Latest / Ghost Cult Magazine Podcast / PODCAST: Episode 923 - David Leaf on Brian Wilson’s SMiLE — The Story Behind the Legend

Transcript

PODCAST: Episode 923 - David Leaf on Brian Wilson’s SMiLE — The Story Behind the Legend · Ghost Cult Magazine Podcast

0:00
What brings us here today, obviously is, is the reissue of
0:03
of his Live at the Roxy Show, which was a very significant
0:07
step in his, what I call his second act, his renaissance of,
0:11
of his career. Because, you know, he was known
0:14
as the guy from The Beach Boys, and there were all sorts of
0:17
myths and legends that had grown up around him.
0:20
And the last thing anyone ever expected was for him to become a
0:23
live performer. And if he hadn't, we would not
0:27
have gotten Pet Sounds live, and we most certainly wouldn't have
0:30
gotten Brian Wilson presents Smile, which are, you know,
0:33
major moments for any, you know, fan of serious pop music.
0:44
Anyway, what's up everybody? It's Keith Ewerkefe from
0:47
ghostcultmag.com. I am super stoked today to be
0:50
joined by author David Leath to talk about the new Brian Wilson
0:55
Live album reissue, Brian Wilson's life and sad passing
1:00
recently, as well as anything else Speech Boys related.
1:04
David, how are you today? I'm doing great.
1:06
You know, I love talking about Brian and his music and his
1:10
legacy. So I'm game for for everything.
1:15
What brings us here today, obviously, is the reissue of his
1:19
Live at the Roxy Show, which was a very significant step in his,
1:24
what I call his second act, his renaissance of his career.
1:27
Because, you know, he was known as the guy from The Beach Boys
1:31
and there were all sorts of myths and legends that had grown
1:34
up around him. And the last thing anyone ever
1:37
expected was for him to become a live performer.
1:40
And if he hadn't, we would not have gotten Pet Sounds live and
1:44
we most certainly wouldn't have gotten Brian Wilson presents
1:46
smile, which, you know, two major moments for any, you know,
1:51
fan of serious pop music, not to not to mention his the rock
1:56
opera that came after and his Gershwin album.
1:59
So the, the live with the Roxy show back in, in in 2000 was
2:05
this turning point in him as a live performer.
2:08
He had started performing in in 1999 and it was a it was a
2:14
tentative dip in the water. His first tour was in the in the
2:19
Midwest. He did four dates.
2:21
That's how tentative it was. It went well.
2:24
So four more dates were booked in the in the Northeast.
2:28
It went so well that four dates were booked in Japan and then
2:34
some dates. And he finally did a show in in
2:36
Los Angeles and in the in the in the West.
2:39
But the band that had been assembled, in part the
2:43
Wonderments who this great power pop group from LA, headed by
2:47
Darian Sahanaja and Niko Lusko, joined with some terrific studio
2:53
musicians from Chicago. And kind of in the middle was
2:56
this guy named Jeffrey Fasquet, who had toured with the Beach
3:00
Voice. So he was a big fan, knew the
3:03
music. What no one expected was the
3:07
brilliance of what the Wonderments brought in terms of
3:10
we're going to do these songs the way Brian originally
3:13
arranged them, and we're going to play them not just note
3:16
perfect, but with the feeling he imbued into the music.
3:21
So it wasn't like just going to a concert where people would
3:23
play in their greatest hits as, as listeners to the Live at the
3:28
Roxy. Well, here he was doing album,
3:31
really deep album cuts. He was doing new songs, he was
3:34
doing covers. So, so there was something
3:37
clicked with Brian when he started touring with these guys
3:41
in 99 And, and this live at the Roxy is, is, is kind of the,
3:46
the, the living proof of, of how he turned the corner as a live
3:50
performer. You can hear him having fun,
3:53
which isn't something nobody ever expected to say.
3:57
Oh yeah, Brian Wilson's going on tour and he's having a great
3:59
time. Right on.
3:59
That's a lovely setup for everything we're going to talk
4:02
about. And I know some of our viewers
4:04
are going to be like Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys, but
4:06
this is music that I grew up with.
