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- [00:00]
Ian Today
Welcome back to Jokerman in Conversation. I'm Ian Today. Thrilled, delighted, truly to be joined by someone you have already heard quite a bit from on this program. If you've been listening to any of our Beach Boys episodes with regularity, but an absolute delight to actually get to speak to the man himself for this episode about an incredible book, the Rise, Fall and resurrection of Brian Wilson. I speak, of course, of David Leaf, author of God Only the Story of Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys and the California Myth, the definitive Beach Boys biography in my estimation at least. David is back with a new book all about Smile, the one and only. Both its 1966, 67 Genesis and collapse. But ultimately really the focus of this book and the true treat to me is its focus on the rebirth of Smile, how it came back together decades later and ultimately turned from one of the great tragedies of pop music into one of the great triumphs. Some of you out there may be aware, but David has been a close personal friend and confidant of Brian's for decades. At this point made a documentary about the recreation, reproduction of Smile in 2004, Beautiful Dreamer. This book looks at a lot of those same areas of focus as the documentary, but in much greater depth, much greater detail and allows really everyone who's a part of the story to speak for themselves and talk about what, you know, what Smile meant to them, means to them and will continue to mean to the rest of us. Just an unbelievable pleasure to get to rap with David for as long as we did here. Over 90 minutes. I think could have gone all day with him. Hopefully we'll get to get him back in the fold at some point. But a man as close to Brian Wilson as there can be as there ever will be. This is a good one, folks. David Leaf. I've been in this town so long.
- [02:31]
David Leaf
And back in the city, I've been taken for a large begun and I've known for a long, long time.
- [02:46]
Ian Today
Roseanne Billings. So you tell the story, David, in not in this book, but in the first book, the book that I've actually been. I've got it right here next to me, quoting from extensively in our big long Beach Boys series. You can see there's a bunch of highlighted passages and everything. Just an essential part of the Beach Boys story. God only knows the story of Brian Willis and the Beach Boys and the California myth. You tell the story at the beginning of this book of how you fell into, just into this the first time you met. I think Dennis, in particular, for our listeners out there who Might not be as familiar or might not have read the book. Can you just. Because that's just an unbelievable way to start this whole journey. Can you just tell us how you. Your entry into the Beach Boys universe?
- [03:44]
David Leaf
Well, one of the primary reasons I moved to California was that I wanted to write a book about Brian, become his friend, and to help him finish his smile, which seems insane to begin with. As, as, as, as a notion that formed in college. And my roommate and I, who had become smile obsessives in 71 and 72, that he would say, well, if you're so upset about all this, do something about it. So I said, I got to move to California. And I arrived in California on a Saturday night. And that Monday morning I went to the state of California unemployment office to transfer my claim from New York to California. It was $95 a week. And in those days you could live in Los angeles comfortably on $95 a week is as ridiculous as that sounds.
- [04:40]
Ian Today
Imagine that.
- [04:41]
David Leaf
But it was one of the reasons I moved to LA was you could be a starving writer in Los Angeles as opposed to a starving writer in New York, where you would live in a fifth floor rat trap, roach infested, walk up $500 a month. It was like, where do I want to be? Near the ocean or near the city that was going bankrupt? So I wasn't hip enough to stay in New York, so I moved to California. And so Saturday night I arrived, Monday morning I go to the unemployment office to transfer my claim. The unemployment office was located at the southwest corner of 5th and Broadway in Santa Monica.
- [05:20]
Ian Today
Sure.
- [05:20]
David Leaf
And I walked out of the building heading north on fifth Street. Across the street and walking towards me was Dennis Wilson. And I walked up to him and I said, hi, Dennis, my name is David Leaf. I just moved to California. Write a book about your brother Brian. And he laughed. It was like, that's the moment. It was like, big laugh. And then he said, good luck. And then he went into a low brick building, which I later found out was brother's studio.
- [05:52]
Ian Today
Unbelievable. Just on the. Just on the block from, you know, right down the block from the unemployment office.
- [06:00]
David Leaf
And the irony of it is that this is the fall of 75, and three years later, the original book the Beach Boys and the California Myth was in stores.
- [06:11]
Ian Today
It's truly an unbelievable, you know, as we'll get into the smile story, in many ways sort of feels predestined or, you know, like the hand of God is guiding this whole story across the decades. And for the dream to be Fulfilled years and years down the line. And I mean, that story right there that starts it all off, I don't know, has that same kind of ring of fate of kismet to me.
- [06:38]
David Leaf
I've come to sense that this was my mission, that it was my calling to do what I did. And I didn't realize it at the time. I didn't realize how absurd my notion was at the time. It's like being president of your high school class and saying, well, one day I'm going to go up to be President of the United States. Well, somebody's going to be president and you know, it's going to be one of those 22,000 high school presidents, maybe. At any rate, there I was in LA and meeting Dennis, I wouldn't say it solidified the notion that, hey, wait a second, I could write this book because I had never written anything longer than a 500 word newspaper article. So a book was way beyond where I was as a writer at that time.
- [07:31]
Ian Today
Sure. Well, I mean, the book speaks for itself. Our listeners are well acquainted with your writing at this point, whether they've read the book themselves or just heard me quote from it endlessly in our long discussions of the Beach Boys. It's a fantastic, you know, kind of, to me, the defining documentary of the Beach Boys. As many great biographies as there are out there. On that note, we're here today to talk, of course, about a new book that is out now. By the time this episode is airing, at least Smile, which is a whole other beast. It is covered to pretty great extent in God Only Knows, of course, and in your 2004 documentary, Beautiful Dreamer. So this is ground that you've covered before in a variety of different contexts. What made you decide that this was the right time for a specific whole new book just focused on the Smile saga.
- [08:30]
David Leaf
I had absolutely no intention of writing this book.
- [08:33]
Ian Today
Okay.
- [08:35]
David Leaf
The editor in chief at Omnibus, David Barraclaw, who had had wanted to. To do the update to the Beast Boys and the California Myth back in. In 2002. And you know, I said, we've got to make the update so significant that people who have that book will want to buy the new. The new. The new edition. And the update ended up being more than half the length of the original book. So it's almost like two books in one. And I wrote about some of the Brian Wilson Presents Smile incidents in the update. And so I wasn't planning to write Smile. The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of Brian Wilson. What I proposed to him to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Brian Wilson presents Smile. And the 20th anniversary of beautiful Dreamer was to publish a book of the full interviews I had done for Beautiful Dreamer. Because when you're making a documentary, maybe 98 or 99% of what you get in those interviews ends up on the cutting room floor. And I knew how much great material had been lost. And I wanted that to exist for people who wanted to take a deep dive. And he said, no, not interested. Interview books don't do well for us. He says, however, if you want to do it as an oral history, that would be very interesting to us.
- [10:11]
Ian Today
That makes perfect sense. And that was one of my other questions. Is this book is written. It is an oral history. Which, you know, I was almost kind of. It took me a moment to kind of figure out, oh, this is what is going on here. It's almost entirely primary sources. You know, instead of you writing a narrative, it is shaped into a narrative, of course. But as opposed to you, the author kind of editorializing and telling us the story. It's the story being told by the people who were in the story themselves. Van Dyke, Parks, Darion, Melinda Wilson, so many others. It's a fascinating kind of, and I think really worthwhile way of approaching this material. To allow the participants to sort of tell the story, tell their own stories themselves.
- [10:56]
David Leaf
Thank you. It was, you know, as. As I wrote in the introduction, I had my say on the subject. Now. Now that. That being said, there are moments in the book where I had to editorialize, where I had to guide the conversation. Because there are so there are as many questions as there are answers. I mean, it's just. It's just. It was this giant jigsaw puzzle to put it all together. And my goal in. In doing it was that if I couldn't hear what the person said. Or visually see it in a television or interview or film interview, it wasn't going to be in the book. Because I felt that it had to be airtight in terms of it not being. Hey, I never said that. Because people say things at different times. I mean, you know, Brian and Van Dyke say things at different times. But this was my version of what I'd been told about Smile by as many of the participants who agreed to talk with me. And there were a few who didn't. And of course, there are a few who long since passed away. So I had to find other source material for them.
