Uncanny

LONDON-SE1 Jude Kelly remembers a Brian Wilson concert in February 2005. She recalls: "My early heroes were the Beach Boys, so when Brian Wilson disappeared from view I mourned him as if he were dead. When I took my two teenage children to see him in the Smile concert it was like watching a man on a tightrope crossing a gorge with the entire audience willing him to succeed. Unlike me, my children had no memory of Brian's glory days, but at the end of the concert they jumped to their feet, recognising his greatness. The Festival Hall gave Brian the chance to become what he once was. The downside is that now my children think they discovered him."

SUICIDE GIRLS: I’ve read that you and your brother have said that you never did drugs when you’re doing the shows. But how can you not when you got a show called Lidsville?
Marty: Well, you don’t have to have a show called Lidsville to do drugs. We were just smart. We had The Beatles calling us for our shows every week. Brian Epstein asked for all the Pufnstuf 16 millimeters and all The Bugaloos 16 millimeters to be sent to London every week. We knew we had something when that was going on. When we did those shows we weren’t thinking about college kids.

But we always did big shows and we always spent more money than any network gave us. For these shows we only got like 50 to 60,000 dollars an episode but we spent $100,000 on each one. Today that $100,000 would probably equal $350,000 but we put everything on the screen.

SG: But would you guys get high?
Marty: Now we’re back at the drug thing.

SG: Yeah, I only want to follow up.
Marty: It’s true that we weren’t doing acid and drugs when we were doing shows. Fortunately we’re not drug addicts or alcoholics. But I know many of them.

CHARLESTON, SC ABC NEWS 4

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LITTLE PAD Goldmine: Did you like [Brian Wilson's] first solo album?
Mike Love: No.

Goldmine: You didn't like it?
Mike Love: Fuck no.

Goldmine: What didn't you like about it?
Mike Love: First of all the lyrics. Second of all the arrangements weren't commercial enough. Third of all it sounded like shit compared to what he could sound like.

Goldmine: That brings up the song "Hang On To Your Ego," which was going to be on Pet Sounds.
Mike Love: That used to be "Hang On To Your Ego" and then it became "I Know There's An Answer." I changed the lyrics because I thought it was too acid for me. That was those guys doing acid, Van Dyke Parks, and Brian and Tony Asher.

Goldmine: So I guess there's no chance for a book?
Mike Love: Who would want to take the fucking time to go through garbage like that just to rectify garbage. What I want is Brian to admit and say that half that stuff he said in his book is outrageous bullshit. And it was because of his paranoid delusions that he came up with this stuff that's not factual, number one. Number two is, yes, Mike Love wrote this and this. And if he actually does not forget, I can have witnesses to say, or we can have a lie detector test brought to bear, then let's go.

I just want to have it be fair. That's the one thing that I'd like to have is a little bit of fairness because he's been very unfair to the rest of the group over the years. Now Brian is very ingenious. You want to like him, you want to feel sorry for him because he's destroyed his life. I mean, who wouldn't feels sorry for a guy who is very gifted and destroyed his life? But the untold story is that he's selfish, he's defrauded his cousin. He's cheated his group. He's been taking money and has not performed. The intent of his getting money to have therapy was not for him to do two solo albums and write a book defaming individuals and the group. The guy has mental problems. The thing is, he's crazy. He's a genius but he nuts so a lot of things he imagines like the two-by-four his father was supposed to be beating him with, that's delusions.

[Brian] wouldn't fuck with anybody else but he screwed me over royally.

QUIGLEY "Well, a lot of our concerts do okay, and I know we still get royalty checks which still isn't that important, but again, I have to just say that we're making our records. We're just doing our thing and why should everybody dig us? Everybody can dig The Beatles, but why should everybody dig us? You know, The Beach Boys' image is kinda like a group Doris Day, you know what I mean? A lot of people stopped digging The Beach Boys, you know, and in their minds that image is probably still that Doris Day image and I think a lot of kids are going away from all that "clean" thing because that's where their parents are at, and they're trying to get into another thing and they don't like groups that represent that "clean" thing as much as other groups, which is OK because it's just another form of growing up." -- Bruce Johnson