What Was It Like to Tour With Brian Wilson and Help Him Finish ‘Smile’?
Rolling Stone interview series Unknown Legends features long-form conversations between senior writer Andy Greene and veteran musicians who have toured and recorded alongside icons for years, if not decades. All are renowned in the business, but some are less well known to the general public. Here, these artists tell their complete stories, giving an up-close look at life on music’s A list. This edition features multi-instrumentalist Probyn Gregory.
Three and a half decades ago, when the Beach Boys were America’s favorite cheeseball uncles thanks to “Kokomo” and appearances on shows like Full House and Baywatch, Probyn Gregory was part of a small group of Los Angles-based Brian Wilson aficionados who appreciated the full extent of his genius. “We’d meet at each other’s houses and play fragments of Smile we’d gathered from bootlegs,” Gregory tells Rolling Stone via Zoom from his home in Sunland-Tujunga, California. “There were marathon listening sessions where we’d go, ‘This should be on there’ or ‘This is the running order.’ Of course, no one knew the running order, because it never came out.”
When Brian Wilson finally decided to finish Smile in 2004, Gregory was one of the handful of musicians by his side helping him piece it together. By that point, the multi-instrumentalist — who can handle anything from guitar, bass, and banjo to trumpet, french horn, and theremin — had been an integral part of Wilson’s studio and road band for six years. They’d played Pet Sounds all across the planet together, performed for the Queen at Buckingham Palace, and shared the stage with Neil Young, Paul McCartney, Elton John, and Bruce Springsteen. He’d toured with the Monkees, Arthur Lee’s Love, Al Jardine, and Jan and Dean over the past couple of decades, but he remained firmly committed to Wilson the entire time, and never missed a tour.
There are Beach Boys songs he’s played well over 1,000 times, but he never lost his love for the work. “There are times during ‘Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)’ where I find myself in tears playing it behind Brian,” he says. “It’s such a beautiful piece of music.”
As the stepson of a Botany professor, Gregory was a “faculty brat” that grew up in college towns all across America. (His biological father was killed in a train accident when Gregory was just 3.) In 1965, when he was 8 and living in Palo Alto, California (his stepfather was teaching at Stanford), he heard “California Girls” on a tiny AM radio. “That intro was just magical,” he says. “I stopped what I was doing and listened to the whole song. It changed me.”
It was the dawn of the hippie revolution, and Gregory was living in its epicenter. “My parents were very plugged in,” he says. “We had a draft-card-burning party at our house. My parents were very involved in the anti-war movement and the anti-nuke movement. My mother actually ended up spending time in prison for civil disobedience. They took me to a Human Be-In in Palo Alto. They also went to a Love-In, but I was too young to attend that. I remember really wishing I was ten years older so I could experience the Summer of Love.”
His parents also loved the music of the hippie era. They introduced him to records by Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and Love. “They took me to my first concert, which was the Grateful Dead playing outside at Panhandle Park near Haight-Ashbury,” he says. “Someone in the crowd threw an orange that hit my brother in the eye. Jerry Garcia waved his hand, stopped the song, and went, ‘Stop. Someone just hit that kid with an orange. Uncool. No throwing stuff!’ My brother was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m famous!'” [Hey Deadheads, consider this a formal challenge to find that moment on a bootleg.]
Gregory picked up the trumpet in the fourth grade and would try to play along to Herb Alpert songs on the radio. Around the same time, he tried to teach himself acoustic guitar by learning the songs of the Beatles, the Byrds, and the Monkees. He continued to sharpen his skills when his family moved across the country in late 1967 after his stepfather accepted a teaching job at Keene State College in New Hampshire. There wasn’t nearly as much live music happening in the area, but he did manage to check out a Jefferson Airplane show in 1970. “Something happened to their van and they were hours late arriving,” he says. “People had been smoking all this dope in this incredibly hot room without air conditioning. It was raining sticky marijuana on us. It was terrible.”
Drugs never played a huge role in his life. “My parents had a loose relationship with drugs,” he says. “They were never addicted to them, but they were helpful in introducing me to things I might’ve stumbled onto and overdone.”
