Mike Love

Mike Love is a singer, songwriter, and co-founder of the Beach Boys. In 1961, Love, alongside his cousins Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, and their friend Al Jardine, defined the California sound of the 1960s as the Beach Boys, co-writing hits including “Good Vibrations,” “California Girls,” and “Fun, Fun, Fun,” while weaving the themes of youth, surfing, and romance into their songs. He was one of the band’s vocalists and lyricists for the entire career of the Beach Boys; Love played a crucial role in the group’s vocal arrangements, adding a popular doo-wop sound and R&B influences. An inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he went on to revamp the Beach Boys in 2011, announcing the band’s 50th Anniversary Tour, release five solo albums, and publish an autobiography titled Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: Squarespace https://squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ 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' ------ 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.

• 0:02Rick Rubin?

  Tetra Grahamington.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  It was December of 1967 and we were invited to go to Paris to do a UNICEF show, United Nations Children's Emergency Fund. And on that show was Marlon Brando and his Tahitian bride and a couple of dancers and stuff. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

• 0:40Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  He did How to Handle a Woman and she would pray across the stage with these signs.

• 0:45Rick Rubin?

  Incredible. This is 67?

• 0:47Speaker 01

  December of 67.

• 0:49Rick Rubin?

  Incredible.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  Well, the curtain opened for our part of the show. There was Mauricio in the front row with John Lennon on one side and George Harrison on the other. I said, "Holy shit, that's a fucking front row for you."

• 1:00Rick Rubin?

  Good audience.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  And that beautiful orchestra. We just did a few songs. And then the after-party, Marlon Brando turns to me and he says, "Wanna get some breakfast?" And I mean, it was very Marlon Brando. I mean, it was the real deal. And I'm thinking, "My club, Beach Boys." Marlon Brando, Viva's a pot on the waterfront and everything is asking us, "If I wanna go for breakfast." What am I gonna say?

• 1:27Rick Rubin?

  That's wild.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  So, yeah, so we did. And he had a Cadillac, and this was in December in Paris, had Cadillac convertible pull up and a few cabs, and he invited I and a couple of other group members and their wives. And he invited us all to go to this after-party, which was given by these de-jeweled ladies in these gowns. And Victor Borga, and the producer of the show, were sitting at a table. Marlon went into the room and this woman spurred eagles herself across the door saying, "I'm terribly sorry, it's a private party." And Marlon Brando looks at her and says... Oh, man, I'm really sorry, he said.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  In Tahiti, when one, when one person goes, everyone goes, it's like family. I think I better leave. And he turns as if to leave the party. And that's Liz and Dick over there. So she was gonna lose Marlon Brando. She couldn't have that. So she let us in and his Tahitian bride and the guy playing the guitar. And it really made the party, actually.

• 2:38Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it was, it was amazing.

• 2:40Rick Rubin?

  That sounds incredible.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then the next day, we, in the afternoon, late afternoon, it was dark already. So he's in the lounge of the airline and I sat next to him on the flight to England. I went to England and he invited us to a, to go to a party there. And we, of course, there we go again. Marlon, go somewhere. So we did go. And that was the last time I personally met, was in his presence. But when he turned and did that Lee Strasberg turn, saying, oh, I think I better leave. It was pure Marlon. I mean, and he was such a great guy because he needed that.

• 3:26Rick Rubin?

  Was he a little older than you at the time?

• 3:28Speaker 01

  A little bit, yeah.

• 3:29Rick Rubin?

  Five years, maybe?

• 3:30Speaker 01

  Probably.

• 3:30Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. I'm just trying to picture what it felt like.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:34Rick Rubin?

  Did he feel like an elder statesman or not really?

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, no, to me, he sure did.

• 3:39Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  You know, he was just an amazing actor, of course, and a great guy because he was for the Black Panthers. He didn't take the Oscar because of his Native American situation.

• 3:55Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  So he was really solid citizen. I mean, it impressed me, anyway.

• 4:02Rick Rubin?

  Then when did Maharishi teach you to meditate?

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Okay, so we got to England. Then I get a call from Dennis Wilson. Was our drummer.

• 4:11Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  And he said, you gotta come back to, to Paris. I said, why? I like England. I like London, you know? He says, well, Maharishi is gonna teach us to meditate. Are you sure? So he called back again. I said, yeah, it's for sure. Tomorrow afternoon at such and such a time. We have to bring a fruit, flowers and handkerchief. So we found some flowers on the way end up to town after we. I mean, we flew back the very next morning to, from England and to, to Paris. Now, because I had been interested in meditation. And I've gone to a lecture at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium by a guy named Jerry Jarvis, who was head of the Students International Meditation Society at the time,

• 4:57Speaker 01

  which was 1015 Gaely in Westwood. And a lot of people were taught there. In fact, I became a teacher of TM a couple of years later. I actually taught there in Westwood. I taught maybe 100 people.

• 5:13Rick Rubin?

  I knew Jerry. I loved Jerry.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:15Rick Rubin?

  Jerry was the coolest guy.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Genius, brilliant guy.

• 5:19Rick Rubin?

  He was sort of Maharishi's right-hand man in those days.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  He was at one time. He carried the deer sticks.

• 5:23Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Deer skin. Yeah, he absolutely. So you had met him?

• 5:27Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he said he learned to fly a helicopter for Maharishi so he could take Maharishi around.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 5:34Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:35Rick Rubin?

  What was it like talking to Maharishi? What was the energy like?

• 5:40Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, Maharishi is a Hindu monk. And Hinduism is so complicated and so diversified, you know? He is what they call brahmachari, which means syllable, you know? And their whole existence is devoted to.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  Enlightenment and God, right? And they have these scriptures, which I'm sure you know, called the Vedas. There's several Vedas. And there's all these codes of behavior in some of the Vedas. So Maharishi was a student of Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, who was a Shankaracharya of Jyotirmath. And Shankar was a spiritual person a couple thousand years ago. I don't exactly know about it. I mean, you could look it up. But he established four seats of Shankar. Shankaracharya, I mean, seats of Shankara.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  So Shankar was this enlightened person who just, as a teenager, he could cognize, they call it cognize, and he could just put his attention on and bring out the scriptures of the Vedas and stuff. So through time, you know, pure knowledge gets eroded. And so he came in at that particular time to clarify these Vedas. And so Guru Dev was a Shankaracharya of Jyotirmath, which is in the north, in the Himalayas. There's four of them in different corners of India. But that seat had been vacant for about 150 years or something.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  But then Guru Dev, Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, he took that office. It's like the pope.

• 7:36Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like a Hindu pope.

• 7:40Rick Rubin?

  And Maharishi was with him for years and years?

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Yes, he was a disciple of, and he used to run errands for him and, you know, kind of like a secretary.

• 7:50Rick Rubin?

  And then whose idea was it for Maharishi to spread the teachings?

• 7:54Speaker 01

  Well, Maharishi came up with that after Guru Dev passed away.

• 7:58Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  I was 11 years old when Guru Dev died. So I never met him. But Maharishi decided to teach this, they call it deep meditation. And then they changed the name to transcendental meditation. After learning meditation with Maharishi, I went to a thing called the Science of Creative Intelligence, a one-month course. So that was interesting. That was a precursor to, if you wanted to become a teacher of TM, you had to take the Science of Creative Intelligence course at that time. I don't know what it's like right now, but that's what you had to do. So I was interested enough to say, well, this stuff works great. Because as my cousins, I mean, they learned to meditate,

• 8:45Speaker 01

  but then they also were attracted to things like heroin, cocaine, uppers, downers, you know, you name it, they do it. Didn't always work out so great. My cousin Dennis was under the influence of, in 1983, when he drowned, you know, in the marina in LA. And then Carl, he started smoking when he was about 12, and he died of lung cancer about a little over 25 years ago. And my cousin Brian is well-known for his mental challenges and stuff. But he would take anything and everything somebody thought they were turning him on to something great or something.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  So, you know, it just really messed up his head.

• 9:34Rick Rubin?

  Did you guys all learn to meditate together?

