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 The History Smile, Brian, & Pull Them Strings      |
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by Michael Vosse "HERE WE GO!" The voice booms over the intercom system and the men spring into action. Saws chew up boards, nails are driven with hammers - the workshop is alive with sounds. In the control room at Goldstar Recording studios in Hollywood, Brian Wilson sits at the board chuckling. "Do you believe it!" He slams his hand down on the arm of the chair. They believe it. Brian Wilson is cutting an album. He wants to sounds of a workshop for background on one of the tracks. David Oppenheim, Emmy award winning producer of CBS documentaries on Igor Stravinksy and pablo Casals, sits watching and listening. He believes it. Moments later he is out in the studio, tools in hand, banging and sawing away with the veteran studio musicians. Jim Dickson, noted folk, jazz and rock producer, and amiable manager of the Byrds: "Brian is not only an excellent composer and musician, he is probably the best engieneer in the recording business. He knows the board like nobody does!" And he does, indeed, know the board... It is a balmy afternoon in Holywood. Brian Wilson comes into studio 3 at Western Recorders for an overdubbing session. In the booth his personal 8-track tape machine is ready to roll. In the studio an old, upright honky-tonk piano and Brian's beautiful black grand piano wait under the microphones. "I have an idea, I'm not sure exaclty how this is going to work, but we'll try it." Brian goes to his piano and signals Chuck, the engineer, to roll the tape. he plays a simple music box melody. The tape is run back. On a second track he adds some tinkles on the honky-tonk piano. For about half an hour Wilson goes over the same piece, filling the eight tracks with counterpoints, syncopated gates and notions. "OK, let's hear it." Wilson in the control room, standing close to the center speaker, listens to the playback. He rushes to the board and supervises the throwing of switches and turning of knobs -- more echo on the third track, a touch of reverb on the second honky-tonk overdub, this track dry and the other with more highs. Something happens to the sounds; they change, they move around and are transformed into a work of sheer beauty. Everyone in the booth has seen and heard the entire process. "How did he do it?" they ask one another. Wilson stands at the back of the booth chuckling, he grabs a fire exinguisher off the wall and aims the nozzle at his friend David Anderle. "All right David, this is IT, you've HAD IT!" WOOOOOOOSSSSSHHHHHHHHHH! A blast of air cools David's face. Both men collapse giggling. Wilson turns to no one in particular and speaks. "You Are My Sunshine" can happen another way. Listen." He plays a mournful series of chord patterns while singing a sad revision of the song..."You were my sunshine, my only sunshine..." The next night he is back at Goldstar and a studio full of cellos, strings, and percussion performing those same poignant chords. There is no sheet music. There hasn't been time for that. Brian is doind the arrangement on the spot. He prefers to work that way -- like Fellini on the set with no script, scurrying about whispering snatches of dialogue into his players' ears. A cabbie, during the short drive to nearby O'Hare Inn, tries to explain the intricate and confusing set of boundaries which surround and join the airport grounds. The monologue was Pinter-Beckett with a touch of Chester Riley: Brian gets every second of it on his portable tape recorder which was hidden under a huge pea coat. Safely inside of his hotel room Wilson listens to the cabbie's recorded voice over and over again, clapping his hands and laughing loudly. "No, THAT is humor. There is so much pretense and defensiveness in recorded comedy today. THis man is truly, humbly funny. I want to take this sort of approach to a humorous record, maybe a radio show." Does he ever stop working? No. Brian and four frinds sit in the darkened studio around an open microphone. Each person makes and repeats a sound which represents the "feeling" of underwater life to him...Brian softly wshipers into ears asking for a variation here, a more pronounced rhythm there, soon the effect is created and Brian returns to the booth to mix the sounds with echoes and pitch changes to create a vocal Atlantis. "This is an interesting direction. When the guys get back we'll try something similar." There is a knock at the studio door. It is "Humble Harv" Miller, a Los Angeles disc jockey who has been upsetting the rigid traditions of top 40 radio programming by playing whole pop albums, 20 minute Dylan cuts and doing three hour tributes to Phil Spector, The Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys. Brian and Harvey are meeting for the frist time. Two happy rebels shake hands and the mutual affection is instantaneous. Brian sits at the piano and plays Harvey his new single "Heroes and Villains." Miller is excited. "That is going to be the greatest record anybody's ever heard." It is late. Miller hurries off to his car and Wilson to his. Mike Love, Carl Wilson and Al Jardine huddle around one of the big playback speakers at Columbia Records, studio A... (Brian records all over town -- Western, Goldstar, Columbia).) ...twelve takes on one small section of background voices for "Heroes and Villains" have just been completed. Mike is not quite staified with his singing on a few bars. They go back into the studio. Over and over they re-record the difficult and complex harmony pattern until it is perfect. Then Brian takes them to the piano and teaches them more background to be overdubbed. The creative process here is as spontaneous as in the earlier track sessions. Carl has an idea and goes to the microphone alone laying in a lovely and funny little riff behind the choral effect. The Beach Boys and their producer work together well. The communication is not limited to words, there is a profound spiritual rapport. They are tuned to one another and it shows up in the music. "Meditation is an important part of my life now. It is a great source of peace and energy." Brian has recently built a meditation tent filling a whole room of his large house. The tent is an oval with a puffed ceiling all made from a beautiful red and gold Indian print fabric. "It was just an idea I had, and I'm happy to see it works." How does he do it? Somebody standing in the hallway asks. Brian Wilson and master percussionist Hal Blaine meet eyeball to eyeball for a deadly game of pool. Blaine picks up his celery stalk, Wilson has his and with oh-so-careful english spins the radish off the tomato for game. Guy Webster is clicking off color photos nearby. "I want people to turn on to vegetables, good natural food, organic food. Health is an important ingredient in spiritual enlightenment. But I do not want to be pompous about this, so we will engage in a satirical approach to the matter." Brian and Van Dyke Parks, his collaborator for the Smile album, write a funky, silly, joyous little ode to VEGA-TABLES. A young pop artist is commissioned to do a vega-table painging for the album, and the Wilson creative process continues. He laughs and jumps into the center of the room. "It's a color short. 16 mm. I'll shoot it. Next week. It's a chicken, and the chicken is wearing TENNIS SHOES. The chicken is wearing tennis shoes and he is bopping around the most beautiful pad. Paul Robbins' pad. Somebody get Robbins on the phone. We've got to shoot it next week!" How does he do it? Suffice to say, he doesit! |
