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David Beard · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Our guest today is David Beard, who has a new book,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: All Summer Long Conversations with the Beach Boys, from Surfing
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: to Smile. David, how'd you get involved in the Beach
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Boys universe?
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Bob? It goes a long ways back. It started with
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: me discovering Jan and Den. First. I'd heard the Beach
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Boys on the radio, of course, but when I saw
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: The Night the nineteen seventy ninety nineteen eighty, the Dead
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Man's Curve television movie about Jan and Dean, that was
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: kind of my road in because I remember to this
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: day so vividly the moment in that TV movie when
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Richard Hatch is Jan standing next to Bruce Davidson is
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Dean with their surfboards at the ocean, and I'm saying,
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: this would sound so great on tape, and he goes,
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: what and then they cut to a montage of Janandine
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: in the studio singing surfing with the actual surfers on
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: the waves. And that's the moment that I just went,
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: what is this and I have to get more of it.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: That's that's where it started.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, when this happens though You're not living in California, right.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: No, I'm up. I'd actually just moved from upstate New
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: York to Charlotte, and I, for the life of me,
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: can't remember if I saw like an advertisement on it,
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: you know, on television that made me want to watch it,
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: or what the case was, because I don't know how
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: I accidentally stumbled across. I don't remember how I came
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: across it, but I remember I watched it from the
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: very beginning. And when that, when that moment happened, I
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: just was. It just sucked me in. I just I
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: was ruined. And the next thing I know, I was,
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: I was as you know, back then, there was retail
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: music stores everywhere, lots of used record stores everywhere, and
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: I went to the main one in downtown Charlotte, I
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: think it was called Camelot, and I bought the Jan
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: and Dean Anthology two record set, and that kind of
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: just galvanized my interest in them, because you know, it
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: was the perfect, perfect first Jan and Deine thing for
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: me to buy because it had all the liner notes
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: in it. It had Dave marsh from Cream's Liner Notes,
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: and it talks so much about Brian Wilson and then I.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: So that made me pay attention to the songwriting credits
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: and I thought, well, I got to know more about
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: the Beach Boys, and so that's that was kind of
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: the doorway and I picked up immediately immediately. I was
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: fourteen or fifteen years old, and I immediately just picked
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: up on that Jan and Deine humor that was so
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: evident throughout all their materials, but especially on side for
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: the Anthology album, which was that wonky sound effect which
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: would which was their original version of Fileus in an
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: abridged form. But that's really what it was, that two
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: record set that just really drew me in. And having
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: in the television movie Dick Clark, Mike Love and Bruce
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: Johnston make the cameo at the end was kind of
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: another crossover thing where it piqued my interest and drew me,
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: you know, wanting to know more about them.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you bought the Genadine Anthology, how'd you start
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: with the Beach Boys?
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: I remember that I bought Pet Sounds on a record
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: because I wanted to know more, and I remember going
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: going in and buying Pet Sounds, but not I took
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: it home, listened to it, and I also had Best
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: of the Beach Boys. Do you remember the record clubs,
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: the Columbia or r C Rety Plus, Yeah, so I had.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Six records for a penny and then the Pet Shit, Yeah,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: so I had.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: I had I'm sure the best of the Beach Boys
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: through that, along with Manilo Live and a whole bunch
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: of other things. And I grew up in New York.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: I was a Kiss fan, major Kiss fan. All the
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: kids were Kiss fans. And I think what put me
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: in the headspace of loving oldies was actually Kiss Alive too,
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: because side for Kiss Alive two was studio tracks, and
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: one of the studio tracks was any Way You Want
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: It with Paul Stanley singing lead. And again I had
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: no idea that that was a Dave Clark five song,
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: but I remember vividly walking down the hallway in junior
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: high school singing that song. So when I see dead
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: Man's Curve and then when I have Best of the
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Beach Boys and I go buy Pet Sounds, I play
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: it and I remember, I think that's not me was
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: the one song that I kind of liked because of
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: the melody and it felt like, you know, singaple where
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: you could sing along, but it didn't stick with me
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: until years later. But when it hit me when I
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: was around twenty four, by eight to ten years later,
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: when it hit me, when I was driving in my
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: car with the Pet Sounds cassette. When that hit me,
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: it hit me like a ton of bricks. Like I thought,
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: how did I not get this any sooner? You know?
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: But when I got it, it really it really stuck.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, But you ultimately become involved with a beach boys,
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: let's call it a fianzine or a newsletter. How does
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: that happen?
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: Well, so I start collecting records and going to used
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: record stores around town, and I went to my junior prom.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: But then when senior prom comes up, I ask three
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: girls they all had dates, and my parents, you know,
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: said here's your money for your prom. And I thought, well, okay,
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: and I took the money that they had given you
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: for the senior prom and went off to a record convention.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: And at so that I became. I started doing those frequently,
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: and within a couple of years I went to one
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: and by this time I had discovered Smile because of
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: Malcolm Leo's Wonderful and American Band documentary in nineteen eighty five.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: So I was really that had really piqued my interest,
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: and I was standing behind a guy very impatiently as
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: he was going one record at a time through the
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: Beach Boys section, and he turned around and we started talking,
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: and then that was Lee Dempsey. And Lee at the
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: time was writing for Endless Summer Quarterly because it was
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: originally founded out in San Diego by Rick Edgell and
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: Phil Mast And he told me about the publication and
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: I said, oh, okay, well, so I subscribed for a
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: year and it just it was a lot of picture
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: and technology is very different now than it was then,
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: but the magazine just had a lot of photos of
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: like you know, covers of sheet music, photos of like
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: the editors with their arms around the Beach Boys backstage
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: and that type of thing, and it just there was
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: nothing about it that had that felt meaty to me
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: where I could find something out. And so one of
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: the first books, and I don't remember how I found it,
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: was Dominic Priori's Look, Listen, Vibrate and Smile The Dumb
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: Angel Gazette, and that be kind of came my bible
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: early early on in my discovery of the Beach Boys
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: and my love to this day and infatuation of smile.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: But you ultimately take over the Quarterly.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: Right yes? So yeah. So summer of ninety three, Rick
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: and Phil contact Lee. They say, hey, we're burnt out
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: the beach Boys. I don't know how the conversation went
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: because I wasn't a part of it, but they asked
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: Lee if he would take it over. He was interested
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: in buying a business license. So by that time Lee
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: and I was a morning show producer at a oldies
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: station and I had him helping me with jingles for
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: the show. And he contacted me and said, hey, I'll
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: do this if you want to do this with me,
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: because I won't do it alone it's too much work.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: So I said sure, what a yeah? Absolutely, are you kidding?
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: I get to write about you know, I got to
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: dig into something that interests me and actually write about it. Absolutely,
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: And I got lucky right out of the bat in
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: August of ninety three and got to do my very
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: first interview with Dean Torrent. So Jan and Dean like the.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Fun let me stop, Let me stop for a second.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: When you take it over? How long has the Quarterly
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: been in existence? And how many subscribers are there.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: It was founded in eighty seven and this is ninety three,
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: so six years in and just over two hundred at
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: the time.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Okay, is the quarterly still in existence?
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: Yes?
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  Speaker 1: And is it growing? You know, what's the status of
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: the subscribership now.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: It's uniquely kind of just you know, it comes. It
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: has peaks and valleys, but it just kind of it
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: just manages to We've got over We've got nearly two
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: thousand names in our database, but it kind of comes
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: and goes because people will renew at different times and
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: a lot of people know of the magazine or what
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: will happen is they'll just want a specific one. Let's
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: say I do one about Sunflower, that's the one they want,
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: or pet Sounds, that's the one they want, and they'll
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: just order them individually. And I did a whole series
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: over the course of winter twenty twenty four all the
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: way to early this year. I think it was of
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: four issues just on Brian Wilson outside the Beach Boys productions,
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: which was a joy, you know, going down that rabbit
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: hole and talking to all these ancillary people about Brian
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: working with them, and some of that ended up in
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: the book.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, I get a ski newsletter Ski History, and they
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: burnt through the major topics and now it's really obscure
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: stuff and sort of reruds. You know, how do you
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: find new material or what do you deliver?
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: Well, it's amazing to me. I don't know if you
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: run across this with things as you get into them, Like,
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: it's amazing to me all the different layers of something
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: that you can explore. And like if you just take
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: one person's name out of the Beach Boys, Brian Wilson
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: and you and you just start to think, Okay, all
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: the things that Brian has worked on, all the things
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: that he's arranged, all the things that he's produced. And
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: then I, you know, along the way, I get to
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: talk to Glenn Campbell, and Glenn's interaction with them was
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: uniquely its own. And so it's just every time I
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: get to talk to someone, something else unfolds in the
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: conversation that maybe I knew about or and was prepared
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: to talk about with the subject, or maybe they, you know,
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: kind of unveil something to me historically that I wasn't
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: quite aware of or knew something of. But it allows
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: me to dig deeper. So I always it's never ending.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you take over the quarterly. Your first interview
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: is with Dean. How do you make contact with Dean
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: and what do you learn in that interview?
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: My good buddy Elliott Kendall set that up. And I
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: didn't know Elliott at the time. He knew Lean, so
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: he was kind enough to get that going.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: And just John, I'm just interested. If you didn't know him,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: how'd you make the connection to make it happen?
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: Well, Elliott Kendall. Elliot Kendall knew him, and he got
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: the phone number. And at the time, I was working
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: in radio, so I called Dean from the radio station.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: I was so nervous, Bob, because Dean was like, you know,
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: I discovered Jan and Deane got it. I was so nervous,
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: and you know, I had the shaky voice, you know
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: that we're not worth anything going on. And we got
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: talking and I interviewed. What I wanted to know about
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: was the Jan and Dean television pilot because I knew
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: of it, but I had not seen it. And so
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: we started talking and he immediately picked up on the
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: genuine interest, you know, not fanboy stuff, but genuine interest
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: in history, and we got on great, right out of
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: the gate and he has since become a mentor of
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: mine graphically. He's been so wonderful over the years. So
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: going back to your question, he just he was just
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: so open and what I learned from him in that
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: interview was it surprised me the most was how cool
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: he was and how open he was. I think he
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: was really the perfect first interview for me to have
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: conducted for that reason.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, you have a good experience with Dean. What's your
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: next step?
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm the more creative between Lee and I. I'm
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: always thinking about what can we do next? What can
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: we do next? Hey and the Beach Boys come through.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: November of nineteen ninety three, they opened their unplugged box
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: set tour, the Good Vibrations box Set. They opened that
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: tour in Charlotte, and I'm just I that that just
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: absolutely I felt like the heavens were shining down, you know,
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: to watch Carl Wilson on stage go over and play
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: the keyboards for Wonderful with the spotlight on him. The
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: whole show was amazing and that kind of became the
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: inspiration and the motivation for me to go, this is
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: just too cool to not just dig deeper and to
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: get more into it. And again the more that I
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: just so we start the mag Lee and I start
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: the magazine, the box set comes out, we see this tour,
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: and I'm just like, this is this is exactly what
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: I'm supposed to be doing right now, this is exactly
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: So I just start reading books. And as you know,
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: back then, there was no Google, there was no any
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: everything at your disposal. You really had to put the
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: time and the energy in to discover and I just
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: I just dove in.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: So keep going.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: So once I dove in the first things that they
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: were somewhat you know, back then there was Carl was
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: a part of the touring band. Carl had not passed
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: away yet, so and no one knew that was coming
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: when it was. But at that time, so what really,
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: Because I love Smile. When we started doing the magazine,
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: they do some Smile tracks in that show, and and
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm as giddy as a fan to see
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: those things. And so I just start thinking about how
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: can what how do I take what's important to me
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: about the Beach Boys and translate that into this magazine
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: so that the reader feels as though they're with me,
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: And that kind of became to this day, that is
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: still what I try to do to this day because
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: I want the reader. If I get to go backstage
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: and do an interview backstage, if I can have photos
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: to go with that and put the reader right there
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: with me, that's that's what I'd love to do. So
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: that's that's kind of what has fed my energy, my
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: creative energy, and kind of one idea after the other.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: I'm always thinking about, is this, you know, this particular year,
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: what is it the anniversary of no I didn't think
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: that so much in the beginning. So it was just
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: really their openness, like Dean, their openness to uh, you know, chatting,
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: chatting with us. And initially it wasn't interviewing, it was
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: just talking us up and we put out a few,
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: you know. By summer of ninety four, they came into
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: town again and played a Knight's Castle, which is a ballpark,
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: and that's when we're talking the Bruce backstage, and he
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: said to me, you guys are cool, and I just
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: thought to myself, how am I? How is that possible?
