Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to Bob Leftsett's podcast. My guest
Speaker 1: today is the one and only Mike Love, of a
Speaker 1: gigantic Beach Boys fan. It's a thrill to have him here.
Speaker 1: He has just been nominated and will be inducted to
Speaker 1: the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Mike, before we get into
Speaker 1: the music, your brother Stan recently passed. What can you
Speaker 1: tell us about Stan.
Speaker 2: Well? I can tell you there was a fantastic athlete.
Speaker 2: You know, our our family was not only musical, but
Speaker 2: athletic as well. In fact, my father, Milton Love, was
Speaker 2: the All City inn at Washington High School in Los
Speaker 2: Angeles at seventeen years old. And he went to UCLA
Speaker 2: and he went out for football there and he got
Speaker 2: knocked out. So he said, well he's going to throw
Speaker 2: in the towel and do something different. But his he
Speaker 2: was the smart one that failed me. Is UCLA report
Speaker 2: card I guess he could call it was scary German trigonometry, physics,
Speaker 2: stuff like that, you know, Oh my gosh. And he
Speaker 2: was a boxer too. My dad was about six three
Speaker 2: and a little over a couple hundred pounds, and he
Speaker 2: did not want to make him angry. My mom, however,
Speaker 2: was from the Wilson side, and they had no money.
Speaker 2: But what they did have his voices, and they loved
Speaker 2: singing together. My uncle's sang harmonies, you know, four parts
Speaker 2: they sang together. And my mom sang on the radio,
Speaker 2: which is a big deal in the thirties and in
Speaker 2: early forties. And and yeah, she sang light opera and
Speaker 2: woke us up to go to school. I went to
Speaker 2: Dorsey High School, and she would wake us up to
Speaker 2: her opera music, which was brutal. But I grew up
Speaker 2: in a family home with a grand piano, some Dneway
Speaker 2: baby ground, a ham in Oregon, and a lion and
Speaker 2: Hailey harp. I have two sisters that play the harp.
Speaker 2: One Maureen played on a couple of her earlier songs.
Speaker 1: Oh so you know catch a wave exactly, which Jenn,
Speaker 1: indeed we did, is a sidewalk surface. But at any event,
Speaker 1: let's go about how many generations was your family in California.
Speaker 2: My mom came out five years old on a train
Speaker 2: from Kansas during the dust bol days, which preceded the
Speaker 2: Great Depression, and they didn't have any money. They called
Speaker 2: the people that came out to California and and camped
Speaker 2: on the beach. They call him Okie's, So all there
Speaker 2: was from Kansas there were Oakie's. And ironically they camped
Speaker 2: on the beach for a little while and before they
Speaker 2: found a home. And ironically, a generation later we sang
Speaker 2: about that very same environment and it caught on all
Speaker 2: around the world, which is pretty pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: Okay, so your father's side of the family, how did
Speaker 1: he get to California.
Speaker 2: My grandfather came from northern rural Louisiana plane dealing Louisiana
Speaker 2: in nineteen oh nine and started love sheet metal. He
Speaker 2: did kitchen equipment primarily. They did the galleys for worships
Speaker 2: during World War Two, and they did the UCLA Medical
Speaker 2: Center after the war. And he did a lot of
Speaker 2: Big Bob's Big Boy drive ins and things like that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: different things. So I was a an apprentice, a local
Speaker 2: one O eight, the sheet Metal Workers Union one O
Speaker 2: eight that, but you know, it wasn't that much fun.
Speaker 2: And actually, you know, my cousin Brian and I got
Speaker 2: together and wrote a song called Surfing in the fall
Speaker 2: of nineteen sixty one, and I did pretty well, and
Speaker 2: I got the attention of Capitol Records, and we did
Speaker 2: our song Surfing Safari and Surfer Girl and four O
Speaker 2: nine and that was on our first album. The cover
Speaker 2: being filmed or photographed at Paradise Co in Malaidu, Malibu,
Speaker 2: which was the site of the final scene of the
Speaker 2: Disney Plus documentary which is still streaming. And it was
Speaker 2: pretty amazing. Brian and I and Bruce and David Marx
Speaker 2: and Alan Jardine, we all got together and we actually
Speaker 2: sang together and reminisced and my cousin Brian. He has
Speaker 2: physical issues. I mean, it's hard for him to get
Speaker 2: around and in fact, recently he has been in Cedar
Speaker 2: Sinai with you know, lung problems. I guess you know,
Speaker 2: it could be related to pnemonia and stuff, which is
Speaker 2: very sad. But he has trouble getting around, but his
Speaker 2: long term memory is amazing. He was remembering stuff in
Speaker 2: our high school days that I'd honestly forgotten about. And
Speaker 2: so it was pretty fascinating to get together and reminisce
Speaker 2: and sang and all that it was. It was really
Speaker 2: a nice afternoon of good vibrations together.
Speaker 1: Okay, so how did your parents meet?
Speaker 2: My parents meet and met in high school in Washington
Speaker 2: High School and part of the Southern League of the
Speaker 2: La City School System. I went to Dorset High School.
Speaker 2: They went to Washington High School. That's where how they met.
Speaker 2: My mom was beautiful, she looked like a thirties forties
Speaker 2: movie star. And my dad was tall and handsome and athletic.
Speaker 2: And my mom was athletic. She she could play golf,
Speaker 2: she could play tennis, she could walk up the stairs
Speaker 2: on her hands. I mean, she was really amazingly you know, athletic.
Speaker 2: But her real love is music. And she created an
Speaker 2: atmosphere where there was no way we weren't going to
Speaker 2: be able to sing together. Because every Christmas, every Thanksgiving,
Speaker 2: every Fourth of July, every New Year's, every Birthday, the
Speaker 2: family would get together. And my mom was one of
Speaker 2: eight kids that lived in maturity and so there's there
Speaker 2: were four aunts and I mean my mom and three
Speaker 2: aunts and four uncles, one of which was Murray, the
Speaker 2: father of Brian Dennis and Carl Wilson. So we always
Speaker 2: got together for music. There's never been a time in
Speaker 2: my life when there wasn't music because it was it
Speaker 2: was in utero, you know, I mean, she was playing
Speaker 2: an opera when when she was carrying me. So where
Speaker 2: did you grow up in La the Baldwin Hills. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So what.
Speaker 1: Were they like then, because it's different today. Who lives there,
Speaker 1: et cetera.
Speaker 2: Well, there are bars in the window of our house
Speaker 2: that we should have, but we live in a place
Speaker 2: called Pill Hill because there were so many doctors and
Speaker 2: dennis living there. In fact, my friend Michael Coleman I
Speaker 2: used to play chess with him. He lived right up
Speaker 2: the street. And uh, when we went Christmas caroling, his
Speaker 2: family was Jewish, so we would something white on them,
Speaker 2: like jingle bells, and we'd leave save away in a
Speaker 2: manger for the next house. But we literally Christmas carold
Speaker 2: around the neighborhood. My dad would bring a truck home
Speaker 2: from Love sheet metal, and adults wo get on the
Speaker 2: truck and the kids would run around behind. Literally killed
Speaker 2: Christmas Carol. That's how it was in those days. And
Speaker 2: we had great friends from all kinds of ethnic and
Speaker 2: religious groups. And Dorsey High School was fascinating. There were
Speaker 2: there were the Japanese kids who had lived in they
Speaker 2: don't call them concentration camps in the United States. Interment. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they took their land and their everything away, and these
Speaker 2: kids I went to high school with, junior high and
Speaker 2: high school with, they taught me Japanese. Really, oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: It was really fascinating. I was able to count in
Speaker 2: Japanese and say a few words like Tomodachi means friend,
Speaker 2: iqin no siameans go ahead, Kuichi means well. Kuichi was
Speaker 2: the name. They wouldn't say that person is Jewish, ku
Speaker 2: is nine and ICHI's one, but nine and one are
Speaker 2: jew in Japanese, so they would say that person's Kuichi.
Speaker 2: So you know, we had blacks, and we had Jewish kids,
Speaker 2: and we had the Japanese kids and the waspy kids
Speaker 2: like me, and and just so many different ethnic groups,
Speaker 2: which is real education. And the fact the music that
Speaker 2: the black kids would sing in the showers and I
Speaker 2: was on the track team and the cross country team.
Speaker 2: It informed me in a lot of ways with some
Speaker 2: of the the things I would put him in in
Speaker 2: the lyrics that I came up with implement Brian's musical efforts, like,
Speaker 2: for instance, well since you put me down, I've been
Speaker 2: out doing in my head doing in I'll do. You know.
Speaker 1: I always wondered where that came from.
Speaker 2: That it came from high school, and you know, it
Speaker 2: was just an amazing, amazing experience, and it was it
Speaker 2: was really fascinating. I really loved growing up in la
Speaker 2: with all the different I would sit next to Fred Belitzer,
Speaker 2: who was a Sephardic Jew, and and he would hit
Speaker 2: me to all the if it was Russia, Shana, it
Speaker 2: was Joan Kapoor, whatever it was, he would he would
Speaker 2: let me know that these days were he was going
Speaker 2: to be taken off and I would take off too.
Speaker 2: And when the teacher would say, where were you, mister Love,
Speaker 2: I said, teach, it was the holidays. And I'm a
Speaker 2: spiritual guy. So I was always, always, always had an attitude,
Speaker 2: a little smart ass kind of the deal.
Speaker 1: So how many kids were in the family.
Speaker 2: Well, my mom had six kids. I'm the oldest.
Speaker 1: She had six kids. They all lived to maturity. Correct,
Speaker 1: what are the other five up to if they're still
Speaker 1: with us? Well, my brother Stan just passed away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that was my sister Stephanie sadly passed away maybe
Speaker 1: twenty years ago from cancer. My mom died of cancer
Speaker 1: at fifty nine years old.
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, they have the women on that side of
Speaker 2: the family carry that gene for that kind of you know,
Speaker 2: uterine kind of cancer and which spreads. Yeah, so that
Speaker 2: was sad.
Speaker 1: And the rest of the kids of the family would happen.
Speaker 2: Well, I have a brother who lives in Hawaii, and
Speaker 2: I have a baby sister who lives in New York
Speaker 2: with her Italian husband.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it sounds like your father was doing pretty
Speaker 1: well in the sheet metal a music.
Speaker 2: My grandfather and father Love she Mill did very well.
Speaker 2: In fact, my grandfather was he was amazing. He was,
Speaker 2: you know, just salt of the earth, just blue collar
Speaker 2: as he could be, but smart and hard working. And
Speaker 2: he he he liked Cadillacs. So we'd buy El Dorado
Speaker 2: convertible in the spring and a and a sedan in
Speaker 2: the fall. Oh yeah, two Cadillacs a year. So, I
Speaker 2: mean he'd be bidding on a job and he said, well,
Speaker 2: I'm going to put a couple thousand bucks more for
Speaker 2: another Cadillac. So for a couple of years there our
Speaker 2: family get handed down. We had a beautiful, uh fifty
Speaker 2: five El Dorado convertible. Yeah it was. It was great.
Speaker 2: And my dad, Miller in love he was a gearhead.
Speaker 2: He bought a fifty eight Chevy pickup and he put
Speaker 2: two dual cards on a quads yea. You know, so
Speaker 2: that inspired some of the lyrics for the car songs
Speaker 2: and actually the energy of the car songs that we
Speaker 2: did because we realize that not everyone had an ocean,
Speaker 2: but everyone loved the cars coming out of Detroit, and
Speaker 2: so we sang yeah songs and we related to all
Speaker 2: that with my cousin Dennis had a four on nine.
Speaker 1: Really okay, but ultimately you have megasuccess. You're a household name.
Speaker 1: In many cases, that person then buys their parents a house,
Speaker 1: or they have kids who live on the payroll. But
Speaker 1: your family was already doing pretty well well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but then love Sheet Mill had a bankruptcy. They
Speaker 2: bid on a thing that was impossible to pay, so
Speaker 2: it was a Chapter seven bankruptcy, which means it's over.
Speaker 2: So I ended up buying a house for my from
Speaker 2: my grandparents and helped out with my parents as well,
Speaker 2: which is good.
Speaker 1: Stan ultimately worked with Brian. But your other siblings did
Speaker 1: they do okay financially?
Speaker 2: My brother Steve was a business manager for a couple
Speaker 2: of years back in the sixties early seventies, and and yeah,
Speaker 2: so he did it okay, But he's been living in
Speaker 2: Hawaii for decades.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're the oldest kid, yes, you see, you
Speaker 1: have a little bit of an attitude. Well, you know
Speaker 1: your parents. Your father's a genius, he's going to UCLA etcter.
Speaker 1: Your mother's got these incredible musical skills. What kind of
Speaker 1: student were you?
Speaker 2: Not a good one? But I was the most well
Speaker 2: read kid in my grade school, junior high on high school.
Speaker 2: In fact, they had a thing called the Iowa Tests,
Speaker 2: which grades you how it gives you how how you're
Speaker 2: doing in terms of the United States, how everybody's doing,
Speaker 2: whether you're so I was given a ninety eight on
Speaker 2: my first Iowa test and that was in like the
Speaker 2: tenth grade, and so that was high there. I was
Speaker 2: along with a couple other kids, one of a good
Speaker 2: friend of mine, Tom doctor Emil Tom Tom Emil. He
Speaker 2: He and I used to chase butterflies when we were
Speaker 2: in the in grade school, and he kept on chasing.
Speaker 2: Has a degree two degrees in lepidoptery, which is a
Speaker 2: study of moths and butterflies, and so he was a
Speaker 2: professor of tenured at University of Florida and unfortunately passed away.
Speaker 2: A couple of years ago. But yeah, so i'm I'm
Speaker 2: wasn't a good student, but I was good at what
Speaker 2: I liked, which was history, literature, language, culture, religion, philosophy,
Speaker 2: and so I was very well read in certain areas.