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Carl, Alan, and myself, and Dennis, and our wives, Randall or significant others at the time, learned from Maharishi. I was invited by Maharishi. I went to go see him at Harvard Law Forum in the Boston area, Cambridge, right, Harvard. And I called his hotel, and he picked up the phone. I wanted to talk to somebody with Maharishi, but he picked up the phone. I said, this is Michael of Beach Boys. And he says, are you coming to India? I said, are we invited? He says, yes, come to India. And so the other guys didn't go, but I did.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  When I got there, I didn't know beforehand that the Beatles were all there. And Ringo only stayed for a brief time, I don't know, about a week or 10 days or something. But George, John, and Paul stayed for quite a bit longer. George Harris and I both had our birthdays, he on February 25th, I on March 15th. So we're both Pisces. What's your birthday?

• 10:42Rick Rubin?

  March 10th, Pisces.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, how about that?

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Anyway, so we had birthday parties and this and that. And the Beatles did a song called "The Spiritual Regeneration Movement Foundation." I don't know if you can find it on your phone, but it's pretty.

• 10:59Rick Rubin?

  I've never heard that.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  "The Spiritual Regeneration Movement Foundation."

• 11:04Rick Rubin?

  Let's see.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  It's like fun, fun, fun or something.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  This is for my birthday.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  Actually, what you're hearing right now is Charles Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr in India in 1968.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  Wolfman Jack.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  The song is a tribute to the Maharishi and his philosophy of transcendental meditation. Lennon's a special birthday present, the Beatles sang this song for Mike.

• 12:42Speaker 03

  Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, Michael. Happy birthday to you.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  That's pretty cool, huh?

• 12:54Speaker 03

  Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, Michael. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, Michael. Happy birthday, Michael.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Say it good. Isn't that cool?

• 13:12Speaker 03

  Oh, happy birthday, Michael. Happy birthday, Michael. Michael.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Michael. Yeah.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  So they did that song for my birthday.

• 13:29Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 13:32Rick Rubin?

  That was great. Unbelievable.

• 13:39Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about the whole India experience.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Well, it was amazing. It was, at that time Maharishi would say, go and meditate as many hours as you're comfortable. So I might meditate for six or eight hours or something. Prudence, dear Prudence, meditate for two or three days.

• 13:55Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, she, they had to go and get her. She took it very seriously. In fact, she has a doctorate in Sanskrit from the University of California at Berkeley. I mean, that's Mia Farrow's sister. Mia Farrow was there for a few minutes.

• 14:10Rick Rubin?

  Prudence stayed for a long time?

• 14:11Speaker 01

  She was way into it.

• 14:12Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  She's one of the most prolific TM teachers and has been for many years. She's great.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Anyway, it was just fascinating, meditating for several hours and then having Maharishi lecture every afternoon and evening too. So it was really fascinating time. I wrote a poem one time. It goes, "In the air above the Ganges, 150 down miles from the source of the holy mother river, Indian spiritual water, ripple seen 100 yards below or shining in the sun, reflecting through the eyes of one who feels as though he'd been there, or nearly so, a long, long time ago, before the nations rose and beat each other down, in which we stand, from which we've fallen, feel the need to find the key misplaced through lost

• 15:01Speaker 01

  time, to swing the rusted doors of a world of living around toward the light of nirvana. The key is found, it is at hand, and now men call it transcendental meditation."

• 15:11Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful. And you wrote that when you were there?

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. Just looking out over the river, feeling like I'd been there before or something.

• 15:20Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, beautiful. How long were you there for?

• 15:24Speaker 01

  About a month and a half.

• 15:25Rick Rubin?

  Wow, that's a long time.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it was a three-month thing. Maharishi said, "You can stay and become a teacher and everything will become better after that." I didn't listen, so I left. And I got back and we rehearsed some for a tour we'd set up mainly in the mid-south. And we were on the balcony in Asheville when Martin Luther King got shot and killed. And the cities were all burning. And I'm thinking, Maharishi said, "If I'd have stayed and become a teacher, we would have missed all that." Well, we had a tour booked, and so I thought that was what we should do.

• 16:05Rick Rubin?

  And then have you kept a decent practice over the years?

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:08Rick Rubin?

  Really?

• 16:09Speaker 01

  I meditate every day.

• 16:10Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  If I don't, I'm not a happy person.

• 16:14Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Because I just feel so much better having meditated.

• 16:18Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Than not.

• 16:20Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Plus, I dealt with stress, you know, all the stress of being in a group and

• 16:25Rick Rubin?

  Of course.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  My uncle Murray, you know, stealing money and recognition for

• 16:30Rick Rubin?

  Of course.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  my part of what I had, what I did with the Beach Boys, which Brian is brilliant. He's be able to sit down at the piano, come up with these tremendous chord changes and progressions and harmony meister. It's amazing. And

• 16:49Speaker 01

  I was more of a lyricist and conceptual guy. And because we wrote songs together, I'd end up singing the leaves. Because, you know, I'd say, hey, let's do the song about going back to the beach again. It's called Do It Again, right? And it went to number one in England, but we were at the end of our tenure at Capitol Records. So they didn't try very hard, but it was a pretty big hit, you know? But I would say something like, let's, we did pretty good with Surfing USA, which is paraphrasing Sweet Little Sixteen. Why don't we do rock and roll music? Top five with all the competition going on, that's pretty good, you know?

• 17:29Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. And your very first single was a hit, yes?

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Surfing was the first.

• 17:35Rick Rubin?

  That was out of the box.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it went to number two in LA and number one in Minnesota, like just a few places. But it wasn't a nationwide hit. It's not a billboard kind of thing.

• 17:45Rick Rubin?

  And it was also just on a little indie label, yes?

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Exactly. This guy was selling records out of the back of his car.

• 17:52Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  And Russ Regan, who became a very well-known head of record companies and stuff, we didn't know what to call ourselves. We called ourselves the Pendle Tones because of Pendle, the mills. Yeah, the surfers all wore them over their T-shirt. So Russ Regan said, well, it's called Surfing. What about the Beach Boys? Said, that's better than what we got. And so it stuck. So the second record going there for Surfing Safari in 1962. We took the photograph for the album cover at Paradise Cove of us on a little truck looking out to sea, you know?

• 18:30Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell me about the world in 1961, when you guys started. What was the music scene like?

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Well, for us, I was listening to all kinds of R and B and blues and stuff like that. I liked the Kingston Trio too. In fact, Alan and I both liked, Al Jardine and I both liked the Kingston Trio. He's the one that sat with Brian and said, here's the chords. We should do Slip John B, which we did. That showed up on the Pet Sounds album.

• 19:01Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, and that was a folk song, which was unusual for the Beach Boys.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  It was unusual, but I liked folk Kingson Trio.

• 19:09Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  And Al was into Kingson Trio and other people as well with the genre. And Brian did this brilliant track. I think we were in Japan touring. Brian decided to leave the touring group in November, I think it was of sixty-four.

• 19:30Rick Rubin?

  Right at the beginning, you were banned for three years.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Yes, so in other words, there were two groups. The touring group.

• 19:38Rick Rubin?

  And the studio.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Which I've always been part of the touring group.

• 19:40Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Really into promotions and venues and I'd meet with the agency and we'd decide what markets we're going to promote and which markets we'd be out of our minds to try to promote because Ron Delsner would do New York City and Barry Fay would do Colorado and the Belkans would do Cleveland. You'd be out of your fucking mind if you thought you were gonna go and do anything in those places because there are these little feistums or whatever you call them, you know, where the promoters were supreme.

• 20:14Rick Rubin?

  They owned the town.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Eventually, yes, and they eventually became Live Nation.

• 20:19Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Right, nice stock deal there.

• 20:23Rick Rubin?

  So you avoided the big promoters and just did outside stuff?

• 20:27Speaker 01

  No, no, we didn't avoid the big, we did the big promoters where you had to. But there were places that were nearby or in Route Two where you could go in and...

• 20:40Rick Rubin?

  It was like no man's land.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, kinda, and it wasn't owned by anybody. They were too small to deal with, I guess, maybe.

• 20:46Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, but that's cool because that was real grassroots.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Totally, it was very cool. In fact, Canton and Akron, we did, there were two theaters, there was a theater in each one, we did two shows a day here and two shows a day there. We'd go back and forth.

