Beach Boys Hang Ten in Hotel Lobby

It’s been nine and a half years since the Beach Boys started out, singing “Surfin’ Safari” in Southern California, on New Year’s Eve, 1961. At New York’s Carnegie Hall, On February 24, 1971, they ended the second of two encores, after a two-hour performance, with . . . “Surfin’ Safari”. In the interim, they’ve seen and learned, a lot, about themselves and about rock'n’roll. They no longer care only about girls,-surfing and cars. They’ve seen, not only groups and performers, but entire musical genres, come and go. Like Elvis, and no other white rock performers, they’ve seen it all from the top.

After nine years and twenty-three albums (though five were “best oE’ anthologies) for Capitol,, the Beach Boys finally launched their own label, Brother, last year. The first release, their * own Sufi flower, was greeted with rave reviews and excellent sales, all things being considered.-The-second, The Flame, a South African r‘n’b group, was met with somewhat less pleasure.

At this point there are six Beach' Boys. Five of them tour , and perform; the sixth, Brian Wilson,.tlie resident genius of the group, stays home, writing, composing and preparing for the next recording sessions. The other five encompass two of Brian’s brothers — Dennis and Carl — one of his cousins, Mike Love, and two old friends, Alan Jardine and Bruce Johnston. They also appear with a bass player and a pianist, and a four piece horn section.

We met with them twice while they were in New York. The : first interview was conducted on the afternoon before the Concert, the second three days later vwe shared that occasion with a group of people videotaping the session. (Among the filmmakers, incidentally, was Barry Goldberg, long time blues organist (Electric Flag, Detroit Wheels, his own groups). For the cameras, and to our delight, the group gave an impromptu a cappella concert in the bathtub, (the acoustics are better there, y’know) that will have to, be seen to be believed. Keep your eyes wide for the flick.

For all their success, the Beach Boys have in recent years endured no end of difficulty With their name, primarily because the legions of over-hip couldn’t relate to the long-lost attractions of surf and sand-, hamburger stands and hot rods. It has often been suggested that the wisest thing the Beach Boys could have done would have been change their name.

“Well it’s not a matter of us changing our name. People have to be re-educated,” Jardine explained. Capitol apparently wouldn’t help out, because they knew the band didn’t like the packaging they were getting.

Dennis and I talked about programming on their early albums, about why songs appeared four and five times on different albums. “Think about it. It’s just a record company, Capitol, making money. And that’s all there was. What control did we have? They’d say, ‘Fuck you, punk!’ Those cats are hungry for money.”

In the end, Capitol, seeing that the group wasn’t going to sign again, wouldn’t promote or advertise their records for two years, Jardine added. “They knew our contract was running to an end. Usually you sign pretty much ahead of time, then you make a public announcement when the time comes. They’ve got Grand Funk and a few other acts, and well, obviously, if they’ve got a seven year contract, the investment’s much better; to throw your promotion behind that, than behind a group that’s only got one year left. Had we reCbnciled our differences with them, we would have stayed with them— like we did in Europe, where we’re still distributed by EMI. But we’re very respected in Europe.”

“People here are conditioned to having new things,” A1 continued. “Newness in their lives. For instance, in Europe, we’ve been there eight years and people there don’t cast aside objects, they retain things, they’re more personal, I suppose. They can’t afford the luxury of picking up on new toys so they just retain the things that are good. In Melody Maker, we were the number three group, without a hit on the charts in two or three years; in New Musical Express, we ranked number four, and that’s jupt on the basis of our making good music. We haven’t had any hits. But here, if you haven’t got a top forty single, which we’re not striving for because we couldn’t care less . .. our concerts seem to be doing our promotion for us. We get good reviews. Maybe that more natural kind of public relations is the way it?s going to happen. We’re not going to break up, so it’s.eventually going to happen again.”

Album sales? “It’s been pretty much non-existent, nothing to speak of. We’re in an age when art is being lost. True, real art could presumably be lost forever in our age of science because of technology and speed, you know, unless something sells ... it’s gonna be shucked. It’s gonna be put in the basket. A great piece of art could be lost. It’s a very critical period of artistic growth, because as I said, on the basis of their assumption that something salable is ‘good’, we’re in plenty of trouble.” All of us.

Even the most acclaimed Beach, Boys albums have been deleted from Capitol’s catalogs, since they weren’t selling. “Right. Smiley Smile is one of the finest albums ever recorded, in my opinion, and Pet Sounds too, and they’re both deleted. And I’d hate to think what would happen if possibly DeBussy or Bach or any of those cats might have come along when heavy acid rock was happening. We might never have heard them.”

