Emitt Rhodes

The Merry-Go-Round and a garage in Hawthorne

Emitt Lynn Rhodes was born on February 25, 1950 in Decatur, Illinois and moved with his parents to Hawthorne, California around age four. At 14 he was the drummer of the Emerals, who became the Palace Guard by 1965, playing the Hullabaloo on the Sunset Strip. In summer 1966 he founded the Merry-Go-Round, singer, songwriter and guitarist, with Joel Larson, Gary Kato and the bassists Bill Rinehart and Rick Dey, on A&M. "Live" reached 63 on the Hot 100 in early 1967 and "You're a Very Lovely Woman" 94; the album The Merry-Go-Round came out in November 1967 and the band split in 1969. Around 1966 he had experimented with two reel-to-reel machines feeding tape between them to get four channels.

In 1969 he bought an old Ampex 300 four-track and built a studio of about 20 by 10 feet in a shed at his parents' house, with a $5,000 advance from A&M per Wikipedia, or from ABC/Dunhill per Perfect Sound Forever. Harvey Bruce, an A&R man at ABC/Dunhill, recommended him to Jay Lasker, who signed him. In 1970 A&M issued The American Dream, shelved Merry-Go-Round material with studio musicians, which confused buyers. "Fresh as a Daisy" reached 54 on the Hot 100 and 69 in Australia, and Emitt Rhodes (December 20, 1970, Dunhill) reached 29 on the album chart. He played six nights at the Troubadour in February 1971 and at Lincoln Center's Philharmonic Hall that December, and followed with Mirror (1971, 182) and Farewell to Paradise (1973), then stopped releasing records. Rhodes called the last one probably the best-engineered record he made.

He worked as an engineer and producer for Elektra from 1976. The Bangles covered "Live" in 1984 and "Lullabye" was used in The Royal Tenenbaums in 2001. The Italian documentary The One Man Beatles (Cosimo Messeri) was shown at the Rome Film Festival in 2009, the same year as the Hip-O Select two-CD set The Emitt Rhodes Recordings 1969-1973. Rainbow Ends (February 26, 2016, Omnivore), produced by Chris Price, was his first album in 43 years, with Aimee Mann, Jon Brion, Susanna Hoffs and Nels Cline among the guests; it reached 150. He died on July 19, 2020, aged 70, at home in Hawthorne.