- [12:16]
Ian Today
Sure. Yeah. I noticed at the end. I was just kind of combing back through it today. Before we hopped on in the acknowledgment section. I think you mentioned that it sounds like Van Dyke did not agree to an additional interview for this book. And you said, thank God he didn't, because we had such a Great Conversation in 2004. That's so funny to me.
- [12:37]
David Leaf
Well, when I asked Van Dyke, he said no. And I was kind of. At first, I was devastated because I wanted his retrospective thoughts on the subject. However, when I went back and looked at the interview he had done for Beautiful Dreamer, it was like, oh, this was mana from heaven. Because I had interviewed him at great length prior to the world premiere.
- [13:01]
Ian Today
Right.
- [13:02]
David Leaf
So he's telling the story contemporaneously, which is, I think, much better for living history, which is true of a lot of the commentary. That's. That's. That's in the book. Jeffrey Foskett obviously couldn't be here to do an interview. Same with Nick Belusco. So I had these interviews with the band members, with. With Brian, with Van Dyke, all primarily done prior to the world premiere. And I think what that did was, much to my surprise, was add a sense of drama to. To the story as it was unfolding. Because every time I would make changes to the book in the PDF form and send it to the publisher, they would make the changes and then send it back to me for me to prove it. So I have to read it over and over and over and over again. And each time I got to 2003, I'm feeling this sense of drama, and it's like, how could there be a sense of drama when we already know what's going to happen and yet it's in there and, you know, I'll pat myself on the back. I love that part of the book.
- [14:11]
Ian Today
Absolutely. That's maybe, to me, that was kind of the biggest discovery, you know, in the book, because it's. I don't know the exact page count numbers. You know, there's a decent chunk of time spent at the beginning, obviously, telling the smile story, circa 1966, 67, which is a story that, you know, I'm very familiar with and a lot of our listeners are familiar with at this point. But I think, to me, the drama of this story really comes beginning in 1999, 2001, when Brian is really kind of getting back on his feet and venturing out there as a performing artist again, leading up to, obviously, the smile performance in February 2004. And that stuff, I know, has been covered. Obviously, you have the beautiful Dreamer documentary, and there were other contemporaneous accounts of this at the time. But that has much less of a. I'd say, like, kind of cultural footprint, I think, than the fireman hats and everything that was going on back in 1966, 67.
- [15:16]
David Leaf
I really didn't want to write about 66, 67 again. And again, the editor in chief, David Barraclot, said, no, you have to contextualize it. This can't just be about what happened in 2003, 2004. You have to tell that part of the story again. And I re. It was just, oh, my goodness. Because it's such a painful story, but because of. Again, because of the interviews I'd done for Beautiful Dreamer, I had these wonderful interviews with the people who were there at the time. I did. I interviewed Mark Volman, who I had not interviewed previously. Marco, you know, one of the great singers from the Turtles. But he. He was part of the. The group that would gather at Brian's house to hear the pieces when Brian would come back from the studio. So a new perspective. We have Annie Wilson, Carl's first wife.
- [16:14]
Ian Today
Right.
- [16:15]
David Leaf
Talking about what that was like. And. And so I. I felt I could retell that story in a different way. Durie Parks Van Dyke Parks FIRST WIFE She's. She had tremendously interesting recollections.
- [16:34]
Ian Today
She's one of the best parts of the book. And I had. I don't think I'd ever, you know, read a single word from her.
- [16:39]
David Leaf
And. And so I realized, you know, there was a lot of gold that had been left on the cutting room floor. And. And by bringing it out in this book, I. I could make 66 and 67 as new as it could be. I mean, Brian's stories about David Crosby coming up to the house, unimaginable. It gives you a sense of how hip he was, how much of a leader he was in the music world, that David Crosby is going up to Brian Wilson's house to hear what he's working on with the sense of, okay, we the Birds, we're having some hits, but what's the competition? What's he doing? And how do we stay in the game? And that was Brian's whole thing was, what do we do different and new that will keep us ahead of everybody else? And unfortunately, he was the only one in his group, and nobody at the record company was really interested in that either. Carl was very supportive of what Brian was doing, but not at the expense of the group. And so it was a very. It's Shakespearean and it's drama and sadness.
- [17:59]
Ian Today
Absolutely. And that actually leads me maybe to one of My first questions I wanted to ask about the actual story itself. I'm going to try to avoid asking you too many questions about 66, 67, because I know that's no problem.
- [18:12]
David Leaf
It is what it is.
- [18:13]
Ian Today
It is, yeah. But there is. I mean, to me, there's a Sliding Doors moment in, like, 65, really. And then into early 66, as pet sounds is really coming together. The Beach Boys. The group is off in Japan. Obviously, Brian is back home making the Pet Sounds record as the Beach Boys, but really, it's just Brian Wilson. And then ultimately, he decides to. Decides to release it as Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, even though he had already put out Caroline Ngo as a seven inch single under his own name. Brian Wilson, Caroline Ngo. And I think there's an argument to be made that whole record should be out under Brian Wilson's name before we even get to Smile. But for whatever reason, and those reasons are established, debated and understood to some extent, he ends up deciding this is a Beach Boys record, not a Brian Wilson record. That, to me, is the moment that kind of sets him down this more troublesome path that is really gonna start to present problems by the time we get to such adventurous outre music as we do on Smile. I just. I kind of wonder what you make of that decision at that time. Even before things really start to get hot and heavy in Beach Boys land, Brian is deciding, nope, I'm gonna keep this group together. I'm gonna keep it under the Beach Boys aegis. Pet Sounds is not me, it's us.
- [19:38]
David Leaf
That's a great question. Brian is pretty clear, as is Danny Hutton, his best friend, who was at the session saying, Brian could have sung all the parts himself. Brian knows he could have sung all the parts himself, but in the same way that he wasn't going to play the bass notes on the. On the tracking dates he had, he told Carol K. What he wanted, or Ray Pullman or Lyle Ritz. He saw them as. Perhaps his greatest invention was the Beach Boys vocal blend. And he wanted that blend. There was just something about it that to this day is. Is. Is in. In. There's something about it to this day that is inimitable and wonderful and has kept us loving Beach Boys records, despite all. All the internal conflict that occurred at this time. So could he have gone solo? It was. There was really. No, there was. There was nothing that Brian could look at in the world and say, here's somebody who left a group and went solo.
- [20:51]
Ian Today
Sure.
- [20:52]
David Leaf
I mean, it wasn't like he was Dion and the Belmonts. And then he went to be Dion. Brian, Brian. Brian was not going to be a full time touring artist. That was not his interest. And to sell records, you had to tour. And so they were, as Dennis Wilson said, Brian's messengers. He was sending his messages to the world. And when you go back to, you know, you mentioned 1965, you go back to Beach Boys today, you already hear what's going on and you see Brian Wilson's name on the front cover of the album. So it's clear to everybody that Brian is moving in a new direction. It's clear to everybody that Brian's moving in a new direction, whether they like it or not. And of course, to me, side two of Beach Boys today is Pet Sounds in miniature.
- [21:44]
Ian Today
Absolutely.
- [21:45]
David Leaf
So he's heading there. The fact that Guess I'm Dumb doesn't make it onto the album is one of a million dumb things that happened in the history of the Beach Boys. It's. It's just remarkable that this great song doesn't make it onto to that album. Supposedly somebody said, well, the Beach Boys don't say we're dumb. You know, as silly as that, something like that. Because as David Anderly would say, Brian needed support. He needed total support. He did. He couldn't be doubted. And he was king in 1965. And it wasn't until Pet Sounds that the grumbling begins, which was, you know, kind of muttered, perhaps under their breath. Sure doesn't sound like the old stuff to us. Now. Tony Etcher is clear that he was under attack when he went to Beach Boys vocal session. So he stopped going. And Capitol Records was kind of waging war on Brian and the Beach Boys. When Pet Sounds came out, their product manager, Carl Engelman, says, hey, guys, the album's great, but couldn't you give us some more stuff like California Girls? And Brian's not the least bit interested in doing that. And so Capital, as far as we can tell, they press 300,000 copies of PET Sounds, and when stores reorder it, they ship them best to the Beach.
- [23:24]
Ian Today
Boys, which came out just two, three months after Pet Sounds did and had obviously no Pet Sounds on it.