Mike Love, A1 and I discussed Brother, the project that is; perhaps closest to all of them. Carl passed through, after getting dressed, and Dennis was just sort of there, listening. Bruce was out. .

“All the rules and Corporate structure don’t really affect, us,” Jar dine began. ‘It’s all on paper. It’s basically,. ‘Can we come up with holiest product, that people are interested in?’ We found one group,. Flame. We really believe in what they’re doing. Carl digs ’em and he produced .them. This is our first venture with Brother on an independent basis. And all the Corporate 'Conglomerate bullshit, it justsounds nice. We’re really just a very simple group of people trying to get down to some very groovy music. And give these cats a chance to say what they want to say.

“We’d like to kind of revolutionize the distribution of profits. We .think it’s a Very unique label.”

Mike Love added more about the the concept of ah alternative record company. “If the corporate mentalities were directed correctly, instead of looking at the artist as an expense — if you could turn the dynamics around so instead of operating On that premise and therefore getting screwed — if you can turn it around, so you’re all going in the same direction. . .” We Compared notes.

Clearly, almost anyone can produce a product, but getting it to the audience, the Consumer, if you will, is'the hard part. “If everything is profit-sharing,” Mike continued, “and the shareholders are the people involved that’ll work. But if you use the same machinery and the machinery is all funky and dirty and rusty and dusty, you got to polish it up and set it in the right motion. The same vehicle could work and make a lot Of people a lot happier, cause a lot less frustration. That’s what we’re trying to do.1

“Maybe we’ll do it a little bit in records, and you’ll do a little bit in newspapers and magazines, but we gotta combine at one point, down the road, to form our own cartel, our own new economic cartel that just really brings enlightenment to the whole situation. That will be, I think, really, successful, because all the creative people have been turned off until now by going through the system and getting shit ail over and knowing Tt’s a bummer anyway. It’s all tied in with . the DuPonts and the Rockefellers; the government this arid GM that: it’s all tied in onC way or another with all that.

But if there can be an alternative that is more creative, more expressive, of what the people want to say, and a better vibration allaround, it’s gonna make more money and then that is gonna be more successful. And in terms of money that’d mean the principles of the whole economic thing can turn around.”

Of the present hip capitalist, Love commented: “Let’s just hope that those ^people are well directed, so that when they learn something out of it and when they get ripped off five years down the road — and they owe Sam money, and everybody else — that then they can turn around andatill have energy enough to get behind something else.”

About Flame, then. Three of them are brothers-: sound familiar? It’s just a coincidence, we were assured, not a requirement for being on Brother.

The Flame album is the first to be recorded and-released completely in quadrosonic (four channel) stereo — though a couple of tracks on Sunflower utilized the process as well.

“I saw them in a club in London,” A1 explained. “I insisted everyone else come and see them — when they did, Carl flipped out and totally fell off his chair. He says, ‘Well they’ve got to pome and record.’ And they were over in a couple of weeks.” They opened with the Beach Boys at Santa Monica Civic in late February, right after a 31 hour flight from their South African home.

“They did all right. They’re very eclectic — some acoustic things, some very hard rock stuff. Mostly their own, a very far out synthesis,” Mike added. “It’s a very far-out thing — they*re East Indian and African, so their music reflects a little of the different cultures.” ,.

Isn’t it a little weird to be a non-white South African rock group and get out of South Africa? After all, South Africa’s apartheid policies are undoubtedly the .most explicity racist qn the planet — they still kind of think Hitler was on the right track, for example. Mike attempted to explain the situation: “They’ve been knocked because they haven’t stood up and said, ‘Well, why hasn’t. ..’

“But they haven’t knocked it because . . . well, to visit their families, who are still back there and have to deal with it. It’s one of those things that is really uptight — they’re really stormtroopers over there. So they have to cool it.

“Rolling Stone woofed on them because they didn’t actually say, 'It’s like this ...’ They didn’t say it like it is down there. Rolling Stone asked them'how it was, and the guys said, ‘It’s pretty, nice scenery . . .’ You know, if you say ANYTHING bad you get stomped on. So they have to tread lightly on any issues. But as far as their music is concerned, it’s all there. It’s fine music.”

Bruce Johnston, the last of the group to join, still seemed the neatest dresser, the most clean-shaven. He was into music before he joined the B Boys, but he wasn’t specifically involved with the band until Brian decided to stop touring, in order to concentrate on composing and to ease his health.

