Creative control is a buzzword that gets a lot of love from artists, but let’s be honest – creative freedom is not for everyone. You might enjoy a suspenseful, cleverly told story in the theatres, but once you bring in the Extended Directors Cut on DVD with added special effects and an extra half an hour running time, you might learn it was probably for the best that the director didn’t have all of the tools to achieve his vision – the restraint forced him to be creative, and make the tough choices that led to a great work.
In order to succeed with creative control of a work, it’s probably best to have knowledge of more than one facet of production – in the same sense that a chef would be suited to take a few business classes before he opened his own restaurant.
Curt Boettcher had that sort of background. The Wisconsin native had done work as a musician, but he was rather quickly drawn to work behind the microphone – he did some songwriting, but he threw himself into work in production, mostly for softer groups like Tommy Roe and The Association. Everything he touched seemed to turn to gold from a commercial perspective, but more importantly, it reached the ears he needed to improve his own status in the industry – he was given the chance to work with big name producer Gary Usher and some other fella named Brian Wilson – his innovative technique impressed Wilson a lot, and you can hear Boettcher’s influence (and his work!) on subsequent Beach Boys records in the years to come.
And so, in 1968, Usher’s backing and Wilson’s enthusiasm led the people at Columbia Records to think they had a gold mine on their hands, and Curt Boettcher, still just 24 years old at the time, was given the largest budget in the history of the label to fulfill whatever vision came to mind, and he planned on using every dime – this was going to be the first ever sixteen-track record. Generally, a vanity record like this means that one person handles the writing, the production, and every other aspect of work in the studio, Boettcher reached out to eight other musicians from groups he’s worked with in the past, both to play and to assist in the songwriting process. Boettcher, himself a gifted vocalist, took the reigns as frontman and started crafting one of the most underappreciated albums of the late 60’s.
Musically, Begin is airtight. With a lineup that stretched across a lot of genres, they managed to walk a thin line that many great records do: blending in a lot of styles from Karmic Dream Sequence #1’s darker, sprawling psychedelic landscape, to I Just Want To Be Your Friend’s straight-across sunny pop music, to Prelude, with dense, looping beats that wouldn’t feel out of place on a Kanye West record while still managing to carry its own center.
Commercially, the record didn’t succeed despite the advertising budget and numerous singles released to support the record. The Millennium hit a sweet spot – it was too artsy and weird for pop radio, but it was too polished to find a niche with underground stations and college campuses. It also didn’t help that Boettcher wasn’t enthusiastic about doing live shows. This was partially because he didn’t have interest in it, but it was also because he’d just created one of the most intricately produced records of the time – Begin was clearly a studio record, and it was almost impossible to make a decent replication of it for live audiences. The odds of another Millennium record would have been long under the best of circumstances, with all the other projects its members were involved in, and its poor commercial performance served to seal its fate. To make matters worse, the record flopped so epically that Columbia eventually canned Gary Usher, who had been Boettcher’s patron.
But we don’t care too much about that, do we? Given the chance at complete creative autonomy, The Millennium have crafted something that still sounds fresh long after the commercial concerns of the quarter have evaporated. Like a film that slowly grows an audience once it its DVD, Begin gradually gained a following in the years after its release, eventually earning 3 new editions of the record, the latest of which has a couple of B-sides and shortened radio cuts of the singles. We’ve got a great record here. Why not take a few minutes and see if you like it?
Tags: Curt Boettcher, The Millenium
What a pain in the butt. I worked on this last night and my computer ate it!