David Beard

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast. Our guest today is David Beard, who has a new book, All Summer Long Conversations with the Beach Boys, from Surfing to Smile. David, how'd you get involved in the Beach Boys universe?
00:00:20
Speaker 2: Bob? It goes a long ways back. It started with me discovering Jan and Den. First. I'd heard the Beach Boys on the radio, of course, but when I saw The Night the nineteen seventy ninety nineteen eighty, the Dead Man's Curve television movie about Jan and Dean, that was kind of my road in because I remember to this day so vividly the moment in that TV movie when Richard Hatch is Jan standing next to Bruce Davidson is Dean with their surfboards at the ocean, and I'm saying, this would sound so great on tape, and he goes, what and then they cut to a montage of Janandine in the studio singing surfing with the actual surfers on the waves. And that's the moment that I just went, what is this and I have to get more of it. That's that's where it started.
00:01:14
Speaker 1: Okay, when this happens though You're not living in California, right.
00:01:18
Speaker 2: No, I'm up. I'd actually just moved from upstate New York to Charlotte, and I, for the life of me, can't remember if I saw like an advertisement on it, you know, on television that made me want to watch it, or what the case was, because I don't know how I accidentally stumbled across. I don't remember how I came across it, but I remember I watched it from the very beginning. And when that, when that moment happened, I just was. It just sucked me in. I just I was ruined. And the next thing I know, I was, I was as you know, back then, there was retail music stores everywhere, lots of used record stores everywhere, and I went to the main one in downtown Charlotte, I think it was called Camelot, and I bought the Jan and Dean Anthology two record set, and that kind of just galvanized my interest in them, because you know, it was the perfect, perfect first Jan and Deine thing for me to buy because it had all the liner notes in it. It had Dave marsh from Cream's Liner Notes, and it talks so much about Brian Wilson and then I. So that made me pay attention to the songwriting credits and I thought, well, I got to know more about the Beach Boys, and so that's that was kind of the doorway and I picked up immediately immediately. I was fourteen or fifteen years old, and I immediately just picked up on that Jan and Deine humor that was so evident throughout all their materials, but especially on side for the Anthology album, which was that wonky sound effect which would which was their original version of Fileus in an abridged form. But that's really what it was, that two record set that just really drew me in. And having in the television movie Dick Clark, Mike Love and Bruce Johnston make the cameo at the end was kind of another crossover thing where it piqued my interest and drew me, you know, wanting to know more about them.
00:03:26
Speaker 1: Okay, so you bought the Genadine Anthology, how'd you start with the Beach Boys?
00:03:32
Speaker 2: I remember that I bought Pet Sounds on a record because I wanted to know more, and I remember going going in and buying Pet Sounds, but not I took it home, listened to it, and I also had Best of the Beach Boys. Do you remember the record clubs, the Columbia or r C Rety Plus, Yeah, so I had.
00:03:51
Speaker 1: Six records for a penny and then the Pet Shit, Yeah, so I had.
00:03:56
Speaker 2: I had I'm sure the best of the Beach Boys through that, along with Manilo Live and a whole bunch of other things. And I grew up in New York. I was a Kiss fan, major Kiss fan. All the kids were Kiss fans. And I think what put me in the headspace of loving oldies was actually Kiss Alive too, because side for Kiss Alive two was studio tracks, and one of the studio tracks was any Way You Want It with Paul Stanley singing lead. And again I had no idea that that was a Dave Clark five song, but I remember vividly walking down the hallway in junior high school singing that song. So when I see dead Man's Curve and then when I have Best of the Beach Boys and I go buy Pet Sounds, I play it and I remember, I think that's not me was the one song that I kind of liked because of the melody and it felt like, you know, singaple where you could sing along, but it didn't stick with me until years later. But when it hit me when I was around twenty four, by eight to ten years later, when it hit me, when I was driving in my car with the Pet Sounds cassette. When that hit me, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Like I thought, how did I not get this any sooner? You know? But when I got it, it really it really stuck.
00:05:15
Speaker 1: Okay, But you ultimately become involved with a beach boys, let's call it a fianzine or a newsletter. How does that happen?
00:05:24
Speaker 2: Well, so I start collecting records and going to used record stores around town, and I went to my junior prom. But then when senior prom comes up, I ask three girls they all had dates, and my parents, you know, said here's your money for your prom. And I thought, well, okay, and I took the money that they had given you for the senior prom and went off to a record convention. And at so that I became. I started doing those frequently, and within a couple of years I went to one and by this time I had discovered Smile because of Malcolm Leo's Wonderful and American Band documentary in nineteen eighty five. So I was really that had really piqued my interest, and I was standing behind a guy very impatiently as he was going one record at a time through the Beach Boys section, and he turned around and we started talking, and then that was Lee Dempsey. And Lee at the time was writing for Endless Summer Quarterly because it was originally founded out in San Diego by Rick Edgell and Phil Mast And he told me about the publication and I said, oh, okay, well, so I subscribed for a year and it just it was a lot of picture and technology is very different now than it was then, but the magazine just had a lot of photos of like you know, covers of sheet music, photos of like the editors with their arms around the Beach Boys backstage and that type of thing, and it just there was nothing about it that had that felt meaty to me where I could find something out. And so one of the first books, and I don't remember how I found it, was Dominic Priori's Look, Listen, Vibrate and Smile The Dumb Angel Gazette, and that be kind of came my bible early early on in my discovery of the Beach Boys and my love to this day and infatuation of smile.
00:07:25
Speaker 1: But you ultimately take over the Quarterly.
00:07:27
Speaker 2: Right yes? So yeah. So summer of ninety three, Rick and Phil contact Lee. They say, hey, we're burnt out the beach Boys. I don't know how the conversation went because I wasn't a part of it, but they asked Lee if he would take it over. He was interested in buying a business license. So by that time Lee and I was a morning show producer at a oldies station and I had him helping me with jingles for the show. And he contacted me and said, hey, I'll do this if you want to do this with me, because I won't do it alone it's too much work. So I said sure, what a yeah? Absolutely, are you kidding? I get to write about you know, I got to dig into something that interests me and actually write about it. Absolutely, And I got lucky right out of the bat in August of ninety three and got to do my very first interview with Dean Torrent. So Jan and Dean like the.
00:08:20
Speaker 1: Fun let me stop, Let me stop for a second. When you take it over? How long has the Quarterly been in existence? And how many subscribers are there.
00:08:31
Speaker 2: It was founded in eighty seven and this is ninety three, so six years in and just over two hundred at the time.
00:08:39
Speaker 1: Okay, is the quarterly still in existence?
00:08:42
Speaker 2: Yes?
00:08:43
Speaker 1: And is it growing? You know, what's the status of the subscribership now.
00:08:49
Speaker 2: It's uniquely kind of just you know, it comes. It has peaks and valleys, but it just kind of it just manages to We've got over We've got nearly two thousand names in our database, but it kind of comes and goes because people will renew at different times and a lot of people know of the magazine or what will happen is they'll just want a specific one. Let's say I do one about Sunflower, that's the one they want, or pet Sounds, that's the one they want, and they'll just order them individually. And I did a whole series over the course of winter twenty twenty four all the way to early this year. I think it was of four issues just on Brian Wilson outside the Beach Boys productions, which was a joy, you know, going down that rabbit hole and talking to all these ancillary people about Brian working with them, and some of that ended up in the book.
00:09:45
Speaker 1: Okay, I get a ski newsletter Ski History, and they burnt through the major topics and now it's really obscure stuff and sort of reruds. You know, how do you find new material or what do you deliver?
00:10:04
Speaker 2: Well, it's amazing to me. I don't know if you run across this with things as you get into them, Like, it's amazing to me all the different layers of something that you can explore. And like if you just take one person's name out of the Beach Boys, Brian Wilson and you and you just start to think, Okay, all the things that Brian has worked on, all the things that he's arranged, all the things that he's produced. And then I, you know, along the way, I get to talk to Glenn Campbell, and Glenn's interaction with them was uniquely its own. And so it's just every time I get to talk to someone, something else unfolds in the conversation that maybe I knew about or and was prepared to talk about with the subject, or maybe they, you know, kind of unveil something to me historically that I wasn't quite aware of or knew something of. But it allows me to dig deeper. So I always it's never ending.
00:11:04
Speaker 1: Okay, so you take over the quarterly. Your first interview is with Dean. How do you make contact with Dean and what do you learn in that interview?
00:11:15
Speaker 2: My good buddy Elliott Kendall set that up. And I didn't know Elliott at the time. He knew Lean, so he was kind enough to get that going.
00:11:24
Speaker 1: And just John, I'm just interested. If you didn't know him, how'd you make the connection to make it happen?
00:11:32
Speaker 2: Well, Elliott Kendall. Elliot Kendall knew him, and he got the phone number. And at the time, I was working in radio, so I called Dean from the radio station. I was so nervous, Bob, because Dean was like, you know, I discovered Jan and Deane got it. I was so nervous, and you know, I had the shaky voice, you know that we're not worth anything going on. And we got talking and I interviewed. What I wanted to know about was the Jan and Dean television pilot because I knew of it, but I had not seen it. And so we started talking and he immediately picked up on the genuine interest, you know, not fanboy stuff, but genuine interest in history, and we got on great, right out of the gate and he has since become a mentor of mine graphically. He's been so wonderful over the years. So going back to your question, he just he was just so open and what I learned from him in that interview was it surprised me the most was how cool he was and how open he was. I think he was really the perfect first interview for me to have conducted for that reason.
00:12:50
Speaker 1: Okay, you have a good experience with Dean. What's your next step?
00:12:57
Speaker 2: Well, I'm the more creative between Lee and I. I'm always thinking about what can we do next? What can we do next? Hey and the Beach Boys come through. November of nineteen ninety three, they opened their unplugged box set tour, the Good Vibrations box Set. They opened that tour in Charlotte, and I'm just I that that just absolutely I felt like the heavens were shining down, you know, to watch Carl Wilson on stage go over and play the keyboards for Wonderful with the spotlight on him. The whole show was amazing and that kind of became the inspiration and the motivation for me to go, this is just too cool to not just dig deeper and to get more into it. And again the more that I just so we start the mag Lee and I start the magazine, the box set comes out, we see this tour, and I'm just like, this is this is exactly what I'm supposed to be doing right now, this is exactly So I just start reading books. And as you know, back then, there was no Google, there was no any everything at your disposal. You really had to put the time and the energy in to discover and I just I just dove in.
