Bruce Johnston

Bruce Johnston is a musician, singer, and songwriter, widely recognized for his influential role in the Beach Boys. Johnston began his musical career in high school, collaborating early-on with musicians including Eddie Cochran and Phil Spector. Joining the Beach Boys in 1965, Johnston was involved as a vocalist and keyboardist, and he continued to make occasional appearances on the Beach Boys albums from the mid-1970s until re-joining the band in 1978. With the group, Johnston co-produced several key albums, including L. A. (Light Album), and the follow-up LP, Keepin' the Summer Alive. Known for his harmony and production skills, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the group’s founding members. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: Vivo Barefoot http://vivobarefoot.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA25' ------ LMNT Electrolytes https://drinklmnt.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Athletic Nicotine https://www.athleticnicotine.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Squarespace https://squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:24Speaker 00

  I was 21 or 22 when I got my second gold record. When you were born in 63.

• 0:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, the second. What was the first?

• 0:36Speaker 00

  Did you ever hear, Ross, if you go back historically, there's probably no history, but it really is. I was in a band. Phil Spector joined the band and Sandy Nelson was a guy a couple of years ahead of me in high school and out. And he knew I could play, and so I was, I would kind of be in his band.

• 0:54Rick Rubin?

  You played piano?

• 0:55Speaker 00

  I played piano.

• 0:56Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 0:56Speaker 00

  I, along with a guy named Richie Podler, Richard Podler, who eventually produced True Dog Night. There was a Cozy Cole record called Topsy that was the top 10 in the like 58, 59. And so Sandy, whose name was Sam Nelson, he just got the idea, convinced this disc jockey. Do you know who Art LeBeau was? Okay, convinced Art LeBeau, who had original sound records. He had had a hit with Press Knaps during Bongo Rock by Dacey and Guitar. And so Sam, Sandy Nelson, talked Art LeBeau into a single, one-off, just not even an album. So we made this, we wrote this song, kind of in the studio, called Teen Beat. And it went to number four.

• 1:39Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:40Speaker 00

  And...

• 1:40Rick Rubin?

  How old were you at that time?

• 1:41Speaker 00

  I was probably 17.

• 1:43Rick Rubin?

  17.

• 1:44Speaker 00

  And Richie Podler and I kind of wrote it, but Richie Podler and I were so young, we didn't know as writers how to... Really asked for writer's credit. I said, "High school. What did I know in high school?"

• 1:57Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to actually listen to a little bit of it just because it's fun. There's different versions too, but the Sandy Nelson version is the first?

• 2:05Speaker 00

  That's the, he rerecorded again because remember I said he got a singles deal?

• 2:10Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:10Speaker 00

  But didn't get an album deal, so he went over and got a little money from Imperial Records and rerecorded it and put an album out. And that's before Let There Be Drums. But this is the, this is significant to me because, because all of a sudden, even though Spectre asked me to play piano on To Know Him Is To Love Him. Do you remember that song?

• 2:28Rick Rubin?

  Of course.

• 2:28Speaker 00

  That he verse? He asked me to play piano on it, but I, I had a date, but I had a ride to her house. So I, I took that option. I do not regret it to this day.

• 2:37Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. So you didn't plan to know, to know him is.

• 2:40Speaker 00

  I was supposed to, but that girl started, but I didn't go.

• 2:42Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:43Speaker 00

  I went out on this date with the girl, which I thought to this day is still was a better idea.

• 2:47Rick Rubin?

  Describe the world at that time. Describe Los Angeles. In what year is this? 1956, 55?

• 2:54Speaker 00

  The whole 50s. I mean, it was Pat Boone's heaven. It was just Ozzy and Harriet. I mean, it was just.

• 3:00Rick Rubin?

  Had rock and roll happened on any level yet or not really?

• 3:03Speaker 00

  It was, well, I went to this private school called Bellar Town and Country. Now it's called John Thomas Tyne. It's a big deal. And it's too expensive. And one of the guys that worked there, I did a lot of jobs. And I was up there because I lived down the street, so I walked there on Saturday. And I ran into Talton, was his name. And he had a Chevy with a good speaker in it. And he said, "You want to listen to some music, Bruce?" Because he knew I was in the school music stuff. So he says, "Listen to this." So the station was called KGFJ that he got me to start listening to. And we're listening to KGFJ, then I hear a group called The Robins.

• 3:50Speaker 00

  They were in stolen, you know. This affected me and all Beach Boys before I knew. One day while I was eating beans and smoking Joe's Cafe. By the way, the blah blah, the guitar, Barney Kessel.

• 4:05Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 4:06Speaker 00

  Barney Kessel.

• 4:06Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 4:07Speaker 00

  Playing that before he played on the first hit Liberty records ever had. And it was Julie Lynn and Crimea River.

• 4:13Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 4:13Speaker 00

  So here I'm listening to pure rhythm and blues with Barney Kessel. And then the other white guys, Libra and Solar, writing it. Anyway, that's when I went, okay, I get it. I got it. And it changed my life.

• 4:27Rick Rubin?

  And did you like doo-wop in general?

• 4:30Speaker 00

  Uh, some of it was ignorant, uh, the wrong way. Some of the white guys didn't know how to do it. Dionne knew how to do it. The black singers were cooler, to be honest with you. They sang it a lot better, but I loved doo-wop. Okay, I'll tell you my story. So, you know, I grew up west side of LA. My father is a pretty successful guy in business. And I went to private schools, all that stuff. I listened to a lot of music and, you know, my parents, this is in our, our new book just came out. Our first book.

• 4:58Rick Rubin?

  Great.

• 4:58Speaker 00

  The Beach Boys by The Beach Boys. So, uh, I listened to all kinds of my, all kinds of music. My parents played music throughout the house, you know, 78 RPM. And, uh,

• 5:08Rick Rubin?

  Was it really 78s in your home?

• 5:10Speaker 00

  Then we had a big, big house. We had a big house in Santa Monica, then a bigger one in Malibu. And that had the, the 78 RPM. The LPs were just kind of starting to get recorded and released in, but we were still 78. But I was listening to South Pacific. I was listening to all kinds of things, you know? So I was always around music. So that got me started. I heard a lot of Sinatra. Then I picked up again on Sinatra and he signed to Capitol and Nelson Riddle started doing the arrangement. Uh-oh, I'm slow dancing in the 50s. Uh, eventually Johnny Mathis, but in the Still of the Night by the Five Satins. That was recorded in their church basement in Connecticut someplace, you know?

• 5:54Speaker 00

  And the doo-wops stuff is pretty cool. I'm listening to, uh, one day on the radio. And this is, now we get up to 59. This, this made me go in the music business completely because I loved all this stuff. I go to the Hollywood Bowl, you know, as a seven, eight, nine year old guy with a white dinner jacket and sit in the box and all that stuff, you know? When I heard,

• 6:16Speaker 00

  The Flamingos recording a I'll Never Ask For You. I went, don't do it. I'm getting in the music business. I'll figure it out. And I was already, I already had a fingernail in, you know? So that's kind of between listening to Elvis. My two favorite singers are Little Richard and Frank Sinatra. You know, so put everything I'm saying in a blender and that's what's sitting before you now.

• 6:40Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, both Little Richard and Frank Sinatra are unbelievable.

• 6:45Speaker 00

  And you know what's great with, and Rachel's too. Sometimes when they get a little intense in the singing, they were always too close to the mic and it would distort. I couldn't wait to hear that.

• 6:57Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, the energy of it.

• 6:58Speaker 00

  So I've been hooked forever. Also, I've been surfing since I lived in Malibu in like 1950, 51. You know, I'd go, I'd walk five houses up to the pier and they'd have the paddle boards that you paddle to the race with the cork in it to Catalina Island. Well, they were also surfing those days. They hadn't gotten into the smaller wood boards before the foam boards. So I surfed down at Zuma all the time, you know?

• 7:27Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 7:27Speaker 00

  I'm totally into it. I'm not a prude. I just skip drugs, alcohol. I just skipped all that stuff. You know, so I'm sitting in front of you happily doing 150 to 180 concerts a year, happily going to the beach. I wish I would have worn a hat because I got some cancer in my ears. I had to take it off. So I've combined my sport, my music and everything. And I hope people, when they read my story, will realize you can start here as a baby guy and be the me guy and not be retired. Just keep going.

• 8:05Rick Rubin?

  Well, you do it because you love it, clearly.

• 8:07Speaker 00

  Oh God, you know, I do it for free.

• 8:10Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, you love it, of course.

• 8:12Speaker 00

  It's not like I ever, every day I would say, well, come on down to my house. We'll make this record. We'll pay. I don't care about that. I just wanted to do it.

• 8:18Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, it feels so good. It's thrilling.

• 8:21Speaker 00

  It is thrilling. And here I am, you know, I'm probably 20 years older than you, 21 years. I'm still hooked.

• 8:28Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 8:29Speaker 00

  I don't need drugs.

• 8:30Rick Rubin?

  It doesn't get old.

• 8:31Speaker 00

  I just need the music. You know, I don't write a lot, but when I write, home run.

• 8:38Speaker 00

  After the other 999 songs go in the wastebasket that no one sees.

• 8:42Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about the world of surf music before the Beach Boys.

• 8:47Speaker 00

  So the music for surfing, remember the woolen sack recorder, little recorder? Okay, you gotta look it up. Fidelity was great. You could record on it. It was mono.

• 8:56Rick Rubin?

  It was like a portable recorder?

• 8:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, portable recorder. It was like the Ampic 601 that Jan Barry used for Jenny Lee. Did you ever hear that? Jenny Lee and Baby Talk. Okay, but it was...

• 9:08Rick Rubin?

  Did you go to school with him?

• 9:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I lived down the street from Jan. Jan and Dean. It was Jan and Arnie. Because Dean went into the six months Army and then came out. So Jan would come down to my house and play doo-wop in the morning at 7:30. And my father would always throw him out of the house. Jan, please stop that racket. So he'd go up to the top of our driveway and we'd wait for the bus and he'd do my algebra homework on the... Going to University High School. You know, so yeah, we all knew each other and everything. Okay, now, back to surf music. The guys that started, like Bruce Brown, for instance, those kind of guys, you know, eventually got very successful with surfing films.

• 9:54Speaker 00

  They would have their woolen sack recorder, and this before surfing soundtrack. They make up their own soundtrack, but it was more like Chico Hamilton, you know, West Coast jazz. And they'd narrate the film as they'd play the music. The guys were really young guys. They'd probably never been exposed to jazz, but they dug the surf, you know? And they'd get high school auditorium at night, you know, on a Friday or Saturday night. So they made their own soundtracks up, but they were Pacific Coast jazz. But somehow, somewhere, some unintentional surf music snuck in.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  Walk Don't Run by The Ventures.

• 10:38Speaker 00

  Started sneaking into the soundtracks.

• 10:40Rick Rubin?

  When you heard Walk Don't Run, was there already such a thing as surf music, or no?

