Three Quarters Of An Hour To Compose The Most Perfect Pop Song Ever? Our Brian Wilson cover story interview from 2016, issue #57
To honour the passing of BRIAN WILSON, one of pop music’s true legends, we’re running CHRIS TWOMEY’s full article from issue #57. Order our beautifully designed bespoke print copy here
As the old adage goes, BRIAN WILSON needs no introduction but always deserves one. Fifty years ago, Pet Sounds, the album he crafted with and without THE BEACH BOYS, redefined the boundaries of pop music forever. GenerAtions of disciples have been playing catch-up ever since, while legions of Fans have welcomed the once-reclusive composer’s return to the public eye. One such fan is CHRIS TWOMEY, who, after 30 years of waiting, saw his dream come true
After 30-plus years of writing for a living and interviewing thousands of people – including every conceivable type of “celebrity” – one name had always eluded me. The groupie in me was never going to find inner peace until I’d interviewed the greatest prize of all: Brian Wilson. Trouble was, with each passing year the chances of that happening grew slimmer and slimmer…
Before we get stuck in, dear reader, you’ll have already noticed an unfamiliar, personal tone to this piece – one that’s very “un-Shindig!” – and there’s a reason for this. We’re here to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Pet Sounds, the perennial masterpiece that’s just been re-issued as a deluxe four-CD box set, and which Brian is currently touring around the world for the last time ever. It’s an incredibly poignant event but what is there left to say about one of the most critically analysed albums in pop history? What can I tell you that you don’t already know? Nothing.
So this isn’t going to be a re-hash or defrosting of old facts, it’s going to be the story of trying to get the story – with a few previously untold surprises thrown in. It’s the only tale I’ve got to tell. Although I’ve been transfixed/seduced by many great bands in my time, including Procol Harum, The Stranglers, Air and XTC, The Beach Boys are the greatest of them all as far as I’m concerned. Yep, greater even than The Beatles, The Kinks, the Stones, The Who, ABBA or whoever else you want to throw at me. As brilliant as these others undoubtedly were, or are, they all lacked one essential ingredient: Brian Wilson.
Simply having him in the picture adds annextra dimension to everything The Beach Boys achieved, not just because he wrote an incredible catalogue of timeless pop melodies, nbut because in a very perceptible sense his tortured psyche gave them a depth and soul the others lacked. Looking back, you can often hear Brian’s state of mind in his complex chord sequences – listen to ‘Surf ’s Up’ and tell me you don’t hear a confused and vulnerable adult crying. I can’t think of another era-defining group who were so heavily dependent on the talents of just one man – a guy, moreover, who was only 23 when he composed, arranged and produced one of pop’s landmark achievements, Pet Sounds.
It’s worth pausing here to put this momentous event in context: by the end of 1965, The Beach Boys’ driving force (dreadful pun intended) had had enough of writing songs about cars, surfing and girls. The Beatles had just reached a new level of musical maturity on Rubber Soul, particularly on ‘Norwegian Wood’ and ‘In My Life’, and Brian was determined to respond in a similarly sophisticated manner. Although his work rate during the previous five years had been nothing less than phenomenal (10 Beach Boys albums spawning dozens of major US hits, not to mention writing and producing for numerous other artists) Brian had generally stuck to a tried ’n’ tested formula. Even though “Pet Sounds moments” such as ‘In My Room’ and ‘Please Let Me Wonder’ were scattered throughout the years, every album to date had been blighted by a surfeit of fillers and novelty skits.
The next record was going to be made on Brian’s terms. Having ceased touring with The Beach Boys a year earlier, and with his bandmates conveniently away touring in Asia and Japan, he’d oversee everything, right down to the arrangements played by The Wrecking Crew and the other top session musicians he hired. All The Beach Boys had to do when they got back from Japan was sing these amazing songs.
The result was a fluid suite of music that blurred the boundaries between pop and classical, easy-listening and rock, teenage angst and adult sentimentality.
The world had heard nothing quite like it before. This was orch-pop before the term had been invented. ‘You Still Believe In Me’ and ‘Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)’ were infused with subtle baroque motifs; the instrumentals ‘Let’s Go Away For Awhile’ and the title track revealed Brian’s incredible gift for evoking moods with innovative arrangements; ‘Caroline No’ was about as far removed from ‘Pom Pom Play Girl’ (on Shut Down Vol 2) as it’s possible to get. Then there was ‘God Only Knows’ – incalculably sublime in every sense.