00:14:20
Speaker 1: So keep going.
00:14:23
Speaker 2: So once I dove in the first things that they were somewhat you know, back then there was Carl was a part of the touring band. Carl had not passed away yet, so and no one knew that was coming when it was. But at that time, so what really, Because I love Smile. When we started doing the magazine, they do some Smile tracks in that show, and and you know, I'm as giddy as a fan to see those things. And so I just start thinking about how can what how do I take what's important to me about the Beach Boys and translate that into this magazine so that the reader feels as though they're with me, And that kind of became to this day, that is still what I try to do to this day because I want the reader. If I get to go backstage and do an interview backstage, if I can have photos to go with that and put the reader right there with me, that's that's what I'd love to do. So that's that's kind of what has fed my energy, my creative energy, and kind of one idea after the other. I'm always thinking about, is this, you know, this particular year, what is it the anniversary of no I didn't think that so much in the beginning. So it was just really their openness, like Dean, their openness to uh, you know, chatting, chatting with us. And initially it wasn't interviewing, it was just talking us up and we put out a few, you know. By summer of ninety four, they came into town again and played a Knight's Castle, which is a ballpark, and that's when we're talking the Bruce backstage, and he said to me, you guys are cool, and I just thought to myself, how am I? How is that possible? To him? And I really just think from the beginning, I really allow my heart to lead the way. I just I don't have a hidden agenda, you know, because they have enough stuff in their lives, as I'm sure you're, the whole public world is aware. They have so much stuff in their history that just is derogatory and doesn't shine well on them or reflect well on them. So I just never got into that stuff, you know. I just I appreciated their time and their energy and their commitment of giving me being present with me when I was with them, and it just kind of grew from there. The seeds of thought and creativity just grew.
00:17:00
Speaker 1: Okay, so you interviewed Dean. What was your next interview?
00:17:04
Speaker 2: I believed in that. I think the second interview was it was Bruce at that same show the summer of ninety four. We were we just kind of caught him and he talked to us about Sunflower briefly, and it was just really off the cuff. We were just kind of standing there with him with a handheld tape recorder and I just started, you know, by that time, I just wanted to be prepared in case something happened. So we'd have a photographer and I'd have a handheld tape recorder and we just would start doing off the cuff conversations with him. And when I go back and I look at those conversations, they're quite mediocre, but you know, they were again, they were so welcoming, and I just really thought, is this always this? You know, I really didn't know what to attribute it to because it was new territory for me. But we just got on so well with them, or at least I did, you know. And it was just one foot, you know, one step right after the other, and they just became very open. And I think after Bruce and as the same day, he told us we were cool because and he was basing that on the way that we changed the magazine, the way we were presenting the magazine. I think Mike was my next interview after that when and it was a year or so later my phone.
00:18:42
Speaker 1: Okay, some of these acts are very familiar with their history. They can tell you what year, you know, what, the order of it, and other ones. I'm up there on stage, I'm playing the songs. You know more about it than I do. So the people involved with the Beach Boys and members, how much were they mental archivists of their own lives?
00:19:04
Speaker 2: Huh? What a great question. Well, at times over this thirty plus nail nearly thirty three years now. At times they were kind of detrimental to their own memories. But I think that's what, you know, being able to have multiple conversations over decades with them, sometimes about the same things, and then reading responses from them in other publications or other outlets, you know, you get a sense of canned thought process, you know, the old kind of trigger memory, muscle memory where they would just go back to something and they and they weren't really kind of it was more Q, just a strict Q and a question answer. And so that kind of really informed me because I realized that if I, if I just say to Mike, as an example, so tell me about writing I get around right, I'm going to get a very specific answer. And instead I after a few years, I would I would reapproach him and say it was during the old you know all Summerlong is a really wonderful summer album. Is during that time that you and Brian ended up having to fire Murray. What do you recall about that? You know, So without with I try not to lead them too much, but kind of give them a pebble of memory that will help steer them, you know, in the right direction, so they so they don't give me the same cand response and hopefully the way I phrase the question will lead them down memory lane.
00:20:52
Speaker 1: Okay, the book, for those who don't know, is a distillation of your interviews, sort of an oral history of the Beach Boys. There's a lot of stuff that you go into depth that I have not seen previously. You talk about Dave Marx living across the street. How did you make contact with David and what was that like?
00:21:13
Speaker 2: Oh? I think David is one of the most enjoyable and fascinating characters I've ever had the pleasure of coming across. He's such a great hang. So I'm trying to remember the first time I talked to him. It was in the late nineties because when Carl got Allen was out Dave, you know, there was the dust up. Al was out and then David came into the fray and that's how I met David. Was. In fact, the first time I met David is in Atlanta, Georgia. The guys were playing a private gig and I contacted him up in his room and said, Hey, I'm here in the hotel and do you want to go to dinner? So he comes down we go, and at that time he was he was drinking and we went out to like an Applebee's or something, and they were playing oldies music over the speakers in the restaurant, and he was not his best self that night. He was in a weird place, a real enjoyable soul, but he was in a really troubled place and he was laying his head down on the table. Hendrix would come on and he said, Jimmy's dead. Somebody else would come on, maybe his Door's song or something. You know. We were, of course already talking about the Beach Boys, and Dennis was gone by that point. You know, Carl So's he's sitting there and he's saying, they're all dead. You know. So it was a very kind of really raw first introduction with David Marx. But then by two thousand and five, so that was, you know, five to six years later, I'm getting to know David, and then they have that great I was at the unveiling of the Hawthorne Monument where the house used to be, and I get to interview him right after that, and the emotions that were David's emotions were so frankly beautiful. They were just so he just was feeling it, really feeling it, and we really got into great conversation about that neighborhood and the Lindeners, gil Gil Linder, and how Murray would go up there in the in the neighborhood and how everybody interacted, and it just I love hearing that you liked hearing about that because I loved hearing about it, you know, just just that that early childhood and how those and how David actually lived in Englewood, which was just the other side of the street, but he'd come over and he'd poke his head in and listen, and then he and Carl taking guitar lessons together from John Moss of all people. You know, it's just a fascinating history. And then how much I'm glad we're talking about David because his influence on that group really informed their direction. You know, that style that he really saw because Carl from day one, whether he was whether he would have gotten in guitar lessons or not, Carl was an R and B guy more so than David. David was someone who was listening to the surf music of the time, but that Dale and jazz at that time, and he really I helped, I believe helped Brian form that sound in that direction that they're so popular well known for from those early records.
00:24:46
Speaker 1: Okay, the traditional story is Al is in the group, Al goes away to school, David becomes part of the band, Al gives up on schools back in the band. From the outside in the sixty it looked like but Dave, they just needed another face. So you're saying that when he was integrated in the band, he had a big effect.
00:25:08
Speaker 2: I absolutely believe. So. Yeah, when you listen you take a song like Surfing, you as if you listen to the guitar work on that, if you're able to just get a hold of a track of that, it's amazing. The guitar lick the downstroke. It's not an up and down stroke. I learned to play acoustic guitar and I do the up and down stroke. David doesn't do that. David does a direct, very intentional downstroke only. And it's kind of like how Ringo Star is the only drummer who kind of pulls off the beat. David chuck at chuk at chug a chugg. I mean, it's down, it's down. He never drags it up. It's always down and if you listen to those early Beach Boys records, that's David. Now. Carl also played the part, but it was David who brought that. He brought that absolutely.
00:26:05
Speaker 1: Since you're close and you're the best source we've got. Hey, how did David feel about getting kicked out of the band? B What did he do for thirty years?
00:26:16
Speaker 2: There's a wonderful book called The Lost Beach Boy and then it's by John Stebbins. It's a really great book. David when he first he was kicked out of the band by Murray, Murray was just looking for an excuse, because what Murray will you because Al did come back when Brian phoned him, and David and Al were in the group, the touring group for a little bit together, and Murray was looking Murray just wanted Brian back, in which Brian did not want. So Murray was just looking for a reason to fire a fifteen year old David Marx. And David Marx was a little fifteen year old Brett. I mean I was a brat at fifteen, So David was no different and he mouthed off to Murray one day and Murray pushed him not physically, but was pushing his buttons and David just said, I quit, and everybody hear that. He says he quit. So Murray drags Brian back into the fray, which was the last thing Brian wanted. So David then goes and he does music for if I'm remembering right, he does something. He does some work for Casey Caseum, different and different, and he forms David and the Marksman. They don't have that greatest success. And what he does, the music he did that I find really really interesting is The Moon, which was nineteen sixty nine and Moon Without Earth was a record, and then the other record was just called the Moon, and both records are just really great and they fit into the genre of all those records of that time, the late sixties early seventies, because I'm a Moody I'm a major Moody blues fan, and the Moon fit right into that pocket for me as a listener.
00:28:06
Speaker 1: How did he survive financially?
00:28:09
Speaker 2: Oh, he's he struggled, you know, uh, you know, and gosh, that's sensitive, that's sensitive territory. I would I feel I feel that would be inappropriate for me to talk about too much in depth because David's not here with us.
00:28:28
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's talk about Brian's first wife, Marilyn. Yes, they had kids together, marriage, where they lived together relative to the long life was not that long. You come on the scene decades later. Is she rolling the rise when you want to talk about the Beach Boys, or she saying, oh, yeah, yeah, let's get back into it.