• 10:44Speaker 00

  No, it was jazz.

• 10:46Rick Rubin?

  It was jazz?

• 10:46Speaker 00

  It was like a late 50s jazz, kinda, kinda.

• 10:50Rick Rubin?

  Cool jazz.

• 10:51Speaker 00

  Cool jazz, baby. So, but somehow that snuck in. And the audiences just flipped out. All of a sudden, something where they could pick up a guitar and play it. People would learn that stuff. And all of a sudden, there's 20 surf bands. You know, and.

• 11:09Rick Rubin?

  But it was inspired by the surf movies.

• 11:11Speaker 00

  Surf movies.

• 11:12Rick Rubin?

  That's amazing.

• 11:13Speaker 00

  You know?

• 11:13Rick Rubin?

  I didn't know that.

• 11:14Speaker 00

  You didn't know that?

• 11:15Rick Rubin?

  No.

• 11:16Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 11:17Rick Rubin?

  That's great.

• 11:18Speaker 00

  I was asked to play in a session, Sandy Nels, and I played on it.

• 11:25Speaker 00

  And so I was in the band for one night. It turned out to be the first intentional surf recording ever made.

• 11:32Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 11:33Speaker 00

  It was called Moon Dog, D-A-W-G.

• 11:38Rick Rubin?

  I wanna hear.

• 11:39Speaker 00

  I feel like I'm tutoring you.

• 11:40Rick Rubin?

  You are. That's why we're doing this.

• 11:43Speaker 00

  Moon Dog by The Gamblers.

• 11:46Rick Rubin?

  Okay.

• 11:47Speaker 00

  Go look it up. And the backside was LSD. That, I don't know if that was for the drug or not. Uh, but, but it was released on Pacific, uh.

• 11:56Rick Rubin?

  The Gamblers.

• 11:57Speaker 00

  Pacific Jazz Rookie.

• 12:00Speaker 00

  I'm playing the high piano and doing the outro.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. Okay, let's listen to it, because this is the first commercial surf record ever made for surfing.

• 12:17Speaker 00

  He's 17 years old.

• 12:19Rick Rubin?

  I could tell you like, like Eddie Richards as well.

• 12:21Speaker 00

  Duh. He's something, he did. I've got vocals here, so.

• 12:30Rick Rubin?

  You did the vocals?

• 12:31Speaker 00

  Me, a couple of the guys.

• 12:35Speaker 00

  Mick and I produced it.

• 12:42Speaker 00

  Pretty thing.

• 12:43Rick Rubin?

  Maybe.

• 12:44Speaker 00

  It's pretty good.

• 12:48Speaker 00

  Who's the first band to have ever covered it?

• 12:52Speaker 00

  The Beach Boys. They don't, the guys don't even know. I never told them I did that.

• 12:57Rick Rubin?

  Is that true?

• 12:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:58Rick Rubin?

  That's amazing.

• 13:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, but that's, that's just-

• 13:02Rick Rubin?

  So you, you made this song. It was the first surf music.

• 13:06Speaker 00

  I showed up.

• 13:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, you were part of it.

• 13:09Speaker 00

  Like Woody Allen in the movie Zelig.

• 13:11Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 13:11Speaker 00

  He'd always show up and he'd be around, you know, famous people at the turn of the century. Remember that movie? I love Woody Allen. Okay, so I just showed up and they're making the, not my idea, they're making the, what would become the very first commercial intended surf instrumental with voices. That's it.

• 13:32Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 13:33Speaker 00

  And you found it right like that.

• 13:34Rick Rubin?

  That's amazing. It's so cool. Yeah, we could listen to everything.

• 13:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:42Rick Rubin?

  When did surf music first start having vocals? Cause it was instrumental for a while.

• 13:47Speaker 00

  Well, if you just hear it just then.

• 13:48Rick Rubin?

  I heard vocals.

• 13:49Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 13:50Rick Rubin?

  Okay, what about lyrics?

• 13:52Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 13:54Rick Rubin?

  When did the lyrics come?

• 13:55Speaker 00

  Uh, I was taking my surfboard out of my car.

• 14:02Speaker 00

  And I think I was, uh, you know who Parma Hansa Yogananda is, right? Okay, well, his, his place down where no fear is down in San Diego.

• 14:11Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 14:11Speaker 00

  You know, so I was surfing there and-

• 14:15Rick Rubin?

  Self-realization fellowship.

• 14:17Speaker 00

  Right, self-realization ship, the one down in San Diego, not the one in Palisades. So I was down there and I don't know how I got the station on my, my radio. I was always messing around with radio because I was almost too far away to receive it. Cause it was KFWB. Do you know KFWB?

• 14:35Rick Rubin?

  No.

• 14:36Speaker 00

  Okay. Oh God. They played all the surf band stuff. It was KFWB, Channel 98, color radio. Okay, so, and then they had a KEWB and a KDWB, you know, one in Minneapolis and one in San Francisco. This station became the top forty station in LA. Like something would be in New York City.

• 15:00Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 15:01Speaker 00

  And so they played all the hits and they, but they also played, uh, Moon Dog and it was a hit on KFWB.

• 15:08Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Now, the only place anyone's making surf music is here.

• 15:13Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 15:14Rick Rubin?

  It's a, we're talking about a tiny underground scene of music, yes?

• 15:17Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 15:18Rick Rubin?

  Tiny underground scene of music.

• 15:20Speaker 00

  Now, we're getting it to the vocals.

• 15:21Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 15:22Speaker 00

  So, this is in the more official story.

• 15:26Rick Rubin?

  Okay.

• 15:27Speaker 00

  By the time I was twenty-one, I, I was, uh, working on staff as a producer at Columbia Records.

• 15:33Rick Rubin?

  Unbelievable.

• 15:34Speaker 00

  You know?

• 15:34Rick Rubin?

  How'd that happen?

• 15:35Speaker 00

  Terry Melsch just said, hey, I'm getting this job. You wanna do it with me? Okay, man.

• 15:41Rick Rubin?

  How do you know Terry?

• 15:42Speaker 00

  I met him because, I should have brought pajamas. You know, this is a lot, a lot of talking. So, I met Terry because Jan and Arnie and were signed to Doris Day's record label, Arwin Records, by a guy named Joe, an English guy named Joe Luvin that claims he wrote, he's probably half-right, Tutti Frutti. I doubt it, but I, I see it in print somehow. Maybe he straightened, I think they had to take Tutti Frutti's words and straighten them out so they were acceptable on the air. Yeah. Anyway, so, I thought, I should just go down to where Arwin Records is. Oh, it's in Beverly Hills.

• 16:25Speaker 00

  And Terry was probably fifteen, sixteen and working, you know, going to school, going to Beverly Hills High School, but also, like my mom said, you have no character. I need you to just have a job after school. So, the As went to Bs and the Bs went to Cs and I delivered liquor in the Palisades. Terry's the same thing. He's, so he's working in the Chevron Gas Station, two blocks from their office building on Cannon Boulevard with the, the label happening. So, he's always hanging around because people bring him music in. So, that's how I met Terry and, and we were instant friends. Instant friends. Anyway.

• 17:01Rick Rubin?

  You see as into music as you were?

• 17:03Speaker 00

  You know, when Terry got his job at Columbia Records, they just always, Doris Day, Sunday gave me a job. Really? You mean the guy who produced Turn, Turn, Turn and Tambourine? Mm-hmm. Yeah, right. Anyway, so, uh, we became really good friends and, uh,

• 17:20Speaker 00

  We didn't have recordings here. We just got together. He was a pretty good piano. He would, you know, do you know what a fake book is?

• 17:28Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 17:30Speaker 00

  He was so tight with his mom. His mom, awesome.

• 17:36Speaker 00

  He had a fake book and he'd sit at their piano and they'd just sing songs together and he'd play them. He'd play the chords.

• 17:41Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 17:42Speaker 00

  Really cool.

• 17:43Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 17:43Speaker 00

  By the way.

• 17:44Rick Rubin?

  Was she cool? Did you meet her?

• 17:46Speaker 00

  She's so cool.

• 17:48Speaker 00

  When Terry and I had our, our little jobs at Columbia Records, she said, you know, after you guys are off work, will you come over to my house? I want to play something. Okay. She was still signed to Columbia. She probably, she might've been 40. I'm not sure. Gorgeous. 59, she was.

• 18:05Rick Rubin?

  And huge movie star at this time.

• 18:07Speaker 00

  Number one box office star in the world, a female. Okay.

• 18:12Speaker 00

  So we go to her house and she said, I want to play some music for you. And she plays us some Motown, especially Hitchhike by Marvin Gaye. And she says to us, this is the music that's going to take me out of the music business and off the radio. And it's really good, boys. I just want you to know that. So probably when my, when my contract's up, I'm not going to re-sign.

• 18:36Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 18:38Speaker 00

  Isn't that a great story?

• 18:39Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 18:39Speaker 00

  No one knows this stuff.

• 18:40Rick Rubin?

  It's amazing.

• 18:41Speaker 00

  You know?

• 18:42Rick Rubin?

  And she was cool with it and she sounds like she respected the music.

• 18:45Speaker 00

  Well, you know, one of the reasons she's so cool with it, you've got to remember, she started as a big record star, band, big band with Les Brown, you know, Sentimental Journey and all that stuff. And then started making movies with actors like Jack Carson. Anyway, so she flipped over to movies, you know, and all of a sudden, here's your record income, here's your movie income. You know, she was so successful and I, I, I think she wasn't so worried about Motown ending her career because she hadn't even done a TV show yet. And she was just a great hang.

• 19:20Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 19:21Speaker 00

  A great hang.

• 19:22Rick Rubin?

  Great.

• 19:22Speaker 00

  Okay, now let's get back to the lyrics.

• 19:24Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 19:24Speaker 00

  So here's the story, the way it's been told to me. Back in those days, Rick, people got married really, okay, we're gonna marry, we're out of college, you know, dumb idea, you know, dumb idea. Anyway, so Mike's married, has a little daughter, maybe two by now, and Dennis Wilson calls him up, Mike, you gotta come over to Brian's. Wow, what's up? And, uh, and Mike says, oh, Mike is so funny. He said, uh, those are the years that I was in the, uh, energy business, worked at a gas station.

• 20:00Speaker 00

  So I'm delivering liquor, you know, it doesn't matter whether my family had a lot of dough or not. My parents were smart enough to kick our ass, all of us. So we're all going, okay, so Dennis calls up Mike, come over to Brian's, you gotta come over to our house. They still live in home. Why? Well, I'm surfing, you know, uh, in, in high school and I'm, I'm hearing instrumentals, surfing instrumentals and let's write a song, song with words about surfing. So Mike goes over there, he comes up with surfing.

• 20:34Rick Rubin?

  It was Dennis's idea?

• 20:35Speaker 00

  Dennis's idea to get Brian, Mike and Brian together, cousins together.

