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music<br />
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The Beach Boys<br />
‘Brian attached us to his vision’<br />
The newest Beach Boy, Bruce Johnston, was<br />
going out for dinner with his girlfriend. It was<br />
March 1966, and he’d been in the band for less<br />
than a year. Carl Wilson had been hyping up the<br />
new songs his brother Brian was working on, and<br />
Johnston and his girlfriend decided to stop by the<br />
studio before their meal. The backing music for<br />
God Only Knows was being recorded. The experience,<br />
Johnston says now, “completely changed<br />
my life” and “put me about 150% into ‘I’m not<br />
worthy, Brian’ mode.”<br />
As far as I can tell, Johnston is still in awe of Brian<br />
Wilson, whose musical genius, dramatic life, and<br />
unfulfilled potential have made him endlessly<br />
fascinating to music writers. I hadn’t intended to<br />
ask much about Brian, but, perhaps unsurprisingly,<br />
his name came up a lot.<br />
***<br />
Hi, is that Bruce Johnston? It still is – what a<br />
miracle!<br />
(Nervous wittering by me) Now, be quiet for a<br />
second, can you hear this?... (Pause)… I thought<br />
I’d share the Pacific Ocean in front of my house.<br />
(More nervous wittering) Chill, my brother.<br />
Your time; I’m totally cool. Do it the way you’d<br />
like to do it.<br />
Apparently the 20/20 album (from 1969) was<br />
the group’s 20th album in seven years, if you<br />
include compilations. Was the high work rate<br />
partly a result of pressure from Capitol? I think<br />
the band didn’t know any better; people in the<br />
music business didn’t know any better. In the old<br />
days, pre-rock and roll, if you go to Tony Bennett,<br />
Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, whatever, you’d walk in<br />
the studio, the arrangement would be perfect, and<br />
you could sing and finish an album in just a few<br />
days. But I don’t think they realised how difficult it<br />
was for Brian to go down the bottom, side, top and<br />
back of his soul to pull all of his talents together<br />
and deliver these amazing musical compositions,<br />
which various lyricists, mostly Mike Love, wrote<br />
to. I don’t think the label got it, how hard it was.<br />
Did you feel there was any conflict between<br />
feeling the need to make a lot of albums and<br />
the artistic standards you were trying to maintain?<br />
I think that as Brian progressed, he slowed<br />
down, in the right kind of way. Like someone<br />
writing a little classical piece and then writing<br />
a symphony, he was just digging deeper into his<br />
emerging talent, and he just couldn’t crank the<br />
albums out the way the label wanted. You’ve got to<br />
understand, as far as the musical – not the lyrical –<br />
the musical composition goes, it was pretty much<br />
Brian. Brian had the vision, and he attached us to<br />
the vision.<br />
Mike Love seems to be perceived as having<br />
been the commercial voice within the group,<br />
while Brian was trying to experiment more.<br />
Has that been exaggerated? I think it’s been<br />
exaggerated, because Brian was just as thrilled as<br />
anybody to be making hit records. Brian, one side<br />
of him loved commercial music, and the other<br />
side loved to push the envelope. Mike Love gets<br />
criticised, unjustly, all the time. If Mike Love<br />
hadn’t been pushing all those years, you wouldn’t<br />
be talking to me, I guarantee you that; there would<br />
never have been hits and there would never have<br />
been budgets to make those albums.<br />
Have the difficulties the group has faced –<br />
particularly the lawsuits, and Brian Wilson’s<br />
mental-health problems – affected the way you<br />
feel when you sing the group’s classic songs?<br />
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