For years our wholesome image had been our albatross, a reminder that we were part of an American era that was now denigrated for its conformity and patriotism. Our music changed and our album covers changed and we changed, but it didn’t matter. We were still the Beach Boys. Then, finally, America changed too, and the albatross turned into a pearl.
The early 1970s was defined by disillusionment. Our combat troops finally left Vietnam, though it didn’t appear that we won. The Watergate hearings began. An Arab oil embargo led to gas lines; inflation spiraled; the economy sputtered. In August of 1974, a helicopter removed Richard Nixon, one last time, from the lawn of the White House. In April of ’75, another helicopter evacuated our marines, for the final time, from our embassy rooftop in Saigon.
The greatest country in the world had lost its way.
Where were you in ’62?
That was the tag line for American Graffiti, the 1973 film about a group of recent high school graduates who hang out at Mel’s Drive-In, cruise the streets with their radio blaring, and sweetly anguish about the future (go to college, don’t go to college). All this happens on one languorous summer night in 1962, complemented by a soundtrack of early rock and roll hits. The film’s writer and director, George Lucas, drew on his experiences growing up in Modesto, California, capturing a moment of innocence and faith that he clearly relished. Only at the end of the movie, when it’s revealed that one character would be killed by a drunk driver and another was missing in Vietnam, does reality intrude.
American Graffiti could have walked right out of the pages of our early songbook. The car in the movie that attracted the most attention is a lemon-yellow little Deuce Coupe, whose radio plays “Surfin’ Safari” and whose tomboy passenger, Mackenzie Phillips, believes the “Beach Boys are boss.” The movie shows no drugs, no violence, no sex, and when the credits roll, the soundtrack plays “All Summer Long,” which Brian and I wrote in 1964.
I thought the movie captured the spirit of our music and the era, and in future concerts, we even used a white T-Bird as a prop onstage—the car that in the film Suzanne Somers drives with seductive élan.
What few people anticipated was the impact of American Graffiti.
It was considered a small film, made for $700,000 and before anyone had heard of George Lucas. But it was a blockbuster, winning critical acclaim, earning five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture (it lost to The Sting), and earning more than $200 million in box office sales and rentals. That doesn’t even include the LP, which charted at No. 10 and whose forty-one songs included such grand oldies as “Sixteen Candles,” “Johnny B. Goode,” and “Love Potion No. 9.”
The movie triggered a wave of nostalgia. The sitcom Happy Days, about preternaturally well-adjusted teens in the trouble-free 1950s, premiered in 1974. Life published a hefty “Best of Life” edition in 1973 that prominently featured photographs from the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. Old-time comic books were popular. Restaurants with jukeboxes drew crowds. Kate Smith sang “God Bless America” at hockey games.
Americans, rightfully disillusioned and understandably cynical, found comfort in a less threatening, more carefree time. People just wanted to feel good about something, and anyone who could fill that positive niche would be in business.
Well, the Beach Boys were still in business, though nostalgia alone didn’t spur our revival. We had stopped fighting with our audiences and overhauled our live show to showcase our hits. In November of 1973, Warner/Reprise released a Beach Boys in Concert album that was heavily weighted toward our early songs (“Surfin’ USA,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “California Girls,” “Good Vibrations”). It charted at No. 25, making it our bestselling LP since 1967 and our first gold album for the label.
Capitol Records noticed, and it wanted to release another collection of our songs. Labels love compilations, as they don’t have to spend money on new music while getting one more shot to cash in on existing recordings. I spoke with the Capitol executives, who said they wanted to once again use the “Best of” construction to name the album. We already had Best of the Beach Boys, Volumes 1, 2, and 3, the latter charting at a miserable No. 53. There had to be something more original. Capitol was going to use our old surfing and hot rod hits, which I thought were timeless, so I suggested that the album be called Endless Summer. For a new generation of fans, it would be like a new album instead of a collection of oldies.
Endless Summer was released in June of 1974, with twenty songs exclusively from 1962 to 1965. Fans assumed that Capitol chose those songs to take advantage of the country’s pining for those innocent days of the early ’60s. In truth, Capitol couldn’t use any songs after 1965 because in settling its lawsuit with us, the Beach Boys had exclusive rights to those post-1965 numbers for ten years. (Capitol added “Good Vibrations” to an Endless Summer CD in 1987.)