00:28:51
Speaker 2: A combination of both, a little bit of both. It's it's it's interesting. I think what I'm going to say is one true they. I think at times they've been surprised. And when I say they, I mean everybody, Beach Boys, the Honeys, you name it. At times they've all been surprised by the interest and that it's still there, you know, after twenty years, after thirty years, after forty years, and I and I think that finally, maybe after twenty twelve, it really really sank in after they did that reunion tour, that it really sank in that this is important, that this is uh, this is worth talking about, this has great value. And so that to me was the moment. I think that's never been communicated to me, but that's what I what I witnessed because I came out to the I saw three of the shows in twenty twelve, and one of them was in Irvine when Dean was with when Dean came out and joined them, and that was the show, Bob. That was a bucketless show for me because I got to see the Beach Boys in California Girls to California Girls. That that was the night. And then I was up on the rafters on the side of the stage and I got to watch them come out for the opening of the second set and do add some music to your day around the piano, oh man, I mean just and then Dean come out at the end to do Barbara Ann with him. It's you know, and I do think as the years have gone by, reunion concert or not, each and every one of them, I've seen it in their eyes when I'm sitting with them where they where they where, they know that even if they've been taught, even if I'm talking to them about a specific song or something that everyone's asked them about for years. Maybe with the Honeys, maybe I'm asking about He's a doll or something, or we're just working with Brian and meeting Brian at the Pandora's box. They they see the you know, I'm genuinely interested and that I want to make sure their story is told the way they wanted to be heard.
00:31:08
Speaker 1: So how did you connect with Marilyn? How many times have you spoken with her? Was she forthcoming because there's a lot of information in the book, or was it over time she opened up?
00:31:20
Speaker 2: It's over time, you know, when you a lot of me. You moved to California, and I'm kind of envious at that because I think if I lived out there, it would have been so much easier to say, you know, ring people up and say hey, I want to come over and visit with you, that type of thing. And so when you live because I live on the East Coast, that took a little bit longer and just kind of making sure they were getting the magazine and letting them see the product and letting them see the way the history was being treated. So yeah, so over time it was an opening up. And I think that is because and you're well aware of this, in the music business. In the music industry, there are always takers. There's always somebody who wants something from you, and you don't know who you can trust. And I've seen that, I've watched it and frankly, it discussed me. So uh, that is so I have trouble with it. I think they deserve better than that. How they treat each other as a whole other thing. But that's not me. That's not for me to decide or to interfere with. You know, when I visit with them and they give me their time, I'm I'm just so grateful because they're they're trusting me to tell their history. And Maryland, Marylynd is a doll.
00:32:49
Speaker 1: Okay, so you make some stuff come alive and I learn new stuff in them meeting at Pandora's Box and then spending a lot of time at her parents' house. And in addition, it's well established that they get married when she is extremely young. Since you in that they go far, that far deep, what did the parents think that.
00:33:15
Speaker 2: Well, that's a great question. I'm I'm right now. And by saying right now, I'm like current day, very intrigued by Irving and may Rovel's story. And I've and I've kind of been trying to crack that egg to get into, you know, a little bit more about that. And it's interesting because Marilyn's somewhat guarded when it comes to that part of her life that the parents. I've experienced that a number of times with her. Ginger is much more open and she's a she's her cousin, you know, fellow honey. And Ginger is a lot more talkative about her May and Irving, and I've been able to kind of get Carnie and Wendy to talk about their grandparents a little bit too. I'm actually right now trying to do I'm trying to put a whole focus on the female side of the family to kind of bring more attention and light to them, because Carney and Wundy are so talented, and Marilyn and her sister Diane and their baby sister Barbara, who most people don't even know of. I'm interviewing Barbera right now, so I'm trying to kind of tell the Rovell sisters story and bring more focus to it, and hopefully through that process, I'm hoping to understand more about man Irving. But from what I understand, they were more than happy to have Brian come over and stay and it just didn't seem to matter, so which goes kind of against the times because most people you go back to that era that was just not allowed that was just like, how could you even But they loved Brian and that Bob. That's like the greatest treasure all of doing this magazine for so long and discovering these stories is the fact that this familial this very rooted familial ties that bind them together before you even start to talk about the music, you know, and how much family was important to them.
00:35:19
Speaker 1: The other thing you make come alive in the book is the interim between Brian living the family home and moving in with Marylyn. You talk about him living in an apartment, having a roommate. You bring up people that I've never even heard of him producing all these different records. Tell us a little bit about that.
00:35:37
Speaker 2: Oh sure, gosh, man, it was just so cool for me to get into Brian his production work outside the Beach Boys because one of the common I think, one of the common knowledge things when it comes to Beach Boy fandom that you don't even have to be too hardcore of a fan to even realize is that they put out twelve albums in four years and know that you go, oh my god, how could they have done that?
00:36:03
Speaker 1: Well?
00:36:03
Speaker 2: Brian, No wonder Brian stopped touring well, he was doing more than that which is even which is I guess the right. My word might be absurd because he was working so hard. It's just he was. He was a sponge. And you and I'm going to jump ahead and then jump back. You get to hear him being a sponge on the pet Sounds box set sessions that you know, you when when one of the LA session musicians comes up with an idea like Al Delori or Al Blaine or somebody, and he'll go play that again or no, what was what was it? Let's let's let's go with that. So that that element of Brian's personality was rooted in his pure love of music. And then you go all the way back to the early sixties and he was working with Gary Usher, and he was working with uh Roger Christian and and and to your point, Bob Norberg his his roommate. And then this guy Dave Nolan moves in next store and it's it's my greatest regret, Bob, when I'm not able to like when someone's not here anymore, when I because they talked to Dave. And as you read and Richelarian, we learn about this guy rich Larian, who is one of the members of the survivors with with Bob Norberg and Dave Nolan and Brian, they were the survivors and I sow which Rich was still here with us today so that we could tell his story. But it's it's it's fascinating how much Brian was open to incorporating ideas and if you played an instrument, and if you were lucky enough to live next store, then then by god, bring your guitar over, or hey, I've got this song idea, what do you think? And it just was like, it's it's like almost kind of when I read it now, it's almost like literally watching It's like if you go out and plant a garden and then you get the walk to grow. It's the musical roots of his you know, coming to fruition.
00:38:06
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've dealt with Brian in his later years. I certainly have. A lot of people are no longer with us, But towards the very end he was more verbal, but it was not like talking to an average person's so they've seen video of a halting speech. He was definitely I'm not a doctor, but appears to be schizophrenic. I know from people who worked with him, he was afraid of being shot on stage. Are you telling me in your mind that he had this open I'm part of the group, I have all these friends. He was a different guy before things turned bad. It's almost hard to believe if you knew him as an adult.
00:38:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he was very different. And I and when I hear these stories he's from family and friends and colleagues, it really makes me wish I knew that guy, you know, because he was he was. I I've often said this about Brian. I think he was an accidental tourist in the music industry. He just was so good. He had no idea, and then when it became a parent gat how good he was, he still didn't quite know what to do with it, right. He still didn't think he was you know, the cat's pajamas. He still was just doing what he loved. It never changed, you know, Dennis bringing the idea of let's do a song about surfing, and then they kind of created and crafted that idea a lot. You know, that ideological framework for all their early records that worked well for them. But it's the songs like Lonely See that Peek Through or in My Room that jumps at you that here's this. You could tell those moments that this was a wounded soul, but he had his act together as good as anybody alive at the time. And and I'll go back to the Endless Harmony documentary from the late nineties where Terry Melcher on camera says, Brian changed the industry, you know, and he did and he and he almost changed it in a way that nobody understood because he did it through love. He did it through love, because that's that's he loved music and that was his conduit and that's yeah. So he was a completely different human being at that period in his life. And boy, would I have liked to have known that guy.
00:40:52
Speaker 1: Okay, to what do you you know? There's some medical biological stuff supposedly, assuming it was schizophrenia, tends to really evidence itself between twenty five and thirty. But to what degree do you believe his left turn was a result of the rejection of both pet sounds and smile or LSD or whatever.
00:41:20
Speaker 2: I'm going to do my best unpack that because that's loaded. So, as I write in the book in my introduction, one of the things that has hasn't deterred me from trying to just learn the memories of everyone is to get out of the way of what I've read in third third party account books or books that editorialize what they believe happened. And so I think it's tricky territory if you just start to assume. But I can say I do believe that Brian got into too many things, and things being drugs, too many within a small short timeframe. You know, Mike talks about it in the book, and I don't agree with disagree with it that. You know, some people can do drugs and function just fine. Other people can't. And now I can't. I absolutely cannot say that Brian smoking marijuana during Pet Sounds was a bad thing, because he's called it his marijuana album. When I listened to Pet Sounds that I absolutely melt and it's like one of the greatest records ever made. So I'm not about to say, well, that was a bad thing. In fact, I would say because of how great it is, it must have been a really great thing, because he really brought something special to life through that experimentation and going back to California Girls in sixty five, he's he's he has said that he was tripping on acid. So I mean, does he come up with the with the Western bit and the beginning with the Bach choral arrangement. Does any of that happen? We don't know, So I just think it was the pressure. I think it's a combination Bob of the drug use with the pressure of the expectations and the demand because he took quite a while with good Vibrations, it took five months or so, and I think had he been given the time to do the same thing with Smile, it would have happened. And you know the other wrinkle with Smile is, you know the guys coming back from and this started to happen with Pet Sounds. You know, they would come back from touring and they would listen and then they'd go, how did we get here? Because it was such an incredible advancement in sound and in creativity. But I don't think Brian purposely. That's what's so beautiful about Brian is he never did it on purpose. It just came inherently natural to him. So I don't know. David Mark said this to me once. I'm really glad we're talking about this. David Mark said to me, once, you know, Brian didn't need drugs on those early records, so why would he have needed them later? And I think that's what I think. That's a really great point.
00:44:33
Speaker 1: Okay, as you've gone on record here that you have a fascination with Smile, it was a mystery album. Ultimately there was a box set, then Brian completes it. How happy are you with the twenty first century version of Smile?
