1961-67 Collaborators Poll (Good Timin Pod Tie-In)
Feb 2, 2024 14:59:45 GMT
jk, Kapitan, and 1 more like this
Post by Sheriff John Stone on Feb 2, 2024 14:59:45 GMT
A 1976 interview with Roger Christian:
MAG: What were your first efforts with Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys?
RC: The first thing that Brian and I wrote together was “Shut Down”, which was the flip side of “Surfin´ U.S.A.” The next record we did was “Little Deuce Coupe”, which was the flip side of “Surfer Girl”.
MAG: How did you get started writing with Brian?
RC: I was a disc jockey at the time on KFWB in Los Angeles. I was explaining the Beach Boys´ record “409” on the air one day, telling listeners what the car was like. I think I put the car down at the time. I said it´s a great song about a poor car! It was just one of those things. A 327 was really better. They came out with a Mark II engine which, I think, was a 428 in very limited production, which was a great engine. But they didn´t really come on strong on that, so the 409 was the big number they were pushing back then. Everybody who got one thought it was just the biggest thing around. But it was just a poorly conceived engine and the 327 was eventually a better machine. So I was playing the record, and I said it was a good song about a bad car. I was explaining the lyrics about four-speed, dual quad, pos-attraction because somebody had called up and said he couldn´t understand what they were singing and would I explain it. So I did.
MAG: What were they?
RC: Four-speed, of course, is the amount of gears that it had. Dual quad means it had two four barrel carbs. And the pos-attraction was a limited slip differential. Brian´s father, Murry Wilson, happened to be listening to the radio and he heard me do this. He called me and said, “Say, you are really into cars.” And I told him I used to race a few years ago. This was in 1963. I quit racing in ´55. So we got talking, and he asked me if I wrote songs. I said I´d written a couple of things. Then I got together with Brian and we started writing.
MAG: So it was Murry Wilson, then, who put the two of you together?
RC: Yes, I brought The Beach Boys out to a couple of disco things – at the time we were calling them record hops – and they were a back-up band sometimes. The Surfaris, too, were a back-up band, and so were The Righteous Brothers. The Beach Boys always played great. They were dependable. Mr. Wilson always kept his word. If he said he´d have them here at 7:35 p.m., he had them here at 7:35 p.m. He was a wonderful guy. I was really saddened when he passed away a couple of years ago. Then we went to the record that Brian and I wrote that gave me greatest pleasure. It was probably the greatest moneymaker
Outside of a song that I wrote with Jan Berry of Jan & Dean called “Little Old Lady From Pasadena”. The record was “Don´t Worry Baby.” That´s the greatest thing that Brian and I ever collaborated on. In fact, the Bay City Rollers just cut it in a new album. It´s been done over the years by quite a few groups. But nobody can cut it the way The Beach Boys did.
MAG: How did you and Brian work together.What was your style?
MAG: What were your first efforts with Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys?
RC: The first thing that Brian and I wrote together was “Shut Down”, which was the flip side of “Surfin´ U.S.A.” The next record we did was “Little Deuce Coupe”, which was the flip side of “Surfer Girl”.
MAG: How did you get started writing with Brian?
RC: I was a disc jockey at the time on KFWB in Los Angeles. I was explaining the Beach Boys´ record “409” on the air one day, telling listeners what the car was like. I think I put the car down at the time. I said it´s a great song about a poor car! It was just one of those things. A 327 was really better. They came out with a Mark II engine which, I think, was a 428 in very limited production, which was a great engine. But they didn´t really come on strong on that, so the 409 was the big number they were pushing back then. Everybody who got one thought it was just the biggest thing around. But it was just a poorly conceived engine and the 327 was eventually a better machine. So I was playing the record, and I said it was a good song about a bad car. I was explaining the lyrics about four-speed, dual quad, pos-attraction because somebody had called up and said he couldn´t understand what they were singing and would I explain it. So I did.
MAG: What were they?
RC: Four-speed, of course, is the amount of gears that it had. Dual quad means it had two four barrel carbs. And the pos-attraction was a limited slip differential. Brian´s father, Murry Wilson, happened to be listening to the radio and he heard me do this. He called me and said, “Say, you are really into cars.” And I told him I used to race a few years ago. This was in 1963. I quit racing in ´55. So we got talking, and he asked me if I wrote songs. I said I´d written a couple of things. Then I got together with Brian and we started writing.