The response to Endless Summer was stunning. Four months after hitting the stores, it reached No. 1 and remained on the Billboard album chart for a remarkable 155 weeks; more than 3 million copies were sold in the United States. In 1976, the album, with a modified song list and retitled 20 Golden Greats, was released in the United Kingdom, where it was No. 1 for ten straight weeks and sold an amazing 1 million copies. (The U.K.’s population at the time was only 56 million, a quarter of the U.S. population.)
The album’s success, at least in America, was credited to nostalgia, but there were plenty of bands from the 1950s and ’60s that did not experience a renaissance. What propelled Endless Summer, I believe, was that the Beach Boys were no longer stigmatized. Many fans have told me how in the late ’60s or early ’70s, they would buy a Beach Boy album and then hide it as they left the record store or conceal it from their friends back home. We were objects of ridicule. Almost overnight, the stigma was gone. I was thirty-three years old, Brian and Al thirty-two. Only Carl, at twenty-eight, had yet to reach thirty. We were ancient by pop music standards. But when “Catch a Wave” and “I Get Around” and “Don’t Worry Baby” and all those other classic songs were introduced to a new generation of teenagers, they embraced the music just as their predecessors had.
In April 1975, Capitol once again scooped into our early songs (including “Dance, Dance, Dance,” “Barbara Ann,” and “409”) and released Spirit of America, and it raced to No. 8. Over the years, the Beach Boys have taken a lot of heat for promoting our old songs at the expense of our new ones, but we couldn’t control the marketplace. In this case, we had our past record company (Capitol) competing against our current one (Warner/Reprise), and our past was winning big. So Warner/Reprise went retro as well. In 1975, it released Good Vibrations, Best of the Beach Boys, its own collection of oldies, mostly from 1966 to 1968 (including “Surf’s Up,” “Heroes and Villains,” and “God Only Knows”), and that album charted at No. 25. Including Endless Summer, we had three albums of past songs competing against one another. In 1976, when Capitol released Beach Boys ’69—Live in London, we had four.
The release of Endless Summer coincided with an eight-city summer tour with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The epitome of countercultural, folk-rock hip, CSN&Y was on a ballyhooed “reunion tour,” and the promoter, the omnipresent Bill Graham, prevailed on the group to share the stage with the Beach Boys. Our own concerts had already been on the upswing, moving from college auditoriums and performing arts centers to an occasional stadium, but the pairing with CSN&Y gave us more cachet and put us before even larger crowds (52,000 at County Stadium in Milwaukee, 50,000 at the Astrodome in Houston).
We were the opening act, and even though CSN&Y had a loyal following, it’s almost always the case that when we perform with another band, we take the air out of the place, in part because very few bands have our broad catalog of hits. As the Kansas City Times wrote about the concert at Royals Stadium on July 19, 1974: “The crowd’s biggest reaction was saved for the Beach Boys, stars of the middle 1960s. The group was called back for an encore after performing for an hour and a half. Standing ovations followed each of the group’s three encore numbers, including golden oldies ‘Surfer Girl’ and ‘Good Vibrations.’”
Rolling Stone, which hadn’t taken us seriously in years, named us Band of the Year in 1974, and the CSN&Y gigs were a prelude to an even more ambitious effort the following year, when we joined Chicago on a twelve-city tour. Known as “the rock band with horns,” Chicago was at its commercial peak, in the midst of recording four consecutive No. 1 albums. The “Beachago tour” was put together by Jim Guercio, who rightly assumed it was a can’t-fail proposition: the two bands had combined for about thirty-five Top 10 hits. Dennis, Carl, and Al had even contributed to one of Chicago’s singles, singing backup on “Wishing You Were Here” in 1974.
I had ideas on how to maximize the shows. Chicago featured many long, jazzy solos, so I thought Chicago should start the concert, then we’d join them and do the rest of the show with the bands integrated. But the bands weren’t equals, or at least the Chicago guys didn’t think so. They were at the top of the heap, and we were on our “comeback”; they were the headliner, while we were the opening act. We thought they were condescending toward us, so before we took the stage on our first show in Houston, I told Dennis, “We’ll do an hour, and we’ll kick their fucking ass, and they’ll wish they never toured with us.”
We performed a solid hour of hits, brought everyone to a frenzy, and left the crowd exhausted. An intermission followed, and then on came Chicago, with their jazzy riffs and extended solos—really good music, but no match for us. As Rolling Stone wrote after our show in Kansas City: “Though Chicago headlined . . . the Beach Boys, playing more than 1,000 miles from an ocean, stole the show . . . The crowd, high-spirited and dying for a good time, had sung along with the Beach Boys, but spontaneous clap-alongs for the less catchy Chicago songs soon trailed off into limbo.”