00:44:56
Speaker 2: What I'll say this is not a musical statement. This is for Brian. First. I'm glad Brian became comfortable enough to complete it. That I think was important. Uh, it's He's got an incredible band and I think they did an incredible job of executing his vision. And there's nothing you can take away from that. But boy, I just you can't. You cannot replace the Beach Boys vocals. You just can't do it. And you know, Surf's Up My is not my favorite song, it's my second favorite, Okay, keep going. Kevin Essence is like my all time favorite Beach Boy song ever ever, because I don't know to this day, and I'm sure there's a song out there that somebody can point me in the direction, but when I listen to that song, I feel like I'm listening to a painting a painting, I feel like I'm listening to an American tapestry, like the color of America, the flag, the flab, the fabrics, the very fabric of who we are as a society in that moment, in that three plus minutes of sound, where they're, where their voices are, the steam coming out of the of the engine. And I still remember I was one of the first people to interview Brian about a Smile track. It was in two thousand and it was before Smile was even a thing, and I interviewed him about cabinescence and it was just out of the blue and he was totally into it. And he says, you know how I got that picking sound? I said, no, how'd you do how'd you do that? He goes, I had everybody take metal guitar picks and and click them on there, uh on the on the twisting knaves on the guitar. That's how we did that. And I'm like, what, So, you know, it's kind of like Carolin, know where he was an upside down milk juger, water jugg or whatever it was. I mean, just you know, just that again, knowing he wanted something and find a way to get there and to me, there's just absolutely nothing like cabin Essence that I cared.
00:47:08
Speaker 1: The first public version is on twenty twenty. Which version you know, it's the same, but they're all different when you're talking to and I think your analogy to painting is brilliant, But which version is the one that resonates with you.
00:47:25
Speaker 3: All?
00:47:25
Speaker 2: The one off the Smile Box, the Smilebox sessions, That's that's the one because it goes back to the it's a little bit more unpolished than the twenty twenty version. They you know, they did it and remark and that's how I discovered twenty you know, it was through twenty twenty. I discovered cabin Essence on twenty twenty along with our prayer, and just had no idea until when I got Dominic's book. Then I was able to piece all these different things together and understand that it was in fact a smile track but easily and actually, my friendly Dempsey who would do the magazine with he's got an asset tate of an early version of cabin Essence where you can hear Dennis is veried catch ass old truck driving man bit. It's a little bit higher in the mix. That's that's really.
00:48:16
Speaker 1: Cool since you mentioned Dennis. Dennis in the public consciousness has a very good reputation. But if you go back to the sixties and seventies, he did not ay. People said, could he play the drums? People said he was uncontrollable. See he poked the beer. In terms of romantic relationship with the offspring of my love, what you learn about Dennis.
00:48:50
Speaker 2: What the type of brother that he was through Brian, that he that he was, that he was an attentive brother. You know again, you know I touched earlier on the kind of that familial element of their story. And you know, I've learned a lot about Dennis through again, through through different books, through documentaries, and get a sense of who he was. I never did get to see him in concert. The earliest speech Boy show I ever saw was in eighty three, and by that time he was he was still alive at the time, but not touring with them, So I never did get to see him in concert. And don't know how good he would have been in eighty three anyways, from the condition he was in at that time. But he was a robust human being. There's no getting around it. If you watch that Tammy Show. You know, if you go back and watch the Tammy Show, he was wrote man, he he was the just that energy, just that live Uh what do you call it? I mean just lighting in a bottle energy, just like just kind of the time, just even that time you watch the Tammy Show and that that whole show. But my god, watching Dennis play drums is fun. He's just so full of energy. But so I don't, really, I can't. I learned a lot. One of the things I enjoyed learning about Dennis was interviewing, and that'll be in the next book or the one after that, is interviewing people about the Pacific Ocean Blue album, which I absolutely adore because it's so emotionally meaty. It's got so much, you know, it's as so beautifully raw as anything as pet sounds to me. It's so great. But Dennis, I'll give you one example. I was talking to Jerry Shilling about Dennis and Billy Henshey and Robert Lamb, and it was funny that they all have this thing. When I'd be talking to the marascue him a question about Dennis, and there'd be some point in one of their answers where they'd all make this kind of hmm, and it was like a like almost like a laugh because you could tell something was going on in their memories that was reminding them of something that Dennis did in front of them, that kind of just like oh, like, oh hell, you know, so I know. He was quite the character, and he was certainly the things that you know, rock and roll tales are made of, especially if you listen to the twenty twenty album and the All I Want to Do at the end where he's having his way with a girl on a mattress in the studio and then left it for Mike. You know, Mike, there's a little something for you. So he's you know, he's the thing. He's it's a rock and roll legend. But you know what, he he brought so much uh piss and vinegar to that group, and I'm so glad he did because you know, every every group needs that kind of because that wasn't Brian's thing. Brian wasn't that live get up and Mike was back in the sixties was doing all he could to kind of hone what he was going to be as a as a front man. But Dennis was just the shit back there on those drums.
00:52:20
Speaker 1: Okay, since you're so close to it, much more than the average person. Was Dennis oblivious when he got involved with the Manton family or was there part of his personality that this is something he would do and he could he could see something wasn't right, but he played along anyway.
00:52:43
Speaker 2: Great question, uh, based on my knowledge of the circumstances that led to that him picking up a couple of cute girls hitchhiking Dennis right, oh, sex tonight, Right, That's all that went through the brain and the rest of the body. Okay, look, I'm gonna have some fun tonight. And so that was the extent of the pickup. I mean, I feel pretty sure that that's what was going through the mind. Then meeting Charlie, and you know, I there's an interview that I've never printed before, and I'm considering for the second book with Stan Shapiro. Stan was quite close to Dennis and was a driver for him and wrote and would and would also co write some songs with Dennis. And he talks about the Manson thing to a degree, and and Bob, that's just that's just such icky shit. It it really is. It's just you know, when Dennis shows up at his house and Manson's there unannounced, standing on his steps waiting for him, And yeah, granted Dennis was interested. Oh look, this guy can control an entire room of women and have an orgy. Okay, yeah, I'm into that. I can. Yeah, sure. But then as the days went on, and then Charlie had songs of his own and wanted to be a recording artist, and I know, and they they bring him in and introduce him to Melcher, and Melcher can immediately immediately reads this guy's out of his mind. He's a creepy dude. I don't want to be around him. Radar goes off right away, you know. And then ultimately that leads Manson to sending the people to the house met that was Melcher's house that but he's renting out the Roman Polanski and that's where those deaths occur. So yeah, it's just you know, Dean Torrence told me the night after that happened, when they all woke up to the news, he said, everybody cut their hair because nobody wanted to be associated as a hippie because of Manson. So that's really really strange and weird times for them.
00:55:07
Speaker 1: Okay, what about the destruction of the foreign audimobile. I believe it was a Ferrari and it not being insured. What can you tell us?
00:55:20
Speaker 3: There just another night on the towel, you know, just you know, that's again.
00:55:33
Speaker 2: You know, he probably had three out of four other cars waiting back in his house for him. You know, Okay, well there goes there goes to Ferrari. You know, no, no worries. I'll just look I'm walking, right.
00:55:43
Speaker 1: I mean, so.
00:55:46
Speaker 2: He was like that, kind of like Jan Berry was like that until he wasn't right. I mean, Jan was like Jan was so similar to Dennis. It's crazy. Jan had Brian's production skills, but his character in his person we're just like Dennis's and that I find fascinating. And you you know, you get to a point where Jan just finally his his luck runs out, and that did not happen with Dennis. But you know, he he ends up that whole story about Dennis stuttering and and then it just disappearing when after the accident. It's just crazy. It's it's like it's it's hard to it's hard to kind of quite understand that. But when I when I hear these stories, through the the memories of friends or family or bandmates. The thing that I take out of it is, I don't know about you. When you hear these great old stories about these you know, this really interesting time, not just in music, but just really interesting time. And I was born in sixty five, So I'm kind of envious of you that you got to go through it as it happened, and by Beatles records and by Beach Boys records as they were coming out. Must have been incredible.
00:57:04
Speaker 1: It was.
00:57:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, Gary Griffin, who's touring with Al Jardine now, and he had been in Brian's band for many years, been in the Beach Boys band, Janandine band back into around twenty eleven. We were working on some music together and we got talking about the year nineteen sixty five, and I think it was a paperback Beatles paperback writer picture sleeve and he said to me because I said, yeah, I was born in sixty five, And he said, Dave, I have got to tell you it was so incredible in nineteen sixty five. Every day, and you knew every day that you woke up and turned on the radio, you knew you would hear something cooler than the day before it is.
00:57:49
Speaker 1: Wow, Well, music drove the culture, that's for sure.
00:57:53
Speaker 2: Let's talk a.
00:57:53
Speaker 1: Little bit about the money. One thing that you depict very well in the book is that a lot of the gigs they were playing were what we would consider to be low n secondary gigs of it. They're playing essentially so cops. People with concert ticket prices today, they believe that, oh everybody's rich. So here you have a band. It varies, but let's just call it five members. Brian writes the tune. Dennis, who had very little input on the publishing end at the time you talked about, had multiple cars. Two questions. First question, when you talk to action from that era, historically, a lot of money has flowed through their hands. Either they were ripped off or they blew it. Second half is did they really have that kind of money?