• 21:01Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  It's like maybe seventy miles.

• 21:04Rick Rubin?

  Wow, so same day?

• 21:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, but we'd have an opening act like we did Buffalo Springfield.

• 21:10Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, there was one time in Alabama where the Rolling Stones were, were on their first tour of the US and they came out and they did their thing and... We came on after them and I said, yeah, that was pretty good. I said, but I think it's time to stand up for Alabama, which is the state motto, which I knew because I had a great, great grandfather, according to the family Bible, that was a sheriff in Alabama before the Civil War.

• 21:40Rick Rubin?

  Wow, going way back.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  Had to be a very colorful profession at that time.

• 21:46Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 21:49Rick Rubin?

  Are you the only Beach Boy to have played at every Beach Boy show in history?

• 21:54Speaker 01

  I actually missed about 10 of them one, one year.

• 21:57Rick Rubin?

  And what was the cause of that?

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Exhaustion.

• 22:01Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  But the exhaustion was exacerbated by the fact that I decided I was gonna fast. I was going through a divorce situation with the mother of two of my kids, Haley and Christian. Christian sings with us now in the group and he does a fantastic job on "Goddly Nose," you know, his perfect voice, his similar timbre to Carl Wilson, which is a phenomenal singer.

• 22:28Rick Rubin?

  Unbelievable.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:30Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful voice.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, did the lead on "Good Vibrations," lead on "Goddly Nose," lead on "Darlin," you know, some really great songs. So anyway, I was going through this divorce, not that I wanted to, but she was doing stuff that wanted to be free. That was Timothy Leary, "Tune In, Turn On and Drop Out."

• 22:50Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  So that works out for some people, okay, you know.

• 22:55Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  Some people do 100 acid trips and be fine. Other people makes them crazy or they think they can fly. But once I learned meditation, I said, well, first of all, my throat's not dry and I don't feel hungover or sketchy after a while, so you have to get high again. I feel clearer and I'm relaxed and I just made the decision to just stay with that rather than all the other stuff. Cause there was weirdness going on.

• 23:25Rick Rubin?

  Do you do it first thing in the morning when you wake up?

• 23:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I shower and usually meditate first thing. Unless, you know, we've got to make a plane and then I'll meditate on the plane.

• 23:37Rick Rubin?

  Planes are great to meditate. You can do long ones.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 23:40Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, the time just passes.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 23:43Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about what motivated the fasting. You said you were going through a hard time. And that's an interesting choice.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  If you read the Old Testament and the Thessalonians, all these guys, they would fast for forty days, forty nights. I said, okay. So why don't I try that? I think it was an escape from the reality of having to go through this thing, which I didn't really want to go through.

• 24:05Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  And I hadn't been meditating. I was thinking, you know, cook two beautiful kids and stuff. And I said, this ain't cool. And so I think it was a reaction to

• 24:17Speaker 01

  maybe that will help me cope with or comprehend what was going on.

• 24:21Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  So I did it. And for about the first week, I just did juice, tea and water. That was it for three weeks. But it made me so sensitive that N wired at the same time. So so I took a few days off and that was Brian actually had been, that was something like around 1969. So Brian had been off a touring for a couple of years, but he came back and subbed for me for.

• 24:53Rick Rubin?

  That's really interesting.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  But that was the only time that I ever missed.

• 24:56Rick Rubin?

  That's interesting, though, that he came back to sub for you. It's very interesting.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:01Rick Rubin?

  But did it always feel like it was the family band? Like your family with the Wilsons and Al?

• 25:11Speaker 01

  And it's Brian's friend.

• 25:13Rick Rubin?

  Brian's friend.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:14Rick Rubin?

  So did it always feel like a family operation pretty much the whole time?

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Well, it absolutely was. Matter of fact, the first time I remember Brian singing was on Grandma Wilson's lap singing Danny Boy when he was maybe ten.

• 25:32Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  So I might have been eleven.

• 25:34Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  My mom was Wilson, Emily Lee Wilson. She was sister to Murray Wilson, who was the Brian Dennis Carl's father.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  And it was all about music, the Wilson situation. The brothers would sing in a quartet. My mom sang in high school, a trio, Madame Butterfly in a light opera. And she would wake us up to go to school to opera music. Maria Callas, Renata Taborati, and all these. And that was incredible, having to wake up in the morning that will get you out of the house. But if we turned on our, the hi-fi set to even halfway on rock and roll, that was a bad thing, according to her. Anyway, every birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, you name it, we would get together musically.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  And we would literally rehearse Christmas carols. And if we walked by the Coleman's house, they were Jewish, we would lay something light on them like Jingle Bells. Then we'd do, you know, a little town of Bethlehem down the street. So, you know, it was always about music, though.

• 26:50Rick Rubin?

  And it sounds like always about harmony, because the hymns were harmony.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Exactly. Brian and I, and my sister Maureen, who played harp on a couple of our early records, we would go to Wednesday night youth night at Angeles Mesa Presbyterian Church and sing the songs they had to sing there. Then on the way home, we'd do three-part harmony in our Everly Brothers.

• 27:11Rick Rubin?

  What does it feel like when you're singing harmony with other people with good voices and you find your part? What's, tell me what that experience is.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Well, it's not only the parts, but as you know, it's the blend. The thing that distinguished the Beach Boys musically from so many other groups that sing harmonies, they can sing two parts, they can sing three parts, some, a few, sing four parts. But it's the blend in addition to singing the parts. So the idea was that we sang with many people over the years. I mean, because Brian and Carl and myself could blend really well together. Dennis, not so much. His voice was rougher. It was fine for a lead, but it didn't blend like that beautiful celestial blend that the Beach Boys were known for.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  Alan Jardine could blend, yeah. And so, right now, we have a guy who's our musical director for our live band, who was 18 years with the Four Freshmen.

• 28:14Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  A recent incarnation, obviously, not the originals. But those guys were amazing in terms of their blend and the fantastic harmonies that they did. Yeah, so we did this filming of a get-together at Paradise Cove for the documentary we, the Disney Plus just did.

• 28:35Rick Rubin?

  The new documentary.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  And we sang "The Hearts Full of Spring", four parts, right there.

• 28:39Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  On the beach.

• 28:41Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it wasn't in the documentary. But we did that, you know, and we sang some other songs too. "Surfing to the Far East", you know, "The Hearts Were Full of Spring", though it was four parts a cappella, no track, no nothing.

• 28:54Rick Rubin?

  And when you sing together, do you feel it become one thing?

• 28:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the beauty of the blend. You supplement your individuality to create the group sound.

• 29:07Rick Rubin?

  And do you discuss in advance, like, when to breathe?

• 29:10Speaker 01

  That comes naturally, I think, according to the, you know, how the song's structured, you know. I always sang the bass part, the lower part. I don't have volume, but I have resonance.

• 29:22Rick Rubin?

  And I imagine you have to sing it the same way every time, because otherwise, the parts won't work. You basically learn your part and you play your part exactly right, and everyone does it together.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  You can't be fucking around. Like, some people think, well, can't you pick up musicians to play? Mm-mm, can't do that.

• 29:39Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  No, our songs are so structured.

• 29:41Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  In order to do them well, you have to replicate them as close to the record recording as possible.

• 29:52Rick Rubin?

  Someone said it in the documentary about comparing The Beach Boys and The Beatles. Someone said, "We were singers, they were players." And I thought that was a really interesting, astute way to look at it. I think it's really accurate.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:12Rick Rubin?

  You guys started as singers and then became a band, but you always sang together.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  We always sang together, family style, yeah. And then when we made the first record, it was a snare drum, a stand-up bass, and a guitar. That's it. That was the track. So you're right, we were singers. And other people were playing their ass off since they were 10 years old or whatever.

• 30:35Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, and it really is apples and oranges. It's an interesting way to think about it. Did you feel like you had peers making music? Or did you feel you were on an island doing your own thing?

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Hmm, that's a really interesting question. Probably the mamas and papas might have been a peer.

• 30:56Rick Rubin?

  They were great.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they had harmonies.

• 30:59Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  They didn't have the blend we had, but they definitely had-

• 31:03Rick Rubin?

  They had something.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  -music and harmonies, great songs. I mean, the lyrics, come on, "California Dreamers."