That Brian never quite scaled such heights thereafter – at least not in any consistent form – wasn’t purely down to self-inflicted over-indulgence or irrational perfectionism. It also had a lot to do with the way Pet Sounds was initially received. Although it reached #2 here in the UK and stayed in the album charts for over six months, Pet Sounds was a relative flop in the US (it initially shifted 500,000 – a 50% drop on The Beach Boys’ 10 preceding one-million sellers) its sophistication seemingly too subtle for a market that demanded in-your-face pop like ‘I Get Around’, ‘Help Me Rhonda’ and ‘California Girls.’ It’s worth remembering the album’s biggest US hit single, ‘Sloop John B’ (which was recorded before the album sessions “proper” began), was added to the running order at the insistence of Capitol Records who initially “didn’t hear a single”.
D-I-D-N-T F-U-C-K-I-N-G H-E-A-R A-S-I-N-G-L-E, even though the greatest pop song ever written was sitting right under their bunged-up noses! Un-be-fucking-leeevable.
And how did Capitol Records respond to the sluggish sales of what was unquestionably The Beach Boys’ most progressive work to date? By whole-heartedly throwing their corporate muscle into a belated promotional campaign? Or by rush-releasing a retrospective Best Of The Beach Boys compilation a mere two months after Pet Sounds’ May ’66 release? You guessed it. Un-fucking-believable.
This confidence-crushing lack of faith in “the new direction”’ fuelled ever-intensifying feelings of paranoia, procrastination and uncertainty in Brian, especially when trying to compete with his main rivals The Beatles. Brian didn’t have a George Martin to turn to for informed, constructively-critical advice, remember, he was playing the Lennon / McCartney / Martin role all by himself. No wonder Pet Sounds’ chief architect never quite recovered from the experience of making it.
Alright, I promised no recycled facts and I’ve already broken my own pact, but here’s where this particular story really begins: I can’t remember life without The Beach Boys. Even before I realised I loved them, I loved them. They were just THERE all the time on the radio, waiting to brighten those typically piss-grey British summer days, or lift low moods, with their beautiful sunny melodies and harmonies. You took them for granted… until one day you decided to investigate further and became fully immersed.
Wow! It was like entering a restaurant and realising that although you already knew you’d like the starters, actually it was their mains menu that made the place truly special. There’s something wonderful about belatedly discovering a band (in my case, in the mid-80s) with an enormous back catalogue. You don’t have to wait 18 months, or three years or whatever, for them to release their next album, you just wander along to Ye Olde Record Shoppe (or its online equivalent) and buy the next.
Gold dust spilled from all directions: the first big surprise was discovering Sunflower, which the purist in me wants to call the best Beach Boys album – or at least the most satisfying collective effort (I think we’re all agreed that Pet Sounds was essentially a solo album) even though it’s a hitless record which bombed on release in ’70. Sunflower was flanked by a range of other lushly produced gems such as Friends, Surf’s Up, and 20/20, but also back-to-basics R&B’n’soul ’n’ pop albums such as Wild Honey and Carl & The Passions: So Tough and – strangest of all – the wigged out minimalism of The Beach Boys Love You and (most of ) Smiley Smile. The inconsistency of The Beach Boys’ late ’60s and ’70s work is what made it so exciting to stumble across. But of course, central to it all sat the cohesive grandeur of Pet Sounds.
Once Brian’s mental health had started to unravel flashes of his brilliance popped up here and there, but he rarely came out to play (and when he did he looked scarily out of shape and uncomfortable). By the time I was regularly contributing to music papers such as Record Mirror in the mid-80s there seemed about as much chance of interviewing Brian Wilson as boarding a manned mission to Pluto. He’d become one of rock’s most famous, burnt-out casualties, and all faith in the unconvincing “Brian’s Back” campaign of a decade earlier had well and truly evaporated.
So I had to make do with any news of him that came my way.
In ’87, Wall Of Voodoo recorded a respectable – if slightly pointless – cover of ‘Do It Again’ and I volunteered to interview them. The highlight was discovering that our Bri had made a cameo appearance in their promo video. “What was he LIKE?” I needed to know. Shy and slightly awkward, was the impression Wall Of Voodoo gave me, and the only creepy part of their brief encounter with Brian was the omni-presence of “Doctor” Eugene Landy. Ah yes, him.
