Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road (2021) Movie Script
1
May I have...
I'm sure most everybody knows,
but for anybody who might not,
may we introduce you by name?
- Al Jardine.
- Thank you, Al.
- Dennis Wilson.
- Thank you.
- Brian Wilson.
- Carl Wilson.
Mike Love.
Now, I think... whoop,
what happened? There you are.
How long has this singing been going on?
About three years now.
It's an amazing thing,
because you have hit after hit.
Who determines, Brian,
what will be done next?
Well, I guess I do, I don't know.
I write the songs and produce them,
so I have a lot to say about it.
I think it's beautiful.
This is a little intro, you know.
All right, let's try
to really pull it off good now.
Here we go.
Play hard and strong, all the way.
You know the part...
Do-do, do-do...
Never more than just a "do-do, do-do."
- Then what after that?
- Then it goes...
Boom! Two, three, four...
Let me hear the organ.
Perfect. OK, we'll go with that.
Let's go again, please.
Here we go.
You've been out
on this really long tour.
- Right.
- Recording several new albums.
You know, really non-stop
since your late 50s.
- Right, right.
- Um...
How do you explain that kind of
burst of creativity and energy?
Where does this sudden surge
of creativity and energy come for you?
It starts in my brain,
makes its way out onto the piano,
and then on to the speakers
in the studio.
Yeah.
- Is that something you can explain?
- No, I can't. I can't.
And now, I'd like to start it out
with the organ and the Fender bass.
He was one of the first people
to actually use the studio
as an instrument itself.
Play hard and strong all the way.
Really feel it, fellas.
There's a certain amount of songwriting
you can learn how to do
- and you can educate yourself.
- Watch me on that part.
It's a fact that some
people are better than other people,
and Brian's one of the people
who's just better than other people.
Are we ready? Let's go.
Take five, "Good Vibrations".
"Good Vibrations", goddamn.
The idea that the chorus
is at one studio
and the verse is at another studio.
That's why that song is
so freaky and so wonderful.
"Good Vibrations"
was recorded in four studios,
Western, Sunset Sound,
Gold Star and RCA Victor.
Well, each studio was different,
you know?
Like, not any one studio's the same.
He sets a very high standard for,
not just being innovative,
but to also be emotionally evocative.
Well, he used all the orchestra.
He used orchestral things.
He used timpani, he used woodwind.
His musical knowledge
wasn't just as a band.
He had an orchestra in his head.
I mean, the Beatles
had George Martin to do it for them,
but Brian, he did it himself.
Well, the Beatles were probably
my favorite group.
Very, very inspirational
with Rubber Soul.
That made me write the Pet Sounds album.
The level of musicianship
and musicality,
I don't think anybody's touched it yet,
for my money.
Back at that time,
there's a lot of upbeat, up-tempo songs,
but Brian brought in
this haunting harmony.
You know there's something
going on with Brian Wilson.
There's no hiding
that this man is troubled
and trying to escape something.
He's just...
one of the greatest artists
who ever walked
the face of the earth.
In our time or in any time.
While we're
making the tapes, Bob,
we won't be able to have
that camera going.
It's a wonderful treat for me tonight
to have heard and seen the Beach Boys.
And as you can hear in the background,
the girls are still hollering for them.
I'm quite pleased to present
to you two of them,
Brian Wilson on my right,
and Carl Wilson, his brother,
on the left.
So, this is just two of them.
In just a minute, you'll meet
the rest of them, but...
Brian, I understand
that you've written
many of the songs
that you all have recorded.
When you write a song,
for yourself or for your group,
what gives you
the incentive to write them?
Well, usually, just the fact
that we're in the industry
and there's a lot of groups
competing with us,
and I feel that competition, you know,
and also I just... I love music,
and I get very inspired,
just generally creative anyway.
- Right, I understand.
- I just do it all the time.
Well, now, how many of them have you had
that have been million-sellers?
Well, actually, million-sellers,
we've had one million-seller,
that was "I Get Around", just recently.
- You wrote this?
- Yes, I did.
Here's this genius
who just can't help but come up
with these complex arrangements
of harmonies,
and then his little brother
comes in and says,
"You guys should write songs
about cars and surfing,
'cause that's what kids are into."
Name some of them
that you've written, Brian.
OK...
Well, starting with "Surfin'",
our first record,
"Surfin' Safari", "409", "Surfer Girl,"
"Little Deuce Coupe",
"Shut Down", "Surfin' USA",
"Be True to Your School..."
- "The Little Old Lady from Pasadena"?
- That's Jan and Dean.
- Is that right?
- And... "Fun, Fun, Fun".
- Oh, it goes on and on.
- "I Get Around", "Don't Worry, Baby".
We had "Little Saint Nick"
at Christmastime.
- Pardon me?
- "When I Grow Up..."
"When I Grow Up."
And "She Knows Me Too Well"
are our latest records.
You certainly are
a talented young man.
Let's talk to your brother
just a minute.
Do you share this
admiration for your brother?
Yes, well...
He's done very well with this,
you know, I mean,
we've had very good luck
with the records.
- You're Carl, right?
- Right.
- Carl's the lead guitar player.
- Lead guitar.
How did you assemble the group?
One day, as we were walking down
the street, we all bumped heads.
I don't know.
Dennis got the idea that we should
write something about surfing
because he was a big avid surfer then.
- You're a surfer?
- Yes, ma'am.
Well, this is something
we don't have much out in Oklahoma.
Yeah, I know.
Thanks so much for stopping by.
May I compliment you
on your beautiful dress?
- It is beautiful.
- Thank you.
Is it a gown or a dress?
Well, actually it's sort of
a beach girl type...
I like that.
I wanted to be in style when I talked
to the Beach Boys.
At the end of the concert,
the girls would all rush the stage
to get Dennis.
You know, me and Mike
and the guys would go,
"What's going on here?" you know?
The girls were all crying,
"Dennis, Dennis," you know?
- Yeah. He was our sex symbol.
- Right, right.
You and he had a little competition
for some women sometimes,
too, didn't you?
- Me and Dennis?
- Yeah.
- No.
- No?
He was a ladies' man.
I never was a ladies' man, you know?
- Right.
- He was always the ladies' man.
What prevented you
from being a ladies' man, do you think?
- Ah, just shy of girls, a little shy.
- Uh-huh, right.
- You can park right there.
- In the handicapped?
- Yeah, I always park there.
- Really?
- Yeah.
- OK.
These guys' | | probably wanna move it,
but I'll park here.
OK. I'm hungry.
- All right, let's get in there.
- OK.
Must have been to this deli
with you about 20 times.
Yeah, at least 20.
- Right?
- Right.
- Good times here.
- Yeah.
It's... I'm hot, you know?
- Yeah.
- I'm nervous.
- Yeah.
- I didn't sleep last night
and my head feels wacky.
- Oh, it does?
- Yeah.
- Why don't we just relax?
- OK. Enjoy our food.
When you get scared, what do you do?
You just take a deep breath?
If I get scared,
I take a deep breath,
but I take it...
try and take it from my belly.
Oh, take it...
- Really deep in here.
- Right.
And then...
How's your mood been?
- My mood?
- Yeah.
- It's been about even.
- Good.
Not depressed, not elated, just even.
- Yeah.
- You feeling scared now?
A little bit.
- It's nice to be with you.
- You're a good guy, Jason.
Thank you, Brian. You are too.
You are a cool person.
You have a very consistent way
of talking, you know?
You sorta stay in this one space,
you know?
- In talk.
- Does it make you feel comfortable?
- Yeah, helps me out.
- Good, I'm glad.
When I'm scared,
I listen to you talk, you know?
- Really?
- Yeah.
- And thinking it'll calm you down?
- Yeah.
All right, man. Well, I'm there for you.
- I'm there for you too.
- Thanks, man.
I first met Brian in 1995.
I went to interview him for the paper
I was working for at the time,
and we had a nice chat.
And when I first came to work
at Rolling Stone in 1997,
Brian had begun to start
what was gonna be sort of a solo career.
He was putting a band together,
he was releasing a record
called Imagination,
and I convinced Jann, my boss,
to let me go to Chicago,
where he was rehearsing.
One of the first times we spoke,
we were sitting in his living room.
We were talking, and sort of
right in the middle of our chat,
about ten minutes in,
he just started to fidget,
and he, he said, "I gotta go."
And he got up and he left.
I was sitting there.
I didn't know if he was coming back
or not coming back,
and I waited a while.
I just sorta started looking around,
and I found myself in the kitchen,
where I found Brian in the refrigerator.
I said, "What's going on?"
He said, "I just got a little scared.
And I said,
"Well, what did you get scared of?"
He said, "I don't know.
You know, sometimes I just
get scared, things scare me."
I said, "Like what?"
He said, "Like 'What a Fool Believes'.
You know that song
by the Doobie Brothers?
Scares the hell out of me."
You know? And it was just like that.
And we started having these moments,
and ever since then,
it just kinda became
part of my beat at Rolling Stone
to cover Brian.
And we became buddies.
The idea of doing an interview
makes Brian nervous,
so he'll often ask
if we can just take a drive
and listen to some music.
Look at that old car.
What kinda car is that?
- What is that?
- I don't know.
Is that a Rolls-Royce?
I think it's...
I don't think it's a Rolls.
I think it's American, isn't it?
Cadillac.
- Cadillac?
- Yeah.
Old Cadillac, right?
- Yeah.
- From what, the '30s?
Or maybe from the '40s?
- Maybe '40s.
- Yeah.
Ask the guy. Yell it out, ask him.
- Well, I can't...
- Hey, buddy! What year is that car?
- '41.
- Thank you. '41.
It was probably "Surfin' Safari", the
first Beach Boys record I ever bought.
The voices, the tone of the voices,
was so beautiful.
Bit like a classical choir, in a way.
It made California sound
such an incredible place to go.
You know, the rooftop is down.
The story begins.
And then they invite you
into that world,
and that world has its own rules
and its own code
and its own story to tell.
There was no greater world
created in rock-and-roll
than the Beach Boys.
I mean, they defined Southern California
for everybody around the world.
It just took you
out of where you were
and took you to another place.
Have you ever been to Paradise Cove?
Years and years ago.
Do you remember when you were
shooting the album cover
for the Beach Boys' first album?
- Can't remember.
- Right. It's a long time ago.
- Yep.
- Was it a little bit funny
singing all the songs about surfing
without actually surfing?
- Yeah, Dennis surfed. I never learned.
- Right.
- There's Paradise Cove.
- Here we are. Closer than I thought.
- There it is, look!
- There it is!
"This marks 'The Spot."
Fifty-five years ago.
How you feeling about Hawthorne?
Uh, you know, I'm a little nervous
to go back there.
- You know what I mean?
- Hm-hmm.
'Cause, like, I grew up there,
and it's, like, I have a lot
of sentiments about it, you know?
Right.
Please play "It's O.K."
on 15 Big Ones.
OK. You got it.
Has Hawthorne changed a lot
from when you were young?
Is it familiar-looking to you?
- What's that?
- Hawthorne?
It doesn't look the same.
It looks a little different.
- So this is 119th Street right here?
- Yeah. 119th.
- And this is the street you lived on?
- Yeah.
So this is where your house was.
Right here.
I don't wanna get out,
I just wanna look.
OK. So, this was all
- where the house was, right here?
- Yeah.
Uh-huh. Look at the cover of the album.
- Yeah.
- Paradise Cove.
"Site of the childhood home
of the Beach Boys."
Friday nights,
my father would get his paycheck.
So the three of us would be
in the back seat singing away.
And that's... actually that's
the birth of the three brothers
singing together.
When we'd be singing harmony together,
my father would just...
fall down crying with joy.
There's me at my piano
when I wrote "Surfer Girl".
Forget it.
That one killed you when it came out.
I played that thing... a thousand times.
How did it feel to be there?
It was a little...
scared me a little bit, you know?
- Did it?
- 'Cause, well, it didn't look the same.
Right.
Yeah.
- Is this Dartmouth?
- To your right, right, right.
- This is where you moved with Marilyn.
- Right.
Was it right after you got married?
About three months
after we got married.
Wow. What a big time in your life.
Yeah. I did an acid trip there.
A-ha! The first time?
Yeah.
- Oh, it was scary.
- What happened?
I don't know, just...
This friend of mine gave me acid
and it freaked me out.
I wrote "California Girls",
"Help Me, Rhonda",
and "She's Not the Little Girl
I Once Knew".
I wrote all those songs there.
Were you still high
when you were doing that?
Uh, no. No, I wasn't.
I wrote "California Girls"
about a week or two after acid.
OK. Did you have a kinda
western thing in mind?
Well, I just had this
I guess that's western, right?
