The Smiley Smile Message Board

The Radiant Radish did not close for good on July 29 1970...the basis of this oft-repeated "fact" is that in the Sept 17 1970 Rolling Stone, Jack Rieley states that Brian closed the store and then did an interview with him for KPFK radio.  However, what Rieley meant was that Brian closed the store for the day and not for good.  Indeed, the opening paragraph clearly implies that the store is still open as of Sept 1970.  Indeed, I bring this up because it is pretty clear that the photos taken of Brian in the store date from the same time as the Rolling Stone cover photo from  Oct 28 1971-both are credited to Annie Liebowitz. Hence-the Radiant Radish photos date from 1971.  Indeed a 1971 interview with the group begins with them eating organic food that they took out from the Radiant Radish  ("Stereo Move Keeps Beach Boys Rolling Along" by Mary Campbell-AP).  Just another "fact" that isn't

Thing to do would be to find out when "Skammen" was screened in LA in the early 70s.

Anyone have the store address? Will add it to the BB location thread if not there already. Thanks.

isn't it at Fairfax and 3rd?   ;D

Imagine walking in and having Brian working the cash register.  You put a $20 bill on the counter to pay and Brian autographs it and hands it back...

No wonder the place went out of business...

  

    

haha, that's awesome...

it'd be cool to get some health advice from him....hamburgers, sandwiches, veggies, honey, birthday cake, etc.

I figured out that it was still open in 1971 when I first read the misinterpreted 1970  Rieley interview in the mid 90's.  Here's a thread where I posted about it
http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,4162.msg68339.html#msg68339

I loves me this stuff, even when it means revising 10452.

So... RR was open until at least summer 1971 (unless Brian wore the same clothes for about a year... which is of course possible back then). Excellent stuff.

More like San Vicente & Melrose, actually!  ;)

Fairfax & 3rd is the LA Farmer's Market.

That's where Brian bought his favorite vega-tables, most likely.

The Farmer's Market is on the east side of Farifax.  I suppose if someone was enterprising enough, they could look up the Radiant Radish in a 1970 and/or 1971 yellow pages at the library.

Kind of ironic, the notion of Brian Wilson working at a health food store. 

I found a reference from summer 1971 in an AP article that ran in various papers, and at various times.  A reporter interviewed the group in a hotel room, where they were eating a "lunch of unsliced bread, peanut butter and honey, all organic, from Brian Wilson's health food store, the Radiant Radish, in Los Angeles ...."  The first date I could find for the article was June 30, 1971, but it could have been a little earlier.  The article was basically a throwaway - talked about BB history a little bit, and noted that they were recording in 4-channel stereo, which no one else was doing.

It's funny I have a 1964 interview where he bemones not having eaten right in the last year or so, adding that he was a health food and vitamin nut in high school.  In 1970 there are photos where he looks more fit then he had been in years so maybe he was trying to be healthier for a time. It's after the store closed that he really began getting heavy into hard drugs and overeating.

I thought Brian was doing psychidelics during the making of Smile, lots of them.  That's heavy stuff. 

He was doing acid but it seems it wasn't to a great extent compared to pot and speed. The problem was that LSD had a bad effect on him even the first time he used it.

Still from a health standpoint he didn't really let himself go until around So Tough or Holland. Carl pinpointed that era as when he noticed a real problem with drugs that's when he learned Brian was starting to use cocaine regularly etc. Even then I read a few times that he bicycled a lot in Holland and on a 1973 radio interview he talked about walking a lot while he was in New York. So I don't know I guess like everything else he really declined after Murry died.

It occurs to me that Brian might have been deluged with fans coming in wanting to talk, get autographs, hang around and get next to him.   Did he himself spend a lot of time there?  How long was it open, beginning to end?  I imagine it was poorly managed, lost money, and had competition from chain stores.  .  Even in the early 70's, there were mall health food stores that sold various products and concoctions for the healthy hippie.   (Now THAT would have been a good name for a health food store near a college campus. ;D )

And why buy carrots from Brian when the farmers market was nearby?

And the big question, do any of you know anyone who ever went there when it was still the raidant radish?

Speaking of organic produce, I just found out "At My Window" is, melodically, a loose cover of the Kingston Trio's "Raspberry, Strawberries", and that's where the working title came from. I found that surprising and I don't think a lot of people know that, but I also didn't think it deserved its own topic. Also, if you listen to the Trio's original, you'll see that's where the idea for the French voice over comes from...

Wow, I definitely hear it, Dada!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AoUmFp6yP4

Its one of the addresses we'll have in our book...

Supposedly Jack Rieley met Brian at the store...

     (Jack enters the store, which is totally devoid of customers)
     Brian: Hi; Well, you're well, you're wel-come to the Radiant Radish - can I help you?
     Jack: Yeah, I'm a Pulitzer-Prize winner who wants to buy some vitamins...
     Brian: Sorry, we don't have any vitamins, this is a health food store.  We do have a special on a jumbo bag of Jack-in-the-Box burgers... oh, I forgot -
               I ate those this morning...
     Jack: No problem... I do have an appointment later and I can't be late, but I don't know if it's 11:30 yet because I don't have a ... oh, what do you
              call it?
     Brian: You mean an unbending, never-ending tablet of time?
     Jack: Exactly!!!
     Brian: (on the intercom) Stock Boy, we need another order of burgers at the check-out counter - STAT!!!
     Jack: Man, you are GOOD!!! 
     Brian: Thanks... are you gonna buy anything or not?
     Jack: Well, I've got gonorrhea, and it's the worst at night...
     Brian: Like, in the evening, see, when you're trying to pee, making it go...
     Jack: Precisely!  So I need something that...
     Brian: ... eases the burning?
     Jack: Never mind.  I'd love to go to Holland - wooden shoe?  Get it?
     Brian: Get the hell out of my store!!!

Man I really do need to find your old magazines!

... and there I was, hoping you'd grow out of it.  ;D

With regard to your address's given on this thread AGD.

http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,4162.msg68339.html#msg68339

Google Map Street View shows this site as the most likely contender

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&q=8700%20west%20melrose%20ave&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl

Sadly it would appear the building of the late 60's has been replaced.

The 533 No. San Vicente Blvd location looks residential.