The tour was a huge success: we sold out five nights at Chicago Stadium and added a sixth night. We sold out four nights at Madison Square Garden while packing 62,000 into Schaefer Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts; it was, at the time, the largest crowd to ever attend a concert in New England. The tour generated more than $7.5 million in revenue and was seen by more than 700,000 people.
Each concert ended with the Beach Boys joining Chicago onstage, and one number was Dennis singing “You Are So Beautiful,” written by Billy Preston and Bruce Fisher, though Dennis was an uncredited contributor. It became, for many fans, Dennis’s signature song, one that he would perform solo at concerts. He would take the mic, his dark hair falling to his shoulders, his beard closely cropped, his presence still riveting, and sometimes say, “I want to dedicate this song to the girls here tonight. Awwright! Do you mess around?” And the girls would scream as Dennis cupped his ear in solemn appreciation, and then his voice, growing heavier and rougher by the year, would serenade a touching version of “You Are So Beautiful.”
Of course, nothing with Dennis was ever simple. By the time we toured with Chicago, he had divorced Barbara and was dating the model Karen Lamm; her former husband was Robert Lamm, a keyboardist, singer, and founding member of Chicago, and it seemed that Dennis was singing “You Are So Beautiful” to Karen. I don’t know how that went over with Robert, but as they say, that’s rock and roll.
The summer we performed with Chicago we also shared the stage with Elton John, among other rock luminaries, at Wembley Stadium in England. It was an eleven-hour event attended by 75,000 people, including Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, who sat in the Royal Box area of the stadium. Elton John was the world’s biggest-selling rock star, but it didn’t matter. According to Melody Maker: “Unfortunately for Elton, [who played] endless songs from his new album Captain Fantastic, the Beach Boys had already stolen the show hours beforehand as they played their marvelous surfing songs under the blazing sunshine of the longest day.” We saw Elton backstage, and he was so distraught over the fans’ lukewarm reaction to his new songs, he was in tears. But there was no need. Captain Fantastic was a huge seller soon enough, in both the United Kingdom and the United States. It was, however, the last time he ever played with us onstage.
We had risen from the musical dead and, with Dennis, Carl, Al, and a rotating cast of talented sidekicks, we had established ourselves as one of the best live acts in America. Our compilations were also flying out of record store bins. What we weren’t doing, however, was recording new songs. We also didn’t have Brian.
—
Brian went to Holland with us in 1972, though that took some doing. Marilyn and their two daughters had gone on ahead of him, and Brian traveled alone. But when his plane landed in Amsterdam, he wasn’t on it. He had reached the Los Angeles airport, changed his mind, and returned home. Someone got him on the phone and persuaded him to fly out the next day. Once again his plane landed, and once again he was nowhere to be found. This time, however, he had walked off the plane at the Amsterdam airport and fallen asleep on a couch in the duty-free lounge. He was soon found.
Brian contributed to the Holland LP, as he had to all our recent albums, but then our recording of new music essentially stopped. We were all responsible, but Brian’s seclusion was a factor. His withdrawal began in 1973, when his father died. For all the traumas he had with his dad, Brian was still staggered by his death. He didn’t attend the funeral, and then he retreated into his bedroom in Bel Air and pretty much wanted to stay there, showing little interest in his family or friends, in writing or recording music, in doing much of anything productive.
Brian’s lack of self-control had long been a problem. At one concert, he saw a bottle of Carl’s cough syrup backstage, and he gulped the whole damn thing because it had codeine. At a hotel in Texas, he once ordered an entire tray of grasshopper shots. He once went to Denny’s with some bandmates, one of whom ordered steak and eggs, and Brian scooped up five inches of steak fat from the guy’s plate and sucked it down.
When Brian went into hibernation, his compulsive habits intensified and became an unfortunate part of Beach Boys’ lore. Brian gave up regular bathing, allowed his hair to grow long and stringy, smoked incessantly, ate indiscriminately, and gained more than a hundred pounds. He lay in bed and watched television for hours, listened to “Be My Baby” over and over, and wandered the house aimlessly in his pajamas and bathrobe. He drank excessively and gulped down amphetamines. He smashed a couple of cars as well.