Did you have a feeling
that was gonna be a popular song?
Oh, yeah, I could tell
when I first wrote it. After we cut it,
Mike did the lead,
and he sang great lead.
He's a great singer.
It was quite a different change-up
from what I usually wrote.
The way you connected the intro
of the song...
- Right.
- ...to the rest of it was...
A different kind of a thing.
Brian just threw away the rule book
and it was all in his head,
and it's just,
"Wow, are you kidding me?"
"What were you thinking, man?
How did you come up
with this combination
of chords and voices?"
He said, "I was at the piano,
and I was trying not to move
my highest fingers
and my lowest fingers,
but make cool geometric patterns
with the internal fingers.
I don't know if he was
telling me the truth.
But he definitely said that to me.
But if you think about that,
that's kinda like what Mozart
does with a string quartet.
Brian had this unique ability
to write a great melody and also
arrange some great harmonies
and produce some great records,
so we had all in one with Brian Wilson.
We had shall we call it...
the jackpot.
Equate that blend, that harmony,
the sound of the vocals...
it's like looking up to the heavens.
It's almost ethereal.
There's a very ethereal rising up.
The only way
to really accomplish a sound that big
is in knowing what you want to hear,
but also
placing some trust in the people
you're working with
and saying, "We can all do this together
if you just follow my lead."
Brian was a leader,
and he could shape this group
around the brothers, you know,
and his cousin and his neighbor,
and that was his team,
and he led these guys.
And I think that that was...
gave Brian so much confidence.
They would do anything that he thought
was the right thing to do.
Hey, let's go...
Where you wanna go to now?
So, let's go to Laurel Way.
- OK.
- You know how to get there?
Laurel Way, trying to think. Uh...
- Go up Santa Monica or Sunset?
- Laurel Way... Can you navigate it?
Yeah.
What did you feel like
when you lived here
and you were young, married,
money, writing hits?
What was that feeling for you?
It was excitement. Exciting and happy.
Groovy feeling.
Haven't seen it since 1966.
Were your parents around then?
Did they come visit?
No, they never did.
Wasn't this your first
sort of big purchase?
- Yeah.
- That must have been an exciting time.
It was, Jason, it was a great time.
It's right up here.
I think it's right up there.
This one?
No, it has a view,
so it's gotta be a little higher.
OK.
It has a view of the whole
of downtown Los Angeles.
- Oh, wow.
- All the way to the beach.
Did you have a room
where you would work?
The piano was in a sandbox.
What was the idea behind that?
I don't know, I just wanted
to have a sandbox.
- While you worked?
- Yeah. Took our shoes and socks off,
and I wrote, you know, music
on a piano in the sandbox.
I put an Arabian tent up
in my den, and I put, like,
eight Tiffany lamps
in the living room,
hanging from the ceiling.
It was a trip.
It sounds like it.
What did you do inside the tent?
- Smoked grass.
- Uh-huh.
Ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
You know.
Young and rich.
That's where I wrote
the Pet Sounds album
- and "Good Vibrations".
- Wow.
That's some pretty big stuff
you wrote up here.
Yeah.
So, you think you'd wanna tour more?
Yeah, I like to go on the road.
What do you like about it?
- Well, the concerts.
- Yep.
- Makes you feel good?
- Yeah. It's fun to play a concert.
You used to get nervous,
but not so much anymore, huh?
No, before a concert,
I get very nervous.
How long does it take you
to calm down on stage?
About two minutes.
To this day,
Brian's still little bit nervous
about Pet Sounds, you know?
"Are they gonna like it? Is it too soft?
"Is it manly?", he'll say sometimes.
Hello, Los Angeles!
The Hollywood Bowl.
Well, you have the great "Caroline, No."
It's one of the greatest songs
in pop history,
as far as dealing
with oncoming adulthood,
loss of innocence,
reckoning with the adult world...
and the terrible heartache
that comes along with it.
I can hear him exploring
the possibilities of these songs
that he probably woke up,
dug his feet in the sand,
and wrote these songs.
He started out writing happy songs
and then, as he grew as a musician,
his tastes refined, his writing refined,
and he wanted to get away
from the three-chord thing
and experiment, and when you do that,
you are drawn to the darker side.
I know I am.
Brian's music, you know,
especially Pet Sounds,
you never move on from it.
I'll be listening to that record
till the day I die.
Pet Sounds,
the beauty of it
carries with it a sense of...
joyfulness even in the pain of living.
The joyfulness of an emotional life.
You have this music bed
that is so complex,
but the lyrics were very simple.
All these concepts of things
that we all ask ourselves,
and it's there forever.
Fifty years later,
we're still celebrating
what is probably one of
the greatest records ever made.
I don't even know what that is.
Flutes and reverb? I don't know, man.
I don't even know where to begin.
Probably took a minute
for everyone to wrap their heads around
a 23-year-old kid coming in
and telling 'em what was up.
That's a banjo. It is a banjo, huh?
Brian always had this thing
where he used the fifth note
of a chord as the bass note.
"God Only Knows"
is a prime example of that.
With the bass note.
And "Someone Saved My Life Tonight"
is exactly the same.
So, you can hear
the other instruments.
They're all in one room
at the same time playing.
With Brian's music, you hear
his spirit, and it's like...
he may be playing a C chord,
but there's, like, this other weird
harmony drifting in over it.
He's using the available tools
that all of us have.
You know, it may be a piano
or a harpsichord
or a guitar or whatever,
but it's all in the architecture
or the recording technique.
Everybody has a piano or a guitar.
Go grab whatever the fuck you
want, but it's the way
you put in the strangeness,
that's what he's the master of.
Listen to that basic track.
Sounds to me like it's maybe
a piano and a banjo
and a harmonica
kinda all becoming one sound.
Brian had to sit home,
dream up these textures
that no one had ever, ever used.
That's one reason why people say
Brian's a genius.
That's being a complete visionary,
to dream up these textures
that never existed before.
I'm still awestruck by the construction.
How he took very complex arrangements,
and yet, at the end of the day,
they sounded so simple
when they entered your ear.
I think his imagination
is what made him a great producer.
We can all sit here
and say we have all the technology
and we know how to use it
and we know how to do it,
but the bottom line is
it doesn't matter what you know,
it's what you're gonna do.
I've been making records
for 40-some years,
and I don't know how you do this.
I don't know how you do that.
Nobody knows.
What I hear
is his competitive nature,
him wanting to be more
than what everybody else was.
And you can totally hear
how he was trying
to make things sound
better than the Beatles.
But I think, more so, his
biggest competitor was himself.
How was that, was that cool?
- It's beautiful.
- All right.
When he started doing
the music around Pet Sounds,
which was more complex,
more orchestral, more personal,
you know, the guys started saying,
"Whoa now," you know?
I mean,
"Where are we going with this?"
You know, this isn't about
cars and girls anymore.
And things started to fragment.
And I don't think it's any wonder
that Brian started to lose
his confidence around that time.
When you think about
recording or touring,
do you feel like you still have
something to accomplish musically?
Do you still have things
you wanna do?
Yeah, I wanna make
a rock-and-roll album.
Maybe something good, you know?
Yeah.
What's rock-and-roll to you?
- Rock-and-roll?
- Yeah.
Chuck Berry, you know.
- Little Richard.
- HM-hmm.
- I recently watched the Smile concert.
- Yeah.
Wow, you looked really happy that night.
- Yeah, that was fun.
- Was it hard to pull off?
We premiered Smile
and Lucky Old Sun album,
2004 and 2005.
When you let it go, when you
stopped working on it in '67,
- was that a hard thing for you?
- Yeah, it was rough, yeah.
Me and Van Dyke got so into it,
you know.
We really got into it.
When you premiered Smile,
how did you feel?
I mean, it must have been a big relief.
Well, it was a big challenge
to try to pull it off, you know?
- Right.
- But we did. It went over very well.
Around 2004, Brian decided
that he was going to come back
and work on Smile,
the, you know, most famous
unreleased album of all time,
something that he had abandoned
around 1967,
and I think, in retrospect,
probably wisely, because it was
proving to be insurmountable
for all kinds of reasons.
He was terrified, he didn't wanna do it,
and then slowly, something about
the music reconnected emotionally.
So, all those bad associations
that he had
were being replaced with good ones.
And it became
more about the music again.
Some of the stuff on that record
was pretty wild, on Smile.
Yeah, some of that stuff
was pretty complicated.
- Yeah.
- Complex.
Hm-hmm. Well, why'd you let it go?
We thought it was
a little ahead of its time.
- Right.
- We waited for, like, 30 years
and we finally finished it.
It became something that was living now,
as opposed to something
that was dead in his mind.
We're not picking up all your notes.
You can feel it,
but you can't really hear it.
In fact,
we couldn't bring up that stuff.
We couldn't even say the words
"Heroes and Villains".
'Cause he would freak out.
What now? God, there are
so many parts to this damn song.
It's endless and endless and endless!
It never ends!
When you listen to Smile
with that ear of hearing
how segmental it was,
and yet how seamlessly
he put it together,
it's quite wonderful.
I remember sitting with him,
and I handed him the CD,
and I said,
"Brian, that's Smile, you finished it."
You know, I could really see
it meant something to him,
because it was a disappointment
that he'd been carrying around.
Being able to finish it at last,
even though it was 30 years later,
was a big moment in his life.
Do you still get ideas for
different ways to produce?
- Who, me?
- Things, sounds, yeah.
Well, usually, you know,
recording's a little slower these days.
You know?
What's your process like?
- The process?
- Yeah.
Start with a background track.
Then you do the...
background vocals,
then you do the leads.
- OK.
- Like we'll do today.
- Will I be on keys?
- That's correct.
What's been making you feel like
making a rock-and-roll record?
Uh, I don't know... well, actually,
Summer Days and Summer Nights
was a rock-and-roll album.
- Yep.
- But I'd like to do another one
- with covers instead of originals.
- Hm-hmm.
Is your click OK?
How do you feel about spending
a few days with your band?
I think it'll be nice
to be back with 'em, you know?
It about time we all recorded like this.
And we are here.
I'm nervous.
It's like you say when you go on stage,
nervous for about two minutes.
Right, and then as soon as I hear
"California Girls", I'm cool.
- One, two.
- You got this.
One, two, three.
Right there.
One, two, three...
No, on the "duh.
- Are you sure it's that?
- Yeah.
Yeah, that's it.
I'll play the piano.
Yeah! Now we're talking!
- Hi, Russ.
- How you doing, Brian?
- I'm good, how are you?
- Doing all right.
OK.
Hi, Tom.
- Hi, Brian.
- How are ya?
- Good, how are you?
- Good.
- We need a click, Wes.
- It's coming.
What's coming?
- The click.
- Oh.
OK, it's cool. The click'll help ya!
- OK.
- One, two, three.
- Paul.
- Yeah?
It's just...
No...
OK.
One, two, three.
- Hey, Paul.
- Yeah?
- Play staccato. Bah, bah, bah.
- OK.
- Yeah.
- Ooh.
One, two, three, four.
Hold it!
The guitar sounds a little fuzzy.
See if that's better.
OK, one, two, three, four.
Yeah, we're cool.
- Let's try it once.
- OK.
One... two... one, two, three.
Two, a-one, two, three, four.
Yeah, it can fall apart, that's cool.
- Pretty good.
- I think that's a print.
Wanna go in, wanna go in the booth.
Can we come in the booth and hear it?
- Yes.
- OK.
Listen, syncopate it a little.
Yeah, what are the words?
Sing it.
"Since you put me down,
I've been arguing in my head."
Let me hear. Sing it, sing it.
No.
- Sing the words.
- OK, I can't do it.
Loosen up.
Loosen up, sweetie, loosen up.
My dad owned
the publishing with Brian,
and he managed the group
for ten percent.
I just remember
there was a lot of tension,
with my dad and Brian.
You guys think you're good?
Can we hear a chord?
Just a chord, like we used to.
When you used to sing
clear records, OK? Let's go.
His presence was very...
where he'd burst into a room, you know?
And beat everyone up.
I got beaten around by my dad.
One kinda spanking is...
But the way I had it,
Dad would double over his belt.
His voice...
Very, very hard.
Pretty tough business.
His dad was extremely tough on him,
abusive at times.
You can hear this in all the old tapes
from those studio sessions
where his dad takes it way too far.
We just wanna be sure this is our thing.
This is an absolute insult.
Well, you're doing the same to me
in front of 20 people.
I'm sorry, I'll never help you guys.
Why?
Because you don't appreciate
the good help I have given you.Ii
- We all appreciate the help.
- You've got a beautiful gift.
When you guys start coming off...
Listen, let me tell you something.
- Yes.
- When you guys get so big
that you can't sing from your hearts,
you're going downhill.
