocals and harmonies used as genuine instruments in service of sun-drenched moods. Against this compositional complexity, the lyrics leaned unmistakably toward brazen escapism, ignoring the new social concerns that were starting to surface in pop-rock (knocking on Dylan's door).

The first bands we can identify as sunshine pop, and who effectively laid the foundations of a local scene (and beyond), are probably the Beach Boys (though in many ways they only belong to the genre for a handful of specific songs), the Mamas & Papas, and the Association, who in 1966 had the nerve to cover Bob Dylan's "One Too Many Mornings," turning it - unlike the original - into a gem of pure joy. Over time, more and more local bands began adopting similar sonic solutions, eventually spreading the gospel of sunshine to seemingly far-flung places like New York, with the Free Design, or even rainy England, with Harmony Grass. It was never a genre of great commercial success, though. Squeezed on one side by the rise of psychedelia - with its audience chasing far more extreme sensations and visions - and on the other by folk, favored by more introspective souls, by the early Seventies the scene had already run its course and drifted into obscurity.

As often happens in music history, the story of sunshine pop too teems with forgotten protagonists, lost talents and disinherited geniuses who might have earned greater recognition had they only brushed against the seductive skin of success. Such was the case of Curt Boettcher, a Brian Wilson who never managed to become Brian Wilson. Even though Gary Usher, the Beach Boys' longtime producer, insisted there was no comparison between the two: "I worked with both. In terms of raw talent, genius, and the ability to do, hear and see things, Curt was light years ahead of Brian." Not bad for a man who, until his death in 1987, worked practically behind the scenes, in the production booth or otherwise far from the spotlight.

Boettcher had met Usher in 1966, and thanks to his intercession managed to land a contract with Columbia. Curt, who had previously worked with the Association and been a member of the Goldebriars, was soon drawn by Usher into an ambitious project called Sagittarius, which would yield two albums, including the fantastic debut "Present Tense," released on July 3, 1968. Just a month earlier, another of their projects had been launched with a dazzling single. The song was called "It's You," a joyous pop crescendo credited to Millennium, arriving a few weeks ahead of "Begin," arguably the high-water mark of an entire genre.

"Begin" is a vivid, sparkling record. Melodically it goes down in one gulp, but in terms of arrangements and, above all, production, it reveals a complex gestation - so much so that Boettcher refused to take it on tour, rightly believing it impossible to replicate that sound live. Nine musicians took part in the recording sessions, magnificently led by Boettcher, who acted as mentor and guide, playing guitar and trading vocals with Lee Mallory and Sandy Salisbury. Alongside him, shaping the record's sound, was Keith Olsen. The two were perfectly in sync: Boettcher devised the sonic solutions, Olsen brought them to life using two eight-track recorders linked together to function as a makeshift sixteen-track. Through every kind of tape manipulation imaginable, Olsen and Boettcher managed to stitch an elegant garment around the fourteen tracks of "Begin," made of overlapping sonic layers harmonized to perfection.

The result of all that work is an ideological manifesto, a prayer to the sun, a category of the soul. It's like witnessing an explosion of melodies climbing over one another to build a staircase, at the top of which Apollo awaits. After a brief prelude, in which several of the album's foundational elements can be heard, the ear is immediately swept away by "To Claudia On Thursday," where Curt manages to fuse sunshine pop melodies, here conjured through the vocals, with a rhythm that seems to arrive straight from Brazil. The result is astonishing, practically perfect - an elegant pop song able to carry our minds to distant, barefoot beaches and let us see the world with new eyes.

The album continues stringing together a sequence of small melodic gems designed to put a smile on our soul, as it does with the delicate, gorgeous “I’m With You”, where the vocal harmonies are lush enough to melt even the toughest heart. Or again in the aching “The Island”, which — thanks once more to the sweet, delicate vocal lines woven by Curt — fires up the teleporter to a secret island.

The album's manifesto song, and of an entire way of approaching life, is “Some Sunny Day”, in which the bed of sound created by ecstatic keyboards and airy guitars melds beautifully with the vocal melodies. It sounds like “Here Comes The Sun” if the Beatles had been born in California, and the effect on our mood is, as ever, overwhelming. Between soul-tinged openings that bring joyful tears to the eyes (“It Won’t Be The Same”) and a bucolic, Renaissance-flavored chant (“There Is Nothing More To Say”), there's also room for the psychedelic digression of “Karmic Dream Sequence #1”, where Curt shows off his talent as an arranger and architect of disorienting sounds — talent we'd later find again in Sagittarius.

Deeply tied to the fate of the genre it belongs to, “Begin” would never manage to break through commercially. Too far outside the mold for the mind-expanding music that was in vogue at the time, and too lighthearted for hippie protest music. Factoring in the sky-high costs that went into producing it, Millennium's sole album ended up being an obstacle to the very career of the man who conceived it, who after this record would go on working only as a producer and arranger for other artists. Curt Boettcher, our very own Brian Wilson.

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03/07/2016