Speaker 2: And so I kept that up through the sixties and
Speaker 2: read some very interesting things. And I was interested in
Speaker 2: the fact that that all these religions exist, and they
Speaker 2: all have great things to say in all the Ten
Speaker 2: Commandments and whatever, but the people can't live up to
Speaker 2: the religion religious In other words, nobody's ever delivered world
Speaker 2: peace in several thousand years of humanity, and to me,
Speaker 2: that's messed up. And that one He met marsh in
Speaker 2: December of sixty seven and he invited us, invited me
Speaker 2: to go to India, which I did go to India
Speaker 2: in the spring of sixty eight. In fact, George Harrison
Speaker 2: and I have our birthdays in Rishikesh, India, where the
Speaker 2: Ganges River come out comes out of the Himalayas. He
Speaker 2: on February twenty fifth, on March fifteenth, so we're both Pisces,
Speaker 2: and so that was fascinating. The Beatles sang this song
Speaker 2: called Spiritual Regeneration Movement Foundation, which can find online and
Speaker 2: at the end of it, they're going happy Birthday, Michael,
Speaker 2: Love Happy Birthday Michael, which is great. It was kind
Speaker 2: of like fun fun, fun sideways or something. You know.
Speaker 2: It's like a Beatles doing a beach boy esque kind
Speaker 2: of a birthday song, which was fascinating. And that was
Speaker 2: a mind blowing time with Marshie lecturing every day and
Speaker 2: encouraging people to go and meditate for as long as
Speaker 2: they're comfortable. In fact, Prudence Farrow what would meditate for
Speaker 2: three days in a row and they had to go
Speaker 2: get her And that's the subject matter of prudence. John
Speaker 2: Lennon came up with Dear Prudence, once you come out
Speaker 2: and play, it's a brand new day and you know
Speaker 2: that kind of thing, right, Okay, what made you such
Speaker 2: a big reader? And are you still a reader today?
Speaker 2: Not as much as I was, but I read a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff, and so I'm very sensitive and interested
Speaker 2: in philosophy and religion and all that. And with meditation,
Speaker 2: with transident meditation is that this is the technique that Mari,
Speaker 2: she teaches. In Sanskrit, they'd probably call it raj yoga
Speaker 2: yoga meaning union. So there's different ways of gaining union
Speaker 2: with the infinite, and one of them is through meditation.
Speaker 2: There are other ways of well, so I was just
Speaker 2: fascinating him by the whole thing. He was talking about
Speaker 2: world peace. The Vietnam War was going on. In fact,
Speaker 2: the woman at the teacher training course in Rishi Kiss
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty eight her son was in the military
Speaker 2: and Vietnam. Yeah, and so it was really interesting to
Speaker 2: me the dichotomy of here were in a meditation a
Speaker 2: treat in India with Marishi. He's talking about world peace.
Speaker 2: If enough people meditated, there would become world peace, and
Speaker 2: yet at the same time there was all this crap
Speaker 2: going on in the world. So to me it was fascinating.
Speaker 2: It really it really touched me that the idea of
Speaker 2: if enough people were more creative through the meditation, we'd
Speaker 2: create our ways out of negative situation rather than kill
Speaker 2: each other in genocide, which is been the history of humanity,
Speaker 2: which I think is disgusting. And yeah, so I learned
Speaker 2: a lot from Marishi and being introduced to what they
Speaker 2: call the Vedas, which to these ancient scriptures. Not that
Speaker 2: I know a lot about them, but I know several
Speaker 2: things derived from them. And so it's been a big,
Speaker 2: huge help in my life because with mine meditating regularly,
Speaker 2: it kept me from making lifestyle choices let's say, aren't
Speaker 2: so positive, you know, with too much alcohol or drugs
Speaker 2: or whatever whatever kind of excesses. So it's been a
Speaker 2: huge help to my life.
Speaker 1: Okay, your mother came from a family eight kids. Was
Speaker 1: there a special relationship with the Wilsons headed by Murray
Speaker 1: Wilson in that family or did you have relationships like
Speaker 1: that with all the Wilsons.
Speaker 2: I think that was the most important because my cousin
Speaker 2: Brian was about a year younger than I, and he
Speaker 2: and I are very close. In fact, when I went
Speaker 2: on a senior trip to Catalina, I invited Brian to go,
Speaker 2: and we would go to each other's games and football
Speaker 2: games and stuff like that. And by the way, Brian,
Speaker 2: Brian Wilson could throw football as far as any NFL
Speaker 2: quarterback ever could. He was so strong in his upper
Speaker 2: body he could throw that football seventy yards. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's unbelievable. So he was at one time in his life.
Speaker 2: He is very very athletic, and so he got some
Speaker 2: of that athleticism, but the musical part. His mom Mayanne Audrey,
Speaker 2: and of course Uncle Murray was a aspiring songwriter. But
Speaker 2: my mom said that Anne Audrey was the most gifted
Speaker 2: musical person she had ever met, because she could hear
Speaker 2: a song and just play it on the rate on
Speaker 2: the on the piano after just hearing it once.
Speaker 1: Okay, you hear the famous story that Marie and Audrey
Speaker 1: go out of town Brian rintz instruments and you record,
Speaker 1: surfit What had happened before that? Had you guys talked
Speaker 1: about making music, had you been making on a music
Speaker 1: at an amateur level, or did it literally start that weekend?
Speaker 2: We were only doing stuff as family, you know, if
Speaker 2: there was a family get together and it was let's
Speaker 2: say we've done our Christmas caroling, okay, well, then the
Speaker 2: kids would Brian and I and maybe Carl and my
Speaker 2: sister Mariene would peel off and we do our everly
Speaker 2: brothers and our do wop and things like that, just
Speaker 2: singing the music of the day that appealed to us
Speaker 2: while the parents were doing their their their songs.
Speaker 1: So is that a true story that the parents went
Speaker 1: out of town and Brian rented this equipment and you
Speaker 1: guys cut music. Is that the way it happened absolutely.
Speaker 2: In fact, Alan Jardine went to his mom to ask
Speaker 2: for some money to rent the music instruments and we
Speaker 2: did do that and it was pretty pretty funky. There
Speaker 2: was I mean, Carl played the guitar, Brian I think
Speaker 2: hit the snare drum and it was The song Surfing
Speaker 2: was really basic, but it was a patterned after the
Speaker 2: dou wop kind of genre. Bomb bomb dipped it it,
Speaker 2: bomb bomped it, you know that? But interesting enough. Sunday
Speaker 2: yesterday we we did the Beach Live festival in Redondo
Speaker 2: Beach and you could look over there and the Redondo
Speaker 2: Beach breakwater where cousin Dennis and I went fishing one time,
Speaker 2: and then we were talking about surfing, and then he
Speaker 2: went back home and talked to his brother Brian about surfing.
Speaker 2: And then I got together with Brian and we created
Speaker 2: that's first song Surfing. And just after no more than
Speaker 2: a month or two, we were on the radio in
Speaker 2: southern cal that weekend.
Speaker 1: Did you record surf in that weekend? And was it
Speaker 1: written that weekend or before? We wrote it first? And
Speaker 1: then we recorded it in a little studio in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: The studio was owned by a guy named Height Morgan
Speaker 1: and his wife Trinda, and they had us to a
Speaker 1: song called Luau that they came up for the B
Speaker 1: side of Surfing. But Surfing came out on Candix Records,
Speaker 1: and the guy who ran that record company ran it
Speaker 1: out of his car. In fact, he declared bankruptcy. We
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to pay.
Speaker 2: Us right right. So it was pretty basic, but it
Speaker 2: did get the attention because it did really well in
Speaker 2: LA and a couple other places. It got the attention
Speaker 2: of Capitol Records, which as, yeah, how old.
Speaker 1: Were you and what was your life about when Surfing
Speaker 1: got on there? I was twenty and your future was
Speaker 1: going to be working in the sheet metal.
Speaker 2: Well I don't know about that because I didn't like
Speaker 2: it that much. But in fact I told my dad, well,
Speaker 2: he said, what if the music doesn't work out? I said, well,
Speaker 2: I guess I'll be back here scraping shut off of metal.
Speaker 2: Because what you do is there's a.
Speaker 1: Will.
Speaker 2: The will leaves us a little bit of slag on top,
Speaker 2: so you have to clean that up and make it
Speaker 2: look nice and pretty. So I did stuff like that
Speaker 2: and installations and things. It was not fun, but it
Speaker 2: was a living and I had a wife and one
Speaker 2: child and another child. So Bury my heart school sweetheart
Speaker 2: who was cheerleader, and Al was the track star, you know.
Speaker 2: So but we, of course, we we came up with
Speaker 2: the song and then we recorded it quite soon thereafter.
Speaker 2: And then there's a guy named Russ Reagan, who, yeah,
Speaker 2: a really nice guy. He was. He was a record
Speaker 2: promotion man at the time, and he heard we were
Speaker 2: calling ourselves the Pendletones because Pendleton mills, the Pendleton plaid,
Speaker 2: Pendleton wool shirts. You would wear those over a T
Speaker 2: shirt because when the sun went down and it started
Speaker 2: to get cold, it's good to have a penalton on
Speaker 2: over your T shirt. And I'm talking about the beach.
Speaker 2: And but Russ Reagan said, well, it's called surfing about
Speaker 2: the beach. Boys lots better than Penaltons. So it stuck.
Speaker 2: Russ Reagan.
Speaker 1: Named us, okay, so surfing comes out on Candix. He
Speaker 1: heared on the local radio. This Capitol Records approached you
Speaker 1: as Murray approached Capital.
Speaker 2: Murray through an attorney, Al Selessinger, who represented him and us.
Speaker 2: In fact, the other guys. I was the only guy
Speaker 2: when we signed with Capitol Records. I just turned twenty
Speaker 2: one in the March, and we signed it after that,
Speaker 2: so I didn't need court approval, but the rest of
Speaker 2: the guys did, so Yeah, it was Murray who sought out.
Speaker 2: It was turned down by several places, but a guy
Speaker 2: named Nick Venet, who was a producer at Capital, like
Speaker 2: what we were doing. But Brian was such as we
Speaker 2: were self voting. Brian was gifted when it came to
Speaker 2: working in the studio and he he very quickly. First
Speaker 2: of all, he didn't need any help, and he knew
Speaker 2: what he wanted to hear, and he very quickly became
Speaker 2: a master of the studio, especially with some of the
Speaker 2: greatest musicians in California. When La they call him the
Speaker 2: Wrecking Crew because the musicians who played in orchestras and
Speaker 2: symphonies thought they were going to wreck the music business,
Speaker 2: but instead they did all these fantastic, great hits. And
Speaker 2: that's how we met Glenn Campbell, who took Brian's place.
Speaker 2: And when Brian left the group in the live group
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty four, what people don't really understand is
Speaker 2: there have been two groups since nineteen sixty four, the
Speaker 2: touring group and the recording group. And of course Brian
Speaker 2: was the head of the recording group, and he left
Speaker 2: in order to be able to devote all his time
Speaker 2: to music and production and arranging and dealing with the tracks.
Speaker 2: A case in point, he was in the studio in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty five with the Wrecking Crew doing this great
Speaker 2: track with a great overture. It was called California Girls.
Speaker 2: And that's all he had is California Girls. And I
Speaker 2: stepped out in the hallway and wrote the lyrics. Well,
Speaker 2: Theast Coast girls are hip. I really dig the styles
Speaker 2: they wear. And the Southern girls and the way they talk.
Speaker 2: They knocked me out when I'm down there. The Midwest
Speaker 2: farmers daughters, they really make you feel all right in
Speaker 2: the Northern girls of where they kiss, they keep their
Speaker 2: boy kiss, keep their boyfriend's warm at night. That caught
Speaker 2: on all over the place, and yeah, it's still one
Speaker 2: of my favorite songs for saying, oh.
Speaker 1: Listen, incredible. So but let's go back. Nick Vinet signed you.
Speaker 1: Now you have to do an album on that album
Speaker 1: that surf in Safari four oh nine, ten Little Indians.
Speaker 1: You gotta have ten songs. Where do you get the
Speaker 1: ten songs?
Speaker 2: Well, we made them up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, did you get were you so young the
Speaker 1: you say, oh we can do this in a second.
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Were you intimidated like we.
Speaker 2: Were intimidated at all? No, we but you know, the
Speaker 2: record company Capitol Records division of E. M I Worldwide,
Speaker 2: which is the same record company the Beatles were on.
Speaker 2: We they were hounding us for an album every few months.
Speaker 2: In fact, Brian was working on the Pet Sounds album
Speaker 2: and doing these amazing tracks and and he needed more time,
Speaker 2: and they were hounding us for records. So we said,
Speaker 2: I said, Brian, why don't we do a song called
Speaker 2: a party album which consists of a bunch of songs
Speaker 2: we just liked singing, you know, And so we did
Speaker 2: bar barn Off that album, which right, yeah, and that
Speaker 2: was recorded in sixty five, late sixty five, but Barbara
Speaker 2: became a huge hit in early sixty six. Then then
Speaker 2: that gave us the time to do the Pet Sounds
Speaker 2: album properly, which came out in mid sixty six, and
Speaker 2: then of course Good Vibrations came out in the fall
Speaker 2: of sixty six. That was an enormous year for the
Speaker 2: Beach Boys.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the second album, Surfing USA. Can you tell
Speaker 1: us about shut down or any other songs you wrote
Speaker 1: for that album.
Speaker 2: Brian became friends with a guy named Roger Christian who
Speaker 2: was a disc jockey in LA and he was gearhead.
Speaker 2: He came up with some great lyrics. You know. I
Speaker 2: was Shutdown, little Loose, coup Car, crazy Cutie, some really
Speaker 2: fun songs. I sang the lead on a lot of those,
Speaker 2: and of course Brian did his high parts and the
Speaker 2: other guys filled in with the harmonies and so yeah,
Speaker 2: it was just a lot of energy going on and
Speaker 2: a lot of you know, desire for the record company
Speaker 2: to have another album, always having another album. So we
Speaker 2: we did a whole bunch of albums, and I think
Speaker 2: there have been there are gems on each one of
Speaker 2: those albums. You know, we did so many of them
Speaker 2: back in the day in.