• 20:39Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, but to write a song about surfing?

• 20:42Speaker 00

  Dennis is the, he's the pre Edison, okay, of, uh,

• 20:47Rick Rubin?

  Cause he heard the instrumental surfing music or with the backup vocals?

• 20:50Speaker 00

  No, he probably, I, he, I bet you he probably heard my Gambler's record, you know, I, I really haven't officially told the band yet that I did that.

• 20:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, you've been, you've been in or associated with the band for 50 years?

• 21:03Speaker 00

  No, longer than that. Since, since 1965.

• 21:08Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 21:11Speaker 00

  As they say in New York.

• 21:12Rick Rubin?

  Do they still refer to you as the new guy?

• 21:14Speaker 00

  Well, not only do they still refer to me as a new guy, are you Brian?

• 21:21Speaker 00

  Are you Mike? And I go, well, if I had a stepstool, I could be.

• 21:28Speaker 00

  Back to the lyric. So Mike goes over, not repeating these four histories, I'm not a part of this. Mike goes over to the Wilsons' house and they start writing a song. And Brian was just so in love, of course, with the Four Freshmen harmony. Oh, fuck. So, anyway, they start writing Surfing, boom, dip, dip, dip, Surfing, boom, dip, dip. And somehow in the middle of all that, Dave Marx isn't in the band. He's like 12 years old in the neighborhood. But Al Jardine had gone to junior college, was in junior college with Brian. And the Wilsons left enough money for everyone to eat, whatever, the two, the parents, Audrey and Murray,

• 22:13Speaker 00

  and they go to Mexico City on vacation. So the guys get together and they decide they want to record their song that Mike wrote and Brian. They were kind of running out of money. So the guys needed to rent some amps and instruments. So Mrs. Jardine, Carl had a guitar, volunteered. She said, "Okay, come over to my house and audition for me." And so to get the money to go and record Surfing on Can-Dix Records.

• 22:46Speaker 00

  And here's the song that they auditioned with. Talk about starting musically with the most difficult music you could ever do. So Brian taught Carl, Al, Mike, Brian, not Dennis, his four-part arrangements of the Four Freshmen singing "Heart's Still Full of Spring" a cappella.

• 23:09Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 23:10Speaker 00

  I know. I told Mike, I said, you know, after Carl passed away and I had, I started singing his part. I said, that's probably the hardest vocal part I ever had to learn because whoo, I forget, oooh. There's a story told of a very gentle boy and the girl who wore his Okay, the reason I know it so well is I couldn't learn it. So I thought, okay. Well, this is years later. I, whatever I was playing, I put it on repeat and went to sleep and woke up with it in my head.

• 23:44Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, sleep learning.

• 23:46Speaker 00

  Carl, he'd learn it in two seconds because he wanted to go play baseball. So, okay, Brian, okay. And then go out and play baseball.

• 23:54Rick Rubin?

  What's the first time you were ever in the room with the Beach Boys singing?

• 23:59Speaker 00

  How about a better question? What's the first time I ever heard the band record?

• 24:04Rick Rubin?

  Okay.

• 24:04Speaker 00

  Didn't involve me.

• 24:05Rick Rubin?

  Okay.

• 24:06Speaker 00

  So this is around 64. Terry and I are still at Columbia Records. So

• 24:11Rick Rubin?

  At 64, you've already made a bunch of records.

• 24:13Speaker 00

  I already had my, my second gold.

• 24:16Rick Rubin?

  By 64, okay.

• 24:18Speaker 00

  By 64, you know. And remember, we're, we're talking right now about the lyrics.

• 24:23Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 24:24Speaker 00

  Just don't lose sight of that.

• 24:25Rick Rubin?

  Yes, yes.

• 24:26Speaker 00

  So the first time I ever heard the band record.

• 24:31Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 24:32Speaker 00

  I walked in with Terry and I, among those guys, I, I know where to be in the right place at the right time. I also know when to leave. I walked in and Mike could have been in his own mic, but I kind of recall. That's how they record you.

• 24:46Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 24:47Speaker 00

  So this is pretty cool. Now, I'm not the tallest guy in the world. I walked in and let's pretend Mike's on his own mic, but I think he wasn't. So Dennis was even on this song. They're all recording around one mic. Yeah, no, Mike was probably on the, on this mic. So Jardine is on a riser.

• 25:11Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, to get all their mouths on the same line.

• 25:13Speaker 00

  Exactly. Now, I'm not, you know, I'm not singing the band or anything. I'm just sitting there at Columbia Records copying all the Surf and the Car songs. You know, and that's was my, my second gold record was Hey Little Cobra.

• 25:25Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, I love that song.

• 25:27Speaker 00

  Written by the girl and her brother who sang the lead in a half hour on the record. I was supposed to play the piano on for Phil to know him as to love him. Annette Kleinbart.

• 25:36Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 25:37Speaker 00

  Carol Connors, who wrote The Rocky Theme. This is a lot of information.

• 25:41Rick Rubin?

  Unbelievable.

• 25:42Speaker 00

  Can you handle this?

• 25:43Rick Rubin?

  Unbelievable. Yeah, I'm good.

• 25:43Speaker 00

  So here I am, you're me, you're over there. Terry and I, we walk in and Brian, on the other hand, has this lower his height.

• 25:52Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 25:53Speaker 00

  To get equal. I'm looking at this and I go, "Okay." And then I hear, "Windy, windy, went right wrong, so wrong, we went together." I hear that. I thought, "Perfect." So we stayed maybe half hour if that.

• 26:05Rick Rubin?

  Were you listening in the control room or in the room where they were singing?

• 26:07Speaker 00

  No, I was in, I'm no fool. I walked into the room.

• 26:12Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. So you're in the live room and you're hearing them sing?

• 26:15Speaker 00

  You asked about hearing them live. Well, I'm saying, I heard them live record. I had heard them live backstage in other earlier times, but not when I was.

• 26:23Rick Rubin?

  But you can't hear live always. And I imagine then there were no PAs or anything.

• 26:28Speaker 00

  No, you had to have an imaginary ear go around to the front of the stage.

• 26:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 26:33Speaker 00

  So you could kind of hear what was going on.

• 26:35Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 26:35Speaker 00

  Okay, so that's the first time. And fantastic song.

• 26:39Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 26:40Speaker 00

  You know, so.

• 26:40Rick Rubin?

  But the voices, did it blow you away, like the bland, did it?

• 26:43Speaker 00

  I was asked by the Bee Gees to produce them.

• 26:46Rick Rubin?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:46Speaker 00

  And I knew them really well. This is like 1972, '74, around there. I said, "I know I could write a hit for you guys, but I'm the wrong guy." "What do you mean?" "You need to get somebody who doesn't write a lot of groovy syrupy ballads. You guys need to step up your tempo." And that's right before all Disco Disco.

• 27:13Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, amazing.

• 27:15Speaker 00

  Okay, okay, so there we are. That's the first time I heard the band sing live while they were recording.

• 27:22Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 27:23Speaker 00

  And the success lyrically, just locally of surfing, bomb, dip, dip, dip, dip. You know, it just started exploding. So Brian and Mike, the surf phase of the Beast Boys was it lasted at least 10 minutes. And it went Girl Surf, Car School. It went on to all the activities. People that were just slightly younger than the band, because they were kind of out of high school just about, you know, with those recordings. So what are you singing about? Well, what you know, what do you know? High school. So that all happened. And so. Because of Dennis, lyrics began to arrive on the radio in the Beach Boys world.

• 28:08Speaker 00

  You know, and then people covered them and everything. And then they went into the other genres of, as I said, girls surf, cars, school.

• 28:17Rick Rubin?

  How many years of instrumental surf were there before that?

• 28:20Speaker 00

  Not many.

• 28:21Rick Rubin?

  Three, two?

• 28:23Speaker 00

  I'm gonna guess, uh, maybe three.

• 28:27Rick Rubin?

  Okay.

• 28:28Speaker 00

  You know.

• 28:28Rick Rubin?

  At the time, would you assume this is an instrumental form of music?

• 28:35Speaker 00

  Absolutely. It never occurred to me anybody would write words about surfing.

• 28:40Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Why would you?

• 28:41Speaker 00

  Why would you?

• 28:42Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, because it worked. It was already a popular genre.

• 28:45Speaker 00

  All of those, uh, shows all over Southern California were sold out, uh, in terms of showing the movie. These guys would, uh, forewall it, they'd have the woolen sack recorder, and they'd have a mic and, hey, you know, and then, and it was, everything was sold out every weekend.

• 29:05Rick Rubin?

  How many surfers were there at that point in time? Were there like millions of surfers?

• 29:12Speaker 00

  Thousands.

• 29:12Rick Rubin?

  Would you know most people? Like, if you went out surfing, you'd know mostly everybody?

• 29:17Speaker 00

  Oh, I'd know the stars.

• 29:18Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 29:19Speaker 00

  And I was a wannabe that knew I never could, like Jack Benny and his violin.

• 29:26Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, but it was fun.

• 29:26Speaker 00

  We're going back a hundred years now, Jack Benny's violin. But it was fun.

• 29:30Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 29:30Speaker 00

  And the girls were cute, and if we got cold, we'd just tear the wood off a classic, we didn't know it was classic, forty-eight Ford Woody, and burn it to get warm.

• 29:41Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 29:42Speaker 00

  And, uh, one of the great things about my job, the job that I had in high school, I didn't like doing it, but I liked the results. The results were that every month I liberated, what's the cheapest vodka? I liberated it from the liquor store, and I would sell ten of them. The eleventh one, I would use it, you know, three or four Saturdays in a row, just to sprinkle a little alcohol on the, on the rubber tires that we'd set on fire so we'd get warm. And then the, the other bottle was used for dating purposes. So, I'm not even eighteen years old.

• 30:23Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 30:24Speaker 00

  It's just, oh, God.

• 30:30Rick Rubin?

  Who were the record companies back then?

• 30:33Speaker 00

  Decca, RCA, Columbia, Epic, I mean, Californiawise. There's always a lot of little independent labels, might have one-hit wonders, you know, but by the time the record labels figured out surfing, they'd have the astronauts, they'd have everybody that doesn't fit. They kind of ruined it quickly.

• 30:57Rick Rubin?

  Was there a Columbia Records office in LA?

• 31:00Speaker 00

  KNX was the radio station, and they had radio studios, and so they got converted into recording studios, and then in the balcony where they used to have audience in Studio A for the radio, they stored all the masters until somebody said, "We don't need the outtakes or the multi-track tapes, the four-track tapes, or the three-tracks, eventually the eight." So they destroyed them.

• 31:27Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 31:28Speaker 00

  Thank you. All Terry did with the Byrds, they just have the masters.

• 31:32Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 31:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. So we had the majors. Everybody couldn't wait to get to Capitol Records for the next 50 years to use their echo chambers. Well, the echo chambers that they used for Sinatra, the old KHJ radio studio became Capitol Records at the gates of Paramount Pictures. And Sinatra always had an audience. Probably people didn't know that. 200 people, all his pals, just, and he'd record. And they'd use the echo over there for the albums that relaunched his career.