4:08
Again, not to give my resume like a Jackass, but I, I have a
4:13
minor in musicology. Beach Boys is one of the few
4:16
Papa rock artists that were played in my House of mostly
4:19
jazz and classical. My brother was a big rock fan,
4:22
but my parents actually liked The Beach Boys and The Beatles
4:25
and, you know, Bowie and the Stones.
4:27
And I think that was the limited list and of acceptable rock
4:31
artists. And my brother was a big rock
4:33
and roll fan and my dad was like, don't you follow in your
4:36
dumb brother's footsteps? And I of course I did, but down
4:40
the path of rock and heavy metal.
4:41
But Brian, in addition to just being an absolute treasure of an
4:45
artist, he was very enigmatic even in the the earlier days of
4:49
The Beach Boys. And again, I don't want to
4:51
downplay his very real life issues, but he had a lot to
4:54
overcome. And I always think of it, you
4:56
know, very similar to Barbra Streisand as well off and
4:59
acclaimed and incredible as Barbra Streisand is and has
5:03
been. And Lord knows I grew up on
5:05
enough of her music. Also, you know, it took a lot
5:09
for him to come back to public life.
5:10
It took a lot for him to come back and become it, like you
5:13
said, a touring artist and find the comfort zone live for him to
5:18
enjoy it. And I think that is a wonderful
5:21
thing. Not for him.
5:23
Forget about for the rest of us. For him, that was a real
5:26
wonderful, lovely thing for his life because he did have a lot
5:30
of turmoil and personal issues. And it was really I, I if you,
5:34
if you listen to live at the Roxy, very gratifying for him to
5:37
come back, back to the stage and get his, you know, we say, as
5:40
the kids say these days, to get his flowers.
5:43
Well, it's, you know, the Roxy was such a wonderful venue.
5:46
He probably had driven by the Roxy 1000 times.
5:50
I know when we used to go out to dinner on La Cienega and, you
5:55
know, we would drive by the Roxy, never, never giving a
5:58
thought that we would be going there to see him perform.
6:04
I mean, it really was just, it was like one of those what
6:09
Brian's it going to be at the Roxy because it's a very small
6:12
club. Yeah, seats around 500.
6:14
And I think that's one of the reasons he's so relaxed on these
6:18
recordings is he's not a, he's not in a 20,000 seat arena.
6:23
He's just hanging with, he's got his band there.
6:26
He's had a lot of familiar faces in the audience.
6:29
And so he not that he had overcome his nervousness, there
6:33
just wasn't any nervousness that night or those nights he just
6:37
came out and killed. You know, there you go.
6:40
You know, he did a lot of work on himself to get prepared for
6:44
this, for that moment. And yeah, the Roxy's phenomenal.
6:48
I was there about a year ago when I was in LA last and yeah,
6:55
he crushed it. The album's wonderful.
6:57
I remember when it came out of the time being surprised that
7:00
they they took an album from that that night.
7:03
The band is killer. The setlist is everything you
7:06
would hope for. And you know, again, what a
7:09
triumph, a personal triumph. We over, you know, we, we
7:13
overuse words like warrior and and legend and icon.
7:17
But Brian is all those things. He really had overcome his own
7:21
war with himself to be able to do this and.
7:26
Yeah, the way I refer to it is almost from the moment he could
7:30
stand up and walk, he was getting slapped down.
7:33
So he really had a lot to overcome just as a person forget
7:38
forgetting the fact that the pressure that he endured from
7:42
the record company to just keep churning out hit records, which
7:46
he did as long as he could. And then he he, he stopped.
7:49
He just couldn't do it anymore or wouldn't do it anymore.
7:52
You know, people always ask me questions about certain periods
7:56
of his life and career. And I say, well, if you had a
7:59
time machine and a forensic psychologist and a mind reader,
8:03
maybe we could go back and figure it out.
8:06
It's a really complicated story. I mean, at this point I've
8:09
written two books and made a documentary about it.
8:12
Did the All Star tribute to Brian Wilson at Radio City in
8:15
2001. It was all out of a real love
8:19
for what he had given us as an audience.
8:22
This the music he gave us, the, you know, spoiler alert, the
8:27
good vibrations he gave us, just with the complete opposite of
8:31
what what was going on in his head.
8:33
It's almost as if he needed the the, the sweetness and the love
8:39
and the harmony and the music for himself and, and the worse
8:43
off his life got, the more powerful the music got.