Speaker 1: Such a well, I just know on the second album
Speaker 1: there's Farmer's Daughter and there's the Lonely Sea. Yeah really
Speaker 1: and okay, so then you wrote the lyrics for Fun, Fun, Fun.
Speaker 2: Just well, we were really popular in Salt Lake City.
Speaker 2: I don't know why, but we were. And we would
Speaker 2: there was a place called the Lagoon, which is a
Speaker 2: theme park in Salt Lake City, so we would go
Speaker 2: up in the open the theme park in the beginning
Speaker 2: of the summer, come in the middle of the summer,
Speaker 2: and close the theme park in the early fall. And
Speaker 2: one of those times we'd gone up there, we were
Speaker 2: we took a taxi from the Holiday Inn in Salt
Speaker 2: Lake City to the airport to fly back to la
Speaker 2: and I said, Brian, we got to do a song
Speaker 2: about a girl who borrows her dad's car and instead
Speaker 2: of going to library, she goes cruising with it, and
Speaker 2: so that became the intro the you know, Carl came
Speaker 2: up with the intro of the guitar intro of fun, fun, Fun,
Speaker 2: and we we you know, we had a great time
Speaker 2: with that. In fact, we closed our show at the
Speaker 2: Beach Life Festival with fun, Fun, Fun, and people love it.
Speaker 2: I don't know if the kids these days even though
Speaker 2: what a Ta Bird is right, but it's such a
Speaker 2: fun song. And when Brian hit that high part at
Speaker 2: the end, oh my god. It has to be responsible
Speaker 2: for a lot of tickets, because if you're cruising your car,
Speaker 2: it's just just like like amazing, uplifting song, you know,
Speaker 2: and it's all positive.
Speaker 1: It's all My father had a t bird and my
Speaker 1: sister was going to the library, so it became a
Speaker 1: family joke exactly. Okay. So then was your time at
Speaker 1: the lagoon the inspiration for Salt Lake City on summer
Speaker 1: days and summer nights?
Speaker 2: Exactly? It sure was, and we can still do it
Speaker 2: whenever we go to Utah, we'll do Salt Lake City
Speaker 2: and people love it.
Speaker 1: Okay. So then ultimately you have the all Summer Long
Speaker 1: album and you're in the movie Girls on the Beach.
Speaker 1: Do you remember making that movie?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So what was that experience like it was?
Speaker 2: I mean, the beach boys in a movie doing a song.
Speaker 2: It's not exactly We're not like you know, Brad Pitt
Speaker 2: or anybody you know. We're not Tom Cruise. We're just
Speaker 2: a bunch of guys you know, from the neighborhood singing
Speaker 2: our songs and we're happy to be doing them on
Speaker 2: in the soundtrack of an album. But our music has
Speaker 2: been featured in so many soundtracks over the years. I mean,
Speaker 2: Shampoo with Warren Beatty.
Speaker 1: That brought back, wouldn't it be nice? Unbelievable it did.
Speaker 2: But also fifty First Dates was huge, I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: and and California Girls with the rush Hour films that
Speaker 2: Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker. They use California Giles I
Speaker 2: think three times and yeah. So it's been fascinating to
Speaker 2: see how many movies, including Cocktail of course with Kokomo,
Speaker 2: have featured our songs. We've been very, very very blessed
Speaker 2: to that producers like to use our songs in the movies.
Speaker 2: In fact, Cocktail, the movie, the director says, can you
Speaker 2: do a song? Tom Cruise a bar turn. He's going
Speaker 2: from New York to Jamaica, And we did a song
Speaker 2: by assignment. We didn't come up with that song. They said,
Speaker 2: can you come up with the song? Well, Terry Milcher
Speaker 2: was the producer of the song. He was friends with
Speaker 2: John Phillips of the Mamas and Papas, and John Phillips
Speaker 2: had this really nice melody off the Florida Keys. There's
Speaker 2: a place called Cocomo. That's where we used to go
Speaker 2: to get away from Rome. I said, hold on, that's
Speaker 2: where we used to go, implies the guy thinking about
Speaker 2: as misspent youth or something. I said, I just changed
Speaker 2: one thing in the verse. That's where you want to
Speaker 2: go to get away from It's a tense change and
Speaker 2: it made it inclusive. And then I came up with
Speaker 2: the chorus Aruba, Jamaica. Who I want to take it
Speaker 2: to Bermuda? Come on pretty much? So come on pretty,
Speaker 2: wamos to me. It could be a kid thinking his
Speaker 2: mom is pretty. It could be an older couple saying
Speaker 2: let's get in the RV and going on to Florida.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So it just fit every generation, and of course it was.
Speaker 2: It became the biggest selling single of our career, even
Speaker 2: bigger than Good Vibrations, which is saying something. And then
Speaker 2: then we got on Full House. John Stamos loved the
Speaker 2: Beach Boys and he loves to play drums with us.
Speaker 2: He was playing with us at the at the Beach
Speaker 2: Life Festival just recently, so he he wanted us on
Speaker 2: Full House. And we did that song on Full House,
Speaker 2: and we've been seen on TV reruns a Full House
Speaker 2: by millions of people over the last thirty some odd years.
Speaker 1: Let's go back though sixty years. Tell us about I
Speaker 1: Get Around.
Speaker 2: Brian came up with a song I get Around. He said,
Speaker 2: I get around from town to town. I'm a real
Speaker 2: cool head. I'm making real good bread. I was thinking
Speaker 2: that's a little braggadocius, just a tad and but He
Speaker 2: had an intro that was kind of meandering, a lot
Speaker 2: of little honeys who were hanging around and all this
Speaker 2: kind of stuff. I said, no, no, no, let's start it
Speaker 2: like we did Barbaran. Now Barbara is Bob Bob bah.
Speaker 2: So I said, let's do round round, get her around.
Speaker 2: I get her around. So I came up with that
Speaker 2: concept and that hook, and of course he did beautiful
Speaker 2: stuff with the harmonies with it, and it came together beautiful.
Speaker 2: I wrote the words to the verses, and so it
Speaker 2: was a true collaboration. He had the I get around
Speaker 2: from town to town. I'm a real cool head. I'm
Speaker 2: making real good bread. I came up the round round,
Speaker 2: get a round part and the lyrics of the verse.
Speaker 1: Okay, Murray is the manager at this point. He is
Speaker 1: portrayed as a tyrant somewhat abusive. What was your experience?
Speaker 2: He was a tyrant and somewhat abusive to his kids.
Speaker 2: Mainly they built bore the brunt of it. But he
Speaker 2: wasn't nice to me. See, I wrote every single syllable
Speaker 2: to surf in USA, but I was not I was
Speaker 2: not credited, nor was I credited or to help me
Speaker 2: Rondo or California girls or I get around. Murray took
Speaker 2: over the publishing. I didn't even know what publishing was.
Speaker 2: Come from a sheet metal family background, didn't even know
Speaker 2: what publishings. I knew he had to sign a you know,
Speaker 2: sign your name to a songwriting contract, but that was
Speaker 2: the extent of my knowledge. I didn't know the value
Speaker 2: of publishing, and I rely on my uncle and my
Speaker 2: cousin to take care of that part because, you know, frankly,
Speaker 2: I didn't know anything, and my uncle Murray knew stuff
Speaker 2: about that, but he really mistreated me, and he ended
Speaker 2: up selling The Sea of Tunes, which destroyed Brian Wilson emotionally.
Speaker 2: But Murray was that way. He didn't care. He just
Speaker 2: wanted something for himself, you know, and he did. He
Speaker 2: got a few hundred thousand bucks and then he died
Speaker 2: three years later.
Speaker 1: And tell me about getting rid of him as the manager.
Speaker 2: Well, Brian and I told him that we could no
Speaker 2: longer have be manager. But the roay he got even
Speaker 2: with me is to disinclude me on on the what
Speaker 2: I did with Brian lyrically.
Speaker 1: So to what degree has that been rectified now?
Speaker 2: It's hard to say the percentage of the ones I
Speaker 2: just enumerated have been rectified, but there's probably thirty or
Speaker 2: forty more songs that have yet to be rectified. And
Speaker 2: who owns those songs today? Universal Music they bought the
Speaker 2: see if well A and m res Irving. Almo Music
Speaker 2: bought Sea of Tunes in the late sixties and then
Speaker 2: years later they sold sold their catalog of Beach Boys
Speaker 2: songs and others to Universal Music.
Speaker 1: I thought that as a lawsuit that Brian got something back.
Speaker 2: Well, there was a lawsuit. Brian was under the control
Speaker 2: of doctor Eugene Landy at one point in time, and
Speaker 2: doctor Landy came up with an idea to go and
Speaker 2: try to get the publishing back. But they they stopped
Speaker 2: short of getting the publishing, and they took something like
Speaker 2: ten dollars, which a lot of them went to attorneys
Speaker 2: and stuff, and I don't know how much Landy got,
Speaker 2: but they solicited me. They wanted me to cooperate with that,
Speaker 2: which I did, and they were supposed to compensate me
Speaker 2: and start paying me on these songs that I wrote
Speaker 2: with Brian, but they didn't. So I was fortunate enough
Speaker 2: to find an attorney who was able to pierce There
Speaker 2: was some fraud involved, and rather than going to the
Speaker 2: ugily details of that, I was able to overcome to
Speaker 2: a certain degree. Maybe about thirty five songs. Okay, so
Speaker 2: today universal loans of songs. There's the publishing share and
Speaker 2: there's the writing share. That's right.
Speaker 1: Are you getting paid on those songs today?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: And are you I'm sure you're happy to get paid
Speaker 1: at all as opposed to Candix? Yeah, ripping you off?
Speaker 1: But have you made peace with what you're making or
Speaker 1: are you still sort of upset you today and can
Speaker 1: get the credit and the money you want.
Speaker 2: I am not happy with what happened to me, but
Speaker 2: I am very blessed to have a healthy life, a
Speaker 2: positive life. I've done six or seven thousand concerts over
Speaker 2: the years as the lead singer in the live Beach
Speaker 2: Boys group. So there's two groups, the recording group and
Speaker 2: the live group. My cousin Karl and I were in
Speaker 2: charge of the live group. He the musical side, made
Speaker 2: the I would meet with the agents and managers and
Speaker 2: talk about, you know, where we're going to go and
Speaker 2: who we're going to promote with. There's certain areas that
Speaker 2: were controlled by very powerful promoters which you could not
Speaker 2: go in without getting you know, you just couldn't buy
Speaker 2: the right time at the radio stations or or the
Speaker 2: rent the venue, but there were places that you go,
Speaker 2: so it was I wasn't busy with that. I always
Speaker 2: liked the live music part of things. The reason being
Speaker 2: that the audience response is so amazing. It's so uplifting.
Speaker 2: So I mean, all agents have a smile on their face,
Speaker 2: they're singing along, So how could you not like that,
Speaker 2: you know, So I've always favored the live music part
Speaker 2: of it. The recording music of music is very necessary
Speaker 2: you're in the studio. It's somewhat claustrophobic, I have to say,
Speaker 2: but it's fantastic as far as getting the sound that
Speaker 2: you want. And so the two different groups coexisted. Of
Speaker 2: course when Brian was at his peak, it was just phenomenal.
Speaker 2: If you listen to the there's a box set that
Speaker 2: they put out years ago of the pet Sounds album.
Speaker 2: They had just the vocals and just the tracks. The
Speaker 2: tracks are amazing. You listen to us. How did he
Speaker 2: come up with that? But he did, and the vocals
Speaker 2: we labored over, like wouldn't it be nice? One section
Speaker 2: for maybe twenty five takes to make it perfect. In fact,
Speaker 2: at that point in time I called Brian dogg ears
Speaker 2: because he heard stuff the human beings on them, you know,
Speaker 2: so that it was okay? Yeah.
Speaker 1: So was Brian always one step removed or was he
Speaker 1: a normal kid and made a left turn?
Speaker 2: Emotionally? What I think Brian is is extremely sensitive. And
Speaker 2: he had a father was, as he said, tyrant, and
Speaker 2: he would tell Brian that he didn't know what he
Speaker 2: was doing, and that was so wrong because Brian totally
Speaker 2: heard what he wanted to hear in that studio, and
Speaker 2: you'd have a drunken Murray come in and try to
Speaker 2: impose his will on things and stuff, and that's what
Speaker 2: we had to get rid of him as a manager.
Speaker 2: So but he was very sensitive, but he was also gullible.
Speaker 2: People would come and turn him on to various things.
Speaker 2: In fact, one of the last tours we were on,
Speaker 2: I went to his room and there was a light
Speaker 2: bulb and this and that paraphernalia, and I was thinking, WHOA,
Speaker 2: this is not good. I was very angry. So he
Speaker 2: was experimenting with things due to associates of his that
Speaker 2: probably didn't have a well being in mind. Let's put
Speaker 2: it that way, and that influenced him in a in
Speaker 2: a not so great way. In fact, when we did
Speaker 2: the pet Sounds album that was one thing, but the
Speaker 2: Smile album, I came up with the term acid alliteration
Speaker 2: because some of the lyrics were I don't know, I
Speaker 2: couldn't relate to them. I think lyrics are meant to
Speaker 2: communicate normally, and sometimes they get a little obtuse.
Speaker 1: Okay, so how did you feel about Van Dyke Parks
Speaker 1: who wrote a lot of those.
Speaker 2: That's the guy who inspired my term acid alliteration.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know schizophrenia, assuming we that is his diagnosis.
Speaker 1: Without going deep into Brian, it tends to occur in
Speaker 1: the late twenties when Brian started to take a left turn.
Speaker 1: Do you believe that element was always in there? Do
Speaker 1: you believe it was drugs? What do you think changed them?
Speaker 2: My personal philosophy, I don't know if it's true or not,
Speaker 2: is that people think they're creative because the drugs they
Speaker 2: took I say were creative in spite of it. So
Speaker 2: he has an amazing amount of creativity. He could sit
Speaker 2: down on the piano right now, and even though he
Speaker 2: has a walker in a wheelchair, and he can't get
Speaker 2: around very good. He can get around just fine on
Speaker 2: a keyboard, and he has his talent, he has his abilities.