I saw Brian occasionally but didn’t speak to him much. I thought he was so gone mentally there wasn’t much that I or anyone in the family could do. Brian should have been with us to enjoy the Beach Boys’ “revival,” but that wasn’t possible.
Marilyn didn’t know what to do. She wanted to get Brian professional counseling, but Brian refused. She and my brother Stephen decided to ask for help from my other brother Stan. He was twenty-six, the youngest, biggest, and most athletic of the three Love brothers. At the University of Oregon, he led the Pacific-8 Conference in scoring two straight years, and then he was drafted in the first round by the Baltimore Bullets. He was known as a free spirit whose heart was in California—he’d show up to games in flip-flops, even in the winter. Stan did play briefly for the Los Angeles Lakers, but his luck didn’t improve much. Our mom was so upset by his lack of playing time that she wrote a letter to the coach (he didn’t respond). After the 1975 season, uncertain about his basketball future (Stan ended the year playing in the ABA), he agreed to help Brian get back on his feet. He had no particular training for Brian’s emotional and psychological problems, but he was an athlete who understood discipline, focus, and exercise, all of which Brian desperately needed. And like all my brothers and sisters, he revered Brian as the fun-loving, gentle soul who gave him his singing part at our Christmas parties, and he couldn’t stand to see the condition he was now in.
Stan’s first job was to find where Brian stashed his drugs and to get rid of them. Then it was compelling Brian to get out of bed, bathe, get dressed, eat right, and move around. He even removed the coffeepot, so Brian couldn’t use it for a caffeine high. Stan also favored tough love. He would yell at Brian, and after he caught Brian breaking his diet, he poked him in the chest and called him a “fat rock star.” Several months passed, and Brian was making some progress, but then Stan received an offer to play for the Atlanta Hawks and moved on. Marilyn, out of desperation, next reached out to a therapist who was recommended by a friend. His name was Eugene Landy, and he was just unconventional enough that Marilyn thought it might work.
Landy was a self-advertised psychologist to the stars, providing his therapeutic magic to Alice Cooper, Richard Harris, and Rod Steiger. He had thick dark hair, a medium build, and a bulbous nose, and whenever he was in an argument, he believed that whoever yelled the loudest won. (By that measure, he usually won.) His background was nothing if not colorful. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, he overcame dyslexia to earn both a master’s in psychology and a doctorate in philosophy. He began his career by treating adolescents and drug addicts; he trained volunteers for the Peace Corps, worked with Vietnam vets, and published a book, The Underground Dictionary, that defined hippie slang. He also claimed to be a record-company promoter, having “discovered” fellow Pittsburgh resident George Benson on a city street corner. Benson later said that he severed ties with Landy when Landy sought too much control over his career.
But what Landy was most known for, as a psychologist, was his twenty-four-hour therapy—according to a paper he wrote on the subject, it required “complete patient dependency on the therapist and total control of the patient’s life.”
At her first meeting with Landy, Marilyn told him that Brian was “very bright and manipulative” and needed someone who could think on his level. Landy said he could do that, but to persuade Brian to submit, they hatched a plan for Landy to come to their house under the ruse that he was there to counsel Marilyn. Brian, feeling left out, would ask for his own time.
That’s what happened, and Landy began seeing Brian. He then brought in his three aides, at least one of whom was always at the house. Landy put chains on the refrigerator door, got Brian to walk and jog, kept the drugs and alcohol at bay, soaked him in water when he wouldn’t get out of bed, and ensured that he didn’t wander off into the street. After five or six months, Marilyn saw progress: Brian began losing significant weight and was more lucid and energetic, though he still smoked constantly. There were also red flags. Landy used another doctor to prescribe—in Marilyn’s words—“mind-controlling drugs” for Brian, what we now know were psychotropic drugs such as lithium. Landy had also begun to shut Brian off from his friends and family, blocking visitors and phone calls. Even more disturbing: One of Landy’s aides tried to discipline Brian and Marilyn’s young daughters, locking one (at age seven) in their sauna for supposedly misbehaving. The sauna wasn’t turned on, but it was still upsetting.
Nonetheless, Brian was improving, and as 1976 rolled around, we were under pressure to record a new album for Warner/Reprise. It seemed that Brian was well enough to contribute, not only in the studio but also onstage, which he had not done since 1970. Brian’s incapacitation had been covered by the media, so my brother Stephen developed a campaign to reintroduce Brian to the public while giving a boost to our next record and concerts.