- Downhill?
- Down.. Hill!
And as we got older, we told him
we didn't want him to manage us anymore.
It's very simple.
It got to the point where
he was so overbearing to work with,
that we had to fire him.
Why did you move
from Laurel Way to Bellagio?
Marilyn wanted to move to Bel Air.
Was it a bigger house?
- What, Bellagio?
- Yeah.
- Much bigger.
- Much bigger, I see.
- There's Bellagio Road.
- Oh, yeah.
You wrote the directions to this house
in a song, "Busy Doin' Nothin'."
Right.
What inspired you to tell people
where you live?
I don't know. I don't know.
Check it out. It was right here.
Yeah, you can't see much, can you?
But that's a beautiful house back there?
Have a swimming pool in the backyard?
Oh, yeah, we had that specially built.
- Wow.
- A very big pool.
I had, like, a den that we built
a recording studio.
- You remember that?
- Yeah.
It was a really state-of-the-art
studio too, I think.
Oh, it was a fantastic studio.
Great.
The Mamas and the Papas
came over one time.
- Oh, really?
- Yeah.
Did you record together?
No, they just came over one night,
John and Michelle...
...came over one night in the '70s.
- Little Richard came over.
- Really?
- Yeah.
- Oh-oh!
Sly from the Family Stone came over.
What? OK, you gotta tell me about that.
I remember...
I just know he fell asleep on a couch.
I think he was snortin' cocaine.
- And he fell asleep?
- Yeah.
Did he come over to party
or to record or just to visit?
- Just to visit.
- What was the vibe?
Terry Melcher brought him over...
- OK.
- ...to visit.
- Sly seemed like a cool cat.
- Who, Sly?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- He was good.
- Oh, yeah.
- "Hot Fun in the Summertime"?
- Oh, man.
Heavy duty.
Is this the house where Elton came over?
Yeah.
Going to Brian Wilson's house
with Danny Hutton of Three Dog Night
was just the most amazing,
surreal trip for me.
Here we are, in Brian Wilson's house,
who we used to lay on the floor
and listen in our headphones
to all his beautiful music.
It was... one of the most
moving nights of my life
and he tried to sell me
his piano as well.
But to that time, he went through
such a dark period of his life.
So, Bellagio is kinda where
things got difficult for you, huh?
- Yeah.
- What was going on?
Uh... I was just kinda
lonesome and, you know...
hung out in my bedroom for a while.
What were you staying
in your bedroom for?
I don't really know.
I was having mental problems.
Yeah. Yeah.
And everyone always says,
"You stayed in your bedroom for years."
You didn't really do that.
- No, for a couple of weeks.
- Yeah.
Sometimes you question yourself,
and I think, especially
when you grapple with demons,
and you think, "Well, do I deserve this?
Am I worthy of this?"
And, you know, I think about
Brian being saddled
with... the term "genius
from such an early age.
That's gotta weigh on you so much.
I think about someone like Brian,
and coming into this
when he was becoming a man
and really starting to make the music
that would change the world
in a lot of ways.
And the pressure that comes with that.
You know, the pressure
to continue to perform at that level
and continue to be the person
that people think
you are supposed to be.
You know, you deal
with a lot of disappointment.
Expectations are the foundation
for disappointments.
Most people in the music business
are a little crazy in a variety
of different ways.
I think you wish for the people
who delivered so much to you,
you wish them happiness and a long life.
You know, if you see someone
who's going through a lot of pain,
you wish, like, hey,
nothing but good things.
I think it's safe to say
that creative people
are usually sensitive people.
That door to drugs and alcohol
is an easy door to walk through.
Brian Wilson
was crying for help a long time ago.
He put it in there,
under this happiness.
It is like the Mona Lisa.
His tones that he chose,
or those harmonies,
were there on purpose.
Was this him calling out
that "I need help"?
Remember the song
"Long Promised Road"?
- Of course.
- Carl recorded it at Bellagio House.
At our house.
And he had me come down
to sing part of the bridge.
So, OK...
I wrote that part.
You kinda came down
from your bedroom and did that
- and then went back up?
- Yeah.
Carl and Dennis were really
different guys, weren't they?
Yeah, Carl was a little easier-going.
Dennis was a little more hyper.
Carl was like...
easygoing kind of a person, you know?
I was listening to
Dennis's record recently.
- Oh, Pacific Ocean Blue?
- Wow.
I have never heard his album.
- Oh, man...
- I heard...
I thought, gosh, I heard that one.
Yep.
But I think there's 11 or 12
that I haven't heard yet.
Oh, my God, "River Song"?
Did you ever hear that one?
No.
Let's listen to it
when we get back to your house.
- Is it, like, pretty cool?
- It's amazing.
- He made good music, didn't he?
- He sure did.
The record is really spectacular.
You're gonna love it.
I'm surprised you never heard it.
- No, I haven't.
- After you had left Marilyn...
Right.
...and you were living in
Pacific Palisades,
that's when you were hanging out
with Dennis a lot, right?
No, actually I was hanging out
with Dennis in Venice.
Oh, in Venice, at his place?
Yeah, he used to play drums
and I'd play organ.
We used to fool around together.
You know?
- He was a good drummer.
- Yeah, he was.
You were really close friends
with Dennis.
Because we snorted cocaine together.
- He used to buy cocaine for me.
- Hm-hmm.
You know what he used to do?
He carried around a big, huge bottle,
plastic bottle of grapefruit juice
and vodka.
Wow.
And he would stay drunk the whole day.
He was crazy, crazy guy.
You think that was 'cause
he was anxious and nervous?
Yeah, he's always been, like, a...
little bit nervous person, you know?
But he was such a sweet guy too, right?
- Didn't he have a big heart?
- Oh, he sure did, yeah.
- I like his song "Forever".
- Oh, yeah. Oh, my God.
- Thought that was beautiful.
- So beautiful.
Yeah, I miss him.
Brian's relationship with his brothers,
he loved them so much.
Carl was just a nice, soft person,
and he was the peacekeeper
in the family,
and Brian was the genius, the introvert,
and Dennis was probably
everything Brian wanted to be.
And Brian was everything
Dennis wanted to be.
And there in the middle you get
that beautiful tug and pull.
Beautiful brotherly relationship.
This is just his little brother talking,
but to see Brian on stage
and see all the people respond to Brian
is so overwhelming, it's so wonderful.
To listen to a Brian Wilson composition,
the only thing stemming from
that, the roots, is the love.
It's love.
- What you gonna have at the deli?
- Good question.
Possibly a Cobb salad.
- What about you?
- Cobb salad for me.
Yeah, today was fun, I liked it.
When you were...
when you had the Radiant Radish,
you'd actually work in the shop,
wouldn't you?
I worked there.
Did you know a lot of information
about health foods and stuff?
- No. A friend of mine was, though.
- Yeah.
I ran the cash register.
I learned how to do a cash register.
- That's fun.
- Guess who I met there.
- Who?
- Jack Rieley.
Really? That's where you met him
the first time?
- Yeah.
- Wow.
And he ended up managing
the Beach Boys, right?
It was his idea to go to Holland.
What was that like?
- It was a trip.
- Hm-hmm.
- Holland is a great record.
- Holland?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
It was a kick, working in Holland.
You didn't wanna go at first.
Oh, no, I didn't wanna go.
Jack said, "Look, Brian, it'd be
a good vacation for us all,
and we can record there."
I said, "OK, I'll go,"
so we packed up and went.
Stayed there for a half a year.
- Wow.
- That's a long vacation.
- Very long.
- Six months in goddamn Holland.
- Whoa...
- Six months.
I was a little depressed, so I laid down
in front of the board,
you know, the console?
- Yeah.
- And just listened to Carl
produce for a couple of weeks,
and then,
after I got over my depression,
I wrote "A Fairy Tale".
- And we did it.
- That's cool.
And then Carl,
he produced "A Fairy Tale".
That's awesome.
I wrote it, he produced it,
and Jack Rieley narrated it.
Wow.
"Funky Pretty."
"Funky Pretty" is amazing. Yeah.
Carl was producing a lot
at that point, right?
He produced his ass off,
are you kidding?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
Must have been really cool to
see your little brother step up.
Well, I was proud of him.
- He produced "A Fairy Tale".
- Right.
He said, "Brian, I wanna produce this."
He goes, "I like these songs."
- I said, "Go ahead, produce it."
- That's cool.
- It blew my mind.
- You didn't know he had it in him.
Oh, no, I did not.
You also... did you write
"Sail On, Sailor" there?
Yeah.
That song, man,
that's one of the greats.
"Sail On, Sailor" is probably
one of the best songs I ever wrote.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
When we get to my house,
would you please boot up Dennis's album?
Absolutely. We'll listen
to a little of the record.
- OK.
- Then you can relax.
All right.
Will you give him the card?
I'm gonna hit the head.
- I'll be right back.
- I'll take care of it.
- How's it going?
- It's going great.
- You gonna take care of this?
- Absolutely. I'm gonna get the check.
OK, Brent, OK.
He's gonna take care of it.
All right, we scored!
- We scored!
- I scored a friend.
- Yeah, for sure.
- I haven't had a friend...
I haven't had a friend to talk to
in three years.
- Really?
- Really.
My life has been so simple, you know?
- Yeah.
- So simple and, like, modest.
Yeah.
No sitting around
and shooting the shit kinda thing.
I haven't had that kind of thing
since you.
- Well, I'm here for ya.
- Vice versa.
- OK.
- Let's go.
That's amazing.
Do you remember him talking
to you about the record?
He came over and he played me
just the "Evening News" song.
I never listened to his album
till right now.
All right.
Can you make it a little louder?
If you ask
Elvis Costello or Roger Taylor
or Peter Buck from REM,
I've heard all of these people
talk about this record,
of it being this, like, lost jewel.
It's a bummer
that it didn't slow him down
or knock some sense into him,
saying, "Lookit, dude,
you are a great artist."
All right!
This could be cool
for the rock-and-roll record.
Yeah.
Good.
Dennis was just
an impulsive hell-raising dude,
but had a big heart, you know?
And loved his brother.
All right.
- Do you wanna hear one more?
- I wanna hear it all.
Yeah.
This guy called me up, he goes,
"Brian, I'm sorry to tell you this,
but your brother Dennis
drowned tonight."
I got this terrible feeling
in my chest, you know?
Really scared me.
I have had two losses in my family
in the last ten years,
and it's been hard for me.
The first loss was very hard,
it was my father,
and then of course my brother Dennis.
We go back about 21 years, you know,
and it's hard to lose a brother,
and somebody who had such
a vital, energetic thing about him.
I just don't want
to talk any more about it.
All right.
It's always a great day
when you can ride to Malibu.
Taking a peaceful to drive
to our stomping grounds.
Yeah, you have
lot of history in Malibu.
- Yeah. Nine years.
- Yeah.
Yeah, I served time for nine years.
Is it like a prison sentence?
Yeah, it was like...
In a way, yeah.
I contribute. I'm a contributor.
- Ooh, ooh, ooh...
- In my personal story,
it really didn't work out so well.
I did my dose of LSD,
it shattered my mind,
and I, you know,
came back, thank God,
in I don't know how many pieces.
I think what happened was that
it became too painful for him.
I was terrified for my brother.
Why in the world would a man
with that kind of God-given talent
need any help from drugs?
I have been taught the difference
by my psychiatrist, thank God,
of a natural high and a drug high.
I mean, drugs are a definite balance
of heaven and hell.
You go to heaven,
then you go right to hell.
What made you come back, Brian?
I probably came back out of will.
Just... my name is Wilson,
maybe that's where I got the will.
They're called auditory hallucinations.
You're normal and then all of a sudden
you start hearing voices in your head.
The voices say, "I'm gonna hurt you,
I'm gonna kill you," yeah.
I was afraid the devil came
in the form of other people
that were competing with me,
that had ideas
of killing me and getting rid of me.
Everywhere I looked, I would say,
"Ah! The devil's after me."
What people have a tendency
to do that suffer with depression
is they use drugs and alcohol
to medicate themselves.
It's called nepenthe.
Numbing the soul.
If I had not taken
control, he could be dead.
He had a year or two to live
and he'd have died.
We are worried that Brian Wilson
is gonna follow Elvis.
Oh, God, no.
We met back in 1986,
during the Landy years.
As time went on,
he became... captive.
I wasn't allowed to call
my family or my friends at all
for nine years.
He doped me up with medication.
He kept me doped up so I couldn't resist
what he told me to do.
- Why?
- He's a control freak.
He just gets off on controlling people.
Was it hard to let go?
A little bit hard for me to let go,
yeah. It was hard.
When you've had a control figure
in your life for that long a period.