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: To him? And I really just think from the beginning,
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: I really allow my heart to lead the way. I
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: just I don't have a hidden agenda, you know, because
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: they have enough stuff in their lives, as I'm sure you're,
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: the whole public world is aware. They have so much
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: stuff in their history that just is derogatory and doesn't
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: shine well on them or reflect well on them. So
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: I just never got into that stuff, you know. I
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: just I appreciated their time and their energy and their
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: commitment of giving me being present with me when I
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: was with them, and it just kind of grew from there.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: The seeds of thought and creativity just grew.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you interviewed Dean. What was your next interview?
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: I believed in that. I think the second interview was
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: it was Bruce at that same show the summer of
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: ninety four. We were we just kind of caught him
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: and he talked to us about Sunflower briefly, and it
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: was just really off the cuff. We were just kind
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: of standing there with him with a handheld tape recorder
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: and I just started, you know, by that time, I
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: just wanted to be prepared in case something happened. So
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: we'd have a photographer and I'd have a handheld tape
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: recorder and we just would start doing off the cuff
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: conversations with him. And when I go back and I
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: look at those conversations, they're quite mediocre, but you know,
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: they were again, they were so welcoming, and I just
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: really thought, is this always this? You know, I really
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: didn't know what to attribute it to because it was
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: new territory for me. But we just got on so
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: well with them, or at least I did, you know.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: And it was just one foot, you know, one step
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: right after the other, and they just became very open.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: And I think after Bruce and as the same day,
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: he told us we were cool because and he was
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: basing that on the way that we changed the magazine,
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: the way we were presenting the magazine. I think Mike
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: was my next interview after that when and it was
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: a year or so later my phone.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Okay, some of these acts are very familiar with their history.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: They can tell you what year, you know, what, the
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: order of it, and other ones. I'm up there on stage,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: I'm playing the songs. You know more about it than
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: I do. So the people involved with the Beach Boys
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: and members, how much were they mental archivists of their
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: own lives?
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: Huh? What a great question. Well, at times over this
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: thirty plus nail nearly thirty three years now. At times
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: they were kind of detrimental to their own memories. But
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: I think that's what, you know, being able to have
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: multiple conversations over decades with them, sometimes about the same things,
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: and then reading responses from them in other publications or
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: other outlets, you know, you get a sense of canned
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: thought process, you know, the old kind of trigger memory,
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: muscle memory where they would just go back to something
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: and they and they weren't really kind of it was
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: more Q, just a strict Q and a question answer.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: And so that kind of really informed me because I
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: realized that if I, if I just say to Mike,
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: as an example, so tell me about writing I get
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: around right, I'm going to get a very specific answer.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: And instead I after a few years, I would I
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: would reapproach him and say it was during the old
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: you know all Summerlong is a really wonderful summer album.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: Is during that time that you and Brian ended up
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: having to fire Murray. What do you recall about that?
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: You know, So without with I try not to lead
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: them too much, but kind of give them a pebble
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: of memory that will help steer them, you know, in
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: the right direction, so they so they don't give me
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: the same cand response and hopefully the way I phrase
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: the question will lead them down memory lane.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, the book, for those who don't know, is a
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: distillation of your interviews, sort of an oral history of
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: the Beach Boys. There's a lot of stuff that you
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: go into depth that I have not seen previously. You
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: talk about Dave Marx living across the street. How did
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: you make contact with David and what was that like?
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: Oh? I think David is one of the most enjoyable
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: and fascinating characters I've ever had the pleasure of coming across.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: He's such a great hang. So I'm trying to remember
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: the first time I talked to him. It was in
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: the late nineties because when Carl got Allen was out Dave,
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: you know, there was the dust up. Al was out
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: and then David came into the fray and that's how
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: I met David. Was. In fact, the first time I
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: met David is in Atlanta, Georgia. The guys were playing
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: a private gig and I contacted him up in his
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: room and said, Hey, I'm here in the hotel and
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: do you want to go to dinner? So he comes
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: down we go, and at that time he was he
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: was drinking and we went out to like an Applebee's
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: or something, and they were playing oldies music over the
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: speakers in the restaurant, and he was not his best
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: self that night. He was in a weird place, a
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: real enjoyable soul, but he was in a really troubled
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: place and he was laying his head down on the table.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: Hendrix would come on and he said, Jimmy's dead. Somebody
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: else would come on, maybe his Door's song or something.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: You know. We were, of course already talking about the
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: Beach Boys, and Dennis was gone by that point. You know,
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: Carl So's he's sitting there and he's saying, they're all dead.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: You know. So it was a very kind of really
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: raw first introduction with David Marx. But then by two
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: thousand and five, so that was, you know, five to
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: six years later, I'm getting to know David, and then
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: they have that great I was at the unveiling of
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: the Hawthorne Monument where the house used to be, and
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: I get to interview him right after that, and the
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: emotions that were David's emotions were so frankly beautiful. They
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: were just so he just was feeling it, really feeling it,
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: and we really got into great conversation about that neighborhood
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: and the Lindeners, gil Gil Linder, and how Murray would
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: go up there in the in the neighborhood and how
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: everybody interacted, and it just I love hearing that you
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: liked hearing about that because I loved hearing about it,
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: you know, just just that that early childhood and how
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: those and how David actually lived in Englewood, which was
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: just the other side of the street, but he'd come
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: over and he'd poke his head in and listen, and
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: then he and Carl taking guitar lessons together from John
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: Moss of all people. You know, it's just a fascinating history.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: And then how much I'm glad we're talking about David
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: because his influence on that group really informed their direction.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: You know, that style that he really saw because Carl
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: from day one, whether he was whether he would have
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: gotten in guitar lessons or not, Carl was an R
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: and B guy more so than David. David was someone
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: who was listening to the surf music of the time,
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: but that Dale and jazz at that time, and he
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: really I helped, I believe helped Brian form that sound
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: in that direction that they're so popular well known for
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: from those early records.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Okay, the traditional story is Al is in the group,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Al goes away to school, David becomes part of the band,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Al gives up on schools back in the band. From
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: the outside in the sixty it looked like but Dave,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: they just needed another face. So you're saying that when
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: he was integrated in the band, he had a big effect.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: I absolutely believe. So. Yeah, when you listen you take
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: a song like Surfing, you as if you listen to
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: the guitar work on that, if you're able to just
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: get a hold of a track of that, it's amazing.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: The guitar lick the downstroke. It's not an up and
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: down stroke. I learned to play acoustic guitar and I
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: do the up and down stroke. David doesn't do that.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: David does a direct, very intentional downstroke only. And it's
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: kind of like how Ringo Star is the only drummer
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: who kind of pulls off the beat. David chuck at
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: chuk at chug a chugg. I mean, it's down, it's down.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: He never drags it up. It's always down and if
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: you listen to those early Beach Boys records, that's David. Now.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: Carl also played the part, but it was David who
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: brought that. He brought that absolutely.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: Since you're close and you're the best source we've got. Hey,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: how did David feel about getting kicked out of the band?
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: B What did he do for thirty years?
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: There's a wonderful book called The Lost Beach Boy and
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: then it's by John Stebbins. It's a really great book.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: David when he first he was kicked out of the
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: band by Murray, Murray was just looking for an excuse,
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: because what Murray will you because Al did come back
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: when Brian phoned him, and David and Al were in
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: the group, the touring group for a little bit together,
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: and Murray was looking Murray just wanted Brian back, in
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: which Brian did not want. So Murray was just looking
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: for a reason to fire a fifteen year old David Marx.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: And David Marx was a little fifteen year old Brett.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: I mean I was a brat at fifteen, So David
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: was no different and he mouthed off to Murray one
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: day and Murray pushed him not physically, but was pushing
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: his buttons and David just said, I quit, and everybody
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: hear that. He says he quit. So Murray drags Brian
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: back into the fray, which was the last thing Brian wanted.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: So David then goes and he does music for if
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: I'm remembering right, he does something. He does some work
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: for Casey Caseum, different and different, and he forms David
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: and the Marksman. They don't have that greatest success. And
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: what he does, the music he did that I find
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: really really interesting is The Moon, which was nineteen sixty
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: nine and Moon Without Earth was a record, and then
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: the other record was just called the Moon, and both
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: records are just really great and they fit into the
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: genre of all those records of that time, the late
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: sixties early seventies, because I'm a Moody I'm a major
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: Moody blues fan, and the Moon fit right into that
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: pocket for me as a listener.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: How did he survive financially?
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: Oh, he's he struggled, you know, uh, you know, and gosh,
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: that's sensitive, that's sensitive territory. I would I feel I
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: feel that would be inappropriate for me to talk about
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: too much in depth because David's not here with us.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: Okay, So let's talk about Brian's first wife, Marilyn. Yes,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: they had kids together, marriage, where they lived together relative
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: to the long life was not that long. You come
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: on the scene decades later. Is she rolling the rise
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: when you want to talk about the Beach Boys, or
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: she saying, oh, yeah, yeah, let's get back into it.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: A combination of both, a little bit of both. It's
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: it's it's interesting. I think what I'm going to say
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: is one true they. I think at times they've been surprised.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: And when I say they, I mean everybody, Beach Boys,
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: the Honeys, you name it. At times they've all been
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: surprised by the interest and that it's still there, you know,
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: after twenty years, after thirty years, after forty years, and
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: I and I think that finally, maybe after twenty twelve,
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: it really really sank in after they did that reunion tour,
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: that it really sank in that this is important, that
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: this is uh, this is worth talking about, this has
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: great value. And so that to me was the moment.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: I think that's never been communicated to me, but that's
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: what I what I witnessed because I came out to
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: the I saw three of the shows in twenty twelve,
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: and one of them was in Irvine when Dean was
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: with when Dean came out and joined them, and that
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: was the show, Bob. That was a bucketless show for
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: me because I got to see the Beach Boys in
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: California Girls to California Girls. That that was the night.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: And then I was up on the rafters on the
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: side of the stage and I got to watch them
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: come out for the opening of the second set and
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: do add some music to your day around the piano,
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: oh man, I mean just and then Dean come out
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: at the end to do Barbara Ann with him. It's
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: you know, and I do think as the years have
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: gone by, reunion concert or not, each and every one
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: of them, I've seen it in their eyes when I'm
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: sitting with them where they where they where, they know
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: that even if they've been taught, even if I'm talking
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: to them about a specific song or something that everyone's
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: asked them about for years. Maybe with the Honeys, maybe
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: I'm asking about He's a doll or something, or we're
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: just working with Brian and meeting Brian at the Pandora's box.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: They they see the you know, I'm genuinely interested and
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: that I want to make sure their story is told
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: the way they wanted to be heard.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: So how did you connect with Marilyn? How many times
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: have you spoken with her? Was she forthcoming because there's
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: a lot of information in the book, or was it
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: over time she opened up?