MAG: So it was Murry Wilson, then, who put the two of you together?
RC: Yes, I brought The Beach Boys out to a couple of disco things – at the time we were calling them record hops – and they were a back-up band sometimes. The Surfaris, too, were a back-up band, and so were The Righteous Brothers. The Beach Boys always played great. They were dependable. Mr. Wilson always kept his word. If he said he´d have them here at 7:35 p.m., he had them here at 7:35 p.m. He was a wonderful guy. I was really saddened when he passed away a couple of years ago. Then we went to the record that Brian and I wrote that gave me greatest pleasure. It was probably the greatest moneymaker
Outside of a song that I wrote with Jan Berry of Jan & Dean called “Little Old Lady From Pasadena”. The record was “Don´t Worry Baby.” That´s the greatest thing that Brian and I ever collaborated on. In fact, the Bay City Rollers just cut it in a new album. It´s been done over the years by quite a few groups. But nobody can cut it the way The Beach Boys did.
MAG: How did you and Brian work together.What was your style?
RC: I tried to come up with a story lyric, and I´d also have a rough idea for a melody-which Brian would promptly dismiss! That was a good thing. Although when I wrote with Jan Berry-I probably wrote more Jan & Dean hits than I did Beach Boys hits. I was co-writer on all of them from “Surf City” right through to “Dead Man´s Curve”, “Little Old Lady From Pasadena” and all of those- I would write a melody and Jan would change it a bit. But with Brian, his melodies were so unique and so original and so imaginative and melodic that I would just write a lyric and Brian would put a melody to it. Sometimes he would improve on a lyric, which is hard for a lyricist to admit-that his words could be improved upon. But Brian was just phasing them so they´d sing a little better.
MAG: How did The Beach Boys get started writing surfing music?
RC: Well, Mr. Wilson had started Brian, Carl and Dennis singing. They had an organ in the front room of their house in Hawthorne. He´d been inspired to music. He wrote some things that he presented back in the ´50s, and he taught the guys how to sing harmony. Brian had always been a big Four Freshmen fan. I had, too. Mr. Wilson taught Brian the harmony and he, of course, worked with the four-part harmony. They would do family type singing things. One day Dennis came home from school and he said surfing was getting really a big thing. Everybody was learning how to do it, and he said they ought to write a song about it. So Mike and Brian wrote a song about it, which they called “Surfin' “. They took it to a guy named Hite Morgan, who was with Guild Music. They made a demo record on it. That was the one that ended up on the Candix label.
MAG: Tell me a little about Candix in those days.
RC: Russ Reagan (now president of 20th Century Records, and the man who made Elton John into a star) was at Candix at that time. So was Joe Saraceno, who went on to do a & r for a number of groups at Warner Brothers and Liberty Records. Russ was in charge of promotion there, and Joe headed a & r. Jim Mitchum, Robert Mitchum´s son, was also working there at the time. They had an office up on Hollywood Boulevard. The Dix Brothers owned this label. They put the first Beach Boys master out, “Surfin´.” They speeded up the tape a little bit to get that young immature sound. It originally had great appeal just to the surfers because here was somebody who was singing what they were doing. It was just a little local hit, but it sold like a hundred thousand in California alone! I don´t know what the story was on Candix, whether they thought this was going to be a flash in the pan and they better get their money and get out, or whether their distributors had problems. Candix had had a pretty good sized instrumental hit called “Underwater” by The Frogmen back in the late ´50s. Russ Reagan recorded for them then under the name of Little Davey Summers. Even Lou Rawls sang a couple of things that were on Candix at the time. But the company had a hard time following a hit with another hit.
MAG: Would you explain the importance of that.
RC: As any small label can tell you, they´re not going to get paid on their first hit until they come along with their second one. The small retailers, the mom and pop record shops, really don´t want to take a record that ´s not that big in the first place. So you have to almost guarantee that it will sell to get it into the stores. Then when they do sell it, it´s awfully hard to get the money because, what are you doing to do, sue a hundred or five hundred record stores? The way you get your money is, once you´ve had a hit and the people are calling you for the follow-up record, then you get paid on the original one or you don´t give them the follow-up, which is guaranteed that they´re going to sell it anyway. That´s about the way it is. I don´t know if Candix didn´t follow up enough, or thought they had The Beach Boys under a longer contract and it was strictly a one-shot master thing, but Capitol wound up signing The Beach Boys.