The campaign slogan: “Brian’s back.”
It was pithy and evocative. It raised the hopes of our fans, and did it ever work. Our publicist, Sandy Friedman, held a press junket at the Sheraton Fisherman’s Wharf Hotel in San Francisco. The Beach Boys sat in different rooms while members of the media, print, radio, and television, circled through to interview us. That night, we took reporters to the Joffrey Ballet, featuring Twyla Tharp, at San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House, and we convinced the troupe to dance their smooth arabesques to “Little Deuce Coupe” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” The journalists were blown away, and it didn’t hurt that we also took them out for a nice dinner afterward.
We were on the covers of Rolling Stone, Crawdaddy!, and New Times and were featured in TV Guide, Time, and Newsweek, whose title for the story was . . . “Brian’s Back.”
There was only one problem. Brian wasn’t back.
It should have been apparent to anyone who bothered reading the stories. In the cover article in Rolling Stone, Brian asked the reporter if he could scare up some cocaine or speed, and his request was included in the piece. NBC featured the Beach Boys in a one-hour prime-time special that was produced by Lorne Michaels, creator of Saturday Night Live. In one sketch, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, dressed as cops, rousted Brian from bed and hauled him to the ocean. There, in his robe and carrying a surfboard, Brian rambled in, was mauled by the waves, and finally mounted his board, unaware that he was riding it backwards.
Carli Muñoz, a jazz musician who played with us for many years, once observed that Brian always had a firewall around him—bodyguards or agents or someone who shielded Brian from others. Landy was now that firewall. When People magazine wanted to do a photo shoot of us, Landy wouldn’t allow Brian to participate, nor would he allow Brian to leave the house on his own. We couldn’t even pick Brian up because one of Landy’s minions was always at his house, even overnight. So we were left with one option: we had to kidnap Brian.
Sandy Friedman got a couple of guys to go over to Brian’s home in the middle of night. They brought a ladder with them, and one of the guys climbed to the second story and knocked on Brian’s window until he woke up. He told Brian that he had to get to a photo shoot, and Brian, half asleep and in his pajamas, made his way down the ladder, got into the car, and was whisked away.
They made it to the photo shoot, and on August 23, 1976, the Beach Boys, all sporting beards, were the first rock band to appear on the cover of People. The caption: “Still Riding the Crest 15 Hairy Years Later.”
—
After so many years in the wilderness, we had a chance to record an album when fans were actually demanding to hear our music. We wanted an LP that recognized our fifteenth anniversary and would be released in conjunction with our bicentennial concerts in July.
Landy supported Brian’s involvement in the album, but his return was bumpy. One day Al and I were with Brian in a studio, and he was trying out an early version of a new song, “T M.” Brian hadn’t sung a real lead vocal on a Beach Boy album in years, apart from two brief lines on Holland. When he tried singing now, his voice was hoarse and croaky and utterly unlike his once-radiant falsetto. I assumed the cigarettes had damaged his vocal cords, which, to me, was like spray paint defacing a national monument. Al would sing the lead on “T M.” Brian sounded better singing lead on a couple of other songs, but many fans were still dismayed by his wavering, off-key vocals.
The dynamics in the band had also changed. Carl had been producing our albums, and both Carl and Dennis had been recording their own stuff, either as potential tracks for the Beach Boys or, in Carl’s case, as a producer and arranger for others. But now for this new album, “Brian was back.” The fans wanted Brian. The media wanted Brian. The label most definitely wanted Brian. But Brian was in no shape to take charge, his once-flawless tracks marred by idiosyncratic arrangements or weird musical textures, which others had to fix. Carl, justifiably so, felt passed over, and Dennis felt ignored.
The album, 15 Big Ones, was a hodgepodge of new songs and old, lacking any thematic unity. Both Dennis and Carl took the unusual step of criticizing their own album in the press, saying it was “unfinished” and “rushed,” and calling out their older brother. As Dennis told Newsweek, “We were heartbroken. People have waited all this time, anticipating a new Beach Boy album, and I hated to give them this. It was a great mistake to put Brian in full control. He was always the absolute producer, but little did he know that in his absence, people grew up.” Dennis and Carl criticized Brian as well as Al and me for releasing a record before it was ready. They preferred to take additional time to do an entire album of new songs.