• 32:10Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 32:11Speaker 00

  And not the echo that they-

• 32:12Rick Rubin?

  So in the studio, he always had an audience?

• 32:14Speaker 00

  Well, in the early days, "I've got you in my skin," and "Wee Small Hour of the Morning," great stuff.

• 32:19Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 32:19Speaker 00

  You know, but, you know, it's, yeah, his drinking buddies, hang out. You know, he was down to being $200,000 in back taxes, and he couldn't get anybody to sign him. And so Sam Weisbord, who was one of Al Jolson's agents when he was a kid, you know, eventually became chairman of William Morris, and so no one would sign him. And somehow, they called Capitol Records. They said, "Frank Sinatra? Are you serious? How soon can you be here?" And he got, he got a one album deal.

• 33:00Speaker 00

  And eventually he inherited Nelson Riddle from Nat King Cole.

• 33:05Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 33:06Speaker 00

  And then they started just recording at Capitol. In the old K H J building, the radio studio building.

• 33:13Rick Rubin?

  Wow, I didn't know that.

• 33:14Speaker 00

  And back to that echo chamber thing, everybody's in, when hiring the echo chamber for fifty or sixty years, and none of the, the magic, magic was ever recorded there.

• 33:27Rick Rubin?

  At the Capitol building, it's not there.

• 33:29Speaker 00

  No, it wasn't there.

• 33:30Rick Rubin?

  Had no idea. Amazing. Tell me the story of the Ripcord's.

• 33:33Speaker 00

  Ripcord's, really cool story. So Terry couldn't get anybody to sign with him at Columbia. Cause, oh, Doris Day's not, what does he know? Manages to take someplace else. So he went to one of the guys that worked for his mom and had the record label, not Joe Lubin. He signs these two guys and calls them the Ripcord's. And he produces a song called Here I Stand. Here I stand at a lonely room, right? Okay. And it kind of charts. And Terry says, hey, you know, Bruce, you know that thing I recorded? They want a follow up. Do you want to work on it with me? I said, okay. So we co-produced a song that got to forty called Gone by the Ripcord's.

• 34:16Speaker 00

  And then Terry said, I'll call David Kaplik, who eventually managed Sly, Family Stone. And I'll just get you my job. So we have it together at Columbia Records. And so we always would time our sessions so we could get to the luau in Beverly Hills. You know, that restaurant, the luau. And in time to order dinner, eight thirty. Anyways, one day I said, we're going tonight? He said, yeah, but we're going to meet Annette Kleinbart, who was the lead singer in high school on the recording of To Know and Still Love Him. And she was there. She's still around. She's out of her mind in the best possible. She's so cool.

• 34:56Rick Rubin?

  Great.

• 34:57Speaker 00

  Anyway, you know, she, as I said, she wrote the Rocky theme. So she's there with her brother and they bring Hey Little Cobra, Lichee, you know? And so we made a lot of edits. We didn't rewrite the song. I mean, you know, this is their song. And we start recording it.

• 35:18Speaker 00

  And eventually, we got a guy named Irving Townsend, who was VP of Columbia Records, the West Coast. All these guys are New York guys, and they're wonderful guys. He just said, "Fellas, you've spent too much money. You have to finish this by midnight tonight." So it's like 2:00 in the afternoon. So we are copying Beach Boys stuff. That was our current job. So we just say, "Do you guys, we're doing a style we know you don't know to do. We're gonna put a couple of voices on it for you." So we wound up singing without cell sync on three track. We had no cell sync. So we did about 10 over the...

• 36:01Speaker 00

  And we do "Hail the Cobra."

• 36:04Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 36:04Speaker 00

  Terry sings the lead.

• 36:06Rick Rubin?

  Let's listen to it.

• 36:06Speaker 00

  Ripcord's "Hail the Cobra." That's just two voices, Terry and Bruce. Terry's singing the lead.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  Hey, little cobra, don't you know you're gonna shut 'em down? I took my cobra down to the track. Hitched to the back of my Cadillac. Everyone was there just a-waitin' for me. There were plenty of stingrays and X-Ks. Spring, little cobra, gettin' ready to strike. Spring, little cobra, with all your might.

• 36:38Speaker 00

  Shut 'em down.

• 36:40Speaker 02

  Spring, little cobra, gettin' ready to strike.

• 36:41Speaker 00

  Shut 'em down.

• 36:42Speaker 02

  Spring, little cobra, with all your might. Hey, little cobra, don't you know you're gonna shut 'em down?

• 36:49Speaker 00

  Okay, that's enough. What do you think?

• 36:52Rick Rubin?

  Fantastic.

• 36:52Speaker 00

  That's just us. Free track, free track, free track, free track, free track. And then I said, "Terry, I got a great idea." We always dressed pretty good, actually, going to Columbia Records. You know, slacks, sometimes shoes. So I had my coat off. Now, this studio, you could eat off the floor, and it was huge. And a guy named Chappy, he was the head engineer of Columbia Records. And the East Coast, he came out and just... Unbelievable engineer. So I said, I want to add something. Okay. I had the guy set the mic up. And I found a trash can this tall, Rubbermaid, you know?

• 37:34Speaker 00

  And I put it over me with the microphone here.

• 37:38Rick Rubin?

  Like a giant hat.

• 37:40Speaker 00

  Yep, but down my shoulders.

• 37:42Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 37:42Speaker 00

  And I went, shut them down.

• 37:44Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 37:45Speaker 00

  Shut them down, shut them down.

• 37:47Rick Rubin?

  It's like echo.

• 37:48Speaker 00

  You know, I like Pee Wee Herman trying to sing bass, you know? So, no, no, just, it just reverb. Like if someone sings in your ear, you hear it. He freaks out. I said, wow, this is perfect. Shut them down, spring a little cobra, getting ready to shut them down. So while I'm doing it, some of the coffee that's turned syrupy is dripping on my shoulder. I'm going, oh shit.

• 38:15Speaker 00

  Anyway, so those are the stories that probably aren't interesting, but.

• 38:19Rick Rubin?

  That's fantastic.

• 38:20Speaker 00

  Definitely not.

• 38:20Rick Rubin?

  It's fantastic.

• 38:21Speaker 00

  So they send the record out. Immediately starts getting plays, immediately. And so I said, you know, Terry, uh, those guys didn't sign the record. Maybe we should put our names on it. Oh, no, I don't want to do that. So he wound up on my behalf, giving away any artist royalty.

• 38:43Speaker 00

  On it. And it sold over a million copies.

• 38:46Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 38:46Speaker 00

  You know, now that's the first production that I have a gold record for officially.

• 38:52Rick Rubin?

  So cool. It's funny to ask you about the Beach Boys as if it's outside of you, but I'm gonna.

• 38:57Speaker 00

  That's perfect.

• 38:58Rick Rubin?

  It's okay?

• 38:59Speaker 00

  I'm the perfect guy to talk to.

• 39:00Rick Rubin?

  Okay.

• 39:00Speaker 00

  Cause I can be, I'm in both places.

• 39:03Rick Rubin?

  Okay. Were the Beach Boys a great live band?

• 39:06Speaker 00

  You should hear it now, even without Carl and Al. It's, it's kind of like, uh, Doc Severn says, was he a great live band?

• 39:18Speaker 00

  Yes, all the arrangements, every note that we sing is written down. We could send it to schools.

• 39:26Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, the shows were short then, yes, in the early days?

• 39:29Speaker 00

  Songs, the songs were short.

• 39:31Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 39:31Speaker 00

  You know, but as far as the parts changing, no, the parts didn't change.

• 39:36Rick Rubin?

  How did it work out that you were chosen to go to London to play Pet Sounds for The Beatles?

• 39:43Speaker 00

  Well, there was this friend of mine, Zeller.

• 39:49Speaker 00

  I'm not shy. I know where to place myself.

• 39:52Rick Rubin?

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:53Speaker 00

  We're talking about now, May of 1966. Pet Sounds is released in America in mono, but unfortunately for Sinatra and The Beach Boys and other acting cool, they invented something called duophonic, which just delayed one of the sides so they could sell it compatible with stereo recordings.

• 40:17Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 40:19Speaker 00

  So, anything duophonic, just treat it like it's radioactive.

• 40:23Rick Rubin?

  That's unbelievable. I didn't know about that.

• 40:26Speaker 00

  Duophonic.

• 40:27Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 40:27Speaker 00

  So, I was so interested in everything. I had to know everything, you know, so I followed everything. And I had heard that people like Keith Moon, who wanted to be in Jan and Dean or The Beach Boys, you know, people like in England were following us. Okay. So, the first year I was in the band, I made three albums and toured. Now, that's probably a lot, but not when you're 21, 22 years old. That's nothing. Okay, sure. And Chase Girls, perfect. God, what a great job to have.

• 41:00Rick Rubin?

  Three albums in the first year?

• 41:02Speaker 00

  First year. And I didn't start recording until those albums till like May of 65. Brian had already recorded the tracks for Summer Days, Summer Nights, that had California Girls in it. Okay?

• 41:17Rick Rubin?

  Unbelievable.

• 41:18Speaker 00

  And then somehow Capitol wanted something, so we slid in a, it's an accidental unplugged album called The Party Album. And in that album...

• 41:32Rick Rubin?

  That's Barbara Ann.

• 41:33Speaker 00

  Barbara Ann by accident.

• 41:34Rick Rubin?

  I love that album.

• 41:35Speaker 00

  Al Corey was like running the branch. Eventually he was president of RSO Beaches. He was running the branch of Capitol in Boston, New England area.

• 41:45Rick Rubin?

  I knew Al Corey.

• 41:46Speaker 00

  And Al was. What a wonderful guy.

• 41:49Rick Rubin?

  Amazing character.

• 41:49Speaker 00

  And he, just for the hell of it, he just sent out some acetates. You know what an acetate is, right? To radio stations. They started playing Barbara Ann. So they did an edit. And that Barbara Ann has probably bought Fred Fasser, who wrote the words and music. Four white guys called the Regents from New Jersey. They probably bought him many houses.

• 42:12Rick Rubin?

  Wow. How did you guys hear Barbara Ann?

• 42:15Speaker 00

  Cause it was a hit by the Regents.

• 42:17Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 42:17Speaker 00

  Before there was a Beach Boys.

• 42:19Rick Rubin?

  Okay.

• 42:19Speaker 00

  It's a pretty good record.

• 42:21Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. I only know the Beach Boys version.

• 42:23Speaker 00

  Oh, you'd love it. Let's play it.

• 42:25Rick Rubin?

  I love it. Anything you want to listen to, I'm down.

• 42:27Speaker 00

  All right.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  Ba ba ba ba Barbara Ann. Ba ba ba ba Barbara Ann. Oh yeah. Tell me what's wrong. Ba ba ba ba Barbara Ann. Ba ba ba ba Barbara Ann. You got me rocking in a roll. You got me rocking in a roll.