MAG: Why do you think Capitol was so eager to sign them?
RC: Capitol wanted to turn into a more youth orientated label. And until the Beatles came along in late ´63 and ´64, The Beach Boys really kept Capitol in business. The Lettermen had hits in ´61 and ´62. But most of Capitol´s other acts were middle-of-the road (MOR) acts. There was a lot of Sue Rainy, Nancy Wilson, Nat King Cole, Stan Kenton, The Four Freshmen, Billy May. There wasn´t a lot of youth product there until ´61 when The Lettermen came in. They had a few masters like “Brontosaurus Stomp” and things like that, but suddenly they were more youth orientated. So Capitol managed to get The Beach Boys right after their first release on Candix.
MAG: How did they do in this move-over to a much bigger label?
RC: They didn´t have much luck recording in the Capitol Tower. The company wanted them to record there, but it was such a big room. When you are working on a harmony thing and you´re in close quarters you can hear what the other guy´s doing. But in a great big recording room Brian had a hard time getting the sound he wanted. I don´t know whether the guys were in awe of a ninety-foot studio or what, but he ended u doing all his work over at Western Recording´s studios in Hollywood, in Studio Three, a small studio there.
MAG: I heard that it was Russ Reagan who came up with the name The Beach Boys for the group. Is that true?
RC: Right. Russ did name them.
MAG: What name were they using before that?
RC: The Pendletones.
MAG: When they started recording were they sophisticated about recording studio techniques? Or were they like the Beatles, who started out not knowing much about recording but learned quickly as they went along and became experts?
RC: Brian always kept the sound that he wanted to end up with. That´s the thing that made The Beach Boys stand alone in their day-the harmony. The Beach Boys had a four-part harmony that was by no means easily come by. Brian would work with them and work with them and work with them. Brian had as near perfect pitch as you can get, if not perfect. He would teach the guys. He´d say, okay Dennis this is your note. And he´d go “Ahhhhh.” And Carl, this is yours-“AHHHHhhhh.” And then they´d start off. And that was it. Just the way the Four Freshmen did or any barbershop quartet did years ago. They would build from there and just keep overdubbing and meshing it down and sometimes they had an acapella that stood alone and didn´t need any tracking. Mike rewrote the old song “Their Hearts Were Full Of Spring” and made it into a James Dean legend ballad. It was all acapella, and it´s really very beautiful. It was in their “Little Deuce Coupe” album, and the chords are very broad and beautiful.
MAG: Were The Beach Boys prepared for the success that hit them?
RC: Not really. It was a wonderful thing. They were still very young. Carl was still in high school, and Brian had just gotten out of high school and was going to college. They had a record on the national charts while they were still in school!
MAG: Were they surprised by their success or did they expect it?
RC: They were surprised. I mean, you always hope that can get it together and you listen to other stuff. Records were suddenly coming around to a youthful sound. The format on radio at the time was that they had the hard rock or the early schlock rock, the Philadelphia Sound from the East from 1956 to ´59, and a lot of good things came out in ´59 and ´60. But they really hadn´t gone trendish. The West Coast sound really hadn´t arrived yet. The West coast sound had always been jazz and that was about it. There really weren´t that many West Coast records. Gary Paxton in ´61 produced “Monster Mash” and there were a few things like that. But nobody really sang that much about what teenagers were doing outside of holding hands and getting it on. Suddenly, here´s a group singing about what guys were interested in doing.
MAG: Were The Beach Boys the first of the surfing groups?
MAG: How did The Beach Boys get started writing surfing music?
RC: Well, Mr. Wilson had started Brian, Carl and Dennis singing. They had an organ in the front room of their house in Hawthorne. He´d been inspired to music. He wrote some things that he presented back in the ´50s, and he taught the guys how to sing harmony. Brian had always been a big Four Freshmen fan. I had, too. Mr. Wilson taught Brian the harmony and he, of course, worked with the four-part harmony. They would do family type singing things. One day Dennis came home from school and he said surfing was getting really a big thing. Everybody was learning how to do it, and he said they ought to write a song about it. So Mike and Brian wrote a song about it, which they called “Surfin' “. They took it to a guy named Hite Morgan, who was with Guild Music. They made a demo record on it. That was the one that ended up on the Candix label.