Speaker 2: But when you take a sensitive person and introduce him
Speaker 2: to stuff that, whether it be LSD, cocaine, heroin, pot
Speaker 2: whatever it is, you don't know what the results are
Speaker 2: going to be. Some people can do that stuff and
Speaker 2: come out just fine and some people don't. And so
Speaker 2: my cousin Brian, I think he shelved the Smile album
Speaker 2: because he felt that he was doing the elements earthwater, fire,
Speaker 2: and air, and we did a fire session and there
Speaker 2: was a fire not so far away and he felt
Speaker 2: that he caused it by doing the fire sessions. So that's,
Speaker 2: you know, things that go on that make you diagnosis
Speaker 2: paranoid schizophrenia. I don't know if that's the current term,
Speaker 2: but that's what it is. You get paranoid from the
Speaker 2: stuff you've been doing. I mean, we're all paranoid about
Speaker 2: some things and whatever. Life is that way, and we
Speaker 2: all have a fight or flight and adrenaline and maybe
Speaker 2: too much fatigue, the blood of lactate and all that.
Speaker 2: It's all physiological and cycle physiological. But if you put
Speaker 2: something into certain people who are very sensitive to begin with,
Speaker 2: and you don't know what the outcome is going to be.
Speaker 2: Sometimes that outcome can be okay, but a lot of
Speaker 2: times it's very destructive.
Speaker 1: Okay. So an album called Smiley Smile comes out, It's
Speaker 1: got good vibrations, heroes and villains. Then Wild Honey and
Speaker 1: do It Again.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I love those songs.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: So how does control of the about Darlin?
Speaker 1: Oh? Absolutely, yeah, you know. But there's that, there's the
Speaker 1: Friend's album, there's twenty twenty. What is the difference in
Speaker 1: recording those records as opposed to, you know, before Smiley Smiled,
Speaker 1: before Brian you know, went into his own world.
Speaker 2: Well, we actually put a recording study in Brian's home
Speaker 2: in bel Air and we were able to do the
Speaker 2: Wild Honey album there. In fact, I went to the
Speaker 2: kitchen and he owned a health food store called the
Speaker 2: Radiant Radish at the time, and I opened the cabinet
Speaker 2: because I was making some tea, and I looked up
Speaker 2: and I said wild Honey, And I said, that's a
Speaker 2: great title for a girl or a guy who's in
Speaker 2: love with this girl and maybe his mom doesn't feel
Speaker 2: the same way, like she's good enough for her son,
Speaker 2: but he's intent on being with this girl. So I
Speaker 2: wrote the lyrics while the guys were doing the track.
Speaker 2: And that was because I saw that wild Honey and
Speaker 2: I said, what a great title.
Speaker 1: Now on that album, Carl starts to sing more. He sings,
Speaker 1: you know, I was made to lover?
Speaker 2: He did.
Speaker 1: Is that just happened naturally? Or is he feeling a
Speaker 1: vacancy that Brian used? Tell and how do you feel.
Speaker 2: That, Colonel Bryant. Carl, it was just his own force
Speaker 2: of nature when I came to the vocals, I mean
Speaker 2: sang the lead on God only knows, Okay, that's phenomenal,
Speaker 2: sang the lead the lyrics, I mean the verses of
Speaker 2: Good Vibrations, which went to number one. And I don't
Speaker 2: know if you knew this, but as a psychologist in Sheffield, England,
Speaker 2: a couple of years ago said that Good Vibrations was
Speaker 2: the number one song for making people feel good.
Speaker 1: Really, I didn't know.
Speaker 2: All these years later, I'll take it. It's pretty amazing
Speaker 2: and it's true it just puts a smile on piece
Speaker 2: of people's faces. But at any rate, so Carl did,
Speaker 2: I was I was made the lover, which the Stevie
Speaker 2: wonder song. I thought he did an amazing, amazing, amazing
Speaker 2: but Darlin I wrote the words that the guys did
Speaker 2: the track, Well.
Speaker 1: Where did the words come from?
Speaker 2: It was just a romantic, romantic poem that I came
Speaker 2: up with, similar to the poem of good Vibrations. I
Speaker 2: don't know if words could say, but Darling will find
Speaker 2: a way to let you know what you meant to me.
Speaker 2: I guess it was meant to be, you know that
Speaker 2: kind of thing. So it was just a beautiful little poem,
Speaker 2: a romantic poem about how special this squirrel made you feel.
Speaker 2: I think sort of the sweetest songs.
Speaker 1: Okay. Conventional wisdom is that you and Dennis butted heads.
Speaker 1: How is your relationship with Dennis and how is your
Speaker 1: relationship with Carl?
Speaker 2: Carl was number of Dennis was a problem because he
Speaker 2: did drugs and alcohol. We had to actually kick him
Speaker 2: out of the group from time to time because he,
Speaker 2: you know, he was unstable. But even it was interesting
Speaker 2: even though he was had been drinking or something. If
Speaker 2: we ever found ourselves together in a situation, he said,
Speaker 2: let's meditate. He is the guy who called and said,
Speaker 2: you know, I'd gone back to England. From Paris in
Speaker 2: December sixty seven when he there his unise show there
Speaker 2: and Dennis called and said, you got to come back
Speaker 2: to Paris. I said, why because Maurice is going to
Speaker 2: teach us to meditate. So you sure He says, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think so. I said, we'll find out for sure.
Speaker 2: So he did call me back a little while later.
Speaker 2: He says, yeah, it's on it. Come in tomorrow and
Speaker 2: you're supposed to bring fruit and flowers and a handkerchief,
Speaker 2: and which we did. We got some flowers. There was
Speaker 2: a Sunday and about the week before Christmas and Mari
Speaker 2: she taught many of us meditation. He first he met
Speaker 2: with us until it was told us what it was about.
Speaker 2: Then he brought us back in and actually taught us,
Speaker 2: which was fascinating, and I was the most relaxed I'd
Speaker 2: ever been in life through the meditation. I said, well,
Speaker 2: this is so simple to do that anybody can do it,
Speaker 2: and if everybody did it, it'd be an entirely different world.
Speaker 2: And that was his old plan, is to create something
Speaker 2: that which could create world peace. So that really affected me.
Speaker 2: But Dennis, because of that connection through meditation and we
Speaker 2: uh even though he would go off the deep end,
Speaker 2: literally and figuratively with alcohol and drugs. I mean we
Speaker 2: had to. He was dating the girl who who would
Speaker 2: introduce him to heroin, and we had to throw heroin away.
Speaker 2: I mean our road manager I had to take and
Speaker 2: throw it in the throw it away and as we
Speaker 2: went into New Zealand because they don't look kindly importing
Speaker 2: heroin there, nor do they like that in Singapore. And
Speaker 2: the fact that says on the boarding or the entry
Speaker 2: card that says importation of drugs is punishable by death, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that'll get your attention. But anyway, so he had these
Speaker 2: this he was very generous and all kinds of great things,
Speaker 2: but and a lot of energy and charisma. But he
Speaker 2: couldn't get off those dependencies and it screwed him up.
Speaker 2: I mean he ended up drowning in the La Marina
Speaker 2: and under the influence.
Speaker 1: Do you think he did ship just to piss you off.
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 2: I think he was just out of his mind through
Speaker 2: the alcohol and the drugs. I don't think he did
Speaker 2: it on purpose. I just think everybody acts differently. Some
Speaker 2: people go to sleep if they drink too much, and
Speaker 2: some people get crazy when they drink too much. Well,
Speaker 2: he was a crazy part.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to the beginning. How does al
Speaker 1: Jardine leave the group replaced by Dave Marx in the
Speaker 1: Al Jardine come back and replace David Marx.
Speaker 2: Well, he thought he'd be best off going to dental school,
Speaker 2: so he'd quit the group after surfing came out. And
Speaker 2: there was a neighbor of the Wilson's where David Marx
Speaker 2: lived across the street, and they used to play guitar
Speaker 2: with Carls. He was a real natural fit. So he
Speaker 2: was a rhythm guitarist and he really nice guy. Another
Speaker 2: fellow who you know, let his you know, didn't maintain
Speaker 2: his sobriety. So great and it's been through a rough
Speaker 2: time for a lot of his life. But a great
Speaker 2: guy and a good guitar player. But his parents were
Speaker 2: I mean, he was a very young guy, fourteen fifteen
Speaker 2: years old, and his parents were vigilant. And Murray was
Speaker 2: doing what he wanted to do with the group and
Speaker 2: they didn't approve of it. So Murray set it up
Speaker 2: to fire David and brought out Jardine back in not
Speaker 2: as a principal but as a paid employee for a while.
Speaker 2: Before he became a full partner.
Speaker 1: So was said that he wanted Al Jardine in the group.
Speaker 1: Where did he really want David Marks out?
Speaker 2: He wanted Dave Marks out because I think his parents
Speaker 2: were or not, you know, in favor of the whimery
Speaker 2: was treating him. But the thing is, Ellen Jardine has
Speaker 2: a great voice. He's an amazing singer, and so he
Speaker 2: could you know, people can sing a note, but can
Speaker 2: they blend. He could blend with Carl and Brian and
Speaker 2: myself very well. And so yeah, it was it was
Speaker 2: a good addition there. So can you tell us about
Speaker 2: the two versions have helped me? Ron It comes out
Speaker 2: on Beach Boys Today in one version, then there's a
Speaker 2: hit version which is included in Summer Days and Summer Nights.
Speaker 2: That's right, Well helped me run to the original version
Speaker 2: was what it was. But we thought we could have
Speaker 2: a little bit and I came over with a couple
Speaker 2: of ball pop bops and stuff. I wrote the words
Speaker 2: and Brian did the track and we all did the
Speaker 2: harmonies together. So we just thought it was a song
Speaker 2: that we thought we could do just a little bit
Speaker 2: more with and it worked out. It went to number
Speaker 2: one and Al Jordane sang the lead on that one,
Speaker 2: by the way.
Speaker 1: Right, That's why I brought it up, Okay, Brian is
Speaker 1: often never never Land. You have this incredible string of hits,
Speaker 1: the music itself starts to change. There starts to be
Speaker 1: underground FM rock radio. There are bands that don't have
Speaker 1: conventional top forty hits. To what degree do you feel
Speaker 1: internal pressure and external pressure to create top forty hits?
Speaker 1: And to what to where are you paying attention to
Speaker 1: all these bands, whether it be Cream, there is a
Speaker 1: million of them that are on the FF.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I mean the thing is, I think u
Speaker 2: uh egotistically, you always want to have a number one record.
Speaker 2: Sure you're going You're going to go for it, and
Speaker 2: but you talk about the times are a change, and
Speaker 2: Bob Dylan said it and uh and so things did
Speaker 2: change in that that album Oriented Rock came along and
Speaker 2: we did a few things that resonated pretty well with that.
Speaker 2: But at that point we didn't have Brian in the
Speaker 2: in the producer chair. It became more democratic, shall we say. So,
Speaker 2: we'd have Al come up with a couple of tunes
Speaker 2: like California Saga and the on one album and you
Speaker 2: have Bruce come up with a couple of great songs,
Speaker 2: and and then Carl of course come up, came up
Speaker 2: with some nice stuff, and Dennis at his own album
Speaker 2: and we did forever with him. In fact, that song
Speaker 2: was played on Full House and Uncle Jesse got married.
Speaker 2: At any rate, we just did it at the Beach
Speaker 2: Life festivals, you know, backing up Staymos anyway, so it
Speaker 2: became a little bit more democratic, shall we say? It
Speaker 2: was different than the early to mid sixties.
Speaker 1: Okay, your contract with Capital is over, You form your
Speaker 1: own company, Brother Records. You put out Sunflower, which is
Speaker 1: on Warner Brothers.
Speaker 2: Yes Forpries.
Speaker 1: You know. To me, I listened to that. I'm all
Speaker 1: the time, isn't it time? It's got all this stuff?
Speaker 1: What was the experience on your side of the fact?
Speaker 1: Was Mo Austin disappointed? Did you believe it had the
Speaker 1: commercial success you wanted it to have.
Speaker 2: I don't think we had any commercial success to speak
Speaker 2: of at that time, I think, But I think there
Speaker 2: are a lot of little gems on these albums. You
Speaker 2: know that one and Holland and you know Beach Boys today.
Speaker 2: All the there's always a really sweet song or two
Speaker 2: or three.
Speaker 1: Okay, just to go back one more time, tell us
Speaker 1: about Brian leaving the touring group. That was nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 2: He was having what they call a nervous breakdown touring
Speaker 2: and stuff, and also there were some things that were
Speaker 2: making him feel a little weird in addition to touring,
Speaker 2: so he left obstensibly to spend more time producing records
Speaker 2: and arranging and recording, which worked out beautifully. But and
Speaker 2: then Carl and I were, as I mentioned earlier, we were.
Speaker 2: He was the musical director of the group at the time,
Speaker 2: and I was more of the the lead singer and
Speaker 2: the guy who got involved with all the the uh
Speaker 2: live music touring stuff. Who were gonna Who's going to
Speaker 2: be our opening act? I mean, we had some great
Speaker 2: opening acts. Buffalo Springfield I saw a tour were Buffalo Springs. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're out Feerfield University in Connecticut. I was nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 1: Also, we else was that Soul Survivors Expressway to Your
Speaker 1: Heart exactly on that bill.
Speaker 2: We had paid a half million dollars or a quarter
Speaker 2: million anyway to get a nice live you know, the
Speaker 2: as our music grew and as our the audience grew,
Speaker 2: we need a better sound than was afforded by most venues.
Speaker 2: So we spent all this money, and I remember Soul
Speaker 2: Survivors getting our microphones down and banging them on the
Speaker 2: floor and stuff. So, and they were going to be
Speaker 2: the biggest crew in the world or something.
Speaker 1: Right right, one hit wonder. So all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I mean, the game is changing, music is blowing up
Speaker 1: the fillmore East, it's announced it's going to close. You
Speaker 1: guys end up playing the closing night of the film, Maurice,
Speaker 1: How does that happen?