Near the end of high school, Gregory went to Merrywood Music Camp in Lenox, Massachusetts, where he focused on the trumpet. “I was one of the worst players at the camp,” he says. “But I had a wonderful time. I met my soulmates, who were mainly these, frankly, Jewish kids from big cities like Boston and New York. I loved them. I wished I was Jewish myself. Some of my counselors had gone to Oberlin, and they were the hippest people I’d ever met in my life.”
He followed in their footsteps by attending Oberlin, a formative time where he took English classes, studied music theory, traveled around to see shows by Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and Linda Ronstadt, and eventually landed a spot at L.A.’s Guitar Institute of Technology after graduation. “Famous guitarists would come by and teach seminars,” he says. “I got to learn from Robben Ford, Larry Carlton, Tommy Tedesco, and Pat Martino.”
The L.A. music scene was dominated by new new wave and hair metal bands when he finished his schooling, but he found work in the surf-rock group the Wedge. Their sole release was Surf Party ’83 and they began playing Top 40 hits in clubs to eke out a living. He took a job at the Economics Research Associates, a consulting firm, too. “I was the guy with the red pen, making sure that things weren’t poorly written,” he says. “At least my English major at Oberlin came into play a little.’
When he wasn’t working, Gregory played briefly with Peter Case, and the Negro Problem, but nothing really took off until he met up with a bunch of likeminded musicians calling themselves the Wondermints. Everyone in the group shared a love of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, and it wasn’t long before they were backing their hero. [Editor’s note: We spoke with Gregory shortly before Brian Wilson’s wife Melinda died and court documents revealed that Wilson is suffering from dementia.]
How did you meet the Wondermints?
I was at Club Lingerie in 1985, and I saw someone with a Smile shirt. I said, “Where’d you get that shirt?” He said, “I made it.” I said, “Can I get you to make me one?” It was [keyboardist] Darian Sahanaja, and we became friends. He later formed the Wondermints. I wasn’t in the first version, but I really liked the band a lot. He and [guitarist] Nick Walusko were the founders, and the two main writers. I finagled my way in to the band, and began playing trumpet with them. Then later I played guitar with them, and then I was even the bass player for a little while. The bass was always a revolving chair in that band.
What was the sound of the Wondermints?
Power pop with humorous shades. We had an alter ego called The After Dinner Mints, where we would play television themes, and cartoon music from cartoons and TV shows. That was a lot of fun.
Were you mainly playing clubs around L.A.?
Yeah. One of the chief clubs around the early and mid Nineties was called Spaceland, in Silver Lake. I played a lot there with whatever bands I was playing with.
Are you still working your day job?
Yeah. I eventually got so busy once things took off that I had to go part-time, or they’d just let me go off on tour and I’d come back. There’d be a pile of things on my desk, and I’d have to just stay late at night for a week until the pile got reduced. I worked there until the company disbanded in 2008. I was there 27 years.
Going back to your early Beach Boys fandom, how did it grow after you first heard “California Girls” on the radio?
The next year, “Good Vibrations” was the big hit. That was monster. That was international. That was on the radio for months. Then in ’67, the big hit, at least where I was living, in Palo Alto, was “Heroes and Villains,” which is a very strange song. Now I know there are tape edits, where they go from the different sections, but I remember listening to it thinking, “Wow, there’s something different.”
It actually made the hair on my neck rise up a little bit. It was a little dangerous. There was something about “Heroes and Villains” where it was very different from other songs on the radio. Then we moved to New Hampshire, and the Beach Boys took a back burner for a little while, because they went through the period where they didn’t have that many hits. “Do It Again” and “Darlin'” weren’t really on my radar. I was busy trying to acclimate to New Hampshire, and listening to whatever was coming over the radio.
I think the first Beach Boys record that came back on my radar was a Pickwick compilation record in the early Seventies. I had a crazy assortment of songs where “409” would follow “God Only Knows.” It was disjointed. Then, of course, in 1974, I fell under the influence, as everyone else did, of the Endless Summer album. That double album essentially remade the Beach Boys’ career, and got them to be a really successful live act again.