• 42:46Speaker 00

  Okay, that's enough.

• 42:49Speaker 00

  So we sound just like them.

• 42:50Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 42:53Rick Rubin?

  Let's see it.

• 42:54Speaker 00

  Isn't that cool?

• 42:55Rick Rubin?

  Beach Boys.

• 42:57Speaker 02

  Ba ba ba ba Barbara Ann. Ba ba ba ba Barbara Ann.

• 43:04Speaker 00

  Who's singing the lead? Brian Wilson and Dean Torrance.

• 43:10Rick Rubin?

  Really? That's Brian and Dean?

• 43:12Speaker 00

  Yeah. Singing the lead together.

• 43:20Speaker 00

  Falsettos, dueling falsettos. The whole song.

• 43:27Speaker 00

  You'll hear it right now.

• 43:41Speaker 00

  I think our record is better.

• 43:43Rick Rubin?

  I love that record.

• 43:44Speaker 00

  Isn't that good?

• 43:44Rick Rubin?

  I love that record.

• 43:47Speaker 00

  Okay, so, we had two weeks off, and, you know, it's not that I wasn't one of the Beach Boys, I just wasn't. But I was in the band recording.

• 43:58Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 43:59Speaker 00

  Why would any of the band think, oh, well, Brian will be on the road soon?

• 44:02Rick Rubin?

  Right.

• 44:02Speaker 00

  So I was just there.

• 44:03Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, you were sitting in for Brian.

• 44:06Speaker 00

  Right.

• 44:06Rick Rubin?

  For the last fifty some odd years.

• 44:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, uh, yeah, since sixty-five. Okay, so, and that's cool. So Derek Taylor was our publicist. Now, there's a guy people think is wacky and crazy, and he's dead now. Kim Fawley, have you ever heard of him?

• 44:23Rick Rubin?

  Of course.

• 44:23Speaker 00

  He's one of my great friends. I hate it when I read negative stuff, but he's so smart. His father was one of those B-movie forty guys with the double-breasted suit gangster guy. And then, uh, when he got older and lost his teeth, he was one of, like, Gabby Hayes guy on Petticoat Junction. "How, how are you?" You know. So Kim Fawley was living in England, and Derek and I, uh, were talking. He says, "Capital Records has released Pet Sounds." Now, it was gonna be released soon in England, you know, and...

• 44:57Rick Rubin?

  And Derek was already the Beatles...

• 45:00Speaker 00

  Beatles guy, and I was our guy.

• 45:02Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 45:02Speaker 00

  Eventually he went back, and he was, uh, Apple.

• 45:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 45:06Speaker 00

  The Apple guy. And he got one of those...

• 45:08Rick Rubin?

  So he moved to California, Derek?

• 45:10Speaker 00

  He moved to California, went crazy. He's a smart guy, had five kids. Went back to run Apple Corps in sixty-eight, and took one of those big Tahitian Hawaiian chairs, like a throne, from the Luau Restaurant in Beverly Hills for his office right there.

• 45:29Rick Rubin?

  Right.

• 45:30Speaker 00

  So, we're talking, I said, "Derek, could you give me some ideas what I could do in England?" So he writes several pages explaining England and London.

• 45:43Speaker 00

  And he says, you know what you should do? You know, Kim follows over the side. I know that. He said, I'll pick the hotel. Why don't you go there and spend seven or eight days there and use the weekdays and just do some interviews? There's probably some interest in the Beach Boys. That's how it came apart.

• 46:02Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 46:02Speaker 00

  So I wound up doing about 15 interviews a day. You know?

• 46:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. And as popular as the Beach Boys were here, they were both popular and seemingly more culturally significant there.

• 46:15Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, America, America, God, they got hot water. God, showers in the bathroom, everything.

• 46:22Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 46:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. So people were really interested. So, so the album wasn't out. But Capitol Records, probably pre-release, maybe. I think the, the international guys were a lot peppered of what to do than the American guys. I really do. Why do I say that? In the seventh week of the release of Pet Sounds, Capitol decided to release the Best of the Beach Boys album, volume one.

• 46:53Rick Rubin?

  That's insane.

• 46:53Speaker 00

  Seven weeks in.

• 46:54Rick Rubin?

  It's insane.

• 46:55Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 46:57Rick Rubin?

  It sounds like the Capitol was against you guys.

• 47:00Speaker 00

  They were getting against us because all they wanted was the girl surf cars. They just wanted more. All they wanted was summer.

• 47:08Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 47:09Speaker 00

  Instead, they get, I know perfectly well, I'm not where I should be. Do you still believe in me? I wanna grow. They get that instead of the surf. You know? And so, you know, we're in the, in the black. So they're not losing money. But they don't want to lose any more money in the future. So they put the best up. By the way, if you were a bottom line guy, that was probably a very smart move for a long time because it's almost up to four million albums. As far as our career and growth, Pet Sounds, that was the album. There it was.

• 47:49Speaker 00

  Week number seven, the very best of the Beach Boys, all promotion off of Pet Sounds. So I'm over there, 15 interviews a day. Keith Moon starts hanging out with me because he wants to be one of the Beach Boys. And this is my generation, right? So he's hanging out with me and every day he brings about five uppers over. Now you're talking to a guy who just doesn't do any of it. So every day he'd bring the Speed over and I, "Oh, thanks, man." Open drawer. Every day, "Thanks, man. Thanks, man." You know, I probably had 30 uppers by the time it was Saturday in my drawer.

• 48:36Speaker 00

  He was taking them every day. Anyway, so he said, "What are you doing?" "I don't know. I'm finished now, you know, we did 15 interviews." He said, "I got a TV show. You want to be on it?" "Sure." "What's it called?" "It's called Ready, Steady, Go." So he takes me over to Ready, Steady, Go. We do a walk on and Benny King's on it. It's so cool. And we just hang out every night. So I get back to the hotel on Friday night after dinner with Keith Moon and Kim's there. He said, he's in the lobby. He said, "Oh, man, I'm glad you're back." "Why?" "John and Paul are waiting for you in your suite. They want to hear Pet Sounds." Mono. I had a record player.

• 49:17Speaker 00

  So they listened to it two times. They couldn't have been any cooler and they were dressed in Edwardian suits and one came in. Rolls. I remember Paul gave me his number and it started with the prefix Escher, right? And they were playing Blackjack with two fans, two girl fans, you know, they'd gotten off after work and found out I was there. And it was really cool, so innocent in those days. God, except for the fact that Marianne Faithfull got rolled up in a rug, you know, when there was a raid on the house and they took her out. They took her out of it.

• 49:53Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 49:55Speaker 00

  Okay, so anyway, here's how the Beatles saved the Beatles. They didn't know it, first of all. They freaked out. All they could talk about was Pet Sounds and God Only Knows. And EMI totally got with it all over Europe and they released it, bang, you know, and stooped on B. Two days after I left, it was number eight, it was next week that I left, it was number five. So the Beatles inadvertently really saved the day. Like when you go bowling and it bowls down the gutter and you get the bowl again, you got a spare, they gave us a spare on Pet Sounds.

• 50:30Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 50:31Speaker 00

  Otherwise, that probably wouldn't have been gone as an album.

• 50:33Rick Rubin?

  Wow. Were you there for the recording of God Only Knows?

• 50:43Speaker 00

  I was dating this girl and I called Terry up and I called her, this is a girl Terry, and I said, "Do you mind if, on the way to dinner, if we stop in Hollywood?" "What do you want to do?" You know, I'd just got back from Japan and Carl said, "You've got to come to these sessions, Brian's, the tracks he's making." This is before it was called Pet Sounds. And I walked in with Terry on our way to go to Beverly Hills to go to Luau for dinner. I walk in and Brian's recording God Only Knows. I'm listening, uh-oh, wait a minute, this is really cool. Because Brian starts with the first, the first verse with the five on the bottom. So there's duh, duh, duh,

• 51:26Speaker 00

  duh, duh, usually goes da, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, "I may not always live..." Okay, the bass note starts with the five. I went, "What?" And there's like a few string players over in the corner. In those days, Rick, we had this thing, wonderful thing called leakage. Now, now we were up to four-track, by the way. And, but we had leakage, you know, and Hal Blaine would be the guy who'd run all the sessions. Terry and I stayed for about an hour and I got it and I thought, "Always know when it's time to leave." Carl was in the booth with Brian. Brian's best friend was Carl. So I went to dinner and, okay, this is before Pet Sounds released, recording this stuff. So Brian just signed

• 52:10Speaker 00

  this note after note, a part after part after part. We just sometimes like, uh, I just wasn't made for these times. We had everybody, including me. We had had Dennis. We had six vocal parts. And if you listened, I just wasn't made for these times. Part of us in Spanish.

• 52:28Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 52:29Speaker 00

  In Spanish, in the chorus. So we make this beautiful album and, uh, Brian and I had a sing-off though. I don't know if you'd remember. On Sloop John B, which wasn't its destiny at that point to go on Pet Sounds. It should have gone on the California Girls album called, uh, Summer Days and Summer Nights. So I was just sitting there, Capitol said, "We don't hear any hits, we don't think." Wouldn't it be nice, God only knows? So, "Okay, sure, nice." So they talked Brian and the Pudding Sloop John B, which has nothing to do with Pet Sounds. And it's a beautiful recording. Everybody treasures it and loves it.

• 53:10Speaker 00

  And so during the recording of that, I talked Brian into writing a higher vocal note. And he couldn't reach it. "Right here, it should be." He said, "I can't sing that high. Why don't you do it?" "Me?" "Yeah." So that's the only time I interfered, but it's just a technicality because it wasn't destined to be, as it, as, uh, as I later found out, I was wrong, on, uh, Pet Sounds. It wasn't done in the spirit of Pet Sounds.

• 53:40Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 53:40Speaker 00

  You know?

• 53:41Rick Rubin?

  Tell me the story of the studio session for Barbara Ann.

• 53:45Speaker 00

  Well, the Barbara Ann studio is just a Barbara Ann studio. One night, we had all the girlfriends, wives would have come over and, and make it sound like a party. And we had potato chips.

• 53:58Speaker 00

  But, uh, we inadvertently had made a, an unplugged album, you know? I even played bass on a lot of it. Lucky me. The day I officially got in the music business for real was my first demo.

• 54:16Speaker 00

  I saved up enough money to hire what would be in the future the Barbara Anstoria, using the engineer that became Brian's engineer, Chuck Brits. When I made this demo, I was in love with my voice and it so sucked. The song was terrible. And I sidebar to the sidebar. And I took the demo to Specialty Records because I love Little Richard. And I played it for their A and R guy there and he had, you know, pocket pen protector, whatever it is, and short sleeve shirt. He listened to it and he said, you know, this is not what we're looking for right now, but Bruce, if you really get excited about something, could you come back and play it

• 55:01Speaker 00

  for us? Who was the A and R man? Sonny Bono.