8:46
So it was when he sings Love and mercy is what you need tonight.
8:51
It's really what he needed. And when he finally got it, when
8:54
he finally found himself surrounded by, I guess a
8:58
sympathetic band would be the way to put it, as well as people
9:01
who just loved him unconditionally, who loved him
9:05
because he was their friend. Not they weren't waiting for him
9:08
to make the next hit record because they had a mortgage
9:11
payment. And and and so you have a guy
9:13
who's doing it because he wants to.
9:16
And we shouldn't overlook the fact that he loved a really good
9:21
room service steak. So, you know, he, he, he loved
9:25
hearing his band play his music the way it was meant to be
9:29
played. And and that's not knocking The
9:31
Beach Boys so much as they had simple, they had sort of dumbed
9:37
down the the the arrangements. This band didn't, did not do
9:40
this to his his, his recordings. They played them the way they
9:45
that he had created them. And that just made him so happy
9:48
to hear his music played right. Right on and really important.
9:53
No, let's not lose. You know, I'm I'm very well
9:56
known as saying it's the music business, not the music.
9:59
Friendship and family can often also complicate things, right.
10:03
I highly recommend anybody that is remotely interested in in
10:07
music and rock music and pop music to watch The Beach Boys
10:11
documentary. I thought it was very well done.
10:14
I wonder if you you know what your thoughts are on it, but it
10:17
really painted a very sympathetic and fair picture of
10:21
Brian, you know, in in addition to, you know his music well.
10:26
I think there are. If you're talking about the
10:28
recent Disney documentary. Those of us who were way too
10:33
deep into Brian and The Beach Boys would recommend Alan Boyd's
10:38
documentary for many years ago on The Beach Boys as well as Don
10:42
Was's. I just wasn't made for these
10:44
Times because basically what we're getting in the Disney
10:48
documentary is a lot of the same stuff.
10:51
And then I made a film called The Beautiful Dream of Brian
10:53
Wilson and the Story of Smile, which which is it doesn't go as
10:57
deeply into the The Beach Boys story.
11:00
It goes more into his story. And it's you know what they say.
11:06
He's an enigma wrapped in a Riddle wrapped and you know,
11:08
he's this guy is not easy to understand.
11:11
However, the only thing you really need to do is listen to
11:14
the music. You don't need to understand
11:17
anything because the music is designed to make you feel good.
11:21
It's designed to make you feel. I mean, when you listen to Pet
11:23
Sounds, an album that I call his, you know, emotional
11:28
autobiography, you're listening to a guy who is wrestling with
11:33
what it means to grow up and take responsibility for your
11:36
life. And you hear, I mean, whoever
11:39
wrote a song with the title God Only Knows It Begins, I may not
11:43
always love you. I mean, that was not what was a
11:47
typical line in a love song. But at the same time, the
11:52
leadoff track on Pet Sounds is, Wouldn't It Be nice?
11:57
And it's the most spectacularly upbeat, powerful, harmonic thing
12:02
you could listen to. So this guy could do it all, and
12:05
he could compose the music. He could arrange the backing
12:09
track in the studio. He could arrange the vocals.
12:12
He could sing the vocals and then produced the records.
12:15
And I remember talking to George Martin once about all of this.
12:19
And George didn't realize that Bryan sang on the records.
12:23
And he and he said he sang. He says one person shouldn't
12:26
have that much talent. That's not fair.
12:29
And so, you know, we're talking about the guy who was surrounded
12:32
by John, Paul, George and Ringo for nearly a decade.
12:35
He recognized in Bryan important and significant.
12:39
He was and you, you can hear a lot of that on on, on this live
12:45
recording. You hear a guy coming back to
12:47
who he was in the 60s, which was the hottest, most plugged in
12:52
producer in Los Angeles. The guy everybody was following.
12:58
There are stories in my In My Smile book about David Crosby
13:02
going up to Brian's house on a regular basis because he wanted
13:06
to hear what direction Brian was going in so he would know what
13:09
the birds should be doing. I mean this, this guy was the
13:12
leader of the pack. He was so significant that
13:15
George Martin said that Sergeant Pepper was The Beatles attempt
13:19
to equal head sounds. So how much more significant do
13:24
you get? You don't.