The less said about this cartoon-like villain the better, probably. The subsequently discredited shrink made himself Executive Producer of Brian’s first official solo album in ’88 and claimed co-authorship of certain songs. No wonder he looked so distracted on the cover. These really were Brian’s wilderness years – marred by bullies and control freaks, legal battles with members of his own band, and tragedies such as the death of his beloved younger brother Dennis in ’83. If Brian’s life was a juggernaut parked atop a hill, someone had released the handbrake.
In June ’93 The Beach Boys embarked on a brief UK tour and I seized this opportunity to meet and interview them. Brian wasn’t part of the entourage of course – would he ever be again? – it was just Carl, Mike Love, Bruce Johnston, Al Jardine and a bunch of back-up musicians, including Al’s son Matt. I was doing some freelancing for a BBC World Service arts show called Multitrack 2 at the time and on a sparkling early summer’s day I headed off to Wembley Arena mid-afternoon with my state-of-the-art Sony Professional tape recorder and grabbed vox pops with expectant fans waiting for the doors to open. I was surprised to see how young many of them were, and to speak to whole families who in some cases had travelled hundreds of miles for the gig. They all expressed the same sentiments: Brian’s music stood outside time, it would endure forever… it was just a real shame he wasn’t present.
When the band’s soundcheck ended I was ushered inside the arena to interview Bruce. He was engaging and enthusiastic – mind you, I scored early brownie points by making a connection between The Beach Boys’ then current album Summer In Paradise and Surf’s Up. Both expressed a concern for the environment, I observed, which went to show how little progress had been made on eco issues since ’71. “Well, what it really shows me, since you’re interviewing me,” said Bruce, “unlike most people who interview me, you’ve really done your homework, because we’ve been trying to do this for a million years and people probably just think we do ‘Barbara Ann’ over and over.”
I love you Bruce! Twenty-two million Multitrack 2 listeners around the world heard him say that… although I’m now going to ruin the convivial atmosphere by reminding myself that Summer In Paradise was a pretty wretched Mike Love-dominated album which Brian had no part in making (the only Brian song featured was an over-produced rehash of ’61’s ‘Surfin’’!)
Later I asked Bruce an obvious one: Did he have a favourite Beach Boys song? “Please… there’s only one Beach Boys song for me – it’s ‘God Only Knows’,” Bruce replied. “In 10 lines Brian Wilson was really able to express the depth of devotion to someone you love. That song kills me every night. For me it’s the best Beach Boys song because it’s simpler than a greeting card and it really hits the home run.”
And with Bruce I totally agree – ‘God Only Knows’ gets my vote, not just as the best Beach Boys song, but the most perfect song ever written – except, aren’t we forgetting someone here? Brian may have written the tune, but Tony Asher, his one-off Pet Sounds collaborator, did the words.
Asher, you’ll remember, was the 26-year-old advertising agency copywriter who bumped into Brian in January ’66 at LA’s United Western United Recorders studios. Tony was there to supervise the recording of an ad jingle, Brian had just started work on The Beach Boys’ 11th album. It was this fluke encounter which lead to Asher taking a fortnight off work to write the bulk of the lyrics on Pet Sounds.
“Most of the songs emerged while we were together,” Tony told US Rock Cellar magazine in 2013. “With songs like ‘God Only Knows’ and ‘Caroline, No’ I was writing lyrics while Brian was writing the melody and we were trading ideas. When I was working on ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ he’d already finished the melody. He’d be banging away at the piano on this fun, bouncy song so I started to write lyrics to it. There are so many notes in ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ that I thought I was going to be there until hell freezes over (laughs). But with ‘God Only Knows’, on the other hand, I always felt like we barely got started. I felt like saying, ‘Wait a second, can’t we put another section in this song?’ because there was not very much to it.”
Asher was just one of several Brian collaborators who quickly fell by the wayside. Roger Christian, Gary Usher, Van Dyke Parks, Andy Paley. Brian was always hungrily looking around for new sources of lyrical inspiration beyond The Beach Boys – much to Mike Love’s irritation. Some of these collaborators never got to hear their songs being recorded (or had their work re-shaped and credited to a different writer).
