best... interview... ever.
It was great! Apparently Brian's known this guy Pete for several years, and was very relaxed and well spoken the whole time. He talked about a lot of things I'd never heard before.
things he played snippets of on piano..
"Beautiful Dreamer".
"Wouldn't It Be Nice" he played the first verse, it was great! Really rumbly with lots of honky tonk piano style, you know Brian's hammering style of playing. Awesome.
"Heroes And villians" the first half of the song, lol. The "HERRROOOESS AND VILLIANNNNSS" part was the best. I mean all these performances were just off the cuff rough performances of course, but really cool to see him reproduce the songs with just him and a piano.
"Love And Mercy" the first verse or so.
A few surprises:
At one point, the guy said "Tell me about who influeced you musically" and Brian said "You know Damn well who influenced me musically!" and Pete said "Can you play the first few bars of your favorite song of Phil Spectors?" and Brian played..
"Da doo ron ron". It was great! He had all kinds of little rock and roll fills, the piano sounded like twice as fast as the crystals version. You could tell he's played that song hundreds of times.
At another point, Pete had been talking about SMiLE and asking Brian to sing (like Heroes and Villians) and he said "Our Prayer", now I'm not going to ask you to recreate that of course... and Brian played, ON PIANO
"Our Prayer", it took a few seconds to figure out what he was doing, but he basically was playing a couple of the melody/harmony lines on piano at the same time. Very interesting, since the song has no words and no instruments you know.
Also, my favorite, Pete asked Brian who his favorite comedian was, and Brian couldn't tell what he was talking about, so Pete brought up Johnny Carson. Brian said "Yeah, on The Beach Boys Love You... how'd that go?" Then found the chords and played and sang the first little bit of Johnny Carson off the top of his head.
Keep in mind none of these were full performances or anything just Brian fucking around on a piano.
Pete mentioned "Good Vibrations" and Brian said that Good Vibrations wasn't a rock song, it was a "Synthetic Pocket Sympony with no Rock and Roll and no Guts" and said that it brought up bad memories. He wasn't dissing the song though, he was just saying that it wasn't a Rock song. He later said he wasn't a rockstar, he was a popstar.
At one point, he said "I Love that fucking song!" then said "Remove that F*cking!". O.K.
He said that Capitol Records gave him hell when he did Smile, according to him they were saying "more surf songs!" and he said "No" and played them some of the new tracks, which they hated, but he told them he was going to do it anyways. Hard to tell if that actually happened or is complete fantasy.
The guy said "What do you do to keep yourself busy when you're not recording or touring" and Brian said one of the funniest things I've heard yet from him. Something to the effect of "Well, I exercise 2 to 3 hours a day, Pete. Then I go out to lunch. Plus, I have auditory halucinations all day that takes up a lot of my time right there".
He said (this is strange) that he was given the opportunity to cancel the "SMiLE" performances on a couple of occasions, but he went ahead and did it because he wanted to be a man and face his problems. He said that he gets a lot of his strength from his name, Wilson, which he feels represents the Will to overcome your problems. I'd never heard that before, then he laughed about it and said that nobody knew that about him.
He said what makes him happy is Sex. Also, he likes watching his wife sleep.
Pete said "Now, I have no problem mentioning your name alongside the greatest composers that have ever lived... I don't want to embarass you" and Brian said "You won't."
LOL
Brian said that he gets off on people calling him a genius, and he understands how it is, because he is jealous of people like Elton John and Elton John is jealous of him.
He said that Van Dyke and him aren't very good friends, but that they respect each other a lot. That's very, very strange.
He said that He gets very depressed around Christmas, and that he gets depressed at New Years because the holiday season is over.
Pete asked him what Beatles album he liked, and he said the first one he felt competitive about was "Rubber Soul". Pete asked him what songs he liked on Rubber Soul (which I felt would f*** Brian up) and he replied "Oh, I liked "GIRRRRLlllll, Oh GIRRRRLLLLL" and "ISN'T IT GOOOOOOD, NORWEIGIAN WOOOOOD" and "Micheeeellllee, Mah Belllleee" and actually sang the hooks of those three Beatles songs.
When Pete said that Good Vibrations was #1 in his jukebox, Brian told him he didn't think it should be, and asked him what #2 was... Pete said "Do You Believe in Magic" by the loving spoonful, and Brian said "That high, huh?" . He was incredibly funny the entire show.
GREAT interview.
www.mixedbagradio.com
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