Posted on 08/13/2004 9:35:15 AM PDT by Zack Nguyen
Questions for Brian Wilson : Summer Fun, Anyone?
Interview by Deborah Solomon
Your album ''Smile'' has been called the greatest rock record that was never released. It's the Beach Boys' lost masterpiece.
We started it in 1967, but we never finished it.
But it is scheduled for release in September. Why did you decide to finish recording it now?
I wanted to get it out before I died.
Are you dying?
No.
And you also have a new solo recording that just came out, ''Gettin' In Over My Head.'' Is it any good?
Each song is different. They're not all the same like the Rolling Stones. You know, Rolling Stones songs all sound kind of the same.
Mick Jagger probably thinks Beach Boys songs all sound the same.
Probably so.
Do you think that the Beach Boys were more artistically adventurous than the Rolling Stones?
I think we're about even. The Beach Boys were a pretty good singing group, but the Stones played their instruments better.
It has been a fairly long time, six years, since you last released a studio recording.
I can't explain it. I had writer's block for a while. Sometimes you sit at the piano and play around, and if you can't get a melody you quit.
It's hard to imagine you as thwarted in any way. Most of us think of you as a poet of surf-filled afternoons and fast cars. The Beach Boys turned summer into the quintessential American season, a time of innocent fun and wildness.
Summer means happy times and good sunshine. It means going to the beach, going to Disneyland, having fun.
But isn't that all a perfect fiction? You have led what seems like a haunted life.
Every now and then I hear voices in my head, but not very clear. I can't understand what they are saying. It's a mental illness. I have been diagnosed as a manic depressive.
When did you last experience an auditory hallucination?
A year ago. I was writing music and I heard voices at the piano. I just jammed on my head and said, ''Stop, stop, stop.'' I take Klonopin and Luvox. They help me relax and keep me from being scared.
What are you scared of?
I think about death a lot. I think about my brothers' deaths.
Your brother Carl died of lung cancer, and your brother Dennis died in a drunken drowning accident. Do you think of them every day?
No, not every day, but about once every two weeks I will think about them.
Is it true you are deaf in one ear?
Yes, my father used to beat the hell out of us.
I guess your songs help carry you away from the memory of your father.
Right. That is probably why I wrote those happy songs. I try to get as close to paradise as I can. I try to steer clear of heartbreaks.
Do you listen to rap?
I don't like it because I can't hear the lyrics of the songs. They say them so fast, and you can't understand what they are saying.
Plus they curse. The Beach Boys never cursed.
I think cursing is a bunch of malarkey.
Are there any musicians under the age of 60 whom you admire?
Not at all. I don't listen to any younger musicians.
It sounds as if you are stuck in a time warp. Who are your heroes?
l McCartney and Phil Spector.
But Phil Spector was just charged with murdering an actress!
hink he will get off. I think it was an accident.
Who came up with the name of the Beach Boys?
Promotion guy for Candix Records, which was the record company we were on. I didn't like it. I didn't like the word ''boys.'"
Do you surf?
I never learned how.
It's not too late. You can learn now.
I don't want to. I am afraid. I am afraid I would get hurt. I haven't been to the beach in a decade.
Is summer your favorite season?
No. I like fall.
"I'm eagerly awaiting the release of "Smile."
Me too. For now, though, Pet Sounds = Perfection. Tears well up just thinking about it.
Maybe he is afraid if he conquers his demons, he will lose his musical genius. The two are tied within him. I can't wait to hear Smile.
Thanks for the ping, Zack!
In the 70s, Brian pretty much stayed in bed all the time, because of his condition. His weight ballooned during that period. I remember on SNL there was a great film where Dan Akroyd and John Belushi go into Brian's bedroom, and tell him to "get up, you're going surfing."
I like the BBs' mid-60s stuff, and will probably get Smile when it comes out. But I also need to get Sticky Fingers, Let it Bleed, Beggars' Banquet, and Exile on Main St. on CD. So it all evens out.
BTW - Do you listen to much Wilco or Uncle Tupelo? Opinion?
What condition?
That's a great point. What might have been monumental in 1967 may just be ho-hum today. Also, the fact remains that Brian Wilson at age 25 may not be the Brian Wilson of 63.
Insanity. He was an undiagnosed paranoid schitzophrenic, with depression, and addicted to lots of drugs.
I heard a bootleg of a Smile concert Wilson did a few months back and everyone that has followed all the snippets of smile tracks will be pleasantly surprised. Without spoiling it, I will say that he fit together all those pieces like a big jigsaw puzzle, and it finally works together as a unified whole. That was something I never could have imagined happening, but he pulled it off! It all flows together and isn't jarring like the box set stuff.
Save your money -- those great albums don't translate to CD very well, imo. .....takes the life right out of them.
Never heard of the two bands you mentioned, but I'll check iTunes to find some examples.
I always recommend Wilco's stuff for people who bemoan the current state of "modern" music. I know everyone raves about Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but I think Summerteeth is their masterpiece. Not a single unlistenable track on that album. Their newest album, A Ghost is Born, has been really growing on me, and after about five or six listens I'm appreciating more and more what Tweedy is trying to pull off. Watching Wilco go from A.M. to Ghost has been pretty exciting--it's always fun to follow a band you really like as they really evolve.
It is highly ironic that the only Wilson brother still alive is Brian.
" Most everything I have heard in the past 25 plus years is just garbage."
25 years ago was the late 70's. Except for punk, the absolute NADIR of rock and roll. You want to talk garbage?
Face it, you got old and just don't listen anymore. It happens to most of us.
What's hilarious is Limbaugh blissing out to his hideous pre-disco funk while shaking his fist and saying rap "isn't music".
"Caroline, No"
(Or haven't you read my profile page :o)
Wilco is led by some former members of Uncle Tupelo, a central Illinois band that was instrumental in the alt-country movement in the 90s. Real instruments, and root-oriented music (country, blues, a little bluegrass, basic R&R, etc.) done in a slightly experimental vein. Good stuff, you ought to check them out.
You took the words right out of my mouth.
Uh.....no.
Brian has been blessed. His brother Dennis, however, was probably worse off than Brian at the time of his death. The book "Heroes and Villians" goes into detail on the last month of Dennis's life, and he was a hopeless alcoholic/heroin addicted wreck. He was homeless and completely unable to keep money in his pocket. It is terribly sad. He had been reduced to a driving need to fulfill his physical passions, and that is pretty much it.
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