OK, here are details on running into Marilyn and Dennis after the Nov. 16, 1973 Beach Boys concert at the Anaheim Convention Center.
I attended the concert with my friend Julie, who lived nearby in Huntington Beach. (This was the second of three times I saw the BBs in 1973, the third time being Dec. 31 at the Long Beach Arena.) I was a college student living in San Diego and also working at Sears. Since I had to work that day, Julie and I drove separately, meeting at the Anaheim Convention Center. The Convention Center was packed, probably sold out or close to it. The Beach Boys, who had been considered has-beens by American audiences just a few years before, were in the midst of a remarkable concert comeback, which would lead, for better or worse, to Capital Record’s release of Endless Summer eight months later.
After the concert I suggested to Julie that we go around to the back to the convention center to find the backstage entrance and see if we could get inside. Not far from the stage door we saw Marilyn Wilson and her sister Diane, “a boss blonde chick”, Marilyn and Diane’s mother, and Audree Wilson, all getting ready to leave in a Lincoln Continental.
The backstage entrance was surrounded by perhaps a dozen and a half fans, mostly (maybe even entirely) young females, along with a couple of guards, including one at the door advising the fans that they had to wait outside. I told Julie, “Follow me and act like we belong here.” We then pushed our way through the fans and as we began to walk through the door I said, “Excuse us” in a very matter-of-fact voice. The guard nodded and we were inside. Julie whispered, “How did you do that?” and I told her I really didn’t know, other than I acted as though we were supposed to be there and it probably helped that I was a guy and not a screaming girl. It’s also important to point out that back stage passes were not in general use at this time, at least with the Beach Boys.
Once inside, we saw Mike, Al, and Dennis. Then Marilyn Wilson passed by, seemingly in a hurry, and I asked “What’s the status of your new album?” She immediately stopped and we discussed the follow-up to the Spring album, which had been released a year and a half earlier. I then asked, “Where’s Brian?” Since Brian and Marilyn had attended both of the previous LA area concerts I had been to, in Dec. 71 and April 73, as well as San Diego in July 68, I assumed Brain would have been at this concert as well. I was dumbfounded when Marilyn replied, “Oh, he stayed home tonight.” It seemed incredible to me that Brian Wilson would pass up a chance to see his group in concert when they were not far from his home. I had read the various stories over the years about Brian’s “nervous breakdown” in late 64, his junking the Smile album in 67, his reservations about releasing and refusal to re-sing Surf’s Up in 71, etc, etc, but back in late 1973 I truly had no idea how serious his problems were. I had been among a small group of fans conversing with him and Marilyn just seven months earlier after the Hollywood Palladium concert and he had seemed completely normal to me. Brian was a musical genius, so to my way of thinking his odd behavior simply went with the territory. Plus, Carl would often dismiss Brian’s unusual behavior as “another Brian put-on”.
I replied, “At home? Why did he stay home?” Marilyn put a very positive spin on it, stating rather enthusiastically that he was working on new material with Danny Hutton of Three Dog Night. That seemed to make sense to me – apparently writing new material was more important to Brian than seeing The Beach Boys in concert. It would be a few years before I knew the real story that we all know now – Brian had retreated from life and was suffering from drug abuse and mental illness, spending much his time lying in bed, and the incredible music I assumed he had been creating during this time had never existed. As C-man pointed out in an earlier post, it seems likely that Brian went rapidly down-hill after Murry had passed away five months earlier. Seven months earlier Brian had been at the Hollywood Palladium concert, which his parents also attended, but now, with Murry gone, Brian apparently couldn’t find the will to get out of bed and attend a Los Angeles area Beach Boys concert.
Marilyn also told us that the Beach Boys were now one of the nation’s biggest concert attractions, then said she had to leave because someone had let the air out of both of the rear tires on her mother’s car.