Speaker 2: You mean with the Grateful Dead? Yeah, yeah, well we
Speaker 2: were invited to join.
Speaker 1: Oh no, that was actually a different gig. Was this
Speaker 1: was the final night you came on like six or eight.
Speaker 1: The final night was the Allman Brothers. Oh but you
Speaker 1: also played with the Grateful Dead on an earlier.
Speaker 2: Yes, that was the one I thought you were meant
Speaker 2: because that was quite memorable.
Speaker 1: Well, so tell me about that.
Speaker 2: That was great. I mean we did a few songs
Speaker 2: with the Grateful Dead and they played along with us,
Speaker 2: We played along with them, whatever it was it was.
Speaker 1: But how did it happen?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I'm not sure. I don't remember exactly
Speaker 2: how it happened, except our management got an inquiry and said,
Speaker 2: would youize guys like to join us? And so we said, yeah,
Speaker 2: why not, let's do it.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the first album on Warner Brothers is not
Speaker 1: commercially successful. The second album my Warner brother sirs Up
Speaker 1: is okay. CIRs Up. The song is pulled from you know,
Speaker 1: Leonard Bernstein Special years before, and there's success. Did you
Speaker 1: feel there was you know, you're on one side of
Speaker 1: the fence, consumers on the other. Did you feel the
Speaker 1: momentum starting with the surs Up album?
Speaker 2: I think it definitely penetrated that aar field and it
Speaker 2: resonated with that whole genre of music. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So how did you write Student Demonstration time?
Speaker 2: The song Riot and so block number nine right was
Speaker 2: the inspiration for that. It was the same song except
Speaker 2: I rewrote the lyrics and the whole idea was, Okay,
Speaker 2: there's these problems going on in the world with the
Speaker 2: Vietnam and the integration and all these kind of things.
Speaker 2: But to put yourself in front of a tank or
Speaker 2: take your life in your hands, I mean, I just
Speaker 2: think it it's better if one finds more creative ways
Speaker 2: to resolve or solve problems hopefully then putting your life's
Speaker 2: and harms way. So that was the concept. Next time
Speaker 2: there's a riot, your best stay out of sight.
Speaker 1: Okay, the Beach Boys gain momentum. They're now playing arenas.
Speaker 1: Put out a double live out. This is the Beach
Speaker 1: Boys in concert. Okay, that's a double live album comes
Speaker 1: out at that time, and the Beach Boys are doing
Speaker 1: incredible live business. They're playing arenas. So did you feel
Speaker 1: that momentum and what do you think people finally realized
Speaker 1: how great you were? Remember what year that was, seventy three.
Speaker 2: I do remember that Reagan came into power at some
Speaker 2: point that during that time period, right, and his sort
Speaker 2: of general positivity kind of mirrored the positivity in our
Speaker 2: earlier music and later music as well, because we were
Speaker 2: almost always ex accentuating the positive in our songs. Maybe
Speaker 2: not in one hundred percent of them, but for the
Speaker 2: most part. So I think just the times changed again
Speaker 2: to favor our sort of philosophy in our in our
Speaker 2: body of music.
Speaker 1: Okay, The Being Flames put out on a Brother Records label. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: Blondie Chaplain and Ricky Fetar end up helping you out
Speaker 1: or being members of the group on Holland and Blondie
Speaker 1: even things sail on Sailor? Was that just an organic thing?
Speaker 1: How did they end up in the group.
Speaker 2: Well, Carl met them in London and they were performing
Speaker 2: there as a group. The Flame and Brother Records hired
Speaker 2: them or contracted him to do some music, which we
Speaker 2: did with them, and they in fact participated in that
Speaker 2: coincided with Dennis screwing up his hands so he literally
Speaker 2: could not drum. So Ricky Fatar, who was a great
Speaker 2: guy and a fantastic singer, he played the drums and
Speaker 2: Blondie he came in with his guitar and his soucial
Speaker 2: voice and he really tore it up. I thought it
Speaker 2: just added a whole different dimension of the Beach Boys.
Speaker 1: Music. And how do he end up singing sale on Sailor?
Speaker 1: I think his voice was just perfect for it. And
Speaker 1: the story is that that song was written pretty much
Speaker 1: after the album was complete they went to Brian. Is
Speaker 1: that a true story?
Speaker 2: I don't recall. I wasn't totally involved with that, Okay.
Speaker 1: Jack Riley is involved in the group at this point
Speaker 1: in time as a manager. He even sings a song.
Speaker 2: Day and Life of the Truth, right, So what's your
Speaker 2: take on that. Well, he was an aor guy out
Speaker 2: in LA and he actually did some great lyrics with
Speaker 2: Carl Wilson and some of Carl's stuff because Carl that
Speaker 2: wasn't particularly astute lyrically, but he was musically is great
Speaker 2: and vocally obviously brilliant.
Speaker 1: But or you know, yeah, so he was helped out
Speaker 1: a lot by So how did you feel about him
Speaker 1: singing a Beach Boys song?
Speaker 2: I thought it was weird. I thought it was weird,
Speaker 2: but hey, people do wear things from time to time,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, So in the summer of seventy five, Capitol puts
Speaker 1: out a double album Greatest Hits on the Beach Boys.
Speaker 1: It becomes it was a seventy four or seventy five.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go on record. For some reason,
Speaker 1: I thought, I think it's seventy five, to be honest
Speaker 1: with you, but it's gigantic.
Speaker 2: Unless summer right.
Speaker 1: Do you have any input or are they just doing
Speaker 1: it under contracting or sitting at hole.
Speaker 2: No. I had plenty of input because one of the
Speaker 2: things I always thought, it's good to have an album that, like,
Speaker 2: when you do a concert, you want one song to
Speaker 2: support the next song, you don't want it to overwhelm
Speaker 2: or you know, you don't go four o nine and
Speaker 2: that Gonnelly knows, and I get around you go, Gonnelly
Speaker 2: knows Sloop John B. Wouldn't it be nice you go?
Speaker 2: So I would? First of all, I named the album.
Speaker 1: Tell us how you named it?
Speaker 2: Well, they were going to call it Beach Best the
Speaker 2: Beach Boys Volume three or something, right, I said, there's
Speaker 2: no such thing. But if you call it Endless Summer,
Speaker 2: all these songs that people enjoyed for so many years
Speaker 2: in the sixties and now it's the seventies, that people
Speaker 2: who are just getting into music are going to think
Speaker 2: of this as a new album, and when they listen
Speaker 2: to it, we're going to sequence it so that it
Speaker 2: gives a really nice lift to the person who's the listener.
Speaker 2: And you know, you're able to feature your ballads but
Speaker 2: also your your mid tempo and your up tempo on
Speaker 2: they And so my my deal was in doing concerts
Speaker 2: is to work on the set list every night, and okay,
Speaker 2: which songs are twelve sing songs, so you don't have
Speaker 2: to go back and forth doing it. I used to
Speaker 2: call it the guitar change ballet. Anyway, so we would
Speaker 2: we would plan on it like that. And so that's
Speaker 2: what I came up with the album title Endless Summer
Speaker 2: because there was a huge movie called Endless Summer. It
Speaker 2: was a surfing movie, right, So it just made a
Speaker 2: lot of sense to me. And then I did I
Speaker 2: helped do the sequencings of the album too.
Speaker 1: Okay, but it took over the summer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was three million coffee rights and a million
Speaker 3: and I'm sure that you had no expectations would be
Speaker 3: that big. No, we didn't, not in the beginning, but
Speaker 3: we were loving it. We still recall us recent tours
Speaker 3: in the summer gold and it's true. I mean, so
Speaker 3: many of those songs people still love to this day.
Speaker 1: Okay, So then it's Brian is back, There's fifteen Big Ones,
Speaker 1: and there's Beach Boys Love You. What was your experience
Speaker 1: on those records?
Speaker 2: Fifteen Big Olins is pretty cool? You know. I enjoyed
Speaker 2: working on that record with Brian, I said, Brian, we
Speaker 2: did pretty good with with Chuck Berry and us, why
Speaker 2: don't we do rock and roll music? And I went
Speaker 2: the top five, which is pretty good beatles of their version.
Speaker 2: Chuck Berry obviously is the original but rock and roll music.
Speaker 2: It was a big hit for us. And what was
Speaker 2: it about? Six maybe I fear exactly how many original
Speaker 2: and somebody covers?
Speaker 1: You know? And then Brian is back. There's a special
Speaker 1: featuring Belushian Ackroyd. The album is called Beach Boys Love You.
Speaker 1: How did you feel about that?
Speaker 2: I thought it was pretty funny that they rusted him
Speaker 2: fa failure. Yes, that's hilarious.
Speaker 1: Classic and he was let's go surfing now everybody's starting
Speaker 1: out coming to Safari with us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was really fun. I thought it was amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, but then Brian starts to fade a little bit.
Speaker 1: Ultimately you do La the Light album and you do
Speaker 1: a disco version of Here Comes the Night.
Speaker 2: Bruce actually did that one, Okay, Bruce Johnson took over
Speaker 2: that dealer.
Speaker 1: And in retrospect, good decision, bad decision, irrelevant.
Speaker 2: I don't think it was the greatest decision ever. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, the Beg's were the disco kings, right yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: so no, it was, but it was the genre. I
Speaker 2: guess it was, you know, an attempt to be part
Speaker 2: of the genre, you know, although that's long since gone
Speaker 2: right right sure? And in the Summer album and the
Speaker 2: Sounds of Summer album lives on.
Speaker 1: Okay, tell me about Glenn Campbell being in the group
Speaker 1: and then being replaced by Bruce Johnston.
Speaker 2: Glenn Campbell was one of the Wrecking Crew. He was
Speaker 2: one of the greatest musician, unbelievable guitar player, but he
Speaker 2: also sing really well. He could sing high, like as
Speaker 2: in falsetto that Brian did, and so we needed somebody
Speaker 2: to be able to take over for Brian for a
Speaker 2: few months before we found a more permanent replacement. So
Speaker 2: Glenn built in from sixty four to early sixty five,
Speaker 2: you know, like, and Bruce joined us in The first
Speaker 2: song he sang with was California Girls in nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 2: But in the meantime, Glenn was with us for a
Speaker 2: while and he was great. He was so funny, he
Speaker 2: was so such a brilliant musician. He played bass with us,
Speaker 2: just like Brian played bass, because that's what we needed
Speaker 2: bass player. So that was nothing for him to do.
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, people will guitarists will listen to
Speaker 2: his guitar playing, they say, how the hell do he
Speaker 2: do that? So and the greatest thing about it was
Speaker 2: his sense of humor at the time, he kept us
Speaker 2: in stitches at Arkansas farm Boy humor. It was hilarious.
Speaker 2: But he was a true genius musically, true genius. It
Speaker 2: was the greatest.
Speaker 1: So did he say, you know, I want to leave
Speaker 1: and have my own solo career. How did he end
Speaker 1: up va?
Speaker 2: Well, he was on his way to becoming Glenn Campbell,
Speaker 2: you know, own what do you call golf thing going
Speaker 2: on and great records and hugely successful. So yeah, but
Speaker 2: he was destined to be a huge star. But he
Speaker 2: was a blessing to have for a little while there
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 1: And how did you get Bruce in the group?
Speaker 2: I met Bruce in Las Vegas and I said, we
Speaker 2: need somebody to fill in for my cousin Brian. We've
Speaker 2: had link Glenn Campbell for a while, but he's he's
Speaker 2: not going to do that permanently. So he called around
Speaker 2: and he couldn't find anybody, said, well, let me try it.
Speaker 2: So he we hired him and he went and learned
Speaker 2: to play bass for the gig. And in fact I
Speaker 2: went to see him and we were in Florida and
Speaker 2: I went to his room to see how he was doing.
Speaker 2: And he had the TV and the bed u. I said,
Speaker 2: what's the TV doing in the bed? He says, well,
Speaker 2: it's not well And I should have run at that point,
Speaker 2: but it didn't, you know. But anyway, he very gifted musician,
Speaker 2: you know, got a Grammy for writing. I write the songs,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: And he.
Speaker 2: Did some beautiful songs on on our albums, really nice ones.
Speaker 2: I mean they weren't typical Beach Boys songs, but they're
Speaker 2: they're his style of writing.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, the end of really before the Cocomo era,
Speaker 1: you make one album with James William Guercio, Keeping the
Speaker 1: Summer Alive. How was that experience?
Speaker 2: That was interesting? It was Carl writing with what was
Speaker 2: it the guys from Canada taking care of business and
Speaker 2: working on bt O Bachman Turner Overdive. Yeah, so Randy
Speaker 2: Bachman he just said a lo to us. We just
Speaker 2: did a tour in Canada month or Sogo, and yeah,
Speaker 2: he was a writing partner on Keeping Summer Live with Carl,
Speaker 2: and I think it was great, good concept. I mean
Speaker 2: for the Beach Boys to we've been keeping the Summer
Speaker 2: Alive so to speak, for decades. Now.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's go all the way back to being
Speaker 1: we go to sixty two, we go to surfing. You know,
Speaker 1: you're married, you got a kid, you got another kid
Speaker 1: on the way. It's on Candix Records, it's on Capitol.
Speaker 1: You have success. The four seasons on the East Coast
Speaker 1: have sort of big success. But you know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of independent labels at the time, a lot of
Speaker 1: Top forty, and then the Beatles come in a what
Speaker 1: did you think of the Beatles coming in in their
Speaker 1: music and and you ultimately met the Beatles, Yeah, we did.
Speaker 2: I thought it was pretty interesting that they had a
Speaker 2: contest kf W Beatles or kf W Beach Boys. It
Speaker 2: was a competitions, a rivalry in a competition. We were
Speaker 2: on the same label, which is good for Capitol, Rutgers
Speaker 2: and AMI internationally. But they were fantastic and meteoric, right.