00:58:48
Speaker 2: Well? Right, So it would take until sixty four to sixty five where they had generated enough success where they were having the one hit record after another hit record, another hit record. So by sixty four they were becoming i want to say affluent, but you know, they were beginning to enjoy life in a way. Dennis, most certainly Carl was still kind of you know, quietly enjoying the success with his focus on music. Brian was not the extrovert, so he was quietly focused on music, and they were just happy to be successful. Mike Mike in those early days. His business acumen didn't kick in until decades later. But so at that time they were all I mean, Mike was divorced by the time they started, So you've got me. He's just looking to put a keep a roof over his head and have, you know, food to eat in front of him. So that was their goal. And yeah, so they got They got ripped off, and that's because primarily Murray was over his head. He didn't know what he was doing. He could have gotten them a far better deal. He didn't mean just he was mismanaging his way through their careers and just did he was. He was in over his head. They should have hired an agent, somebody actual too. But again, in those early days, I mean, the Beatles got taken advantage of. Everybody gets taken advantage of. You don't you don't know until you cross the bridge how badly you've been, you know, taken advantage of. And they certainly were. So yeah, those early gigs you reference, I remind people when I get into talking about early Beach Boys, and this isn't just I'll refer somebody to the movie That Thing You Do by Tom Hanks and say have you seen that movie? And most people see yeah, and I'll say, well, that's what it was like if you had a hit or two, you'd go on a tour with other groups that I had a hit or two, and you'd come out and do your set and unplug and get off. And what I would have really liked, and I haven't seen any photos of it, but Bob would I love to see photos of Jan and Dean and the Beach Boys together in those early early days when the when the Beach Boys would open for Jan and Deine and then Jan and Deine would come out and the Beach Boys would be their backup band. And what I would give to see a photo of that or footage of that would be I'd get my right leg for, you know, because those those are the things or I know they filmed. We get into it a little bit in one of the chapters where they were at all in Hawaii together. It was the only time Bruce and Terry ever did a tour, and they're all in Hawaii and there and there, Janadin had already done their set and their backstage, and they had gotten winto the fact that the Beach Boys were gonna spray and with shaving cream or something. So they put on the Beach Boys street clothes and they come out on stage and they get into this big, you know, food fight on stage during the show. And what I want to get to just watch the act would be so great. So those early days they were meager. I mean, they just were Jane and Dean a little bit better off. First of all, they came out of Beverly Hills and Hollywood's you know, Uni High, and Jan's father was William Barry who worked with Howard Hughes, and Dean's parents were also very well off, so that was a different circumstance. And they've been around and they had lou Adler and Herb Albert managing them in the beginning, so they were well established enough. They weren't making a lot of money, but they were making enough money to give it their attention when they weren't in school. Which is another very rare thing about any music act, ever, is that Jan and Dean kept going back to college and would make records when they had time, and which is why they were always flipping, you know, holding their middle fingle, middle middle finger up to Liberty Records. Every time Liberty tried to tell them to do something, I say, we're not, We're not, We're not doing that.
01:03:08
Speaker 1: Okay, did Murray do anything good?
01:03:12
Speaker 2: Absolutely it would yes, Murray. Murray fought for his sons. Now in the broader statement, he fought for the band. He went around and until he found a label for them, So he made that happen. Unfortunately, again, he was over his head, so he didn't know how to make a broker a good deal for them. But he went around and found the label, and you know, he he did that good old fashioned door kicking. You know, you know, I'm going to find a spot for my boys. I'm going to find a spot for my boys. And he did that and he got them in. But he immediately lost touch with with with the whatever idealism he had in his mind. I mean, I don't know if you've ever seen him, but there's Buttons that said something to the effect like I know Brian's dad. Then he would hand out at concerts, like at these sock hops, and I'm like what who does that? So? So, yeah, Murray was instrumental in getting them going, and but he almost he almost immediately became irrelevant because Brian was a whiz kid and no one including Brian saw it coming.
01:04:42
Speaker 1: Okay, Jack Riley he insinuates himself in the band to the point where he even sings on the damn record?
01:04:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, how did that happen?
01:04:53
Speaker 1: Was he really a bad guy? Taker? What was going on there?
01:05:00
Speaker 2: I've heard multiple stories about Jack, and what I can say is he the fact that Carl Wilson, so really Jack's for me? From what I understand, the main emphasis of who Jack Riley was within that group structure and his interaction with them really circled around Carl Wilson because Carl and he wrote on Promised Road together and what's the other song off surfs up that I'm blanking.
01:05:29
Speaker 1: On the day in the Life of a Tree.
01:05:32
Speaker 2: Well he sings that one, that one was by Brian and on Promised Road and.
01:05:40
Speaker 1: No, I can't think of it, but I keep going.
01:05:46
Speaker 2: So they did the two songs together, and what so Jack was trying he got them very popular in the underground scene. Right FM radio starts to play the Beach boys now Sunflowers surfs up. And he was really good at that, I mean getting the word out about those records, especially the serf's up record. What they ran into with him is he was lying to them. He was telling them and everybody else, Oh, I know they're rolling stones. Oh I know these people. I know those people. And so what happened was he eventually told a lie that Carl got wind of, and Carl said, yeah, he can't, he can't be a part of this anymore. Carl always that was a problem. Carl would not permit inauthenticity. He wouldn't permit it because it affected the family.
01:06:49
Speaker 1: Another thing you do not cover in the book, but you have come across Brian's health food store. What was going on there?
01:06:59
Speaker 2: Oh, that's a probably it's in the next book. It's going to be great. So that that is a So. I did interviews with Arnie Geller, Richard Mayer, Dickie Muhr, and Arnie actually ran the store with Steve Kortof, who is Brian's cousin, and Brian. And it's interesting when I talked to Arnie how he says he thinks and Dicky Mirror agreed because Dickie worked there for a short time that they believe the idea for the whole health food store started back in the time of Smile with vegetables, that that's where the idea started the form. And then so by the time he gets to nineteen sixty nine, Brian is just you know, the public has this impression of Brian that because he stopped touring, because by because he did Smiley Smile, that he was retreating, he wasn't doing music, and that's not true. Friends is a very heavy produced album by Brian, and it's after Friends didn't do well on the charts that that really crushed him. That that's really where he because you get we were talking earlier about the drug use and everything. If the drugs really were the were the point where he just went off and then never returned, Friends wouldn't have happened. Friends is a great record, and I think it's I agree with Carney Wilson who has said that's when they sound their most pure, and I agree they they're great record. So Brian all this time is wondering if you know, he's just an active mind, he's a creative mind, and he gets to this point where he decides I want to do all, you know, I want to do a health food store. And it's just kind of like, let's go do this now. And he gets Arnie Geller and Steve corked off to get you know, find a place. And then they find a place and Arnie's in charge of getting a sign and you know, having that all put together, and then lo and behold they have this put together and then it's incredibly successful. It's incredibly They can't keep they can't keep the shelves stocked. And Brian will trickle it at night from time to time in his bathrobe. He'll get in the car and his bathrobe and he'll drive down. He'll get behind the counter because that was his thing. You've surely seen the photos of him behind the cast register. That was this whole thing. That's what he wanted to do. He wanted to go and get behind the cash register. And just I think he liked going there at night because less traffic, less people to deal with, and just to help somebody find some vitamins that they were looking for. And he enjoyed it. But I don't think he knew anything about it from a professional perspective other than the types of you know, supplements that he may take. But he was Brian's fascinating because he also went back in the mid seventies to college to study astrology. Astrology and that's how you get solar system on the Love You album. So there's I mean, he's fascinating that he was always kind of wondering about other things in life and how to you know, because a healths food store, astrology are both, in my opinion, extensions of the human condition. Health, you know, the wonderment of the universe, right, these are extensions of us and in kind of the mind wandering about beyond our own self and how we can be better versions of ourself, whether it's through health or through science and learning more. And that's how I take those pursuits of his, is that he was really he really is really behind it in the moment. It's kind of like the sandbox though, right, I mean, you know, at one point he wants a sandbox at his house and another point he wants Jim Matt's in his house. But his behavior in the mid sixties around the Smile time was more erratic, and that that goes back to what we're talking about earlier with the different substances. He was ingesting. You know, he's a little bit more erratic because he was doing speed, he was doing you know, smoking hash do it drop an LSD, and so that that cocktail and that combination of different influences had him kind of a little all over the place, which is one of the reasons I will say that I believe Smile was he just got to the point where he didn't know what to do because he just had spent too much time on heroes and villains. Heroes and villains derailed him, Bob, I.
01:11:33
Speaker 1: Mean, tell us more about that.
01:11:37
Speaker 2: So he was I would say my percentage, guest is like easily seventy percent done with Smile. And by the time Good Vibrations comes out in October sixty six, the Beach Boys in touring have come back and they've lent their vocals to whatever Brian has at that point, and it's coming along great. I mean, it's it's that album is moving right along. And then they you know, somebody's and says Brian, the label needs another record that needs another single from you. You've got to you've got to get a move in another single to follow up to Good Vibrations. So January of sixty seven, he just stops the Smile work. He had already started Heroes and Villains, but he just pays puts all his attention into Heroes and Villains, similarly in the way that he did Good Vibrations over a period of months, and the other music suffers because it sits there. And he gets to the point where he has this mix of he whittles the beautiful arrange of the original part one in part two of Heroes and Villains, which would have been incredible, authentic come out as an A side and B side single. He whittles it down to one side, sticks your Welcome on the back and goes down to the radio station, which is the death nail and the whole thing. He goes down there and there, you know, a beach Boy is walking in with a new single for you to play. And the guy won't play it, and he says, I got a call station manager. I mean, they should have just slapped him in the side of the head and said, what's wrong with you? This is Brian, this is Brodie Wilson. It he's got the latest Beach Boys single. But that's kind of what derailed him is all the time and energy that he put into heroes and villains, and then he comes to a radio station. The guy won't just immediately play it, so there's doubt. Right there, right in front of him, there's a stall. So there's that adds to this questioning of is what I'm doing right for the time. And it's more so about that because I read your wonderful review of my book, thank you, about how there is no mention about you know, the you know, there was a fire nearby, and then suddenly that's it wasn't like that, you know, he was he was being so visual and create native that Yeah, it's it's I love how unusual it is that he had a bucket of smoldering wood put in the studio. Not very wise because the you know, all those professional musicians are having to breathe that stuff. But I'm sure you've seen the footage from the American Band documentary. Brian is clearly tripping on acid during during that session, and it's it's just, you know, there's little things like spending all that time on heroes and villains and then having that guy stall when he walks in the building with it. I just think that's what put enough doubt in him to where he just went, well, this is nobody's ready for ready for this. I'm here with the single and the guy won't even play it. People aren't ready. So I think it's less about myth and way way more focused on just the actual tangible things that occurred in his life and the circumstances at the time. It just and unfortunately he didn't have the band with him all the time, and depending on your perspective of that, that necessarily might not have been a good thing because of the amount of drug use. Book, But I mean they were all getting high. Mike was getting high, Al's getting high. They were all getting high. It was a thing. But I'll tell you that we're talking about smile. The most fascinating thing to me was how the McCartney perspective right, McCartney's coming by the studio, and I would think if somebody just told me the story that oh my god, they must have been so thrilled that Paul was coming by. It's a beatle. It's just like, how incredible would that have been. And we learned that Brian was hesitant because he was working, and we learned that Al Jardine was kind of miffed about the whole thing, that they were getting high and playing songs on the piano because he wanted to finish the track and get out of there and go home. So it's it's interesting because I would automatically assume that would have that must have been the Night of Knights, right with Derek Taylor and Paul and Brian and Paul playing She's leaving home for him there on the spot. That just must have been incredible. But it's I think just that's getting these first hand accounts of these things is so vital for that reason because we're we're given these little, you know, third party accounts or editorialized myth building perspective, or even if they're not myth building, then they're then their attempts at taking apart the myth. And I don't that's not that's not for me to do. You know, if if one member mariemembers it a certain way, another remembers it is another way, then that's that's what we have. That's what we have to work with. And anytime you got five guys in a room, you're gonna have fives, Okay.