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: It's over time, you know, when you a lot of me.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: You moved to California, and I'm kind of envious at
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: that because I think if I lived out there, it
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: would have been so much easier to say, you know,
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: ring people up and say hey, I want to come
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: over and visit with you, that type of thing. And
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: so when you live because I live on the East Coast,
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: that took a little bit longer and just kind of
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: making sure they were getting the magazine and letting them
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: see the product and letting them see the way the
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: history was being treated. So yeah, so over time it
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: was an opening up. And I think that is because
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: and you're well aware of this, in the music business.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: In the music industry, there are always takers. There's always
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: somebody who wants something from you, and you don't know
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: who you can trust. And I've seen that, I've watched
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: it and frankly, it discussed me. So uh, that is
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: so I have trouble with it. I think they deserve
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: better than that. How they treat each other as a
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: whole other thing. But that's not me. That's not for
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: me to decide or to interfere with. You know, when
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: I visit with them and they give me their time,
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: I'm I'm just so grateful because they're they're trusting me
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: to tell their history. And Maryland, Marylynd is a doll.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you make some stuff come alive and I
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: learn new stuff in them meeting at Pandora's Box and
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: then spending a lot of time at her parents' house.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: And in addition, it's well established that they get married
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: when she is extremely young. Since you in that they
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: go far, that far deep, what did the parents think that.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: Well, that's a great question. I'm I'm right now. And
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: by saying right now, I'm like current day, very intrigued
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: by Irving and may Rovel's story. And I've and I've
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: kind of been trying to crack that egg to get into,
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: you know, a little bit more about that. And it's
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: interesting because Marilyn's somewhat guarded when it comes to that
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: part of her life that the parents. I've experienced that
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: a number of times with her. Ginger is much more
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: open and she's a she's her cousin, you know, fellow honey.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: And Ginger is a lot more talkative about her May
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: and Irving, and I've been able to kind of get
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: Carnie and Wendy to talk about their grandparents a little
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: bit too. I'm actually right now trying to do I'm
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: trying to put a whole focus on the female side
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: of the family to kind of bring more attention and
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: light to them, because Carney and Wundy are so talented,
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: and Marilyn and her sister Diane and their baby sister Barbara,
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: who most people don't even know of. I'm interviewing Barbera
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: right now, so I'm trying to kind of tell the
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: Rovell sisters story and bring more focus to it, and
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: hopefully through that process, I'm hoping to understand more about
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: man Irving. But from what I understand, they were more
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: than happy to have Brian come over and stay and
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: it just didn't seem to matter, so which goes kind
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: of against the times because most people you go back
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: to that era that was just not allowed that was
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: just like, how could you even But they loved Brian
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: and that Bob. That's like the greatest treasure all of
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: doing this magazine for so long and discovering these stories
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: is the fact that this familial this very rooted familial
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: ties that bind them together before you even start to
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: talk about the music, you know, and how much family
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: was important to them.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: The other thing you make come alive in the book
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: is the interim between Brian living the family home and
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: moving in with Marylyn. You talk about him living in
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: an apartment, having a roommate. You bring up people that
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: I've never even heard of him producing all these different records.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about that.
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: Oh sure, gosh, man, it was just so cool for
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: me to get into Brian his production work outside the
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: Beach Boys because one of the common I think, one
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: of the common knowledge things when it comes to Beach
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: Boy fandom that you don't even have to be too
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: hardcore of a fan to even realize is that they
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: put out twelve albums in four years and know that
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: you go, oh my god, how could they have done that?
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: Well?
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: Brian, No wonder Brian stopped touring well, he was doing
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: more than that which is even which is I guess
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: the right. My word might be absurd because he was
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: working so hard. It's just he was. He was a sponge.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: And you and I'm going to jump ahead and then
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: jump back. You get to hear him being a sponge
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: on the pet Sounds box set sessions that you know,
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: you when when one of the LA session musicians comes
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: up with an idea like Al Delori or Al Blaine
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: or somebody, and he'll go play that again or no,
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: what was what was it? Let's let's let's go with that.
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: So that that element of Brian's personality was rooted in
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: his pure love of music. And then you go all
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: the way back to the early sixties and he was
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: working with Gary Usher, and he was working with uh
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: Roger Christian and and and to your point, Bob Norberg
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: his his roommate. And then this guy Dave Nolan moves
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: in next store and it's it's my greatest regret, Bob,
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: when I'm not able to like when someone's not here anymore,
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: when I because they talked to Dave. And as you
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: read and Richelarian, we learn about this guy rich Larian,
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: who is one of the members of the survivors with
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: with Bob Norberg and Dave Nolan and Brian, they were
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: the survivors and I sow which Rich was still here
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: with us today so that we could tell his story.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: But it's it's it's fascinating how much Brian was open
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: to incorporating ideas and if you played an instrument, and
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: if you were lucky enough to live next store, then
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: then by god, bring your guitar over, or hey, I've
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: got this song idea, what do you think? And it
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: just was like, it's it's like almost kind of when
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: I read it now, it's almost like literally watching It's
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: like if you go out and plant a garden and
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: then you get the walk to grow. It's the musical
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: roots of his you know, coming to fruition.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you've dealt with Brian in his later years.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: I certainly have. A lot of people are no longer
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: with us, But towards the very end he was more verbal,
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: but it was not like talking to an average person's
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: so they've seen video of a halting speech. He was
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: definitely I'm not a doctor, but appears to be schizophrenic.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: I know from people who worked with him, he was
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: afraid of being shot on stage. Are you telling me
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: in your mind that he had this open I'm part
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: of the group, I have all these friends. He was
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: a different guy before things turned bad. It's almost hard
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: to believe if you knew him as an adult.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he was very different. And I and when
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: I hear these stories he's from family and friends and colleagues,
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: it really makes me wish I knew that guy, you know,
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: because he was he was. I I've often said this
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: about Brian. I think he was an accidental tourist in
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: the music industry. He just was so good. He had
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: no idea, and then when it became a parent gat
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: how good he was, he still didn't quite know what
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: to do with it, right. He still didn't think he
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: was you know, the cat's pajamas. He still was just
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: doing what he loved. It never changed, you know, Dennis
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: bringing the idea of let's do a song about surfing,
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: and then they kind of created and crafted that idea
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: a lot. You know, that ideological framework for all their
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: early records that worked well for them. But it's the
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: songs like Lonely See that Peek Through or in My
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: Room that jumps at you that here's this. You could
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: tell those moments that this was a wounded soul, but
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: he had his act together as good as anybody alive
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: at the time. And and I'll go back to the
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: Endless Harmony documentary from the late nineties where Terry Melcher
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: on camera says, Brian changed the industry, you know, and
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: he did and he and he almost changed it in
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: a way that nobody understood because he did it through love.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: He did it through love, because that's that's he loved
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: music and that was his conduit and that's yeah. So
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: he was a completely different human being at that period
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: in his life. And boy, would I have liked to
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: have known that guy.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, to what do you you know? There's some medical
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: biological stuff supposedly, assuming it was schizophrenia, tends to really
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: evidence itself between twenty five and thirty. But to what
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: degree do you believe his left turn was a result
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: of the rejection of both pet sounds and smile or
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: LSD or whatever.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: I'm going to do my best unpack that because that's loaded. So,
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: as I write in the book in my introduction, one
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: of the things that has hasn't deterred me from trying
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: to just learn the memories of everyone is to get
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: out of the way of what I've read in third
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: third party account books or books that editorialize what they
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: believe happened. And so I think it's tricky territory if
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: you just start to assume. But I can say I
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: do believe that Brian got into too many things, and
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: things being drugs, too many within a small short timeframe.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: You know, Mike talks about it in the book, and
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: I don't agree with disagree with it that. You know,
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: some people can do drugs and function just fine. Other
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: people can't. And now I can't. I absolutely cannot say
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: that Brian smoking marijuana during Pet Sounds was a bad thing,
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: because he's called it his marijuana album. When I listened
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: to Pet Sounds that I absolutely melt and it's like
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: one of the greatest records ever made. So I'm not
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: about to say, well, that was a bad thing. In fact,
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: I would say because of how great it is, it
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: must have been a really great thing, because he really
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: brought something special to life through that experimentation and going
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: back to California Girls in sixty five, he's he's he
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: has said that he was tripping on acid. So I mean,
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: does he come up with the with the Western bit
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: and the beginning with the Bach choral arrangement. Does any
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: of that happen? We don't know, So I just think
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: it was the pressure. I think it's a combination Bob
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: of the drug use with the pressure of the expectations
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: and the demand because he took quite a while with
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: good Vibrations, it took five months or so, and I
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: think had he been given the time to do the
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: same thing with Smile, it would have happened. And you
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: know the other wrinkle with Smile is, you know the
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: guys coming back from and this started to happen with
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: Pet Sounds. You know, they would come back from touring
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: and they would listen and then they'd go, how did
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: we get here? Because it was such an incredible advancement
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: in sound and in creativity. But I don't think Brian purposely.
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: That's what's so beautiful about Brian is he never did
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: it on purpose. It just came inherently natural to him.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: So I don't know. David Mark said this to me once.
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: I'm really glad we're talking about this. David Mark said
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: to me, once, you know, Brian didn't need drugs on
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: those early records, so why would he have needed them later?
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: And I think that's what I think. That's a really
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: great point.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: Okay, as you've gone on record here that you have
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: a fascination with Smile, it was a mystery album. Ultimately
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: there was a box set, then Brian completes it. How
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: happy are you with the twenty first century version of Smile?
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: What I'll say this is not a musical statement. This
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: is for Brian. First. I'm glad Brian became comfortable enough
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: to complete it. That I think was important. Uh, it's
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: He's got an incredible band and I think they did
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: an incredible job of executing his vision. And there's nothing
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: you can take away from that. But boy, I just
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: you can't. You cannot replace the Beach Boys vocals. You
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: just can't do it. And you know, Surf's Up My
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: is not my favorite song, it's my second favorite, Okay,
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: keep going. Kevin Essence is like my all time favorite
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: Beach Boy song ever ever, because I don't know to
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: this day, and I'm sure there's a song out there
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: that somebody can point me in the direction, but when
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: I listen to that song, I feel like I'm listening
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: to a painting a painting, I feel like I'm listening
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: to an American tapestry, like the color of America, the flag,
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: the flab, the fabrics, the very fabric of who we
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: are as a society in that moment, in that three
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: plus minutes of sound, where they're, where their voices are,
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: the steam coming out of the of the engine. And
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: I still remember I was one of the first people
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: to interview Brian about a Smile track. It was in
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: two thousand and it was before Smile was even a thing,
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: and I interviewed him about cabinescence and it was just
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: out of the blue and he was totally into it.
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: And he says, you know how I got that picking sound?
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: I said, no, how'd you do how'd you do that?
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: He goes, I had everybody take metal guitar picks and
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: and click them on there, uh on the on the
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: twisting knaves on the guitar. That's how we did that.
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, what, So, you know, it's kind of
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: like Carolin, know where he was an upside down milk juger,
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: water jugg or whatever it was. I mean, just you know,
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: just that again, knowing he wanted something and find a
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: way to get there and to me, there's just absolutely
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: nothing like cabin Essence that I cared.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: The first public version is on twenty twenty. Which version
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: you know, it's the same, but they're all different when
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: you're talking to and I think your analogy to painting
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: is brilliant, But which version is the one that resonates
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: with you.
