“The Beach Boys are trying to destroy me!”

Did the latest Beach Boys “asshole” behaviour come about around the Baywatch Nights recording?

“Yeah, we managed to get Carl on tape but we couldn’t get Mike on tape. That wasn’t the best chemistry or song for The Beach Boys that we were doing. We could try another one, there’s always something else to try.”

But you don’t really want to at the moment?

“No. Assholes should be treated like assholes. That’s how I feel about my group. I can’t get nothing but detours and bad vibes, it makes me wanna split the state and go live in Miami or Hawaii and live a couple of years on my — our — money and not do anything. Y’know, it’s a tragedy that people get that way. They’d rather destroy something than do something. I’m just waiting around, I’m as positive as I can possibly be.”

What are they trying to destroy exactly?

“Well, I think The Beach Boys are trying to destroy me as a producer. I think they’re trying to make Terry Melcher [veteran producer who co-wrote The Beach Boys’ Brian-less 1988 Number One, ‘Kokomo’] their hero and me their villain. Fuck that shit, y’know? I’m not gonna go through that.”

It’s incredibly sad when you think what you’ve done for them.

“I think it’s sad, yeah.”

You think Mike’d still be pumping gas if it wasn’t for you?

“Nooo. I ain’t shit when it comes down to it, but I certainly don’t think he is, either,” he laughs. “I mean, a fight is a fight, y’know?”

But you’ve had so many fights with him over the years and yet still you go into the studio with him?

“You mean being in the same room with him? We can still do that, yeah. We still have that together, but we’ve gotta work on ourselves. How would you deal with it? If you went in the studio with The Beach Boys, and you were gonna produce them, how would you go about doing it?”

I don’t know… hold a gun to their heads, I think.

“Really? Oh, so you’d force The Beach Boys like a gangster?”

Well, from what I know about Mike, it seems that force is the only thing he understands.

“He relates to that. That’s a good idea, thank you,” he laughs. “That’s really cool. You mean put on the pressure?”

Yeah. How many times has he done that to you over the years?

“Probably once.”

Melinda snorts. “Oh yeah, with a couple of zeroes behind it.”

“He put me on an insecurity trip for about a hundred years by just not looking at me like he really cared that much for me.”

“Brian lets his emotions get involved with his family and his work,” interjects Melinda. She has left her seat and is now supportively stroking her husband’s neck and shoulders tenderly as she talks. “With them, it’s all work.”

“I mean, I don’t care,” continues Brian, clearly meaning the opposite. “The only things I have to go on are feelings. If I feel that nobody likes me, or that the group is a big scam, it’s gonna put me on a bummer but the worse it gets to me, the worse it’ll be for me later. Because you can’t put a person through that much bullshit and not expect that person to turn up with some kind of ego-trip disaster that’s gonna fucking scare people to death.”

“I dunno. We’re taking chances. If we try something heavy we stand a chance of getting knocked off because somebody else in a higher position would not want us to get anywhere. So that’s my problem. I used to think gangsters ruled my life, but I don’t think that any more.”

But emotional gangsters have, in the past, used nasty techniques to rule your life?

“What it applies to me is,” he taps out the rhythm of the words with his glass, “I’M-BEING-FORCED-TO-DO-SOMETHING-I-DON’T-WANNA-DO. I’ve had emotional gangsters run my life for 20 years. I pray to God with all my heart and soul that it doesn’t happen again. I don’t wanna go back to that place.”

“It’s like a double-edged sword,” Melinda explains. “He loves the sound, but he doesn’t want the problems.”

“The bottom line is: all I have to go on is how I feel. And if I feel like I’m being rejected or The Beach Boys don’t wanna work with me, or somebody else doesn’t wanna work with me, I’ll go elsewhere.”

They know which buttons to push.

“Yeah, that’s true. I dunno… Fuck the fucking Beach Boys. I mean, that is the truth, man. I’m sorry to have a negative on them. You probably want me to say: ‘Hohoho, everything’s great. Oh wow.’ “

How much money have they taken off…

“Oh hell… Mike clobbered me. He got five million dollars from me [for ‘uncredited lyrics’ that Love successfully claimed he had written to some of the group’s biggest hits]. That’s a lot of money. I didn’t care. I said: ‘You deserve it, you didn’t get anywhere with ‘California Girls’ so, fine, here’s your money.’

“That’s cool, no problem,” he adds sarcastically, “I don’t miss it. I was real rich one time — I had five million bucks in the bank last year, and I lost it.”

