Beach Boys band member Nelson Bragg was in Dublin last week, as he puts it “decompressing” after playing over 60 gigs with the reformed Californian popsters.
While here he found time to add percussion to the new Duckworth Lewis Method album – “The privilege was all mine. The record sounds amazing” – and poo-poo the notion that Mike Love had “fired” fellow founder members Brian Wilson and Al Jardine from the band.
“We knew a while back that Wembley Arena on September 28 was likely to be the last gig featuring Mike, Brian, Al, Dave (Marks) and Bruce (Johnston) and afterwards Mike would probably do his own thing,” maintains the percussionist who’s been playing with Brian Wilson for coming up to a decade now. “There were lots of hugs and high-fives when we came off stage at Wembley. The vibe was, ‘Job well done, guys’, not, ‘Hey, what’s going on here?’”
As for the 50th Anniversary tour itself, Bragg jokes, “It was like being inside the world’s biggest family feud! But you know what? Everyone made the effort to get on and rekindle friendships. I’m not saying that everybody hung out with everybody else – there were several different tour busses – but the atmosphere for the most party was really good.”
The reunion jaunt may be over, but you’ll be seeing and hearing lots of the Beach Boys over the coming months.
“A PBS tour special has already gone out in the States and there’s a concert DVD on the way – possibly two of them,” Nelson resumes. “There were so many songs left over from (this year’s) That’s Why God Made The Radio sessions that I imagine there will be another album of new material too.”
The 51-year-old, whose own We Get What We Want solo record is a power pop pearler and can be ordered from [link]http://www.nelsonbragg.com[/link], was also able to tell us about the meeting of two great musical minds.
“We did Later With Jools Holland and Brian, who has this child-like quality at times, was absolutely mesmerised by John Lydon who was on with Public Image,” Bragg recounts. “He couldn’t take his eyes of him when he was performing. Afterwards John said, ‘I’ve waited all my life to meet you Mr. Wilson’ but the admiration was mutual. There’s a great picture of the two of them on Twitter if you can find it.”
We have! An extended interview with Nelson Bragg will appear in an upcoming issue of Hot Press.