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: All?
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: The one off the Smile Box, the Smilebox sessions, That's
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: that's the one because it goes back to the it's
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: a little bit more unpolished than the twenty twenty version.
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: They you know, they did it and remark and that's
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: how I discovered twenty you know, it was through twenty twenty.
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: I discovered cabin Essence on twenty twenty along with our prayer,
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: and just had no idea until when I got Dominic's book.
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: Then I was able to piece all these different things
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: together and understand that it was in fact a smile
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: track but easily and actually, my friendly Dempsey who would
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: do the magazine with he's got an asset tate of
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: an early version of cabin Essence where you can hear
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: Dennis is veried catch ass old truck driving man bit.
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: It's a little bit higher in the mix. That's that's really.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: Cool since you mentioned Dennis. Dennis in the public consciousness
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: has a very good reputation. But if you go back
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: to the sixties and seventies, he did not ay. People said,
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: could he play the drums? People said he was uncontrollable.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: See he poked the beer. In terms of romantic relationship
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: with the offspring of my love, what you learn about Dennis.
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: What the type of brother that he was through Brian,
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: that he that he was, that he was an attentive brother.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: You know again, you know I touched earlier on the
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: kind of that familial element of their story. And you know,
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: I've learned a lot about Dennis through again, through through
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: different books, through documentaries, and get a sense of who
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: he was. I never did get to see him in concert.
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: The earliest speech Boy show I ever saw was in
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: eighty three, and by that time he was he was
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: still alive at the time, but not touring with them,
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: So I never did get to see him in concert.
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: And don't know how good he would have been in
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: eighty three anyways, from the condition he was in at
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: that time. But he was a robust human being. There's
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: no getting around it. If you watch that Tammy Show.
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: You know, if you go back and watch the Tammy Show,
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: he was wrote man, he he was the just that energy,
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: just that live Uh what do you call it? I
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: mean just lighting in a bottle energy, just like just
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: kind of the time, just even that time you watch
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: the Tammy Show and that that whole show. But my god,
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: watching Dennis play drums is fun. He's just so full
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: of energy. But so I don't, really, I can't. I
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: learned a lot. One of the things I enjoyed learning
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: about Dennis was interviewing, and that'll be in the next
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: book or the one after that, is interviewing people about
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: the Pacific Ocean Blue album, which I absolutely adore because
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: it's so emotionally meaty. It's got so much, you know,
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: it's as so beautifully raw as anything as pet sounds
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: to me. It's so great. But Dennis, I'll give you
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: one example. I was talking to Jerry Shilling about Dennis
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: and Billy Henshey and Robert Lamb, and it was funny
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: that they all have this thing. When I'd be talking
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: to the marascue him a question about Dennis, and there'd
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: be some point in one of their answers where they'd
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: all make this kind of hmm, and it was like
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: a like almost like a laugh because you could tell
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: something was going on in their memories that was reminding
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: them of something that Dennis did in front of them,
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: that kind of just like oh, like, oh hell, you know,
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: so I know. He was quite the character, and he
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: was certainly the things that you know, rock and roll
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: tales are made of, especially if you listen to the
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty album and the All I Want to Do
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: at the end where he's having his way with a
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: girl on a mattress in the studio and then left
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: it for Mike. You know, Mike, there's a little something
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: for you. So he's you know, he's the thing. He's
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: it's a rock and roll legend. But you know what,
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: he he brought so much uh piss and vinegar to
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: that group, and I'm so glad he did because you know,
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: every every group needs that kind of because that wasn't
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: Brian's thing. Brian wasn't that live get up and Mike
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: was back in the sixties was doing all he could
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: to kind of hone what he was going to be
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: as a as a front man. But Dennis was just
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: the shit back there on those drums.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, since you're so close to it, much more than
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: the average person. Was Dennis oblivious when he got involved
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: with the Manton family or was there part of his
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: personality that this is something he would do and he
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: could he could see something wasn't right, but he played
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: along anyway.
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: Great question, uh, based on my knowledge of the circumstances
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: that led to that him picking up a couple of
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: cute girls hitchhiking Dennis right, oh, sex tonight, Right, That's
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: all that went through the brain and the rest of
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: the body. Okay, look, I'm gonna have some fun tonight.
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: And so that was the extent of the pickup. I mean,
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: I feel pretty sure that that's what was going through
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: the mind. Then meeting Charlie, and you know, I there's
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: an interview that I've never printed before, and I'm considering
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: for the second book with Stan Shapiro. Stan was quite
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: close to Dennis and was a driver for him and
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: wrote and would and would also co write some songs
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: with Dennis. And he talks about the Manson thing to
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: a degree, and and Bob, that's just that's just such
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: icky shit. It it really is. It's just you know,
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: when Dennis shows up at his house and Manson's there unannounced,
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: standing on his steps waiting for him, And yeah, granted
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: Dennis was interested. Oh look, this guy can control an
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: entire room of women and have an orgy. Okay, yeah,
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: I'm into that. I can. Yeah, sure. But then as
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: the days went on, and then Charlie had songs of
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: his own and wanted to be a recording artist, and
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: I know, and they they bring him in and introduce
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: him to Melcher, and Melcher can immediately immediately reads this
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: guy's out of his mind. He's a creepy dude. I
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: don't want to be around him. Radar goes off right away,
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: you know. And then ultimately that leads Manson to sending
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: the people to the house met that was Melcher's house
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: that but he's renting out the Roman Polanski and that's
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: where those deaths occur. So yeah, it's just you know,
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: Dean Torrence told me the night after that happened, when
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: they all woke up to the news, he said, everybody
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: cut their hair because nobody wanted to be associated as
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: a hippie because of Manson. So that's really really strange
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: and weird times for them.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, what about the destruction of the foreign audimobile. I
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: believe it was a Ferrari and it not being insured.
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: What can you tell us?
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: There just another night on the towel, you know, just
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: you know, that's again.
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: You know, he probably had three out of four other
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: cars waiting back in his house for him. You know, Okay,
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: well there goes there goes to Ferrari. You know, no,
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: no worries. I'll just look I'm walking, right.
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, so.
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: He was like that, kind of like Jan Berry was
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: like that until he wasn't right. I mean, Jan was
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: like Jan was so similar to Dennis. It's crazy. Jan
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: had Brian's production skills, but his character in his person
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: we're just like Dennis's and that I find fascinating. And
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: you you know, you get to a point where Jan
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: just finally his his luck runs out, and that did
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: not happen with Dennis. But you know, he he ends
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: up that whole story about Dennis stuttering and and then
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: it just disappearing when after the accident. It's just crazy.
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: It's it's like it's it's hard to it's hard to
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: kind of quite understand that. But when I when I
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: hear these stories, through the the memories of friends or
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: family or bandmates. The thing that I take out of
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: it is, I don't know about you. When you hear
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: these great old stories about these you know, this really
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: interesting time, not just in music, but just really interesting time.
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: And I was born in sixty five, So I'm kind
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: of envious of you that you got to go through
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: it as it happened, and by Beatles records and by
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: Beach Boys records as they were coming out. Must have
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: been incredible.
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: It was.
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Gary Griffin, who's touring with Al Jardine now, and
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: he had been in Brian's band for many years, been
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: in the Beach Boys band, Janandine band back into around
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: twenty eleven. We were working on some music together and
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: we got talking about the year nineteen sixty five, and
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: I think it was a paperback Beatles paperback writer picture
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: sleeve and he said to me because I said, yeah,
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: I was born in sixty five, And he said, Dave,
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: I have got to tell you it was so incredible
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty five. Every day, and you knew every
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: day that you woke up and turned on the radio,
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: you knew you would hear something cooler than the day
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: before it is.
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: Wow, Well, music drove the culture, that's for sure.
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: Let's talk a.
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: Little bit about the money. One thing that you depict
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: very well in the book is that a lot of
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: the gigs they were playing were what we would consider
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: to be low n secondary gigs of it. They're playing
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: essentially so cops. People with concert ticket prices today, they
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: believe that, oh everybody's rich. So here you have a band.
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: It varies, but let's just call it five members. Brian
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: writes the tune. Dennis, who had very little input on
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: the publishing end at the time you talked about, had
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: multiple cars. Two questions. First question, when you talk to
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: action from that era, historically, a lot of money has
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: flowed through their hands. Either they were ripped off or
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: they blew it. Second half is did they really have
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: that kind of money?
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: Well? Right, So it would take until sixty four to
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: sixty five where they had generated enough success where they
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: were having the one hit record after another hit record,
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: another hit record. So by sixty four they were becoming
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: i want to say affluent, but you know, they were
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: beginning to enjoy life in a way. Dennis, most certainly
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: Carl was still kind of you know, quietly enjoying the
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: success with his focus on music. Brian was not the extrovert,
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: so he was quietly focused on music, and they were
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: just happy to be successful. Mike Mike in those early days.
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: His business acumen didn't kick in until decades later. But
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: so at that time they were all I mean, Mike
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: was divorced by the time they started, So you've got me.
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: He's just looking to put a keep a roof over
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: his head and have, you know, food to eat in
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: front of him. So that was their goal. And yeah,
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: so they got They got ripped off, and that's because
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: primarily Murray was over his head. He didn't know what
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: he was doing. He could have gotten them a far
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: better deal. He didn't mean just he was mismanaging his
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: way through their careers and just did he was. He
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: was in over his head. They should have hired an agent,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: somebody actual too. But again, in those early days, I mean,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: the Beatles got taken advantage of. Everybody gets taken advantage of.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: You don't you don't know until you cross the bridge
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: how badly you've been, you know, taken advantage of. And
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: they certainly were. So yeah, those early gigs you reference,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: I remind people when I get into talking about early
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: Beach Boys, and this isn't just I'll refer somebody to
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: the movie That Thing You Do by Tom Hanks and
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: say have you seen that movie? And most people see yeah,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: and I'll say, well, that's what it was like if
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: you had a hit or two, you'd go on a
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: tour with other groups that I had a hit or two,
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: and you'd come out and do your set and unplug
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: and get off. And what I would have really liked,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: and I haven't seen any photos of it, but Bob
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: would I love to see photos of Jan and Dean
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: and the Beach Boys together in those early early days
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: when the when the Beach Boys would open for Jan
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: and Deine and then Jan and Deine would come out
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: and the Beach Boys would be their backup band. And
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: what I would give to see a photo of that
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: or footage of that would be I'd get my right
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: leg for, you know, because those those are the things
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: or I know they filmed. We get into it a
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: little bit in one of the chapters where they were
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: at all in Hawaii together. It was the only time
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: Bruce and Terry ever did a tour, and they're all
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: in Hawaii and there and there, Janadin had already done
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: their set and their backstage, and they had gotten winto
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: the fact that the Beach Boys were gonna spray and
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: with shaving cream or something. So they put on the
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: Beach Boys street clothes and they come out on stage
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: and they get into this big, you know, food fight
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: on stage during the show. And what I want to
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: get to just watch the act would be so great.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: So those early days they were meager. I mean, they
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: just were Jane and Dean a little bit better off.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: First of all, they came out of Beverly Hills and
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: Hollywood's you know, Uni High, and Jan's father was William
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: Barry who worked with Howard Hughes, and Dean's parents were
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: also very well off, so that was a different circumstance.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: And they've been around and they had lou Adler and
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: Herb Albert managing them in the beginning, so they were
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: well established enough. They weren't making a lot of money,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: but they were making enough money to give it their
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: attention when they weren't in school. Which is another very
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: rare thing about any music act, ever, is that Jan
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: and Dean kept going back to college and would make
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: records when they had time, and which is why they
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: were always flipping, you know, holding their middle fingle, middle
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: middle finger up to Liberty Records. Every time Liberty tried
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: to tell them to do something, I say, we're not,
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: We're not, We're not doing that.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: Okay, did Murray do anything good?