Yet you still go on TV with Mike, he goes to your wedding, Carl’s your best man — how’d you put up with that? How’d you let them back into your life?

“I dunno. It hurts me a little bit, but I don’t mind Carl being around.”

Melinda comes to his rescue again. “Brian thinks blood is thicker than water, regardless of what goes on with these guys. In some respects, they’re still family, and he’s probably more forgiving than you or I would be.”

“Hey, love is the answer in a lot of cases,” he says determinedly.

Brian’s off on another tangent now.

“Our friend Andy [Paley] is a mental genius but he’s a little crippled, y’know? His hell is, of course, that he feels shitty about working with me. I can tell, when he talks to me, that he’d rather work with Phil Spector or something.”

“Brian!” shouts Melinda, exasperated.

“OK, I’m being negative, alright, maybe, but that’s how I feel.” He bangs on the table emphatically.

“The bottom line is: no booze parties, no big huh-huh-huh. The real trip is that we’re gonna go forward with a solo career and we’re not gonna let anyone like The Beach Boys slow us down or fuck us up. The Boys are big businessmen, and people are a little scared of ‘em, but at the same time there are people in the industry who can kick The Beach Boys right out of the world.”

But all The Beach Boys do is cynically cash in on your reputation.

“But the Boys themselves didn’t even know what the fuck they were doing. They didn’t realise that they were being messengers for higher people.”

Melinda: “That’s how he looks upon them; as the messengers of his music.”

“And they were so scared that they literally kicked some butt. And nobody can sing better than Mike Love — he’s the best singer in the whole industry, except for Danny [Hutton, an old friend of Brian’s and former leader of Three Dog Night].”

What about Carl?

“Nah. Carl can’t sing for shit. The best he can do onstage is go: ‘HO!’ and yell.

“The truth is, there’s no getting out of bad vibes, no getting out of people that don’t like you.”

“The problem is, the reality is, he does care,” continues Melinda, honestly, “but it’s a constant struggle. All he’s ever wanted is for them to be nice to him. It’s so hard for him to have any type of conflict in his life. He just hates conflict. He wants everything to be OK all the time.”

Do you remember a time when you were as happy and contented as now?

“Well, er… no. Actually, no. Well this interview of course is a big breakthrough,” he laughs again. “I had a dream the other night and I kept dreaming that I said to myself: ‘I wanna break on through to the other side!’ Didn’t some group do a song like that? Morrison, right? Morrison from The Doors. I’m trying to write a song about that.”

And what’s on the other side?

“Ohhh…” — he starts singing again — “ ‘Milk and honey on the other side, Hallelujah!’ The last coupla days, my brain just hasn’t been functioning right. I have auditory hallucinations in my head.”

Melinda elucidates: “Basically, Brian has problems with depression. Day to day it varies, and auditory hallucinations are caused because the neuro-transmitters in the brain have gone haywire. So we’re on new medication, we’ve alleviated a lot of the old medication. So some days he has great days, and other days are…”

“…Lousy,” he mumbles.

“…Lousy. And the problem is that stress is a major cause of auditory hallucinations through depression. It’s an on-going thing that Brian’s always gonna be dealing with, but for the first time in his life he’s with people that understand what he’s going through instead of saying: ‘You’re crazy.’ And what we know about the brain is… nothing.”

Brian burps loudly. “I’m not sure about the brain, but I don’t understand what goes on between brain and emotion when you write a song. Are you writing a song from your soul or from your brain? It’s weird. What goes on?”

“The amazing part,” wonders his wife, “is many creative people suffer from depression. Maybe that’s the part of the brain that deals with creativity, too.”

So would you have sacrificed the creativity to have avoided the depression?

“Yeah. It gets back to being scared, because if you’re depressed, that’s gonna fuck your mind up. Being depressed these days, that throws your mind into a scared situation.”

But for an entire life of complete emotional and psychological simplicity, would you have sacrificed every note of music that you’ve written and played?

He becomes vague and makes desperate attempts to change the subject. Melinda firmly takes over the questioning. “No, Brian. If, in fact, you could have a life free of depression and auditory hallucinations, free of all the emotional insecurity that you’ve gone through, would you trade that with having your life with music?”

He answers very quietly. “No.”

“No, I don’t think so,” she says, satisfied.

“As much emotional security as I have, I still need more, though,” he returns.

But music’s so important to you that you’re prepared to go through the rough times?

He’s very distant, suddenly exhausted.

“Yeah. Oh yeah.”