MAG: Tell me a little about Candix in those days.
RC: Russ Reagan (now president of 20th Century Records, and the man who made Elton John into a star) was at Candix at that time. So was Joe Saraceno, who went on to do a & r for a number of groups at Warner Brothers and Liberty Records. Russ was in charge of promotion there, and Joe headed a & r. Jim Mitchum, Robert Mitchum´s son, was also working there at the time. They had an office up on Hollywood Boulevard. The Dix Brothers owned this label. They put the first Beach Boys master out, “Surfin´.” They speeded up the tape a little bit to get that young immature sound. It originally had great appeal just to the surfers because here was somebody who was singing what they were doing. It was just a little local hit, but it sold like a hundred thousand in California alone! I don´t know what the story was on Candix, whether they thought this was going to be a flash in the pan and they better get their money and get out, or whether their distributors had problems. Candix had had a pretty good sized instrumental hit called “Underwater” by The Frogmen back in the late ´50s. Russ Reagan recorded for them then under the name of Little Davey Summers. Even Lou Rawls sang a couple of things that were on Candix at the time. But the company had a hard time following a hit with another hit.
MAG: Would you explain the importance of that.
RC: As any small label can tell you, they´re not going to get paid on their first hit until they come along with their second one. The small retailers, the mom and pop record shops, really don´t want to take a record that ´s not that big in the first place. So you have to almost guarantee that it will sell to get it into the stores. Then when they do sell it, it´s awfully hard to get the money because, what are you doing to do, sue a hundred or five hundred record stores? The way you get your money is, once you´ve had a hit and the people are calling you for the follow-up record, then you get paid on the original one or you don´t give them the follow-up, which is guaranteed that they´re going to sell it anyway. That´s about the way it is. I don´t know if Candix didn´t follow up enough, or thought they had The Beach Boys under a longer contract and it was strictly a one-shot master thing, but Capitol wound up signing The Beach Boys.
MAG: Why do you think Capitol was so eager to sign them?
RC: Capitol wanted to turn into a more youth orientated label. And until the Beatles came along in late ´63 and ´64, The Beach Boys really kept Capitol in business. The Lettermen had hits in ´61 and ´62. But most of Capitol´s other acts were middle-of-the road (MOR) acts. There was a lot of Sue Rainy, Nancy Wilson, Nat King Cole, Stan Kenton, The Four Freshmen, Billy May. There wasn´t a lot of youth product there until ´61 when The Lettermen came in. They had a few masters like “Brontosaurus Stomp” and things like that, but suddenly they were more youth orientated. So Capitol managed to get The Beach Boys right after their first release on Candix.
MAG: How did they do in this move-over to a much bigger label?
RC: They didn´t have much luck recording in the Capitol Tower. The company wanted them to record there, but it was such a big room. When you are working on a harmony thing and you´re in close quarters you can hear what the other guy´s doing. But in a great big recording room Brian had a hard time getting the sound he wanted. I don´t know whether the guys were in awe of a ninety-foot studio or what, but he ended u doing all his work over at Western Recording´s studios in Hollywood, in Studio Three, a small studio there.
MAG: I heard that it was Russ Reagan who came up with the name The Beach Boys for the group. Is that true?
RC: Right. Russ did name them.
MAG: What name were they using before that?
RC: The Pendletones.
MAG: When they started recording were they sophisticated about recording studio techniques? Or were they like the Beatles, who started out not knowing much about recording but learned quickly as they went along and became experts?
RC: Brian always kept the sound that he wanted to end up with. That´s the thing that made The Beach Boys stand alone in their day-the harmony. The Beach Boys had a four-part harmony that was by no means easily come by. Brian would work with them and work with them and work with them. Brian had as near perfect pitch as you can get, if not perfect. He would teach the guys. He´d say, okay Dennis this is your note. And he´d go “Ahhhhh.” And Carl, this is yours-“AHHHHhhhh.” And then they´d start off. And that was it. Just the way the Four Freshmen did or any barbershop quartet did years ago. They would build from there and just keep overdubbing and meshing it down and sometimes they had an acapella that stood alone and didn´t need any tracking. Mike rewrote the old song “Their Hearts Were Full Of Spring” and made it into a James Dean legend ballad. It was all acapella, and it´s really very beautiful. It was in their “Little Deuce Coupe” album, and the chords are very broad and beautiful.