Nine years, starting from 1983 to 1992.
It was nine years of control.
He's the one that's done all this.
He's had support, like I say.
He's had emotional security,
but he is the one that's pulled
himself out of the darkness,
back into the sunlight.
Dr. Landy controlled
a lot of aspects of your life.
- Yep.
- Was he a pretty tough taskmaster?
He was rough, yeah. He was rough.
He did things like he made me
eat spaghetti off the floor.
Crazy things, you know?
Why did he do that?
- I don't know, he just acted crazy.
- Hm-hmm.
He goes, "All right, I want you
to eat your spaghetti off the floor."
I said, "Oh, man," he goes,
"I said eat your..."
You know, he was real mean, you know?
And then about two weeks,
three weeks later, he went, "Hi, Brian."
In a real friendly tone, you know?
That was really quite an experience.
- Kind of a mind trip.
- Yeah.
Yeah, he didn't let me call my family.
That must have been hard.
Your daughters were growing up.
Oh, it was, Jason, it was.
So, do you have a hard time making sense
of the good parts and the bad parts?
No, I took the bad with the good
with him, you know?
Yeah.
Balancing the two together, you know?
You know what I did for a little while?
- What?
- When I was, like, really fat?
I ate two New York steaks for breakfast
and a big piece of birthday cake.
- Really?
- Yeah.
I shot up to 311.
- Oh, my God.
- Oh, Jason, I was so fat.
And when Eugene Landy came into my life,
he had me weigh myself.
I weighed 311, and he goes,
"We're going to Kona, Hawaii,
and you're gonna start exercising."
So, in about five or six months,
I goddamn lost...
went from 311 to 185.
Can you believe that?
- Oh, man.
- Isn't that amazing?
Why do you think you were eating so bad?
Uh... I was just being stupid.
So, what was it like
when Landy took you to Hawaii?
Well, I had to kick three main
drug habits at the same time.
So I spent a few nights
tossing and turning
and rolling in the bed,
moaning and groaning
and it was like a guy
kicking heroin, you know?
Oh, it was rough.
I had to kick cigarettes,
alcohol and cocaine.
All at once?
- All at once, yeah.
- Whoa.
That was one of the roughest trips
I ever took.
- Yeah.
- Which was the hardest to stop?
Um, the roughest
was the cigarettes.
He motivated you.
He sure did, yeah.
But on the bad side, he controlled you.
Yeah, he did.
He made money off my name, you know?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
The thing about
Eugene Landy was that
he was supposed
to be watching Brian's diet
and taking care of him physically,
and trying to get him to lose weight
and stop living a bad lifestyle.
He kind of overstepped
his boundaries or something,
whatever boundaries
there were supposed to be,
and got involved in songwriting
and production and stuff like that.
That was kind of a real drag.
When people realized how bad that was,
I think that started the wheels
turning pretty quickly
to get rid of Landy.
The day that that happened,
Brian called me,
and he said, "I'm free now.
I can do whatever I want.
What are you doing, Andy?"
And I said, "I'm... doing nothing,
what do you wanna do?"
And he said, "I wanna write songs."
Trying to think of what I wanna hear.
Play...
- "Long Promised Road"?
- Great call.
Here it is.
It's a really cool track.
Did he write the words? Carl?
Yeah, Jack Rieley wrote 'em.
- OK.
- Yeah.
He died not too long ago.
- Jack died?
- A few years ago, yeah.
How do you know that?
Somebody that I knew
knew him, and told me that.
Where was he living, in Amsterdam?
Yeah, in Europe.
I don't know if it was in Amsterdam.
- He died?
- Yeah.
- Oh, man.
- A few years back.
That's enough.
Jack seemed like a really fun guy.
Yeah. He's the one who thought
of going to Holland.
You know?
- What did Jack die of?
- I'm not sure.
Was he older than you?
Uh, I think he was
about the same age as me.
OK.
Would you play, um...
"It's O.K." by the Beach Boys?
- Heck, yeah.
- On... 15 Big Ones.
- Really cool line.
- Yeah.
That broke my heart
when I heard Jack Rieley died.
Oh, man, I'm sorry to be
the bearer of bad news.
Absolutely... absolutely broke my heart.
- About three years ago?
- I think so, yeah, maybe more.
- Any other ones you wanna hear?
- Yeah.
Play...
Don't play anything.
- I've heard enough today.
- OK.
You've gotta be tough
to go through what he's been through,
personally and musically,
and with his family,
and stuff with his dad.
You've gotta be tough to survive that.
The odds were not on Brian,
but the fact that he is still here
and performing and making music,
that's a miracle, kind of, isn't it?
Really, it is.
I wonder if he sees it that way.
- Here's your old spot.
- Moonshadows.
Good.
I think they have a dance floor there.
Had a couple glasses of wine,
feel good, then I went and danced.
- Right.
- For a little while.
I never knew you were a big dancer.
I can't dance very good, Jason.
You did... I saw that you did
a lot of dancing at your wedding.
Yeah.
When the spirit moves you?
Yeah.
Tell me the story of when you
and Melinda decided to get married.
- We were staying in a house on Ferrari.
- Uh-huh.
And she goes, "Aren't you going to
ask me to get married?"
I said, "Yeah." She goes, "Yeah!"
I said, "Would you marry me?"
She goes, "Yeah!"
You must have been pretty excited.
Yeah, we got married in Palos Verdes.
- To speak...
- To speak...
- And to listen.
- And to listen.
- To inspire...
- To inspire...
- And to respond.
- And what?
And to respond.
And to respond.
To Brian and Melinda.
When did you guys
decide to have kids?
- We adopted.
- Yeah.
19... 98.
That must have been a big deal,
adopting new kids.
Yeah, that was a trip.
One, two, three, swing.
One, two, three, swing.
Those kids are, like,
very creative and playful.
I learned love from them,
the way they express love.
Yeah, it's inspiring,
it really is, yeah.
I don't think
there would've been a third act
if it hadn't have been for Melinda.
Brian found his salvation.
He went through
such a dark period of his life.
And whenever I see them,
they're just like
a very happy, ordinary
married couple with children.
He loves her, she loves him.
Again, he's not a person
to live a lavish lifestyle.
He's just a California boy that likes to
make music and be with his family.
He doesn't deserve just
the accolades about the music.
He deserves the accolades
about his personal life.
Do you remember the day
you came to Trancas
- to your birthday party?
- Yeah, McCartney was there.
And his wife, Linda...
...was there.
And it was a really cool house.
It's amazing.
You did so much that day.
It was your birthday party,
you filmed that Rolling Stone cover,
and you did that skit
for Saturday Night Live,
all on the same day.
- Let's go surfin' now.
- Everybody's learnin' how.
Come on a safari with us.
- Come on.
- Let's go.
Right.
How does it make you feel
to hear these songs?
Oh, wonderful. A great feel.
Oh, I'm so proud of Carl, again, man.
When did you first know that Carl
could sing leads so well like that?
Well, 1965 or 6.
When he sang "God Only Knows",
you must have known,
"My gosh, he's really stepped up."
Well, I was gonna do the vocal,
and I said, "Carl,
do you wanna do the vocal?"
He goes, "Sure, I'd love to,"
you know? So he did the vocal.
- And he killed it.
- Yeah, he did.
I saw him
about a week before he died,
and he goes, "I'm gonna make it, Brian,
I'm gonna make it through."
- And he died a couple of weeks later.
- Oh.
It's emotionally hard to sing it.
- It feels good to sing, though.
- Hm-hmm.
When I sing it, I think about him.
"God Only Knows" gets
a standing ovation every time.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen!
Please be seated. Thank you very much.
Yeah, there it is.
Right here.
I'm not gonna get out of the car.
- You sure?
- Yeah.
- I'm gonna get out, OK? Check it out.
- I'm just gonna wait.
Too sentimental for me to go.
All right, I'll tell 'em.
- Want the music on?
- Yeah.
I asked Brian one time,
"Why do you think we succeeded
in such a big way?"
He said, "Well, I think the music
celebrated the joy of life
in a real, simple way."
Not heady or complex or anything.
Just a real direct experience
of just joyfulness.
- Too much on that one, huh?
- Yeah.
Yeah.
I wanna take this opportunity right now
to thank our beloved Brian
for writing all that beautiful music
and making this evening possible.
Let's hear it for Brian Wilson.
- "It's O.K."?
- Sure.
- Love it, yeah.
- OK.
It starts out one, two, three.
OK, OK.
It fades in about eight, ten bars.
Got it.
I'm just gonna prepare myself
mentally for the vocals.
- For some vocals?
- Yeah.
Good. You want me to scratch
your back or rub your back?
Sure.
One, two, one, two, three...
It's a gift for all of us
to have someone like Brian or those guys
who still love music
and wanna play music.
It's a gift to everybody because he
certainly doesn't have to do that.
Brian will always
want to go out and perform.
He will always want to make records.
It's 'cause music
runs through his veins.
I don't see age.
I see fucking history
and continuing to make history.
I think he's enjoying himself.
He wants to go on the road
and he wants to keep going, so...
I can't argue with that.
In the last two years,
you've toured, like, 180 dates.
It's more than you've ever played
at any time in your career.
- We toured the world.
- You gotta be proud of that.
Lotta concerts.
I've been in a concert
with him, and he did a song
that I thought I would never hear live,
and he opened his mouth
and just went...
Brian's provided that for me many times,
and not only
has he provided that for me,
he must get that every day in concert.
I didn't know what to expect
from Brian's show.
Trying to Pet Sounds live, you know,
it's like, what could be harder,
but we could not believe it.
If somebody
was making a bet with me,
I would have bet that they had tapes
rolling along with what they were doing,
but at the end of the day,
they simply learned
how to sing
and recreate that music live,
and it made me so happy
to see what he created
honored in that way.
This has been taken seriously,
and everybody on that stage
loves this guy
and loves this music.
Yeah!
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen!
I think everyone
has issues, you know,
whether it's mental health
or anything else,
and the fact that Brian is vulnerable
enough and real enough...
- Thank you very much.
- ...to get up there and do this,
I think gives people a lot of strength.
I know it gives me a lot of strength.
I love him.
I think he's a beautiful, sweet guy.
There is a real innocence and optimism
and positivity and goodness,
that's what's at his core.
The funny thing about those songs
is they're both more joyful
and more painful now
because of the loss of your own youth,
your own adolescence,
and yet at the same time,
it does speak to your current life,
which is the hallmark
of great and lasting music.
You know, it's like
there's some secret code
that makes Brian's music resonate
the same as this feather
or a piece of grass
or a leaf or air or water.
There's something about it that we need.
You hear his music
and you need it to live.
You know, it's like an essential
element of your life.
I don't think there are words for it.
There's very few people
that continue to make
the kind of impact he's made,
and having gone through
all he's gone through
and coming out the other side,
it's really kind of incredible,
and, again, so rare.
I think there's a misconception
of what real artists are,
and the ones
that are watching the clock.
Those are the people
that don't belong here.
It's the ones that just keep going.
It's Brian Wilson, that wants to
still beat "God Only Knows".
I mean, can you imagine that?
Two, a one, two, three, four... no!
Someone's coming in too soon.
I can remember
almost word for word a quote
that Brian Wilson,
more than anybody else,
has had a profound effect
over American rock music
for the next 30 years.
You can hear it...
Your influence is everywhere, Brian.
I mean, do you feel
that's a strong responsibility?
Yes, I do, sure, because...
once you've established yourself as...
an artist, producer, somebody
who has something to say,
it's an artist's obligation.
It's constructive work,
you know, it's work.
Any artist that you find
has that feeling.
He feels the need to please, you know?
And it's a very personal thing,
and it's something that comes with...
it's natural, you know?
It's a natural thing.
When I hear his music,
it makes me smile.
It makes me realize that there's
a lot of songs still left in me.
There's still a lot of songs
left in Brian.
He's always writing,
he's always making music.
And I have that love of him
that will never ever die.
We're gonna go.
Can you hear yourself all right?
- Yeah.
- One, two, one, two, three.
It's like Brian's music
taps into that same source
that gospel music taps into,
of that deep, fundamental sadness
or darkness that we all carry.
It's like it finds you there
and it takes you up out of it.
That was just innately in the music.
The harmonies, the sound of them,
offered a way out,
and offered a transcendence.
You can put on all these songs,
and it still stands up.
We're never gonna have
Brian Wilson ever again.
He once told me
that he used to pray
to make really spiritual music
and to make a better album
than Rubber Soul.
That's a good prayer.
It worked.
That should convert you.
Brian is a living example,
through his suffering,
through his pain, he found a joy.
His music is an act of love.
Good one!
- I like it!
- Beautiful.
Barbara Ann.