15 Big Ones did indeed have some rough sections, but I disagreed that all we needed was more time. What the press didn’t report was that Carl had suffered a debilitating back injury, causing him significant pain. Sometimes he was forced to lie flat on his back in the studio when he was doing some of his guitar parts; other times he would do vocal parts from a wheelchair. He was also self-medicating and drinking, problems that would emerge publicly in a couple of years.
We had been recording music for a decade while the whole concept of the Beach Boys seemed obsolete. We should release 15 Big Ones, I thought, before we lost the momentum, but even with that momentum, we needed a hit song. When we were in the studio, I reminded Brian of the success we had in tapping into Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen” for “Surfin’ USA.” I told him we should do another Chuck Berry number, and we agreed to cover “Rock and Roll Music.” Brian did the track, I did the lead vocals, and it was released on May 24. Honestly, it was barely finished and kind of scratchy—Brian produced a better version for the album—but it still sounded cool and ballsy on highly compressed old AM car radio speakers. I was both relieved and happy that it peaked at No. 5, making it our first Top 10 single since “Good Vibrations” in 1966.
15 Big Ones, released in July, charted at No. 8; excluding our compilations, it was our bestselling album since Beach Boys’ Party! in 1965. The LP also included “It’s OK,” an original that Brian and I wrote that I thought was a great summer song. I believe if it had been released as a single at the end of spring—or if it had been the album’s lead song—it would have been a hit and gone down as one of our classics. But Warner/Reprise didn’t want it to compete with “Rock and Roll Music,” so it wasn’t available as a single until August 30, and by then it was too late. It only charted at No. 29. A missed opportunity, in my opinion.
Despite its success, the album proved to be one of our most polarizing, its critics seeing it as evidence of putting commerce ahead of art. I saw it as recognition of how the music world operates. We were trying to defy the laws of musical gravity, remaining viable from one decade to the next. That rarely happens for a rock band. So when an opportunity arises, you can’t dawdle in search of artistic perfection. Instead, we moved fast, and 15 Big Ones would be our last Top 10 album until 2012.
Unintentionally, the album’s cover said a lot about the band. It was designed by Dean Torrence, who had his own graphic design company. He started it after Jan Berry suffered severe head injuries in a 1966 car accident, leaving him partially paralyzed. The duo would perform again, but Dean began a second career as a designer, specializing in album covers. Nineteen seventy-six was an Olympic year, so for 15 Big Ones, Dean put the five Olympic rings on the cover, each ring filled with one of our portraits. The images of Brian, Dennis, Carl, Al, and me in five interlocking circles could have been a metaphor for five bandmates united in common purpose, or five guys living in their separate worlds. With us, it was both. What drew the most attention, however, was the photo of Brian, who, with shoulder-length, lacquered hair and heavy jowls, bore no resemblance to his younger self.
—
The highlight of the Brian’s Back campaign was his joining us for two bicentennial concerts, the most memorable one for me at Anaheim Stadium on July 3. Billed as Southern California’s Only Bicentennial Rock Event, it drew a sold-out crowd of 55,000. America, one of my favorite bands, opened for us, and we joined them onstage to play “Sister Golden Hair” and “A Horse with No Name.” After a short break, we came back alone.
In the weeks leading up to the concerts, I needed to make a change, as I had gained a few pounds and was feeling sluggish. So I entered a program at the Hippocrates Health Institute in Lemon Grove, California, which offered a much safer way to purify the body than what I had tried the last time. The institute believes in the medicinal power of raw, organic foods, particularly wheatgrass, used to create a nutrient juice. You drank it to cleanse your cells and purify your blood, and you had enemas and “wheatgrass implants.” You also ate a lot of raw greens, sprouts, and seeds. This wasn’t for the weak of heart—I called it the Marine Boot Camp of Purification—but I lost fifteen pounds in about two weeks and was totally reinvigorated.
I also enjoy the costume-design part of rock and roll, the sartorial plumage, and for the concerts I could now wear a tight gold lamé vest, with no shirt, beads, and white bell-bottoms. We had an amazing band, with Billy Hinsche (guitar and keyboards), Ed Carter (bass guitar), Bobby Figueroa (drums), Ron Altbach (keyboards), and Carli Muñoz (keyboards), and I jammed on the stage to “I Get Around,” “Be True to Your School,” and “Surfin’ USA.” But the crowd in Anaheim! Sitting on the outfield grass and in the stands, they sang, rocked, and danced, and you could feel their energy. Then the passions ran too high. During “I Get Around,” I looked up and saw the upper deck swaying and the banks of lights moving. It was like a low-level rumbling earthquake without the actual earthquake. One fan later swore that the stands were swaying to the beat of the music. We had to halt the concert for a PA announcement, which asked the people in the upper deck to stop jumping up and down because chunks of concrete were breaking off under the grandstands. I was ecstatic that the Beach Boys could still bring down the house, but I was petrified that we were going to actually bring down the house.