- [23:30]
David Leaf
No Pet Sounds. And looking at the history of the music business in the 60s, a great hits album to me was kind of a signal. We think, you're done, you're not going to have any more hits. And so whatever momentum that Sounds might have had in the United states, it had four top 40 hits, it had two top 10 hits. Why isn't Capital selling it harder? Well, that's not what they want to sell. They want to sell what's easy. And as Carl Ingeman says, it was quota. So Brian, who had put aside a song he was working on, on Brian, who put aside Good Vibrations, a song he was working on during that sound sections with a lyric by Tony Etcher, because he had a bigger idea for it. And it took him months and a lot of sessions and he finally stitched it all together and comes back with Good Vibrations, a worldwide number one first million seller, first million selling single by the Beach Boys. Meanwhile, over in England, where they don't have quite the same baggage and history that the Beach Boys do have in America, where the people in England are living with gray days and quite happy to embrace anything that is sunny, that sounds becomes a gigantic success. So much so that when the year ends, one of the British music magazines puts Pet Sounds and Beatles Revolver as co number ones for the album of the year. So you've got these two worlds in Britain where Brian has brilliantly hired Derek Taylor, the former Beatles publicist, to be the Beach Boys publicist. Making it clear that something incredible is happening with Brian and the Beach Boys. He's creating the smile myth at the same time that Tom Nolan is writing about him, at the same time Jules Siegel is, is embedded with, with, with the group and Brian. And they don't know they're creating a myth. They just think they're promoting the next album. They don't know it's not going to happen. And there's one great quote from Brian in, in, in the British press saying our next album is going to be as advanced from Pet Sounds as Pet Sounds was from summer days and summer nights. Well, you talk about racing the bar, talk about the kind of confidence that you have to have to say that. So he's supremely confident that at that point and the reason for it is he's working with Van Dyke Parks, who I believe it's Annie Wilson in the book talks about for the first time Brian is working with a peer, somebody who has the abilities and talents that are, that are equal and very different from Brian, but somebody who has enormous gifts and she's watching it and seeing it and she's seeing how much excitement and joy and great music is being generated by this collaboration.
- [26:50]
Ian Today
Truly a match made in heaven, the two of them, Brian and Van Dyke. I wonder if you could just talk a little bit. And I mean as someone who obviously has firsthand experience with the two of them on their own together of course as well later on, if you could just sort of give us a sense of that relationship over the years. Because they are so alike in some ways, each just musical savant geniuses. And at the same time are so radically different in the way that they communicate with the world. What they're interested in, what they look like, what they sound like. It's sort of a perfect yin and yang type of musical relationship to me. How has that duo kind of grown and evolved over time?
- [27:38]
David Leaf
Well, I think they would both deny that they're geniuses. Brian at the time said, I'm ingenious. I'm not a genius. Van Dyke, having sung for Albert Einstein, says, I've been in the presence of genius. So. So he wouldn't put himself. He wouldn't put that word on himself either. At some point, I came to look at them. If you remember the old cartoon series Yogi Bear, it looked like Yogi and Boo Boo. Brian is gigantic. You, you, you. Unless you're in his presence, you don't realize how big he is. And hut talks about how intimidating a figure he cut. He's, you know, well over, you know, six, two, six, three. He's great looking and he's in charge. And Van Dyke, there's. There's. There's nobody like Van Dyke that you can't point to somebody and say, oh, he's Van Dyke. He's like Van Dyke. There's just. No, there's.
- [28:40]
Ian Today
They're Both 1 of 1.
- [28:43]
David Leaf
1. 1 of 1 is a good way to put it. Thank you. And their talents are completely opposite. Brian is pure music, and Van Dyke has enormous musical talents. But his lyricism, like his conversation, is often impenetrable.
- [29:04]
Ian Today
Yes.
- [29:05]
David Leaf
So what made this marriage work? Well, Brian, after Pet Sounds, which I always refer to as his. As his emotional autobiography, it was like, okay, that's a little too close to the bone. Brian's thinking, I want to. I want to do an album where the lyrics aren't as personal to me. Brian was always perfectly capable of writing a great lyric, as he proved with Surfer Girl. As he would prove until I die in love and mercy. He didn't need a lyricist. He loved working with somebody. He loved working with Roger Christian, who would give him these poems that Brian would set to music like Don't Worry, Baby. It was almost like Bernie Taupin and Elton John. So Brian was exploring different ways of collaborating. And he loved. Brian loved the camaraderie that Van Dyke brought to the situation. Because when he met Van Dyke, who is this guy? It's amazing that he's part of The LA music scene already. And yet he's unlike anything that the public knew. There were a lot of people behind the scenes like PF Sloan and you know, Harry Nilsson would join that group. These are really smart, smart, educated people who. Multi talented and Van Dyke was one of them. So Brian, you know, got it right away and he asked Van Dyke to collaborate with them. And so this wonderful collaboration is happening as Brian is finishing Good Vibrations and getting ready to unleash it on the world. And so they get right to work. As Van Dyke says, the first day, the first song they wrote was Heroes and Villains.
- [30:51]
Ian Today
Unbelievable.
- [30:52]
David Leaf
You can't really do much better than that on your first day, can you?
- [30:58]
Ian Today
Walking up to the plate and just hitting a grand slam. First pitch right out, right out of the park.
- [31:04]
David Leaf
Absolutely. Out in the barnyard the chickens do their number out in the barnyard the.
- [31:19]
Ian Today
Cook is chopping lumber There's a quote from Van. You know, there's tons of quotes from Van Dyck all across this book. That's honestly one of the great joys of this book is literally just like. Because even the way he speaks, Van Dyck, there's a musical, melodical, melodic quality to it. Just in him talking, he sounds like someone who would have written a Van Dyke Parks record because he's Van Dyke Parks. But there's one quote in particular just kind of really stuck out to me. Not for itself, you know, melodicism or its clever wordplay, but really for like kind of the emotional reality of it. And I just want to. I just want to read this to you from the book. And you know, if you, if you have any comments or thoughts on it. Van Dyke says it's Brian Wilson that matters to me. This is in 2004, the project, you know, in quotes, the project itself, Smile. To me, it's the residue of a real desire of some things that music can speak to, like in this case, loyalty and friendship and the general humanities, confirmational things. Being able to laugh at what concerns us, to be able to present music on different levels that can be taken on different levels with words that can either be relevant or not apply at all. Your thoughts on that take on smile circa 2004?
- [32:46]
David Leaf
Well, let me first go back to what you said. One of the joys of the book for me was unlike in Beautiful Dreamer, where I have to keep the story moving so Van Dyke Parks get. Gets cut off after a sentence or two, in this book, I could allow his quotes to play out in their entirety. And what a. What a. What a gift for the author. If you will. And what a gift for the reader that we are able to spend that much time with Van Dyke Parks, talking about Brian Wilson, talking about Smile, talking about things that are in many ways beyond my understanding. And the quote you just read is one that I can't. What's great about Van Dyke is his quotes are like his lyrics. You have to read them repeatedly to understand what he's saying, and you have to look at the context in which he's saying it, when he said it. His relationship with Brian was one of the most heartbreaking things of his life, that he had been essentially plucked out of obscurity to collaborate with America's most successful songwriter at that time on a project that was going to follow what, at least in England, they were hailing as the greatest album of all time, an album he and his first wife, Jury, both adored. So he's just about to reach Mount Everest, and one of the chirpas pulled him by the belt and throws him off the mount. And so how do you recover from that? So he has a career in which he makes a bunch of great solo albums that, again, require the listener to have. They require the listener to bring a certain level of intelligence and interest to them, whether it's Tokyo Rose or my personal favorite, Orange Crate Art.
- [35:01]
Ian Today
Sure.
- [35:02]
David Leaf
But they're not mainstream records. And so his one shot at being in the mainstream is Smile. So he's in his early 20s, and that's taken away from him. And now he's going back in 2003 to look at the residue of what they had done. And much to his joy, there's. There's a reason to do it. That the music has survived its time of creation and, in a sense, is as timeless in 2004 as it was going to be in 1967 as it still remains to this day. You can't listen to Smile and say, oh, that's of an era.
- [35:50]
Ian Today
It's from another universe, unstuck from time.