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: Absolutely it would yes, Murray. Murray fought for his sons.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: Now in the broader statement, he fought for the band.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: He went around and until he found a label for them,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: So he made that happen. Unfortunately, again, he was over
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: his head, so he didn't know how to make a
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: broker a good deal for them. But he went around
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: and found the label, and you know, he he did
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: that good old fashioned door kicking. You know, you know,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: I'm going to find a spot for my boys. I'm
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: going to find a spot for my boys. And he
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: did that and he got them in. But he immediately
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: lost touch with with with the whatever idealism he had
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: in his mind. I mean, I don't know if you've
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: ever seen him, but there's Buttons that said something to
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: the effect like I know Brian's dad. Then he would
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: hand out at concerts, like at these sock hops, and
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: I'm like what who does that? So? So, yeah, Murray
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: was instrumental in getting them going, and but he almost
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: he almost immediately became irrelevant because Brian was a whiz
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: kid and no one including Brian saw it coming.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: Okay, Jack Riley he insinuates himself in the band to
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: the point where he even sings on the damn record?
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, how did that happen?
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: Was he really a bad guy? Taker? What was going
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: on there?
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: I've heard multiple stories about Jack, and what I can
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: say is he the fact that Carl Wilson, so really
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: Jack's for me? From what I understand, the main emphasis
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: of who Jack Riley was within that group structure and
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: his interaction with them really circled around Carl Wilson because
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: Carl and he wrote on Promised Road together and what's
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: the other song off surfs up that I'm blanking.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: On the day in the Life of a Tree.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: Well he sings that one, that one was by Brian
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: and on Promised Road and.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: No, I can't think of it, but I keep going.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: So they did the two songs together, and what so
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: Jack was trying he got them very popular in the
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: underground scene. Right FM radio starts to play the Beach
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: boys now Sunflowers surfs up. And he was really good
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: at that, I mean getting the word out about those records,
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: especially the serf's up record. What they ran into with
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: him is he was lying to them. He was telling
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: them and everybody else, Oh, I know they're rolling stones.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: Oh I know these people. I know those people. And
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: so what happened was he eventually told a lie that
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: Carl got wind of, and Carl said, yeah, he can't,
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: he can't be a part of this anymore. Carl always
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: that was a problem. Carl would not permit inauthenticity. He
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: wouldn't permit it because it affected the family.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: Another thing you do not cover in the book, but
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: you have come across Brian's health food store. What was
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: going on there?
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's a probably it's in the next book. It's
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: going to be great. So that that is a So.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: I did interviews with Arnie Geller, Richard Mayer, Dickie Muhr,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: and Arnie actually ran the store with Steve Kortof, who
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: is Brian's cousin, and Brian. And it's interesting when I
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: talked to Arnie how he says he thinks and Dicky
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: Mirror agreed because Dickie worked there for a short time
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: that they believe the idea for the whole health food
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: store started back in the time of Smile with vegetables,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: that that's where the idea started the form. And then
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: so by the time he gets to nineteen sixty nine,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: Brian is just you know, the public has this impression
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: of Brian that because he stopped touring, because by because
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: he did Smiley Smile, that he was retreating, he wasn't
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: doing music, and that's not true. Friends is a very
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: heavy produced album by Brian, and it's after Friends didn't
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: do well on the charts that that really crushed him.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: That that's really where he because you get we were
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: talking earlier about the drug use and everything. If the
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: drugs really were the were the point where he just
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: went off and then never returned, Friends wouldn't have happened.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: Friends is a great record, and I think it's I
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: agree with Carney Wilson who has said that's when they
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: sound their most pure, and I agree they they're great record.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: So Brian all this time is wondering if you know,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: he's just an active mind, he's a creative mind, and
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: he gets to this point where he decides I want
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: to do all, you know, I want to do a
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: health food store. And it's just kind of like, let's
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: go do this now. And he gets Arnie Geller and
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: Steve corked off to get you know, find a place.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: And then they find a place and Arnie's in charge
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: of getting a sign and you know, having that all
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: put together, and then lo and behold they have this
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: put together and then it's incredibly successful. It's incredibly They
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: can't keep they can't keep the shelves stocked. And Brian
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: will trickle it at night from time to time in
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: his bathrobe. He'll get in the car and his bathrobe
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: and he'll drive down. He'll get behind the counter because
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: that was his thing. You've surely seen the photos of
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: him behind the cast register. That was this whole thing.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: That's what he wanted to do. He wanted to go
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: and get behind the cash register. And just I think
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: he liked going there at night because less traffic, less
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: people to deal with, and just to help somebody find
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: some vitamins that they were looking for. And he enjoyed it.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: But I don't think he knew anything about it from
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: a professional perspective other than the types of you know,
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: supplements that he may take. But he was Brian's fascinating
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: because he also went back in the mid seventies to
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: college to study astrology. Astrology and that's how you get
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: solar system on the Love You album. So there's I mean,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: he's fascinating that he was always kind of wondering about
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: other things in life and how to you know, because
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: a healths food store, astrology are both, in my opinion,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: extensions of the human condition. Health, you know, the wonderment
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: of the universe, right, these are extensions of us and
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: in kind of the mind wandering about beyond our own
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: self and how we can be better versions of ourself,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: whether it's through health or through science and learning more.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: And that's how I take those pursuits of his, is
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: that he was really he really is really behind it
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: in the moment. It's kind of like the sandbox though, right,
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, at one point he wants a
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: sandbox at his house and another point he wants Jim
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: Matt's in his house. But his behavior in the mid
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: sixties around the Smile time was more erratic, and that
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: that goes back to what we're talking about earlier with
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: the different substances. He was ingesting. You know, he's a
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: little bit more erratic because he was doing speed, he
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: was doing you know, smoking hash do it drop an LSD,
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: and so that that cocktail and that combination of different
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: influences had him kind of a little all over the place,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: which is one of the reasons I will say that
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: I believe Smile was he just got to the point
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: where he didn't know what to do because he just
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: had spent too much time on heroes and villains. Heroes
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: and villains derailed him, Bob, I.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: Mean, tell us more about that.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: So he was I would say my percentage, guest is
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: like easily seventy percent done with Smile. And by the
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: time Good Vibrations comes out in October sixty six, the
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: Beach Boys in touring have come back and they've lent
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: their vocals to whatever Brian has at that point, and
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: it's coming along great. I mean, it's it's that album
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: is moving right along. And then they you know, somebody's
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: and says Brian, the label needs another record that needs
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: another single from you. You've got to you've got to
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: get a move in another single to follow up to
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: Good Vibrations. So January of sixty seven, he just stops
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: the Smile work. He had already started Heroes and Villains,
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: but he just pays puts all his attention into Heroes
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: and Villains, similarly in the way that he did Good
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: Vibrations over a period of months, and the other music
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: suffers because it sits there. And he gets to the
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: point where he has this mix of he whittles the
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: beautiful arrange of the original part one in part two
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: of Heroes and Villains, which would have been incredible, authentic
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: come out as an A side and B side single.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: He whittles it down to one side, sticks your Welcome
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: on the back and goes down to the radio station,
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: which is the death nail and the whole thing. He
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: goes down there and there, you know, a beach Boy
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: is walking in with a new single for you to play.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: And the guy won't play it, and he says, I
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 2: got a call station manager. I mean, they should have
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: just slapped him in the side of the head and said,
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: what's wrong with you? This is Brian, this is Brodie Wilson.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: It he's got the latest Beach Boys single. But that's
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: kind of what derailed him is all the time and
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 2: energy that he put into heroes and villains, and then
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: he comes to a radio station. The guy won't just
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: immediately play it, so there's doubt. Right there, right in
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: front of him, there's a stall. So there's that adds
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: to this questioning of is what I'm doing right for
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: the time. And it's more so about that because I
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: read your wonderful review of my book, thank you, about
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: how there is no mention about you know, the you know,
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: there was a fire nearby, and then suddenly that's it
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: wasn't like that, you know, he was he was being
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: so visual and create native that Yeah, it's it's I
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: love how unusual it is that he had a bucket
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: of smoldering wood put in the studio. Not very wise
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: because the you know, all those professional musicians are having
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: to breathe that stuff. But I'm sure you've seen the
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: footage from the American Band documentary. Brian is clearly tripping
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: on acid during during that session, and it's it's just,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: you know, there's little things like spending all that time
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: on heroes and villains and then having that guy stall
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: when he walks in the building with it. I just
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: think that's what put enough doubt in him to where
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: he just went, well, this is nobody's ready for ready
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: for this. I'm here with the single and the guy
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: won't even play it. People aren't ready. So I think
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: it's less about myth and way way more focused on
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: just the actual tangible things that occurred in his life
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: and the circumstances at the time. It just and unfortunately
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: he didn't have the band with him all the time,
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: and depending on your perspective of that, that necessarily might
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: not have been a good thing because of the amount
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: of drug use. Book, But I mean they were all
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: getting high. Mike was getting high, Al's getting high. They
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: were all getting high. It was a thing. But I'll
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: tell you that we're talking about smile. The most fascinating
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: thing to me was how the McCartney perspective right, McCartney's
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: coming by the studio, and I would think if somebody
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: just told me the story that oh my god, they
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: must have been so thrilled that Paul was coming by.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: It's a beatle. It's just like, how incredible would that
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: have been. And we learned that Brian was hesitant because
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: he was working, and we learned that Al Jardine was
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: kind of miffed about the whole thing, that they were
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: getting high and playing songs on the piano because he
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: wanted to finish the track and get out of there
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: and go home. So it's it's interesting because I would
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: automatically assume that would have that must have been the
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: Night of Knights, right with Derek Taylor and Paul and
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: Brian and Paul playing She's leaving home for him there
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: on the spot. That just must have been incredible. But
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: it's I think just that's getting these first hand accounts
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: of these things is so vital for that reason because
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: we're we're given these little, you know, third party accounts
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: or editorialized myth building perspective, or even if they're not
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: myth building, then they're then their attempts at taking apart
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: the myth. And I don't that's not that's not for
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: me to do. You know, if if one member mariemembers
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: it a certain way, another remembers it is another way,
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 2: then that's that's what we have. That's what we have
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: to work with. And anytime you got five guys in
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: a room, you're gonna have fives, Okay.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: James William Guercio, who starts with the bucking Hams, then
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: moves on to Chicago. How does he become the manager?
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: And is that a good or bad thing?
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: I think it's good. So he becomes the manager because
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: they're playing, they're playing venues and it's not filled up,
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: and they're trying to sort out what do we do?