• 31:08Rick Rubin?

  Unbelievable.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  That's fucking a great song.

• 31:10Rick Rubin?

  Monday, Monday.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  We do our own version. We did a video of it in a church, and I stopped along the way. I stopped in a church, I passed along the way. I got down on my knees and pretended to pray. Fucking great lyrics. And, "The preacher likes the cold, he knows I'm gonna stay."

• 31:28Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Great song.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  John Phillips, yeah.

• 31:33Rick Rubin?

  So- Did you know him?

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Yes. In fact, "The Melody of Kokomo," which is said to be our biggest hit single.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  The melody of the verses was by John Phillips. Off the Florida Keys, there's a place called Kokomo. That's where we used to go to get away from it all. That's what he wrote. I said, hold on. That's where we used to go? Sounds like some old guy lamenting his lost youth. That's where you wanna go? That opens it up to...

• 32:06Rick Rubin?

  Aspirational.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Yes, and so that's my only contribution to the first verse. But then I came up, "Aruba Jamaica, who wanna take ya? Bermuda, Bahamas, come on, pretty molecule, orgasm, tigo, baby, why don't we go?" So I came up the chorus, because the melody, as sweet as it was, it didn't have a groove to it. So I came up, I did the R and B thing, "Aruba..." And you know what? The impulse of that is Smokey Joe's Cafe. Oh, wow, that Smokey Joe's Cafe.

• 32:36Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  "Aruba Jamaica, who I wanna take ya..." Yeah, still right back in the R and B groove, which is what I listened to constantly when I was in high school.

• 32:50Rick Rubin?

  Did you like Duop as well?

• 32:51Speaker 01

  I love it, yeah. Barbara Ann was kind of a Duop.

• 32:56Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Tell me about the album that has Barbara Ann on it. It sounds like acoustic guitar.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  It is.

• 33:02Rick Rubin?

  I love that album.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  It's our party album.

• 33:04Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  We didn't even conceive of it being a hit, but the promotion man for the East Coast for Capitol Records took it off the album and got it played in Worcester, Mass., and then I got it played in Boston, and I got it played everywhere. And it became a significant hit for us.

• 33:20Rick Rubin?

  It's a great song.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  In January, it came out with us in late 65, because we needed to do something to give us more time to develop the Pet Sounds album, like Brian wanted to do. You know, he needed more time to do all those great tracks with all the Wrecking Crew guys and stuff like that. So I suggested, let's do a party album and just take a bunch of the songs we like doing. So we did a Beatles song, a Bob Dylan song, and Barbara Ann was among those songs.

• 33:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, such a great album. I love that album.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  It's just fun, you know? It was just, we were just doing a bunch of songs we liked.

• 34:00Rick Rubin?

  But you can feel the... Spontaneous camaraderie, like you feel the fun.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  The camaraderie was Dean Torrance, who was with Jan and Dean, they did Surf City, right?

• 34:13Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  He came to the session and sang the high part with Brian. So we had two totally great falsettes.

• 34:19Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  On that.

• 34:20Rick Rubin?

  Did Brian always sing falsetto?

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:24Rick Rubin?

  From the beginning?

• 34:24Speaker 01

  He could hit, you'd probably listen to the lead of Don't Worry Baby.

• 34:29Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Unbelievable.

• 34:30Rick Rubin?

  Unbelievable.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  What a great, what a great.

• 34:32Rick Rubin?

  And even before the Beach Boys, when you guys were sitting together, he would always sing harp?

• 34:37Speaker 01

  He would sing the high part on whatever, you know, like for freshmen.

• 34:41Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  He would sing the high part, I'd sing the low part, and Carl would sing here and Al would sing here.

• 34:46Rick Rubin?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 34:48Rick Rubin?

  And would you guys sing Everly Brothers songs too?

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely.

• 34:51Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Loved the Everly Brothers.

• 34:53Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  And so did the Beatles, too. So that's interesting, those similar inspirations for both of us. Chuck Berry and Everly Brothers. That's two thirds of a hundred percent. Right there, that's enough.

• 35:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  And that was the Beach Boys, you know, Fun Fun Fun is Chuck Berry.

• 35:11Rick Rubin?

  Yep.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  And the concept was every kid wants to borrow the car and go cruising. So the girl tells her dad, I'm gonna go to the library, but she has other plans, actually.

• 35:28Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  So it was just a vignette of whatever was going on at that age when you get your driver's license, you own those crews.

• 35:37Rick Rubin?

  What was the first car song, the first hot rod song you guys did, do you remember?

• 35:41Speaker 01

  409.

• 35:42Rick Rubin?

  Great record.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's, we had what's called double sided hits there for a while because they would play Surfing is Fine, then they'd turn it over and play 409. And that went over really well in a lot of parts of the country where they didn't know from surfing or anything.

• 35:56Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  And all over the Midwest and the South, the 409, Shut Down, Little Deuce Coop, I Get Around, you know.

• 36:03Rick Rubin?

  Great.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  Fun, Fun, Fun.

• 36:05Rick Rubin?

  Great songs.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. And I was involved in the lyrics of all those songs, except Deuce Coop, I didn't do anything. There was a guy named Roger Christian, who was a DJ in LA, who was a gearhead, you know, he's... So, yeah, yeah.

• 36:21Rick Rubin?

  So cool. What do you remember about the Pet Sounds era?

• 36:26Speaker 01

  I remember doing the song Wouldn't It Be Nice? And we would do this one pass, this is one section, maybe 25, 28 times.

• 36:35Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  And I started calling Brian dog ears, because he heard shit that no other human being would.

• 36:42Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  Because he wanted to do it again. I said, "It was perfect. Why do we have to do this again?" He says, "No, I'm just looking for a different feel or something." So we do it again. We did that a lot with several of the songs, you know, that called for the backgrounds to be perfect. And there's a box set of the Pet Sounds album where they just have the tracks, and there's one CD that has just the vocals. And you listen to that and says, "Oh, boy."

• 37:11Rick Rubin?

  You understand why.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:13Rick Rubin?

  It's unbelievable.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  And then you listen to the tracks, I said, "Who the fuck came up with those woodwinds like that?" Brian, there's some stuff that doesn't make sense. I mean, he didn't have to go there for it, did he? He just did.

• 37:28Rick Rubin?

  It's so beautiful.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  He was brilliant at that point in time.

• 37:30Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So beautiful.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:33Rick Rubin?

  You guys have put out either box sets or repackages that are extensive and amazing. There was one a couple of years ago of Surf's Up.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:43Rick Rubin?

  It's mind-blowing. I listened to it a thousand times.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Come on, really?

• 37:48Rick Rubin?

  Seriously. And it's hours and hours of music.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  The master of wisdom.

• 37:53Rick Rubin?

  No, it's hours and hours of music, but it's so beautiful. How did the idea come to start doing these expanded?

• 38:02Speaker 01

  Well, the thing is, there are a lot of albums that came out that at a period in time weren't selling very much product, and yet the feeling was that there's a lot of good stuff. On some of those albums, like the Holland album and Surf's Up album, stuff like that. So why not repackage them, put them out and they've been remastered and different things. And so, so it gives a person a chance, if they're interested, into diving a little deeper into stuff that wasn't as well known.

• 38:35Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  Like for instance, our Sounds of Summer album sold about four million copies in the US, which is pretty good. This is the 50th anniversary of the Endless Summer album, which came out in 1974. That's fucking amazing to have a 50th anniversary of an album that came out in 74.

• 38:54Rick Rubin?

  Of a greatest hits.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  And we're doing about 17 of the songs, of the 20 songs on the double album.

• 38:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Tell me the story of the Endless Summer album, because I remember when it came out, it felt like it renewed the Beach Boys.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  It did. It absolutely fucking literally did because Endless Summer, the same album came out in Great Britain. It was called 20 Golden Greats and sold a million copies of a double album LP in Great Britain. That's a lot.

• 39:22Rick Rubin?

  A lot.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  It was like one every other house or something. And the thing is, they were songs that were done on Capitol Records. We were always, after that contract ended, we were with Repries, Mo Austin and yeah, that kind of thing. And then we did a couple of years of CBS. But they took all these songs and put them together and they were going to call it the Best of the Beach Boys, Volume Two or Three or something. I said, there is no such thing. I said, let's call it Endless Summer. After Bruce Brown's movie, The Endless Summer.

