THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,881) Curt Boettcher — “Sometimes“
This B-side written by Curt Boettcher and Lee Mallory (see #18, 1,693) “honestly might be the best song Curt ever wrote”, the B-side from the “only single from what would have been Curt[‘s] first solo album, if not for Together’s untimely demise”. (DoYouLikeVeggies, https://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/curt-boettcher/share-with-me-sometimes/)
Magic Pop Blog rhapsodizes (courtesy of Google Translate — I’m sure it would sound even more rhapsodic in the original Italian):
[It is a] pristine combination of rhythm and melody without a single flaw or added embellishment. A pop song in all its splendor, it transforms the solemn into the celestial, while the lead vocals envelop us with a perfect and tender range, interwoven with string arrangements and baroque and psychedelic effects.
For those of you who know Curt Boettcher’s work, he needs no introduction. But here are excepts from a fairly recent piece by Lucy Harbron in Far Out Magazine:
At first, he started out as part of The GoldeBriars, a folk unit. . . . It was . . . in that band that he started to craft his sound. It was folk at first, but it quickly morphed into something broader, bringing in elements of rock, a hefty dose of pop, but also more left-field elements, even being inspired by his childhood as the son of a navy man and the army songs he’d heard then. His scope was massive, and it was making him well-known, so when that band stopped, he was called on quickly. From there, he started applying all those skills to the work of others. Most notably, he produced for Lee Mallory and became the first person to use the reserve echo, although Jimmy Page [see #110, 589] likes to take credit for that . . . .But as Boettcher produced “That’s the Way It’s Gonna Be” [see #18], the earlier sound of it there gives the medal to him as proof of just how much the producer was ahead of the game. That’s truly the pattern in his career; Boettcher was always a step ahead. In his production work, he inspired bravery in others, pushing the boundaries of genre and studio capabilities, and getting experimental with the kit in a way no one else was. In The GoldeBriars, as early as 1964, he was starting to merge sounds and inspirations in a way that The Beatles [see #422, 1,087, 1,256] wouldn’t date until Rubber Soul, or The Beach Boys [see #667, 1,825] wouldn’t really start to do until 1966 with Pet Sounds—after Brian Wilson had met Boettcher. Boettcher and Wilson met in early 1966, and Gary Usher, who was there at the time, claimed that, Wilson was openly inspired by him, playing a significant role in pushing his production further on Pet Sounds after hearing what Boettcher was doing.* . . . It seems that at every turn, here we have the originator, yet his name is forgotten. . . . “If his life had gone just a bit differently, [he] might have been another Brian Wilson,” [Alexandra Molotkow] theorised [in the New York Times Magazine on August 9, 2013 in an essay about Boettcher and Dawn Eden Goldstein —https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/magazine/she-told-herself-she-couldnt-die-because-she-had-to-write-his-story.html (paywall)]. Clearly with the same musical intuitions, Boettcher seemed just as deserving of the genius status Wilson was awarded, but instead, he was forgotten . . . [As Molotkow] wrote, “As it stands, Boettcher — a pop-music producer whose heyday was the late ’60s — now survives in rock history mostly as a liner-note credit. He could have been, but never was. Yet he enjoys a godlike status among a select group of music fans, for whom obscurity is more enticing than fame.”
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/curt-boettcher-man-who-couldve-been-brian-wilson/
- There is no more classic description of being gobsmacked than the story Gary Usher told Dawn Eden Goldstein about the time Usher and Wilson first met Curt (to be found in the liner notes to the CD reissue of Sagittarius’ Present Tense).
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