A few months ago a friend introduced me by email to Mark Sebastian, younger brother of The Lovin’ Spoonful’s John. Mark co-wrote the Spoonful’s US chart-topper ‘Summer In The City’ when he was only 15 – he was, and still is, a songwriter and accomplished guitarist in his own right. We started talking on the phone and Mark began to tell me these amazing stories about a brief period in the mid-70s when Brian became his musical mentor. It happened shortly after Mark left his New York home and moved into John’s house in Laurel Canyon because he was being courted by some of LA’s biggest labels.
“One night the phone rang really late, I think it was about 2am, and it was Brian,” recalls Mark, who like so many other musicians, sensed a new dawn for popular music the moment he first heard Pet Sounds.
“He asked for John, and I said, ‘John isn’t here right now’ – he was out on the road – ‘but I’m happy to take a message.’ And Brian started talking very excitedly about this song he’d written. He really wanted John to sing on the demo, and then Brian said, ‘You sound a lot like your brother.’ So I told him I was a singer/songwriter as well. I didn’t want to seem like a fan but I’m sure I said something like ‘I really enjoy your music’ – I must have. I can’t believe I would have been on the phone to Brian Wilson and not said something.
“Anyway, he said ‘Why don’t you come over here and sing this thing and we’ll see how it sounds?’ I said, ‘I don’t have a car.’ So he said, ‘Take a cab and I’ll pay for it.’”
And off to Brian’s Bel Air mansion Mark duly went, even though it was the middle of the night. “He’d kind of flipped the clock at that point,” Mark laughs. “He’d become nocturnal so this was perfectly normal for him. I was fine with it. What are you going to say to Brian Wilson: ‘Well, tomorrow would be better?’”
It proved to be the first of several writing sessions the pair spent together and Mark was stunned by what he heard. “All the stuff Brian was playing was so bluesed out – I mean, just the colours of the chords were very soulful,” he remembers. “And I thought, fuck, what is more vanilla – and I say that trying to be politically correct – what is more Caucasian than The Beach Boys and he’s playing so soulfully. The figures were very, I dunno, Scott Joplin. I’m telling you, this guy played like an old Black man in New Orleans. I never saw that in Brian before.”
Although nothing became of their trysts – I’m holding some juicy parts of this story back for another time – at least Mark actually got to work directly with Brian. Unlike The High Llamas’ Sean O’Hagan who gave me a colourful account of the weirdness and mind-games he had to contend with in ’97 when Bruce Johnston contacted him out of the blue and asked if he’d be interested in writing songs with Brian.
By then, Landy was out of the picture and Brian had married Melinda Ledbetter – the present Mrs Wilson. He’d also been enjoying The High Llama’s most recent album Hawaii, which was stylistically reminiscent of his own post-Pet Sounds work. The Beach Boys were hoping to record a new record together and needed someone to act as Brian’s creative foil, so, how about it Sean?
Naturally, O’Hagan said yes, but after spending a few weeks with Da Boys on home turf, Sean had had his fill of the rather sinister band-and-management political manoeuvring – not to mention undisguised hostility from Mike Love. “Carl was wonderful and Al was a sweet guy – I’ve nothing but respect and admiration for them,” says Sean. “But I’d get messages from other people saying, ‘Don’t get involved, it’s going to be crazy, your career will end…’ I came home and felt really happy to be back amongst friends in London, writing music again.”
Brian released his second, commercially under-whelming, solo album Imagination in ’98 – the same year his other brother Carl died of lung cancer – and then something miraculous happened: Brian announced he was going to perform Pet Sounds in its entirety live in the US, UK and other parts of Europe.
Whaaaat? Brian really is back, folks! It was a giddily exciting moment only slight marred by the selfish realisation that I now worked for a mainstream TV listings magazine and couldn’t think of a sufficiently convincing reason to request an interview with the great man. Bugger.
So I’ll now fast-forward to 2015, by which time I’d been contributing to Shindig! for a few years, and Brian was about to embark on a UK stadium tour with a band which was to include Al Jardine and Blondie Chaplin, with America in support. I contacted the PR and for a while it looked as though a chat with Brian was on the cards, but suddenly the tour was cancelled “due to Brian’s US commitments following the success of the movie Love & Mercy”. Bugger again.