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: How do we fill up venues again? And they as
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: a group they kind of sit together and go what
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: do we do? What do we do? And they knew
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: Jim by that point and as a group, and when
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: I say as a group by the early seventies. The
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: reason I was mentioning Carl earlier in his perspective being
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: so important when it came to Jack Riley was Carl
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 2: had Brian's vote. Brian just said, Carl, you've whatever you do,
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: I'll trust Dennis. If he wasn't there, Carl voted for him.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: So what happened in this particular event, I don't know
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: who all was in the room, but I do know
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: that it was Carl, Mike, Al and Dennis. I'm not
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: sure if Brian was there, but they all voted in
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: favor of going and talking to Jim gers Show and
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: finding out if he would help them to figure out
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: you know how they could fill up venues again. Dennis says,
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: I'll go. So Dennis is the one who goes up
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: to Caribou. Jim says, okay, I'll come and watch your shows.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: He sees, because I can't answer until I see what
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: you're doing. He watches a few of their shows and
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: he says, Okay, first of all, you got to get
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: rid of these medleys that you're doing, and you have
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: to play all the songs. You have to play them.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 2: You can't crunch them into a car medley or a
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: serf medally. You gotta play them. That's what people are
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: coming to see. So that's the first advice he gives them.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: Within the year unless Summer comes out. So all of
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: a sudden, and because Gercia is already working with Chicago,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: then you have the incredible successful tour that Billy Hinschy
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: called the beach Igo Tour with the Chicago and the
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 2: Beach Boys together, and that just became such an incredible
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: successful time for them. All of a sudden, they were
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: selling out again. So it was it was in fact,
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: and I tried it because I've seen so many comments
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: for decades now that it's because of Mike love that
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: the Beach Boys are a touring oldies act, and that's
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: not accurate.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: Mike.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: Mike is definitely honed in on that and that is
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: what people come to see. But it was it was
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: a group decision to bring in ger show, and it
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 2: was Dennis who initiated it, so because they all recognized
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: that again, this goes back to what we were talking
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: about earlier about the you know, meager beginnings and not
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: having a lot of mone They by that time in
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: their lives they need you know, they had families and
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: they needed to be able to sustain their livelihood. So
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: that was a very serious conversation they had about how
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: do we fix this. And when Gershel comes in and says,
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: you're going to put all your hits back in, you're
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 2: gonna you're going to play what the people come to see.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: So they're not shouting out play surf in USA while
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: you're trying to do the trader, you know, play what
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: the people are coming to see. And within a year's time,
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: they're they're back on the charts Endless Summer and then
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: the year after that Spirit of America or you know,
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: everybody's buying their records again. Their early records are now
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: and cut out bins. You know, by the early seven
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: early to mid seventies, everybody's buying them. So they just
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden take off again and they become huge,
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: and that's their second coming, and that is thanks to Gerciel.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: Whose idea was Endless Summer.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: The name of the record was Mike's because I think
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: Capitol was just going to call it best of our
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: Greatest Hits or something, and Mike said, well, don't just
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: call it another greatest Hits or best of We've done
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: that already, because they had Best of one, Best of
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: Volume two, Best of Volume three, and Mike was like,
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: there's too many of those. Let's call it something else,
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: and he just came up with Endless Summer.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: Okay, the last real Beach Boys album before the twenty
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: twelve reunion is Keeping the Summer Alive. How come there's
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: no more after that?
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: Well, Keeping the Summer Alive from nineteen eighty is. Unfortunately
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: it doesn't have Dennis on it. It's drummer Scott Matthews's
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: an incredible talent, incredibly talented drummer. He's on there almost
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 2: all the tracks. They had the eighty five album, which
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: when I discovered, you know, as I was telling you earlier,
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: how I kind of came into their world. And at
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: the timing of that, in eighty five we had the
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: Malcolm Leo an American Band documentary, and then for that
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 2: Get You Back, because that was in the middle of
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 2: the MTV era. Not a great video, kind of hokey
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: the cheese falls off the cracker, for sure, but it
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: was those those soaring falsettos that were Jeffrey Fasquette singing
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: underneath Brian, but you could hear Brian singing the falsetto again.
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: I was Bob that record. I love that record to
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 2: this day. The eighty five record, Carl's got some great
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: stuff on there. It's getting late maybe I don't know.
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 2: Bruce has got a lovely ballad on there, she Believes
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 2: in Love Again. And then in eighty nine they did
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 2: the Still Cruisinel and that record has got a song
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: on there that I I would tell everybody about, and
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: it's called Somewhere Near Japan. And this is by this
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: time Melcher and Mike are working a lot more on
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 2: material and what Terry Melcher did so well with the
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: Beach Boys vocally is he took. He made sure that
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: everybody was having a chance to sing with each other
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: on one recording, so you would get a little little Al,
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: a little bit of Mike, a little bit of Carl,
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 2: and Somewhere near Japan is an absolutely great adult contemporary
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine recording, and I wish more people were
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 2: familiar with it because I think it's one of their
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: finer moments. And it's actually originally John Phillips Papa John
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: Phillips song called Fairytale Girls that Terry and Mike honed
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 2: and reworked into the song that became, and it became
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: much better like Kocomo was also Papa John Phillips with
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: Scott Mackenzie. That's how it started. And Terry took that
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: and then he the He went back to his nineteen
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: Terry's nineteen seventy five Royal Flush album. There's a song
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: on there called Mexico, and the phrase get there fast
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: and take it slow is in the song Mexico. So
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: he took that, brought it all the way up to
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: nineteen eighty eight and stuck it in there and had
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: Carl sing it. And Carl could sing the phone book
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 2: for all I hear when you get into the eighties
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: in Carl Wilson's voice, hearing him hone, his vocals and
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 2: the way that he did it, I always knew. I
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: tell everyone this, if Carl Wilson was involved on a
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: beach Boy project, that's all I needed to know. Take
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: for example, the Beach Boys with the Fat Boys in
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: eighty seven wipe Out. Carl's not on it, That's all
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: I need to know. That was my gauge. So for
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: Carl to be involved. I don't have a specific fondness
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: of Full House it was I was too old by
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 2: that time to really get into it. But I did
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: see that episode where he was in the video with John.
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: Carl would not have done that if he didn't support it,
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: because this goes back to Jack Riley. Even Carl only
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: did what he believed in ever.
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, one other thing in the book. You're talking about
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: surfing USA, and from what I take from the book,
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: Ryan did not know what it was sweet Little sixteen.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: Is that really true?
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: I did?
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: I don't. Yeah, I get that. Yes. From Dean, I
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: really got the sense that Brian didn't quite understand. I
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 2: certainly believe that he understood that the same melody but
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 2: I don't think Brian had any clue or understanding that
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 2: by doing that, he was he was literally borrowing Chuck.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: I don't think he understood that, because again, Brian just
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 2: loved music, so I don't think he was thinking that way.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 2: He wasn't thinking about the business of it. He wasn't
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 2: thinking about publishing rights or licensing or anything. He just
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 2: liked that riff and his dad said it was okay,
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: so he just thought it was okay. Yeah. I just
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: I can't imagine that Brian, as a musician, even at
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: that early stage in his career, didn't realize that when
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 2: he played that for Jan and Dean, that that wasn't
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: that song, because they said to him in the moment, Hey,
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 2: we know Chuck's you know that is sweet little sixteen.
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 2: We know we've already met Chuck, we know his manager.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: You should give that to us because we can get it, okayed,
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 2: And He's like, no, no, no, you can have this
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 2: other one, which would ultimately and so you lived it.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: So I'm gonna ask you a question, is that not
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 2: like one of the most incredible periods surf in USA
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 2: coming out in the spring of sixty three, followed by
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 2: Surf City in June of sixty three, those two songs.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 2: Was that not? Is that part of you wanting to
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: go to California?
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: Oh, It's all part of me wanting to go to California.
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: But I must say I certainly remember a little old
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: lady at Capacadeen on the radio, et cetera. I got
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: into Jan and Dean. I can't remember the reason why
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: I bought Command Performance. Okay, Yeah, So the summer of
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: sixty three, you have to understand, Okay, radio was still regional.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: So I'm living on the East Coast at that time,
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: it's not the same thing as living on the West coast.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: We were aware of surfing and we all wanted to
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: go surfing, and the Jan and Den striped shirts. But
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: the I would say even more dramatic was when they
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: in the Spring Beach Boys in the Spring come out
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: with I get around, because you thought the Beach Boys
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: had been wiped out by the British invasion, and this
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: proved that they absolutely were not. As far as the
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: California myth, I live in California because of the Beach Boys.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: I could go on and on, but just staying on
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: this same tip, I mean on the Beach Boys, they
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: make the twenty twenty twelve album, they go on the road,
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: the tour is over. Brian inherently is a little oblivious,
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: but he says, oh, maybe we'll do some more dates,
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: and mikemmunit says, oh, I'm booked as the Beach Boys.
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: What was going on there?
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: There was several moving parts there, and I'm going to
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 2: be a little guarded because there's people not here anymore.
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: So what happened is when they started that tour off,
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 2: there was an agreed number of dates and Brian was
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 2: having a blast. He was having so much fun that
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: they added dates and he wanted to keep it going.
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 2: And what happened was one of the things that happened
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 2: was he his wife Melinda had kind of gotten to
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: the you know, just felt that it was it was enough,
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 2: and so between the different parties, different camps, there was
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 2: a point where they just all thought they had recognized
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 2: that the number of dates was the number of dates,
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: and everything was locked down and that was all there
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: was going to be. So Mike, with that in mind,
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 2: star to network for future dates with Bruce. So that happened,
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: and then Brian again when they started they didn't realize
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 2: that Brian was going to have so much fun and
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 2: experienced so much joy throughout the thing that that he
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: just want to like this. This was like Brian would
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 2: want to keep it going, and Brian wanted to keep
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: it going. But because of the certain the allotted number
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 2: of dates that they had, Mike, Mike wasn't thinking that way.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 2: He just thought, Okay, I gotta again. I got to
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: keep the you know, the machine rolling. So I'm going
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 2: to go out. I'm just gonna go I'm gonna keep
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 2: booking dates. And you have from a buyer's perspective, that's
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 2: a different amount of money. If you're booking Mike and
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 2: Bruce as the Beach Boys, that's a different amount of
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 2: money than if you're getting Brian Wilson, Al Jardine and
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: David Marx with Mike and Bruce, that's that's that's a
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 2: different ballpark. So to go back and try to and
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 2: he could have, uh, Mike could have easily. I you know,
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: I don't get into the weeds and these types of
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: things with those guys. But he I'm sure if he
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 2: had wanted to, could have restructured, gone back to some
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: of the clients or the buyers and said, hey, you know,
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 2: we were thinking about keeping this going. Would you would
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 2: you want the you know, the full you know, the
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: full group, And I'm sure most would have said yes.
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 2: But you know, relationship strains being what they are, played
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: a factor. And then you end up having this unusual
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 2: public Los Angeles Times thing about Brian saying he felt
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 2: as though he was fired. And that's not that that
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 2: that article wasn't fair to anyone, including Brian. It just
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: it just it just wasn't it really wasn't in in
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 2: authentic to the nature of what actually took place.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: What was Melinda's role?
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: Well, Melinda, you know, she she did an incredible job
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 2: of helping Brian get on his you know, be kind
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 2: of an active musician again. You know, he was struggling,
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 2: you know, under landy and thank god they got him.
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 2: Carl and Melinda worked together to get you know, to
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 2: get him out of that, and and they did. And
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 2: she she got him the right type of doctor. She
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 2: got she made sure that he was on the right
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 2: type of medicine. And I think she did an incredible
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 2: job of being his caretaker and loving wife and in
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 2: Brian's later years. Now, what I also say that maybe
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 2: she was over protective. From my perspective, I would I
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 2: have felt that at times. But I'm not in the
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 2: music business, so I know there's moving parts and things
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 2: that take place behind the scenes that I know nothing of.
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 2: So I'm not critical of that aspect of her behavior
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 2: at all. But because I know how great Brian looked
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 2: for so long once she came into his life, and
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 2: he really did some interest. I mean that Lucky Old
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: Son is a great album. Brian Wilson reimagines Gershwin, great record.
