After a successful wintertime holiday recording called Christmas in Harmony, Wilson Phillips rejoiced in the season of Spring by releasing Dedicated in April of this year. Along with her sister, Carnie Wilson and long-time trio member and friend, Chynna Phillips, Wendy Wilson decided to honor the legacy of songs their parents sang with Dedicated. The result is a fresh yet true-to-the-original spirit of some
of the classics from both The Beach Boys and The Mamas and The Papas. With two upcoming performances in San Diego as part of the San Diego Symphony “Summer Pops” season on Friday and Saturday, August 17 and 18, Wilson Phillips proves that though the seasons come and go… their musical quality and talent continues to shine through the years. Here for The Rage Monthly, Wendy gets to the heart of the newest recording, reflects on the initial success of Wilson Phillips and her philosophy on keeping up with all that life has to offer.
I wanted to begin with the new CD Dedicated. You three did such majesty in keep- ing the original flavors of the songs and at the same time, adding so many unique additions to the arrangements and in the harmonies of the songs. Thank you so much. We had a lot of fun making the record and of
course, we wanted to keep the integrity of the original music there… Which is obviously brilliant. We didn’t want to depart too far from that. However, we tried to add our own style as we did it. In choosing the songs for this CD, how complicated or smooth was the selection process? It was a little bit complicated because there is such a big library of
music. The hardest part was choosing what to cover because we loved so many of the songs. We went with a list of songs that we thought the public would like and also songs that were not as well known that we liked, as well. We kind of married the two. I’m really glad that Wilson Phillips honestly feels a true responsibility to this music as Brian Wilson [Beach Boys] and John Phillips [The Mamas and the Papas] are just masters at the art of songwriting. I know, they’re unique individuals, they don’t come around very
often. We’re very blessed. I was honestly flabbergasted to hear Owen Elliot-Kugel [Cass Elliot’s daughter] on the recording of “Dedicated to the One I Love.” When I heard Owen sing, “And it’s something… that everybody needs,” I got the chills on my arms as to how much she sounded like her mother. I know… you’re not the only one who’s said that, everybody’s said it.
It’s astounding, isn’t it, how much she resembles her. How did she come to be on this song and what are some of your thoughts on recording this track with her? When we first formed the band, back in the late 1980s, Owen was
originally the fourth member. Things didn’t work out timing-wise; so it turned out to be just the three of us. That’s when we made our group name, “Wilson Phillips.” It is really a wonderful feeling to have her on this record; we of course remained friends with Owen for all of these years. There was always this void and we wanted to sing with her and we knew that someday we would and this was the perfect opportunity to have her sing with us—It was very wonderful and very cathartic. We thought for Dedicated that she would sound just beautiful on that
song. So, we chose that song for her. She is getting a great response from this record and it’s well deserved. She’s very happy about it and so are we.
AUGUST 2012 | RAGE monthly 45
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