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What It Felt Like to Sing With Brian Wilson
Somehow I got the chance to harmonize with the greatest pop songwriter of our lifetime
In 1998, the author (right), who then worked at a tiny local newspaper in California, made the most of a rare opportunity to interview music legend Brian Wilson.
Courtesy Corey Levitan
Nearly 30 years ago, I got the chance to harmonize with the voice that’s been in my head since I was 8 years old.
No, not my mother’s — Brian Wilson’s. The Beach Boy passed away earlier this week at age 82.
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In 1998, I met with Brian at his house to talk about his new solo album at the time. Brian’s publicist was pissed off that I’d even gotten the interview. It wasn’t her choice to slot me in between Rolling Stone and Entertainment Tonight. I worked for the Daily Breeze, a community newspaper you’ve probably only heard of if you were looking for apartments in Redondo Beach, California.
But the Breeze had something the L.A. Times didn’t. It was the hometown newspaper of the Wilsons, only a couple of miles south of Hawthorne, where in 2005 a Beach Boys monument was erected at the site of Brian’s demolished childhood home.
The Breeze was the newspaper that Murry Wilson slammed down on his coffee table after coming home from his job as a supervisor at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, often too exhausted and/or frustrated to spend quality time with his sons Brian, Carl and Dennis, who would form the nucleus of the Beach Boys.
A hand-drawn portrait of the late Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson was among the mementoes placed at the site of Wilson’s childhood home in Hawthorne, California, this week.
Chris Pizzello/AP Photo
So I hatched a plan to exploit this.
Brian’s manager at the time was Irving Azoff. Best known for steering the Eagles’ career, Azoff had pulled himself up from a small-time booking agent using aggressive tactics. (Rolling Stone once described him as a “pint-sized dynamo,” which is one of the kindest ways it’s ever been put.)
So I typed Azoff a letter explaining the frustrations of being the little guy in music journalism who’s never cut a break, and FedExed it to his New York office. Knowing Azoff’s own story, I wrote, I knew he could sympathize. I pleaded with him to let Brian’s hometown newspaper have just 15 minutes with him.
My Wite-Out-stained prose must have worked. A week later, Brian’s publicist called me.
“I don’t know how the hell you did it, Corey,” she said, “but I was told to slot you in for an hour with Brian tomorrow.”
The drive to Brian’s house was itself the stuff of lifetime highlights. It sat at the end of a mountaintop enclave off Coldwater Canyon that seemed magically populated only by rock stars.
After the gate guard checked if my driver’s license matched the name on his clipboard list, I drove my 1991 Toyota Paseo past Paul Stanley jogging shirtless and John Fogerty getting into a limousine.
The publicist met me in the house’s open garage, begrudgingly pointing to the door leading into the home. Brian’s wife, Melinda, introduced herself first, offering a choice of miniature sandwiches from a silver tray in the kitchen.
Brian seemed incredibly uncomfortable answering my questions face-to-face. Flashing painfully awkward smiles — and only after I smiled first — he gave mostly one- or two-word answers. I told him I grew up on the Beach Boys album All Summer Long, which I recorded onto a cassette so my dad and I could listen to it on long drives.
“That’s my favorite album,” he replied.
“How do you feel your new album stacks up against Pet Sounds?” I asked him.
“Quite well,” he answered.
The Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds,” released in 1966, is widely regarded as one of the most groundbreaking albums in rock history.
Alamy
When I asked him to elaborate, Brian replied, “I think it compares quite well to Pet Sounds.”
After about 20 minutes of this, I asked if there was somewhere we could go that might help him feel more relaxed and able to open up. Maybe outdoors?
That’s when he signaled me to follow him to the piano outside his kitchen. He sat down and began playing his new song “Your Imagination.” Because I had listened to an advance CD of the album 25 times in preparation for our interview, I recognized the chord pattern he was plinking out and started singing before he did.
“Wait, you know this?” Brian asked me, stunned.
He slapped the bench, inviting me to sit next to him.
“Sing!” he commanded, as though I were his cousin Mike Love during a recording session in the 1960s.
And so we harmonized together. Brian wrapped his famous voice around my unfamous one, alternating between low and high harmonies when I got to the chorus.
I got to spend more than 90 minutes with my idol, including 10 minutes performing with him. (The only other song I can recall is “Surf’s Up,” but I let him sing that without any of my help!)
Afterward, Brian opened up enough to give me my Daily Breeze cover story, which was a relief.
Unfortunately, no footage exists of our surreal private concert. Our phones didn’t have video recorders in them yet. There isn’t even a photo of it, because the Breeze photographer assigned to the shoot chose that very moment to step outside for a smoke. (I had to settle for a private snap at the top of the Wilsons’ stairway on the way out.)
The author took part in a “surreal private concert” that featured Wilson playing the piano.
Deborah Feingold/Corbis via Getty Images
Only Melinda was there to bear witness to the greatest moment of my life so far. (Shhh, don’t tell my wife or daughter, but it is. How could it not be?)
“That sounded very nice,” Melinda said. “You sure you don’t want a sandwich? The egg salad is really good.”
AARP essays share a point of view in the author’s voice, drawn from expertise or experience, and do not necessarily reflect the views of AARP.
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