Johnston comes from the same culture as the others and has been more than just a surrogate Brian. His compositions are some of the finest on Sunflower.

Bruce started in rock'n’roll, or at least recorded rock‘n’roll, with a Beach Boys’ offshoot called the Rip Chords. In 1964-65 they hit twice, once fairly big with “Hey Little Cobra,” a little later with the weaker,"less successful (but musically identical) “Three Window Coupe” (“you’re the tuffest machine ini town”). Later, he was to be a studio Raider for Raul Revere and Co., doing backing vocals and such.

Johnston was studio Chord, at the time, with none other than Charles Mansonette Terry Melcher, who is now producing his mother's tv show — his mother being Doris Day. g| SS§j

Actually, the Rip Chords were an accident. “We were Just sitting in a studio one day. Then we had that one hit and faded into obscurity.” (Nonetheless, their Three Window Coupe album contains some of the finest surf genre jams to be found.) Melcher, besides mom’s tv show, went on to produce a pair of early Byrds’ albums, a few for the Raiders ajid Easy -Rider and Untitled for McGuinn and cohorts once more. “I produced the first Paul Revere album for Columbia, Here They Come, i got a gold lp thing for it. Oh everything they did, up until about 1968; they kept changing the backup gfoup, so Terry and I would do the vocals. I’d come off a tour with the Beach Boys and go over to Columbia, sing with Terfy, overdub it about ten times. ,

“I also wrote, but blew it and gave the publishing away; “Teen Beat”, Sandy Nelson’s drum record, when I was 1-6. I even played piano on it.” ^

Dennis and I talked about his independent projects — Two Lane Blacktop; th e-film that stars Taylor, his solo album that he is recording at home, for‘Brother.

“A lot of the solo is moog. I get confused though. There’s so many . . . there are like 30 or 40 different oscillations and I get lost, I have to start all over agaiq. What I want to do is, instead of renting a bell for $10, try to get my bell sound with the moog, or a snail crawling or what sound would a liver make for an alcoholic?

“But it takes time, and I’ve only been at it for a year. It must take a lifetime, before you can get sounds you’ve never heard. So many sounds, though. You can create sounds, stop relating to sounds that you’ve heard, chords. The texture of a chord. Like the old Beach Boys harmony — ‘Surfer Girl’, you can tell that harmonic structure is BEACH BOYS.

“But if-you take it electronically, it’s completely different again. And then you change each oscillation til it comes out different. For instance, what would a laser beam sound like? Or a rainbow? Know what I mean? I’m working on that — voices — I have a whole new way of overdubbing: I’ve overdubbed my voice like 299 times. Parts of it for choir, parts for one voice. Like within five seconds it’ll go from one voice to 200. Like a roman candle.

“From one voice to 200 voices, from one violin to a moog violin. And on and on and on . . . Music today’s just great but it’s all the same. It’s doesn’t get you to hold on. I dig my music. I could play the piano all night long.

“I went to rock concerts ten years ago,” he added. “I’ve heard all of ’em. The names.are changing and the ideas, a little bit, that’s all. Lyrically it’s different but musically it’s not gone anywhere in 50 years. It’s subtler — but the same two verses, bridge, two verses, on and on.

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Beach Boys

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“I love my old friend, music, it’s my best friend. It’s hard to explain how much music can mean to some people. It’s a dear friend, but it’s like wearing the same t-shirt every day.”

Carl spoke a little about other people’s music, as well. Cat Stevens and John Lennon emerged as faves, if somewhat polar tastes. “Mitch Ryder’s got a new group? Far out, he’s got one of the best voices in rock and roll. He’s such a good singer, it’s incredible. He’s maybe a little strange, though . .

At one point there was a Beach Boys release called Stack-O-Tracks, something like 15fsongs without vocal tracks so you can sing along. “You’d probably be surprised at what was under the vocals. It was what was really behind them, too. Just the music tracks from our records — I like that.”

Carl’s still fighting the Selective Service System. It’s been four years since the hassle began, though it certainly has nothing at all to do witK the public image of the Beach Boys as clean cut suburban kids (though that may be precisely where the clean-cut suburban child of yesteryear has traveled, come to think of it).

The rest of the band each had a dodge: Mike and A1 got married in time, Brian is deaf in one ear. As for Dennis: “I went in, they told me I was crazy and “Get out!’ Everyone’s different. I didn’t try to get out or to get in. I just said, ‘1 don’t like it in here. I don’t like you or what you stand for;’ They said, ‘Can you speak English?’ I said, ‘Hunh??”

