One of the most affecting stories in popular music right now concerns a California group called Forest For The Trees, and its creative mainstay, a multi-talented musician, songwriter, producer, engineer, and arranger named Carl Stephenson. The group has just released its debut album, but the music on it was actually recorded four years ago, before Stephenson was incapacitated by mental illness, which his doctors describe as a complex and chronic brain disorder that they're still studying. But with the help of medication, Stephenson has fought his way back to music, and he's a man worth hearing and meeting.

JOHN COZ, Forest For The Trees: Carl is the Godfather of trip hop.

MARK SCHULTZ, Forest For The Trees: Yeah, definitely. He created the sound.

COZ: We were around doing the stuff before anyone came up with the name.

JOHN NORRIS: If you were going to describe the Forest For the Trees album to someone, how would you describe the music?

CARL STEPHENSON,

Forest For The Trees: Um, I would describe it as ordered or as ordering chaos, or a vision of heaven.

MTV: ...Or a musical melting pot that was quite literally ahead of its time. You see, "Forest For the Trees" may be new to record stores, but it was actually completed in 1993.

TONY BERG, Geffen Records, A&R Executive: Look, let's examine the fact that we're listening to it in 1997 and it's challenging now, it's inventive now. Four years ago, it was without precedent.

NORRIS: The strange saga of Carl Stephenson began as a young musical whiz in Yakima, Washington, and continued in Houston, where, as a teenager, the budding producer worked with, of all people, the Geto Boys at Rap-A-Lot Records. Next stop for Carl was here in Los Angeles, where he originally moved to work with the hip-hop group, the College Boys. But his true break came when he hooked up with a young, folkie by the name of Beck Hansen. Together, they created a ground breaking hit single ["Loser" video clip, 891k QuickTime] that would offer just a taste at what Carl had up his musical sleeves.

STEPHENSON: We got together and basically, I just sat down and started composing some music while he was composing some lyrics. It was really casual. It only took us a couple of hours to compose the whole thing.

MTV: Carl took the same sonic collage that characterized "Loser" to another level with Forest For The Trees, sampling everything from alarm clocks, to pots and pans, to sounds of the ocean.

NORRIS: I think it was John in the press kit who talked about how just the recording process was so unique that he could be making spaghetti and laying down some vocal tracks or something.

STEPHENSON: Yeah. That's kind of what happened. I mean, the studio was like right next to the kitchen, so somebody would be making spaghetti while we were trying to do music. (Pulls out a notepad and starts to

write) I wanna write down this idea. Next song is going to be washing the dishes...

NORRIS: Do you keep ideas? Do you jot things down all the time?

STEPHENSON: Yeah. I keep a little notepad with me at all times.

MTV: It was another kind of spontaneous inspiration that helped create "Dream," the infectious first single from the album.

STEPHENSON: That started out thinking about bagpipes and then I woke up one morning with the sun shining in my eyes from the window and I thought, "Wow." It's just so strange that you can be dreaming and not really know that you're dreaming and you're awake and you know you're not dreaming, but it still feels like you're dreaming. I've had so many dreams about working with the Beatles, and working with John Lennon. In one of my dreams, John Lennon and I were going to Mars in a spacecraft and he was singing a song inside the spacecraft called "Zithers in the Sun".

SCHULTZ: He was brought up without a TV and without

a lot of electronic stimulus, so he always talked about tuning into the "dream channel." This was his big outlet, to go to sleep and dream up weird stuff, you know?