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 2: So those two records are actually my favorite Brian Wilson
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 2: solo pieces.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, what can you tell me about the adoption of
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: kids with Melinda? Brian was an absent for they were
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: the first two kids. How involved was he with the
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: second set of kids. I mean, this is a guy
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: who struggled with his own life.
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I'm adopted myself, so I'm a fan of adoption.
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 2: So when I saw that Melinda and Brian were doing that,
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 2: I was you know, initially it was Daria and Delaney.
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 2: So as the years went on and they were adopting
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 2: more children, I was a little surprised because because of
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 2: their age, right, I mean, their grandparents' age, you wouldn't
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 2: think they'd be adopting children at that point. I can't
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 2: speak to how Brian was with them. I you know,
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 2: going to his service last year, and I think it
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 2: was Dash who got up and spoke about his dad.
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 2: I got a sense of his relationship with his father,
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 2: and it seemed as though there was depth there to it.
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 2: So I and glean from that that much, you know,
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 2: I know that Carney and Wendy, as you point out,
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 2: you know when he was in the home, he was
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 2: somewhat absentee. I think navigating those were some troubled times
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 2: for him going into the mid seventies for sure, and
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 2: he he was. I guess the term that comes to
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 2: mind is I would say a lost soul for a while, right.
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 2: The music never left him, but he was he was
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 2: a bit of a lost soul for quite some time.
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 2: And and it's it's quite unfortunate for Carne and Wendy
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 2: because the apple certainly didn't fall far from the tree musically.
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 2: And are you familiar with the Donald not down was
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 2: but the Rob Wasserman Fantasy is reality song that Brian
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 2: and Karney did together. Oh, it's from ninety four it's
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 2: you got to look it up. It's gorgeous, it's amazing.
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 2: It's called Fantasy Is Reality, and it's Rob Wasserman. It's
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 2: called Trios and it's a collection of different artists and
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 2: Carne and Brian do his song Fantasy's Reality together and
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 2: it's amazing. And it was the beginning of them working together.
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 2: And so by ninety seven you have the Wilson album,
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 2: which is Carne and Wendy with Brian and select tracks,
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 2: and it brings Tony asherback in and Brian and Tony
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 2: co write Everything I Need and they're on that together
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 2: and it's it's just it is.
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 2: On one hand, I'm going to say it's a shame
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 2: they didn't have the opportunity to work together more. But
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 2: when they did, it special, special moments. So that's that's
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 2: why I wish they worked together more often, because whenever,
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 2: like especially the Don was produced nineteen ninety five, I
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 2: just wasn't made for these times documentary. When Karney and
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 2: Wendy are in there singing with Brian, Oh my god,
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 2: it's gold, it's absolute gold, and well Andrew Gold's in there,
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 2: so but I mean so, but I mean, what a
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 2: great I mean, I go back and I watched that.
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: When I watch that down was documentary, I get so
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 2: much joy just watching them singing together. And that's I think,
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 2: that's Bob. That's That's what leads me through all of this,
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 2: is just how much joy this music has brought me,
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 2: and and how much joy I get out of having
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 2: these conversations with these people about these really special moments
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 2: in their lives.
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: So what do you do when you're not writing about
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: the Beach Voice?
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm an office administrator and treasurer at a church.
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 2: I sing in a church choir at a different church.
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 2: But uh, that's that's it. I mean, I I absolutely all.
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 2: I listened to the Moody Blues a hell of a lot.
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 2: I'm a big billy Joel Nut unless to a wide spectrum.
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 2: The older I get, the more the more I've been
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 2: really digging McCartney's latest, The Voice from Dungeon Lane. I
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 2: love it, absolutely love it. Ripples in the Pond then yeah,
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 2: I think that's the one. I'm really loving that song.
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 2: But I I love uh, I wish it's like when
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 2: I hear you know, Ringo and Paul did a song
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 2: together on his record Paul's record and Ringo's got a
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 2: new album out. I've got it, but I haven't had
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 2: a chance to listen to it yet. But the Lemon
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 2: Twigs are are are a great example of music that
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 2: is awesome, that that takes you back to that flavor
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 2: of time. I highly recommend them. Brian and Michael di Dario.
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 2: I'm jumping around here, but it's you know, I feel
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 2: so fortunate, really I would. I'm gonna guess that you
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 2: you must get this a little bit because you get
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 2: to write about and you know, yeah, Okay, that's what
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 2: I thought. Yeah, because it's it's it's you know, how
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 2: how lucky are we?
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: Well? I mean, you know, I could talk for hours
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: of myself about the Beach Wood but it's your podcast.
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: But does your obsession with the Beach Boys interfere with
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: romantic relationships and other relationships?
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 2: What? Agree? This is funny that you would bring this up,
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 2: because I can't tell you I was. I'm glad you
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 2: brought that up because I could go back and think
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 2: about when I first discovered Janandine. I was like fourteen
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 2: or fifteen years old, and between that time and like
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 2: my early twenties, I cannot tell you the number of
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 2: times that people would check I mean literally check out
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 2: on me in front of me as I would go
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 2: on and on about Janedine or on and on about
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 2: smile or whatever it was, and how they would just
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 2: kind of they wouldn't necessarily roll their eyes, but you
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 2: see you eventually with their faces which just go blank,
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 2: and they would just kind of like, is this guy
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 2: ever gonna shut up about this stuff? So I've learned
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 2: that over time that there's a there's a time and
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 2: place for everything. That's why I was still looking forward
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 2: to talking with you about Janetide to the Beach Boys.
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 2: But so romantically no, And I think that's because there's
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 2: there's romance in their music and and and I think
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 2: music in general has a romantic stable to it. And
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 2: I and I that's something I tap into. And so
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 2: I think and that and that comes through me in
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 2: my life and in my behavior and my personality.
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: Will do you have a significant other?
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 2: Yes?
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, so they can This person can handle the beach
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: voice fixation. Just a couple of deep stuff. What causes
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: Brian's voice to.
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 2: Change well in the in the mid seventies, it's cigarette use.
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, that that was that was that
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 2: was one of the things that that was very noticeable.
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 2: By the time you get the fifteen big ones, it's
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 2: quite noticeable then it For the eighty five album, Steve
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 2: Levine had told me that Brian showed up and he
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 2: just his vocals just weren't cutting it. So Steve very
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 2: matter of factly looked at him and said, you need
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 2: to take voice lessons. And he did and he went
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 2: back and did he he took it seriously, and he
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 2: and he took voice lessons. And you know, that's not uncommon.
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 2: I know, I know Mickey Dolans has done that for years.
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 2: Like whenever he's you know, going to work on something
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 2: or do work, he's always professionally working on doing vocal
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 2: exercises to make sure because that's a muscle too. Your
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 2: voice is a muscle, you know, well multiple muscles, but
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 2: you know to to to keep it. And I sing
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 2: in a choir, you can't just not singing and then
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden expect to be able to have
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 2: that whatever you're able to dumb a first tenor. If
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 2: I just go and try to be a first tenor
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 2: and I haven't sung in a while, it's not possible
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 2: outside of singing in the car, and that doesn't that
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 2: doesn't count. So so Brian cigarettes. You know, he eventually
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 2: does kick that habit by eighty three eighty four when
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 2: Landy comes back into the picture. And Landy was fantastic
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 2: for Brian in respect to all the weight loss and
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 2: getting Brian off of cigarettes and getting Brian off of drugs.
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 2: But then Landy unfortunately got Brian under the influence of
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 2: psychotropics which were damaging to Brian's psyche and damaging for
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 2: Brian's nervous system. And I don't even like talking about
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 2: it because who knows what we lost in those years
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 2: because of that, you know, who knows?
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, we hear all about this discord amongst the group
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: was what we read on the external level true, And
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: what's the status of the relationship of the remaining players.
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 2: It's not as good as I'd like it to be,
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 2: you know, through the years, I don't know where to pick. So,
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 2: you know, when they started out, they were as do
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 2: you have siblings?
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: Yes? They do.
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I've got two brothers. I got an older
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 2: brothers also adopted, and I have a younger brother.
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: I'm a kid too, But two sisters.
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 2: Okay, oh great. So you know, at different intervals in
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 2: my life I'm sixty one now, at different intervals in
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 2: my life with my brothers, we've had different types of relationship.
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 2: I've never had a relationship with my parents where my
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 2: father was abusive, So that's something I can't I understand
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 2: what Brian went through, but I can't relate to it
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 2: directly because it's not my own experience. But I'm terribly
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 2: empathetic towards it. So when in the early days, and
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 2: you can see this in photos, you can see this
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 2: in any type of documentary that's been put together with them,
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 2: you can see Dennis as the wild one. He I'm
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 2: sure he pushed Mike's bought in every chance he could.
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 2: But it wasn't because they disliked one another. It was
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 2: because they were cousins and they have a deep love.
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 2: It's family. It's family. And that's what I think a
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 2: lot of people get wrong when it comes to the
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 2: Beach Boys, is they don't there. They're too worried about
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 2: oh if Mike said something about Dennis or took Brian
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 2: to court. Perfect example, when when when Mike went to
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 2: court for songwriting credits, perfect example. Anyone I've ever spoken
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 2: to about that said Mike should have done that. If
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 2: you read the court documents, which you're out there for
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 2: anybody to read and find. Brian says, Mike wrote these songs,
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 2: and Brian, as I understand it, was more than happy
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 2: to give Mike the credit without ever having to go
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 2: to court. He was advised not to do that. So
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 2: it ends up in court. Mike didn't want to go
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 2: to court, and Mike could have gotten a lot more
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 2: money than he did, and he didn't. He didn't take it.
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: So and I'm not making any excuses for Mike. I'm not.
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 2: None of them need to be defended by me, none
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 2: of them. They're they, they've they've made their own path
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 2: as far as the relationships that they have is. So
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 2: I've had the the you know, because I've talked to
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 2: them so many years, whether it's over the phone, in
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 2: a zoom or sitting with them in a room, I've
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 2: seen them. I've seen qualities in each and every one
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 2: of them that I treasure where I like, this is
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 2: a good person. This isn't like they're they're down to
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 2: earth with me. They're kind, they're open, and that's all
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 2: I can ask from anybody. So when I see that,
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's just a story that Ran I want
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 2: to say about a week ago, that Mike and l
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 2: can't seem to reconcile whatever differences there are that they have,
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 2: and I just wish it weren't so because I know
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 2: Al pretty well, and I know Mike and Mike pretty well,
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 2: and they both have different They're both very different, but
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 2: they both have really great qualities about them, and I
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 2: know these qualities. I just think, why is it that
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 2: Mike being who he is, can't get on with Al
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 2: being who he is? And I don't mean from the
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 2: music business perspective, I just mean as as former colleagues,
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 2: to be able to be in a room together, to
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 2: be able to, you know, enjoy one another's company and
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 2: not be concerned about the music end of it. But
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 2: I think there's just so much emotional baggage that when
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 2: they are in a room together, it's hard for them,
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 2: particularly Al. I think Al really struggles with it. And
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 2: this might I'm just guessing, totally guess, but maybe what
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 2: Al's dealing with is how he was told to turn
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 2: on the TV in nineteen ninety nine because the beach
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 2: Boys were performing at the Super Bowl and they had
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 2: Glenn Campbell and Dean there and Al wasn't there, and
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 2: he had no idea that they were. Has just been austed?
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 2: Why was that? I? I? Yeah, you know, Mike, Mike
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 2: became a businessman and and for better or worse, that's
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 2: just what happened. Mike is a businessman. And uh, I
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 2: don't you know so that that part of it the
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 2: music business. Uh, it's just it's just okay.
