Brian Wilson on Bedwetting, Draft-Dodging, and Finding Your Beach

This Wednesday, pop legend Brian Wilson, frontman of the Beach Boys, passed away. In memory of the California rocker, we dove into the archives to bring you two of his many Interview features over the years, one in conversation with Elton John and one with Scott Cohen and Elia Katz, in which he opened up about sex, drugs, depression, performance, and surfing.

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Interview, April 1985.

SCOTT COHEN: What were you getting too much of?

BRIAN WILSON: I was getting too much sex. I think I was overdoing the sex.

COHEN: How did that affect your creativity?

WILSON: It zapped my energy and I didn’t know what to do about it because I like sex and I’d like to have it all the time. There’s no way to stop it.

COHEN: How much of what you do comes from heaven?

WILSON: Now and then ideas for songs seem to come from heaven and from other places .. I don’t know where the heck they were. Melodies and stuff would come from heaven.

COHEN: When you went into seclusion, where did you go?

WILSON: To my room.

COHEN: Did you stay there for four years?

WILSON: Yeah.

ELIA KATZ: Why?

WILSON: Because I had run out of ideas. I had some personal problems that zapped me and took three, four years to recover from.

COHEN: Is that when you got the stomach?

WILSON: Yeah. I laid around and got fat. I’d eat at night, every night, around five o’clock.

COHEN: Was “In My Room” an early premonition of being a recluse?

WILSON: Yeah, “In My Room” was like a little prayer about the room, you know, about having a room to go to.

COHEN: Did you feel you were a recluse?

WILSON: Oh, yeah, of course I was. I stayed in my room and wouldn’t see anybody.

KATZ: Did you feel omnipotent?

WILSON: Omnipotent? What does that mean?

KATZ: Totally powerful.

WILSON: I felt pretty powerful for a while, but I couldn’t really know what it was about. I felt powerful, but I couldn’t relate it to anything.

KATZ: Did that come out in the music?

WILSON: Some of it has, but a lot of it I still don’t understand. I can’t explain what I felt. Sure, power, but what the hell’s power if you don’t know what it is? So maybe it wasn’t my power that I was feeling. Could have been feeling someone else’s. That’s the problem.

KATZ: Do you think identity might be something other than what we think it is?

WILSON: Yeah, like a lot of times I think my music belongs to someone else.

COHEN: Would you say you’ve had mystical experiences?

WILSON: Yeah, I’ve had a lot of them. Like when we did “Surfer Girl,” there was a mystical thing that happened that night that I can’t describe. All I can tell you is that it was beyond what I had known before and I never knew it to happen until it [snaps fingers] spontaneously happened. So that shows me that maybe I didn’t have control, but I still did, so I don’t know how to answer these questions.

COHEN: What was your biggest fear in life?

WILSON: My biggest fear was losing the Beach Boys or having the Beach Boys bomb. My biggest fear was to lose all that. No money coming in. There would be nothing…

COHEN: Wasn’t there a series of events leading up to your seclusion?

WILSON: Well, yeah, because when we went to Holland, we left all our friends so when I got back there was a really weird vibe. Pretty soon more and more piled up, and I was locked up in that goddamn room. And you know, there was nothing I could do. First I went through that kind of thing where I’d say, “Hey, I can’t make records like on the radio.” So I tried to figure out what that commercial formula was and then I started saying fuck it and I said the Beach Boys don’t amount to shit and aren’t part of the business anymore.

The thing is, that wasn’t so bad. We had a studio here in the house, okay, then what happened was my wife decided that she was going to pull it out [1972], so all the guys said, “Fuck it, we’re gonna go to Holland, build a studio there and cut there for awhile.” So we were forced to go. We all went for a half a year, almost. When we came back everything went up in smoke. It was like we had been out of touch. Oh, god, we were so fuckin’ out of touch at that time that it was really hard and then, finally, I don’t know what happened.

COHEN: Was it like being high on some hallucinogen and being bombarded with one revelation after another faster than you could organize or deal with?

