The Grammy-award winning Beach Boy talks about life, Eminem and what it takes to win The Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award -
It all started in 1961 within the small town of Hawthorne, California. ‘Pop’ music was at its beginnings with cars, surfing and girls placed in the spotlight, which later paved the way for mega-groups like N Sync, The Backstreet Boys, etc. Unlike some bands in the history of music, however, there’s a lot more to The Beach Boys than cars, surfing and girls, or a bunch of frontmen with a team of production and creative directors to deliver the punch.
The Beach Boys, composed of brothers Brian, Carl and Dennis Wilson, cousin Mike Love and friends Alan Jardine and Bruce Johnston, have been dubbed ‘America’s Band’, due largely to the fact that no other American band, at the time, could really compete against the ‘British Invasion’ like The Beach Boys.
Towards the later 1960’s, the times were ‘a-changin’. While the group matured, both musically and socially, extending their scope beyond pop music, the record companies were not always in step with the band. The ‘boys’ have, throughout time, proven their mastery of music and diversity (It’s hard to find someone in the music industry they haven’t worked with). Performing on an average of five months out of the year, for an audience ranging in age from six to sixty+, worldwide, they’ve also demonstrated their resilience to not only the changing times and the ‘cut-throat’ music industry, but their ability to withstand the personal battles and losses the group has faced; most recently, of which, was the passing of Carl Wilson due to lung cancer and the Wilsons’ mother, Audree Wilson, both in 1998.
As of February 2, 2001, The Beach Boys are now honorees of The Recording Academy’s prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award; this, as the group celebrates their fortieth anniversary, this year.
Beach Boy, Bruce Johnston was generous enough to speak with me about the group’s current status, their Lifetime Achievement Award and The Beach Boys’ new Brother Records reissues, now available in stores.
Bruce joined The Beach Boys in 1965 after Brian Wilson retired from the road. With three solo albums under his belt, Bruce’s better known credentials include a 1976 Grammy for writing the ‘Song Of The Year’, I Write The Songs, recorded by Barry Manilow. He also arranged and performed back up vocals for Elton John’s, Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me and Pink Floyd’s, The Wall.
In a very personable interview, Bruce proves to be quite down to earth, as we step into his car, mid-way through the interview (over the phone), starting and warming the car up for his nine-year-old before they go to school; and then later, performing on the piano, a segment of Tears In the Morning, an emotional track he wrote for The Beach Boys’ Sunflower album (Brother Records).
(Dial tone), (ring...)
Bruce Johnston: Right on time!
Josh Humble: Absolutely; I like to be punctual! I hope it’s not too early out there for you (L.A. time, 7:20am).
BJ: People think this is early, but there’s school and work.
JH: You have four kids, two in college?
BJ: The oldest boys are in school in Great Britain. The oldest one is twenty-two and he’s three months into his PHD. The next one is in his first year at King’s College, London University, majoring in business. Can you imagine your campus being London, and that you look like Tom Cruise?! He’s ridiculous. The traffic stops for him in London.
JH: You’re considered to be the ‘musical engineer’ of The Beach Boys; who do you consider to be your role models?
BJ: I would say, a great deal of classical music, along with Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, The Four Freshmen; you know, from that really early period of your life. We listened to Elvis and Little Richard and we grew up with a lot of ‘rhythm and blues’ in L.A. - a lot of ‘black’ music. We lived in L.A. when the Mexican guys, the black guys and the white guys all got along and hung out. We went all over town.
JH: And now look at it.
BJ: Yeah, well it’s pretty funky now. Anyway, so you have all these influences in the blender. The first song that made me decide that I was definitely going to stay in the music business at seventeen, was: ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’, by The Flamingos, cause’ they had ‘doo-wap groove’ and great chord structure.
JH: What is your view on today’s music?