Speaker 2: They were huge for how many years, you know, and
Speaker 2: their music is their catalog lives on, you know, it's
Speaker 2: a fantastic one. In fact, the Rolling Stone magazine did
Speaker 2: that top five hundred rock albums of all time and
Speaker 2: Sergeant Pepper's number one and Pat Sounds number two. It's
Speaker 2: a good company. So, yeah, we we went to see him.
Speaker 2: I remember Carl BLUs and I went to Portland, Oregon
Speaker 2: and met with him backstage. They were doing a concert
Speaker 2: there and John Lennon's voice was out and he says, well,
Speaker 2: when we get to that part of the song, shake
Speaker 2: your heads and girls of scream and no nobody even
Speaker 2: hear anything. But what are we talking about? Girls and cars?
Speaker 2: My cousin Carl had an Aston Martin dB five. Really yeah.
Speaker 2: George Harrison loved racing cars and I was an audio.
Speaker 2: I was an Anglo file when it came to I
Speaker 2: had a forty eight MG, thirty nine Rules Royce, an
Speaker 2: x K E in the middle, this is all in
Speaker 2: the sixties, and a Jaguar Sedan.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we were.
Speaker 2: We were rivals, but I think it was really positive.
Speaker 2: In fact, we had a birthday party at Carl Wilson's
Speaker 2: house he was renting in Malibu, and Paul McCartney came
Speaker 2: to that party, he and his wife Linda, and he
Speaker 2: says to Brian, who was there. He says, Brian, when
Speaker 2: are you going to give us some of the pet sounds.
Speaker 2: I was listening to the album going through Mohan Drive
Speaker 2: and tears coming out of my eyes, you know, so
Speaker 2: he loved pet Sounds album, and he loved Only Knows
Speaker 2: and What's Not the Life with Yesterday and all these
Speaker 2: great songs that he came up.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you start in the early sixties, music starts
Speaker 1: to dominate at the culture in a way that people
Speaker 1: today can't understand. Are the Beach Boys their own thing?
Speaker 1: Are you now interacting with all the other hit acts?
Speaker 2: I don't know about interacting. I've always thought that the
Speaker 2: Beach Boys are a sonic oasis. It's like its own thing,
Speaker 2: and some of the songs are the potential to be immortal,
Speaker 2: and so you know, it's just it's coming from a
Speaker 2: place of love, the love of harmonizing together. I mean,
Speaker 2: forgetting the you know, whether you're famous or successful financially
Speaker 2: or anything like that, at the core, it's the love
Speaker 2: of the harmonies, and that I think gives a certain feeling,
Speaker 2: an uplifting feeling that people they feel it. I don't
Speaker 2: know if they intellectually understand it, but they feel it.
Speaker 2: You know, it touches them, touches their hearts. And you
Speaker 2: see that irrespective of the age, when you see a
Speaker 2: crowd of fifty sixty seventy thousand people singing along and
Speaker 2: having a great times. It's joyous and so that you
Speaker 2: know that I've always said were a sonic oasis. We
Speaker 2: weren't trying to keep up with anybody, weren't trying to
Speaker 2: put anybody down because they were doing so great or something.
Speaker 2: And there's always been people who were fantastic. I mean
Speaker 2: about Michael Jackson, you know, phenomenal and brilliant, and you
Speaker 2: know so many other people you can mention that We've
Speaker 2: loved all the music. I'm almost I was friendly with
Speaker 2: Marvin Gay.
Speaker 1: We did, but how does how do you meet a
Speaker 1: how do you meet him? And he was notoriously edgy personality,
Speaker 1: so how'd you get along with them?
Speaker 2: I'm gray with him. I smoked a joint with him
Speaker 2: at the Tammy Show out on a break and we went.
Speaker 2: We were on tour and in in Europe, and he
Speaker 2: was there on the tour we were on and we
Speaker 2: did silly things like you know how people set out
Speaker 2: their shoes to be shined at night. We would change
Speaker 2: the people's shoes around and stuff. And this is Marvin
Speaker 2: Gay and Mike Love and so he he he had
Speaker 2: he lived in Holland for a while because he was addicted,
Speaker 2: unfortunately to heroin, and so he could get what he
Speaker 2: needed without being without it being a problem. But the
Speaker 2: I R S took everything from him. So we had
Speaker 2: some friends who were helping to get back together on
Speaker 2: tour and I went and visited with Marvin and he
Speaker 2: was He was telling me songs that he had come
Speaker 2: up with, which which were amazing, and and I actually
Speaker 2: went on and saw him on his final tour. That
Speaker 2: was the when he got home, that's when his father
Speaker 2: shot him.
Speaker 1: What about Jean Berry?
Speaker 2: Jan Berry was very aggressive guy. He took Brian came
Speaker 2: over with the idea for Surf City and jan Berry
Speaker 2: took it over. And my uncle Murray wasn't happy about
Speaker 2: that at all, but yeah, but he was, he was.
Speaker 2: You know what the interesting thing about Jan and Dean was,
Speaker 2: it was Jan and Arnie originally with baby talk. But
Speaker 2: Jan and Dean I said, well, we can do is
Speaker 2: least as well as them. And they'll say there was
Speaker 2: sort of an inspiration. They preceded us by a year
Speaker 2: or two. And so when we did surfing, we said
Speaker 2: in Surf and SAPARi, we said, oh we can do
Speaker 2: as well as those guys.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us how we stole Surfing City.
Speaker 2: Uh well, I think Brian was just open an open book,
Speaker 2: you know. He he would share anything with anybody, and
Speaker 2: he he you know, he happened to I don't know
Speaker 2: how that happened because I wasn't there, but he did
Speaker 2: to the two girls for every boy, that kind of thing, right,
Speaker 2: and got that song going and and Jan finished it up,
Speaker 2: of course, but uh yeah, Michael Murray was not happy
Speaker 2: with that. It was the number one song, right in
Speaker 2: a great song.
Speaker 1: So you're married, but you're on the road, and you know,
Speaker 1: today they had cell phone cameras. They didn't used to
Speaker 1: have that, but there are groupes opportunities. What's it like
Speaker 1: being an early twenty something guy out on the road.
Speaker 2: Well, that led to my first divorce. You know, I
Speaker 2: was married to my high school sweetheart and we had
Speaker 2: two children. But then it was a huge show what
Speaker 2: do you call it, temptation to be the lead singer
Speaker 2: in a rock group and early to mid sixties and stuff,
Speaker 2: and so I you know, I enjoyed that for a while,
Speaker 2: but then they got it to be a little bit
Speaker 2: you know, superficial and a little bit not the greatest,
Speaker 2: and so I got remarried again and two more great children,
Speaker 2: one of which is performing with us. His name is
Speaker 2: Christian Love and he sings God only Knows beautifully and
Speaker 2: it harmonizes perfectly, and so it's a family tradition again.
Speaker 2: Still so yeah, so there is an element of that.
Speaker 2: I'm sure that every group has been, you know, tempted
Speaker 2: to do things and you then after a while you
Speaker 2: understand what that is and what that means. And it's
Speaker 2: a lot of times it's ego. A lot of times
Speaker 2: it makes you feel like you're a big star or
Speaker 2: something like that, or being you can be kind of
Speaker 2: charming for a night or two. But you know, so
Speaker 2: there was that phase. But yeah, I learned that that's
Speaker 2: not the greatest way. I've been married for thirty years.
Speaker 2: I've been together with with Jacqueline for probably thirty seven years.
Speaker 1: How many times have been married?
Speaker 2: I was married five times before meeting jocclin Well. One
Speaker 2: of them was in what do you do annuled?
Speaker 1: Okay, we live in California.
Speaker 2: You get divorced, you lose half of what you got,
Speaker 2: not necessarily.
Speaker 1: Not necessarily because you could have a pre existing contract
Speaker 1: and if we have, but divorce is expensive.
Speaker 2: Can be, but I haven't. I haven't found it to
Speaker 2: be a problem really that way, and and and you know,
Speaker 2: let's put it this way. We were so successful in
Speaker 2: the sixties that, you know, ultimately getting the publishing and
Speaker 2: the writing back for some of the big huts and stuff.
Speaker 2: It all works out. And we've always been continually touring
Speaker 2: all along. I've done several thousand shows over the years.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you talk about George Herisin and you talk
Speaker 1: about all the cars in your garage. Were the economics
Speaker 1: different then or were you just making so much money?
Speaker 2: I don't know if we're making so much money. We're
Speaker 2: making enough money to go to England and order five
Speaker 2: or six rolls Royces.
Speaker 1: They were never cheap.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, but they weren't as much as they are now.
Speaker 2: Maybe the money's uh not worth as much these days
Speaker 2: as it once was. But no, yeah, we were successful
Speaker 2: enough to enjoy a lot of the perks of that success.
Speaker 2: But also you come to understand that that's that's not
Speaker 2: the only thing in life. I mean, because you may
Speaker 2: be doing well, but how is the world doing? You know?
Speaker 2: So that that really bugs me that we as collectively
Speaker 2: as the creative community, aren't doing enough to help help,
Speaker 2: you know, like we are the world. When we did
Speaker 2: Live Aid, we did our show from Philadelphia, they were
Speaker 2: singing along to us in Wembley Stadium. And so that's
Speaker 2: going to be re released. I think you probably know when,
Speaker 2: but more than most.
Speaker 1: Actually I do not know when that's going to be.
Speaker 2: So it's in the works.
Speaker 1: So you've been married five times, well six six, excuse me,
Speaker 1: one was annulled. So what's the key to a successful marriage?
Speaker 2: Well, in my case, my wife was a nurse when
Speaker 2: I met her. She's brilliant and she's protected, and we
Speaker 2: have two great children together, and we have a together
Speaker 2: as a family. We have a club, Cocomo Spirits Rum
Speaker 2: primarily a line, and we're promoting that and my my
Speaker 2: son Brian is doing a fantastic job marketing wise there,
Speaker 2: and my wife and I are also involved with with
Speaker 2: him in helping to promote and be creative about things.
Speaker 2: And she's she's really creative and really great and and
Speaker 2: just a really devoted, great person. She's very spiritual in
Speaker 2: her own way, and so that that's that's good stuff,
Speaker 2: you know, that's good stuff to warrant, you know, to
Speaker 2: have a good relationship where people love each other and
Speaker 2: care about each other and forego any other kind of
Speaker 2: situations that get complicated.
Speaker 1: So you're kind of saying like she keeps you in line.
Speaker 2: Yeah, more than in line. She's she did pulmonary h
Speaker 2: what do you call it? The lungs she worked for
Speaker 2: When I met her, she was a nurse working for
Speaker 2: a doctor who is a pulmonary specialist. If I breathe
Speaker 2: the wrong way, she's on my case.
Speaker 1: And how many kids do you have?
Speaker 2: I have eight kids?
Speaker 1: And how's your relationship with all eight?
Speaker 2: Good? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And are they off the payroll?
Speaker 2: Pardon?
Speaker 1: Are they off the payroll? Oh?
Speaker 2: No, My son, Christian sings with us, right, yeah, and
Speaker 2: so and he's great. But my oldest daughters, my two
Speaker 2: oldest daughters both worked for Southwest Airlines really and then
Speaker 2: so you know, everybody's great and we all have a
Speaker 2: good time together, and we all spend the holidays together,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: And where are you living right now?
Speaker 2: I live in Inclined Village, Nevada.
Speaker 1: Right Lakely. I'd you end up there? I went there
Speaker 1: as a kid.
Speaker 2: My father used to like this to fish in the
Speaker 2: Trucky River, and I just love that place all my life.
Speaker 2: I thought it was so beautiful, and so in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty one I bought a property up there, so I've
Speaker 2: lived there full time for the last thirty years. You
Speaker 2: used to live in Santa Barbara, which is gorgeous, but
Speaker 2: California is also punitive tax wise in other ways as well,
Speaker 2: So we're enjoying it. It's clear air, fresh air, beautiful and.
Speaker 1: If you go on the road, you're an inclined village.
Speaker 2: How do you get to the gig Reno? I drive
Speaker 2: down of Reno and take any number of airlines wherever
Speaker 2: I gotta go.
Speaker 1: So you talk about taxes. Starting in the eighties, he
Speaker 1: came out that you were on the right side politically,
Speaker 1: right as opposed to left, as opposed to correct or incorrect. Man,
Speaker 1: you would not come out politically to the general public
Speaker 1: before that. What are your political beliefs? And do you
Speaker 1: believe making political statements is good, bad, necessary, unnecessary?
Speaker 2: Mainly in terms of politics. I remember a guy coming
Speaker 2: up to me when we did a place coach in Chautauqua,
Speaker 2: New York. There's a nice amphitheater there. It's a Christian community,
Speaker 2: goes back over one hundred years, and he came up
Speaker 2: to me and said, you know, I was really happy
Speaker 2: to come to a concert and not have to hear
Speaker 2: anything about politics. So I have a philosophy about what
Speaker 2: we say in public from the stage, which is no politics,
Speaker 2: because I know there are people, you know, on this side,
Speaker 2: that side, the other side, all kinds of sides and
Speaker 2: opinions and everything. I think our job is entertained and
Speaker 2: be positive and you know, literally create those good vibrations.
Speaker 2: So I don't like to do anything in a concert
Speaker 2: setting that you know, might make people feel uncomfortable one
Speaker 2: way or the other. So but on the other hand,
Speaker 2: you know, we've performed for Donald Trump's fiftieth birthday party
Speaker 2: in Atlantic City. He has been nothing but nice to us.
Speaker 2: And I understand that these things are going I mean,
Speaker 2: unbelievably climactic changes are going on, but that's the nature
Speaker 2: of the relative, the nature of the material world, and uh,
Speaker 2: there's always going to be changed and always going to
Speaker 2: be upheaval. Unfortunately, there's always been negative stuff going on.
Speaker 2: So personally, if I have an experience with somebody, whether
Speaker 2: there left, right or middle or or nothing, then then
Speaker 2: that's that's there. What do you call it? That is
Speaker 2: their right to be the way they want to think
Speaker 2: and act and what they want to get involved with.