WILSON: Oh, yeah, exactly. I just didn’t want to get into it with you. You know, that’s what I was experiencing—overload. An overload of programming.

COHEN: Do you think that if you are pure you can tap into the source and still keep control?

WILSON: You sure can. You know, tapping into the source is a matter of physical purity too, which we underestimate. They say you are what you eat. Actually, it’s true. If you take a lot of speed, you become that way. If you take a lot of vitamins and good food you start groovin’. Which is hard to do. It’s a hard discipline. You go sit there in the kitchen and look at all those bottles. You go gulp. gulp, gulp. You gotta force ’em down. You gotta do it.

COHEN: What’s the toughest thing about being a Beach Boy?

WILSON: The toughest thing is going through all that fear about going on television and stuff.

COHEN: What can’t you handle?

WILSON: I don’t think I could handle watching me talk. I think I’d be a crappy conversationalist. I think I’d shell up. I don’t know why. I even admit I make up for it by writing music. 

KATZ: Do you like to do only the things you do best?

WILSON: Well, I admit the only thing I’d do is sing—if I really had to do something. I’m not the best at it, but I feel that I hold my place high enough where it’s all worth it. In other words, I’d quit this business, I’d quit altogether, if I figured I couldn’t sing.

COHEN: How did you become a Beach Boy?

WILSON: I became a Beach Boy through my brother. He said, “Hey, we got to write a song about surfin’.” That instantly formulated the idea. So it was Dennis’s conception. I wasn’t into the surfin’ stuff. I didn’t care. Even when we got further along, I didn’t know a thing about it. But it seemed right. Because I saw some surfing movies and they turned me on.

COHEN: Did you write about it because of the cultural significance?

WILSON: Nope, because I wasn’t even that intellectual or whatever-you-call-it to have it in my head to think, “Hey, that’s cultural.” He said all the kids at school would like it. I wasn’t thinking of it that way. So on that level I said, “Hey, that’s great,” but then we just happened to get a hit record. 

COHEN: Did the best surfers get the best girls?

WILSON: They used to, they really did. They were really in shape and they could hop to it. I mean, these guys could make it with the chicks, let’s face it.

COHEN: What about the car songs-“Little Deuce Coupe,” “409” and “Fun, Fun, Fun”—were you into cars?

WILSON: I picked up a lot on that from my brother Dennis also, and I saw a lot, went to a lot of hamburger stands…

COHEN: What was the first car you drove?

WILSON: ’51 Mercury. Then a ’57 Ford, then a ’60 Chevy. Then a Porsche, Jaguar, Cadillac, Rolls-Royce, Corvette and a station wagon.

COHEN: Was your childhood like a Beach Boys song?

WILSON: Yep, it really was. It’s typical of one period we went through.

COHEN: Were you the quarterback of your high school football team?

WILSON: Yeah. I wasn’t first-string, but I did play quarterback.

COHEN: And baseball?

WILSON: Yeah. Centerfield, first-string.

COHEN: Could you have played pro ball?

WILSON: I wanted to. I was all set toward baseball. I thought I’d be a major-league player, you know. But it didn’t happen. I got into music and I was much happier there.

COHEN: What was your lifetime batting average?

WILSON: Oh, I don’t have a good average. I had a shitty one—.169. I struck out all the time.

KATZ: How could you have gone pro?

WILSON: Because I felt I was a good player.

COHEN: Are the Beach Boys part of a family tradition, like the Mills Brothers or the McGuire Sisters?

WILSON: Harmonically, yep, because we harmonized a lot at home. So harmonically, my brothers and my cousin [Mike Love], we all sang before we got into anything—a family tradition, actually.

COHEN: Do you have a favorite Beach Boys song?

WILSON: “Surfer Girl.”

COHEN: What about “Surf’s Up”?

WILSON: I like that, but I like “Surfer Girl.” “Surf’s Up” was done at a time— who knows what drugs I was on. I was kind of zapped.

COHEN: You mean you don’t feel you were as much there for “Surf’s Up” as for “Surfer Girl”?