BJ: There’s always something out there. A guy that’s been pretty remarkable for a lot of years now is Sting; I love Sting’s stuff. And U2’s new album,- they’re kind of back to their basics. Even though we don’t have, what I used to call ‘corporate rock’, there’s a lot of garbage. Eminem is total garbage, but really clever; Slim Shady is absolutely brilliant. Maybe Marilyn Manson and these guys are the ‘Tiny Tims’ of the twenty-first century.
JH: Do you have a preference for any of the newer groups?
BJ: For me, I think Radiohead is probably the coolest group right now. We can get into other groups, but I’m going to narrow it down to one band. They turned their back on the ‘radio’ point of view. They don’t need radio the way most bands need radio. On one side, there’s N Sync, 98 degrees and The Backstreet Boys; all of that is pop and it’s really good. But, I would say Radiohead is more on the ‘Pet- Sounds/Smiley Smile’ level.
JH: What kind of influence do you think The Beach Boys may have had on some of today’s more ‘out there’ artists like Orb, Art Of Noise, etc.?
BJ: I think we always blur from one century to the next. Let’s go back to Brian Wilson; I think that in all of the music through Pet Sounds, he was definitely an orchestral producer. If you think about Brian’s ‘great experiment’ - Cool, Cool Water, which is hidden in the Sunflower album, you can see that if he were ‘coming up’ right now, with all of this technology, there’s no doubt in my mind that he would be just as successful. Cool, Cool Water merges his vocal genius and his studio genius into what would be as deep as you can go with synths (synthesizers).
JH: A lot of Brian’s multi-layered basses and production techniques can be heard in today’s dance, trance and ambient scenes.
BJ: Yeah, absolutely! I would hope that some of these bands would have listened to a couple of key tracks like that (Cool, Cool Water) that might have spurred them on, in addition to Debussy and Ravel, - things like that.
JH: Throughout the years, there have been several remakes of the earlier hits from The Beach Boys. What would you say to the idea of remaking some of the deeper music The Beach Boys produced under their Brother Records label?
BJ: I don’t think I would do that. I’d rather have Carl and Dennis’ presence and voices back. It’s ‘what it was’.
(Dennis Wilson passed away in a drowning incident in 1983. -editor's note.)
JH: It was a sad day for the music industry and Beach Boy fans around the world when Carl Wilson passed away; my condolences to you and the rest of the group.
BJ: I don’t even think Carl thought he was going to die.
JH: How has the group evolved since Carl’s passing?
BJ: I don’t think the group has evolved. I would say, on the group level, it’s been watered down. Brian’s faction has discovered that they can go out and get booked and make some money out of being an ‘online’ label. I’m not sure what Allen wants to do. I haven’t talked to him in a long time. He went out as ‘The Beach Boys Family and Friends’, but I don’t think he uses that name. I think he changed it to ‘Al Jardine Family and Friends’. The way Mike and I go out, we seem to be very successful as ‘The Beach Boys’. We were breaking some attendance records this summer, and I had to laugh because I thought, there’s no Brian, Al, or Carl out here with us. The star of the music isn’t really us, it’s the name and the songs.
"This is not Jim Jones in Jones Town.
These people are taught to try to create heaven on earth," -
JH: So much of your music pertains to spirituality. I have to ask; does Mike Love still practice Transcendental Meditation?
BJ: Mike and Al are certified teachers of Transcendental Meditation. Several musicians in our group do it. Mike doesn’t use it as a religion, but he really uses all the benefits. It’s one of the things that keeps him grounded. So many things come along with TM beyond being able to settle your soul. The medical principles that are five thousand+ years old, on a health level, are just fantastic. If you took away the meditation part and you got into all the other stuff they do,- it’s fascinating, absolutely fascinating! This is not Jim Jones in Jones Town. These people are taught to try to create heaven on earth. For me, the most fascinating thing is their ayurvedic medicine; it’s all natural and it’s just fantastic.
JH: A track that really seems to stand out from the ‘Carl and The Passions - So Tough’ album is All This Is That.
BJ: That song is right out of Maharishi’s (founder of TM) teachings. Have you read ‘The Beatles Anthology’?
JH: I’ve been working on it.
BJ: Isn’t it great?