• 39:58Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  I'm thinking Surfing Songs, Endless Summer. It's not a best of, it's a new album to people who don't know of the Beach Boys.

• 40:08Rick Rubin?

  It's a concept album, really.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  It's a concept album that is new to the new record aware person, which there are millions.

• 40:17Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  You know, between 60 to 74, there are millions of people that got into music. They were out of grade school or junior high or high school and now they're in, really into it.

• 40:28Rick Rubin?

  Music changed over those years a lot.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:30Rick Rubin?

  It felt new again.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, what's really amazing is we'll do those songs in concert and there'll be children, pre-teens, teens, young adults and great grandparents. They'll Enjoy the music together as one big happy family, which is fantastic. That's a really neat thing to see is the happiness that those songs evoke. We did a festival on the beach in Wildwood, New Jersey last summer. And this guy comes up to me afterwards backstage and he says, you know, my dad and I bonded over your music. My dad, I lost my dad in January of this year.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  And so that being here at that concert, you playing those songs was like an emotional experience for me. That goes on these days like by the millions because people played our music, you know, as these kids were growing up and go on to college and whatever they did. The parents move on, literally. And that was something like in our family, singing together and harmonizing with the multiple generations got us started. And that whole vibe continues on in a mega type way with people all over the world.

• 41:56Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:57Rick Rubin?

  Over the years, how much did you guys play outside of the U.S.?

• 42:02Speaker 01

  Quite a bit. We and the Beatles were like for foreign groups, we're right up there in Germany, you know. In England, we did really well, you know. We even had the number one album in Spain, which is repackaged and stuff. We had fan letters from Russia, fan letters from China. I met a real estate agent from Iran who said that we play your LPs at whatever the sea that they went to during the summer. I mean, so I had the Saudi ambassador of the United States in 1977, was it? In Washington DC, tell me that he had our cassettes.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  In his Austin Healey, when he was going to college in England, that was the ambassador from Saudi Arabia. So you got people from all around the world and all these places that were, you know, not exactly perceived as friendly to the United States, that had been fans of the Beach Boys.

• 43:05Rick Rubin?

  And it always was perceived as American music. Not even just American music, California music. It really was, the sound of California.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  There's a lot of people wanting to come to California because of those songs.

• 43:20Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. So tell me, over the history of the band from the beginning, what's the first gig you remember doing ever?

• 43:27Speaker 01

  New Year's Eve, December 31st, 1961. Our song Surfing had been a decent sized hit in California at that time. And on the show was the Rivingtons with Papa Oo Maal Maal. And Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm featuring the Ikeettes. Tina Turner did this song, I'm Blue. Scooby doo, scooby doo, dong, dong, dong, dong. And she was primordial, blew my mind. That was Tina Turner was one of the Ikeettes.

• 44:04Rick Rubin?

  Is there a recording of that song? I've never heard that song.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Oh, no? Oh, sure, there is a recording, I'm Blue.

• 44:09Rick Rubin?

  I'm Blue. Let's listen to it.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 44:11Rick Rubin?

  Love listening to music.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  She was just unbelievable live, oh my God.

• 44:19Speaker 04

  Ladies and gentlemen, greet my friends if you will. These are the Ikeettes.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  That's Tim.

• 45:13Speaker 05

  I hope her reading was wrong. I hope she was wrong, but you've been gone too long, long. Hey! Dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, yeah! I do. Do be do be do be do. Dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, yeah! I do. Do be do be do be do. Dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, yeah! I do. Do, do be do be do be do. I can't sleep at night for thinking of you. Every night about to find love, boy, you come tumbling down.

• 45:56Speaker 05

  I can't stand being here alone. I thought of you and I'm fumbling, but you ain't nowhere around. I hope her reading was wrong. I hope she was wrong, but you've been gone too long, long. Hey! Dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, yeah! I do. Do be do be do be do. Hey! Dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, yeah! I do. Do be do be do be do. Dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, yeah! I do. Do, do be do be do be do.

• 46:43Rick Rubin?

  Incredible.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, unbelievable. Imagine hearing them live with the Kings of Rhythm and like.

• 46:50Rick Rubin?

  Wow, so that was your first show?

• 46:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, that blew my mind. And we only did like three songs.

• 46:57Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  I said, this is pretty good, 500 bucks, three songs. We do it for 60 bucks each or something like that, I don't know. We went back about 10 years later with, made in the many thousands. It's an improvement.

• 47:12Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. How many people were at that show, do you remember?

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Maybe a thousand.

• 47:16Rick Rubin?

  A thousand. That's a pretty big show for a first show.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  It was a Ritchie Valens Memorial Dance and Show.

• 47:27Rick Rubin?

  So up until this point, surf music had been purely instrumental?

• 47:32Speaker 01

  Correct. The Ventures and Dick Dill and the Dill Tones, you know.

• 47:37Rick Rubin?

  How many years would you say surf music was around? Two or three?

• 47:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's it.

• 47:42Rick Rubin?

  Pretty new sound.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was. And it was guitar driven, you know, which is great.

• 47:47Rick Rubin?

  And do you know if surf music was big all over the country? Or was it mainly a Southern California thing?

• 47:52Speaker 01

  I don't know about all over the country, but it was big in Japan. The Ventures did really well in Japan.

• 47:58Rick Rubin?

  That's interesting.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  They still travel, not the original guys, they're not around anymore, but.

• 48:03Rick Rubin?

  How did the idea come to sing about surfing?

• 48:08Speaker 01

  My cousin Dennis and I would go, we'd go fishing or we'd go run down the beach. And there were the surfers and the ho-dads. Meaning, there are the people that wore the Pendleton shirts and the T-shirts and the jeans and stuff. And talked a certain way, had a certain lingo. If the waves are up, they'd cut class and go to the beach, you know, that kind of thing. And so on the record surfing, I got up this morning, turned on the radios. I was checking out the surfers thing to see if I would go. And when the DJ tells me that the surfing is fine, that's one I know my baby and I will have a good time going surfing. Boom, boom, dip, dip, dip.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  So, yeah, which is a little R and B, kind of a boom, boom, dip, dip, dip, dip, kind of doo-wop-y thing.

• 48:55Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  Right. So we just were the first to make up a song. About going surfing, you know, which became a phenomenal kind of thing. And then Surf and Safari followed that up. And then Surfing USA was really, it was number one or something. And I would look at the foreign charts in Billboard. We had Surfing USA would be in the top 10 in Israel or South America or Australia or Norway, Sweden or Denmark. And, you know, that kind of thing. It's pretty fascinating to see our music from California showing up worldwide.

• 49:35Rick Rubin?

  Amazing. And surfing was still a pretty new thing. And there weren't millions of surfers in the world. There were probably thousands.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 49:43Rick Rubin?

  It was a small subculture.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  Yes, that's for damn sure.

• 49:46Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Probably you guys did more to spread surfing than anyone else. Because even in places where there weren't waves, they could listen to your music.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And there's T-shirts of Surf Ohio. You know, there's this guy that just took it upon himself to do a Surf Ohio shirt, which he's been doing after 40 years or more. Yeah.

• 50:10Rick Rubin?

  If you look at the history of the band, do you think of it in chapters?

• 50:14Speaker 01

  Well, there's definitely the original band. And then when Brian decided to go and not do the touring, but stay and do the recording and producing, recording, arranging and all that that comes along with that, there became two bands. So I don't know if you call it chapters, but it was just two bands. And then we've had different changes in the live band over the years. The most success we had record wise, I think, in the 60s was Good Vibrations. I don't think there's any question about that. Pet Sounds was great. However, it wasn't, the record company didn't know how to promote it.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  It wasn't received as well in the marketplace. But with the people who are musicians or... Producers or anything to do with writers or anything that listened to the album. I said, wow, that's pretty cool.

• 51:11Rick Rubin?

  And now it's considered one of the top albums in the history of music.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  Rolling Stone magazine did a thing, maybe 20 years ago, the top 500 albums of all time. Number one was Sergeant Pepper. Number two was Pet Sounds. That ain't bad. It's pretty good company.