MAG: Were The Beach Boys prepared for the success that hit them?
RC: Not really. It was a wonderful thing. They were still very young. Carl was still in high school, and Brian had just gotten out of high school and was going to college. They had a record on the national charts while they were still in school!
MAG: Were they surprised by their success or did they expect it?
RC: They were surprised. I mean, you always hope that can get it together and you listen to other stuff. Records were suddenly coming around to a youthful sound. The format on radio at the time was that they had the hard rock or the early schlock rock, the Philadelphia Sound from the East from 1956 to ´59, and a lot of good things came out in ´59 and ´60. But they really hadn´t gone trendish. The West Coast sound really hadn´t arrived yet. The West coast sound had always been jazz and that was about it. There really weren´t that many West Coast records. Gary Paxton in ´61 produced “Monster Mash” and there were a few things like that. But nobody really sang that much about what teenagers were doing outside of holding hands and getting it on. Suddenly, here´s a group singing about what guys were interested in doing.
MAG: Were The Beach Boys the first of the surfing groups?
RC: Well, if you talk about lyrically, their story embodying what´s going on surfing-wise, they were. The surf people-you know, the surfers, themselves, were at the beach most of the time-used to like Dick Dale. He was not that much of a singer. He was more of an instrumentalist. A fantastic guitar player. He really coined the surf beat.
MAG: What were some of his biggest hits?
RC: He never had anything that charted nationally. He had a lot of things out here in Los Angeles, and he was always number one in L.A. with anything he came out with. He took the old song “Miserlou” and gave it a surf beat. He came out with “Let´s Go Trippin´ ” and “Peppermint Man.” All of those records were number one in Los Angeles.
MAG: And this was all prior to 1962?
RC: Yes, that ´s right.
MAG: When did Jan & Dean come on?
RC: They had “Baby Talk” in the late ´50s. And they faded a little bit. They still did a lot of record hops in the South Bay area of Los Angeles with me. I´d have different acts there. Brian and Jan got to be very close. Jan really had great respect for Brian´s work. Jan was an expert in the studio. They just naturally hit it off.
MAG: Did they ever work together?
RC: Oh, many times. In fact Brian sang on all the Jan & Dean records from “Surf City” right on through.
MAG: How would you contrast The Beach Boys sound from that of Jan & Dean or The Surfaris or The Rip Chords or any other of the surfing groups?
RC: They´re mostly spin-offs of what The Beach Boys did. The Rip Chords were a group that Columbia had under contract. Terry Melcher was a studio producer with Columbia, and he was given the task of producing The Rip Chords. He ended up really doing the singing, he and Bruce Johnston, who later joined The Beach Boys in 1965. They just turned to the car things like The Beach Boys had been doing. In fact, I wrote two of The Rip Chords´ records with Jan Berry. One was “Three Window Coupe”, which got up to number twenty or something on the charts. “Red Hot Roadster” was the other. I was an associate producer on a film called “A Swinging Summer” that the Rip Chords were in. So were Gary Lewis and the Playboys and the Righteous Brothers. The Rip Chords sang a song called “Red Hot Roadster” which I had written with Mike Post, who ´s now a musical director for a number of television shows. That was, by the way, also notable as Raquel Welch´ s first movie! I´d written the song with Mike Post and Carol Connors. I think Carol was the one who originally wrote the first Rip Chord´s hit, “Hey Little Cobra”.
MAG: The Beach Boys´ music began to change around 1966 with the album “Pet Sounds”. Brian began to get into different musical areas. I´ve heard stories that he felt a strong competitiveness with The Beatles. Is that true?
RC: Oh, yes. Definitely. Well, every American act when The Beatles started to come and Capitol put the big push on them was concerned. That´s all The Beatles needed was the advance publicity because they certainly had the showmanship and the musical ability and the charisma and the karma and everything to sustain it once everybody knew about them, which they have done, of course. But a lot of American acts were suddenly concerned. The weaker one fell by the wayside. Seventy percent of the product on the American music charts in 1964 was English! You know, it was the thing. All the little American girls went crazy for the British accents and the hair on their foreheads. It never hurt Brian that much, but he was always concerned. He had great respect for their music. And The Beatles had great respect for The Beach Boys´ music.