- [35:54]
David Leaf
And Van Dyck understands that as somebody who. Who knows more about music than all of us put together. And it's. You ask him a question and you never get the answer. You're expecting what you know. So what I love about that interview is he talks in depth about the creation of. Of the smile songs from in 66 in ways that I don't think I've heard him speak before. And then he talks about the reconstruction of it in 2003, and then the absolute trepidation he is feeling as the world premiere is approaching. And he does it as an outsider and an insider. He's there to help Brian finish it, but he has no role in the actual presentation.
- [36:47]
Ian Today
Yeah, it's. It's the commentary I think you get from Van Dyke or, you know, that's presented from Van Dyke in the book is really, you know, so thrilling and revealing to me because, like, that quote in particular, I think, speaks to this, you know, emotional fulfillment, you know, putting, you know, turning a tragedy into a triumph, really, for him and Brian both for this record. That wasn't, you know, at the time at least, you know, Pet Sounds. That's, as you said, the emotional autobiography of Brian Wilson. Smile is not quite as nakedly emotional, confessional, biographical. It's more interested in the world without than the world within to compare it to Pet Sounds. And yet the way that the story unfolds over the years, over the decades, and Van Dyck's read on things, I think, makes this very clear. It ultimately takes on this very deep emotional aspect to it, even if it wasn't there necessarily in the, you know, writing about the cantina in Heroes and Villains, for instance.
- [37:58]
David Leaf
Well, I think. I think what Van Dyck is able to articulate better than any of us is that it's one man dealing with his past, coming to grips with it and the kind of courage it takes. So it makes the presentation of the music more than a concert, more than an album. It's essentially the triumph of the human spirit, which is, I think, the most unexpected aspect of it all. We were there to hear the music of Smile. We didn't realize that it was going to be a personal resurrection as well.
- [38:36]
Ian Today
Exactly. I wonder what your impression is. You know, Brian himself, of course, shows up in this book quite a bit. He's quoted quite frequently. I wonder what your impression is of him, of Brian as an authority on his own work. You call him, at one point in this book, a most imperfect narrator. If you can explain that a little bit further.
- [39:00]
David Leaf
Well, depending upon what mood he's in, what day of the week it is, he either wants to talk about what he's done as great or he doesn't want to talk about at all. Or he wants to dismiss it, or he wants to, I think, get to his truth, which is that he thinks of himself as a channel for God. So it's, you know, they had, as he says, they had prayer sessions during Pet Sounds. In describing what the next album is going to be to Tom Nolan, he says, he. He says, I'm. I'm writing a teenage symphony to God. I can't think of anyone else in the popular musical world who would use that sentence to describe their next record. I mean, a symphony to God. Well, how spiritual does that have to be to earn that description? And so I think there's a quality of Brian that, like, whatever spiritual power you may or may not believe in is completely unknowable. And so if you ask Brian to talk about the music, he. He just may not want to talk about it. So before the, the, the, the trip to London to do the first shows, I did an interview with him for Beautiful Dreamer. And nothing from that interview made it into the film. I was hoping to get kind of a before and after contrast, and he just didn't want to talk about it. He's scared to death.
- [40:45]
Ian Today
Yeah.
- [40:46]
David Leaf
When he came back from England, he was a blabber owl, so to speak. I mean, he called me the day he came home from the tour. We had come home after the world premiere week in London to get to work. And when he came home, he says, you got to come over here tomorrow. I got to do an interview about Smile. And if you think back from 1967 to 2004, every interview Brian did, he was undoubtedly asked, what about Smile? And he never had anything good to say about it because it was the worst thing that ever happened to him. Sylvie Simmons, the great UK journalist, talks about interviewing Brian at him just getting up and leaving and getting in his car and driving away because he didn't want to talk about it. So the notion that he wanted to talk about it was like stunning.
- [41:45]
Ian Today
Radical.
- [41:46]
David Leaf
Radical indeed. Unprecedented. So we went over there and, you know, he said, you know, believe it or not, David, I can't wait to get back on tour again. Again. Another sentence one would never hear from Brian. When I asked him about comparing Pet Sounds to Smile, he says, well, I give Pet Sounds a four and Smile attempt. I mean, you know, in later interviews, he would give Pet Sounds a seven. He would give Pet Sounds a little, little bit more.
- [42:13]
Ian Today
Bump it up a little. Yeah, give it a C, Pets.
- [42:17]
David Leaf
So, so he, he knew all along how great the music was. So whenever somebody wanted to talk to him about it, it was just. It was like putting an electric jolt of pain. I don't want to talk about this. This. It's inappropriate, he would say, or. That was just junk. And so. So what began was the happiest period of his life, or at least the. Or at least the happiest period of his post Good Vibrations life.
- [42:47]
Ian Today
Right. His later life. Absolutely. I mean, it's almost as if you get the Impression, you know, especially from some of those, those comments you just made there. As if the experience sort of like, you know, I don't know, just like, like made him a new person almost in, in some ways or, or, you know, you know, chased away, I don't know, years, decades of demons and difficult experiences that he was unable to really even process or talk. And just overnight it's all gone. There's a whole new reality for him.
- [43:23]
David Leaf
It did. And the top of the back cover has a quote where Brian's talking about London and he says, the most cathartic experience of my life. I, you know, you can't say it much more clearly than that. We can talk about it was an albatross around in his neck and all that, but he's very clear we saw the demons leave him during, during the world premiere week. Yeah, we can't, we can't figure out whether it was the first night or the second night, but clearly all of the pain associated with what had happened was now being replaced with maybe 180 degrees in the other direction of Joy of Happiness.
- [44:12]
Ian Today
It's the perfect. You couldn't script it better in a Frank Capra picture to focus on the music itself a little bit and maybe take a few steps back to when it was originally being written and composed and conceived. You introduce in the book Smile, as I think above all else, an American record, something that speaks to the American experience. David Anderley, I think you quote, calling it an Americana album, even, which sounds, I mean, knowing what we know now as the genre that is American, like Smile doesn't sound anything like what people consider Americana music, you know, under that limited kind of genre description. And yet, you know, it does seem to address the American experience and Americana in general. I wonder if you can tell me your thoughts on Smile as an American album.
- [45:12]
David Leaf
Well, clearly Van Dyck was determined in the wake of the British Invasion or make a statement that was American. I'm not quite sure what that means, but. But it was, you know, the conception was this journey from. From Plymouth Rock to Diamond Head of a bicycle rider flying across the United States to his ultimate destination. And I never thought of it as Americana. I never, I was never much for genres. I, I'm pretty much. I'm very simple in my music, musical tastes. I love melody and I love harmony and certain people's voices connect with me and others don't. You know, I'm, I'm. I'm a Beatles and a Beach Boys fan. I'm not likely to pick up, say, a Lou Reed record. I don't need to add to. I'm from New York. I don't need to hear any more pressing stuff. I'm looking for some sort of uplift. Even if this. The songs might not be subject matter wise uplifting. There's something in a person's voice that. That will connect with me.
- [46:38]
Ian Today
Sure.
- [46:39]
David Leaf
So John and Paul's voice is connected with me. The aforementioned Dion's voice connected with me. Obviously, you know, there's a whole litany of people whose music means a lot to me to this day. People are always surprised when they say, who's your favorite group? And I say, the Beatles. I mean, they were like, what? Well, yeah, it's pretty simple because the Beach Boys. The Beach Boys story overwhelmed the music in the past 50 years.
- [47:19]
Ian Today
Sure.
- [47:20]
David Leaf
And then once, you know, once I started to dig deeper, it was even worse than one could have anticipated. So there was a biography that came out in the early 80s called Heroes and Villains by Stephen Gaines. And I think when Carl Wilson was asked about it, he said something like, oh, that's just the tip of the iceberg. One can only imagine the trauma and troubles of growing up in the Wilson household. And by all accounts, Mike Love's dad wasn't the easiest guy to live with either. So you've got these folks who didn't have what we might call a normal upbringing. And unfortunately, there's nobody who can accurately tell us how bad it was in the Wilson household. Brian and Dennis have their version. Brian says it clearly, I was a hero, my dad was a villain. Dennis, I don't know anybody who got it. Like us. Carl isn't here to speak to it. So Annie speaks on his behalf and. And offers the notion that it may have been exaggerated from what we've heard, but we don't know what it was like to be the oldest child, to be the first child in which, you know, a father invests so much and then have this failed songwriter essentially be insanely jealous of what you're able to do and take it out on you. And. And so it's the only real example we have of it is the so called Help Me Murray tape, which is. Is painfully unlistenable. But if you want to know what. What the relationship was like, it's about all. All we have other than minimal eyewitness.