Speaker 2: I think it's sad that there's so much vilification that
Speaker 2: that's it's it's not good. It's not good. There's too
Speaker 2: much negativity going on. I mean, you should be able
Speaker 2: to have a I mean, that's what free freedom of
Speaker 2: speech is all about. You should be to say what
Speaker 2: you want to say. And you may not like what
Speaker 2: you're hearing, but it's good if you can at least
Speaker 2: allow a person to express themselves and you're going to
Speaker 2: do what you want to do anyway, and you're whatever
Speaker 2: group you're affiliated with is going to do what they're
Speaker 2: going to do. They're not going to change their minds
Speaker 2: because somebody's vehement proposals. So I just think it's I
Speaker 2: guess it's from years of meditation. I just like to
Speaker 2: transcend a come out and be positive and try to
Speaker 2: do the best I can to be a good person
Speaker 2: and try to help out with our celebrity where we may.
Speaker 2: But you know, so we were invited to do New
Speaker 2: Year's Eve actually the Saturday before New Year's Eve at
Speaker 2: mar Logo. So we did it and people loved it.
Speaker 2: And I've got lots of compliments, but that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that we're going to do stuff on stage that that
Speaker 2: that are pro anything.
Speaker 1: Well, a gig is a gig. If you've got a
Speaker 1: offer to play for Nancy Pelosi, would you play for her?
Speaker 2: I'm not sure she does gigs.
Speaker 1: I mean, she has a fundraiser and she says, we'll
Speaker 1: pay your fee to come perform.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know. That's a hypothetical question,
Speaker 2: I think, But I.
Speaker 1: Let me put it a different way. Is it gig
Speaker 1: A gig someone's going to pay you, Are you going
Speaker 1: to show up? Or are you going to say? Hmm,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I approve of that person.
Speaker 2: Well, it depends. It would depend on the situation and
Speaker 2: who's involved and what their their purposes are. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm not a believe me. I'm I'm all about doing gigs.
Speaker 2: I'm you know, right, But anyway we I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: Howard Stern said he was going to talk to anybody
Speaker 2: who was pro Republican or something. I think that's wrong,
Speaker 2: you know. I mean, Howard's great and brilliant and very
Speaker 2: well to do, but that's not the right attitude. I
Speaker 2: don't think or somebody in a public situation. But he's
Speaker 2: entitled to and do and say what he wants, so
Speaker 2: he did. I just don't think it's very uplifting because
Speaker 2: you can have a nice dialogue with somebody, in a
Speaker 2: conversation with and even an argument. But and that's okay,
Speaker 2: because that's what our country's been all about for many
Speaker 2: a years.
Speaker 1: Okay, but you've mentioned a couple of times peace in
Speaker 1: the world, and we don't have peace, right You talked
Speaker 1: about we are the world being positive. What can we
Speaker 1: do as a culture, as entertainers, performers to advance the
Speaker 1: cause of peace in the world.
Speaker 2: Well, like I said, I learned meditation from Marishi. I
Speaker 2: was invited to go in India. He was talking about
Speaker 2: world peace at a time when there was all this
Speaker 2: stuff going on. And this is after Good Vibrations in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty six where they were talking about nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 2: and so Marishi came over with the formula for world Piece,
Speaker 2: which involves a lot of people meditating the same time
Speaker 2: in the same place, doing a thing called the TM
Speaker 2: hyphen Sidhi Tmcity program. And if enough people do that
Speaker 2: together at same time place, it creates so much positivity
Speaker 2: in the atmosphere that the negativity falls away. Now has
Speaker 2: it been done, not to any great degree, but once
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty three, and over the Christmas holidays it
Speaker 2: was and the war deaths went down, traffic deaths went down,
Speaker 2: hospital and missions went down, all kinds of indications of
Speaker 2: positivity through this group. There were over seven thousand people
Speaker 2: meditating during the TM City program. So you know, I
Speaker 2: went to a six month long meditation course to learn
Speaker 2: the Tmcity program in nineteen seventy seven, three months in
Speaker 2: Switzerland and three months in no three months in France
Speaker 2: and three months in Switzerland. And it was very interesting
Speaker 2: because this, if you're able to do get that many
Speaker 2: people to meditate together, it creates an amazing, super radiant effect.
Speaker 2: It's pretty mystical and pretty fantastic. So the possibility exists
Speaker 2: to have the world peace. The possibility will humanity get there?
Speaker 2: We don't know. It's I don't know if you ever
Speaker 2: had anybody talk about the Vedas, these ancient scriptures. Well,
Speaker 2: there's a thing called Caliyuga, which is a period of
Speaker 2: time started about five thousand years ago, and all the
Speaker 2: negativity you see in society and life, and you look
Speaker 2: out on your phone every day and you see these
Speaker 2: horrible things that have happened. That's a symptomatic of caliyuga.
Speaker 2: There's a thing called sought yuga, which is all positivity
Speaker 2: and peace on earth and no crime, no disease, no starvation,
Speaker 2: no nothing negative sought yoga. Marisha came in to set
Speaker 2: it up to have to create sought yoga within Caliyuga.
Speaker 2: Now Coliuga goes for four hundred and twenty thousand more
Speaker 2: years of negativetivity, but they'll be they're supposed to become
Speaker 2: five thousand years of peace within. You can sought yoga
Speaker 2: within Caliyuga. So that's something was foretold by these ancient
Speaker 2: sages from India thousands of years ago. So you know,
Speaker 2: am I going to say that that's not the truth
Speaker 2: or not going to work. I mean it, It hasn't
Speaker 2: been tried to any great degree, but I think it'd
Speaker 2: be awesome if if it were to be possible to
Speaker 2: have that many people. Like, for instance, if seven thousand
Speaker 2: people meditate together, it's like four billion, nine hundred million
Speaker 2: people meditating because they're doing it together. Pretty amazing stuff.
Speaker 2: Sought Yugo within Caliyuga. You don't find a lot of
Speaker 2: people talking about that.
Speaker 1: No, you don't, but you had, you know, you did
Speaker 1: the MIU album. You know they had the Maharishi Center
Speaker 1: in Iowa. Switching gears a little bit. You're an icon.
Speaker 1: You have also met icons. You talk about Trump, I
Speaker 1: know you knew Bush Bush won anyway. Oh yeah, So
Speaker 1: do you ever get starstruck and tell us about some
Speaker 1: of the most amazing people you met.
Speaker 2: Marlon Brando tell us that starstruck. We did the UNISEF show.
Speaker 2: That's where we went Marichi United Nations Children's Emergency Fund
Speaker 2: in December of sixty seven. On the show is Marlon
Speaker 2: Brando and his Tahitian bride and dancers, and Elizabeth Taylor
Speaker 2: and Richard Burton, the Russian Red Army Choir, the Turkish Ballet.
Speaker 2: I think there were some great singers. There was an orchestra,
Speaker 2: a beautiful orchestra in this beautiful venue in Paris. And
Speaker 2: when the curtain opened for our part of the show,
Speaker 2: there was Marichi in the front row with John Litt
Speaker 2: on one side and George Harrison on the other. But
Speaker 2: that night there was a party at at an embassy,
Speaker 2: and Marlon Brando was there and He says, you want
Speaker 2: to go get some breakfast. This is Marlon brown A
Speaker 2: talking to Mike lover the Beach Boys, right, and I'm thinking,
Speaker 2: here's on the waterfront, you know, and you know Viva's
Speaker 2: Apoda and so many great movies. And he said, you
Speaker 2: want to go get some breakfast. I said, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: that'd be nice. But we didn't know anything about Paris.
Speaker 2: But he did. He says, well, yeah, there's a private
Speaker 2: party at Maxims to Pirie. I says. So he had
Speaker 2: a Cadillac and vert will come out. This is December.
Speaker 2: Cadillac Bertivo comes up, pulls up. We got in some cabs,
Speaker 2: the Beach Boys crew and we went to Maxims to Peri.
Speaker 2: So we there was a private party in this room
Speaker 2: off to the right as you walk in. The restaurants
Speaker 2: and nightclubs still ahead. But there was this private party,
Speaker 2: and you had Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, you had
Speaker 2: the director of the festival, and Victor Borgo, who is
Speaker 2: a Danish pianist and humorist. He was there as well.
Speaker 2: And Marlon Brado walks into the room and then this
Speaker 2: lady spread eagles herself for the entry of the room
Speaker 2: and says, oh, I'm terribly sorry. It's a private, private party.
Speaker 2: So Marlon Brando takes a look at her and says, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm really sorry. He says, in Tahiti, if one person goes,
Speaker 2: everybody goes. It's like family. He says, I think I'd
Speaker 2: better leave, and he turns as if you know a
Speaker 2: Lee Strasper type urn. He turns as if he's going
Speaker 2: to leave, and she's going to lose Marlon Brando, Well,
Speaker 2: that ain't going to happen. So she let us all
Speaker 2: in and it made the party because you know, yeah
Speaker 2: it was. It made the party, and so that that
Speaker 2: was an amazing time. I thought that guy is about
Speaker 2: as cool as you can possibly be, and he just
Speaker 2: just with a little turn of the head, he got
Speaker 2: this alda cave.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: The next day I was in the waiting room and uh,
Speaker 2: waiting to border our flight to London, and who should
Speaker 2: be sitting there with Marlon Browno. So we sat next
Speaker 2: to each other on the way to London and I said,
Speaker 2: and I asked him, well, how are you getting into town?
Speaker 2: He says, I'm just going to take a cab. I said,
Speaker 2: why do you come with us? We had six Dameler
Speaker 2: limousines lined up and we drove into town. He says,
Speaker 2: you want to go to a party? Here we go
Speaker 2: again and so yeah, I said fine, but let's drop
Speaker 2: our luggage. And so we had like ten suits and
Speaker 2: corner suites in the London Hilton and I came into
Speaker 2: the swit sweet to drop my bags and stuff and
Speaker 2: he looks one way and looks the other and he says,
Speaker 2: manucats really know how to travel. So that was amazing.
Speaker 2: But he was That was the last time I saw
Speaker 2: him in person. That was nineteen sixty seven. But he
Speaker 2: was the coolest. You can't top that story, I don't think,
Speaker 2: so the said store struck there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll leave it at that. The Beach Boys made
Speaker 1: a deal selling rights Irving Azos Iconic.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: How do you decide to do that? And how's that
Speaker 1: worked out?
Speaker 2: Well, Brother Records at the end of it, it owns
Speaker 2: the Beach Boy's name and I tour. I'm given the
Speaker 2: license a tour as the Beach Boys by Brother Records. Well,
Speaker 2: Iconic Irving games off about fifty one, which is a
Speaker 2: good thing because we were pretty dysfunctional, honestly. But he
Speaker 2: he organized that a concert that came out a year
Speaker 2: before last on Easter Sunday. It was there was twenty
Speaker 2: acts doing Beach Boys songs, which was great. And then
Speaker 2: he also did the deal with Disney plus documentary that
Speaker 2: was great. So he's they are working that, the group
Speaker 2: Iconic is working on, you know, developing various things that
Speaker 2: we never did and so and they've done a great
Speaker 2: job so far.
Speaker 1: So how did you learn how to play the therem in?
Speaker 2: It was a little I didn't say a proper theorem
Speaker 2: and I a mogue, synthesize or did something with the
Speaker 2: little thing, and it was it was hard to do
Speaker 2: to hit the right note and not screw up and
Speaker 2: sing at the same time. But I did as well
Speaker 2: as I could.
Speaker 1: So you're talking about the set list. If I went
Speaker 1: to every Beach Boys concert, it's not identical set list.
Speaker 2: Pretty much a lot of the same components. But we
Speaker 2: might if it's if it's a outdoor venue, we might
Speaker 2: not do something subtle. But if it's indoor theater where
Speaker 2: you can see and hear everything, we'll do something more spiritual,
Speaker 2: more and more subtle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then at this point, you performed some of
Speaker 1: these songs thousands of times.
Speaker 2: What are your favorite songs to perform? I love California Girls,
Speaker 2: I love I Get Around, I love surfing Usa, I
Speaker 2: love doing Cocomo. I love doing Good Vibrations Do It
Speaker 2: Again went to number one in England, even though we
Speaker 2: were transitting from Capitol Records to Reprise Records, and Capitol
Speaker 2: Records didn't try very hard in the US. But it
Speaker 2: went to number one in England, which is nice because
Speaker 2: the previous number one was Good Vibrations a couple of
Speaker 2: years before that, so that's always a nice one. Our
Speaker 2: serving songs are car songs. I get Around, fun, fun,
Speaker 2: you know, Little Deuce, Scoop four on nine, shut Down.
Speaker 2: They're all good, They're all fun, and so I enjoy
Speaker 2: so many of them.
Speaker 1: I have been on stage where I've literally watched an
Speaker 1: act win over a disinterested audience. You hit the stage,
Speaker 1: people know who you are, know what the songs are.
Speaker 1: Do you just have to stand up to the mic
Speaker 1: and sing? Or are you very attentive to what the
Speaker 1: reaction is and how you're performing me?
Speaker 2: No, I don't assume that anybody knows anything about our music,
Speaker 2: or the Beach, Pizonous or anything. Our job is to
Speaker 2: create fans. I mean, if they're already fans, that's great,
Speaker 2: and we're not going to disappoint them. We're going to
Speaker 2: recreate those songs as close as humanly possible to what
Speaker 2: you heard on the records or on the radio or
Speaker 2: TV or ads or or soundtracks of movies. So, you know,
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of young people who have seen us
Speaker 2: on full House reruns doing you know, Kocomo and I
Speaker 2: mean millions and so, but they don't know all the
Speaker 2: stuff that we just went over in the last hour
Speaker 2: and a half or so. They just and I don't think,
Speaker 2: I don't assume they would. I don't know old girlfriend
Speaker 2: who thought that Ringo might be black, you know, I
Speaker 2: mean she did know about the music business, and she didn't.
Speaker 2: It was it was past the Beatles, and you know,
Speaker 2: it was you know, So that taught me a lesson.
Speaker 2: I said, people assume because they're they're successful and they
Speaker 2: had you know, hit records and stuff, that everybody knows them.