01:17:01
Speaker 1: James William Guercio, who starts with the bucking Hams, then moves on to Chicago. How does he become the manager? And is that a good or bad thing?
01:17:13
Speaker 2: I think it's good. So he becomes the manager because they're playing, they're playing venues and it's not filled up, and they're trying to sort out what do we do? How do we fill up venues again? And they as a group they kind of sit together and go what do we do? What do we do? And they knew Jim by that point and as a group, and when I say as a group by the early seventies. The reason I was mentioning Carl earlier in his perspective being so important when it came to Jack Riley was Carl had Brian's vote. Brian just said, Carl, you've whatever you do, I'll trust Dennis. If he wasn't there, Carl voted for him. So what happened in this particular event, I don't know who all was in the room, but I do know that it was Carl, Mike, Al and Dennis. I'm not sure if Brian was there, but they all voted in favor of going and talking to Jim gers Show and finding out if he would help them to figure out you know how they could fill up venues again. Dennis says, I'll go. So Dennis is the one who goes up to Caribou. Jim says, okay, I'll come and watch your shows. He sees, because I can't answer until I see what you're doing. He watches a few of their shows and he says, Okay, first of all, you got to get rid of these medleys that you're doing, and you have to play all the songs. You have to play them. You can't crunch them into a car medley or a serf medally. You gotta play them. That's what people are coming to see. So that's the first advice he gives them. Within the year unless Summer comes out. So all of a sudden, and because Gercia is already working with Chicago, then you have the incredible successful tour that Billy Hinschy called the beach Igo Tour with the Chicago and the Beach Boys together, and that just became such an incredible successful time for them. All of a sudden, they were selling out again. So it was it was in fact, and I tried it because I've seen so many comments for decades now that it's because of Mike love that the Beach Boys are a touring oldies act, and that's not accurate.
01:19:37
Speaker 1: Mike.
01:19:38
Speaker 2: Mike is definitely honed in on that and that is what people come to see. But it was it was a group decision to bring in ger show, and it was Dennis who initiated it, so because they all recognized that again, this goes back to what we were talking about earlier about the you know, meager beginnings and not having a lot of mone They by that time in their lives they need you know, they had families and they needed to be able to sustain their livelihood. So that was a very serious conversation they had about how do we fix this. And when Gershel comes in and says, you're going to put all your hits back in, you're gonna you're going to play what the people come to see. So they're not shouting out play surf in USA while you're trying to do the trader, you know, play what the people are coming to see. And within a year's time, they're they're back on the charts Endless Summer and then the year after that Spirit of America or you know, everybody's buying their records again. Their early records are now and cut out bins. You know, by the early seven early to mid seventies, everybody's buying them. So they just all of a sudden take off again and they become huge, and that's their second coming, and that is thanks to Gerciel.
01:20:56
Speaker 1: Whose idea was Endless Summer.
01:21:01
Speaker 2: The name of the record was Mike's because I think Capitol was just going to call it best of our Greatest Hits or something, and Mike said, well, don't just call it another greatest Hits or best of We've done that already, because they had Best of one, Best of Volume two, Best of Volume three, and Mike was like, there's too many of those. Let's call it something else, and he just came up with Endless Summer.
01:21:28
Speaker 1: Okay, the last real Beach Boys album before the twenty twelve reunion is Keeping the Summer Alive. How come there's no more after that?
01:21:40
Speaker 2: Well, Keeping the Summer Alive from nineteen eighty is. Unfortunately it doesn't have Dennis on it. It's drummer Scott Matthews's an incredible talent, incredibly talented drummer. He's on there almost all the tracks. They had the eighty five album, which when I discovered, you know, as I was telling you earlier, how I kind of came into their world. And at the timing of that, in eighty five we had the Malcolm Leo an American Band documentary, and then for that Get You Back, because that was in the middle of the MTV era. Not a great video, kind of hokey the cheese falls off the cracker, for sure, but it was those those soaring falsettos that were Jeffrey Fasquette singing underneath Brian, but you could hear Brian singing the falsetto again. I was Bob that record. I love that record to this day. The eighty five record, Carl's got some great stuff on there. It's getting late maybe I don't know. Bruce has got a lovely ballad on there, she Believes in Love Again. And then in eighty nine they did the Still Cruisinel and that record has got a song on there that I I would tell everybody about, and it's called Somewhere Near Japan. And this is by this time Melcher and Mike are working a lot more on material and what Terry Melcher did so well with the Beach Boys vocally is he took. He made sure that everybody was having a chance to sing with each other on one recording, so you would get a little little Al, a little bit of Mike, a little bit of Carl, and Somewhere near Japan is an absolutely great adult contemporary nineteen eighty nine recording, and I wish more people were familiar with it because I think it's one of their finer moments. And it's actually originally John Phillips Papa John Phillips song called Fairytale Girls that Terry and Mike honed and reworked into the song that became, and it became much better like Kocomo was also Papa John Phillips with Scott Mackenzie. That's how it started. And Terry took that and then he the He went back to his nineteen Terry's nineteen seventy five Royal Flush album. There's a song on there called Mexico, and the phrase get there fast and take it slow is in the song Mexico. So he took that, brought it all the way up to nineteen eighty eight and stuck it in there and had Carl sing it. And Carl could sing the phone book for all I hear when you get into the eighties in Carl Wilson's voice, hearing him hone, his vocals and the way that he did it, I always knew. I tell everyone this, if Carl Wilson was involved on a beach Boy project, that's all I needed to know. Take for example, the Beach Boys with the Fat Boys in eighty seven wipe Out. Carl's not on it, That's all I need to know. That was my gauge. So for Carl to be involved. I don't have a specific fondness of Full House it was I was too old by that time to really get into it. But I did see that episode where he was in the video with John. Carl would not have done that if he didn't support it, because this goes back to Jack Riley. Even Carl only did what he believed in ever.
01:25:32
Speaker 1: Okay, one other thing in the book. You're talking about surfing USA, and from what I take from the book, Ryan did not know what it was sweet Little sixteen.
01:25:43
Speaker 2: Is that really true?
01:25:47
Speaker 1: I did?
01:25:48
Speaker 2: I don't. Yeah, I get that. Yes. From Dean, I really got the sense that Brian didn't quite understand. I certainly believe that he understood that the same melody but I don't think Brian had any clue or understanding that by doing that, he was he was literally borrowing Chuck. I don't think he understood that, because again, Brian just loved music, so I don't think he was thinking that way. He wasn't thinking about the business of it. He wasn't thinking about publishing rights or licensing or anything. He just liked that riff and his dad said it was okay, so he just thought it was okay. Yeah. I just I can't imagine that Brian, as a musician, even at that early stage in his career, didn't realize that when he played that for Jan and Dean, that that wasn't that song, because they said to him in the moment, Hey, we know Chuck's you know that is sweet little sixteen. We know we've already met Chuck, we know his manager. You should give that to us because we can get it, okayed, And He's like, no, no, no, you can have this other one, which would ultimately and so you lived it. So I'm gonna ask you a question, is that not like one of the most incredible periods surf in USA coming out in the spring of sixty three, followed by Surf City in June of sixty three, those two songs. Was that not? Is that part of you wanting to go to California?
01:27:19
Speaker 1: Oh, It's all part of me wanting to go to California. But I must say I certainly remember a little old lady at Capacadeen on the radio, et cetera. I got into Jan and Dean. I can't remember the reason why I bought Command Performance. Okay, Yeah, So the summer of sixty three, you have to understand, Okay, radio was still regional. So I'm living on the East Coast at that time, it's not the same thing as living on the West coast. We were aware of surfing and we all wanted to go surfing, and the Jan and Den striped shirts. But the I would say even more dramatic was when they in the Spring Beach Boys in the Spring come out with I get around, because you thought the Beach Boys had been wiped out by the British invasion, and this proved that they absolutely were not. As far as the California myth, I live in California because of the Beach Boys. I could go on and on, but just staying on this same tip, I mean on the Beach Boys, they make the twenty twenty twelve album, they go on the road, the tour is over. Brian inherently is a little oblivious, but he says, oh, maybe we'll do some more dates, and mikemmunit says, oh, I'm booked as the Beach Boys. What was going on there?
01:28:50
Speaker 2: There was several moving parts there, and I'm going to be a little guarded because there's people not here anymore. So what happened is when they started that tour off, there was an agreed number of dates and Brian was having a blast. He was having so much fun that they added dates and he wanted to keep it going. And what happened was one of the things that happened was he his wife Melinda had kind of gotten to the you know, just felt that it was it was enough, and so between the different parties, different camps, there was a point where they just all thought they had recognized that the number of dates was the number of dates, and everything was locked down and that was all there was going to be. So Mike, with that in mind, star to network for future dates with Bruce. So that happened, and then Brian again when they started they didn't realize that Brian was going to have so much fun and experienced so much joy throughout the thing that that he just want to like this. This was like Brian would want to keep it going, and Brian wanted to keep it going. But because of the certain the allotted number of dates that they had, Mike, Mike wasn't thinking that way. He just thought, Okay, I gotta again. I got to keep the you know, the machine rolling. So I'm going to go out. I'm just gonna go I'm gonna keep booking dates. And you have from a buyer's perspective, that's a different amount of money. If you're booking Mike and Bruce as the Beach Boys, that's a different amount of money than if you're getting Brian Wilson, Al Jardine and David Marx with Mike and Bruce, that's that's that's a different ballpark. So to go back and try to and he could have, uh, Mike could have easily. I you know, I don't get into the weeds and these types of things with those guys. But he I'm sure if he had wanted to, could have restructured, gone back to some of the clients or the buyers and said, hey, you know, we were thinking about keeping this going. Would you would you want the you know, the full you know, the full group, And I'm sure most would have said yes. But you know, relationship strains being what they are, played a factor. And then you end up having this unusual public Los Angeles Times thing about Brian saying he felt as though he was fired. And that's not that that that article wasn't fair to anyone, including Brian. It just it just it just wasn't it really wasn't in in authentic to the nature of what actually took place.