• 55:05Rick Rubin?

  Wow. That's unbelievable.

• 55:08Speaker 00

  Is that not a cool story?

• 55:10Rick Rubin?

  So cool.

• 55:11Speaker 00

  Okay. So, back to the first day in the Barbara Anstoria, in the music business. You know, I was playing in high school.

• 55:18Rick Rubin?

  And was this pre-Sunny and Cher?

• 55:19Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, this is Sunny, but that was his job. He was an A and R guy. He wasn't down at Cosmo Studio where he should have been in New Orleans with Earl Palmer on drums, playing a Ghost foot pedal and Richard singing, "Wap, wap, wap, wap." You know, it was owned by Art Wu and it was up on, just beyond where the crescendo was towards Hollywood, about four or five doors, Specialty Records, office, then the studio. But they didn't cut any hits there. They cut them in New Orleans at Cosmos, who's, it's still there. Okay. So, the first day, I'm making my demo of this horrible song.

• 56:00Speaker 00

  There's a guy, black guy, dressed pretty cool actually, and I saw him drive in in a four-door 1956, like a Coupe de Ville four-door, no such thing. Well, I don't know what they got, some kind of a Fleetwood. It was great. Had a diamond pinky ring, a white tie, and a white shirt. And he owned this thing that we all listened to. We listened to Huggy Boy on the radio here, from the whitest guy ever, down the middle of Watts, broadcasting from Dolphins of Hollywood. You can look him on a John Dolphin. He had record labels, he had everything. And I had the chancellor's daughter of UCLA, my friend girl from high school, Barbara Allen. Remember that?

• 56:45Speaker 00

  So he, um, he said, here's my card. Why don't you bring your, your acetate down when you're finished? So we went down there and the door was locked and there was a black guy, Percy Anderson Ivy. He was muttering and pissed off. He was, ah, no, he's in here, you know? Just all the southern dialect, white guys never heard before. Woo, he said, John, you owes me money. It's like watching a video of Stagger Lee. And it goes, no, I don't. And so the next thing I, I see and hear is that guy shoots him five times in front of me when I was 17. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

• 57:22Rick Rubin?

  Shoots dolphin.

• 57:23Speaker 00

  Kills him.

• 57:24Rick Rubin?

  Kills it.

• 57:25Speaker 00

  And he falls on the heater and turns the heater on. It smells like crap in there. And so one of the guys in my band who is now, uh, first chair, uh, flautist with the LA Philharmonic. He's in high school with me, played tenor sax. And he gets grazed by a bullet. Uh, everyone else runs out except me. So I stay there and I see dolphins foaming in the mouth, dead, you know? Uh, 17 years old. Wait a minute. No, I'm 15 years old. Excuse me.

• 57:58Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 57:59Speaker 00

  I'm 15. This is February 1st, 1958. I'm still 15 years old.

• 58:05Rick Rubin?

  Okay.

• 58:06Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 58:07Rick Rubin?

  So you just watched a guy get murdered in front of you?

• 58:09Speaker 00

  No.

• 58:10Rick Rubin?

  On your first day in the music business?

• 58:12Speaker 00

  First day in the music business. Because of Barbara Ann's chancellor, Raymond Allen of UCLA, we kept about 99% of it out of the paper. We put it on, you know, over there in the ocean. So.

• 58:28Rick Rubin?

  So it didn't come out?

• 58:29Speaker 00

  Just totally buried.

• 58:31Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 58:32Speaker 00

  So that was my very first day in the music business.

• 58:36Rick Rubin?

  That day you knew this is for me.

• 58:40Speaker 00

  No, it took two more years. And then in that time period, I had, I was in Sandy Ellison's little band and Spectre was in it. And I listened to his chorus. I went, oh my God.

• 58:51Rick Rubin?

  What was he like?

• 58:54Rick Rubin?

  Same age? You were same age?

• 58:56Speaker 00

  Uh, no, he's probably a year, two years older than me. He's very eccentric.

• 58:59Rick Rubin?

  Same school or a different school?

• 59:01Speaker 00

  Few, uh, like Herbie, Herb Alpert and those guys, they, they went to, and, and that Kleinboard, they went to Fairfax, you know, but he was just eccentric. And you know, the title of his song, To Know Him Was To Love Him? That's the epitaph on his father's gravestone. You know, that's how he got that. Okay. So that's how I got my start. And then I, um,

• 59:25Speaker 00

  working after Beach Boys, our band that we put together took the place of the house band for Art LeBeau. Because they had shows at Long Beach Municipal Auditorium, they had shows at Pasadena Civic and El Monte Legion Stadium.

• 59:38Rick Rubin?

  You had to tell me about Art LeBeau too.

• 59:40Speaker 00

  Well, Art LeBeau, he was just a, he's just a great promoter. You know, he promoted himself right into being one of the writers of the song I wrote.

• 59:51Rick Rubin?

  As, as was what was happening in those days.

• 59:53Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 59:54Rick Rubin?

  That's not an unusual story.

• 59:55Speaker 00

  Right. So Larry Nectal was the keyboard player and Mike Probody was the drummer. And they got hired to join Dwayne Eddie's band. So Larry, who became one of the members of, of Bread, and also got a Grammy for arranging with Jimmy Haskell, Bridge Over Troubled Water, that's him playing the piano.

• 1:00:14Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 1:00:14Speaker 00

  First half was art. So everybody does something. If you're hanging around along off, something groovy happens.

• 1:00:20Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:21Speaker 00

  So we get in this band, Specter's gone. He's, he actually has moved to New York, you know, for a few months and under the wing of Lieber and Stoller, who are LA guys that went to LA City College, you know, and they're the guys who wrote Smokey Joe's Cafe be, long before the two, the two, two Robins went to New York and became the Coasters.

• 1:00:42Rick Rubin?

  They wrote for Elvis as well.

• 1:00:43Speaker 00

  Well, they wrote Loving You, I Will Spend My Whole Life Through. They also wrote.

• 1:00:50Speaker 00

  For Big Mama Thornton.

• 1:00:51Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:00:52Speaker 00

  Who recorded this with Johnny Otis, like around fifty-two, fifty-one. You're nothing but a hound dog. That was her original recording. And she, when she met these two white Jewish guys, Libra and Stoller, with the song, she almost, she almost beat them up. She's about six feet high. You get out, get out. And, and Johnny Otis is, now Mama, Mama, you gotta listen to this. Mama, could settle down. You know, all that stuff's going on. Johnny Otis is on TV, by the way, local TV for two years. So I see James Brown in fifty-seven, fifty-eight on his TV show. You know, like first round of hits, please, please, please.

• 1:01:33Rick Rubin?

  Was that another mind blowing? Like James Brown must have been insane the first time you saw it.

• 1:01:37Speaker 00

  Well, I, I saw, the first time I saw him live was sixty-one at the Paramount Theater with an eighteen-piece big band and he would play organ in it and do all kinds of things. And his steps and he had his valet and he'd throw it off and run back out. And, uh, three high school girls called the Bluebells were his background group. Patti LaBelle and the Bluebells.

• 1:02:02Rick Rubin?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:02:03Speaker 00

  You know.

• 1:02:04Rick Rubin?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:02:04Speaker 00

  I had the curiosity you had as a young guy for what was going on. I was, I was every, everywhere. I was in Watts. I was, again, whiter than, um, Pat Boone. And, but it was safe then. No one gave me any crap. So all this stuff's going on around me, you know? And somehow I'm learning how to surf and I'm going to the surf movies. And I'm listening to Richard, I'm listening to Sinatra. I'm just, all this cool stuff's happening, you know, just influencing me. I would say, I only have eyes for you. As I said earlier, that's like, the verses are in doo-wop.

• 1:02:48Speaker 00

  And the choruses are, but I only have you. Major, if I's for you, do, de, do, do, do, do what you want. I thought, okay.

• 1:02:57Rick Rubin?

  Let's listen to it. We gotta listen to it.

• 1:02:59Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:02:59Rick Rubin?

  Gotta listen to it.

• 1:03:04Speaker 00

  This is original.

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  But you.

• 1:03:18Speaker 03

  Suma, summa.

• 1:03:22Speaker 03

  Do, summa, summa.

• 1:03:26Speaker 03

  Do, summa, summa.

• 1:03:30Speaker 03

  Do, summa, summa.

• 1:03:34Speaker 03

  Do, summa, summa.

• 1:03:35Speaker 02

  Are the stars out tonight?

• 1:03:42Speaker 03

  Do, summa, summa.

• 1:03:44Speaker 02

  I don't know if it's cloudy or not.

• 1:03:47Speaker 00

  Here comes the major seventh.

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  I only have eyes.

• 1:03:54Speaker 00

  And there's falsetto on this record, by the way.

• 1:04:03Speaker 00

  That's due up slow dance.

• 1:04:06Speaker 03

  Do, summa.

• 1:04:08Speaker 02

  The moon may be behind.

• 1:04:16Speaker 02

  But I can't see a thing in the sky. I only have eyes for you.

• 1:04:35Speaker 00

  Falsetto like Brian.

• 1:04:37Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 1:04:40Speaker 02

  I don't know if we're in a garden.

• 1:04:52Speaker 00

  Recorded track and everything in three hours and voices. New York.

• 1:05:12Speaker 02

  You are here. And so am I. Maybe millions of people. Don't mind. But they all disappear.

• 1:05:33Speaker 00

  Check the faucet will come right now.

• 1:06:08Speaker 00

  Isn't that a piece of work?

• 1:06:09Rick Rubin?

  It's unbelievable.

• 1:06:10Speaker 00

  It's like a symphony to me.

• 1:06:12Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, fantastic. What do you think that the shuvap shuvap vocals, you think that that was because they didn't have horns? So it's like doing a horn part?

• 1:06:23Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 1:06:24Rick Rubin?

  What do you think it was?

• 1:06:25Speaker 00

  It almost sounds like do what you want or shuvap shuvap, you know, it's just what they did. Terry Johnson, who's still around, if you ever see picture of the coasters, he's the guy with the Les Paul guitar. He did, he did that whole arrangement. And they just went in and recorded it. Three hours, front to back and the mix. Bang. But that's very elegant.

• 1:06:50Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:51Speaker 00

  I could play, have you play part of a song that kind of kept me in the music business. Okay, just play a little piece of I'm Not in Love by 10cc.

• 1:07:01Rick Rubin?

  Okay.

• 1:07:09Speaker 00

  Everybody, everybody recorded every note they could record on a separate track and they, all the voices are mixed this way.

• 1:07:19Speaker 00

  Great song too. You know the song? Just listen to it.

• 1:07:24Speaker 00

  Recorded at Orange Studios in Manchester, England.

• 1:07:47Speaker 00

  So there's a song there, being a song, besides all that stuff.

• 1:07:55Speaker 00

  Just a little more.