I was really listening to every song, and dropping the needle, and bringing it back, and trying to figure out, on piano, what the chords were. At this point, I’d learned to play guitar. Some of them were in keys I could play, some of them were in E-Flat. Who could play an E-Flat?
How did you learn about the lost Smile record?
I heard rumors of it in college, but when I first came to L.A., someone loaned me a cassette with a few fragments on there. I thought, “Wow, this is crazy stuff.” I began seeking it out at what they call “swap meets,” these places where you could buy bootleg records. I don’t know how this stuff leaked out of the vaults, but various parts of Smile would come my way, or come other people’s way.
When I met Darian, he had fragments that I didn’t have, and I had fragments that he didn’t have. We would meet at each other’s houses, along with Nick Walusko, or this person, Domenic Priore, who was a Smile scholar. He may not have been a musician, but he was a real fan of all that Smile stuff.
What captivated you so much about this music?
The vibe. One of the things about the Beach Boys has always been their ethereal vocal blends. Even after I joined the Brian Wilson Band, we would try to sound like that, but we couldn’t because we weren’t the brothers. We didn’t have the history that they did of sitting around the Wilson family piano, with Al Jardine and Mike Love. They had a sound like no one else did. There was something that came across in the yearning and the mournful feeling that imbues a lot of Brian Wilson’s music.
That came through in spades, to me, in the Smile fragments. I got a real sense of, not incompletion, but world weariness, and an understanding. Pet Sounds was all about that too, the teenager trying to become a man.
There was this sort of illicit thrill of listening to Smile bootlegs back then. It was this forbidden music you knew drove Brian insane trying to finish, and no longer wanted anything to do with.
I know what you mean. Every time I heard a new fragment that I fell in love with, I would thank God for my little inner circle of people that allowed me to hear this music that otherwise wouldn’t be heard. I really wished that other people would hear it. At some point, there was a paper in Los Angeles called The Reader. I took out an ad in the back, and I said something along the order of, “Capitol Records, please release Smile. This music needs to be heard.”
How did you first meet Brian?
It was around 1989. His first solo album was coming out. I was rehearsing with a band in West L.A. I heard that Brian Wilson was rehearsing in the studio next door. I thought, “This is my only chance.” I think I knocked at the door, and I think he was the only one in there.
He came to the door and said, “Yeah, can I help you?” I said, “I have to say, you are amazing, and I love your music so much.” I was the gushing fan. He’s like, “That’s great. Okay, thanks, bye.” He closed the door and he went back to rehearsing.
The next time I met him was a few years later. We were playing a Brian Wilson tribute show for Wild Honey, which was this charity organization. We were doing “Surf’s Up,” and I happened to be singing lead on that one. I looked into the audience, and there was Brian Wilson. I was like, “Oh my God. I have to sing this hard song, his song, one of his best songs, to him?” I was very nervous. We met him briefly, then he actually played at his own tribute show.
Where did things go from there in terms of the Wondermints backing Brian in concert?
He had to do a radio show, and he needed a band. This was maybe a year after the tribute. His manager got ahold of the Wondermints manager, and we ended up doing that. He sang “Do It Again,” “Darlin’,” and maybe one other song. “Do It Again” is an E-Flat, and he gets to the bridge, and suddenly Brian stops.
He stopped, and so we stopped, and then he starts playing a boogie-woogie in A major, which is a key very far away from E Flat. It’s a tritone. It doesn’t make any sense. He’s playing away. Suddenly he stops, and he says, “Oh, yeah,” and then he goes into the bridge of “Do It Again,” in A flat, a half step away from where he has just been playing. We all look at each other like, “That’s not human. What just happened. Who thinks that way?” Well, he does.
How did that lead to more work with Brian?
If my memory serves, the Wondermints were playing various clubs. Every once in a while, he would find out that we were playing and he would come down and sing. It was usually the same song, “Do It Again.” This happened a couple of times. And then in late 1998 or early 1999, his wife [Melinda] approached our manager.