• 51:29Rick Rubin?

  Not bad.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  One and two, right up there on the top of 500 albums.

• 51:34Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  Which is pretty amazing. Now, everybody has their own taste and appreciation of music. So it's gonna vary, I think, according to what group of people you're gonna. I mean, I think Marvin Gaye probably coming pretty high with a group of people who listen to his music. You know, I don't think we've ever sold as many singles as some people have. Like Three Dog Night, Joy to the World, like several million copies, you know.

• 52:00Rick Rubin?

  Great song.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. And Creedence Clearwater had some amazing singles. And so they would do more numbers, I think, but we did okay. We had, what, 40 top? Yeah, I don't know how many top 40 records.

• 52:18Rick Rubin?

  You talk about being the studio band and there being the live band.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:23Rick Rubin?

  We think of that as being unusual for the Beach Boys. But if you think about it, The Wrecking Crew played on The Byrds albums.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:30Rick Rubin?

  Simon and Garfunkel.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Mamas and Papas.

• 52:33Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, most of the things that were coming out of California.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  Even the Spectre stuff.

• 52:38Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, Phil Spector. So they were the California house band for pretty much everybody.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  They were, yeah. Huge.

• 52:46Rick Rubin?

  I think the main difference was Brian deciding not to go on the road is the thing that was unusual.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:52Rick Rubin?

  But actually, he got to spend all the time working on the music, which was beneficial to you guys.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:59Rick Rubin?

  It was unusual, but it worked out.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was. And, you know, Glen Campbell took his place for a few months.

• 53:04Rick Rubin?

  And he was incredible.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was one of the greatest guitar players ever.

• 53:10Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 53:10Speaker 01

  You know, and a self-taught.

• 53:12Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  From Arkansas.

• 53:13Rick Rubin?

  And could sing.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  He could sing his ass off, which obviously became very famous and did all those great songs about Phoenix and MacArthur's Park and all that stuff.

• 53:24Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. How did the band change when Dennis passed away?

• 53:30Speaker 01

  Well, the Dennis situation was a drag because he would go into rehab for one night. It doesn't work that way. And so he couldn't get up off the self-medication, I guess, the drugs and the alcohol. We had a road manager had to flush heroin down the toilet when we went into New Zealand one year because they don't look kindly towards importation of those types of drugs in New Zealand. In Singapore, the importation of drugs is punishable by death. That's kind of a deterrent to some people. I don't think McCartney would have taken his weed to Singapore.

• 54:13Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Didn't he go to jail in Japan?

• 54:16Speaker 01

  In Japan, yeah. Yeah, he actually spent time in Japan, yeah.

• 54:22Rick Rubin?

  What was it like at that period of the band anyway? Was it difficult with Dennis's proclivities?

• 54:28Speaker 01

  It was, it was, it was rough. Because we'd have to tell him, no, you can't come around here anymore. And so we had to get other people to play the drums.

• 54:40Rick Rubin?

  So there were times where you would ask him not to come on tour?

• 54:43Speaker 01

  Correct. Yeah, because he'd be drunk.

• 54:47Rick Rubin?

  Couldn't do it, yeah. Couldn't do his gig.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  And that's not right. Everybody else is doing their part and he's not able to. It's not that we wanted to do that.

• 54:57Rick Rubin?

  No, of course.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  We just had to do that for the...

• 54:59Rick Rubin?

  Of course.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  To protect the group.

• 55:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Was Carl a steady force in the band over the years?

• 55:09Speaker 01

  For the most part. He went through some times where he was involved in some of those things he shouldn't have been. But he got up off of that and was a very stable force in the group. He was the... The bandleader, musically speaking.

• 55:28Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  And I was always in promotions and figuring out where we're gonna tour and what markets, like I alluded to earlier. So it was a good partnership because I knew that the songs were gonna be perfectly played and sang. And I was able to commit a lot of time to songwriting and guiding the group in terms of the one-nighters and stuff. So we've put, somebody gave me an award in Troy this last summer, saying that we've done over 6,000 shows or something like that, the most of anybody.

• 56:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  We like what we do.

• 56:04Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  You know, and I like doing these smaller theaters because they sound great, they look great, you know? Economically, they're not as big as the amphitheaters and the festivals. There's huge festivals nowadays where they have, we did Stagecoach and there was 80,000 people, they say, at our concert. The Stagecoach sold out, which is a huge festival, sold out in advance, which is an amazing thing.

• 56:33Rick Rubin?

  After, in the summer, you guys were playing huge shows again.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, did very well.

• 56:38Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. So tell me, from the peaks and valleys of the size of audiences you've played to over the years, just tell me the roller coaster ride.

• 56:48Speaker 01

  We always try to do the best shows we can.

• 56:53Rick Rubin?

  Of course.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  No matter what the size and stuff.

• 56:55Rick Rubin?

  Of course.

• 56:55Speaker 01

  So I really don't identify so much which are bigger on the smaller shows, except to say then in July 4th, in the mid 80s, we did these shows in Philadelphia and Washington DC. We're in Philadelphia on a July 4th, the Philadelphia Inquirer said we had 900,000 people in the streets of Philadelphia in front of the, you know, where Sylvester Stallone has his statue. And then that, that was the afternoon and the evening was Washington DC with over a half a million people.

• 57:29Rick Rubin?

  And those would be on television, I remember.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 57:32Rick Rubin?

  Amazing. How did those come about?

• 57:34Speaker 01

  I came up with the idea.

• 57:35Rick Rubin?

  It's a great idea.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  I said, look, the United States has been good to us. The least we can do is celebrate July 4th and do a free concert. Now, a free concert is anything but free in terms of the cost of putting it on. So, we had Amway one year came up with a few hundred thousand dollars for the sound, the lights, the staging, all the transportation for all the different acts and stuff. Cause we wouldn't do just the Beach Boys, although we headlined. We knew we weren't the only music out there, so we had the OJs one year.

• 58:07Rick Rubin?

  Great.

• 58:08Speaker 01

  We had Joan Jett one year.

• 58:09Rick Rubin?

  Great.

• 58:10Speaker 01

  We had Hank Jr. One year, we even had Julio Iglesias sing Surfer Girl with us. We did the backgrounds for an album he did called Bel Air or something. He did an album and we sang The Air That I Breathe, which is...

• 58:27Rick Rubin?

  Great song.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's nice. And, and, and we were playing some of our songs in the studio and he says, "Who did these songs?" "Well, Brian and I did those songs." And so, he was impressed, you know? So, we, we got him to sing Surfer Girl with us and he did one of the songs from his album as well. And we introduced him to over half a million people.

• 58:51Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about each band member. From childhood, tell me about each guy.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  Okay, well, Dennis never touched a drum set before he started, but he learned the drums right off the bat, you know, which is great. And he wasn't J. Kripa, but he did the two and four down, went boom, boom. And, you know, he was good. A lot of energy and charisma and stuff. The girl loved him. Alan Jardine was the one who played rhythm guitar. Carl Wilson played lead guitar. For a while, Alan left the group after Surfing and we signed Surfing Safari with a fellow named David Marks, who played rhythm guitar and Carl played lead. So, it was Brian, Dennis and Carl, Mike and David Marks, signed the Capitol Records

• 59:40Speaker 01

  contract and David was with us for about four albums. And then, my Uncle Murray didn't like the fact that his parents, he was only like 14 or 15 at the time while we were doing this. And his parents were very watchful for him and my Uncle Murray didn't like that cause he, he wanted to have his way with his group. You know, and we fired Uncle Murray, Brian and I did. And his way of getting even with me was to, because he was administrating the publishing, and he didn't put my name as writer on Help Me Rhonda, I Get Around.

• 1:00:19Rick Rubin?

  All the songs you read the words.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  Trudy School, Little Saint Nick. Yeah, Surfing USA was the biggest ripoff of it all, but yeah.

• 1:00:27Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about the conversation you and Brian had deciding to fire Murray. That's a big deal because he's Brian's dad.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, and it was not easy. But Brian wanted to do his music a certain way, and his father would come in and say, oh, do it a different way, you know?