The stadium survived the concert, which was about all we could say for Brian as well.
He began offstage, and then after we had played a couple of numbers, I spoke to the crowd, offered some introductory chatter, and then said: “By the way, there is someone with us tonight who doesn’t go to many places with us lately. He’s here tonight. He’s responsible for us being here. His name is Brian Wilson! Let’s hear it for Brian!”
With Landy coaxing him on, Brian walked onstage and made his way to the keyboard, and the fans went wild, with some waving Brian’s Back signs.
Even when healthy, Brian hated performing before large crowds. Now he sat on his stool in some medicated haze, rarely singing or playing. There were times when he seemed aware and engaged and could perform; but mostly he drifted and mumbled. At one point, appearing to have a panic attack, he yelled, “Get away from my piano! Get away from me.” Melody Maker wrote of Brian, “Apparently, performing is part of his therapy program. But he should have stayed home.” Perhaps, but there was no doubt that the fans loved seeing him, in whatever shape.
For our first encore, Dennis sang “You Are So Beautiful,” which as always electrified the crowd, and it was followed by “Rock and Roll Music,” “Barbara Ann,” and “Fun, Fun, Fun.”
The crowd gave us a long, standing ovation—but that wasn’t the best part. The best was that my parents attended. They didn’t see that many of our shows, as we didn’t play that many in Southern California; but they always enjoyed them. Back in the early 1960s, they attended one of our concerts at the Hollywood Bowl. Afterward, the guys and I were taken away in our cars while about a hundred kids were trying to get our autographs. One of them noticed my mom and asked her for her autograph, which she proudly gave. That led to requests from a half-dozen other kids, all of whom my mom obliged until my dad pulled her away.
Now in Anaheim, I was really happy that my parents saw a concert that drew such a large, raucous crowd. They were obviously proud of me and their nephews, but I wasn’t that good at telling them how meaningful their example was. All I could do onstage was sing and prance. They sat on side stage, wearing earplugs, and when I first saw them during one of our songs, I went over and gave my mom a kiss and my dad a hug. As I returned to center stage, my mom looked out onto the field and saw it packed with kids yelling, some girls on top of their boyfriends’ shoulders, everyone with their arms waving.
“This is an example of mass hysteria!” she yelled to my dad.
“Yes,” he shouted back, “but good hysteria!”
—
No “comeback,” real or imagined, can last forever, and so it was with Brian’s. The most immediate change in his life occurred at the end of 1976 when Stephen and Marilyn fired Landy. Landy was always expensive, but he was now charging $32,000 a month, part of which was being picked up by the Beach Boys. The cost was indefensible while Landy’s obsession with control was too much, and he was gone.
But there was a time, early in the campaign, that I hoped Brian really was back, and there were times in the studio or even onstage when Brian would reconnect to the music and his voice would soar and he would hit the high notes as only Brian Wilson could. I would watch in amazement and get so emotional I’d have to choke back the tears. I couldn’t tell him how I felt, but I wrote this song instead, called “Brian’s Back.”
Teenage gambol(ers)
Sittin’ in a Rambler
Listenin’ to the radio.
And then standing in the grandstand,
Following the game plan,
Watching life’s plays unfold.
You fell in love with a pretty cheerleader.
I even married one.
And we once rode a cab outta Salt Lake City
Comin’ up with “Fun, Fun, Fun.”
They say that Brian is back.
Well I’ve known him for oh so long.
They say Brian is back.
Well I never knew that he was gone.
Still they say Brian is back.
I know he’s had his ups and downs.
Well they say that Brian is back.
But in my heart he’s always been around.
I still remember,
You soundin’ sweet and tender.
Singin’ “Danny Boy” on Grandma’s lap.
And those harmony highs
Could bring tears to my eyes.
I guess I’m just a sentimental sap.
“Good Vibrations” caused such a sensation,
Not to mention ol’ Pet Sounds.
And we traveled the world,
As the banners unfurled.
I guess you’d have to say we got around.