And he said to us, “Brian’s putting together a solo band, and you guys are remembered fondly, and are asked to come out and audition.” They took us out in a couple of waves, and we passed the audition. [Guitarist/singer] Jeff Foskett was next to us in the next hotel room, and he later become very instrumental in the band.
Was your mind blown when you got the job?
Oh my God. Todd Rundgren, Neil Young, and Brian Wilson, especially Brian Wilson and Todd, those are my heroes. To be able to play with one of my heroes, it just blew my head off.
Tell me about preparing for that tour. You guys approached the material very differently than the Beach Boys touring band of that time.
Yes. But I didn’t even really know what the touring band was up to. My friends told me in the Seventies and the Eighties that the touring band didn’t float their boat. They said, “Just listen to the records. Don’t bother going to the show. You’ll be disappointed,” which was stupid, and I’m sorry I ever listened to them, because I could have seen Dennis play. I never saw Dennis play before he passed away. And similarly with Carl. But the time I got around to seeing the Beach Boys, it was 2000. I felt cheated that I didn’t get to see those earlier versions of the band.
Songs like “The Little Girl I Once Knew” and “Til I Die” are pretty lush and weren’t really made for the stage. How did you approach them?
It was challenging. One of the reasons that I think I made the cut for the band is that I was a multi-instrumentalist. When they needed French horn on “God Only Knows,” I can do that. If they needed theremin for “Good Vibrations,” “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times,” and “Wild Honey,” I could do that. And I could play guitar and sing, so I was of use there.
We spent a lot of time listening to the original records, and if we happened to have access to broken down parts without the vocals, and we could hear better, we’d rely on them. We had listened a lot to things from the vaults, and tried to determine what had been done, and what we could get away with on stage with the personnel that we had.
What were those first few shows like? A Brian Wilson solo concert was a pretty untested proposition.
Yes and no. He played a few festivals sets in 1998 [with other musicians] where he tested the waters, but those were short sets. Our first show was in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We didn’t know how Brian was going to do. He always looked a little, not gun shy, but he wasn’t confident, necessarily. Our first three shows were in March of 1999. We didn’t know if he was just going to hang up his spurs after three shows, call it a day, and say, “Ah, I tried it, but it’s not for me.” But he did pretty well, and as it turns out, he’s a trouper. He may not be playing this year, but we got in 24 good years, and there was no guarantee that it was going to make it out of the first couple of shows.
I love that Live at the Roxy album you put out in 2000. It was very early in your time with him, but the show was already really tight.
We’d been rehearsing a lot. We really wanted to do the music justice. I think everyone gave it their A-plus shot, and really focused, and really tried to emote, and tried to break down the fourth wall as much as we could. Even though it’s Brian’s show, it’s up to him to do it. But as the backing band, we wanted to make sure that we gave him as solid a bed as we possibly could so that he could thrive.
The timing for all this was pretty perfect. I feel like Brian was getting a lot respect in the indie music community, and people were finally starting to see him as a separate entity from the Beach Boys.
I’d never really thought of that, but I guess you’re right. Also, people hadn’t really seen him. If they had seen him live with the Beach Boys, he’d come out and play piano or sing one song, and then he’d wander offstage. That was his regular approach up until that point.
Were you shocked when they came to you with plans for the Pet Sounds orchestral tour just one year into all this.
Yeah. That was tough. We would listen to these tracks and go, “Okay, what can we cover? We know we’re going to have to hire some strings…” On that first one, we were just using local orchestras. But it was thrilling because I loved that music. It was the only album where I loved every single song. But it was hard for me because my father was killed by a train, and the last thing you hear on that album is a train. I used to burst into tears.
What was it like playing the Queen’s Jubilee in 2002?
That was quite an honor to play on that stage. And at one point, we were rehearsing and were taken aback because we could see Paul McCartney sitting on one of the amps. Eric Clapton was a few feet away. We’re like, “Oh my God. Everyone play as good as you could possibly play.”
So you’re performing for the Queen and Paul McCartney, playing Pet Sounds all across the world, and then you go back home to your day job?
