by Lewis Shiner
“Here’s to free enterprise,” I said, and chugged the rest of the can.
“Amen to that.”
After he left I walked up to Sunset and went in the first place that served liquor. A strip joint would have suited me perfectly, except all of Morrison’s favorites were gone. Instead I got potted plants and stained glass and waitresses in tuxedo shirts and black pants. Crosby, Stills & Nash came out of the ceiling, not very loud. There were a couple of young women drinking piña coladas at the bar when I came in. One of them looked me over—ponytail, T-shirt, no Porsche keys dangling from my hand—and looked away again. I sat at a table and ate a chicken breast sandwich on seven-grain bread. Morrison had sung, “I eat more chicken any man ever seen.” Yeah, right.
I went back to my motel and slept the sleep of the drunken.
We finished the digital version the following Tuesday. Being as it was me and Graham, we chose to celebrate with a case of beer. We sat in a patch of park by the Santa Monica Pier, and I helped Graham out of his chair so he could sit in the grass.
“People are not going to believe this album,” he said.
“They’ll have to. It’s there. It’s real.”
A cop car drove slowly past us. There was a Latin motto on the door: Populus Felix in Urbe Felici. “Happy people in a happy town.” For a while we sat and listened to the traffic and the voices in the distance.
“We can’t stop now, you know,” Graham said.
“I don’t even want to think about another record.”
“I know you’re bled dry right now. You can’t blame me for dreaming. I feel like a kid in a candy store.”
I drank a beer. “‘The future’s uncertain,’” I said, quoting Morrison, “‘and the end is always near.’” Coors cans are so thin they crush with the slightest pressure.
“I know you have to get back to Austin. To see your wife and everything. I just wish you could stay longer.”
“Me too.”
“I really don’t have much idea what your life there is like. What does she think of all this?”
“Elizabeth? She doesn’t, not if she can help it. You know, of all the women I’ve known in my life there’s been maybe one or two who came even close to feeling about music the way you and I do. The way most of my male friends do. Suffice to say Elizabeth isn’t one of them.”
“Yeah, it’s true. Sometimes I wonder about that, devoting my life to something most women don’t really give a damn about.”
We were inching toward a lot of unasked questions about Graham and women. I wanted to keep him going. “Elizabeth always says she saves her emotions for stuff that’s real, and music is just the background.”
“And yet, if you go out with a bunch of married couples, it’s always the women that want to dance. It makes me think sometimes that I’ve forgotten what rock and roll is all about. It’s not about who played on what label, it’s about feeling that nasty rhythm.”
“Sure,” I said, “but the more you know, the more you can control it, so you can recreate that feeling anytime you want.”
“That’s just it, isn’t it? We have to control everything. We can’t just let it happen and, you know, dance to it.” He looked at his chair, then back at his beer. “In a manner of speaking. Hell, what am I going on about? Look what we did today. We created a fucking masterpiece! Give me a beer.”
And then, somehow, we were talking about other things. Solid-state versus tube amps, microphone placement in the studio, DooTone Records and all the great groups they recorded in the fifties.
We finished the case. Graham must not have done his share because by two o’clock, right over a sign that said, DANGER, DO NOT GO BEYOND THIS FENCE, I heaved my guts out onto the ice plant and the eroded cliff that looked down on the Pacific Coast Highway while Graham sat in his chair and held on to my belt. For a moment I thought it would all come out of me: Lizard Kings and dead winos and naked groupies passed out in the vocal booth.
I was wrong. We drove down to the ocean and I waded into it to wash my mouth with salt water, soaking my shoes and pants cuffs, nearly falling down in the freezing water. As I came back up the concrete steps to the road I could feel him still there, coiled up inside me like a snake.
c h a p t e r 3
SMILE
Brian Wilson started working on Smile in the summer of 1966. Pet Sounds had just come out; it was big in England and had a cult following in the U.S., but it hadn’t gone through the roof like the Beatles’ Rubber Soul. Brian had this competition thing about the Beatles and it was like they had beaten him again. Mere greatness was not enough. He had to produce an authentic work of genius.
Of all the albums Graham and I talked about, over breakfast and on our way to LAX, Smile was the one that most intrigued me. What if Brian had gotten it out for Christmas of 1966 like he promised? The only track the Beatles had finished for Sgt. Pepper was “When I’m Sixty-Four.” McCartney made no secret of his admiration for Pet Sounds and Smile would have blown him away. Then there was the effect on Brian himself, to have produced the first rock and roll record universally acclaimed as high art.
At this point Brian lived in a house on Laurel Way at the top of Beverly Hills, a couple of miles of winding streets and switchbacks away from Sunset Boulevard. He’d dropped acid and smoked a lot of hash and things had started to get weird. He built a big sandbox around his grand piano so he could feel the sand under his feet while he played. He put up a sultan’s tent that filled an entire room and then never went in it. It was hard for him to get out of bed, and harder still to get dressed. Then, in the grip of an idea he could barely articulate, he would rush out to Western or Gold Star Studios to put down some tracks, even if it was three in the morning.