13:25
And I had seen the WAS documentary well in the past and
13:29
it, you're right, it does kind of track that, uh, the current,
13:32
the recent one is, you know, very similar.
13:34
And we're gonna link all of your stuff in the description and
13:36
point people to where they can, you know, follow your work and
13:39
support you and buy your work. And yeah, you know what a gift
13:43
Pet Sounds is, is still a monument.
13:46
And yeah, none of that surprised me.
13:48
Of course. You know, they, I love new
13:51
people coming up and telling me like, I didn't realize The Beach
13:54
Boys were so big because they didn't have the through line,
13:57
you know, that maybe some other bands had Beatles had less than
14:00
10 years to do all that music. And really the significant music
14:03
of The Beatles, the change in them coordinates with the dawn
14:07
of The Beach Boys. How strange that they should
14:09
change. And stylistically and radically,
14:12
as soon as The Beach Boys come around.
14:14
But. Yeah, You know, it's funny
14:16
because we're always looking for, you know, I don't know,
14:20
coincidences or whatever you might call it, but Paul
14:23
McCartney was born 2 days before Brian.
14:28
Was it 2 days after the same same month, same year.
14:31
They were both the bass players for their groups whose names
14:35
began with the letters Bea signed to the same record
14:38
company. I mean, is it is it coincidence
14:41
or, or is this just some cosmic thing and, and Paul McCartney
14:46
worships to this day? And what's so sweet about Brian?
14:52
When Pet Sounds came out, John and Paul called him to tell him
14:55
how much they loved the record. And what was Brian's response?
15:00
He says it was such an honor to be called by that.
15:03
He had he had an ego, but it was in service not to himself.
15:08
But he really believed that his music was that he was a conduit
15:11
for God. And that's now you're really
15:14
getting into a whole other unchartered area.
15:17
I haven't heard too many rock and rollers.
15:20
Yeah, my music came from God. Not without some raised
15:26
eyebrows, but I think certainly if Brian makes a good case, if
15:33
there's a heaven Brians in it for sure for what he gave
15:37
humanity. But but again, people today
15:41
can't because there's so much music and it's so available and
15:45
you and it's it's literally served Tijuana platter in a way
15:49
that kind of cheapens not its importance to me, but cheapens
15:53
its intrinsic value. The way it used to be a single
15:58
could sell a mil, a physical single of a 45 could sell a
16:01
million records and captivate the whole country.
16:04
And The Beach Boys only did that, you know, like 75 times.
16:07
Brian only did it like 100 times in his career.
16:09
So you know, it is so much to unpack and talk about, but let's
16:15
let's take it back to the Roxy and the sort of, you know, a
16:20
really important coordination for him.
16:23
How do you pick the set list for a career spanning set every
16:26
night? How do you, you know, expressed
16:29
that love to the audience? You could have a whole set set
16:34
of greatest hits of stuff that wasn't put on there.
16:36
You know, that's a testament to how great that he was as a
16:40
writer. But he really did recap.
16:42
You said it best earlier. He did really recapture his love
16:45
for the live room. And I think because it was at
16:47
the Roxy, which is very intimate, I think it made it, it
16:51
really, you know, supercharged him.
16:54
And you know, you know, if he, if he was lacking any confidence
16:57
going into that show after, he surely had it all back, right?
17:01
For the, you know, for the moment, yes, but literally every
17:04
concert he would be before he had, he had nerves before every
17:08
concert and and Darian Saha Naja, his great bandleader,
17:11
would say, why are you so nervous?
17:13
He says, I'm just nervous. He was just nervous because,
17:17
again, it wasn't what he was used to doing.
17:20
So when you talk about the setlist, the 1999 shows were the
17:27
putting together of that setlist in a sense, because the band was
17:33
now Rd. tested and the songs live were Rd. tested.
17:36
And because the band, especially the Wondermans and Jeffrey
17:42
Foskett worshipped Brian and his body of work, They weren't going
17:48
to do a Beach Boys greatest hits set list.
17:51
They just weren't going to do it.
17:52
And and so they they came up with songs that, you know, The
17:57
Beach Boys hadn't played endlessly.