01:32:17
Speaker 1: What was Melinda's role?
01:32:20
Speaker 2: Well, Melinda, you know, she she did an incredible job of helping Brian get on his you know, be kind of an active musician again. You know, he was struggling, you know, under landy and thank god they got him. Carl and Melinda worked together to get you know, to get him out of that, and and they did. And she she got him the right type of doctor. She got she made sure that he was on the right type of medicine. And I think she did an incredible job of being his caretaker and loving wife and in Brian's later years. Now, what I also say that maybe she was over protective. From my perspective, I would I have felt that at times. But I'm not in the music business, so I know there's moving parts and things that take place behind the scenes that I know nothing of. So I'm not critical of that aspect of her behavior at all. But because I know how great Brian looked for so long once she came into his life, and he really did some interest. I mean that Lucky Old Son is a great album. Brian Wilson reimagines Gershwin, great record. So those two records are actually my favorite Brian Wilson solo pieces.
01:33:52
Speaker 1: Okay, what can you tell me about the adoption of kids with Melinda? Brian was an absent for they were the first two kids. How involved was he with the second set of kids. I mean, this is a guy who struggled with his own life.
01:34:08
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I'm adopted myself, so I'm a fan of adoption. So when I saw that Melinda and Brian were doing that, I was you know, initially it was Daria and Delaney. So as the years went on and they were adopting more children, I was a little surprised because because of their age, right, I mean, their grandparents' age, you wouldn't think they'd be adopting children at that point. I can't speak to how Brian was with them. I you know, going to his service last year, and I think it was Dash who got up and spoke about his dad. I got a sense of his relationship with his father, and it seemed as though there was depth there to it. So I and glean from that that much, you know, I know that Carney and Wendy, as you point out, you know when he was in the home, he was somewhat absentee. I think navigating those were some troubled times for him going into the mid seventies for sure, and he he was. I guess the term that comes to mind is I would say a lost soul for a while, right. The music never left him, but he was he was a bit of a lost soul for quite some time. And and it's it's quite unfortunate for Carne and Wendy because the apple certainly didn't fall far from the tree musically. And are you familiar with the Donald not down was but the Rob Wasserman Fantasy is reality song that Brian and Karney did together. Oh, it's from ninety four it's you got to look it up. It's gorgeous, it's amazing. It's called Fantasy Is Reality, and it's Rob Wasserman. It's called Trios and it's a collection of different artists and Carne and Brian do his song Fantasy's Reality together and it's amazing. And it was the beginning of them working together. And so by ninety seven you have the Wilson album, which is Carne and Wendy with Brian and select tracks, and it brings Tony asherback in and Brian and Tony co write Everything I Need and they're on that together and it's it's just it is.
01:36:35
Speaker 3: You know.
01:36:35
Speaker 2: On one hand, I'm going to say it's a shame they didn't have the opportunity to work together more. But when they did, it special, special moments. So that's that's why I wish they worked together more often, because whenever, like especially the Don was produced nineteen ninety five, I just wasn't made for these times documentary. When Karney and Wendy are in there singing with Brian, Oh my god, it's gold, it's absolute gold, and well Andrew Gold's in there, so but I mean so, but I mean, what a great I mean, I go back and I watched that. When I watch that down was documentary, I get so much joy just watching them singing together. And that's I think, that's Bob. That's That's what leads me through all of this, is just how much joy this music has brought me, and and how much joy I get out of having these conversations with these people about these really special moments in their lives.
01:37:34
Speaker 1: So what do you do when you're not writing about the Beach Voice?
01:37:39
Speaker 2: Well, I'm an office administrator and treasurer at a church. I sing in a church choir at a different church. But uh, that's that's it. I mean, I I absolutely all. I listened to the Moody Blues a hell of a lot. I'm a big billy Joel Nut unless to a wide spectrum. The older I get, the more the more I've been really digging McCartney's latest, The Voice from Dungeon Lane. I love it, absolutely love it. Ripples in the Pond then yeah, I think that's the one. I'm really loving that song. But I I love uh, I wish it's like when I hear you know, Ringo and Paul did a song together on his record Paul's record and Ringo's got a new album out. I've got it, but I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet. But the Lemon Twigs are are are a great example of music that is awesome, that that takes you back to that flavor of time. I highly recommend them. Brian and Michael di Dario. I'm jumping around here, but it's you know, I feel so fortunate, really I would. I'm gonna guess that you you must get this a little bit because you get to write about and you know, yeah, Okay, that's what I thought. Yeah, because it's it's it's you know, how how lucky are we?
01:39:05
Speaker 1: Well? I mean, you know, I could talk for hours of myself about the Beach Wood but it's your podcast. But does your obsession with the Beach Boys interfere with romantic relationships and other relationships?
01:39:21
Speaker 2: What? Agree? This is funny that you would bring this up, because I can't tell you I was. I'm glad you brought that up because I could go back and think about when I first discovered Janandine. I was like fourteen or fifteen years old, and between that time and like my early twenties, I cannot tell you the number of times that people would check I mean literally check out on me in front of me as I would go on and on about Janedine or on and on about smile or whatever it was, and how they would just kind of they wouldn't necessarily roll their eyes, but you see you eventually with their faces which just go blank, and they would just kind of like, is this guy ever gonna shut up about this stuff? So I've learned that over time that there's a there's a time and place for everything. That's why I was still looking forward to talking with you about Janetide to the Beach Boys. But so romantically no, And I think that's because there's there's romance in their music and and and I think music in general has a romantic stable to it. And I and I that's something I tap into. And so I think and that and that comes through me in my life and in my behavior and my personality.
01:40:41
Speaker 1: Will do you have a significant other?
01:40:45
Speaker 2: Yes?
01:40:47
Speaker 1: Okay, so they can This person can handle the beach voice fixation. Just a couple of deep stuff. What causes Brian's voice to.
01:40:57
Speaker 2: Change well in the in the mid seventies, it's cigarette use. I mean, you know, that that was that was that was one of the things that that was very noticeable. By the time you get the fifteen big ones, it's quite noticeable then it For the eighty five album, Steve Levine had told me that Brian showed up and he just his vocals just weren't cutting it. So Steve very matter of factly looked at him and said, you need to take voice lessons. And he did and he went back and did he he took it seriously, and he and he took voice lessons. And you know, that's not uncommon. I know, I know Mickey Dolans has done that for years. Like whenever he's you know, going to work on something or do work, he's always professionally working on doing vocal exercises to make sure because that's a muscle too. Your voice is a muscle, you know, well multiple muscles, but you know to to to keep it. And I sing in a choir, you can't just not singing and then all of a sudden expect to be able to have that whatever you're able to dumb a first tenor. If I just go and try to be a first tenor and I haven't sung in a while, it's not possible outside of singing in the car, and that doesn't that doesn't count. So so Brian cigarettes. You know, he eventually does kick that habit by eighty three eighty four when Landy comes back into the picture. And Landy was fantastic for Brian in respect to all the weight loss and getting Brian off of cigarettes and getting Brian off of drugs. But then Landy unfortunately got Brian under the influence of psychotropics which were damaging to Brian's psyche and damaging for Brian's nervous system. And I don't even like talking about it because who knows what we lost in those years because of that, you know, who knows?
01:43:07
Speaker 1: Okay, we hear all about this discord amongst the group was what we read on the external level true, And what's the status of the relationship of the remaining players.
01:43:23
Speaker 2: It's not as good as I'd like it to be, you know, through the years, I don't know where to pick. So, you know, when they started out, they were as do you have siblings?
01:43:39
Speaker 1: Yes? They do.
01:43:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I've got two brothers. I got an older brothers also adopted, and I have a younger brother.
01:43:45
Speaker 1: I'm a kid too, But two sisters.
01:43:47
Speaker 2: Okay, oh great. So you know, at different intervals in my life I'm sixty one now, at different intervals in my life with my brothers, we've had different types of relationship. I've never had a relationship with my parents where my father was abusive, So that's something I can't I understand what Brian went through, but I can't relate to it directly because it's not my own experience. But I'm terribly empathetic towards it. So when in the early days, and you can see this in photos, you can see this in any type of documentary that's been put together with them, you can see Dennis as the wild one. He I'm sure he pushed Mike's bought in every chance he could. But it wasn't because they disliked one another. It was because they were cousins and they have a deep love. It's family. It's family. And that's what I think a lot of people get wrong when it comes to the Beach Boys, is they don't there. They're too worried about oh if Mike said something about Dennis or took Brian to court. Perfect example, when when when Mike went to court for songwriting credits, perfect example. Anyone I've ever spoken to about that said Mike should have done that. If you read the court documents, which you're out there for anybody to read and find. Brian says, Mike wrote these songs, and Brian, as I understand it, was more than happy to give Mike the credit without ever having to go to court. He was advised not to do that. So it ends up in court. Mike didn't want to go to court, and Mike could have gotten a lot more money than he did, and he didn't. He didn't take it. So and I'm not making any excuses for Mike. I'm not. None of them need to be defended by me, none of them. They're they, they've they've made their own path as far as the relationships that they have is. So I've had the the you know, because I've talked to them so many years, whether it's over the phone, in a zoom or sitting with them in a room, I've seen them. I've seen qualities in each and every one of them that I treasure where I like, this is a good person. This isn't like they're they're down to earth with me. They're kind, they're open, and that's all I can ask from anybody. So when I see that, I mean, there's just a story that Ran I want to say about a week ago, that Mike and l can't seem to reconcile whatever differences there are that they have, and I just wish it weren't so because I know Al pretty well, and I know Mike and Mike pretty well, and they both have different They're both very different, but they both have really great qualities about them, and I know these qualities. I just think, why is it that Mike being who he is, can't get on with Al being who he is? And I don't mean from the music business perspective, I just mean as as former colleagues, to be able to be in a room together, to be able to, you know, enjoy one another's company and not be concerned about the music end of it. But I think there's just so much emotional baggage that when they are in a room together, it's hard for them, particularly Al. I think Al really struggles with it. And this might I'm just guessing, totally guess, but maybe what Al's dealing with is how he was told to turn on the TV in nineteen ninety nine because the beach Boys were performing at the Super Bowl and they had Glenn Campbell and Dean there and Al wasn't there, and he had no idea that they were. Has just been austed? Why was that? I? I? Yeah, you know, Mike, Mike became a businessman and and for better or worse, that's just what happened. Mike is a businessman. And uh, I don't you know so that that part of it the music business. Uh, it's just it's just okay.