- [49:18]
Ian Today
Accounts and the lengthy Murray Wilson letter to Brian as well, which I think to me is the most revealing glimpse into that dynamic. I know that letter, I think, just finally came to light for everyone maybe 10, 15 years ago. Just one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever laid my eyes on. To write that to your son, you know, I, I, I can't even imagine.
- [49:44]
David Leaf
It's, it's pretty terrible. And so, so here's this guy who's persevering through all of it as, as somebody said to me, what I wouldn't have given to know what Brian and Audrey spoke about. When Brian came back after having some sort of breakdown on Tour in late 64 and coming home by himself, and Audrey meets him at the airport and they go to the now empty Wilson home in Hawthorne to talk. What did they talk about? Well, I didn't ask Audrey when I interviewed her, unfortunately. So I, I don't know and we'll never know, but we could guess because I think Brian said, well, basically I got a lifelong hang up out. Well, what, you know, what could that be? That he couldn't hit the curveball in high school? I doubt that was what he was referring to. So you've got somebody with this terribly painful upbringing. You might describe it as almost from the moment he could stand up as a little boy, he's getting smacked down, whether it's verbally, emotionally or physically. And what does that do to you? And so he overcomes it as best he can and becomes, I mean that moment in Beautiful Dreamer when he says, it wasn't until I was 16 in high school where I could stand up straight and walk like a man. What the heck is he talking about? Well, we can guess what he's talking about. It's pretty tough stuff. And yet he remains a prankster to the end. One of the things I love about the anthology at the back. Which of the book which leads with the Tom Nolan essay is Tom Nolan telling us a story about a prank that Brian pulled on, on Murray and Audrey where he, he mounts a like police bullhorn on his car when he knows his parents are upstairs being intimate. And we'll, we'll let leave it up to the reader to, to get the rest of the story, but it's just, it's just, it's just, you know, it's like something out of a movie and he records a song on Bugged at My Old Man.
- [52:07]
Ian Today
Bugged Me at My Old man. Yeah, which is, I mean that's one of the, we just recently on the podcast, we watched the 1976. You know, I guess some people call it the, it's okay television special. I guess other people say it's just the Beach Boy, you know, the Lorne Michaels Brian's back television special that went along with 15 big ones. And there's that performance of I'm Bugged at My Old man that he does at the piano. And Dennis and Carl are singing harmonies next to him. And, man, that song is just so. Because it's so. It's so hilarious on one level, and yet on another level, it's just like. It's one of the most confessional pieces of songwriting he ever, you know, he ever put. Put to paper, at least up until that point where he, like, he's laughing about this stuff, but, like, this is actually. This is. This is a real glimpse into Brian. Brian Wilson's emotional reality.
- [52:51]
David Leaf
Yeah, I think we got a lot of that. I mean, we got it in my room. Know, where's a place that's safe? I mean, you know, it's a. It's a very, you know, now that we know what we know, that song is Safe Harbor. Where can I go where, you know, can I close the door and. And have peace? And of course, it wasn't peaceful in there because if they made too much noise at night, dad was coming into.
- [53:19]
Ian Today
Here comes Murray.
- [53:20]
David Leaf
Yeah. Not. Not Here Comes Santa Claus Here comes Santa Claus Right down Santa Claus Lane.
- [53:30]
Ian Today
Back to Smile. I've always been really kind of taken with the original title, I guess. I don't even know to what extent anyone ever thought of this as a hard and fast title. Obviously it didn't end up being the title, so I guess that might answer that own question there. But Dumb angel, which to me feels so, I don't know, accidentally revealing, personally significant to me for Brian Wilson to make a record or, you know, whatever you want to consider Smile to be a symphony, a rock opera, as he describes it to you. That phrase just seems really significant. And of course, Brian ends up moving away from it and Smile ends up being its smile. I wonder if you have any thoughts just on Dumb angel as a title, as an accidental personal description of Brian himself, something else entirely.
- [54:21]
David Leaf
I have heard that it was named after Marilyn. I've heard it was named after Dennis. I haven't heard of it as an autobiographical title. But one of the things that's interesting in the book, as we hear from both Danny Hutton and David Anderley about whether there was going to be an album called Smile, Period. You know. You know, as Danny says, you know, I'm. I'm the Smile heretic here. I didn't. I never heard Brian talk about he was making an album called Smile. Well, Danny's too busy with his own career to Read the music magazines, I guess, because Brian's talk talking about an album called Smile. And in, in Beautiful Dreamer, he talks about it. In the book, he talks about it. And perhaps that's, you know, what he, he wanted to make the world smile because he wanted to make himself smile. And I think, I think the great sadness that I've come to grips with in recent years was that the reason there's so much power and emotional depth in Brian's music is because of what he lived through. And then in a sense, he was creating all of these good vibrations to make himself feel better. And if we look at it from that point of view, you know, he's trying to get a smile on his face. He was not a happy grown up or adult. He, he, you know, he could smile for the camera. To quote Steely Daniel.
- [56:03]
Ian Today
Sure.
- [56:03]
David Leaf
But, but not, not for himself. He, he, he looked, he, he always looked depressed.
- [56:11]
Ian Today
Yeah, you see some of those pictures. I mean, there's that picture. There's, there's, you know, I always love looking at like the picture section in, in a book like this because there's just some unbelievable shots and there's that really famous. There's a really nice reproduction of this picture. You know, I've seen it many times before, but of the whole friend group at LAX in the hallway, where Brian is there and he's got Marilyn there and he's got Dan. I think Danny Hutton is there. It's just like, I don't know, 20 people or something. And there's Brian just kind of off in the corner. He's got all of these people that love him, that he loves, that have come here to be with him and take this picture with. And he just looks adrift at sea, almost like, you know, lost. It's kind of just that one image says so much, I think, about who he was and where he was at that moment.
- [56:56]
David Leaf
Yeah, it reminds me in the original edition of the Beach Boys in the California Myth, which had hundreds of photographs, there's a picture of Brian on senior Ditch day at high school. And he's with his group of friends from high school and he's standing off to the side. And I think the caption said something like, Brian is part of the group and apart from the group. And that seems to be who he is and always has been. So the Beach Boys were his group. They, they listened to him until they stopped listening to him. And then that it became like, we need you. And as Marilyn Wilson says, you know, you guys think this is so easy. You go do it. And then, and then she says, you know, she says, I hate to say it, but they really beat him down now. There's so much behind just that one sentence, they beat him down. Well, what does that mean? And, you know, I. I read the Chuck Negron biography, Three Dog Nightmare, and he describes the scene when Brian is working with a group he's named Redwood, which. Which features Danny Hutton and two other great vocalists.
- [58:18]
Ian Today
I wanted to ask you about this.
- [58:20]
David Leaf
And so there they are, making a single, their first record, it's going to be Darlin and Time to Get Alone, and they record the backing tracks.
- [58:28]
Ian Today
This is like 67.
- [58:31]
David Leaf
This is 67. So Brian has shelved Smile and he wants to work with people who are going to listen to exactly what he says, happily. And so one day at the studio, according to Chuck, Mike Love, Carl Wilson and one other Beach Boy arrived. And Chuck describes it as. They're basically trying to corner Brian in the control room. They're watching it from out in the studio where they're getting ready to record vocals. And Brian goes from this in control, happy, grown up, to what Chuck describes as a. Looks like a little boy who's being scolded for doing something wrong. And Brian comes out of the studio and says, they say, I can't work with you. I'll give you any amount of money to finish the record. But they say, I can't work with you. And so the three of them leave and change the name of their group and become Three Dog Night and become the most successful singles group of the next six years. And Brian, you know, with his tail between his legs, leaves the studio with a conundrum. They don't want to do what I want to do and they won't let me do what I want to do with somebody else. Basically either work with us or don't work with it with anybody. And so for the next 20 years, that's what Brian does. He either works with them or he doesn't work with anybody. With the slight exception of. Of American Spring is his wife's group.