Yeah, up until 2009 when it went away and I was forced to look for other sideline music things. I occasionally taught instruments, usually to children. I taught banjo, trumpet, guitar, bass a couple of times.
Fans had the sense that Brian hated Smile and didn’t want to even talk about it. When did that start changing?
When the band first got formed in 1999, Brian was so uptight about songs of that Smile era. You couldn’t even say the words “Heroes and Villains” or “Surf’s Up” or “Cabinessence.” He said, “That reminds me of a bad time. I don’t want to think about it. Please don’t mention those songs when I’m around.” So we naturally obeyed our boss.
But we were at a Christmas party at Scott Bennett’s house. He was the keyboardist in the Brian Wilson Band. Brian just sat down at the piano and started playing “Heroes and Villains.” We were all shocked that he would do that. We all jumped in and sang it with him. The ice was sort of broken at that point.
We debuted “Heroes and Villains” at the Radio City Music Hall tribute to Brian Wilson later that year. And it was only a couple years later, in 2003…and I think that Melinda was a big mover here in making this happen. She had heard what the fans wanted. They wanted to hear things like “Surf’s Up” and “Cabinessence” and things off Smile.
She suggested to Brian, “What about finishing this thing up? It’s been dogging you all these years.” And slowly he got into the idea. And when I say slowly, I mean we rehearsed a lot without him and learned our parts. Nick Walusko and I, as the main guitar players, would go and listen to tapes and say, “Okay, I’m going to do this part,” or, “This falls into my wheelhouse.”
So we got it all together, and then we went over to Brian’s house. There’s a documentary about this where you can actually see him. I think he leaves the room as we’re rehearsing because he’s just not ready. He couldn’t take it.
What was Brian’s emotional state as all of this was happening?
I’ve seen footage of the premier in London in February of 2004, and he has this look of he’s just been let out of jail. When we got done with it, none of us could believe that it came off as well as it did. We didn’t know when we started the show if Brian would even make it through the show or if we’d be rife with errors. Hardly any of us were reading music. Most of us had memorized our parts. And that was a long show with a lot of complicated parts, blowing on little whistle rings, shaking sheets of metal, running over and playing a marimba part, and then going back and playing guitar and singing. It was very complicated.
But it took him a long time to do it, but you could see him slowly making the corner and coming to terms with this demon from his past. Smile was very heavy for Brian and letting it go cannot have been easy in 1967.
Tell me about making That Lucky Old Sun. Did you take the energy of making Smile and take it into the studio for the creation of new songs?
That was a fun album. In fact, I consider that his best work, apart from Smile, which is more recent of course. Nothing will touch the original Beach Boys triumphs, but of his solo work, I thought That Lucky Old Sun was probably my number two after Smile. That was a lot of fun. It was very collaborative. Scott Bennett was involved in fleshing out some of the music and the lyrics, and everyone had a lot to offer.
That was a really busy time for the band. I felt like Brian was on a creative roll. I listened to the songs from that record, and they had some of the old Beach Boys magic in their composition. Not that his other more modern things didn’t have that, but this had it even more so.
Al Jardine came into the band in 2006. It must have been great to add him into the mix.
Well, I love the vibe that he brings because he’s a smiley, good time. He brings a peacefulness and also, his voice as we stand here now in 2024, he has the best remaining voice of all the Beach Boys. He sounds most like the old singer that he was, and I don’t know if that’s because he eats a lot of organic peanut butter, which I know he does. But he sounds good. His vibe is good. He was a real asset. I was very glad that he began playing with us again.
Prior to 2012, most fans felt a Beach Boys reunion tour with Brian was an impossibility. Did you think it was impossible or were you optimistic it could happen?
I was in between. I knew that there had been disagreements, and even some lawsuits between the guys. And so I wasn’t sure how the egos were going to pan out among all the people onstage, but it ended up that it worked and people were willing to maybe bite their tongue or put some things aside. And even David Marks came back and was part of the fold, which is fantastic. I backed him up a couple of times in some of his solo things. David’s a great guitar player and was historic. I mean, that’s him on “409” and other songs of the era.
What were the initial rehearsals like for you?