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: So Al, it comes down to the money. I have
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: a friend who says, you never really know your relatives
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: to your share and inheritance, and would and would you?
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: Would you say that ultimately financial things are the driving
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: force here.
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 2: To a degree. I think that's accurate. I mean if
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 2: if if Mike's touring and he doesn't have Al with him,
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 2: that's less that he has to give out. Although I
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 2: don't know how it works now, but prior to the
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 2: sale to Iconic Artists Group, I know that the way
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 2: it worked then was like if Mike went and did
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 2: the show under the Beach Boys name, Brian would get money,
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 2: the you know, Carl Wilson's son Shonah and Justin would
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 2: get money. Al would get money because they were all shareholders.
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 2: Now I think they are minority shareholders now, so I
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 2: think there might still be a distribution that takes place.
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure about that though, but it's it's still
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 2: they all, you know. They if Mike performs, they make money.
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 2: So it's I can say that in my experience with
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 2: Mike that al al is not easy for Mike because
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 2: Mike likes to show up and have everything happen right,
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 2: not wonder where somebody is not be concerned. Is somebody
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 2: going to show up on time? Not be concerned with?
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 2: Is when so and so is going to take the stage?
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 2: Are they going to complain about something? So that that
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 2: is something I witnessed over time where it was Mike
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 2: likes a streamlined that's all he wants. He doesn't want
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 2: to have to think about anything. He wants to be
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 2: able to go from point A to point B in
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 2: the show up and be on stage and entertain people.
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 2: He doesn't want to be thinking about anything else. And
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 2: if somebody has him thinking about somebody something else that's
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 2: got other than just going on and doing a great job,
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 2: he doesn't want to deal with it. And once you
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 2: get to your eighties, or late seventies, even why would
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 2: you write? Why not just eliminate that? So life is
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 2: easy and it's you know, al Alic's a sweetheart though,
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 2: So that's what's so perplexing about the whole thing. But
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 2: I guess when you when you're when you're a partner
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 2: of somebody over a you know, decades, the personalities come
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 2: into play. I mean, my god, we've seen it with
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 2: every group there is, right, We've seen it with the Eagles,
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 2: We've seen I mean, they're notorious. We've seen it happened
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 2: in the Moody Blues. It's it's happened with everybody, and
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 2: and so it's it's not surprising that it that it's
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 2: happened with them. But they're such great guys. And I'll
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 2: just tell you I have one son. He's twenty four.
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 2: His name is Ethan is down syndrome. I take Ethan
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 2: to Beach Boys shows and they bring him on for
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 2: Barbara in and melts my heart. They treat him like king,
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 2: like a king, So I I you know, and that
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 2: was never any that was never When I started the
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 2: magazine back, you know, working on a magazine back in
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 2: ninety three, I didn't have a child. So for them
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 2: to just naturally do that for me is a big deal.
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 2: And it's not because they're the Beach Boys. It's just
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 2: they're treating a member of my family well. And I
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 2: don't care who you are, what you do for a living.
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 2: If you treat if you treat other people well, your
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 2: stock goes up with me.
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, how many times did you talk with Brian and
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: what were those interactions like?
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 2: Well? First, first few times clumsy because I didn't know
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 2: that if I asked them yes or no question, I
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 2: would get yes or no, that's for sure. Yes. So
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 2: after a few of those, my greatest Bob, I had
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 2: the most wonderful, incredible, memorable evening with Brian Wilson that
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 2: has just gone that just lives with me. So it
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 2: was July of two thousand. I had gone to his
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 2: Roxy performances in April and seen those and just was
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 2: ecstatic about that. You know, I just had so much
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 2: fun at those two shows. And then he was coming
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 2: to see chest Stain done in Atlanta, Georgia. He had
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 2: just started doing his Pet Sounds in its entirety tour
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 2: and they had the full orchestra and everything, and he
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 2: came down and I had set it up that I
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 2: was going to interview him after the show, so I
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 2: got to sit with Melinda at a table right in
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 2: front of the stage, right where Brian was. So that's
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 2: why I that's where I got to watch the pet
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 2: Sounds in its entirety for the first time ever. And
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 2: I had no idea they were going to throw the
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 2: dog and the train in at the end. I wasn't
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 2: even thinking about that because this was a live performance.
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 2: All of a sudden that comes in and I'm already
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 2: standing clapping and the little kid in me where the
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 2: jaw drops, and I mean I must have had such
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 2: a geeky look on my face that looked over at
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 2: me was just laughing, like almost with convulsing with laughter
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 2: at me because I just had geeked out. But then
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 2: I get to go back and interview Brian uh part
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 2: for the magazine and part for his Brian Wilson Breakaway
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 2: newsletter that they were doing at the time. And so
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 2: I had so because I'm in radio, or I was
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 2: in radio. If I can do an impression, I do
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 2: an impression. So I had worked on my Paul McCartney
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 2: and I thought, Okay, I'm going to do my Paul
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 2: McCartney for Brian, because Brian's met Paul McCartney. So I'll
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 2: do I'll do my Paul McCartney. So we get that
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 2: back there and I'm sitting, I mean just a few
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 2: feet away from him, and we do the interview and
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 2: nobody's there to kick me out or anything like that.
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 2: The interview's over and I said, hey, Brian, I want
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 2: to do my I'd like to do my Paul McCartney
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 2: impression for you, and he goes, okay. Well, before I
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 2: do this, I want to say the whole time during
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 2: an interview, Bob, he was engaged, he was lucid, he
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 2: was present with me the whole time. And I think
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 2: it was attributable to the fact that I was sitting
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 2: there with him, and that was a lesson for me.
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 2: That was a really informed moment for me because he
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 2: was just so into it with me. And so we
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 2: get to the point and I go, I'll do my
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 2: Pullman CARDNEYR. Priss and he goes he looks at me like,
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 2: what the hell does that mean? He goes okay, and
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 2: I said, So one morning I woke up and I
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 2: had a bit of a melody. You know, going about
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 2: in my head, and I smelled breakfast, you know, and
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 2: out came scrambled eggs. Oh my darling, how I love
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 2: you legs? And those those were good legs. And he
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 2: gave me I have this on tape to this day.
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 2: He gave me three reactions. He goes, that's freaked out,
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 2: that's unbelievable. That's pretty damn good. And we stand up
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 2: and he gives me this monster hug, Bob, and then
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 2: he walks off. And I didn't know that was a
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 2: bucket list moment, but that was a bucket list moment
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 2: I had. I mean, right then and there, I just went,
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 2: oh my gosh, that that just happened. So no, that
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 2: was that was incredible, that moment. And as I touch
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 2: on in my introduction in the book, well no, I
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 2: think it's in my acknowledgments in the back. What I
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 2: learned from that night was because of how engaged he
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 2: was with me sitting by that time, I had learned
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 2: how to ask him questions so that they weren't yes
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 2: and no. But so going forward, if I got him
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 2: on the phone, I my questions were formed so that
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 2: they weren't yes and no. So I that was easy
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 2: enough for me to work out. But as time went
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 2: on and he got older, I it became kind of
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 2: a science to me to get the best out of him.
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 2: And so what I would do is I would come
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 2: up with my questions. And this became a whole other
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 2: way of informing in the interview process. Is I had
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 2: to come up with questions and then kind of guess
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 2: ahead at what he might say to come up with
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 2: the follow up question and then email those to his
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 2: publicist Gene Severs, who's a wonderful soul, or Jeffrey Fossquett,
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 2: who was who would work, you know, would be Brian's
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 2: caretaker for a time. So either Jeffrey or Jean, or
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 2: Jerry Weiss or later Alberto Raise who was Brian's caretaker
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 2: towards the end, they would all help facilitate and they
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 2: would sit with Brian because I couldn't be there, and
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 2: they were the perfect handoff in that respect that they
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 2: would do that for me, and they would sit there
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 2: with him and they would interview him, asking him the questions,
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 2: and it was great. Jerry Weiss and Jeffrey Fosquett were
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 2: fantastic in that process because like you and I, Jerry
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 2: and Jeffrey are not you know about this music. So
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 2: if maybe even I didn't even have a question that
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 2: I rolled into what I was asking, if Brian would
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 2: say something in response, they would insert a follow up,
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 2: and it just it just it blossomed into the perfect
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 2: way of collecting great content from Brian.
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, at some point everybody involved in the group will
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: be gone. Do you think it's like Abba will have
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: being animatronic or do you think what's going to be
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: the future of the music in the legend.
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 2: Well, the first thing I'll say is I hope it's
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 2: not and I'm intronic, but you never know who will
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 2: get a hold of what and what they'll do. You
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 2: just no control over that. But uh, I think the
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 2: legacy and the Beach Boys is set in stone, and
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 2: it's been set in stone. I you know, a handful
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 2: of years ago a country group What the Heck Where
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 2: the Low Cash came around and they did a song
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 2: called uh get It Get Around as basically a drinking
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 2: gang like past drinks around type of thing, and Mike
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 2: and Bruce are on it, and somebody said to me,
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 2: don't you think that's going to hurt their legacy? And
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 2: I said, nobody is going to even remember this song
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 2: in two years now. Let alone be concerned with the legacy,
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 2: the legacy of the Beach Boys and I and I
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 2: hope it's not, you know, for the long time generational
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 2: fans like you and I. I hope it isn't to
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 2: the point where people are are looking at it. And
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 2: you know, because I see, I just see a lot
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 2: of stuff online about, oh, they're you know, Mike should
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 2: hang it up, you know, he's but he loves it.
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 2: He loves it. He loves what he's doing. He loves
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 2: bringing joy to the fans, and that's why he still
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 2: does it. The legacy is, from my perspective, is remarkable
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 2: music that remains unmatched and unparalleled by anyone anywhere. The
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 2: Beatles would do back in the USSR, which is the
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 2: closest they ever came to doing a Beach Boys song,
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 2: and the Beach Boys, Brian's vocal arrangements, his production style,
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 2: his inherent built in ability to realize something he was imagining,
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 2: is just unmatched. It's unmatched. There are other records that
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 2: I can put on that will reach me on a
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 2: level as beautiful as pet Sounds does. But the moments
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 2: in pet Sounds. There's moments in songs like that. There's
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 2: moments on pet Sounds, moments, just moments like it could
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 2: be a it could be the way an instrument hits,
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 2: or the way that one vocal voice is rubbing up
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 2: against the other voice. That aren't anywhere else. They're not
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 2: anywhere else ever that I've ever heard. And you could say, oh,
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 2: it's that familial blend in it. That might be in
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 2: fact true, But I mean, I'm thinking of a spot
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 2: where it's Bruce and Brian. Bruce isn't a family member,
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 2: so it's just to me. The Beach Boys legacy is
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 2: Brian Wilson, Brian Wilson's incredible gift and the group's incredible
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 2: adaptability to keep up.
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: You've been listening to David Beard once again. He has
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: a new book, All Summer Long Conversations with the Beach Boys,
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: from Surfing to Smile. As you can tell from listening,
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: he's been in charge of this magazine for thirty years.
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 1: He's done all these interviews and he's distilled them down
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: to tell a story. I know a lot about the
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: Beach Boys, but I certainly learned a bunch of stuff.
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 2: It was real.
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: You know, the top level stuff who worked on the songs,
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 1: that's available everywhere, but the people and the personalities, that's
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 1: what made it come alive for me. David, I want
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 1: to thank you for taking the time with my audience.
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 2: Bob, thank you. This has really been a pleasure. I
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 2: love it.
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 1: Till next time. This is Bob left sets