- [60:19]
Ian Today
Great little record, but.
- [60:22]
David Leaf
So he's. He has been defeated and defeated. If one listens to the. The Redwood version of Time To Get Alone, it's. It's a spectacular record. That's not to say it was going to be a hit. Eventually the Beast Boys put their vocals on it. And it's a spectacular record for the Beach Boys, sure, but it wasn't what Brian wanted. And. And so he's, as he writes in the song, you know, I went to Sleep time to get alone Busy doing nothing. He couldn't be much more clear about how he thinks and feels about what's going on in his life. Till I die. I mean, is there a sadder song in the canon than that?
- [61:18]
Ian Today
Love in your eyes made me feel so. Now look at me baby what do you see? So much love in my. Just for you and now we know. We. That's one of the. And I think you even. We. You know, we talked about this a couple months ago when we did the Surf's up record episodes. But I think you mentioned in the book that, you know, Brian brought this song, brought Till I die to the group at that time and was like, here, you know, this is what I got. I really feel strong about this song. And one particular member of the group, maybe we could say, told her, this is not Beach Boys. We don't want this, Brian. This doesn't belong on this record. And Brian offers to change the lyrics in the song from. I forget the exact change, but basically do 180 degree interpretation where I'm feeling at the end of my rope, you know, like I need, like I'm at the end of my life to like I have overcome these things and I'm feeling happy now or whatever. And it just like completely throws that song out of whack. Obviously he ends up getting the song onto the record with the correct, you know, true lyrics. But it's just like that little anecdote I think speaks so much to this impossible situation he found himself in with the group.
- [63:02]
David Leaf
The challenge with all of this Until I die is a good example of it is. Yes, Steve Desper, he tells you one story. You asked members of the Beach Boys. You would get a different story. You ask Brian and he may not even want to talk about it. Although he explains it quite perfectly, I think A beautiful dreamer that he's feeling like how insignificant he is, you know, a grain of sand on a giant beach. But what's the truth of what happened? And the essence of what happened is, is the song wasn't 100% accepted when, when, when, when he submitted it, which, which is just. It's kind of it's head shaking.
- [63:50]
Ian Today
Unimaginable.
- [63:51]
David Leaf
Well, it's. It's completely imaginable inside the context of, of the Beach Boy story. Sure, but why would you want to work in that circumstance? And yet he continues to. Yeah, you know, he writes Marcella and. And you need a message. Helps to stand alone and. And then Van Dyke rescues a sale on sailor when Warner Brothers rejects Holland. So he continues, and then doesn't take.
- [64:23]
Ian Today
Good turns on the note of continuing over that period of time. And really starting in, I guess, actually ON Wild Honey 1967 with Mama Sez, Bits and pieces of Smile, the music that was created during the Smile sessions, I should say, whether or not there were ever a record, there was going to be a record called Smile. Back then, Little Snatches, you know, kind of go on to leak out over the year. Often tacked on to the end of a Beach Boys record that was not particularly good or needed a little something extra, you know, maybe most notably notoriously at the end of 2020, which just like completely jarring conclusion to that record with Cabin Essence, you know, one of the great snatches of music from Smile, but just does not make any sense on 2020. It does work in some places. I think Surf's up in particular is probably the strongest example of the Surf's up song. At the end of the Surf's up record. I wonder how you think about the way that the group, the Beach Boys, Capitol and later Warners and whatever approached the Smile music over the years that followed the collapse of the initial Smile project.
- [65:36]
David Leaf
Well, Smiley Smile, which comes out when Smile is supposed to. Or in place of Smile, clearly there was going to be an album called Smile From Brian's Point of View, because they capital printed up hundreds of thousands of covers sleeves.
- [65:52]
Ian Today
Sure.
- [65:54]
David Leaf
But when we come to, okay, what can we say from this? And you'll hear a song like Wonderful on Smiley Smile, you know, that the production isn't what he was capable of. But you hear a song that's a wonderful song. Heroes and Villains that's released isn't what we were expecting, or I shouldn't say we, because I wasn't expecting anything. I had never heard the name Brian Wilson until 1971. So those four Capital Albums groups are. They're scavenging in a sense. But. But when I heard 2020, when I heard Mama says, I didn't think, oh, gee, they're bastardizing or anything. I just. It was like, wow, listen to that.
- [66:56]
Ian Today
Right?
- [66:58]
David Leaf
But that was all in. That was all retrospectively to me hearing Surf's Up. When I heard Surf's up and read about Smile in the. In the Rolling Stone article that Tom Nolan wrote and went on my journey. Part of my journey was buying all the Beast Boys albums that were in cutout bins. And so in listening to the albums like 2020, I wasn't thinking, boy, this seems out of place. It was like, oh, wow, this is incredible. And you Have a side with I Went to Sleep and Time to Get Alone. Time to Get Alone has the kind of production and beauty that seems like it could have been on Smile. Again, an example of Brian not needing a lyricist. But we were just thrilled to hear now. Now that we were detectives trying to understand what was going on. Hearing our prayer in Cabinet since the end of 2020 was.
- [68:06]
Ian Today
It was a treat.
- [68:07]
David Leaf
Wow, that's. That's. It was. It was. It was more than a treat. And of course, as. As the years went by, those. Those pieces in the DIY world of Smile became essential because you could take Good Vibrations, Heroes and Villains, the Wonderful that was released on Smiley Smile and Mama says and Our Prayer and Cabanessence and Surf's up and you've almost got an album right there.
- [68:40]
Ian Today
You can kind of Frankenstein it together. Sure.
- [68:42]
David Leaf
And. And so, you know, the tragedy of it, you know, is ineffable. What's interesting is about Good Vibrations being part of Brian Wilson Presents Smile was. It showed the power of record companies still in that day, in 66, 67, because there's a sleeve with Good Vibrations on it. And as David Anderly says, Good Vibrations was not part of Smile. It was a step in between. This is my experimentation in modular recording. It worked. Now I'm going to do a whole album like that. But now it's part of Smile.
- [69:28]
Ian Today
It's part of Dance. Exactly. It's kind of the perfect. I mean, to me, frankly, kind of. I can't imagine Smile not ending on Good Vibrations the way that it does.
- [69:39]
David Leaf
Well, it's funny, when I walked into rehearsal one day in, I guess it was early February of 2004, and Tony Asher had given me the lyric he had written for Good Vibrations. And I walked over to Brian and I said, I don't know if you want this or not, but this is a lyric that Tony wrote for good. And I didn't even get the second word out of my mouth, and he snatched it out of my hands. He looked at it, he goes, this. This is the one we're going to use. I mean, it's. It's just. It's amazing how powerful he was in the original Smile era and would be again in. In the Brian Wilson percent Smile era to make sure it was what he could. He was comfortable with. There were days where he was completely uncomfortable. You can see that in. In Beautiful Dreamer. And then there are days where he was saying, turning around and go, no, no, you're. That's the wrong note. What are you singing? No. And. And so, you know, and then he'd come into the rehearsal hall, I think, as Darian says, Are we gonna be doing Smile today?
- [70:55]
Ian Today
Great.
- [70:55]
David Leaf
I mean, it's just, just so incongruous. Are we going to be doing Smile today?
- [71:02]
Ian Today
I can't even imagine.
- [71:03]
David Leaf
He, he, he is, he is such a sweet person and has always been such a sweet person. And that what happened to him, it makes it even sadder. It wasn't like he was an. He wanted to include everybody. You spoke earlier of the idea of, could he have gone solo with Head Sounds. He wasn't going to do that. He was going to be loyal to the family and to the family band and the family business to the extent that he was going to put Smile on the shelf because he believed that it would destroy the family business if.
- [71:46]
Ian Today
He continued too good for this world. Brian Wilson, perhaps there's this phrase that keeps popping up kind of along these lines in the 2004 section, Emotional Security, which I think you credit and seems like almost everyone around Brian credits to his ability to get back on the horse and get Smile across the finish line at that point. I wonder if you could just talk about where that emotional security came from for Brian and what role it played.
