After Suzanne and I divorced, I was determined to maintain custody of our two children. Nowadays, that might not be so unusual; but back then, it was rare for fathers to prevail in such a hearing, and I’m almost certain that no male rock performer had ever been awarded custody. My lawyer told me explicitly that I had no chance. I know that Suzanne loved our kids, and it was true that I still traveled a lot. But I thought I could provide a healthier, more stable home. What’s more, I was so rattled that Susan Atkins babysat our children, I just thought they would be safer with me. I felt strongly enough about it that if I had lost custody, I considered moving to London with Hayleigh and Christian.
It didn’t come to that. A judge assessed our respective claims and awarded me custody, for which I’ve always been grateful. (Suzanne had visitation rights, including Christmas and other holidays.) I hired a young woman, Connie Pappas, who had been a receptionist at a recording studio, to be the caretaker for the kids. She did a wonderful job, and she stayed with us until I bought my next property on 101 Mesa Lane in Santa Barbara. Another couple lived on the property, and they would take care of the children when I traveled. The compound itself was far more rustic than any place I had ever lived. It was three and a half acres, which included six redwood structures, the main house a former girls’ school with a common kitchen. We had filtered water, landscaped grounds, and organic gardens planted for maximum yield according to the moon cycles from The Old Farmers’ Almanac, all surrounded by cornstalks and lemon and eucalyptus trees. The house was perched firmly on a cliff that overlooked the Pacific Ocean, and we had a steep, hundred-step staircase that led directly to a nude beach.
It was an idyllic setting, soon equipped with a studio to record music, and in the years ahead, Maharishi himself would pay a timely visit.
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But I could not escape the present, and the Manson murders had one other ricochet effect on the Beach Boys. The breathless coverage cast Southern California as a breeding ground for sadism, criminality, and freaked-out hippies. This made a mockery of the Southern California we had glorified and reinforced the perception that the Beach Boys were impossibly detached from what was happening in our country and even in our own city. I’m sure that was the thinking of Capitol Records, which didn’t believe in the music we were now doing and did not renew our contract in 1969. For the first time in seven years, we didn’t have a label. Financially, we had little money coming in, were still reeling from our tour-related losses, and were behind on many of our bills.
In August of 1969, some 200,000 young people descended on muddy farmland in upstate New York for what would be the most significant rock festival in history—Woodstock. The Who played at sunrise and Ravi Shankar performed in the rain. Jimi Hendrix riffed an electrified “The Star-Spangled Banner” that mimicked dropping bombs and machine-gun fire. And the Beach Boys? We weren’t invited. It wasn’t our time and it wasn’t our music, but I can’t say I was heartbroken. I thought the atmospherics at these concerts—the drugs, the mayhem, at times the violence—were getting out of hand. On December 6, at the Altamont Speedway in Northern California, another counterculture rock bonanza unfolded, with a lineup that included Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Violence scarred the event from the beginning, with dozens of fans beaten or maimed. One woman had her skull fractured by a thrown beer can. Two people were killed by a hit-and-run driver; another was drowned; and one fan was stabbed to death by a member of the Hells Angels while the Stones performed “Under My Thumb” onstage.
Our concerts were tame indeed. In fact, we sometimes performed in near-empty halls. On Thanksgiving, we did three shows in one day—two in South Dakota and one in Sioux City, Iowa. I drove one of the station wagons to a place called the Corn Palace, and running late, I think I gunned it at about 100 mph while Bruce ate turkey off the dashboard. We performed in front of about fifty people.
But no matter how meager the crowds, at least someone showed up, and I never lost faith in our talent. We released an album, 20/20, which included a couple of cuts from the Smile era (“Our Prayer” and “Cabin Essence”), two good numbers by Dennis (“Be with Me” and “All I Want to Do”), and Carl’s brilliant cover of “I Can Hear Music.” That song was released as a single, became a hit in the United Kingdom (while charting at No. 24 in the United States), and demonstrated Carl’s growth as producer and arranger. We continued to develop new music, and our fans overseas still believed in us. In June 1969, we toured Europe for a month and, in London and the Netherlands, in Paris and Frankfurt, played before enthusiastic, sold-out crowds. There was nothing unusual about that. What was unusual was that we played in our first Communist country.