Yay!
May I have...
I'm sure most everybody knows,
but for anybody who might not,
may we introduce you by name?
- Al Jardine.
- Thank you, Al.
- Dennis Wilson.
- Thank you.
- Brian Wilson.
- Carl Wilson.
Mike Love.
Now, I think... whoop,
what happened? There you are.
How long has this singing been going on?
About three years now.
It's an amazing thing,
because you have hit after hit.
Who determines, Brian,
what will be done next?
Well, I guess I do, I don't know.
I write the songs and produce them,
so I have a lot to say about it.
I think it's beautiful.
This is a little intro, you know.
All right, let's try
to really pull it off good now.
Here we go.
Play hard and strong, all the way.
You know the part...
Do-do, do-do...
Never more than just a "do-do, do-do."
- Then what after that?
- Then it goes...
Boom! Two, three, four...
Let me hear the organ.
Perfect. OK, we'll go with that.
Let's go again, please.
Here we go.
You've been out
on this really long tour.
- Right.
- Recording several new albums.
You know, really non-stop
since your late 50s.
- Right, right.
- Um...
How do you explain that kind of
burst of creativity and energy?
Where does this sudden surge
of creativity and energy come for you?
It starts in my brain,
makes its way out onto the piano,
and then on to the speakers
in the studio.
Yeah.
- Is that something you can explain?
- No, I can't. I can't.
And now, I'd like to start it out
with the organ and the Fender bass.
He was one of the first people
to actually use the studio
as an instrument itself.
Play hard and strong all the way.
Really feel it, fellas.
There's a certain amount of songwriting
you can learn how to do
- and you can educate yourself.
- Watch me on that part.
It's a fact that some
people are better than other people,
and Brian's one of the people
who's just better than other people.
Are we ready? Let's go.
Take five, "Good Vibrations".
"Good Vibrations", goddamn.
The idea that the chorus
is at one studio
and the verse is at another studio.
That's why that song is
so freaky and so wonderful.
"Good Vibrations"
was recorded in four studios,
Western, Sunset Sound,
Gold Star and RCA Victor.
Well, each studio was different,
you know?
Like, not any one studio's the same.
He sets a very high standard for,
not just being innovative,
but to also be emotionally evocative.
Well, he used all the orchestra.
He used orchestral things.
He used timpani, he used woodwind.
His musical knowledge
wasn't just as a band.
He had an orchestra in his head.
I mean, the Beatles
had George Martin to do it for them,
but Brian, he did it himself.
Well, the Beatles were probably
my favorite group.
Very, very inspirational
with Rubber Soul.
That made me write the Pet Sounds album.
The level of musicianship
and musicality,
I don't think anybody's touched it yet,
for my money.
Back at that time,
there's a lot of upbeat, up-tempo songs,
but Brian brought in
this haunting harmony.
You know there's something
going on with Brian Wilson.
There's no hiding
that this man is troubled
and trying to escape something.
He's just...
one of the greatest artists
who ever walked
the face of the earth.
In our time or in any time.
While we're
making the tapes, Bob,
we won't be able to have
that camera going.
It's a wonderful treat for me tonight
to have heard and seen the Beach Boys.
And as you can hear in the background,
the girls are still hollering for them.
I'm quite pleased to present
to you two of them,
Brian Wilson on my right,
and Carl Wilson, his brother,
on the left.
So, this is just two of them.
In just a minute, you'll meet
the rest of them, but...
Brian, I understand
that you've written
many of the songs
that you all have recorded.
When you write a song,
for yourself or for your group,
what gives you
the incentive to write them?
Well, usually, just the fact
that we're in the industry
and there's a lot of groups
competing with us,
and I feel that competition, you know,
and also I just... I love music,
and I get very inspired,
just generally creative anyway.
- Right, I understand.
- I just do it all the time.
Well, now, how many of them have you had
that have been million-sellers?
Well, actually, million-sellers,
we've had one million-seller,
that was "I Get Around", just recently.
- You wrote this?
- Yes, I did.
Here's this genius
who just can't help but come up
with these complex arrangements
of harmonies,
and then his little brother
comes in and says,
"You guys should write songs
about cars and surfing,
'cause that's what kids are into."
Name some of them
that you've written, Brian.
OK...
Well, starting with "Surfin'",
our first record,
"Surfin' Safari", "409", "Surfer Girl,"
"Little Deuce Coupe",
"Shut Down", "Surfin' USA",
"Be True to Your School..."
- "The Little Old Lady from Pasadena"?
- That's Jan and Dean.
- Is that right?
- And... "Fun, Fun, Fun".
- Oh, it goes on and on.
- "I Get Around", "Don't Worry, Baby".
We had "Little Saint Nick"
at Christmastime.
- Pardon me?
- "When I Grow Up..."
"When I Grow Up."
And "She Knows Me Too Well"
are our latest records.
You certainly are
a talented young man.
Let's talk to your brother
just a minute.
Do you share this
admiration for your brother?
Yes, well...
He's done very well with this,
you know, I mean,
we've had very good luck
with the records.
- You're Carl, right?
- Right.
- Carl's the lead guitar player.
- Lead guitar.
How did you assemble the group?
One day, as we were walking down
the street, we all bumped heads.
I don't know.
Dennis got the idea that we should
write something about surfing
because he was a big avid surfer then.
- You're a surfer?
- Yes, ma'am.
Well, this is something
we don't have much out in Oklahoma.
Yeah, I know.
Thanks so much for stopping by.
May I compliment you
on your beautiful dress?
- It is beautiful.
- Thank you.
Is it a gown or a dress?
Well, actually it's sort of
a beach girl type...
I like that.
I wanted to be in style when I talked
to the Beach Boys.
At the end of the concert,
the girls would all rush the stage
to get Dennis.
You know, me and Mike
and the guys would go,
"What's going on here?" you know?
The girls were all crying,
"Dennis, Dennis," you know?
- Yeah. He was our sex symbol.
- Right, right.
You and he had a little competition
for some women sometimes,
too, didn't you?
- Me and Dennis?
- Yeah.
- No.
- No?
He was a ladies' man.
I never was a ladies' man, you know?
- Right.
- He was always the ladies' man.
What prevented you
from being a ladies' man, do you think?
- Ah, just shy of girls, a little shy.
- Uh-huh, right.
- You can park right there.
- In the handicapped?
- Yeah, I always park there.
- Really?
- Yeah.
- OK.
These guys' | | probably wanna move it,
but I'll park here.
OK. I'm hungry.
- All right, let's get in there.
- OK.
Must have been to this deli
with you about 20 times.
Yeah, at least 20.
- Right?
- Right.
- Good times here.
- Yeah.
It's... I'm hot, you know?
- Yeah.
- I'm nervous.
- Yeah.
- I didn't sleep last night
and my head feels wacky.
- Oh, it does?
- Yeah.
- Why don't we just relax?
- OK. Enjoy our food.
When you get scared, what do you do?
You just take a deep breath?
If I get scared,
I take a deep breath,
but I take it...
try and take it from my belly.
Oh, take it...
- Really deep in here.
- Right.
And then...
How's your mood been?
- My mood?
- Yeah.
- It's been about even.
- Good.
Not depressed, not elated, just even.
- Yeah.
- You feeling scared now?
A little bit.
- It's nice to be with you.
- You're a good guy, Jason.
Thank you, Brian. You are too.
You are a cool person.
You have a very consistent way
of talking, you know?
You sorta stay in this one space,
you know?
- In talk.
- Does it make you feel comfortable?
- Yeah, helps me out.
- Good, I'm glad.
When I'm scared,
I listen to you talk, you know?
- Really?
- Yeah.
- And thinking it'll calm you down?
- Yeah.
All right, man. Well, I'm there for you.
- I'm there for you too.
- Thanks, man.
I first met Brian in 1995.
I went to interview him for the paper
I was working for at the time,
and we had a nice chat.
And when I first came to work
at Rolling Stone in 1997,
Brian had begun to start
what was gonna be sort of a solo career.
He was putting a band together,
he was releasing a record
called Imagination,
and I convinced Jann, my boss,
to let me go to Chicago,
where he was rehearsing.
One of the first times we spoke,
we were sitting in his living room.
We were talking, and sort of
right in the middle of our chat,
about ten minutes in,
he just started to fidget,
and he, he said, "I gotta go."
And he got up and he left.
I was sitting there.
I didn't know if he was coming back
or not coming back,
and I waited a while.
I just sorta started looking around,
and I found myself in the kitchen,
where I found Brian in the refrigerator.
I said, "What's going on?"
He said, "I just got a little scared.
And I said,
"Well, what did you get scared of?"
He said, "I don't know.
You know, sometimes I just
get scared, things scare me."
I said, "Like what?"
He said, "Like 'What a Fool Believes'.
You know that song
by the Doobie Brothers?
Scares the hell out of me."
You know? And it was just like that.
And we started having these moments,
and ever since then,
it just kinda became
part of my beat at Rolling Stone
to cover Brian.
And we became buddies.
The idea of doing an interview
makes Brian nervous,
so he'll often ask
if we can just take a drive
and listen to some music.
Look at that old car.
What kinda car is that?
- What is that?
- I don't know.
Is that a Rolls-Royce?
I think it's...
I don't think it's a Rolls.
I think it's American, isn't it?
Cadillac.
- Cadillac?
- Yeah.
Old Cadillac, right?
- Yeah.
- From what, the '30s?
Or maybe from the '40s?
- Maybe '40s.
- Yeah.
Ask the guy. Yell it out, ask him.
- Well, I can't...
- Hey, buddy! What year is that car?
- '41.
- Thank you. '41.
It was probably "Surfin' Safari", the
first Beach Boys record I ever bought.
The voices, the tone of the voices,
was so beautiful.
Bit like a classical choir, in a way.
It made California sound
such an incredible place to go.
You know, the rooftop is down.
The story begins.
And then they invite you
into that world,
and that world has its own rules
and its own code
and its own story to tell.
There was no greater world
created in rock-and-roll
than the Beach Boys.
I mean, they defined Southern California
for everybody around the world.
It just took you
out of where you were
and took you to another place.
Have you ever been to Paradise Cove?
Years and years ago.
Do you remember when you were
shooting the album cover
for the Beach Boys' first album?
- Can't remember.
- Right. It's a long time ago.
- Yep.
- Was it a little bit funny
singing all the songs about surfing
without actually surfing?
- Yeah, Dennis surfed. I never learned.
- Right.
- There's Paradise Cove.
- Here we are. Closer than I thought.
- There it is, look!
- There it is!
"This marks 'The Spot."
Fifty-five years ago.
How you feeling about Hawthorne?
Uh, you know, I'm a little nervous
to go back there.
- You know what I mean?
- Hm-hmm.
'Cause, like, I grew up there,
and it's, like, I have a lot
of sentiments about it, you know?
Right.
Please play "It's O.K."
on 15 Big Ones.
OK. You got it.
Has Hawthorne changed a lot
from when you were young?
Is it familiar-looking to you?
- What's that?
- Hawthorne?
It doesn't look the same.
It looks a little different.
- So this is 119th Street right here?
- Yeah. 119th.
- And this is the street you lived on?
- Yeah.
So this is where your house was.
Right here.
I don't wanna get out,
I just wanna look.
OK. So, this was all
- where the house was, right here?
- Yeah.
Uh-huh. Look at the cover of the album.
- Yeah.
- Paradise Cove.
"Site of the childhood home
of the Beach Boys."
Friday nights,
my father would get his paycheck.
So the three of us would be
in the back seat singing away.
And that's... actually that's
the birth of the three brothers
singing together.
When we'd be singing harmony together,
my father would just...
fall down crying with joy.
There's me at my piano
when I wrote "Surfer Girl".
Forget it.
That one killed you when it came out.
I played that thing... a thousand times.
How did it feel to be there?
It was a little...
scared me a little bit, you know?
- Did it?
- 'Cause, well, it didn't look the same.
Right.
Yeah.
- Is this Dartmouth?
- To your right, right, right.
- This is where you moved with Marilyn.
- Right.
Was it right after you got married?
About three months
after we got married.
Wow. What a big time in your life.
Yeah. I did an acid trip there.
A-ha! The first time?
Yeah.
- Oh, it was scary.
- What happened?
I don't know, just...
This friend of mine gave me acid
and it freaked me out.
I wrote "California Girls",
"Help Me, Rhonda",
and "She's Not the Little Girl
I Once Knew".
I wrote all those songs there.
Were you still high
when you were doing that?
Uh, no. No, I wasn't.
I wrote "California Girls"
about a week or two after acid.
OK. Did you have a kinda
western thing in mind?
Well, I just had this
I guess that's western, right?