- [72:19]
David Leaf
Well, the first time I heard him use it was in the mid-90s, 1995, I think, right around the time he was doing promotional work for the Don Was documentary and for Orange Crate Art. And he was asked the question, brian, you've been kind of hidden from for a while. Why are you out here doing, doing all this? And he just said, I have emotional security. And, and of course, what that implied was when I don't have emotional security, I can't do it. The emotional security was, was clear. He, he, he was married to Melinda. They were newlyweds. We, we, my late wife and I, we spent years double dating with them. And they were like teenagers in love. And that joy of not having any pressure to have to go make a record, to have to do anything, it allowed the spark to rekindle to the extent that it did. And nobody expected that. We just wanted him to be safe and secure, away from the previous regime, if you will, when. Which he describes as nine years in prison. And so the idea that he could just walk out the front door and get in his car and drive to the, the Beverly Glen Deli and have breakfast and then drive down to the park and walk around the park and then drive back up to the Beverly Deli and have lunch and then drive back to the park and sit in his car and listen to the oldies station, and he could do what he wanted to do. And making music became part of what he wanted to do. I mean, he's so funny. Intentionally and unintentionally, I mean, you know, when he was in the studio to record the. What was. What he thought was only going to be the single Orange Great Art, because it was like, let's just bring him along. Let's see what. What he'll do. And so he's in the studio waiting for the. For the first take, and he. He. He says to Van Dyke, he says, remind me again while. Why I'm here. Remind me again why I'm here. And Van Dyke says, because I hate the sound of my own voice. And Brian goes, well, that makes sense.
- [75:01]
Ian Today
Fair enough.
- [75:02]
David Leaf
And, you know, and he doesn't say, oh, no, Van Dyke, you've got a lovely voice, people. There's none of that kind of, you know, bullshit in Brian whatsoever. It's like, oh, yeah, I can understand why you. That way. And. And he proceeds to record an album of vocals that, you know, to me, it's. It's the best album of vocals he's done in the. In the past 30 years, because he's doing all the backgrounds himself, which was also true of his first solo album, and it was true of Imagination. But there's something about Orange Crate Art. I'm not sure what it is. Maybe it's the idea that there's no pressure on him. That's a Van Dyke Parks album. And he brings a certain kind of inventiveness to. Doesn't feel forced. I don't really. I've never really stopped to analyze it.
- [75:57]
Ian Today
Orange Great Art was the place to start. Orange Great Art was a world upon home for to Review Us and all where there's aroma and home Memories of Orange Crayon.
- [76:26]
David Leaf
But, you know, he sang wonderfully on.
- [76:29]
Ian Today
On.
- [76:29]
David Leaf
On his first solo album. I wish Jeff Lynn had produced the whole record because Let It Shine shines above vocals that are on the rest of the record. Yeah.
- [76:44]
Ian Today
I wonder if you kind of. On the note of that first record, you have an interesting read in the book on the Eugene Landy. The second Eugene Landy situation, I should say, when he's brought back into the fold in the lead up to the first solo record and whether or not. Whether or not it was ultimately a positive or a negative aspect. Brian. Or sort of maybe the second Eugene Landy thing being both a positive and a negative. I wonder if you could just kind of talk me through your perspective on.
- [77:21]
David Leaf
That I talk in the book a little bit about intended and unintended consequences. So in the early 1980s, Brian comes out of a place called Brotman Memorial and is accompanied by a nurse who sees an opportunity to leech onto Brian. And she's giving him anything he wants to eat. And Brian is a man of appetites. He's hanging out with Dennis and these are what some bootleg called the Cocaine Years.
- [78:05]
Ian Today
Yeah, there's that tape, the Cocaine Sessions From I think 81.
- [78:10]
David Leaf
And so his appetites are uncontrolled and it looks like he's essentially eating himself to death. And so the Beach Boys hire the aforementioned psychologist who may have been the only person who at that moment could have imposed the discipline that would have kept him alive. Were there other psychologists to hire? Were there other places there where Brian could have been sent, where he probably would have escaped or would have figured out a way to bribe people to bring him food? Who the heck knows? But. But at that time, this was the decision and. And this time he was given complete control over Brian. So the intended consequences to keep Brian alive and bring him back to the Beach Boys, that's the goal, which he does for the 85 album and is unhappy with the fact that he doesn't have complete control over the circumstances. So when a solo album is offered by Seymour Stein and Lenny Warrenker in the Warner Music Group, he grabs at it because then he won't have deal with Brian's partners. Any other, I believe, any other psychologist, psychiatrist, any other team of professionals who they would have brought in would have done what they wanted, which was to keep Brian and the Beach Boys fold. And you have to remember that up until that moment, Dennis, Carl and Mike had all had solo albums, but not Brian. Brian was going to write songs. It was going to be for a Beach Boys project that was part of the contract with. I don't know if it was called Sony Music then, but with. With the label, which was easy album had us had to have a certain number of brand new Brian Wilson originals. So this solo deal takes Brian away from the group and leads towards the. The series of events that ultimately take us to. To Brian Wilson presents Smile and Beyond. You know, this great second act where we get the lucky old son and Brian Wilson reimagines Gershwin, et cetera. And so the intended consequences, for all the reasons I outline in the book, Brian needs to be kept alive. But they didn't want to give up Brian. And suddenly he's not a Beach Boy. And suddenly it becomes a negotiation. What Beach Boy projects is he going to work on and how is he going to contribute to them? And that continued until Carl's passing.
- [81:13]
Ian Today
Sure. So sort of the ability for Brian to be extricated from that Beach Boy's universe and begin to kind of chart his own individual course on his own. Even if it is a challenging set of circumstances that leads him to that point, it doesn't.
- [81:40]
David Leaf
Because for whatever reasons, and I'm not a psychologist or a trained psychiatrist, Ryan seems to make binary decisions. It's an either or with him, Murray or Mike, you know, there's no. There's kind of no. So when he's extricated, it's like, I know how to live in this world. And as much as Brian refers to it as a prison, he learns how to manipulate that world. Beach Boys can't quite penetrate what has been constructed around him. This 247 bodyguard situation where Brian isn't allowed to call anyone he wants or do anything he wants and has been being given medication and from what I can tell, being over medicated, kind of drugged, if you will.
- [82:40]
Ian Today
Sure.
- [82:41]
David Leaf
And so he's. That's, that's. And now, now a new opportunity arises again. Unintended consequences. The psychologist thinks, good, good idea for Brian to have some dating experience as if he had never dated before. So all of a sudden he and Melinda are dating and. And then it becomes, you know, Melinda drives the, the effort to extricate him from his nine year prison sentence.
- [83:13]
Ian Today
Sure.
- [83:14]
David Leaf
And so I'm around for all of this. I'm part of all of this. And so the second half the book or more isn't me trying to guess at what happened. It's I'm a fly on the wall or a participant in the events of. From, you know, the late 70s onward.
- [83:40]
Ian Today
On the note of Melinda, you know, she just passed not too long ago. May she rest in peace. There is a beautiful little foreword from her at the beginning of the book. You've already kind of started to edge into this. But just to take it a step further, just can you sort of speak to the role that she played in Brian's life and what she did for him throughout this process leading up to Smiles.
- [84:07]
David Leaf
So there's, there's the emotional security that, that he can, in. He can live in peace, if you will. And after he records Imagination, a strange, A strange record to me in that I love his vocals and I really like a lot of the songs on it, but I don't like the production.
- [84:31]
Ian Today
Sounds a little funky. Yeah.