The only consolation was that he promised to return to the UK in 2016 for one last throw of the die, to mark the 50th anniversary of Pet Sounds. When the tour was confirmed I was straight in there with my interview request(s). It was now or never, the last chance saloon.
And then, one morning in March, I got an email telling me Brian was going to phone me that same day – however, the PR couldn’t specify a time and warned me the call could come late night (due to the pesky LA/London time difference). I’ll now hand you over to my Facebook posting the next day:
“Have you ever experienced simultaneous feelings of anxiousness and boredom? Well that’s me right now. I’m trapped, a prisoner in my own home, for the second day running. I daren’t leave the house – in fact, I can’t even move from room to room at the moment without first consulting a checklist because (name-drop alert) I’m waiting for Brian Wilson to call.
“If you don’t know who Brian is, you’re either under 30, completely disinterested in music, or live somewhere with no internet access. He’s the musical soul of Califor-nie-ay, the guy who put the Warmth into the Sun and Safari into Surfin’. He’s the bloke who went mad (from a combo of fame pressure and powerful psychedelic drugs) in the late ’60s and eventually stayed in bed for three years. He’s my musical hero – and on Monday morning I received an email saying Brian would be phoning me at some point later in the day.
“If The Pope suddenly learnt he’d been granted an audience with Him upstairs, he couldn’t have been more excited or terrified. At first I thought, “Great!” then “Shit! What am I going to ask him?”, which is strange considering I know pretty much everything there is to know about Brian Wilson and I almost certainly remember more about his life than he does.
“Admittedly I’m facing an onerous challenge. Brian’s a notoriously – how does one put this nicely – reticent interviewee, and because he’s about to embark on a world tour to mark the 50th anniversary of Pet Sounds, widely regarded as one of the best albums ever recorded, I‘ve been asked to write a 5,000 word magazine cover feature… assuming I can do a bit more than simply regurgitate the same tired old facts.
“But how do you tease new information or insights from a man who generally gives six word answers to questions he likes, a yes/no grunt to those he doesn’t?
“A couple of weeks ago the PR cautiously checked to make sure I knew what I was up against. I told him Brian would only have to say ‘Ba, ba, ba, ba, Barbara Ann’ and we’d have a world exclusive as far as I was concerned – which, amazingly, put his mind at ease. Brian would be safe in my hands, no awkward questions about the shrink who controlled him 24/7 for years, or his on-going mental health issues, or his difficult relationship with Beach Boys singer Mike Love, or the untimely deaths of his brothers Dennis and Carl. My interview would be Fun, Fun, Fun not Glum, Glum,
“Glum, which is very easy to promise, not so easy to deliver with only a few hours notice.
“Arrrrggghhh! Brian Wilson’s going to phone me any time now and I can’t think of a single fucking half-decent question, even though I’ve been a Beach Boys fan all my life! What’s going on?
“It’s funny what a good- ole adrenaline rush can achieve. The fear of disappointing Brian with crap questions (and receiving rubbish answers) pushed me onto a higher level. By mid-afternoon yesterday, I was confident I’d found a line of questioning which would curb Brian’s initial wariness, appeal to his hyper-sensitivity, stimulate him, and maybe even – in my wildest dreams – make him laugh. I was armed and ready for action, aware The Call could come any time right up to midnight (Brian lives in LA). By my side were three phones – I told the PR that if one line was engaged, the others would be free – a wired Dictaphone, a notebook to prompt me, and a pair of reading glasses. Wherever I went, even if it was just the loo, they had to follow. Bit of a pain but, hey, it’s not every day you’re waiting for a living legend to call.
“Except, you’ve probably guessed it, 35 hours on, the phone’s rung a few times and I’ve had to tell a few cold-callers to piss off, but sadly no sign yet of Brian.
“Late yesterday the publicist sent me an email saying, ‘It isn’t going to happen tonight. Will let you know.’ But I still know nothing. Did Brian decide to go surfing? (If so, that would be a first.) Did he go back to bed? Did he suddenly get bad vibrations? Who knows? But as long as there’s a realistic chance of the greatest living songwriter/composer dialling one of my three numbers, the phones will remain by my side.”
