Today (June 20) is Brian Wilson's birthday, so it seemed like a good time to post this piece I did with him (and Van Dyke Parks and Andy Paley) back in 1995. Wilson has a latterday reputation as not the most rewarding of interviewees, but I'm pretty sure this is the most revealing piece I've ever be...
“Y’know, you’ll have to take these birds out of here before we do this interview, ‘cos they’re gonna be chirping…”
Brian Wilson is preparing his kitchen for an interview. Present are his doting new wife Melinda Ledbetter; a maid, who is fixing him a big glass of Diet Coke; his amiable new manager David Leaf, a TV producer and Beach Boys biographer; and a couple of tropical birds. It’s a relatively unshowy house by LA standards sat high up in Laurel Canyon on a security-guarded estate. Business files litter the big kitchen table and, nearby, a china dog observes the scene from a shelf. From where I sit, it appears to be wearing a plastic fireman’s helmet.
Heavy and greying, Wilson hardly looks like a rock star — but he doesn’t look much like the wasted and ravaged monster of legend, either. Andy Paley claimed: “He’s the best comedian I know,” and it’s immediately apparent that he’s not averse to taking the piss out of himself and public perceptions of himself — hence the terrifying gurning he turns on for the VOX photographer’s camera. The trouble is, as his moods swing wildly from sentence to sentence, it’s hard to tell when he’s joking and when he isn’t.
Often, he has that innocent worldview, awkwardness and arcane language of a pampered Californian kid of the early ‘60s. Other times, he’ll gaze off sadly into the distance and then erupt with rage, and all the demons that have plagued his adult life become suddenly and disturbingly apparent. Then, it’s clear Brian Wilson will never be totally free of the mental horrors he’s gone through. Like he says, it’s a weird trip…
The first thing Brian says to me is: “You talk.”
No, you talk, that’s fine.
“No, I think we have a good start with everything.”
Some tracks I heard, like ‘Getting In Over My Head’, sounds like one of the most soulful records you’ve ever made; kind of bluesy, raw and passionate. Were you trying to achieve that?
“No… well, yeah, we wanted to achieve… First of all we need to do the one thing in life that we should do, and that is to bring spiritual love to people. Which we did in the ‘60s, and over the years, and I feel another cycle coming on to maybe have what I call a carte blanche from God to record. I don’t think I thoroughly understand what that really means.”
He laughs gently.
What do you think it means?
“Well, one way would be to say green lights, but that’s kinda scary, y’know, so I guess you could say, just another chance to express ourselves and do something that people would like, that we could bring spiritual security to people. And people like Phil Spector, who made music that was an inspiration to The Beach Boys to messenger images — I mean, er, to messenger the messages, to deliver the messages for people, how small it ever might be or how insignificant it might be, at least we do that we’re doing some good, y’know? But not really a lot, though.”
David Leaf mentioned that your emotional security in the past year or two has been a contributor factor to becoming so productive again.
“Yeah, yeah, that’s very true. And I’m having a real time trying to put the pieces back together from this breakdown I had a while ago. But I’m getting there.”
When did you have the breakdown?
“Well,” he sighs deeply, “I had the breakdown like, I dunno, a couple of years ago I guess. And then, like, I thought: As long as I’m having a nervous breakdown, it might as well be a good nervous breakdown.”
The whole machinery surrounding you now — Melinda, David, Andy — seems very secure.
“It’s like a shell to me. It curves like this” — he reaches out expansively — “like I’m back here in this shell and they’re screening out some of the bad shit and keeping some of the cool shit cool, y’know? And it’s kinda scary, but it’s like playing football. When you first learn how to play football it’s kinda scary, to get hit real hard by a tackler, y’know? But then, later on, you get mad and you start slamming around because there’s no other way to do it.
“When I was playing football in high school I got hit so hard that I quit the team, y’know? Three guys hit me and knocked me on the ground so hard that I lost consciousness for 20 to 30 seconds. I got up, I said: ‘I quit.’ Never came back. I got knocked a little bit too hard, no way I could hang in there and play that rough. I was so scared of getting beat up I quit.”
Did the experience make you a bit more nervous?
“Yeah, it shook me up enough to make me nervous but, y’know,” he sighs again, “… I like to play cool, y’know? That’s what I wanted to do, was to try to get some cools going. But now I get teased back from a lot of people: ‘Do I wanna get rough?’ or ‘Do I wanna get heavy?’ And I say: ‘Well, yeah, I think I can, probably.’
“But I never know from day to day what the fuck is really up, that’s the only problem with me. I know The Beach Boys are good, I know I can make music, but the rest of the trip I don’t know about. It’s confusing, it’s very confusing. The shell around me has given me a strength inside not to blast open, but to pry open something good and new, something positive. And I think that’s what I could do.”