MAG: What happened to Brian? When “Pet Sounds” came out and it didn´t do especially well, Brian began to change.
RC: Well, after “Good Vibrations,” which was such a classic masterpiece, the next few after that (“Heroes and Villains” and “Wild Honey”) fell off. “Good Vibrations” was their last really huge single. Probably their absolute top single. After “Good Vibrations” was the first time they were off Capitol. It´s funny but when an artist shifts from one label to another, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn´t.It´s one of those things. But the main reason that “Pet Sounds” – which is finally getting the due that it does deserves now-didn´t do well was the people couldn´t understand why it wasn´t in stereo. Brian had never really recorded that much in stereo. He would go in and he´d build. He´d start with the harmony and keep building it and building it. If maybe it was a tiny bit flat in one place he would go a little sharp on the next overdub. By the time he´d gone through a lot of mixing, he would end up exactly what he wanted for a mono sound. Now, to come and split that for stereo, especially when you cut it on three track-and Brian cut on three track most of the time- and suddenly there was four track, then there was eight track and sixteen track. In the old days, you´d go and cut it on three or four track. If you did a three hour session it would take you as many hours to dub it down. And that was it. Now if you did a three hour session on sixteen track it takes you a week to dub the thing down because every time you boost one track you overcome something on another track. You just really go crazy until you learn how to bring up what you want without losing something else.
MAG: Would you elaborate a little on that?
RC: You want to feature something, but you don´t want something else to be gone. By the time you put a limiter on the total product it´s going to bring up what it hears and diminish what it doesn´t. The limiter is like second-guessing what the actual dub-down man wants the product to sound like. Finally, within the last few years they have developed little computer mods to remember what´s on a certain track and how much the limiter has to diminish the total response of what is there individually and collectively. This way young producers just don´t go out of their minds! The equipment and the capabilities of the facilities that are available now are really such a challenge that they´re so versatile and so amazing in what they can do. It´s inconceivable for a producer to keep in his head just exactly what he wants to come out. The computers can keep track on that. But Brian didn´t have that at that time.
MAG: So because the technique wasn´t there, he didn´t do “Pet Sounds” in stereo?
RC: No. He would have it, but he had never worked or spent that much time with eight track and things like that. He didn´t need it. Other musicians could use an eight track to bury sounds or work around what they wanted or didn´t want. Brian didn´t.
MAG: If Brian had recorded “Pet Sounds” in stereo do you think that would have made a significant difference in its reception?
RC: As far as the critics are concerned, it might have. It´s really hard to say why it wasn´t well received. I always thought it was. But I´ve come to understand since then that it wasn´t well received by a lot of critics. Crawdaddy magazine and people like that were starting to come out and say good things and bad things about records. Brian would be very sensitive about criticism.
MAG: How did Capitol feel about it? Were they pleased with the change in The Beach Boys´ music? Here was an album that was not just another collection of surfing sounds, more of the same music for which there was a built-in audience.
RC: Capitol was run by different people then, who really didn´t listen to their artists that much. To them artists were the people who came up and pounded on their doors a couple of times a year to get advances. They´re much more sensitive to the needs of the artists today. They have to be because so many other companies give the artists whatever they want within reason to keep that act happy and to keep their records coming out. With Brian, he would knock himself out doing something really great and really a milestone in young rock music communication. He´d spend a lot of time and puts his whole self into it. He´d be so high about it and have such a great feeling about it. Then he´d take it up to Capitol and somebody would say. “Uh, just a minute Brian. I can´t talk to you. I´ve got Tak Shinto on the phone, who´s an oriental musician, and we got an album coming out on him .” Nobody´s ever heard of him since then, Tak Shinto is good. I´m not putting him down. I´m just saying that Capitol should have been much more sensitive. They could have kept The Beach Boys there if they´d made them happy. They just didn´t treat Brian at that time with the respect that he should have had. To them he was a tall kid who wore sneakers and drove up from the beach every once in a while to bug them. They didn´t realize that they had the most creative young talent producer in the country.
MAG: Is there any incident along these lines that can recall?