Did you have a feeling
that was gonna be a popular song?
Oh, yeah, I could tell
when I first wrote it. After we cut it,
Mike did the lead,
and he sang great lead.
He's a great singer.
It was quite a different change-up
from what I usually wrote.
The way you connected the intro
of the song...
- Right.
- ...to the rest of it was...
A different kind of a thing.
Brian just threw away the rule book
and it was all in his head,
and it's just,
"Wow, are you kidding me?"
"What were you thinking, man?
How did you come up
with this combination
of chords and voices?"
He said, "I was at the piano,
and I was trying not to move
my highest fingers
and my lowest fingers,
but make cool geometric patterns
with the internal fingers.
I don't know if he was
telling me the truth.
But he definitely said that to me.
But if you think about that,
that's kinda like what Mozart
does with a string quartet.
Brian had this unique ability
to write a great melody and also
arrange some great harmonies
and produce some great records,
so we had all in one with Brian Wilson.
We had shall we call it...
the jackpot.
Equate that blend, that harmony,
the sound of the vocals...
it's like looking up to the heavens.
It's almost ethereal.
There's a very ethereal rising up.
The only way
to really accomplish a sound that big
is in knowing what you want to hear,
but also
placing some trust in the people
you're working with
and saying, "We can all do this together
if you just follow my lead."
Brian was a leader,
and he could shape this group
around the brothers, you know,
and his cousin and his neighbor,
and that was his team,
and he led these guys.
And I think that that was...
gave Brian so much confidence.
They would do anything that he thought
was the right thing to do.
Hey, let's go...
Where you wanna go to now?
So, let's go to Laurel Way.
- OK.
- You know how to get there?
Laurel Way, trying to think. Uh...
- Go up Santa Monica or Sunset?
- Laurel Way... Can you navigate it?
Yeah.
What did you feel like
when you lived here
and you were young, married,
money, writing hits?
What was that feeling for you?
It was excitement. Exciting and happy.
Groovy feeling.
Haven't seen it since 1966.
Were your parents around then?
Did they come visit?
No, they never did.
Wasn't this your first
sort of big purchase?
- Yeah.
- That must have been an exciting time.
It was, Jason, it was a great time.
It's right up here.
I think it's right up there.
This one?
No, it has a view,
so it's gotta be a little higher.
OK.
It has a view of the whole
of downtown Los Angeles.
- Oh, wow.
- All the way to the beach.
Did you have a room
where you would work?
The piano was in a sandbox.
What was the idea behind that?
I don't know, I just wanted
to have a sandbox.
- While you worked?
- Yeah. Took our shoes and socks off,
and I wrote, you know, music
on a piano in the sandbox.
I put an Arabian tent up
in my den, and I put, like,
eight Tiffany lamps
in the living room,
hanging from the ceiling.
It was a trip.
It sounds like it.
What did you do inside the tent?
- Smoked grass.
- Uh-huh.
Ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
You know.
Young and rich.
That's where I wrote
the Pet Sounds album
- and "Good Vibrations".
- Wow.
That's some pretty big stuff
you wrote up here.
Yeah.
So, you think you'd wanna tour more?
Yeah, I like to go on the road.
What do you like about it?
- Well, the concerts.
- Yep.
- Makes you feel good?
- Yeah. It's fun to play a concert.
You used to get nervous,
but not so much anymore, huh?
No, before a concert,
I get very nervous.
How long does it take you
to calm down on stage?
About two minutes.
To this day,
Brian's still little bit nervous
about Pet Sounds, you know?
"Are they gonna like it? Is it too soft?
"Is it manly?", he'll say sometimes.
Hello, Los Angeles!
The Hollywood Bowl.
Well, you have the great "Caroline, No."
It's one of the greatest songs
in pop history,
as far as dealing
with oncoming adulthood,
loss of innocence,
reckoning with the adult world...
and the terrible heartache
that comes along with it.
I can hear him exploring
the possibilities of these songs
that he probably woke up,
dug his feet in the sand,
and wrote these songs.
He started out writing happy songs
and then, as he grew as a musician,
his tastes refined, his writing refined,
and he wanted to get away
from the three-chord thing
and experiment, and when you do that,
you are drawn to the darker side.
I know I am.
Brian's music, you know,
especially Pet Sounds,
you never move on from it.
I'll be listening to that record
till the day I die.
Pet Sounds,
the beauty of it
carries with it a sense of...
joyfulness even in the pain of living.
The joyfulness of an emotional life.
You have this music bed
that is so complex,
but the lyrics were very simple.
All these concepts of things
that we all ask ourselves,
and it's there forever.
Fifty years later,
we're still celebrating
what is probably one of
the greatest records ever made.
I don't even know what that is.
Flutes and reverb? I don't know, man.
I don't even know where to begin.
Probably took a minute
for everyone to wrap their heads around
a 23-year-old kid coming in
and telling 'em what was up.
That's a banjo. It is a banjo, huh?
Brian always had this thing
where he used the fifth note
of a chord as the bass note.
"God Only Knows"
is a prime example of that.
With the bass note.
And "Someone Saved My Life Tonight"
is exactly the same.
So, you can hear
the other instruments.
They're all in one room
at the same time playing.
With Brian's music, you hear
his spirit, and it's like...
he may be playing a C chord,
but there's, like, this other weird
harmony drifting in over it.
He's using the available tools
that all of us have.
You know, it may be a piano
or a harpsichord
or a guitar or whatever,
but it's all in the architecture
or the recording technique.
Everybody has a piano or a guitar.
Go grab whatever the fuck you
want, but it's the way
you put in the strangeness,
that's what he's the master of.
Listen to that basic track.
Sounds to me like it's maybe
a piano and a banjo
and a harmonica
kinda all becoming one sound.
Brian had to sit home,
dream up these textures
that no one had ever, ever used.
That's one reason why people say
Brian's a genius.
That's being a complete visionary,
to dream up these textures
that never existed before.
I'm still awestruck by the construction.
How he took very complex arrangements,
and yet, at the end of the day,
they sounded so simple
when they entered your ear.
I think his imagination
is what made him a great producer.
We can all sit here
and say we have all the technology
and we know how to use it
and we know how to do it,
but the bottom line is
it doesn't matter what you know,
it's what you're gonna do.
I've been making records
for 40-some years,
and I don't know how you do this.
I don't know how you do that.
Nobody knows.
What I hear
is his competitive nature,
him wanting to be more
than what everybody else was.
And you can totally hear
how he was trying
to make things sound
better than the Beatles.
But I think, more so, his
biggest competitor was himself.
How was that, was that cool?
- It's beautiful.
- All right.
When he started doing
the music around Pet Sounds,
which was more complex,
more orchestral, more personal,
you know, the guys started saying,
"Whoa now," you know?
I mean,
"Where are we going with this?"
You know, this isn't about
cars and girls anymore.
And things started to fragment.
And I don't think it's any wonder
that Brian started to lose
his confidence around that time.
When you think about
recording or touring,
do you feel like you still have
something to accomplish musically?
Do you still have things
you wanna do?
Yeah, I wanna make
a rock-and-roll album.
Maybe something good, you know?
Yeah.
What's rock-and-roll to you?
- Rock-and-roll?
- Yeah.
Chuck Berry, you know.
- Little Richard.
- HM-hmm.
- I recently watched the Smile concert.
- Yeah.
Wow, you looked really happy that night.
- Yeah, that was fun.
- Was it hard to pull off?
We premiered Smile
and Lucky Old Sun album,
2004 and 2005.
When you let it go, when you
stopped working on it in '67,
- was that a hard thing for you?
- Yeah, it was rough, yeah.
Me and Van Dyke got so into it,
you know.
We really got into it.
When you premiered Smile,
how did you feel?
I mean, it must have been a big relief.
Well, it was a big challenge
to try to pull it off, you know?
- Right.
- But we did. It went over very well.
Around 2004, Brian decided
that he was going to come back
and work on Smile,
the, you know, most famous
unreleased album of all time,
something that he had abandoned
around 1967,
and I think, in retrospect,
probably wisely, because it was
proving to be insurmountable
for all kinds of reasons.
He was terrified, he didn't wanna do it,
and then slowly, something about
the music reconnected emotionally.
So, all those bad associations
that he had
were being replaced with good ones.
And it became
more about the music again.
Some of the stuff on that record
was pretty wild, on Smile.
Yeah, some of that stuff
was pretty complicated.
- Yeah.
- Complex.
Hm-hmm. Well, why'd you let it go?
We thought it was
a little ahead of its time.
- Right.
- We waited for, like, 30 years
and we finally finished it.
It became something that was living now,
as opposed to something
that was dead in his mind.
We're not picking up all your notes.
You can feel it,
but you can't really hear it.
In fact,
we couldn't bring up that stuff.
We couldn't even say the words
"Heroes and Villains".
'Cause he would freak out.
What now? God, there are
so many parts to this damn song.
It's endless and endless and endless!
It never ends!
When you listen to Smile
with that ear of hearing
how segmental it was,
and yet how seamlessly
he put it together,
it's quite wonderful.
I remember sitting with him,
and I handed him the CD,
and I said,
"Brian, that's Smile, you finished it."
You know, I could really see
it meant something to him,
because it was a disappointment
that he'd been carrying around.
Being able to finish it at last,
even though it was 30 years later,
was a big moment in his life.
Do you still get ideas for
different ways to produce?
- Who, me?
- Things, sounds, yeah.
Well, usually, you know,
recording's a little slower these days.
You know?
What's your process like?
- The process?
- Yeah.
Start with a background track.
Then you do the...
background vocals,
then you do the leads.
- OK.
- Like we'll do today.
- Will I be on keys?
- That's correct.
What's been making you feel like
making a rock-and-roll record?
Uh, I don't know... well, actually,
Summer Days and Summer Nights
was a rock-and-roll album.
- Yep.
- But I'd like to do another one
- with covers instead of originals.
- Hm-hmm.
Is your click OK?
How do you feel about spending
a few days with your band?
I think it'll be nice
to be back with 'em, you know?
It about time we all recorded like this.
And we are here.
I'm nervous.
It's like you say when you go on stage,
nervous for about two minutes.
Right, and then as soon as I hear
"California Girls", I'm cool.
- One, two.
- You got this.
One, two, three.
Right there.
One, two, three...
No, on the "duh.
- Are you sure it's that?
- Yeah.
Yeah, that's it.
I'll play the piano.
Yeah! Now we're talking!
- Hi, Russ.
- How you doing, Brian?
- I'm good, how are you?
- Doing all right.
OK.
Hi, Tom.
- Hi, Brian.
- How are ya?
- Good, how are you?
- Good.
- We need a click, Wes.
- It's coming.
What's coming?
- The click.
- Oh.
OK, it's cool. The click'll help ya!
- OK.
- One, two, three.
- Paul.
- Yeah?
It's just...
No...
OK.
One, two, three.
- Hey, Paul.
- Yeah?
- Play staccato. Bah, bah, bah.
- OK.
- Yeah.
- Ooh.
One, two, three, four.
Hold it!
The guitar sounds a little fuzzy.
See if that's better.
OK, one, two, three, four.
Yeah, we're cool.
- Let's try it once.
- OK.
One... two... one, two, three.
Two, a-one, two, three, four.
Yeah, it can fall apart, that's cool.
- Pretty good.
- I think that's a print.
Wanna go in, wanna go in the booth.
Can we come in the booth and hear it?
- Yes.
- OK.
Listen, syncopate it a little.
Yeah, what are the words?
Sing it.
"Since you put me down,
I've been arguing in my head."
Let me hear. Sing it, sing it.
No.
- Sing the words.
- OK, I can't do it.
Loosen up.
Loosen up, sweetie, loosen up.
My dad owned
the publishing with Brian,
and he managed the group
for ten percent.
I just remember
there was a lot of tension,
with my dad and Brian.
You guys think you're good?
Can we hear a chord?
Just a chord, like we used to.
When you used to sing
clear records, OK? Let's go.
His presence was very...
where he'd burst into a room, you know?
And beat everyone up.
I got beaten around by my dad.
One kinda spanking is...
But the way I had it,
Dad would double over his belt.
His voice...
Very, very hard.
Pretty tough business.
His dad was extremely tough on him,
abusive at times.
You can hear this in all the old tapes
from those studio sessions
where his dad takes it way too far.
We just wanna be sure this is our thing.
This is an absolute insult.
Well, you're doing the same to me
in front of 20 people.
I'm sorry, I'll never help you guys.
Why?
Because you don't appreciate
the good help I have given you.Ii
- We all appreciate the help.
- You've got a beautiful gift.
When you guys start coming off...
Listen, let me tell you something.
- Yes.
- When you guys get so big
that you can't sing from your hearts,
you're going downhill.