18:00
Like, like the little girl I once knew or this whole world or
18:03
Kiss Me Baby. I mean, it was, you know, of
18:06
course there's California girls and I get around and, and, and
18:09
surfer girl and in my room. But there, you know, there's
18:13
album tracks that people really loved.
18:17
And, and of course, if there's only 500 people in the audience,
18:21
you got to figure these are pretty hardcore folks who were
18:24
willing to, to, to sleep on the sidewalk outside the Roxy to get
18:29
get up to the box office and get tickets.
18:31
But but what what I think, you know, is so much fun about the
18:36
said list is that it's very new in his solo career at this
18:41
point. He's less than 20 dates into it.
18:44
And so there's a freshness to it.
18:46
There's there's not like, OK, we got to do, we're going to do
18:49
that song again. Although an audience gives you
18:53
the feedback that, you know, you're doing it right.
18:56
But when you hear him sing very, very familiar Beach Boys hits,
19:01
you know, you don't you don't go.
19:03
Oh, there it is again. You because it's Brian singing
19:07
it with a band who was bringing youthful life to it.
19:11
So. So it's very it's just great
19:13
fun. You know, he had a lot of big
19:16
hits, but he also had, from my point of view, many more great
19:21
songs that were on albums that no one had ever heard unless you
19:25
had bought the albums. So to hear, you know, a song
19:29
like please Let me wonder, which is the opener of sight two of
19:33
The Beach Boys today. It's just it was it was really
19:37
exciting. I mean, you know, so I had seen
19:39
the show and seen it in rehearsal, you know, dozens of
19:42
times before the Roxy shows. But there was nothing like that,
19:46
you know, again, the intimacy of the venue.
19:49
I think it really calmed him in a calmed him in a way that there
19:55
was number nervousness or very little nervousness.
19:58
Right on. You know, again that takes.
20:02
You know, practice and time, especially when you've been out
20:05
of the game and you hold yourself to a very high
20:07
standard. My personal favorite Beach Boys
20:08
song has always been Carolina. No, just an absolute brilliant
20:13
piece of music. Probably not everybody's first
20:16
favorite song. There are but a bunch of others,
20:18
obviously, but that's just such a monumental song for my life.
20:22
I also had like a really terrible story from my childhood
20:24
where I had a got picked up to go to kindergarten on a little
20:27
yellow school bus like everybody, and there was a girl
20:31
in our class called Rhonda because her parents are not
20:36
smart and a bunch of little 4 year olds are singing help me
20:39
Rhonda to this girl every day, driving her probably insane into
20:43
you know, she probably she's probably like R now for the rest
20:46
of her life or RO because like Rhonda ruined her life being
20:50
named Rhonda. Just a little bunch of little
20:53
monkey see, monkey do little 4 year olds help me, Rhonda help
20:56
help me. Well, and just like every day,
20:58
her eyes would get this big and just what I can't, I can't even.
21:02
But anyways, good, mostly good memories, good vibrations and
21:06
and you know, I wasn't made like so many great songs, so many and
21:10
much more than they hits and much more than our greatest hits
21:13
album. And we do live in a spot in a
21:14
playlist and unfortunately, Spotify society and I really am
21:19
an album person and I'm so thrilled that the vinyl album
21:21
has come back. And you know, people should
21:23
absolutely go and buy live at the Roxy again and really go sit
21:29
with this record and all The Beach Boys records.
21:31
You know, it's important to me that people educate themselves.
21:34
You can't appreciate things, I think, as we're losing our
21:37
heroes 1 by 1. And Brians was certainly
21:41
shocking since he was in the middle of the tour.
21:44
No, Brian. Brian wasn't.
21:45
Brian wasn't in the. Middle was he?
21:46
Was he off the road? I thought.
21:48
He was retired from touring at that.
21:51
Okay, I didn't realize. Yeah, he wasn't.
21:54
He wasn't well for a while. OK, I see.
21:56
And you know, it's it's great that we still have the music and
22:01
his music is the thing that's going to carry on and on, which
22:04
is the most important thing. Just a few more, you know,
22:06
questions for your personal experience.
22:08
Is there, you know, I don't do any kind of gotcha interviews,
22:12
but is there something about Brian that maybe people don't
22:15
know that they would be surprised to learn in a positive
22:17
way that, you know, like maybe shine a little bit of light on
22:20
him that they don't know? I think I.