Starting in the mid-1950s, the State Department began sending jazz musicians to Soviet bloc countries, turning the likes of Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington into goodwill ambassadors. Music, it seemed, was one of the few things that the two superpowers could agree on, and these cultural exchanges continued. In 1969, Czechoslovakia was part of an Eastern Europe Rock and Roll Festival, endorsed by the Soviets, and the festival’s organizers approached the State Department and asked if the Beach Boys would participate. We were supposedly the only rock group in America that was acceptable, all others considered too decadent. I of course had wanted to perform in a Communist country for several years and absolutely agreed that music was one of the best ways to bring people together. We accepted the invitation, and a representative from the State Department flew to Los Angeles and swore us in as official ambassadors. We were given guidelines on how to act, what to say, what to eat, and were told specifically not to have intimate relations with anyone behind the Iron Curtain. We assured them there would be no cross-border liaisons.
It was actually a remarkable time to make the trip, as we flew from Paris to Prague on June 17. The previous summer, in response to reform movements in Czechoslovakia, the Soviets sent in 200,000 troops and 2,000 tanks to occupy the country while arresting the movement’s leader, Alexander Dubček. Czech resistance was mostly nonviolent but included two students setting themselves on fire in Prague’s Wenceslas Square. I didn’t know what to expect, but when we arrived, and with the tanks still in the streets, we were treated like conquering heroes. Kids peppered us with questions about America and asked us for our autographs—some had us sign on their arms.
We got a crash course in the shortcomings of a planned economy. We were paid in the local currency, but it couldn’t be exchanged outside the country—it had no value—so we had to scramble around buying stuff (clothes, dishes, suitcases) before we left.
Prague’s roads were bumpy, and the jarring ride over to Lucerna Hall damaged the batteries that powered our console and Fender amp heads. No batteries, no show. But our sound engineer found replacements that were the size of tank batteries, wheeled in by eight armed guards. We also needed a Hammond organ. Only two were available in the entire country, and the one we got had sticky keys, a missing amplifier tube, and some rogue notes.
In truth, the music hall was so rowdy, it didn’t make any difference. We played two shows, and more than 6,000 fans who were unable to get tickets stood outside, forcing the police to bring reinforcements. Inside was hot, stale, and smoky—there was no air conditioning, and supposedly no air conditioning in the country—and with so many people jammed together, the columns were perspiring. One of our keyboardists said the sweat and humidity were so great the piano keys were too wet to play. I had been wearing a white monk’s robe, reflective of the spiritual influences in my life, and the room was so stifling that I took it off and performed bare-chested in white pants. But more than anything, it was just deafening—stomping, whistling, screaming—so loud that you had to scream into the microphone if you had any chance of being heard.
Our performances coincided with the release of our album on a Czech label, making it our first record distributed behind the Iron Curtain. Titled The Beach Boys and featuring liner notes in the local language, it included “California Girls,” “Good Vibrations,” and “Fun, Fun, Fun.” The Czechs wanted our music, but I don’t believe that the music alone was our appeal. In our three days in the country, in Prague and Brno, we were besieged by fans fascinated by the United States. They were desperate for anything Western. In contrast to their own suffocating conditions, the Beach Boys represented sun-kissed beaches and high-powered hot rods. But we also represented freedom, prosperity, and opportunity. The irony: in America itself, we were too closely associated with those values, but abroad, those values made us idols.
All music has a political context, and we performed ours when the Soviets and the Americans were vying for the allegiance of people from across the world, from Europe to Asia to Africa as well as Latin America. Unwittingly, our music exported the American dream in two-minute capsules. I’m not claiming we helped win the Cold War, but I’ve heard from Russians and Chinese, Cubans and South Africans, East Germans and Vietnamese, who listened to our music on American Forces Network or pirate ships or bootlegged tapes or old-fashioned albums. And they loved our songs, many of which offered a vision of America, and a way of life, that they themselves wanted.
And so on that hot night at Lucerna Hall in Prague, amid the cheers, cries, and applause, I wanted to be heard. We were told that we had a special guest in the audience—the country’s ousted leader, Alexander Dubček. I stepped to the mic and, with a song that we had recently recorded, yelled, “We’re very happy to be here, all the way from the West Coast of the United States of America! We dedicate this next number, which is called ‘Break Away,’ to Mr. Dubček, who is also here tonight!”
The place went crazy.