WILSON: Right, right.

COHEN: Did you know that Leonard Bernstein once said “Surf’s Up” is a masterpiece?

WILSON: No, I did not ever hear that. I can’t believe it. Do you have his phone number?

KATZ: Do you keep a diary?

WILSON: I did in 1966—all through that year.

COHEN: Did you ever kiss a Northern girl?

WILSON: Oh yeah, on tour, but not really. Not seriously.

COHEN: Ever date a fan?

WILSON: No. Never have. Honest to god.

COHEN: How did you get out of the draft?

WILSON: I got out on a deaf ear and bed-wetting.

COHEN: Where was “California Girls” written?

WILSON: That was in this little apartment and I wanted to write about girls themselves, you know. I was first going to call that song “Girls” and in the fade-out it goes, “Girls, girls, girls, yeah, I dig the girls.” It was really going to be called “Yeah, I Dig the Girls.” But then we changed it to “California Girls.”

COHEN: “Good Vibrations”?

WILSON: That one took us about three months, about five recording studios and about 16,000 bucks. We spliced it— fit the pieces together from the different recording studios.

COHEN: What was the original version like?

WILSON: The first version was straight R&B.

COHEN: Did you once put up a tent in your living room?

WILSON: Yeah. That’s when we lived in Beverly Hills. We constructed an Arabian tent and it was really wild, but there’s no air in the thing. That thing was 12×12.

COHEN: Was there a sandbox in your living room which you ran your toes through while you played the piano?

WILSON: I used that for inspiration as though I were at the beach. I wanted to feel what I was doing.

COHEN: What can’t you live without?

WILSON: My vitamins. All my pills. My herbs. My ginseng; I can’t do without my ginseng. 

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Interview, July 2004.

“THE ORIGINAL BEACH BOY IS RIDING A WAVE OF GOOD VIBRATIONS”

ELTON JOHN: What am I going to ask you? You’ve been through a lot of struggles, hard times, and family bereavements. Now, looking at you, I see you the most content and happiest you’ve ever been.

BRIAN WILSON: Yeah, I’m very happy.

JOHN: It’s been a long trip, right?

WILSON: Oh, it’s been a long haul. I used to be with the Beach Boys, and then all of a sudden, my wife and my manager told me to try a solo career. I said, “No, it wouldn’t go over.” But we tried a concert, and it went fantastic. Ever since then, I’ve been doing tours.

JOHN: Do you enjoy doing the tours now?

WILSON: Yeah.

JOHN: You never used to like performing before, did you?

WILSON: Well, I did, but I didn’t like it so much with the Beach Boys.

JOHN: Are you still in touch with the other Beach Boys?

WILSON: No, they’re gone. Mike Love went one way, Al Jardine went another way, and I went another.

JOHN: I suppose it’s hard because you lost [your brothers] Dennis and Carl— they were such an important part of the group. You really can’t go back after that, can you?

WILSON: No. It’s difficult for me to think about.

JOHN: You must miss Carl quite a lot.

WILSON: When I sing “God Only Knows,” I think about him.

JOHN: There are generations upon generations who listen to your music. ”Pet Sounds” [1966] is always coming back onto the charts. But what makes me happy is to see how you are now. It couldn’t happen to someone who deserves it more. It tears me up a bit.

WILSON: I feel so goddamn lucky.

JOHN: Well, we’re all lucky. It’s great that you have this hunger to make more music. There are so many people you make happy by making more records and playing more shows.

WILSON: I want to make people get up and dance. I want to make people dance around the room.

JOHN: So what does Brian Wilson do during the day?

WILSON: I exercise— go to the park, run, walk, drive home and back. I pace myself throughout the day. Then I go to the piano and try to work on my writing a bit. Then I watch the news—I’m hung up on it. I like it, but it scares me.

JOHN: It scares me, too. [Wilson laughs] Well, I think you’re rock’s biggest survivor, Brian—you and Keith Richards probably. (laughs]

WILSON: I’ve been a survivor, Elton, from the word go.