- Downhill?
- Down.. Hill!
And as we got older, we told him
we didn't want him to manage us anymore.
It's very simple.
It got to the point where
he was so overbearing to work with,
that we had to fire him.
Why did you move
from Laurel Way to Bellagio?
Marilyn wanted to move to Bel Air.
Was it a bigger house?
- What, Bellagio?
- Yeah.
- Much bigger.
- Much bigger, I see.
- There's Bellagio Road.
- Oh, yeah.
You wrote the directions to this house
in a song, "Busy Doin' Nothin'."
Right.
What inspired you to tell people
where you live?
I don't know. I don't know.
Check it out. It was right here.
Yeah, you can't see much, can you?
But that's a beautiful house back there?
Have a swimming pool in the backyard?
Oh, yeah, we had that specially built.
- Wow.
- A very big pool.
I had, like, a den that we built
a recording studio.
- You remember that?
- Yeah.
It was a really state-of-the-art
studio too, I think.
Oh, it was a fantastic studio.
Great.
The Mamas and the Papas
came over one time.
- Oh, really?
- Yeah.
Did you record together?
No, they just came over one night,
John and Michelle...
...came over one night in the '70s.
- Little Richard came over.
- Really?
- Yeah.
- Oh-oh!
Sly from the Family Stone came over.
What? OK, you gotta tell me about that.
I remember...
I just know he fell asleep on a couch.
I think he was snortin' cocaine.
- And he fell asleep?
- Yeah.
Did he come over to party
or to record or just to visit?
- Just to visit.
- What was the vibe?
Terry Melcher brought him over...
- OK.
- ...to visit.
- Sly seemed like a cool cat.
- Who, Sly?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- He was good.
- Oh, yeah.
- "Hot Fun in the Summertime"?
- Oh, man.
Heavy duty.
Is this the house where Elton came over?
Yeah.
Going to Brian Wilson's house
with Danny Hutton of Three Dog Night
was just the most amazing,
surreal trip for me.
Here we are, in Brian Wilson's house,
who we used to lay on the floor
and listen in our headphones
to all his beautiful music.
It was... one of the most
moving nights of my life
and he tried to sell me
his piano as well.
But to that time, he went through
such a dark period of his life.
So, Bellagio is kinda where
things got difficult for you, huh?
- Yeah.
- What was going on?
Uh... I was just kinda
lonesome and, you know...
hung out in my bedroom for a while.
What were you staying
in your bedroom for?
I don't really know.
I was having mental problems.
Yeah. Yeah.
And everyone always says,
"You stayed in your bedroom for years."
You didn't really do that.
- No, for a couple of weeks.
- Yeah.
Sometimes you question yourself,
and I think, especially
when you grapple with demons,
and you think, "Well, do I deserve this?
Am I worthy of this?"
And, you know, I think about
Brian being saddled
with... the term "genius
from such an early age.
That's gotta weigh on you so much.
I think about someone like Brian,
and coming into this
when he was becoming a man
and really starting to make the music
that would change the world
in a lot of ways.
And the pressure that comes with that.
You know, the pressure
to continue to perform at that level
and continue to be the person
that people think
you are supposed to be.
You know, you deal
with a lot of disappointment.
Expectations are the foundation
for disappointments.
Most people in the music business
are a little crazy in a variety
of different ways.
I think you wish for the people
who delivered so much to you,
you wish them happiness and a long life.
You know, if you see someone
who's going through a lot of pain,
you wish, like, hey,
nothing but good things.
I think it's safe to say
that creative people
are usually sensitive people.
That door to drugs and alcohol
is an easy door to walk through.
Brian Wilson
was crying for help a long time ago.
He put it in there,
under this happiness.
It is like the Mona Lisa.
His tones that he chose,
or those harmonies,
were there on purpose.
Was this him calling out
that "I need help"?
Remember the song
"Long Promised Road"?
- Of course.
- Carl recorded it at Bellagio House.
At our house.
And he had me come down
to sing part of the bridge.
So, OK...
I wrote that part.
You kinda came down
from your bedroom and did that
- and then went back up?
- Yeah.
Carl and Dennis were really
different guys, weren't they?
Yeah, Carl was a little easier-going.
Dennis was a little more hyper.
Carl was like...
easygoing kind of a person, you know?
I was listening to
Dennis's record recently.
- Oh, Pacific Ocean Blue?
- Wow.
I have never heard his album.
- Oh, man...
- I heard...
I thought, gosh, I heard that one.
Yep.
But I think there's 11 or 12
that I haven't heard yet.
Oh, my God, "River Song"?
Did you ever hear that one?
No.
Let's listen to it
when we get back to your house.
- Is it, like, pretty cool?
- It's amazing.
- He made good music, didn't he?
- He sure did.
The record is really spectacular.
You're gonna love it.
I'm surprised you never heard it.
- No, I haven't.
- After you had left Marilyn...
Right.
...and you were living in
Pacific Palisades,
that's when you were hanging out
with Dennis a lot, right?
No, actually I was hanging out
with Dennis in Venice.
Oh, in Venice, at his place?
Yeah, he used to play drums
and I'd play organ.
We used to fool around together.
You know?
- He was a good drummer.
- Yeah, he was.
You were really close friends
with Dennis.
Because we snorted cocaine together.
- He used to buy cocaine for me.
- Hm-hmm.
You know what he used to do?
He carried around a big, huge bottle,
plastic bottle of grapefruit juice
and vodka.
Wow.
And he would stay drunk the whole day.
He was crazy, crazy guy.
You think that was 'cause
he was anxious and nervous?
Yeah, he's always been, like, a...
little bit nervous person, you know?
But he was such a sweet guy too, right?
- Didn't he have a big heart?
- Oh, he sure did, yeah.
- I like his song "Forever".
- Oh, yeah. Oh, my God.
- Thought that was beautiful.
- So beautiful.
Yeah, I miss him.
Brian's relationship with his brothers,
he loved them so much.
Carl was just a nice, soft person,
and he was the peacekeeper
in the family,
and Brian was the genius, the introvert,
and Dennis was probably
everything Brian wanted to be.
And Brian was everything
Dennis wanted to be.
And there in the middle you get
that beautiful tug and pull.
Beautiful brotherly relationship.
This is just his little brother talking,
but to see Brian on stage
and see all the people respond to Brian
is so overwhelming, it's so wonderful.
To listen to a Brian Wilson composition,
the only thing stemming from
that, the roots, is the love.
It's love.
- What you gonna have at the deli?
- Good question.
Possibly a Cobb salad.
- What about you?
- Cobb salad for me.
Yeah, today was fun, I liked it.
When you were...
when you had the Radiant Radish,
you'd actually work in the shop,
wouldn't you?
I worked there.
Did you know a lot of information
about health foods and stuff?
- No. A friend of mine was, though.
- Yeah.
I ran the cash register.
I learned how to do a cash register.
- That's fun.
- Guess who I met there.
- Who?
- Jack Rieley.
Really? That's where you met him
the first time?
- Yeah.
- Wow.
And he ended up managing
the Beach Boys, right?
It was his idea to go to Holland.
What was that like?
- It was a trip.
- Hm-hmm.
- Holland is a great record.
- Holland?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
It was a kick, working in Holland.
You didn't wanna go at first.
Oh, no, I didn't wanna go.
Jack said, "Look, Brian, it'd be
a good vacation for us all,
and we can record there."
I said, "OK, I'll go,"
so we packed up and went.
Stayed there for a half a year.
- Wow.
- That's a long vacation.
- Very long.
- Six months in goddamn Holland.
- Whoa...
- Six months.
I was a little depressed, so I laid down
in front of the board,
you know, the console?
- Yeah.
- And just listened to Carl
produce for a couple of weeks,
and then,
after I got over my depression,
I wrote "A Fairy Tale".
- And we did it.
- That's cool.
And then Carl,
he produced "A Fairy Tale".
That's awesome.
I wrote it, he produced it,
and Jack Rieley narrated it.
Wow.
"Funky Pretty."
"Funky Pretty" is amazing. Yeah.
Carl was producing a lot
at that point, right?
He produced his ass off,
are you kidding?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
Must have been really cool to
see your little brother step up.
Well, I was proud of him.
- He produced "A Fairy Tale".
- Right.
He said, "Brian, I wanna produce this."
He goes, "I like these songs."
- I said, "Go ahead, produce it."
- That's cool.
- It blew my mind.
- You didn't know he had it in him.
Oh, no, I did not.
You also... did you write
"Sail On, Sailor" there?
Yeah.
That song, man,
that's one of the greats.
"Sail On, Sailor" is probably
one of the best songs I ever wrote.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
When we get to my house,
would you please boot up Dennis's album?
Absolutely. We'll listen
to a little of the record.
- OK.
- Then you can relax.
All right.
Will you give him the card?
I'm gonna hit the head.
- I'll be right back.
- I'll take care of it.
- How's it going?
- It's going great.
- You gonna take care of this?
- Absolutely. I'm gonna get the check.
OK, Brent, OK.
He's gonna take care of it.
All right, we scored!
- We scored!
- I scored a friend.
- Yeah, for sure.
- I haven't had a friend...
I haven't had a friend to talk to
in three years.
- Really?
- Really.
My life has been so simple, you know?
- Yeah.
- So simple and, like, modest.
Yeah.
No sitting around
and shooting the shit kinda thing.
I haven't had that kind of thing
since you.
- Well, I'm here for ya.
- Vice versa.
- OK.
- Let's go.
That's amazing.
Do you remember him talking
to you about the record?
He came over and he played me
just the "Evening News" song.
I never listened to his album
till right now.
All right.
Can you make it a little louder?
If you ask
Elvis Costello or Roger Taylor
or Peter Buck from REM,
I've heard all of these people
talk about this record,
of it being this, like, lost jewel.
It's a bummer
that it didn't slow him down
or knock some sense into him,
saying, "Lookit, dude,
you are a great artist."
All right!
This could be cool
for the rock-and-roll record.
Yeah.
Good.
Dennis was just
an impulsive hell-raising dude,
but had a big heart, you know?
And loved his brother.
All right.
- Do you wanna hear one more?
- I wanna hear it all.
Yeah.
This guy called me up, he goes,
"Brian, I'm sorry to tell you this,
but your brother Dennis
drowned tonight."
I got this terrible feeling
in my chest, you know?
Really scared me.
I have had two losses in my family
in the last ten years,
and it's been hard for me.
The first loss was very hard,
it was my father,
and then of course my brother Dennis.
We go back about 21 years, you know,
and it's hard to lose a brother,
and somebody who had such
a vital, energetic thing about him.
I just don't want
to talk any more about it.
All right.
It's always a great day
when you can ride to Malibu.
Taking a peaceful to drive
to our stomping grounds.
Yeah, you have
lot of history in Malibu.
- Yeah. Nine years.
- Yeah.
Yeah, I served time for nine years.
Is it like a prison sentence?
Yeah, it was like...
In a way, yeah.
I contribute. I'm a contributor.
- Ooh, ooh, ooh...
- In my personal story,
it really didn't work out so well.
I did my dose of LSD,
it shattered my mind,
and I, you know,
came back, thank God,
in I don't know how many pieces.
I think what happened was that
it became too painful for him.
I was terrified for my brother.
Why in the world would a man
with that kind of God-given talent
need any help from drugs?
I have been taught the difference
by my psychiatrist, thank God,
of a natural high and a drug high.
I mean, drugs are a definite balance
of heaven and hell.
You go to heaven,
then you go right to hell.
What made you come back, Brian?
I probably came back out of will.
Just... my name is Wilson,
maybe that's where I got the will.
They're called auditory hallucinations.
You're normal and then all of a sudden
you start hearing voices in your head.
The voices say, "I'm gonna hurt you,
I'm gonna kill you," yeah.
I was afraid the devil came
in the form of other people
that were competing with me,
that had ideas
of killing me and getting rid of me.
Everywhere I looked, I would say,
"Ah! The devil's after me."
What people have a tendency
to do that suffer with depression
is they use drugs and alcohol
to medicate themselves.
It's called nepenthe.
Numbing the soul.
If I had not taken
control, he could be dead.
He had a year or two to live
and he'd have died.
We are worried that Brian Wilson
is gonna follow Elvis.
Oh, God, no.
We met back in 1986,
during the Landy years.
As time went on,
he became... captive.
I wasn't allowed to call
my family or my friends at all
for nine years.
He doped me up with medication.
He kept me doped up so I couldn't resist
what he told me to do.
- Why?
- He's a control freak.
He just gets off on controlling people.
Was it hard to let go?
A little bit hard for me to let go,
yeah. It was hard.
When you've had a control figure
in your life for that long a period.