• 1:08:01Speaker 00

  Written by Graham Goulber.

• 1:08:21Speaker 00

  The whole thing's great. You know, I listened to the whole thing. I just want you to see what I did.

• 1:08:27Rick Rubin?

  It's amazing.

• 1:08:28Speaker 00

  That kind of kept me going.

• 1:08:30Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. I like the songs.

• 1:08:33Speaker 00

  I'm on the freeway in my Porsche, because I could afford it. I'm listening to the radio. I hear, "Joy to the world, joy to the..." Okay, cute song. And then I hear, "I, I believe in music..." And then I hear, "Oh, girl..." Lobo. "I want you to want me..."

• 1:08:59Speaker 00

  And I, I'm thinking to myself, "I can't spell it, but I think it's happening." Epiphany.

• 1:09:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:07Speaker 00

  And I go, "I should write a song about where music comes from."

• 1:09:11Rick Rubin?

  Great.

• 1:09:13Speaker 00

  I, I always like startling words, like, uh, I've done, I've done a lot of Elton John's recording. I always liked working with Elton, because Bernie's lyrics are just so whacked out and wonderful. So I always think, well... You gotta have a really interesting first line. So I went intro. I've been alive forever and I wrote the very first song. Now, if you can't catch him with that, you might as well not finish the song.

• 1:09:44Rick Rubin?

  It's a good, it's a good opening line.

• 1:09:46Speaker 00

  It's kind of like, pretend I'm interviewing God.

• 1:09:50Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:51Speaker 00

  And I go, so God, tell me about yourself. Well, okay.

• 1:09:56Rick Rubin?

  I've been alive forever.

• 1:09:57Speaker 00

  I've been alive forever, I wrote the very first song, put the words and melodies together on music and I write the songs. Hey.

• 1:10:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's ultimately a devotional song.

• 1:10:07Speaker 00

  Kind of.

• 1:10:08Rick Rubin?

  It is.

• 1:10:08Speaker 00

  Kind of.

• 1:10:09Rick Rubin?

  You just told me the story and I'm telling you, you might not know it. It's a devotional song.

• 1:10:13Speaker 00

  It is, but I, but I, I kind of never told Barry what it was really about. I said, well, it's just about the spirit of music, Barry, because I know he would have loved it. And finally, after, he waited a year before he called Clive back. When I was at Columbia Records, Clive was one of the guys I worked with in the business department.

• 1:10:32Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:10:33Speaker 00

  So when he called Clive back, he says, okay, even though I think people are gonna think I'm conceited, I get it, I hear it. He put about 85 key changes and he put every trick he knew and it actually worked. And then, three years ago, he called me up and he said, I wanna, I want you to listen to my live version. So he had a live version with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at some venue that had 18,000 people in England. And it would shock you if you think the record was good. It was, it's just all over. It's all over. It's called Live in London.

• 1:11:09Rick Rubin?

  Let's listen to it.

• 1:11:11Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:11:11Rick Rubin?

  Let's listen to it.

• 1:11:17Speaker 00

  That's it.

• 1:11:21Speaker 00

  Wait till you hear them sing it. Them sing it.

• 1:11:27Speaker 00

  Then I'll tell you the arrangement story.

• 1:11:34Speaker 02

  I've been alive forever. And I wrote the very first song.

• 1:11:46Speaker 02

  I put the words and the melodies together. I am music and I write the songs. I write the songs that make the whole world sing. I write the songs of love and special things. I write the songs that make the young girls cry. I write the songs, I write the songs.

• 1:12:28Speaker 02

  My home lies deep within you. And I've got my own place in your soul. Now when I look out through your eyes. I'm young again, even though I'm very. Come on, sing us one with us. Come on, let me hear you. Ready? I write the songs that make the whole.

• 1:12:58Speaker 00

  Eighteen thousand people on life.

• 1:13:01Speaker 02

  Sing. Nice. I write the songs that make the young. Uh huh. I write the songs. Great, great.

• 1:13:17Speaker 02

  Oh, my music makes you dance And gives you spirit to take a chance And I wrote some rock and roll, so you can move Music fills your heart Well, that's a real fine place to start It's for me, it's for you, it's for you, it's for me It's a worldwide symphony I write the songs that make the whole world sing I write the songs of love and special things

• 1:13:57Speaker 02

  I write the songs that make the young girls cry I write the songs, I write the songs I write the songs that make the whole world sing I write the songs of love and special things I write the songs that make the young girls cry I write the songs, I write the songs Music's a good music!

• 1:14:38Speaker 02

  I'm a music, and I write the songs And I write the songs

• 1:14:53Speaker 02

  And I write the songs

• 1:14:58Speaker 00

  Keep listening.

• 1:15:47Speaker 00

  It's on, huh?

• 1:15:48Rick Rubin?

  It is.

• 1:15:54Speaker 00

  So, when I called Barry back, I said, "Barry, where did you get that arrangement?" He said, "Are you kidding? Really, Bruce? It's your arrangement." I said, "How could it be my arrangement?" He said, "You know the recording you made with, 'I Write the Songs with David Cassidy'? It was top 10, top 11, something, in England." He said, "I just copied that arrangement." "Oh, because I did the arrangement." I said, "Okay."

• 1:16:23Rick Rubin?

  No wonder it sounded good. Tell me about the intro to the song.

• 1:16:27Speaker 00

  Intro?

• 1:16:27Rick Rubin?

  The chords before it goes into the ballad.

• 1:16:31Speaker 00

  I call that the doorbell.

• 1:16:35Rick Rubin?

  It's the signature of the song.

• 1:16:37Speaker 00

  No, it just gets your...

• 1:16:38Rick Rubin?

  Lets you know we're here.

• 1:16:40Speaker 00

  Pay attention to my song on the radio. That's why that's there.

• 1:16:42Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:43Speaker 00

  And then, after that intro, then there's the engaging lyrics. "I've been alive forever." Here, I'll turn your piano on. I'll play you something I just wrote for Barry. Not a new song. I wrote him a new intro.

• 1:17:00Rick Rubin?

  Good.

• 1:17:00Speaker 00

  Ready?

• 1:17:01Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:02Speaker 00

  You might like this. So it goes...

• 1:17:16Speaker 00

  Now, the melody is, the chorus is...

• 1:17:22Speaker 00

  Right? So I put it in the intro.

• 1:17:44Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful.

• 1:17:45Speaker 00

  Isn't that cool?

• 1:17:46Rick Rubin?

  So beautiful. I'm gonna name some names, tell me stories about the people. Tony Asher.

• 1:17:52Speaker 00

  He's the sweetest, nicest guy. He was a copywriter at an advertising agency. Somehow, he met Brian. They were talking about writing. And we, Beach Boys, were in Japan for two, three weeks. And so, Tony and Brian started writing Pet Sounds. Is Mike capable, Mike Love capable of writing Pet Sounds? Absolutely. Did you ever hear Mike's song called "The Warmth of the Sun"?

• 1:18:26Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, that's Mike's song.

• 1:18:28Speaker 00

  He wrote the words.

• 1:18:29Rick Rubin?

  I love that song.

• 1:18:30Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:18:31Rick Rubin?

  It's one of my favorite, it's one of my favorite Beach Boys songs.

• 1:18:32Speaker 00

  That's my favorite Beach Boys song ever written.

• 1:18:34Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:35Speaker 00

  Well, that's for-

• 1:18:35Rick Rubin?

  Let's listen to "One For the Sun".

• 1:18:37Speaker 00

  Oh, man.

• 1:18:38Rick Rubin?

  Gotta. Come on.

• 1:18:40Speaker 00

  That's the best recording and the best song they ever wrote together. That's why I knew he was right for Pet Sounds. He's very hurt by that, by the way.

• 1:21:35Rick Rubin?

  Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

• 1:21:39Speaker 00

  That's it for me.

• 1:21:39Rick Rubin?

  Breathtaking.

• 1:21:42Speaker 00

  Somehow, Brian would talk to Carl every night in Japan.

• 1:21:47Speaker 00

  And tell him what he was doing, but it was, he was doing what he usually did with Mike, but with Tony, and he's just working with Tony. What do I think of Tony? Yeah. Who do I think it should have been? Cause I'm kind of loyal to the, to Lennon McCartney, or Rodgers and Hammerstein, you know? Mike and Brian.

• 1:22:11Rick Rubin?

  What are the inner band politics like? And how have they changed over the years?

• 1:22:17Speaker 00

  It's just like these leaves blowing. They just change. They just happen. Nobody does anything mean spirited. You know, I just think Mike, never knowing that that was on the horizon.

• 1:22:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:32Speaker 00

  Brian should have offered it to his cousin first.

• 1:22:36Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:36Speaker 00

  Just of the strength of the heart of the son. Everything's perfect.

• 1:22:42Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you know Gary Usher?

• 1:22:45Speaker 00

  Very well. He was kind of like a threat to Murray Wilson in terms of his writing and everything. And he was a real ambitious guy that, you know, as ambitious as the dad was, so that got in the way. What do I think of him? He's a great guy. How could I not like someone who wrote in my room?

• 1:23:08Speaker 00

  What a great song between Brian and Gary.

• 1:23:11Rick Rubin?

  Great song.

• 1:23:12Speaker 00

  You know. So he was an A&R guy. He was, he was there. He worked on staff at Capitol. He did everything. He was a good survivor and he died way too young.

• 1:23:22Rick Rubin?

  Jack Nietzsche.

• 1:23:23Speaker 00

  Jack was fantastic. Fantastic arrangements. Every place, everything he did.

• 1:23:30Rick Rubin?

  Did you ever get to work with him?

• 1:23:31Speaker 00

  Not really. I spent a lot of time with him. More because of his wife. She's the singer. She's so cool. And she said, Terry Bruce, you've got to come here tonight. You're Laurel Canyon somewhere. And she said, you've got to listen to this guy's songs. Free Wheeling album, Bob Dylan.

• 1:23:52Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:23:53Speaker 00

  And gracious. She said, this guy's gonna change the way people write songs. And she was so right.

• 1:24:00Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:00Speaker 00

  And that was Jack Nietzsche's wife. Probably nobody knows she did that.

• 1:24:03Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 1:24:04Speaker 00

  To a lot of us.

• 1:24:05Rick Rubin?

  Van Dyke Parks.

• 1:24:09Speaker 00

  He's not someone to dislike. He's too sweet. He's like Kurt Betsy. He's too nice. But I know that he admitted to Mike Love with some of his lyrics. He didn't know what they mean, but they sound great.

• 1:24:24Rick Rubin?

  Okay.

• 1:24:24Speaker 00

  You know? What can I say? He's a very clever guy. But I think, I really think he took Brian off the path.

• 1:24:31Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:24:32Speaker 00

  Myself.

• 1:24:33Rick Rubin?

  Sagittarius, my world fell down.