22:22
Think a positive way. I I just think his, his he he,
22:28
he loved to laugh and he loved to make people laugh.
22:33
I mean, he, he he, you know, personally, you know my greatest
22:37
treasured possessions. What you in Hollywood, like any
22:41
big tourist city, they have these souvenir shops where you
22:45
can go and buy really cheap souvenirs.
22:50
You know, obviously, I guess they'll be more expensive in the
22:53
made in China tariff era. But one day he showed up at my
22:57
apartment with with then think you could buy fake Oscars.
23:00
World's greatest mom, world's greatest dad, and he showed up
23:04
with two for me, World's greatest comic and world's
23:08
greatest writer. You know what, what, what better
23:11
personal treasure could I have that he had, he had driven to
23:14
Hollywood Blvd. you know, and gone into the one of those
23:17
stores and found those and then and then and then, you know,
23:21
brought him over. He just, he just was really
23:25
kind. His humor was, you know, most,
23:27
most comedy comes at the expense of somebody.
23:31
Somebody has to be hurt for their for the audience to laugh.
23:35
Even if you're making fun of yourself, which Brian Brian
23:38
could do. But his, his humor was gentle.
23:42
He he would like trip over a chair and catch himself
23:46
purposely to make you laugh. He just was a very sweet guy.
23:52
You know, it's it's he recorded an album in 19 that came out in
23:57
1977 called The Beach Boys Love You.
23:59
And he had wanted to call it Brian Loves You.
24:02
And he said, you know, like Jesus loves you.
24:04
He really thought of himself as somebody who was spreading God's
24:09
love. And I think that's, you don't
24:11
hear that in songs like I Get Around or Surf in USA, but you
24:16
feel it. It makes this music really makes
24:19
you feel good. And, you know, it took a while
24:21
after his passing that I was able to listen to his music
24:24
without crying. But you know, it's there.
24:29
The music is there forever. As long as there's electricity,
24:32
we'll have Brian Wilson. That's amazing.
24:35
What a great way to sum wall that up.
24:38
I like to end these with a wild card question.
24:40
There's a interview device invented by somebody which
24:42
smarter than I. What is the last good book you
24:45
read, David? You know, I've been so busy
24:47
writing them, I haven't had too much time to read them.
24:49
You know, I'm reading this. I was very skeptical about this
24:52
new biography on about John Lennon and Paul McCartney
24:56
because there's been so many books on The Beatles.
24:58
And it's like, what? Is there anything new to say?
25:02
So I'm reading it. I haven't finished it, but it's
25:06
really good. The, the last great book that I,
25:09
that I finished that I can look at on my bookshelf, believe it
25:13
or not, was To Kill a Mockingbird.
25:15
Because when I was in school, I was a really bad student.
25:18
So I didn't listen to this books that were assigned for the most
25:21
part. So I'm now going back and, and,
25:24
and, and reading the classics and, and, and reading this book.
25:27
It's like, Oh my God, no wonder this book is still talked about,
25:32
you know, you know, decades and decades after it was first
25:36
published. I'm just a amazing, amazing
25:39
book. So I would go with To Kill a
25:40
Mockingbird if you're looking for something to read.
25:43
Right on. Everybody should go back and
25:45
reread the classics several times in your life.
25:48
It's gratifying. David, lovely to meet you and
25:51
hear from you and hear your story.
25:52
Thank you for carrying this flag for for Brian and The Beach
25:56
Boys. We're going to link everything
25:57
in the description where people can support you and your work.
26:01
Author. Thank you, Keith.
26:02
Yeah, the, the paperback edition of of that book, my book on
26:07
Smile is, is is going to be out. It's out in England already.
26:11
It comes out in the States by mid November.
26:14
So hardcover or paperback, it'll be available for Christmas.
26:19
And it's it's a, it's a pretty stunning gathering.
26:23
It's an oral history of the most famous unreleased unfinished
26:27
album of all time. Until Brian finally did finish
26:30
it. Amazing.
26:31
You. Have a great day, David.
26:33
Thank you so much for joining us today.
26:34
It really means a lot to me. Wonderful talking to you.
26:36
Thank you. My pleasure.
26:38
You too. Take care.