Nine years, starting from 1983 to 1992.
It was nine years of control.
He's the one that's done all this.
He's had support, like I say.
He's had emotional security,
but he is the one that's pulled
himself out of the darkness,
back into the sunlight.
Dr. Landy controlled
a lot of aspects of your life.
- Yep.
- Was he a pretty tough taskmaster?
He was rough, yeah. He was rough.
He did things like he made me
eat spaghetti off the floor.
Crazy things, you know?
Why did he do that?
- I don't know, he just acted crazy.
- Hm-hmm.
He goes, "All right, I want you
to eat your spaghetti off the floor."
I said, "Oh, man," he goes,
"I said eat your..."
You know, he was real mean, you know?
And then about two weeks,
three weeks later, he went, "Hi, Brian."
In a real friendly tone, you know?
That was really quite an experience.
- Kind of a mind trip.
- Yeah.
Yeah, he didn't let me call my family.
That must have been hard.
Your daughters were growing up.
Oh, it was, Jason, it was.
So, do you have a hard time making sense
of the good parts and the bad parts?
No, I took the bad with the good
with him, you know?
Yeah.
Balancing the two together, you know?
You know what I did for a little while?
- What?
- When I was, like, really fat?
I ate two New York steaks for breakfast
and a big piece of birthday cake.
- Really?
- Yeah.
I shot up to 311.
- Oh, my God.
- Oh, Jason, I was so fat.
And when Eugene Landy came into my life,
he had me weigh myself.
I weighed 311, and he goes,
"We're going to Kona, Hawaii,
and you're gonna start exercising."
So, in about five or six months,
I goddamn lost...
went from 311 to 185.
Can you believe that?
- Oh, man.
- Isn't that amazing?
Why do you think you were eating so bad?
Uh... I was just being stupid.
So, what was it like
when Landy took you to Hawaii?
Well, I had to kick three main
drug habits at the same time.
So I spent a few nights
tossing and turning
and rolling in the bed,
moaning and groaning
and it was like a guy
kicking heroin, you know?
Oh, it was rough.
I had to kick cigarettes,
alcohol and cocaine.
All at once?
- All at once, yeah.
- Whoa.
That was one of the roughest trips
I ever took.
- Yeah.
- Which was the hardest to stop?
Um, the roughest
was the cigarettes.
He motivated you.
He sure did, yeah.
But on the bad side, he controlled you.
Yeah, he did.
He made money off my name, you know?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
The thing about
Eugene Landy was that
he was supposed
to be watching Brian's diet
and taking care of him physically,
and trying to get him to lose weight
and stop living a bad lifestyle.
He kind of overstepped
his boundaries or something,
whatever boundaries
there were supposed to be,
and got involved in songwriting
and production and stuff like that.
That was kind of a real drag.
When people realized how bad that was,
I think that started the wheels
turning pretty quickly
to get rid of Landy.
The day that that happened,
Brian called me,
and he said, "I'm free now.
I can do whatever I want.
What are you doing, Andy?"
And I said, "I'm... doing nothing,
what do you wanna do?"
And he said, "I wanna write songs."
Trying to think of what I wanna hear.
Play...
- "Long Promised Road"?
- Great call.
Here it is.
It's a really cool track.
Did he write the words? Carl?
Yeah, Jack Rieley wrote 'em.
- OK.
- Yeah.
He died not too long ago.
- Jack died?
- A few years ago, yeah.
How do you know that?
Somebody that I knew
knew him, and told me that.
Where was he living, in Amsterdam?
Yeah, in Europe.
I don't know if it was in Amsterdam.
- He died?
- Yeah.
- Oh, man.
- A few years back.
That's enough.
Jack seemed like a really fun guy.
Yeah. He's the one who thought
of going to Holland.
You know?
- What did Jack die of?
- I'm not sure.
Was he older than you?
Uh, I think he was
about the same age as me.
OK.
Would you play, um...
"It's O.K." by the Beach Boys?
- Heck, yeah.
- On... 15 Big Ones.
- Really cool line.
- Yeah.
That broke my heart
when I heard Jack Rieley died.
Oh, man, I'm sorry to be
the bearer of bad news.
Absolutely... absolutely broke my heart.
- About three years ago?
- I think so, yeah, maybe more.
- Any other ones you wanna hear?
- Yeah.
Play...
Don't play anything.
- I've heard enough today.
- OK.
You've gotta be tough
to go through what he's been through,
personally and musically,
and with his family,
and stuff with his dad.
You've gotta be tough to survive that.
The odds were not on Brian,
but the fact that he is still here
and performing and making music,
that's a miracle, kind of, isn't it?
Really, it is.
I wonder if he sees it that way.
- Here's your old spot.
- Moonshadows.
Good.
I think they have a dance floor there.
Had a couple glasses of wine,
feel good, then I went and danced.
- Right.
- For a little while.
I never knew you were a big dancer.
I can't dance very good, Jason.
You did... I saw that you did
a lot of dancing at your wedding.
Yeah.
When the spirit moves you?
Yeah.
Tell me the story of when you
and Melinda decided to get married.
- We were staying in a house on Ferrari.
- Uh-huh.
And she goes, "Aren't you going to
ask me to get married?"
I said, "Yeah." She goes, "Yeah!"
I said, "Would you marry me?"
She goes, "Yeah!"
You must have been pretty excited.
Yeah, we got married in Palos Verdes.
- To speak...
- To speak...
- And to listen.
- And to listen.
- To inspire...
- To inspire...
- And to respond.
- And what?
And to respond.
And to respond.
To Brian and Melinda.
When did you guys
decide to have kids?
- We adopted.
- Yeah.
19... 98.
That must have been a big deal,
adopting new kids.
Yeah, that was a trip.
One, two, three, swing.
One, two, three, swing.
Those kids are, like,
very creative and playful.
I learned love from them,
the way they express love.
Yeah, it's inspiring,
it really is, yeah.
I don't think
there would've been a third act
if it hadn't have been for Melinda.
Brian found his salvation.
He went through
such a dark period of his life.
And whenever I see them,
they're just like
a very happy, ordinary
married couple with children.
He loves her, she loves him.
Again, he's not a person
to live a lavish lifestyle.
He's just a California boy that likes to
make music and be with his family.
He doesn't deserve just
the accolades about the music.
He deserves the accolades
about his personal life.
Do you remember the day
you came to Trancas
- to your birthday party?
- Yeah, McCartney was there.
And his wife, Linda...
...was there.
And it was a really cool house.
It's amazing.
You did so much that day.
It was your birthday party,
you filmed that Rolling Stone cover,
and you did that skit
for Saturday Night Live,
all on the same day.
- Let's go surfin' now.
- Everybody's learnin' how.
Come on a safari with us.
- Come on.
- Let's go.
Right.
How does it make you feel
to hear these songs?
Oh, wonderful. A great feel.
Oh, I'm so proud of Carl, again, man.
When did you first know that Carl
could sing leads so well like that?
Well, 1965 or 6.
When he sang "God Only Knows",
you must have known,
"My gosh, he's really stepped up."
Well, I was gonna do the vocal,
and I said, "Carl,
do you wanna do the vocal?"
He goes, "Sure, I'd love to,"
you know? So he did the vocal.
- And he killed it.
- Yeah, he did.
I saw him
about a week before he died,
and he goes, "I'm gonna make it, Brian,
I'm gonna make it through."
- And he died a couple of weeks later.
- Oh.
It's emotionally hard to sing it.
- It feels good to sing, though.
- Hm-hmm.
When I sing it, I think about him.
"God Only Knows" gets
a standing ovation every time.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen!
Please be seated. Thank you very much.
Yeah, there it is.
Right here.
I'm not gonna get out of the car.
- You sure?
- Yeah.
- I'm gonna get out, OK? Check it out.
- I'm just gonna wait.
Too sentimental for me to go.
All right, I'll tell 'em.
- Want the music on?
- Yeah.
I asked Brian one time,
"Why do you think we succeeded
in such a big way?"
He said, "Well, I think the music
celebrated the joy of life
in a real, simple way."
Not heady or complex or anything.
Just a real direct experience
of just joyfulness.
- Too much on that one, huh?
- Yeah.
Yeah.
I wanna take this opportunity right now
to thank our beloved Brian
for writing all that beautiful music
and making this evening possible.
Let's hear it for Brian Wilson.
- "It's O.K."?
- Sure.
- Love it, yeah.
- OK.
It starts out one, two, three.
OK, OK.
It fades in about eight, ten bars.
Got it.
I'm just gonna prepare myself
mentally for the vocals.
- For some vocals?
- Yeah.
Good. You want me to scratch
your back or rub your back?
Sure.
One, two, one, two, three...
It's a gift for all of us
to have someone like Brian or those guys
who still love music
and wanna play music.
It's a gift to everybody because he
certainly doesn't have to do that.
Brian will always
want to go out and perform.
He will always want to make records.
It's 'cause music
runs through his veins.
I don't see age.
I see fucking history
and continuing to make history.
I think he's enjoying himself.
He wants to go on the road
and he wants to keep going, so...
I can't argue with that.
In the last two years,
you've toured, like, 180 dates.
It's more than you've ever played
at any time in your career.
- We toured the world.
- You gotta be proud of that.
Lotta concerts.
I've been in a concert
with him, and he did a song
that I thought I would never hear live,
and he opened his mouth
and just went...
Brian's provided that for me many times,
and not only
has he provided that for me,
he must get that every day in concert.
I didn't know what to expect
from Brian's show.
Trying to Pet Sounds live, you know,
it's like, what could be harder,
but we could not believe it.
If somebody
was making a bet with me,
I would have bet that they had tapes
rolling along with what they were doing,
but at the end of the day,
they simply learned
how to sing
and recreate that music live,
and it made me so happy
to see what he created
honored in that way.
This has been taken seriously,
and everybody on that stage
loves this guy
and loves this music.
Yeah!
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen!
I think everyone
has issues, you know,
whether it's mental health
or anything else,
and the fact that Brian is vulnerable
enough and real enough...
- Thank you very much.
- ...to get up there and do this,
I think gives people a lot of strength.
I know it gives me a lot of strength.
I love him.
I think he's a beautiful, sweet guy.
There is a real innocence and optimism
and positivity and goodness,
that's what's at his core.
The funny thing about those songs
is they're both more joyful
and more painful now
because of the loss of your own youth,
your own adolescence,
and yet at the same time,
it does speak to your current life,
which is the hallmark
of great and lasting music.
You know, it's like
there's some secret code
that makes Brian's music resonate
the same as this feather
or a piece of grass
or a leaf or air or water.
There's something about it that we need.
You hear his music
and you need it to live.
You know, it's like an essential
element of your life.
I don't think there are words for it.
There's very few people
that continue to make
the kind of impact he's made,
and having gone through
all he's gone through
and coming out the other side,
it's really kind of incredible,
and, again, so rare.
I think there's a misconception
of what real artists are,
and the ones
that are watching the clock.
Those are the people
that don't belong here.
It's the ones that just keep going.
It's Brian Wilson, that wants to
still beat "God Only Knows".
I mean, can you imagine that?
Two, a one, two, three, four... no!
Someone's coming in too soon.
I can remember
almost word for word a quote
that Brian Wilson,
more than anybody else,
has had a profound effect
over American rock music
for the next 30 years.
You can hear it...
Your influence is everywhere, Brian.
I mean, do you feel
that's a strong responsibility?
Yes, I do, sure, because...
once you've established yourself as...
an artist, producer, somebody
who has something to say,
it's an artist's obligation.
It's constructive work,
you know, it's work.
Any artist that you find
has that feeling.
He feels the need to please, you know?
And it's a very personal thing,
and it's something that comes with...
it's natural, you know?
It's a natural thing.
When I hear his music,
it makes me smile.
It makes me realize that there's
a lot of songs still left in me.
There's still a lot of songs
left in Brian.
He's always writing,
he's always making music.
And I have that love of him
that will never ever die.
We're gonna go.
Can you hear yourself all right?
- Yeah.
- One, two, one, two, three.
It's like Brian's music
taps into that same source
that gospel music taps into,
of that deep, fundamental sadness
or darkness that we all carry.
It's like it finds you there
and it takes you up out of it.
That was just innately in the music.
The harmonies, the sound of them,
offered a way out,
and offered a transcendence.
You can put on all these songs,
and it still stands up.
We're never gonna have
Brian Wilson ever again.
He once told me
that he used to pray
to make really spiritual music
and to make a better album
than Rubber Soul.
That's a good prayer.
It worked.
That should convert you.
Brian is a living example,
through his suffering,
through his pain, he found a joy.
His music is an act of love.
Good one!
- I like it!
- Beautiful.
Barbara Ann.
Yay!