• 1:24:35Speaker 00

  Well, I actually walked out of the session. Gary Asher produced it. We did it at Columbia Records. Glen Campbell sang on it. And some of the people singing with me were singing flat. And I couldn't get them to sing on, really on key to my standard. So I sang it and just left. And people love it. And I listened to it and something just says, this is wrong.

• 1:25:00Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:25:01Speaker 00

  The pitch.

• 1:25:01Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:02Speaker 00

  The pitch.

• 1:25:03Rick Rubin?

  Do you have perfect pitch?

• 1:25:04Speaker 00

  Luckily, I don't. You don't want perfect pitch.

• 1:25:07Rick Rubin?

  But you can hear, you can hear.

• 1:25:08Speaker 00

  I can hear pitch. Perfect pitch is something that, for people who listen to radio stations that sped their records up so they could get them over faster to sell more time.

• 1:25:20Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:20Speaker 00

  And so you'd hear stuff and you'd go, oh. Yeah.

• 1:25:24Rick Rubin?

  Lou Adler?

• 1:25:25Speaker 00

  Lou. I think Lou was born cool.

• 1:25:30Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:31Speaker 00

  As he got older and older and older, he, he got above the 100% mark for being cool without trying. He's great. Now he's 90 years old. I saw a picture of him someplace with Herbie. Herb Albert and Lou were partners and they managed Jan and Dean. And when they broke up, Lou took the management and right thing to do. What do you think Herb took? The Ampex 601, 601 dash.

• 1:26:01Rick Rubin?

  The tape machine?

• 1:26:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, the tape machine. And went down, I'm told, to Mexico to the, where they had the bullfights and recorded all the olays. And then he had a studio in his garage and started and recorded Lonely Bull.

• 1:26:15Rick Rubin?

  Worked out okay.

• 1:26:17Speaker 00

  When I was at Columbia Records, Cherry Moss in 63, used to come to my office, working for a publisher and play me songs.

• 1:26:25Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 1:26:26Speaker 00

  And Herbie and I, it's not that I didn't have any money, doesn't matter when you're young. Money, yeah, girls, hey. I used to do a few sessions with him and we got $10 a song. I'd play keyboard, he'd play trumpet. And like Sunset Sound or one of those studios. It's great.

• 1:26:47Rick Rubin?

  Amazing. Who were the sleepwalkers?

• 1:26:52Speaker 00

  It might have been me. I don't know. I think Kim Folley named whatever I was doing as the sleepwalkers. That's all I know.

• 1:26:59Rick Rubin?

  And was there a band before that, The Barons?

• 1:27:01Speaker 00

  Oh, that was Jan Berry and Dean Torrance's Hi-Y, like YMCA, Hi-Y Club. Name of their rough and tough guys' club at University High School called The Barons. Jackets, everything. The Tears was a girls' club, Nancy Sinatra's club.

• 1:27:22Rick Rubin?

  Wow. Cool. Mike Curb.

• 1:27:27Speaker 00

  Fantastic guy. Just a real straight Presbyterian kind of businessman. Loved music, but had to put a lot of stuff together. And now he still has the biggest in America independent label. And Curb Records in tons of hits in Nashville. Great guy. Great guy.

• 1:27:53Rick Rubin?

  Are the Beach Boys the longest existing band in history?

• 1:27:58Speaker 00

  Maybe still a living-ish.

• 1:28:00Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. I mean, Stones were after.

• 1:28:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's good. Most people don't realize that. Stones were after.

• 1:28:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:08Speaker 00

  Okay, I want to read you something.

• 1:28:10Rick Rubin?

  Okay.

• 1:28:11Speaker 00

  A friend of mine was, uh, one of the biggest stations in America was, um, WMMS in Cleveland. Bruce Springsteen would be at the Coliseum, the Beach Boys would be at Blossom, Laura Branigan would be at Soul, we'd all be sold out in the same night promoted by the same station. That's how big they were. So Walter Taberski sends me this. He says, "Thanks, Bruce. I'll always be grateful to you for your long time support, encouragement, and guidance during my hazy, crazy radio days." Walter's a programmer, program director.

• 1:28:50Speaker 00

  I wrote Walter a letter. I think I was writing myself.

• 1:28:55Speaker 00

  I went, "Walter, we all grow in our careers as we age, and my personal focus is to continue reaching out to humanity via songs I write, to share how I view life, and hopefully my messages will resonate with other agreeable souls. I am always a positive person, and I hope my, my songs reflect that. Walter, no retirement for me. Even if I'm on my back, I'll use sign language if that's what it takes to deliver my message of hope, love, romance, loyalty, keeping the world's environmental issues center stage if corrections are needed."

• 1:29:36Speaker 00

  Parenthesis, I use, among the founders, "I use the Surf Rider Foundation to deal with all the ocean pollution problems plaguing the planet, and a jillion other thoughts I have about living. Just saying, Bruce."

• 1:29:48Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful.

• 1:29:49Speaker 00

  I just kind of sent that to him out of the blue.

• 1:29:51Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful. Tell me the story of Surf Riders.

• 1:29:54Speaker 00

  It's really cool. There's a lot of guys that got famous in surfing in those days. So I know all these guys and they said, you know, we're working on what? We want to call this thing the Surf Rider Foundation. Let me be part of it. I'm sure you're in. So in 84, we wound up having the Surf Rider Foundation or SurfRider.org. And so you go to the beach and a little kid's there and he's looking at a Coke can. And we say, well, if you don't dispose of this properly, and we'll show you how to do it, it'll be there 350 years. And we get, we go through the plastic, we do that. So, I don't know, we had us, we were the kind of the members.

• 1:30:37Speaker 00

  Anyway, guess how many members nonprofit we have? We have 200 chapters and a million members.

• 1:30:43Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:30:44Speaker 00

  SurfRider.org.

• 1:30:45Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:30:47Speaker 00

  So.

• 1:30:48Rick Rubin?

  I heard a story that when Richard Branson started his new label, V2, there was a rumor that he was going to sign the Beach Boys. And there was an idea to like, get back to the creative.

• 1:31:03Speaker 00

  Okay, so we had the most amazing deal with Branson.

• 1:31:10Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:11Speaker 00

  And we would be the first artists.

• 1:31:13Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:13Speaker 00

  Long time. So everyone was for it, except Brian's wife. And he said, great idea, we should do it, but first Brian has to have a solo album or we're not signing. Deal's gone.

• 1:31:29Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:31:30Speaker 00

  Not that everybody needed money, but you know, there's plenty of advance and budget.

• 1:31:39Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, but it also seemed like a creative breath of new life.

• 1:31:43Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:31:44Rick Rubin?

  From someone who wanted something great from the Beach Boys instead of what your experience with.

• 1:31:50Speaker 00

  You're exactly right, but I don't want to, she just passed away in the last two or three months. But she just said, oh, sure, great idea, but we have, but first Brian has to have his own album. And if he, so okay, of course we'll make him, here's the budget for Brian's album.

• 1:32:12Speaker 00

  But first we have to do the Beach Boys. She said, no, it has to be Brian. Goodbye. Bang, gone.

• 1:32:18Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Tell me about Brian.

• 1:32:22Rick Rubin?

  Would you say you know him well?

• 1:32:25Speaker 00

  I don't think so. I observed him well.

• 1:32:27Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:28Speaker 00

  That's all I can tell you.

• 1:32:29Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:30Speaker 00

  When you read our book, you'll learn more about the band as I learn more about the band.

• 1:32:36Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:36Speaker 00

  You know, I read all the rough drafts and everything. It's totally written from Beach Boys. It's not ghostwriters or anything, you know, things unfilled at Carl because he's not alive.

• 1:32:47Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:48Speaker 00

  You know, Brian kind of got captured by a lot of people.

• 1:32:57Speaker 00

  That, you know, probably thinking, uh, how we can work with them. This is really great. I remember kind of later in the Pet Sound sessions, people say after eight thirty would start bringing pills and things. You know, with the sales thing on Brian, hey, this is going to really give you more depth to your creativity. Just all the wrong people brought all the wrong stuff.

• 1:33:22Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:33:23Speaker 00

  So did I know Brian?

• 1:33:26Speaker 00

  I knew Brian more like, uh, the sun coming out in, in Great Britain because it's so cloudy. You get glimpses of the sun, you know? One fun glimpse, though, we did the Beach Boys 50th anniversary.

• 1:33:42Speaker 00

  And we were at one of those TV shows that just sell clothing, sell TV, sell everything, right? And, uh, I think we sold like that night, we sold 30,000 albums just by going out and playing a song. That's pretty good. And, uh, while Brian was sitting around, we're just kind of talking with him. He's kind of being okay. And he said, I had a couple of top five records that year. What year? Oh, in, uh, in sixty-four and into sixty-five. All right. You know, I've had a number one record here. He started going over all his hits, just talking to us. I thought, is this guy waking up?

• 1:34:27Speaker 00

  Being healthy? He's just, was talking about it. It's so cool.

• 1:34:31Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:32Speaker 00

  And that's probably the last time he was really Brian. I don't know what his demons were or are. I don't know how much his medication helped him or preserved him or harmed him.

• 1:34:47Rick Rubin?

  As a songwriter, looking at Brian's songs, how would you say his songwriting changed from the earliest days?

• 1:34:54Speaker 00

  I think the Beast Boys ended on that level with Brian

• 1:35:02Speaker 00

  maybe stepped out, but stepping back in

• 1:35:06Speaker 00

  with the recording of Till I Die. Have you ever heard that? Okay, play it right now.

• 1:35:11Rick Rubin?

  Okay.

• 1:35:12Speaker 00

  I think that's the last Brian Wilson brilliant thing. And he happened to write the lyrics. The last time he wrote the lyrics was Surf Girl, and then Mike wrote everything else. Till I Die on the Surf Sup album.

• 1:35:25Rick Rubin?

  Great.

• 1:35:25Speaker 00

  It's so revealing. It's fantastic. He's into his harmony. We're singing harmony.

• 1:36:38Speaker 02

  What do you think?

• 1:37:49Rick Rubin?

  Heavy.

• 1:37:49Speaker 02

  That's the last time I heard Brian be a real Brian.

• 1:37:55Rick Rubin?

  He wrote the words too? Wow.

• 1:37:57Speaker 02

  All of them.

• 1:37:58Rick Rubin?

  Heavy.

• 1:37:59Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:38:00Rick Rubin?

  Heavy song.

• 1:38:00Speaker 02

  I wanted to give him a, some kind of a psychological PhD for that one.

• 1:38:06Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful.

• 1:38:07Speaker 02

  That's just, he just put his insides on the table and just sang about them.

• 1:38:12Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:12Speaker 02

  His inside thoughts.

• 1:38:14Rick Rubin?

  Very beautiful.

• 1:38:15Speaker 02

  That's just me, Charlie. Anything is me. I don't speak for the band.

• 1:38:18Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, of course.

• 1:38:19Speaker 02

  I'm the Inside Outside USA guy.

• 1:38:54Speaker 04

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