• 1:00:43Rick Rubin?

  He was getting in the way.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was interfering with the sound that Brian was hearing that he wanted to put on record. And so it became a conflict creatively. In addition to Murray was not a very nice, friendly guy, you know? So we did, in fact, fire him as our manager, but he's hung on to the publishing. And he sold it.

• 1:01:09Rick Rubin?

  Do you remember the conversation where you guys fired him?

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:12Rick Rubin?

  What was it like?

• 1:01:13Speaker 01

  It was tough. It was not fun, but we just told him flat out, you know, we want to go in our own direction, basically, and we don't think you understand or are capable of letting us do what we want to do. So it was a decision that had to be made, you know, in order to do the records that we quickly thereafter did.

• 1:01:41Rick Rubin?

  When you were starting, the different members of the band, how were people's tastes the same and how is it different?

• 1:01:49Speaker 01

  Well, as I've mentioned earlier, Alan Jardine really liked the folk music. Brian fell in love with the Four Freshmen. He would sit at the piano for hours and break it down, break down those harmonies. And so he would have those harmonies in his head. And he would, here's the bass, here's the notes above that and the middle two parts, and he would sing the high part. So he would sit at the piano and break it all down. And so, and he had that amazing falsetto.

• 1:02:22Speaker 01

  He had a great lead in natural voice, too. You know. Carl, of course, Carl had a beautiful voice, could blend with the best of them. And a great lead. He did Wild Honey and Darling and Good Vibrations leads, stuff Gomly knows. So he was absolutely amazing. Al sang We Don't Help Me Rhonda, which went to number one. I wrote the lyrics and Brian did the preponderance of the music. We worked on the harmonies together. Dennis has his own style and own type of music and stuff that he did. It was quite emotional.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  And we, in fact, John Stamos, our actor friend, chose to do the song Dennis wrote called Forever on the episode where Uncle Jesse got married on Full House. And we backed him up on Forever. And if he comes out and does concerts with us, which he likes to do.

• 1:03:27Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  We back him up and he sings that song. You know, people love it.

• 1:03:33Rick Rubin?

  How would you decide who would sing lead on a song?

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  Often it was the range of the song. And of course, you know, I don't have particularly a high voice. But if Brian and I wrote a song together, quite often I would end up singing the lead. You know, like Brian had a period where he didn't get out of bed very often, you know? He was just isolated. And so I went over to his house one day and this is regarding Do It Again, 1968. And I got him, took him down on the beach, walked around a little bit, came back. I remember going back to my house and sitting at the piano and about 15, 20 minutes, we had that song carved out.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  Came up with the concept, wrote the lyrics, sang the lead. He did the track, you know, along with Carl and stuff. At the studio, we'd put in his house in Bel Air. So we didn't want him out. At that point in time, it wasn't a good idea to have him out in Hollywood in the streets. He would stop people in Bel Air, stop cars and ask them if he could borrow a cigarette.

• 1:04:46Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was. You know, doing a lot of cocaine and.

• 1:04:51Rick Rubin?

  Do you think bringing him to the beach sparked the inspiration for the song?

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And we just got on the piano and it came up with it in no time and recorded it. And like I said, I went to number one in England, which was good. I mean, not as high in the US because we were at the end of our tenure there and they weren't trying too hard with us. But they tried okay. And seventy four was the summer album. It came back around.

• 1:05:23Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Tell me more about writing lyrics about any times you can think of where you would have the concept in advance, let's say.

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  The concept in advance. We did a show at a place called The Lagoon, which is a place in Salt Lake City, which is a theme park. And we were very popular there. We did a show to open the season, one in the middle of the season, and a show to close the season. So for a couple of years there, we would, we'd go three times a year, all during the summer. And so this one time we had played there and I, I said to Brian, we gotta do a song about a girl who borrows her dad's car and says she's gonna go to the library, but in fact, she goes cruising. That was the birth of Fun Fun Fun. So, and

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  I said, it's got to start with the Chuck Berry style of guitar intro. So Carl did,

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  so that was a case of the concept.

• 1:06:27Rick Rubin?

  Came first.

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  Came before the song. And then Brian got busy with Carl and in the studio and came up with the track and I sang the lyrics. I finished up the lyrics, sang them. And he did that amazing falsetto part, ooh, at the end, which was mind blowing. I always thought that was a fantastic part. So there's that. Then another time, November of nineteen sixty four. It was November twenty second or so. It was.

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  He had moved out of his family home because the contentious between his dad and himself and stuff. So he rented a house not too far away, a couple miles away. And I went and joined him for a songwriting session. He came up with this beautiful melody, a haunting melody. And I came up with the lyrics to a song called "The Warmth of the Sun", which is really beautiful ballad. And we probably stopped writing at about 2:00 in the morning. And the next day, we were awakened that President Kennedy had been taken to the hospital in Dallas. Yeah, so it was... When we were writing it, he had to have been in Dallas.

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  It was early morning hours, the last day he was alive. And so it was an eerie feeling in that music. What I got out of the feeling of it was the loss of some love. Meaning, you were in love with somebody, they didn't feel the same way anymore. Maybe they had it one time, but you didn't feel it anymore. So it was never gonna happen. And yet, and part of the fact is really screwed up, terrible, disappointing feelings, at least you had felt that euphoria that comes along with that kind of feeling of being in love.

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  And so that was trying to take a negative and look at it positively. So I wrote lyrics to go with that mood and the feeling of it. And we didn't change any lyrics because of what happened. We've recorded about a month later, but the emotion was there.

• 1:08:45Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:08:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:46Rick Rubin?

  Let's listen to that song.

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  "The Warmth of the Sun".

• 1:08:49Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, it's one of my favorites.

• 1:09:06Speaker 06

  What good is the dawn That grows into day?

• 1:09:20Speaker 06

  The sunset at night Or living this way? For I am the one The soul of the sun Within me at night Within me at night The love of my life She left me one day

• 1:10:02Speaker 06

  I cried when she said I don't feel the same way Still I am the one The soul of the sun Within me tonight Within me tonight I'll dream of her arms And her then I'll breathe

• 1:10:45Speaker 06

  Just like she's still there The way that I feel My love like the moon The soul of the sun And one and one night

• 1:11:45Rick Rubin?

  Incredible soul.

• 1:11:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's beautiful.

• 1:11:46Rick Rubin?

  Incredible soul.

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:48Rick Rubin?

  What do you remember about recording that?

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  Just that it was done January 1 of 65.

• 1:11:56Rick Rubin?

  Wow. When you would do the harmony vocals, would all of you stand around one mic? How would you do it typically?

• 1:12:02Speaker 01

  I would be on my own mic. The other guys would be on their mic if it's doing backgrounds. Whoever's gonna do a lead, that's the difference.

• 1:12:09Rick Rubin?

  Would the lead happen at the same time, too?

• 1:12:12Speaker 01

  I think what we did was, in that case, I think we did the backgrounds and they did the lead.

• 1:12:17Rick Rubin?

  Backgrounds first?

• 1:12:18Speaker 01

  I think, that's what I recall.

• 1:12:20Rick Rubin?

  Would it typically be the case on a song where there would be lead and backups, that you'd do the backups first for the lead to sit on top of?

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, pretty often, yeah. But, you know, I would sing on my own mic because I don't have volume in that range. But I have a resonance, like, it's a nice bass of the others. So I'd have my own mic. The other guys singing their more natural ranges. I'm singing low. I'm not singing the lead in that range.

• 1:12:51Rick Rubin?

  Would there ever be songs where the lead would be sang at the same time as the harmonies in recording?

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, especially as technology grows, you know. You do whatever. Or maybe you just do a verse on the lead and then do the harmonies and then you finish it up.

• 1:13:10Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  You know, later. It's all, no set way.

• 1:13:14Rick Rubin?

  Would you ever record music and vocals at the same time? Or rarely?

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  The only time I recall doing that is our Christmas album where we did half the albums with an orchestra. So you did it like Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin would, you know, sang with the orchestra.

• 1:13:31Rick Rubin?

  Live with the orchestra.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  So we did that on a few songs.

• 1:13:34Rick Rubin?

  Was that a good experience, singing with an orchestra?

