Fifteen minutes on the phone with Brian Wilson. Where do you even begin? And which Brian Wilson are we talking about, ’cos there are a few.
There’s Brian Wilson the victim of psychological and physical bullying at the hands of his father Murray. There’s Brian Wilson the gifted bubblegum Mozart who carried his significantly less-talented siblings and friends through 15 rounds of touring before he quit the road to craft Pet Sounds, a melodic miracle that wedded Gershwin compositional faculties to surf dreams and aching songs of innocence and experience, written and arranged out of a burning envy of Spector, Bacharach/David and The Beatles’ Revolver and illuminated by a fidelity to teenage intensity matched only by Roy Orbison.
There’s Wilson the tragic misfit of Steven Gaines’ Heroes And Villains biography and Nick Kent’s California noir portrait The Last Beach House Revisited, an acid-damaged, emotionally traumatised man-child playing in a dogshit-soiled sandpit, who abandoned what he foresaw as his masterpiece, Smile, leaving only the cosmic pocket symphony ‘Good Vibrations’ as a tantalising glimpse of what could have been.
There’s the Brian Wilson who was simultaneously rehabilitated and brainwashed by a succession of surf Nazis, therapists and new-agey gurus throughout the ‘80s, yet still managed to produce the odd immaculate hymn from the bunker like ‘Love And Mercy’.
There’s Wilson the sad-eyed hulk of a man wheeled out on a succession of gaudy nostalgia farragoes pimped as Beach Boys reunion tours. And there’s the resurrected Brian Wilson who made a triumphant return to the live circuit a couple of years ago, leading a well-drilled but sensitive ensemble with the air of a dazed yet enthusiastic high-school kid exclaiming, “Hey fellas, let’s put the show on right here!” That same rejuvenated Wilson who, incredibly, returned to the studio with old friend Van Dyke Parks to re-record the songs from that lost masterpiece Smile almost four decades after the fact, resulting in a celestial tapestry of oysters, harmonicas, timpani, drum taps, saloon piano, trebly bass, cooing harmonies and baap-bap-ba-ba-baap vocal tics.
Would the real Brian Wilson please come to the phone?
It’s 7.45pm on a mid-April night when we settle down to partake in an exchange that is neither conversation nor interview per se, more a discombobulated back-and-forth between two individuals tuned to different frequencies. The man on the other end of the line responds for the most part with monosyllabic yes-or-no answers, but despite his obvious acute discomfort, the tone never gets snippy. Pitch him a line of inquiry that touches on the years he spent wandering in the psychic wilderness and he says flatly, “I can’t answer that question.” After thirteen minutes of near comically stilted non-communication, Wilson calls time up, thanks your reporter for a wonderful interview and moves onto the next press chore.
Here’s the transcript.

Hello Brian, how are you.
“I’m fine, how are you?”

Very well thanks. You’re due to play Ireland in a few weeks. What form will the shows take?
“The UK shows?”

Well, yes.
“Brian Wilson songs and old Beach Boys. No Smile material this time.”

What was it that prompted you to revisit the Smile songs 37 years after they were originally recorded?
“My wife suggested it.”

It was interesting to hear these songs at last, having for years read about Smile being your great lost album.
“Oh, right.”

Tell me about working with Van Dyke Parks again.
“It was a thrill.”

Did you try and stay faithful to the original sessions or give yourself a free license to make it all up again?
“Free license to make it up.”

Do you have an idea in your head how to orchestrate the vocal arrangements before the songs are written? Or does that happen after they’re finished?
“After.”

How long does it take to layer each piece?
“About a week.”

I imagine the hard part is knowing when you’re finished.
“Oh, you just know when it’s done.”

Songs like ‘Our Prayer/Gee’ remind me of liturgical pieces. Were you brought up listening to gospel or religious music?
“No, I wasn’t, I just listened to old rhythm ‘n’ blues records.”

Your approach has been compared to classical composers, and yet that wasn’t part of your background either.
“No. But Leonard Bernstein said he really liked ‘Surf’s Up’.”

Who did you listen to when you were growing up?
“Fats Domino. Chuck Berry.”

I remember reading that when Paul McCartney said ‘God Only Knows’ was one of his favourite songs –
“Yes, Paul McCartney said he liked that. Isn’t that amazing?”

...It upset you because you were afraid you might never do anything as good again. Is praise like that bad for your creativity?
“I can’t answer that question.”

It’s been said that the quality of albums released in the late ‘60s was due to the competition between bands. You’d hear Revolver and The Beatles would hear Pet Sounds and that would influence the Stones in turn and push everyone onto greater things.
“Right, exactly. We all pushed each other along; we all inspired each other.”

When you’re singing some of these songs as a grown man, do you experience the emotions that inspired them all over again?
“Yes I do.”

So many younger bands have taken a lot from your sound, from Teenage Fanclub, The Thrills, High Llamas, REM...
“I heard about some of those.”

How does it make you feel when people pay such close attention to your methods in order to recreate those sounds?
“It worried me a little bit. That’s been fifteen minutes. Thank you, that was a wonderful interview.”

Click.

Brian Wilson plays Vicar St, Dublin, (June 29) and Cork Showgrounds (30).