01:48:35
Speaker 1: So Al, it comes down to the money. I have a friend who says, you never really know your relatives to your share and inheritance, and would and would you? Would you say that ultimately financial things are the driving force here.
01:48:51
Speaker 2: To a degree. I think that's accurate. I mean if if if Mike's touring and he doesn't have Al with him, that's less that he has to give out. Although I don't know how it works now, but prior to the sale to Iconic Artists Group, I know that the way it worked then was like if Mike went and did the show under the Beach Boys name, Brian would get money, the you know, Carl Wilson's son Shonah and Justin would get money. Al would get money because they were all shareholders. Now I think they are minority shareholders now, so I think there might still be a distribution that takes place. I'm not sure about that though, but it's it's still they all, you know. They if Mike performs, they make money. So it's I can say that in my experience with Mike that al al is not easy for Mike because Mike likes to show up and have everything happen right, not wonder where somebody is not be concerned. Is somebody going to show up on time? Not be concerned with? Is when so and so is going to take the stage? Are they going to complain about something? So that that is something I witnessed over time where it was Mike likes a streamlined that's all he wants. He doesn't want to have to think about anything. He wants to be able to go from point A to point B in the show up and be on stage and entertain people. He doesn't want to be thinking about anything else. And if somebody has him thinking about somebody something else that's got other than just going on and doing a great job, he doesn't want to deal with it. And once you get to your eighties, or late seventies, even why would you write? Why not just eliminate that? So life is easy and it's you know, al Alic's a sweetheart though, So that's what's so perplexing about the whole thing. But I guess when you when you're when you're a partner of somebody over a you know, decades, the personalities come into play. I mean, my god, we've seen it with every group there is, right, We've seen it with the Eagles, We've seen I mean, they're notorious. We've seen it happened in the Moody Blues. It's it's happened with everybody, and and so it's it's not surprising that it that it's happened with them. But they're such great guys. And I'll just tell you I have one son. He's twenty four. His name is Ethan is down syndrome. I take Ethan to Beach Boys shows and they bring him on for Barbara in and melts my heart. They treat him like king, like a king, So I I you know, and that was never any that was never When I started the magazine back, you know, working on a magazine back in ninety three, I didn't have a child. So for them to just naturally do that for me is a big deal. And it's not because they're the Beach Boys. It's just they're treating a member of my family well. And I don't care who you are, what you do for a living. If you treat if you treat other people well, your stock goes up with me.
01:52:20
Speaker 1: Okay, how many times did you talk with Brian and what were those interactions like?
01:52:29
Speaker 2: Well? First, first few times clumsy because I didn't know that if I asked them yes or no question, I would get yes or no, that's for sure. Yes. So after a few of those, my greatest Bob, I had the most wonderful, incredible, memorable evening with Brian Wilson that has just gone that just lives with me. So it was July of two thousand. I had gone to his Roxy performances in April and seen those and just was ecstatic about that. You know, I just had so much fun at those two shows. And then he was coming to see chest Stain done in Atlanta, Georgia. He had just started doing his Pet Sounds in its entirety tour and they had the full orchestra and everything, and he came down and I had set it up that I was going to interview him after the show, so I got to sit with Melinda at a table right in front of the stage, right where Brian was. So that's why I that's where I got to watch the pet Sounds in its entirety for the first time ever. And I had no idea they were going to throw the dog and the train in at the end. I wasn't even thinking about that because this was a live performance. All of a sudden that comes in and I'm already standing clapping and the little kid in me where the jaw drops, and I mean I must have had such a geeky look on my face that looked over at me was just laughing, like almost with convulsing with laughter at me because I just had geeked out. But then I get to go back and interview Brian uh part for the magazine and part for his Brian Wilson Breakaway newsletter that they were doing at the time. And so I had so because I'm in radio, or I was in radio. If I can do an impression, I do an impression. So I had worked on my Paul McCartney and I thought, Okay, I'm going to do my Paul McCartney for Brian, because Brian's met Paul McCartney. So I'll do I'll do my Paul McCartney. So we get that back there and I'm sitting, I mean just a few feet away from him, and we do the interview and nobody's there to kick me out or anything like that. The interview's over and I said, hey, Brian, I want to do my I'd like to do my Paul McCartney impression for you, and he goes, okay. Well, before I do this, I want to say the whole time during an interview, Bob, he was engaged, he was lucid, he was present with me the whole time. And I think it was attributable to the fact that I was sitting there with him, and that was a lesson for me. That was a really informed moment for me because he was just so into it with me. And so we get to the point and I go, I'll do my Pullman CARDNEYR. Priss and he goes he looks at me like, what the hell does that mean? He goes okay, and I said, So one morning I woke up and I had a bit of a melody. You know, going about in my head, and I smelled breakfast, you know, and out came scrambled eggs. Oh my darling, how I love you legs? And those those were good legs. And he gave me I have this on tape to this day. He gave me three reactions. He goes, that's freaked out, that's unbelievable. That's pretty damn good. And we stand up and he gives me this monster hug, Bob, and then he walks off. And I didn't know that was a bucket list moment, but that was a bucket list moment I had. I mean, right then and there, I just went, oh my gosh, that that just happened. So no, that was that was incredible, that moment. And as I touch on in my introduction in the book, well no, I think it's in my acknowledgments in the back. What I learned from that night was because of how engaged he was with me sitting by that time, I had learned how to ask him questions so that they weren't yes and no. But so going forward, if I got him on the phone, I my questions were formed so that they weren't yes and no. So I that was easy enough for me to work out. But as time went on and he got older, I it became kind of a science to me to get the best out of him. And so what I would do is I would come up with my questions. And this became a whole other way of informing in the interview process. Is I had to come up with questions and then kind of guess ahead at what he might say to come up with the follow up question and then email those to his publicist Gene Severs, who's a wonderful soul, or Jeffrey Fossquett, who was who would work, you know, would be Brian's caretaker for a time. So either Jeffrey or Jean, or Jerry Weiss or later Alberto Raise who was Brian's caretaker towards the end, they would all help facilitate and they would sit with Brian because I couldn't be there, and they were the perfect handoff in that respect that they would do that for me, and they would sit there with him and they would interview him, asking him the questions, and it was great. Jerry Weiss and Jeffrey Fosquett were fantastic in that process because like you and I, Jerry and Jeffrey are not you know about this music. So if maybe even I didn't even have a question that I rolled into what I was asking, if Brian would say something in response, they would insert a follow up, and it just it just it blossomed into the perfect way of collecting great content from Brian.
01:58:20
Speaker 1: Okay, at some point everybody involved in the group will be gone. Do you think it's like Abba will have being animatronic or do you think what's going to be the future of the music in the legend.
01:58:37
Speaker 2: Well, the first thing I'll say is I hope it's not and I'm intronic, but you never know who will get a hold of what and what they'll do. You just no control over that. But uh, I think the legacy and the Beach Boys is set in stone, and it's been set in stone. I you know, a handful of years ago a country group What the Heck Where the Low Cash came around and they did a song called uh get It Get Around as basically a drinking gang like past drinks around type of thing, and Mike and Bruce are on it, and somebody said to me, don't you think that's going to hurt their legacy? And I said, nobody is going to even remember this song in two years now. Let alone be concerned with the legacy, the legacy of the Beach Boys and I and I hope it's not, you know, for the long time generational fans like you and I. I hope it isn't to the point where people are are looking at it. And you know, because I see, I just see a lot of stuff online about, oh, they're you know, Mike should hang it up, you know, he's but he loves it. He loves it. He loves what he's doing. He loves bringing joy to the fans, and that's why he still does it. The legacy is, from my perspective, is remarkable music that remains unmatched and unparalleled by anyone anywhere. The Beatles would do back in the USSR, which is the closest they ever came to doing a Beach Boys song, and the Beach Boys, Brian's vocal arrangements, his production style, his inherent built in ability to realize something he was imagining, is just unmatched. It's unmatched. There are other records that I can put on that will reach me on a level as beautiful as pet Sounds does. But the moments in pet Sounds. There's moments in songs like that. There's moments on pet Sounds, moments, just moments like it could be a it could be the way an instrument hits, or the way that one vocal voice is rubbing up against the other voice. That aren't anywhere else. They're not anywhere else ever that I've ever heard. And you could say, oh, it's that familial blend in it. That might be in fact true, But I mean, I'm thinking of a spot where it's Bruce and Brian. Bruce isn't a family member, so it's just to me. The Beach Boys legacy is Brian Wilson, Brian Wilson's incredible gift and the group's incredible adaptability to keep up.
02:01:35
Speaker 1: You've been listening to David Beard once again. He has a new book, All Summer Long Conversations with the Beach Boys, from Surfing to Smile. As you can tell from listening, he's been in charge of this magazine for thirty years. He's done all these interviews and he's distilled them down to tell a story. I know a lot about the Beach Boys, but I certainly learned a bunch of stuff.
02:01:59
Speaker 2: It was real.
02:02:00
Speaker 1: You know, the top level stuff who worked on the songs, that's available everywhere, but the people and the personalities, that's what made it come alive for me. David, I want to thank you for taking the time with my audience.
02:02:12
Speaker 2: Bob, thank you. This has really been a pleasure. I love it.
02:02:16
Speaker 1: Till next time. This is Bob left sets