He’d started to put on weight, too. He talked about vegetables and health food and ate hamburgers and hashish brownies. His moods swung from rage to hysterical laughter to tears. There was all this stuff in his head, ideas and music and sounds, and every scrap had intense emotions tied up in it, every note meant something.
I had mixed feelings about the Beach Boys. Sure, “Good Vibrations” is a classic, and the early car and surf songs have great hooks and harmonies. But what about those concerts on the White House lawn, and all the patriotic “Be True To Your School” attitude?
Graham tried to set me straight. I had to make a distinction, he said, between the records, which were Brian, and the touring band. It’s Mike Love who keeps the band on the road, who likes nothing better in the world than to be in front of an audience, the bigger the better. He works them tirelessly, pumps them up, gets them singing along or even screaming at him, anything for a reaction. He’s the Republican of the group, the flag-waver, as conservative musically as he is politically. The car and surf songs were good enough for the early sixties and that’s good enough for him.
Brian dropped out of the touring band in 1964, replaced briefly by Glen Campbell and then more or less permanently by Bruce Johnston. By that point the rest of the band was making only minimal contributions to the albums anyway. Carl played a little guitar, everybody sang what Brian told them to, and the rest was done by studio musicians. Brian wrote all the songs, did all the arrangements and production.
The story is that it started with “Surfer Girl.” Studio guys played the instruments, Brian and some of his friends did the vocals, and the first the rest of the band knew about it was when Brian took a finished acetate home and played it for them. Suddenly Brian didn’t need them anymore.
On Pet Sounds Brian let the other guys come in and rerecord some of the vocals he already had on tape. If they didn’t sing what he wanted, or he wasn’t happy with the take, he would wait until they left and do it again by himself. He didn’t start Smile until the touring band was away on the road.
I said to Graham, “What you’re telling me is that everything I like about the Beach Boys is Brian, and everything I hate is Mike Love?”
“You said it, not me.”
We’d been by Mike Autrey�
��s store, and he put me on the plane with a stack of books and cassettes, some by or about the Beach Boys, others about everybody from Sam Cooke to Bob Dylan to Prince. “Think it over,” he said, “and give me a call sometime.”
Inside David Leaf’s Beach Boys and the California Myth was a check for ten thousand dollars.
Elizabeth was in a good mood when I called her from the airport. Instead of being relieved I felt myself slipping backward into the marriage. She seemed to know every time I was angry enough or distant enough to leave her. It was like it flipped some kind of switch and she would turn seductive, break down the walls I’d built up, work just hard enough to keep me hanging on.
When I got in the car she gave me a real kiss, her tongue darting into my mouth. “I missed you,” she said. We went straight out to Little Italy for dinner and killed a carafe and a half of wine. At home she stopped inside the door and kissed me again and I followed her into the bedroom.
We sat on the edge of the bed. I pulled her sweater off and she unhooked her bra. I could smell Halston and the warmth of her body. Her nipples were stiff with desire. My good intentions counted for nothing. I wanted her and I told myself it wouldn’t make any difference, we could still talk about what was eating me up, only not now, let’s not miss this chance.
“Ray,” she said.
“Mmmmm.”
“Ray.” She put her hands around my neck and gently pulled my face back up to her eye level. “Maybe this isn’t the best time to bring this up. But if we wait much longer it’ll be too late.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know I’ve been off the pill for six months.” Her doctor took her off occasionally, per label instructions. We’d used condoms or a diaphragm the few times we’d actually done anything lately. “I was thinking. C’mere. That’s better. I was thinking maybe we should take advantage of that.”
“Advantage?”
“Don’t be difficult. I want a baby. You know that. We’ve talked about it.”
“Not recently.”
“It’s not something that’s just going to go away.”
I rolled onto my back, feeling my erection start to fade. “You’re right, this is not a real good time.”
“Is it your father?”
“That’s a lot of it.”
“You’re not like your father. You know that.”
“I want to believe it. That doesn’t make it true.”
“You don’t have to be a saint to be a father. God, you should see some of the parents at school. There’s only one thing you absolutely have to do with a kid. You have to let them know that you love them, no matter what they do. That’s all. Everything beyond that is gravy.”
My eyes stung unexpectedly. If it was so easy, why couldn’t my parents have done it?
“Besides,” Elizabeth said. “It might, you know, bring us closer. Closer together.”
“I thought we couldn’t afford a kid.” Which was a shitty thing to say, considering the check for ten grand in my luggage. It was just that I’d been thinking about using that money to set myself up on my own.
“I’m going to get the vice-principal’s job. Martha told me today.”
I rolled back over to face her. “That’s fantastic. I’m really proud of you.”
“So money’s not a problem.” She reached over and unzipped me. “I mean, we don’t even know if we can have a kid.” She tugged at my pants and I helped her pull them off. She peeled away my underwear and sure enough, the erection was back, oblivious to consequences. “I mean, if it did happen tonight,” she said, “it would be like fate, wouldn’t it? Like it was meant to happen.”