Half a week – and a bit of gentle PR-prodding – later and I was told Brian would definitely be phoning me that day at 10.15pm. Fan-bloody-tastic! I let a few people know and they replied with good luck messages – including one from a good mate who has a prominent role in the publishing world and wanted to warn me he’d heard Brian was more or less giving yes/no answers to questions in his latest round of interviews. That’s what I’d heard too. But somewhere deep down I still fantasised about being THE ONE who could make him turn around and say – just as Bruce Johnston once did – “You know what Chris, you’re not like all those other lazy fuckwit reporters out there – I’m gonna tell you like it really was.”
And then the phone rang, 10 minutes early, and a friendly-sounding American PR woman told me they were running ahead of schedule because Brian’s previous interview had ended early. IN-TER-EST-ING. She ran me through the drill – checking I was aware that Brian was publishing his autobiography in the autumn – then suddenly handed me over to Brian, saying, “Chris, you’ve got 15 minutes, okay?”
Brian: Hi Chris.
Me: Hi Brian, how are you?
Brian: I’m fine, how about you?
Me: I’m good, and even better now I’m speaking to you because I always wondered, “One day I might get to interview Brian Wilson, but what would I say first?” And, you know what, I haven’t even figured it out, other than me turning round to you and saying I’ve loved your music all my life and, er…how many people start interviews saying that?
Brian: In a lot of my interviews, they tell me they like my music.
Me: Do people get emotional about it? Brian: No, not really. No, no.
Me: Because the first time I saw you live was in the UK at The Royal Festival Hall and when you played ‘God Only Knows’ I started crying…
Brian: Oh really?
Me: …and I thought, “I wasn’t expecting this, I’ve never cried at a gig before.” Afterwards I told my wife about it and other people who were there, including other musicians – some well-known – and several people said they had exactly the same response. How does it make you feel to hear that people get very strong emotional responses to your music?
Brian: Well I think ‘God Only Knows’ is a beautiful tune and I can understand why people would cry to ‘God Only Knows’ – because it’s a beautiful tune, it’s a nice tune.
Me: You must have been tapping into a certain feeling when you wrote it?
Brian: I knew we were writing a good song when we collaborated because all it took was 45 minutes.
Me: Is that all?
Brian: Yeah
Me: Incredible. Obviously that was on Pet Sounds, and Pet Sounds is what you’re touring for the next four months or so.
Brian: Yeah, about that, yeah.
Me: When you play Pet Sounds live do all the old memories, all the old feelings, of recording it 50 years ago come flooding back?
Brian: When we do it on stage, yeah, it brings back the memories of recording it… yes.
Me: And what’s your over-riding feeling when you think about that time? Are they happy memories?
Brian: Yeah, happy memories, yeah.
Me: What was the best bit about it, do you think?
Brian: I can’t answer that question. I really don’t know, sir.
Me (slightly stunned that Brian’s just called me “Sir”): At the time you recorded Pet Sounds you were on a complete roll, weren’t you…[Brian interjects: Yeah] having to do one thing after another, after another, after another…It must have felt like a complete treadmill for you. [Brian: Right!] And then suddenly you were given a bit of breathing space and allowed to make the record you’d always wanted to make. Pet Sounds was a big leap forwards for you artistically. Did you realise that at the time?
Brian: I knew that it was a different direction we went in because I wrote a lot of surf songs and car songs, and then we went into a new direction. I think people liked that direction.
Me: But were you aware of how you’d helped to redefine pop music? Musicians were just blown away by what you did, in the same way that – as you know Brian – The Beatles kept pushing the frontiers forward from project to project. Pet Sounds played a big part in changing the pop scene forever.
Brian: Well, I didn’t go too far. We pushed it into a new direction but I didn’t push it too far at all.
Me: When you look back at Pet Sounds now, how do you feel about it as a piece of art?
Brian: I think it’s a great piece of art and I’ll always be proud of it.
Me: Rightly so. I just wonder whether, 50 years on, there’s anything about it you’d change?
Brian: No, I would not change anything about it. I wouldn’t change anything.
[I start laughing]
Me: Good, nor should you! [although, somewhat fraudulently I’m thinking “You should have dumped ‘Sloop John B’ and replaced it with your most recent composition ‘Good Vibrations’”… imagine!] So you’re doing this world tour and you’re going to be playing Pet Sounds for the last time ever. How does that make you feel?