RC: I remember in 1963 when Capitol had a record out by Kyu Sakamoto (“Sukiyaki”). It was either number one or number two at the time. Capitol threw a party at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel up on the veranda around the swimming pool. I had an invitation that said, “You and a guest.” Well, Brian and I were in the studio that afternoon writing or something. We were talking about this new act that Capitol had, and Brian said he wondered what the guy was like. I said that I had an invitation as a disc jockey to meet him, and asked if he´d like to go meet him, and asked if he´d liked to go along. Brian said, ” I don´t know. Do you think it´d be okay?” I said sure. So he went home and put on a coat and a tie. I was doing a movie over at MGM at the time, I met him someplace and we went over to the hotel, where I presented my pass. Somebody from Capitol came over and took Brian aside and said, “you really shouldn´t be here because it´s like you´re trying to horn in on Kyu Sakamoto, and we really don´t think it´s your place to be here.” Brian said to me, “I´d better go.” I said, ”Hell, no. You are my guest. What is this?” Another Capitol executive, a diplomat who really held things together there for quite a while, came over and asked me what the problem was. I said that Brian and I had been writing for the last few days to get the last songs for the “Little Deuce Coupe” album or whatever it was and we just took a break and came over and now you´re stiffing him and that´s not right. He said ” No, no-no-no.” That´ s just one example about how some of the early powers at Capitol didn´t make Brian feel as good as they should have made a creative genius like Brian feel… Since then Capitol has realigned their whole corporate attitude towards young creative talent and guys there now are making suggestions and getting things done the way they should be done. It´s developed into a much better commercial thing.
MG: Would you tell us something about why Brian stopped touring with The Beach Boys after the end of 1964?
RC: It was tough for Brian on tour, although he did at first. Traveling is always an exhausting thing. You can´t really create that much unless you´re left alone. It´s very hard to create when you´re overworked and a million different people want a million answers. You get an idea, an inspiration, and you can´t follow through with it. Brian preferred solitude a great deal of time. He just didn´t have any when he was on the road. When he´d get back in town he was exhausted. But Capitol would say, “We need an album.” It was just really tough for Brian to tour and front the group with Mike. A lot of groups when they go to record say, ”Well, let´s see, Jimmy Webb´s got a new thing out, let´s try and do that; or so-and-so´s gonna overdub, let´s do that. But Brian wrote all his own stuff, and arranged and produced it. That plus the travel was just a little too much for him. At that time Glen Campbell was between hits. He hadn´t really hit the second time around, outside of “Turn Around Look at Me,” which he had in ´61 for Challenge, which was pretty good. So Glen toured in Brian´s place for awhile, till his own career took off. Then Bruce Johnston, of course, came in ´65. But Brian basically just preferred solitude, to be left alone to create.
MAG: When did you stop working with The Beach Boys?
RC: Brian and I kind of drifted apart after about ´65 because I had gotten involved in a situation. Back in 1961 or ´62 I had written a thing called “Last Drag.” An engineer named Charlie Underwood, Tony Butala, who was the lead singer in The Lettermen, and Gary Paxton, who produced “Monster Mash,” and Bob Todd, who worked with ABC for awhile, wanted to produce a record with me doing a narrative. We recorded “Last Drag.” It was a real simple thing with me narrating and just some percussions, a sax blowing fifths, and not too much else. Nothing ever happened. I never signed a contract or anything. I never got paid, but it never sold. Later when I did “Shut Down,” I used a couple of lines that were similar to what I´d written in my original song “Last Drag.” All of a sudden when “Shut Down” hit the charts, I heard from Tony, my friend from The Lettermen. I´d been greatly responsible for helping The Lettermen with their careers, and playing their product. I was doing an all-night show at the time and played Lettermen albums all the time because I liked their music. I think nine out of ten Lettermen albums sold were sold in Los Angeles. At the time at KFWB was one of few stations on the air all night playing pop music. So, definitely, my playing the things had something to do with their sales. Here comes Tony later, and he´s going to sue me because of two lines in a song that I´d written on a hit that never happened. A contract that I never signed with the publisher because I was the writer. So I used the two lines again. He was going to sue The Beach Boys because they stole a song of his! I couldn´t believe it. I think about it now, fifteen years later, and I still get mad. Anyway, Charlie Underwood and Tony called Murry Wilson and said they were going to sue because of this and this. Mr. Wilson was a little concerned that if Brian wrote with me there would be trouble. Brian and I wrote sixteen songs in the course of two years. Then the threat of this lawsuit popped up and we never really wrote together after that.
