Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall & Redemption of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson by Peter Ames Carlin

Author:Peter Ames Carlin [Carlin, Peter Ames]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rodale
Published: 2007-06-26T04:00:00+00:00

And the people there in the open air, one big family

Yeah, the people there love to sing and share their newfound liberty.

A decade later, the search for the place where the kids are hip only begins where the highway ends. But the driving impulse—and the joyous music that springs from its description—remains the same. That the group could pivot from that moment of revelation right into Carl’s “The Trader” and its clear-eyed acknowledgment of the awful price extracted from the natives in the white man’s pursuit of paradise only lends the entire “California Saga” more depth. And, amazingly, they achieved that feat almost entirely without the magical ear of Brian Wilson—reaching creative heights that would have been unthinkable only two years earlier.

Still, when the group returned home, the master tape they presented Warner Brothers earned them another fishy stare and yet another variation on the age-old pop music demand: Where’s the single? The real problem, as it emerged, was “We Got Love,” the Blondie/Ricky–dominated tune that flew the furthest from the Beach Boys’ usual terrain. Granted, the studio outtake has only a glimmer of the explosive sound apparent in the band’s live renditions, such as the one included on In Concert, the album that would follow in 1973. But what the execs really wanted, of course, was a brilliant new Brian Wilson song, and preferably one that wasn’t part of a ten-minute fairy tale. Unfortunately, Brian had no evident interest in writing that kind of song—not for the Beach Boys, at any rate. That’s how it seemed until Van Dyke Parks, still working his day job as a mixed-media exec for Warner Brothers records, showed up in the office of Warner’s executive David Berson with a cassette tape of a song he helped Brian write a few months earlier. On a whim, Van Dyke had shown up at Brian’s door, bearing a prototype Walkman tape recorder and almost no patience for Brian’s usual dilly-dallying.

According to several published descriptions of the tape Van Dyke made (which he swears he turned over to the Warner’s establishment in 1972 and hasn’t seen since), it begins with Brian, sitting with Van Dyke on the piano bench in his home studio on Bellagio Road, begging his friend to “hypnotize me and make me believe I’m not crazy.”

“Cut the shit, Brian,” Van Dyke responds evenly. “You’re a songwriter. That’s what you do, and I want you to sit down and write a song for me.”

“Convince me I’m not crazy,” Brian says.

“Cut the shit, Brian, and play the tune.”

Once again, Brian surrenders to the inevitable.

“What’s the tune called?”

“‘Sail On, Sailor.’”

And then he begins to play, a rollicking G chord capturing the insistent rhythm of a steamer plowing across heavy seas.

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