Julie and I spent a little more time in the back stage area, and when we returned outside we encountered a group of people, including Dennis Wilson, around the Lincoln Continental, with Mae Rovell, Audree Wilson, Marilyn Wilson, Diane Rovell, and the blonde sitting inside. Dennis was replacing one of the tires with the spare from the trunk, and some concert goers in a Mustang had just driven up, offering their spare to Dennis. But, as Dennis attempted to put the Mustang’s spare on the Lincoln, it was discovered that the Mustang’s wheel was too small and would not fit the Lincoln’s lug nuts. At this point, Julie offered, “I’ve got a can of Fix-a-Flat you can use.” Dennis said, “Great!” and we jumped in my Mustang and drove over to Julie’s VW Super Beetle to grab the Fix-a-Flat. We returned to find that some other fans had brought over their larger car, but its spare did not fit the Lincoln either. Dennis then installed Julie’s Fix-a-Flat in one of the flat tires and put it back on the car. Audree Wilson thanked everyone for their help, and the Lincoln was on its way.
After that, a few female fans who had been hanging around asked Dennis for his autograph, as did Julie. (Julie seemed surprised that I was not interested in Dennis’ autograph, but at the time it seemed to me that getting Dennis Wilson’s autograph on a piece of paper, as opposed to an album cover, for example, was something only females should be interested in.)
Dennis then said, “Thank you, thank you so much” to Julie and me. Prior to shaking my hand he began to shake Julie’s, but the next thing I knew they were in an embrace and exchanged a kiss. I told Dennis it was a great concert but that I didn’t think Mike should close the show with Jumpin’ Jack Flash, as it wasn’t a Beach Boys song. I later felt like an idiot when I realized that I had failed to tell him that Forever was (and still is) my very favorite Beach Boys song. (I did tell that to Mike around a year later, and asked him to tell Dennis that he should be singing it in concert. At the time I had no idea that there were any issues between the two of them.)
As Dennis prepared to leave he suddenly pulled his jacket back, wiggled his hips back and forth, and exclaimed with a huge smile, “Have a good sex life!” We laughed, and he walked off with a girl (or perhaps I should be saying a woman) and another guy who was with a female. I recall thinking that had any other member of the band encountered the car with two flat tires they probably would have gone inside and called a tow truck to come and fix the tires, but not Dennis, who was determined to take care of the problem himself.
In order to provide as accurate a recollection as possible, prior to writing this I checked out a letter I had written to my friend Ralph a couple of weeks after the concert. The majority of the details in the letter were the same as I had recalled them, but there were some interesting differences, compared to how I had recalled things and had told them to others in recent years. For example, I had recalled that the owner and driver of the Lincoln Continental was Audree Wilson, but in the letter I stated that the car belonged to Marilyn and Diane’s mother. (Maybe it was Mae Rovell’s car but Audree was driving.) And, I (surprisingly) had completely forgotten about “a boss blonde chick” (to quote the letter exactly) in the car with them. Does anyone have an idea as to who this might have been? And who were the three people Dennis walked off with? Any ideas? Could Ed Roach or Stanley Shapiro have been the guy?
Thinking she might be able to provide additional details, I emailed Julie asking for her specific recollections (without mentioning any of mine). Her response is indicative of the effect Dennis had on women, as well as the fact that this all happened close to three dozen years ago: “My memories of “our concert” (as with everything else) are a little sparse. You are a MUCH BETTER “historian” than I am. I remember going back stage and acting “like we belonged” and then going to the back parking lot, seeing the car with the flat, and asking if they wanted to use my "Fix-A-Flat." Then, of course, came THE kiss and everything else is a blur.
”
Interestingly, I met Jon Stebbins in the lobby of the Roxy theater when Brian was performing on April 8, 2000, and Jon was giving out flyers promoting his forthcoming biography of Dennis. I told this story to Jon, but when I was done he and another guy standing next to him looked skeptically at me, and one of them (don’t recall which one) said, “They didn’t have Fix-a-Flat back then!” I assured him that they did, and that I recalled first buying it sometime in the late sixties or early seventies.
Author