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was cool. You were actually reading your notes, you know. I was able to read music because I studied piano a little bit, so was never a good piano player, but at least I'd studied music and I could read the notes. So I was 38.

• 1:13:51Rick Rubin?

  Over the years, were there different factions in the band?

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  We used to take two jets from one place to another. One was a smoking jet and one was a non-smoking jet.

• 1:14:04Rick Rubin?

  So that's what made up the factions, the smokers and the non-smokers?

• 1:14:08Speaker 01

  Smokers was a euphemism for those who were doing the dope.

• 1:14:11Rick Rubin?

  Oh, I see.

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  Or smoke and pot or whatever. And it could be cigarettes too, because, you know, not everybody metabolizes cigarettes smoked that well, you know?

• 1:14:21Rick Rubin?

  How do you think you escaped the root of drugs and alcohol?

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  Well, because of meditation, I think.

• 1:14:31Rick Rubin?

  But the other guys meditated too.

• 1:14:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they also didn't mind experimenting with all these other things. So I was fine with being relaxed and clear and energetic through meditation. It's not like I never smoked any weed, but people would say, oh, this is really great shit. And I was saying, not really, it's the same as it always was. For me, it didn't, it wasn't that attractive, so I didn't want to graduate to anything else.

• 1:15:02Rick Rubin?

  Understood.

• 1:15:03Speaker 01

  Because you would see people who were doing LSD and they were acting really weird. And if they were doing a lot of coke, they were acting really wired. I'm already energetic enough, I think, just naturally with, I mean, I was very athletic in high school. My, I ran cross-country. Three years of cross-country, it was a little varsity cross-country. As captain of my team, I'd run five miles in the morning before breakfast.

• 1:15:29Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  So I was, I had some, what do you call it, competitive thing, and I didn't think being drunk or fucked up or stoned is you're going to put your best foot forward on stage. So.

• 1:15:44Speaker 01

  Transferring that competitive thing on the stage. You want to do the best you can. And you just can't if you're under the influence.

• 1:15:52Rick Rubin?

  Do you remember the first time you guys played outside of the US?

• 1:15:56Speaker 01

  Australia is what I remember, yeah. Roy Orbison was on the show.

• 1:16:02Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:16:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:03Rick Rubin?

  Great hearing him sing live.

• 1:16:05Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. He was an opening act for us.

• 1:16:09Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  His last year, he was touring before he passed away.

• 1:16:13Rick Rubin?

  What a singer.

• 1:16:14Speaker 01

  Oh, and a nice guy, too.

• 1:16:16Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  He really was a great singer.

• 1:16:18Rick Rubin?

  Tell me what you remember about the Smile album situation.

• 1:16:24Speaker 01

  I remember that that was when the drugs was at the worst.

• 1:16:27Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. My cousin Brian was doing LSD and whatever else he was doing, because I wasn't there when they were doing it. And this guy Van Tyke Parks was involved with the lyrics and stuff. So I wasn't involved creatively with it. But I sang on all the songs that was asked to sing on, you know?

• 1:16:46Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:47Speaker 01

  But I thought there was just, I call it acid alliteration. I just thought there was too much monkey business, as Chuck Berry would have said, for me to be involved with.

• 1:17:01Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:02Speaker 01

  So it's just, it was not a positive time from my frame of reference. The tracks were fucking awesome.

• 1:17:12Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:13Speaker 01

  It's the lyrics that I had a problem and the behavior around it.

• 1:17:17Rick Rubin?

  Do you think drugs changed Brian's chemistry?

• 1:17:22Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

• 1:17:24Rick Rubin?

  Was he a different person before he took drugs?

• 1:17:26Speaker 01

  Yes. He was very sensitive, always, all the way through it. But and he was compulsive and really, like, for instance, if you're obsessed about music, it turned out great. But if you're obsessive about drugs, there's a chance that your psyche is not going to survive, not without some, you know, damage. And even Brian will say to this day, says, "Don't do drugs." You know, because he knows that he harmed himself.

• 1:17:58Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:59Speaker 01

  He just did too much or too many. And, and you never know. I mean, it could have happened once, or it could have happened over periods of time. And not a psychiatrist or psychologist for that matter. But he was so into it, into the music. And it took him fantastic places. But those drugs, I think you can look at it, you know, in terms of the timing of his being. I call him the Stalin of the studio. Because he was absolutely the Fuhrer in the studio. He was in command and he was great at it.

• 1:18:40Speaker 01

  And then after that Smile situation, he shelved the whole album. Didn't want it, want it to come out. Bits and pieces, drubs and drabs came out over the years. And some of the tracks are really brilliant. But right now, he's in a conservatorship because of the damage that was done back then.

• 1:19:00Rick Rubin?

  Did you ever get to meet Eugene Landy?

• 1:19:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:19:03Rick Rubin?

  What was that like?

• 1:19:04Speaker 01

  He was into what they called 24-hour therapy. He wouldn't allow Brian to talk to his mom, his brothers, his bandmates. He controlled his life totally. And he took plenty of money for the purpose of doing so. Yeah, yeah. So it was very egregious. And he had to be the producer. We were doing Kokomo and we asked Brian if he wanted to be on the record. Well, Landy wouldn't let him be on the record unless Landy was a producer. And we had Terry Melcher produce that one. He was, he did The Birds and Paul Revere and The Raiders. It was very successful. And so we didn't need him. So Landy wouldn't let him participate unless he, we met his needs.

• 1:19:48Rick Rubin?

  How was it working with Terry?

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  Great. He was really cool.

• 1:19:52Rick Rubin?

  Did you know him for a long time?

• 1:19:54Speaker 01

  Quite a while. Yeah. We were asked to do Kokomo for the Cocktail Album soundtrack.

• 1:20:02Speaker 01

  Featured Tom Cruise and stuff. Like I said, I came up with the chorus. Terry came up with the bridge. "Ooh, I wanna take you down to Kokomo. Get there fast, then we'll take it slow. That's where you wanna go." So he came up with that. And when the director of the film heard the music, he said, "This is the best song you've done since Good Vibrations." And I said, "Really? I mean, we're just doing it because we were asked to do this song for the album."

• 1:20:27Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:27Speaker 01

  And sure enough, it went to number one and it was very successful.

• 1:20:31Rick Rubin?

  Incredible.

• 1:20:32Speaker 01

  People sing along to it, too. Like, because it's been on Full House, it's been for years now. And so, all these kids sing along to it. I mean, kids from 10 to, you know, 30, 40.

• 1:20:47Rick Rubin?

  It's amazing. Is it true that Brian had a sandbox in his house?

• 1:20:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was okay until the cats found... That's a kitty litter box.

• 1:20:59Rick Rubin?

  Do you sing when you're not on tour?

• 1:21:03Speaker 01

  I listen to my music with these ears because I have some hearing loss in certain ranges. And the antidote to that is to listen to your music. So it keeps your sense of pitch right. So I'm doing that.

• 1:21:18Rick Rubin?

  How would you say your relationship with music has changed over the course of your life?

• 1:21:26Speaker 01

  Before we became a group, it was just a hobby. It was a family hobby and we loved doing it. And just, I think the love of harmonizing together was the impetus. The reason to get together, even though if you didn't 100% have the same lifestyle or agree with everybody's politics or anything like that, or religion for that matter, you could harmonize together. And I think it's a life lesson, actually. You can harmonize together. So much of that negativity disappears and the division and stuff. So I think the fact that we love the harmony and harmonizing together as a family...

• 1:22:13Speaker 01

  Carried through into our professional times. You know, who smoked, who didn't, who did drugs, who didn't. Only harmonized, no matter if it was good vibrations. I mean, Brian will talk about having smoked some pot and that got him thinking about California Girls, or he did something else and it helped him write something. I personally think that people are creative not because of, but in spite of. I think there's a billion, jillion neurons going on mentally. I think you have plenty of creativity to uncover. Yeah. There's no limit to the possibilities.

• 1:22:57Speaker 01

  But music, to me, it is, it's kind of interesting because we still have the same feeling about recreating the sound on stage. But we've noticed over the last 50 years that these songs actually mean something to people.

• 1:23:44Speaker 07

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