I didn’t have to say anything. All I had to do was lie there and let it happen. Which is what I did.
Elizabeth never did put on a nightgown and I was aware of her naked skin all night. In the morning when I touched her waist she turned to me and we made love again. When she left for school I was still in bed and she was all smiles and kisses.
I lay there a long time. On one level I’d been manipulated. The problem was that I felt good, more relaxed than I’d been in weeks. I couldn’t summon up the anger I’d felt in L.A.
I did a little work and thought about what it would mean if she was actually pregnant. Not just what kind of father I’d be, but how Elizabeth would be as a mother. Our own mothers and fathers had spent years in silence, she and I hardly talked to each other, what chance did a kid have?
And the kid would change us. After Larry and Diane had their first kid, Larry said their sex life dried up to nothing. Diane wanted back rubs instead—not that this would be anything new for me. I’d heard it over and over. If the presence of the kids isn’t enough, crawling in bed between you, they change the way you see each other, not as lovers any more but as Mommy and Daddy.
That gave me a sudden vision of my father, who had to share my mother with me. Maybe it even hurt him to share me with my mother. Either way, him jealous and without the words to say why. It felt weird to suddenly see things through his eyes, weird and uncomfortable. I can see that happening a lot if the kid becomes a reality. Good or bad, it’s what Elizabeth wants. If I back out now, I don’t think the marriage will survive it. A couple of days ago that would have been fine. Today I don’t know.
The jobs in front of me were both CD players, both with intermittent problems. Sometimes one wouldn’t load the disk unless the guy slapped it on top of the box at exactly the right moment. It amazes me how people discover these arcane methods of getting things to work. This other player would hang up and let out that awful digital echo, but only sometimes, and only on the first track.
I needed a distraction, so I put on my scratched LP of Pet Sounds. I didn’t see the big deal. A lot of the songs sound alike and some of them border on elevator music. I took it off and put on Glimpses volume three, the one with “Codine” by Quicksilver Messenger Service and “Tallyman” by Jeff Beck.
By late afternoon I had both CD players back together and running tests. It was all I could do not to open the refrigerator and start pouring beers down myself. The gray, cold day ate at my resolve to put on the brakes. At that point I was ready to talk myself out of the Beach Boys. I picked up one of Mike Autrey’s books just to make sure and the next thing I knew I was hooked.
Brian is the oldest of three brothers. He was the genius, Dennis was the troublemaker, and little Carl, overweight for most of his adolescence, was the spiritual one. They grew up in what was then the white, middle-class suburb of Hawthorne in South Central L.A.
Brian seemed normal enough in high school. He was six three and handsome, with soulful eyes and neatly cut brown hair. He dressed like everybody else, in blue jeans and white T-shirts. He played center field and quarterback. He had plenty of friends, he liked girls and cars and junk food.
It was his father, Murry, the would-be songwriter, that drove him crazy. Nothing Brian did was ever good enough for him. Not his performance on the football field, not his grades, especially not the songs he wrote. Murry’s message was simple: Brian was worthless without him, without his coaching in sports, without his production and PR work in music.
Legend has it the Wilson parents went to Mexico for the weekend and left the boys a hundred bucks for food and emergencies. The boys used it to rent instruments instead and spent the whole time writing songs. “Surfin’” was Dennis’s idea, since he was the only one of them who actually did surf. It was less of a sport at that point than something tough kids like Dennis did between beers and girls.
Brian thought Murry would be proud of him for following in his footsteps. In fact Murry was pissed off. Since he couldn’t talk them out of it, he took over. He got them a recording session, which he produced, then he took the tapes around until Candix records agreed to put out a single, “Surfin’” b/w “Luau.” When the song took off they did another demo tape that included “409” and “Surfer Girl.” Murry took it to Capitol and the rest, more or less, is history. In all the years that he mana
ged the band, though, he never told Brian that his songs were anything but junk, and he never forgave Brian for recording his own songs instead of Murry’s Lawrence Welk-style numbers.
I remember how my father came home from the hospital the summer after my junior year in high school, still wobbly from his first heart attack, and told me how he could still kick my ass. I remember how I knocked myself out over the next year trying to be the perfect kid, and him grounding me for my “attitude.” One night in the spring of 1968 I tried to sleep out under a bridge and got picked up by the cops around two A.M. When I hadn’t come home after school, my father had taken to bed with pains in his chest. I tried to explain to my mother that I had to get away, had to prove that I was a real person, capable of independent action, even if the action was stupid and pointless. My father never quit competing, never quit trying to hog the spotlight, not even at the end.
Neither did Murry.
You don’t get pregnant, Elizabeth tells me, from repeated efforts. That lowers the sperm count. Better to save it up and take your best shot.
Apparently we’ve taken ours, and time will now tell. No further efforts are required on my part.
Brian’s father could never get over Brian’s success. It ate at him all his life. My father could never understand why I didn’t want to be a teacher, just like him. It comes down to the same thing. What Brian or I did was only important to the extent that it reflected on our fathers. Whether we were happy or not never counted.