At the first rehearsal, it blew me away to hear the original voices. I mean, there’s Mike [Love], there’s Al, there’s Brian, there’s Bruce Johnston. Sure, we didn’t have Carl and Dennis, but no one sounded like that. I was just over the moon.
You’re on the reunion album too.
That was a little bit of a hodgepodge. Joe Thomas produced it. He has people that he likes to use that are not necessarily in the Brian Wilson Band, and that’s fine. It doesn’t always have to be us, of course. It’s producer’s prerogative to choose who he wants to play. I liked some of the songs in there. I thought the main track, “That’s Why God Made the Radio,” was fantastic. I’m sorry that didn’t do better.
How did you wind up in the Monkees touring band?
I’d been approached to be part of the Monkees touring band on a couple of different instruments. In 2012, they needed French horn on “Shades of Gray.” They wanted trumpet on some songs and banjo on a few. And that year, Christian Nesmith joined because Mike wanted his son in the band. And then Micky got his sister Coco Dolenz in. So there was no more budget for me.
But I was friends with the manager, Andrew Sandoval. And in 2019, he called and he said, “I think we have a spot for you now.” And I’m like, “You’re kidding.” Because when I was 10, my favorite bands in the world were the Monkees, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Byrds. Now, I’d already played with the Beach Boys at that point. So if I could manage to play with the Monkees, I could die happy.
I love what Nez brought to the band during that era.
I loved working with Nez. He was a very creative guy, and I love his songwriting vibe and what he brings to the stage.
I sensed that he was never the same after his heart attack.
I saw that, too. Backstage he moved slowly. I’d met him a couple of times after shows prior to that, so I knew what he could be like. And even if he happened to be stoned or something, his mind was sharp.
I was just overjoyed to be in that band, especially playing parts that I’d never really heard played with the band. There’s a really nice trumpet part at the end of “Daydream Believer.” It rarely gets played. And so here I was on stage with them, and I was like, “I’m going to nail those parts.” And I did.
You went out with Jan and Dean at one point?
Yes. After Jan [Berry] had died, Dean [Torrence] was going out as “Dean Torrence of Jan & Dean.” And I got recruited to be in his backing band in about ’08. We played a bunch of live shows. I did a couple of cruises. I did a bunch of car shows. It’s amazing playing at a car show. You have to put your songs in between the cars zipping around or you can’t hear anything.
Tell me about touring with Arthur Lee and Love.
I had a good time with that, although Arthur was a real piece of work. He was…I guess the key word would be “mercurial.” You got him on a good day, everything was great. If you got him on a bad day, look out. He might throw a chair at you.
He had a pretty tough life.
Yes. I will say that he had played at UCLA, and I think he was on some substance, and the show wasn’t very good. I wasn’t there, but everyone had not good things to say about that show. So he was contrite. And the next show he did was the House of Blues, and I was in the band. That was one of the best shows I ever played with anyone in my life. He rocked so hard. Someone tried to heckle him, he just threw it right back at him and just kept on steamrolling the set. So I saw the really great side of him too. That was like an A-list performance.
You got to play Forever Changes with him.
That was fun because when I was a boy, that was one of the albums that made me think, “Hey, maybe I can play trumpet in a rock band.” And here I was getting paid to do it.
It’s amazing to think about how many classics Sixties works you helped bring back to life onstage.
Well, that’s interesting. I hadn’t thought of that. Pet Sounds, Smile, Forever Changes…
All the Monkees songs too. A lot of that stuff was never played live back in the day. And when they attempted the big hits, they sounded nothing like they did on the records.
Yeah. I have to say it is really validating. I spent 20 years trying to get into a successful band in L.A., and it just never happened. The closest was the Wondermints when we recorded the Austin Powers theme song.
But then to be able to back up people who I really like, like the Monkees or Brian Wilson…I was really happy to be playing music that the audience was really digging. And so, sure, I didn’t write the song. It wasn’t even my band that might’ve done the original version, but that doesn’t matter to me. If I can be part of a team of people bringing joy to other people’s lives, great. And if I can get paid for it on top of it, all the better.