“It struck all of us as pretty funny.”

Both Carl and General Hershey have found each other less than amusing. “I was convicted of failure to comply with induction. I’ve been contending that I can be much more helpful singing for people or. teaching them how to play instruments, get a choir together, something like that. They say that the program I’ve outlined isn’t concrete enough.

“We’d play at prisons, hospitals, institutions. They couldn’t police it well enough to relax about it though.

“It all started in 1967. I get arrested in New York City for refusing to submit to induction. Which has a hype — see, they called me .a few days before and said, ‘O.K., listen, there’s a warrant out for your arrest and you just come into the office in New York and we’ll arrest you. Then we’ll release you on personal recognizance bond and you’ll go back to L.A. and take care of it.’ So I did that, but they really wanted to do a news thing. They got a photographer, actually arrested me and did a hoked-up trick, held me in jail for a few hours. That’s all.

“When I had to file, I asked for a 1-0 Classification. It’s cost $30,000 to fight this thing so far. Imagine what it’d be like for somebody who didn’t have the money. It must happen a lot, too.”

Dennis is involved with other sorts of politics. He asked me, totally out of the blue, in the midst of a completely unrelated discussion, if there were any NY ecology groups still functioning. I knew of a few.

“I’d like to donate everything I make and do to environment and ecology,” Dennis responded. “I’d like to get a list of them. We’ve been thinking and talking about it but I’m tired of just talking. I wanna do free shows, get rid of the pollutant in the cock, in the mind, everywhere. From syphillis to smog. I really honestly want to do something about it.” | ,

Later, he started up again: “I have an idea. If every gr.oup would donate one record, one album, absolutely all the publishing and all the writer’s royalties — everything to the cause of ecology that’d really help out. Three shows per year, 100% of the money. And every record company, for a tax write-off, wpuld donate a certain amount to ecology or to a free clinic or to mental health. Why aren’t the heavy rock'n’rollers doing if already?

“Every group, even if they don’t do free shows, they should, even if they’re doing a big show, donate their fee. It’s gotta be free though, I’m tired of charging money. It CAN be free.” .

Carl and I discussed WPAX — the radio service that broadcasts American rock'n’roll and American politics to soldiers in South Viet Nam from North Viet Nam. “That’s about the best thing happening over there. Can you dig relating to that? Being over there, I mean. It’ll give them a lot of strength. I can really relate to that. It’s really fortunate that they’ve got that. That’s really good. Can you imagine being over there? Wow! I’d love to help.”

Still, I get to thinking that perhaps these are all empty words, to be forgotten once they’re spojeen, left behind in New York when they fly out. Still, I want to believe that they mean it. They’ve got engaging personalities, charm — talented, pros, witty and warm, easy to talk to, relax with. But I think I want to end this with the part that I liked best.

Dennis and I finally got down to talking about surfing and cars, all the early Beach Boys’ meniorablia. Although he has constantly beguiling and expressive eyes (he is an actor), his eyes were positively aglow during this rap: this is really his true love, more than anything else. All I had to ask was, “Well what about surfing?”. Off he went...

“I was completely behind it. All the way. I was into carburetors, cars, peeling out, cruising, A&W root beers, I was into root beer; I was into tit, nipples, dirty pictures — I loved dirty pictures, magazines — Tijuana, surfboards on top of the car. Even if I wasn’t going surfing on that day, I’d put ’em up there anyway. Anything to do with that — with having fun.”

He reeled off more surfing and hot rod phrases that the microphone wasn’t swift enough to grab, and then 1 asked about the other surf bands. “I loved ’em all. I really still do. The best was Dick Dale, he was an authentic. He dug the surf, too. Did you dig the surf?”

No, I grew up in Vermont. Still, I said, I listened to Beach Boys records between innings of my little league baseball games. “I love baseball. I really dig baseball. We’re all big baseball fans. I still play, too. Soft ball mostly. I just got a new soft ball, you know, with a hard rubber cover. Wow, you can hit it 250 feet — ya gotta use a hard ball bat though.”

Well, w*hy wasn’t there ever a Beach Boys-endorsed surf board? “No, the boards I use, most kids don’t like. They say it’s a pretty shitty board. They name boards after acid, now ... Like Blue Cheer.”

Does he still surf? “God.damn right I do, I surf a lot. Anywhere there’s good waves. Its funny, they see me in the water and the guys go WHOOOEE, THIS IS IT!”

Yes indeed ... whatever else they may be or do, the Beach Boys still get around.