JH: It’s fascinating!
BJ: You’ll find Mike’s picture on a page in there. He went to India; now, he’s a vegetarian and that’s part of the whole thing. He took beef jerky because he thought he would starve up there. (laughter)
JH: Oops!
BJ: He didn’t know you could eat vegetables only, and survive. So he’s been a vegetarian since, about 1968. I’ve been a vegetarian, probably since 1970. It doesn’t make me a nicer person, I might add. (laughter)
JH: Tell me about the group’s Lifetime Achievement Award nomination.
BJ: It’s cool and subtle. You have no idea how cool this award is; you find out in funny ways. The best thing is, our kids kinda go: “Dad... this is really cool”. Here’s the really funny thing; I was in L.A. for the night with one of my sons when he was eight years old, and I explained the ‘stars’ to him and I told him that I would show him our star (The Beach Boys’ Hollywood star). So we go over there; what happens? There’s this drunk guy throwing up on it. Fast forward, -- I’m going to show my next son, a few years later; we go there and the concrete support of a bus bench is right on top of it. I later go to show son number three and it’s completely cracked! And I haven’t shown son number four yet. (Laughter)
JH: And you’re looking around going, “Has this happened to any one else?!”.
BJ: Who knows? I will say that, as important as the kid buying the music, is the fact that each guy has a really cool looking award and, hopefully, each guy will frame their envelope and letter for the Lifetime Achievement. So this is a big deal. Joining the band in 65’, as hard as I worked, I was shocked that I was included. Do you know Dave Marks?
JH: Yes, I know of him.
BJ: He was in the band for a short time, during the explosion because Alan wanted to go to college. Maybe he was too young to handle it and he eventually quit. When the Grammy people called me, I asked, “Who’s on the list?”. They named everybody; and I said, “What about Dave Marks; don’t you think with all of the albums he sang on, he should be included?”. And they said, “You’ve got to understand Bruce; this is the Lifetime Achievement Award. If you were in a band for a year or two, and you didn’t participate the rest of the time, how could you be eligible for a Lifetime Achievement?”. It just didn’t occur to me to reason it out that way.
JH: What do you consider to be your greatest personal accomplishment in the music industry?
BJ: For my own piece of mind, I do have that one claim to fame, being, I Write The Songs. I never even told Dennis that I wrote it. He did know eventually, and he freaked out. It was his favorite song. It goes: “I’ve been alive forever and I wrote the very first song -”, I mean, that’s a pretty heavy thing to say. I originally wrote it thinking it could be a pretty cool hymn, but then I think I watched one of those ‘southern Bible thumping guys’ say the word ‘Jesus’ so long, I thought he was constipated. (Laughter) So then I kinda moved it around, and I thought, here’s a song not about where songs come from, but a song about creativity.
JH: What do you see in the future for The Beach Boys, in light of the group’s fortieth anniversary?
BJ: I think that we will concoct some kind of a cool album with a working title called: ‘The Top Fortieth’. I’d put in some new studio tracks, a dance cut, some live stuff and a symphonic. I’d like to put in a couple of tracks from the work tapes when we were rehearsing to go on our little ‘unplugged’ tour.
JH: Bruce, it has been my distinct pleasure to speak with you.
BJ: Thank you, Josh.
In addition to the group’s receiving their Lifetime Achievement Award, The Beach Boys’ revolutionary album, Pet Sounds (1966) recently ranked #3 on VH1’s Top 100 Albums in Rock N Roll History. The Brother Records reissues are a rare series of musical compilations produced by The Beach Boys within the time period of the late 1960’s to the early 1980’s. The range of musical styles to be found on these albums take you from ballad and soul, to R&B, rock and ambient, with lyrical content consisting of relationships, spirituality and life in general, along with a bit of child-like fantasy. This coveted collection of music has been digitally remastered and is not just for the Beach Boy fan, but for all music enthusiasts. You can purchase or order these albums at a music store near you. Check out The Beach Boys on-line at: www.beachboys.com. -JH
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