The last Brian Wilson tour was in the summer of 2022 with Chicago. How was that?
It was a little tough. We’ve seen that over the years, that sometimes he’s really pumped and all there and ready to do a show. At other times he’s scared and he’s heard voices or he’s just not feeling up to it. And I’m afraid to say that a lot of 2022 he wasn’t feeling up to it. So that was difficult because he’s 81. He’s certainly earned the right to take time off. I’m not sure if we’re going to see Brian [tour] again. It’d be great if we would, but I don’t know.
I didn’t get a chance to see that tour with Chicago, but I saw some videos. He didn’t seem super engaged.
That’s been an issue all along with Brian. People love to ring the bell and extol his virtues when he’s on, and that’s great. But when he’s not engaged, as you’ve seen him, it can seem really bad. And I feel bad for everyone. The audience, they want to get the good Brian, and we in the band want everyone to be pleased, but we can’t control everything. What happens to Brian happens to him. There’s nothing anyone can do about it.
There’s been so much tragedy in the last few years with Nicky Wonder dying, and then Jeff Foskett following a few years later.
There has been sadness recently. Losing Nicky was a terrible blow. And the same with Foskett. We’re just getting to the age now…it’s the 2020s and these people were making music in the ’60s, so some of them are bound to either pass on or not be able to do the work anymore, or not want to. 2023 was a bad year in a lot of respects. I don’t want to dwell on it, but let’s hope that 2024 is better.
Are you hopeful that Brian might have just one more tour in him?
I’m always hopeful because I got to say, those first three shows that we did, we didn’t know that he would be able to go on. And there have been other times when he was at a low ebb where we said, “Oh, this is it. He’s going to pack it in.” And he didn’t. He’s in for the long haul because he outlasted everyone. His parents, all of his brothers.
Is there any scenario in which the band could go out and play the music without him?
I think some of us would like to do that. I’m not sure politically how that would work. We’d have to make sure that we met the criteria of everyone involved, and get the permissions, and make sure not to step on everyone’s toes. There’s been a little talk about it, but of course we don’t want to get our hopes up. And mainly what we want to do is do what Brian wants to do until the bitter end.
As you said, Al Jardine is still singing his ass off.
He is doing some solo tours and he has three different versions of that band. There’s the Storytellers version that’s a trio. There’s the Endless Summer band that’s six people, and I’m in that on guitar. And then there’s the Friends & Family, even larger one, that has Carnie and Wendy Wilson, and I have subbed in on that one and may sub in again in the future. I hope that Al does go on and do a lot of shows because, as I say, I think his voice sounds great.
What do you hope to accomplish in the next few years?
Oh, that’s a tough one. I’m 66. I don’t have much hair left and I can’t pretend to be younger than I am. I still enjoy performing, but 2023 was a bad year for that. There was not any Brian work to speak of and I just was taking gigs where I can get them. I was Paul Simon in a Simon and Garfunkel tribute for a bit. I play in Beach Boy tributes when people call me and if I’m free and it’s not having to travel terribly far.
I guess I have a solo album in me somewhere. I haven’t really ever done my own music that much. I’m not quite sure, other than doing a solo album on which I do not intend to tour.
I’m sorry to hear the past year was so rough, but you’ve still gotten to live the dream of most musicians. You’ve played with many of the biggest icons in music history.
I know how lucky I am because I know plenty of people who are better players than I am that have given up after a few years of trying to make it in whatever way, and gone back and gotten a bank job in Iowa. But they were great players. They just didn’t manage to have the lucky breaks. And same thing with me. I was trying to get signed for 20 years, and it didn’t happen. Then, almost by luck, the fact that I was playing with the Wondermints got me into the Brian Wilson eye. Everything else sort of came from that big lucky break with Brian Wilson.
If you hear “California Girls” on the radio, are you still able to enjoy it?
Yes and no. Every once in a while, because I’ve literally played that song a thousand times or more onstage with various ensembles. If I’m in the right mood and I can actually focus, yes, I can get back to me being 8 with that little transistor radio against my ear, completely having an out of body experience. The music is so amazing.