Speaker 2: That's not true. I don't think. And and especially they
Speaker 2: don't know the individuals. I mean, we have had fan
Speaker 2: letters from Russia, fan letters from China. I met a
Speaker 2: real estate agent in New Jersey who said he's from
Speaker 2: Iran and they played our records in Iran in the
Speaker 2: summer where they went for summer vacation. I was, I'm
Speaker 2: in the eighties. I met the Saudi Ambassador, Prince Bandhar
Speaker 2: Saudi Radi, Ambassador, Saudi Arabian Ambassador of the US in Washington, DC,
Speaker 2: and he told me, Mike, I'm a fan. I played
Speaker 2: your cassette in my Austin Hilly while going to school
Speaker 2: in England. That's the ambassador from Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: And then when you added that Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Hall
Speaker 2: and Finland. We're going to Poland this summer. South Africa's
Speaker 2: South America, and like I said, China and Russia and
Speaker 2: all that, Japan. We've had records all over the world
Speaker 2: and people really like them still, but I don't ever
Speaker 2: assume that people really know us and and and our
Speaker 2: job as performers is to recreate those songs. It's closest
Speaker 2: humanly possible to the records, and we're not everybody's cup
Speaker 2: of tea, but we're a lot of people's cup of tea,
Speaker 2: so a lot.
Speaker 1: Of people to reproduce. They have a lot of backing
Speaker 1: tracks on hard drive, et cetera. What's your philosophy on that.
Speaker 2: We do all of our music live. I'm in the vocals.
Speaker 2: We might have some click tracks to keep everybody in
Speaker 2: sync a cup on a few songs, but yeah, we
Speaker 2: don't have a lot of supplementation like that or sampling
Speaker 2: or aning of that stuff. We don't need it. We
Speaker 2: have enough vocalists to recreate the vocal blend and harmonies
Speaker 2: in the sound of the Beach Boys.
Speaker 1: So how many gigs a year do you do?
Speaker 2: Now? Well, I've done as many as one hundred and fifty,
Speaker 2: maybe one hundred and twenty this year. Perhaps, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I just do them. That's a lot of work, it is.
Speaker 2: The travel can be tiring. We just did a tour
Speaker 2: of Canada, went from British Columbia to the Toronto area
Speaker 2: and it was not good. I was cold, it was
Speaker 2: we were taking overnight drives to escape snow that was coming.
Speaker 2: So we're not going to do that anymore.
Speaker 1: But well, some acts, it all depends on economics. They'll
Speaker 1: locate in one city, they'll take a jet, private jet
Speaker 1: to different locations. Are you always flying commercial? You go
Speaker 1: and buy bus? You're taking private jets, mainly bus.
Speaker 2: If we're doing a lot of sequential dates, so we
Speaker 2: try to make it so that it's reachable from one
Speaker 2: date to the other. Sometimes we'll have to take an
Speaker 2: all night drive to get to the next place. That's
Speaker 2: okay because when we get in the morning, we get
Speaker 2: to rest a few hours. Rest is a huge deal.
Speaker 2: So my meditation and my rest. If I get that,
Speaker 2: I'm good to go, and I can do innumerable concerts.
Speaker 2: But honestly, I'm eighty four years old, and so as
Speaker 2: I look down the road, I learned my lesson going
Speaker 2: to Canada at the wrong time year. So you you
Speaker 2: learn new things every day and you learn your limitations,
Speaker 2: and so I'll probably do less concerts, but specific to
Speaker 2: times a year. For instance, we're already getting offers for
Speaker 2: next February and March in Florida, and that's when you
Speaker 2: should go to Florida, right because all the people from
Speaker 2: all the northern areas come down there, the snowbirds, and
Speaker 2: that's great. So it's a great time to go.
Speaker 1: At this late date, you've been on the road so much.
Speaker 1: You're only on stage for an hour hour fifteen actually two.
Speaker 2: Really we do an hour with a twenty minute in
Speaker 2: minute and intermission followed by another hour. Unless it's a casino,
Speaker 2: they don't want you to do an hour and intermission
Speaker 2: and another hour, which is two hours of music. They
Speaker 2: want you to do maybe an hour and a half
Speaker 2: at the most. And so you just do mainly your
Speaker 2: hits and and they're happy, and people to come to
Speaker 2: see you, they're they're happy.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, I've seen your two hours show. The last
Speaker 1: time I saw you live was its stage coach last year. Yes,
Speaker 1: so in a situation like that, that was one hour, right, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: eighty thousand people there. It was fantastic, unbelievable. So how
Speaker 1: do you entertain yourself twenty three hours a day, twenty
Speaker 1: two hours a day, you're on stage for two hours.
Speaker 2: That's the highlight? Well, I said, like I said, I risked,
Speaker 2: I meditate, I'll do a little exercise, everything moderation, especially
Speaker 2: exercise anyway. So yeah, it's just new normal stuff. You know,
Speaker 2: family things and you know, calling your kids or talking
Speaker 2: to your wife five times a day. So it's it's
Speaker 2: all good. It's just normalcy. But our our particular way
Speaker 2: of life is a little abnormal, honestly, but it's great.
Speaker 2: Because people feel good when they come to a Beach
Speaker 2: Boys show around the world, by the way, which is
Speaker 2: we're going to do five shows in Spain, We're going
Speaker 2: to we've never been to horse of Or we're going
Speaker 2: this year, and then Switzerland and Germany. A nice festival
Speaker 2: in Germany, and then we're ten thousand people in England
Speaker 2: coming to see us at Englefield, which is you know,
Speaker 2: west of no east of London anyway, so we're having
Speaker 2: a great time.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, where's the strangest place you've played? I
Speaker 1: mean in terms of my own travel. You know, it's
Speaker 1: great to go to London. Everybody speaks English places. I've
Speaker 1: been to Bogata in Columbia and everybody I was with
Speaker 1: had had a family member killed. It's like I felt
Speaker 1: very alive. Yeah, So where are some of the couple
Speaker 1: of the exotic places you've been to that made an
Speaker 1: impression upon you?
Speaker 2: South Africa? You know, at the time we went, we'd
Speaker 2: go to the beach and says blacks only or whites only.
Speaker 2: But in the clubs and stuff, it was mixed, everybody
Speaker 2: having a good time to the music. We played in
Speaker 2: a place African homelands, it was a big golf course thing.
Speaker 2: In fact, we met uh Sean Connery there at the time,
Speaker 2: so it was an African homeless place. So it wasn't
Speaker 2: apartheid was There's plenty of African leaders there in the
Speaker 2: in the in the concert. But we did our thing
Speaker 2: and it was it's it was an interesting time to go.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: It was before apartheid went away, but they they it
Speaker 2: was it was interesting place to see and we're, of
Speaker 2: course we're not pro apartheid or anything, but in this
Speaker 2: particular place it was mixed. So we felt justified and going.
Speaker 1: Okay, you sang about cars. You talked about having all
Speaker 1: those cars. What's the best car you ever owned?
Speaker 2: Wow, that's a rough one. Corvettes are really nice. X
Speaker 2: K's are pretty groovy. But I had a nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: nine Rolls Royce Limo that was pretty amazing with the
Speaker 2: big huge headlines and stuff. That's beautiful. But I've had
Speaker 2: some really great So I had a sixty two Bentley
Speaker 2: which I had painted a certain way and it was gorgeous.
Speaker 2: And I actually went to jail one time because I
Speaker 2: was I just had my motor redone and I was
Speaker 2: going from from north of Malibu to Oxnard, and there
Speaker 2: was a straightaway for about five miles and I was
Speaker 2: going about one hundred and forty five miles an hour,
Speaker 2: and the California Hawaii Highway Patrol lights went on because
Speaker 2: I had to slow down. There was a town coming up,
Speaker 2: and he pulled me over, handcuffed me, put me in
Speaker 2: his car, and he had he had a shotgun and
Speaker 2: he was using that as an aerial for his boombox.
Speaker 2: And on the radio comes rock and roll music and
Speaker 2: I said, you know you hear that song? He says yeah,
Speaker 2: he says. I said, well, you're just the rest of
Speaker 2: the lead singer. He said, well, sorry, I don't know you, Mike,
Speaker 2: but yeah, I just wanted to see how fast that
Speaker 2: thing would go in I went pretty damn fast, but
Speaker 2: you know, a couple of times over the speed limits,
Speaker 2: and that costs me a small fortune to get out
Speaker 2: of going to driving school.
Speaker 1: What kind of car was it?
Speaker 2: Sixty two Bentley?
Speaker 1: So that was the Bentley. He had one hundred and
Speaker 1: forty five at Bentley.
Speaker 2: They're made for racing.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're going to die on stage? You're ever going
Speaker 1: to retire?
Speaker 2: No, I'll retire, I'll retire. But see my philosophy. If
Speaker 2: you can do it, great, If you can't do it, don't.
Speaker 2: So the minute I can't sing California Girls right, or
Speaker 2: I get around or fun, fun, fun or something, I'm
Speaker 2: out of here, which is because I've certainly done enough
Speaker 2: concerts over the years, and it's been a blessing, honestly,
Speaker 2: taking a family hobby which is all about the love
Speaker 2: of music and create and morphed into a long lasting
Speaker 2: profession which has been a blessing. And so many people
Speaker 2: around the world and so many wonderful crowds, just as
Speaker 2: recently as at the Beach Life Festival was beautiful, and
Speaker 2: all these festivals. We're going to do some more this summer,
Speaker 2: and I mean there'll be thousands of people singing along
Speaker 2: to our song. That's pretty pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: Okay, you've been open and honest, you told all these stories.
Speaker 1: As say, I'm a gigantic fan. I'll continue to listen
Speaker 1: to the record. So great to have you here on
Speaker 1: the show talking to us.
Speaker 2: Mike, Thank you, Bob. It's an honor to be on
Speaker 2: your show.
Speaker 1: Listen, I can tell you Beach Boys stories and seeing
Speaker 1: the Beach Boys from day one. You know, you know,
Speaker 1: no you're not that old, not quite that old now.
Speaker 1: But you know the song that I listened to, which
Speaker 1: is not is a Carl song, was off the Summer
Speaker 1: Day Summer Nights. Girl don't tell me? Oh yeah, little girl,
Speaker 1: it's me. Don't right, going to last.
Speaker 2: Summers have to be your grant.
Speaker 1: It's like, wow, the sweet song really all that?
Speaker 2: That's the one we don't do on the Endless Summer Elm.
Speaker 1: We don't do that, I mean, right, you know? Okay,
Speaker 1: So if I sat here and called out any song,
Speaker 1: could you sing it?
Speaker 2: Which one?
Speaker 1: No, any song from the catalog, any thoughts on the
Speaker 1: Beach Boys, free.
Speaker 2: Enough, you sing the lead or not? If it's a
Speaker 2: Carl song, if it's a dentist song, if it's l.
Speaker 2: Jardine singing or something. May I can probably do pretty
Speaker 2: good on some of them. But yeah, that's a hypothetical question,
Speaker 2: and we're gonna have to do another program.
Speaker 1: Okay, So any song that you don't regularly sing that
Speaker 1: you wish was in the set?
Speaker 2: All this is that And all I want to do.
Speaker 2: All I want to do is only bring good to you,
Speaker 2: to give you all the love I can help you
Speaker 2: in whatever you do. Sure as the sun will come
Speaker 2: around and start off another day. You can be sure
Speaker 2: that in my heart and so I love you in
Speaker 2: every way. Yeah, just one final thing. You're selling a
Speaker 2: message of positivity. You come across as positive. You do
Speaker 2: say earlier you're edgy guy. What pisces you off? Apathy?
Speaker 2: People who squander their wealth. There are over one hundred
Speaker 2: million displaced people right now. A guy named Bill Aremony
Speaker 2: started a company developed the company goals. Yeah, what's the
Speaker 2: one that everybody? Everybody contributes to shoot? Anyway? The point
Speaker 2: being he said, think to scale. So who's thinking to scale?
Speaker 2: All these genius billionaires who are one wants to go
Speaker 2: to Mars, wants we want to go somewhere else and
Speaker 2: and and you know includes me, I'm I'm apathetic like
Speaker 2: the next person. I'm doing well, I'm having a good time.
Speaker 2: My family's doing well. But we've got to get I
Speaker 2: think to scale a little bit better on how to
Speaker 2: get humanity to be kind to each other and to more.
Speaker 2: I wrote a song called Make Love Not War goes
Speaker 2: Make Love not War? What in the world is all
Speaker 2: the fighting for? Give piece of chance? The earth could
Speaker 2: use an evolutionary advance back in the sixties. It was
Speaker 2: during Vietnam. I remember brother Marvin saying, what's going on?
Speaker 2: War is not the answer. I distinguished, distinct distinctly heard
Speaker 2: him say. Yet the same old, same olds happen in
Speaker 2: the day. God to say. I'm grateful to the USA
Speaker 2: and all the folks protecting us every week, every day.
Speaker 2: But love's the only way to make hate go away.
Speaker 2: And that's why so many people are saying, make love
Speaker 2: not war. And it goes gov this everywhere. Pay no
Speaker 2: heed to the lack of opportunities for people in need.
Speaker 2: Musslm and his new Christian and Jude. Too many don't
Speaker 2: appreciate the other's point of view. You repot, you saw
Speaker 2: that's the truth. Indeed, to raise a new crop, we're
Speaker 2: going to need a new seed. Swords into plowshares. Instead
Speaker 2: of a fight, spread a little love and let has
Speaker 2: shed a lot of light. Make love not more. What
Speaker 2: in the world is allifining for give piece of chance
Speaker 2: here is could use the evolutionary events. So I really
Speaker 2: believe that. And if we can contribute to data coming
Speaker 2: to pass where more people are taken care of and
Speaker 2: not just you know, forgotten about, that'd be great.
Speaker 1: I think that sums it up. On that note, we've
Speaker 1: been talking to Mike Love, new member of the Songwriters
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame. Great thrill for me, Mike, thanks so
Speaker 1: much for doing this. Think about it until next time.
Speaker 1: This is Bob left sus
Speaker 3: Sh