Candy (The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) – The Byrds And Steppenwolf, Dave Grusin

Jazz composer David Grusin, who would years later release an album on Epic also entitled Candy, co-writes an orchestrated “Child of the Universe” with Roger McGuinn. The theme to the film Candy certainly doesn’t sound like the Byrds; it sounds like Roger McGuinn doing a movie soundtrack and calling it “The Byrds.” But that’s ok, because this collection of music really works and is of more historical importance than it is given credit for. Coming a year before the groundbreaking Easy Rider musical score, the two main elements of that audio delight are here on ABC records as well. Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride” and “Rock Me” augment what is really the debut of Roger McGuinn solo. This goes beyond the Byrds being on the road and the Mamas &the Papas’ session musicians cutting their backing tracks, and in a flick with Ringo Starr, John Astin, John Huston, James Coburn, Charles Aznavour, Marlon Brando, Walter Matthau, Richard Burton, and others, it’s no wonder poor little sexpot Ewa Aulin got banished to European films — a fate better than Roger Heron’s when he vanished completely after being sodomized by Raquel Welch in that other John Huston film of the day, Myra Breckinridge. As the motion picture Candy boasts the rare McGuinn/Grusin theme, Myra Breckinridge had John Phillips doing the honors, but it is this movie which is the precursor to all that came after, slyly merging stylish rock with the psychedelic excess of Tower Records film albums — Riot on Sunset Strip, Psych-Out, and Wild in the Streets. Where those discs had hip underground bands like Strawberry Alarm Clock, Chocolate Watchband, and the Seeds pervading the celluloid, jazz musician Dave Grusin ups the ante. His acid-drenched ramblings on side one are superior to the garage rock screwing around on the wonderfully cheesy Tower releases. From the quasi-psychedelic “Birth by Descent” to the rip of Jefferson Airplane’s “Volunteers” that is the third track “Opening Night: By Surgery,” Dave Grusin proves his pen can paint the electric comic book just fine. Side two gets a little bogged down in sitar, wah-wah, and heavy organ, but it still is first-rate and enjoyable, a long prelude to John Kay’s gutsy “Rock Me,” the instrumental stuff is just a build to the release that Steppenwolf provides. “Constant Journey” is the Seeds trying to be Pink Floyd, while “Every Mother’s Daughter” could be the Velvet Underground meeting Frijid Pink at The Factory. Still, it’s the decision to include two choice Steppenwolf hits that proved to be visionary (“Magic Carpet Ride” would end up in how many movies after this?). Snippets of a remake of “Magic Carpet Ride” for the big screen version of Star Trek: The Next Generation as the rocket blasts off was not pioneering, but the inclusion of the full four minutes and 25 seconds of it here is. The percussion toward the end of the three minute and 41 second “Rock Me” complements the Dave Grusin instrumentals very nicely, and Roger McGuinn opening the whole thing up with the elegantly orchestrated “Child of the Universe,” including otherworld lyrics like “swirling ions from the stars/streaming down onto the Earth/from a galaxy like ours….leaving man her cosmic well…vision of an untouched grace…” (you get the idea). This stuff is beyond the Byrds “Eight Miles High,” and this was most likely the real first solo effort from McGuinn — as well as being the foundation for ABC’s success with the soundtrack to Easy Rider a year later. Just too bad they didn’t add some dialogue from Ringo Starr and the other stars, something that will make the DVD all the more worthwhile.