Brian: Well it makes me proud. I hope people like it, because I like it.
Me: Will you feel a sense of loss because it’s the last time you’ll ever perform it?
Brian: Well I feel very sentimental about it. I feel sentimental about it, you know, and I’m a little scared to go on tour… but only scared because I’m nervous of the reaction to it.
Me: But surely you get adoration whenever you play live now – let alone perform Pet Sounds?
Brian: Yeah, well people admire my… our music.
Me: So what are you going to do after this tour Brian?
Brian: I don’t know. I might record an album called Brian Wilson Sings – a tribute album to the great rock ’n’ roll artists.
Me: Well I hope you do something because, as I said, people have a very emotional attachment to your music. I just want to ask you a couple more questions. I’ve seen the movie Love & Mercy and, actually, I loved it. What did you think of it?
Brian: I thought it was well portrayed, I thought the actors portrayed me and my wife very well, and I thought they did a great acting job… especially the guy that played Dr Landy. He was great. I think it’s Paul Giamatti, his name? He did great.
Me: It must be very weird to have two different actors play you at different parts of your life. Did you think they represented your story accurately?
Brian: Yes, yes.
Me: The film focused a lot on you recording Pet Sounds and at that time you were, how can I put it, a perfectionist… [Brian: Right]… times 10. You started Pet Sounds without the other guys around because they were on tour. You were in the studio with those amazing musicians [Brian: Right]…Do you think it was easier to achieve the sound you were looking for because you didn‘t have the others interfering?
Brian: Yeah, well I wrote out manuscript paper for the musicians to play and they played it as written.
Me: You were obviously in your element constructing this amazing thing, but even some of the seasoned session musicians around you weren‘t sure what you were assembling until they heard the finished product. Then they went, “Wow!”
Brian: Well I knew what I was doing. I was only 23 or 24 years old and I was experimenting with music.
Me: But the other thing is, there was a lot of pressure on you at that time – you felt you were in competition with The Beatles…
Brian: Right, well they inspired us very much.
Me: …and because you eventually felt they were “beating you” artistically, it messed with your head, didn’t it? When Sgt Pepper came out you felt defeated. I mean, it was too much for one bloke to compete with them on his own. But my point is, in the long term, you “won” didn’t you, because Pet Sounds keeps being voted the best album of all time.
Brian: I don’t know if it’s the best album, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s the best album, I think it’s a great album, but not the best.
Me: Well okay, it’s one of the best.
Brian: Yes! One of the best.
Me: How does that make you feel – that 50 years on, it’s still regarded as a masterpiece?
Brian: I still like the album as much as I did 50 years ago.
Me: Another thing, Brian, is that you’ve sometimes said your favourite Beach Boys album is Love You…
Brian: Yeah, that’s true.
Me: But in production-quality terms, that’s the absolute opposite of Pet Sounds.
Brian: Pet Sounds was an emotional album and Beach Boys Love You was more of a happier album.
Me: Really stripped back as well, wasn’t it.
Brian: Yeah.
Me: Most people would associate The Beach Boys with the big harmonies and the big this and that. Would you fancy doing another stripped back album?
Brian: I don’t know. I don’t know Chris, I don’t know.
Me: Can I finally ask Brian – and this is a bit of a loaded question – what do you see as your greatest achievement?
Brian: I think ‘Good Vibrations’ and ‘California Girls’. I think those are my two greatest achievements…
Me: Well all I can say is, please, please go on recording.
Brian: Okay Chris, thank you very much for the interview.
And that’s pretty much it, ladies and gentlemen, time to collect your bags and coats and head off home. Except, wait a minute, before you go, did you spot that morsel of an exclusive? I’ve scoured the net and thumbed back through all my Beach Boys biographies (both official and unofficial) and I can’t find a single previous mention of it taking only 45 minutes for Brian and Tony Asher to write ‘God Only Knows’. SERIOUSLY: THREE QUARTERS OF AN HOUR TO COMPOSE THE MOST PERFECT POP SONG EVER? Now that’s what I call a fucking miracle.
God bless you Brian.
This article is our tribute to Brian Wilson whose death was announced yesterday on social media. It has not been updated in any way. Order issue #57 here and our later Beach Boys cover (#101) here, and our Dennis Wilson cover (#118) here.
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