- [84:34]
David Leaf
And a decision is made to do to go on the road, kind of an experimental promotional tour, to see if touring is something he can do. And I remember when she told us about it, thinking, this is the dumbest idea I've ever heard. I'm glad it wasn't mine. And of course, it turned out to make everything else possible because if Brian doesn't go on tour and, and succeed at it and, and the band isn't put together, there is no Pet Sounds tour in 2000. There's no band to play at the, at the 2001 All Star tribute to Brian Wilson that I, I wrote and produced. And there's no band who surrounds them with the same emotional security and love, except in a very different way. They're musicians, particularly the guys from the Wonderments, who worship him in, in a very positive way and are determined to play his music exactly as he composed, arranged and produced it back in the 60s. So he hears that, as he said apocryphally or not in 1994 when he heard the Wonderments at a, at a benefit tribute to him, boy, if I'd had these guys in 1967, I could have taken Smile on the road. All of a sudden, you know, he knows he has a team who, who can do anything he wants. And so when he performs Heroes and Villains at the Radio City tribute, which happens by accident, is one we'll read in the book, it's a stunning tour de force. And the New York audience, which is probably Brian's, like in the way that London is the place where Brian's worshiped the most, New York is the place in the United States where he's worshiped the most. And so that audience understands what a big deal it is that he's gonna, that he's doing Heroes and Villains and gets a rousing ovation and he starts to add Smile songs to his touring repertoire. And because he now sees that the music of Smile is not something to be afraid of, that the fans actually do want to hear it. And then in 2003, it's really Belinda. I mean, there's a lot of circumstances that happen, but once you've toured Pet Sounds 2000 in the States, 2002 in England, the question becomes, okay, what, what are you going to do next? How do you top this? And the answer comes back Smile. And it took a lot of things to come together for that to even get on the plate, get announced. But one of the biggest factors is Glenn Max at the Royal Festival hall, essentially commissioning it because it's 19 people on stage and it's it's an expensive production musically, just to rehearse all these people. And there's no notion that this is going to be successful and go on the road and become a worldwide tour and an album. That's Brian's biggest solo album of his career. Nobody has any idea. That's all going to happen. So Glenn Max is. Is one of the heroes. Melinda and. And Gene Seavers, Brian's manager, are, you know. You know, Melinda's basically saying, hey, Brian, you know, I'm reading on the message board that the fans want you to do Smile. So he agrees, and, you know, I'm there in London when he makes the announcement. And then the British press are just like, to use their word, gobsmacked at this moment is, yeah, we're going to come back next year and do Smile. And it's like, what did he just say? And then we come back to the States, and he wants nothing to do with it. He doesn't want to talk about it. He doesn't want to deal with it. For months, this goes on. And then one day, he and I are coming back from the movies in Santa Monica, where I lived at the time, and walking up the 3rd Street Promenade and. And he says to me, he says, you know, I can't do this unless you're there with me every day. And I'm like, what are you talking about? And so we talked, and I said, brian, the only way I could be there, because when it was announced, it was just like, we bought our plane tickets and made our hotel reservations because we have to be there now. He wants me to be there. Through all the rehearsals and everything, I said, brian, I got a company. We make documentaries. The only way I can be there is if I make a documentary. And he's like, okay. And so fortunately, I had a friend who knew somebody who bought commission projects at Showtime, and we went in and told her the story, and she bought it in the room. It does not happen very often. I can tell you that from experience. It wasn't enough to make the film, but it was enough to get started.
- [90:01]
Ian Today
Sure.
- [90:02]
David Leaf
And it became my Mount Everest, if you will.
- [90:07]
Ian Today
It shows you've already been very generous with your time here, David, so we can wrap soon. I don't want to eat up your whole Sunday afternoon here.
- [90:16]
David Leaf
Too late. No, no, obviously, I love talking about this, but your listeners, there's only so much of this they want to hear from me.
- [90:28]
Ian Today
Oh, no, believe me, they want to hear it. You're speaking to the right audience here. Maybe to conclude this Whole conversation. I don't want to. There's so much in this book. It's all of the guys from the Wonderments show up. There's some incredible comments, obviously from the rest of the Beach Boys, positive and negative both. And all of the essays at the end from other folks in the world, including the last one from a young woman. Her name is escaping me, but really Charlotte Martin. Remarkable. I don't even really want to say any more. Just unbelievable. Note to end this book on, but I guess kind of the ultimate takeaway, the big question, or a big question from this whole thing is the idea of Smile as Brian Wilson. Brian Wilson presents Smile. That's the title of the record, right? Versus Smile, the Beach Boys record that might have come out in 1967. Obviously never did. I wonder if you could just speak to the significance of Smile ultimately existing as not as a Beach Boys record or secondarily as a Beach Boys record, I guess we could say, due to the 2011 release, but first and foremost a Brian Wilson project.
- [91:49]
David Leaf
I don't think he was ever happier to do it live, record it. There's a couple of great quotes from people who were there the day he was handed the CD from the party he had to celebrate the launch. It was a Brian Wilson we might have seen in 1965. He was reborn. That's why I use the word resurrection. It's why I refer to the church of Brian Wilson in the book. And a number of people unbidden by me talked about going to these concerts. And it was almost like going to church because of the reverence the audience has for him. And so this was as great a time as there was in his life, in my experience. And I didn't meet him until 76, and it's been a roller coaster of a life for him. Put it mildly, to say the least. If anyone would have said he would be the last of the brothers to be alive, people would have been happy to Bet you he's going to be 83 this year. He's going through difficult times, but he's handling it well, so he's okay. But it was for those of us who had become obsessed with Smile and some of. Some of. By us, I mean this small coterie of people who became dear, dear friends.
- [93:43]
Ian Today
Like Ray Lawler, the Brianistas.
- [93:46]
David Leaf
Well, before there were Brianistas, there were just few of people I knew. Ray Lawler and Debbie, Kyle Levitt and her roommate Eva Easton, who became my wife. We all believed, and part of what drove us, that if he ever Finished, smile. He would be relieved of this terrible, terrible burden and make great music again. And so it was thrilling when that lucky old son was announced and we, we, this time we booked our tickets. I didn't have to make a documentary. We could just go, go and cheer them on as fans. And same with the Gershwin album. So. So it was. It really was a period of unexpected joy. We had seen him become happy again as a person, but I was determined, one might say obsessed, with seeing him get the kind of recognition I believed he deserved. And so, in creating the All Star tribute that took place in. In radio city in 2001, which probably was in the works for almost at least a half dozen years before I finally found the right partners who would finance it, get it done. It was just. It just. None of those things are easy to do. But there were the Brian Eastas, certainly. And then there was this critical mass around him of people who showed up for his first solo concerts in Michigan and Wisconsin. And he felt what he had never felt before, which that there was an audience that loved him as Brian Wilson, playing the music he had created. And it was as nervous as he was before every show, as eager as he was to get out of the auditorium or wherever the show was afterwards and get back to the hotel and order a room service steak, it was a very, very happy time to be with him, to be around him, to see him blossom to the point where he could confidently be backstage at the Royal Festival hall and greet Paul McCartney and Roger Daltrey and everybody else who is also in the Church of Brian Wilson, but his peers in the Rock and Roll hall of Fame, and for him to take his place rightfully with this surprising second act of life. Somebody, not me, needs to start a petition to get him inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of Fame as a producer and as an artist, as a solo artist as well. Those really need to happen for people to understand how significant he is in rock history in the long run, in the short run, he's already done it. And keeping his music alive is going to be up to your generation. So you now have the burden. I pass it on to you, Ian.
- [97:08]
Ian Today
It's a heavy burden, I must confess, but I will do what I can to some small extent. And honestly, I gotta say thank you for not only the book, the documentary, but just we talk about emotional security, I think the emotional security that you were there to provide for Brian and help him realize this masterpiece that was nearly half a century in the making, one of the great pieces of recorded music. In the history of recorded music. 20th century, 21st century, right back until the very beginning. A story, I think, unlike any other. David Leif, thank you so much for this extraordinary conversation and extraordinary book.
- [97:54]
David Leaf
My pleasure, Ian. Always happy to be with you.
- [98:09]
Ian Today
Thanks again to David Leif for fantastic conversation. Fantastic book. Smile, the Rise, Fall and Resurrection of Brian Wilson, available now from Omnibus Press. And thanks to him, you know, thanks to him for the part that he played in putting this record together. You know, making this, making this happen, you know, one of the most unlikely, unbelievable stories, you know, to, to bring this whole project full circle after decades and decades and all the ups and downs, not only in Smiles conception, but the Beach Boys career. Brian Wilson's personal life, an unlikely but unbelievably happy ending to one of the most twisted and torturous tales in, in rock history. Essential reading for anyone who's been listening along with us, anyone who's a fan of Brian, anyone who loves Smile as much as I do. Link in the description to pick this book up. Truly one I can say with full throated confidence, don't you dare miss it. To borrow a bit of language from our Bob Dylan era. We'll see you next time on Jokerman. Father.