MAG: What was the last song you wrote as a team?
RC: It was the movie “Muscle Beach,” a song called “Muscle Bustle.” I called Brian and we got together and wrote it. That was the last thing we wrote, and that was in 1964. The Last Beach Boys thing we wrote was “Don´t Worry Baby.”
MAG: In the years since then The Beach Boys have had a rough time. After “Good Vibrations” they never had another number-one record. In fact, they never had another top ten record, and they only had one top-fifteen record afterwards. What happened?
MAG: What were some of his biggest hits?
RC: He never had anything that charted nationally. He had a lot of things out here in Los Angeles, and he was always number one in L.A. with anything he came out with. He took the old song “Miserlou” and gave it a surf beat. He came out with “Let´s Go Trippin´ ” and “Peppermint Man.” All of those records were number one in Los Angeles.
MAG: And this was all prior to 1962?
RC: Yes, that ´s right.
MAG: When did Jan & Dean come on?
RC: They had “Baby Talk” in the late ´50s. And they faded a little bit. They still did a lot of record hops in the South Bay area of Los Angeles with me. I´d have different acts there. Brian and Jan got to be very close. Jan really had great respect for Brian´s work. Jan was an expert in the studio. They just naturally hit it off.
MAG: Did they ever work together?
RC: Oh, many times. In fact Brian sang on all the Jan & Dean records from “Surf City” right on through.
MAG: How would you contrast The Beach Boys sound from that of Jan & Dean or The Surfaris or The Rip Chords or any other of the surfing groups?
RC: They´re mostly spin-offs of what The Beach Boys did. The Rip Chords were a group that Columbia had under contract. Terry Melcher was a studio producer with Columbia, and he was given the task of producing The Rip Chords. He ended up really doing the singing, he and Bruce Johnston, who later joined The Beach Boys in 1965. They just turned to the car things like The Beach Boys had been doing. In fact, I wrote two of The Rip Chords´ records with Jan Berry. One was “Three Window Coupe”, which got up to number twenty or something on the charts. “Red Hot Roadster” was the other. I was an associate producer on a film called “A Swinging Summer” that the Rip Chords were in. So were Gary Lewis and the Playboys and the Righteous Brothers. The Rip Chords sang a song called “Red Hot Roadster” which I had written with Mike Post, who ´s now a musical director for a number of television shows. That was, by the way, also notable as Raquel Welch´ s first movie! I´d written the song with Mike Post and Carol Connors. I think Carol was the one who originally wrote the first Rip Chord´s hit, “Hey Little Cobra”.
MAG: The Beach Boys´ music began to change around 1966 with the album “Pet Sounds”. Brian began to get into different musical areas. I´ve heard stories that he felt a strong competitiveness with The Beatles. Is that true?
RC: Oh, yes. Definitely. Well, every American act when The Beatles started to come and Capitol put the big push on them was concerned. That´s all The Beatles needed was the advance publicity because they certainly had the showmanship and the musical ability and the charisma and the karma and everything to sustain it once everybody knew about them, which they have done, of course. But a lot of American acts were suddenly concerned. The weaker one fell by the wayside. Seventy percent of the product on the American music charts in 1964 was English! You know, it was the thing. All the little American girls went crazy for the British accents and the hair on their foreheads. It never hurt Brian that much, but he was always concerned. He had great respect for their music. And The Beatles had great respect for The Beach Boys´ music.
MAG: What happened to Brian? When “Pet Sounds” came out and it didn´t do especially well, Brian began to change.
RC: Well, after “Good Vibrations,” which was such a classic masterpiece, the next few after that (“Heroes and Villains” and “Wild Honey”) fell off. “Good Vibrations” was their last really huge single. Probably their absolute top single. After “Good Vibrations” was the first time they were off Capitol. It´s funny but when an artist shifts from one label to another, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn´t.It´s one of those things. But the main reason that “Pet Sounds” – which is finally getting the due that it does deserves now-didn´t do well was the people couldn´t understand why it wasn´t in stereo. Brian had never really recorded that much in stereo. He would go in and he´d build. He´d start with the harmony and keep building it and building it. If maybe it was a tiny bit flat in one place he would go a little sharp on the next overdub. By the time he´d gone through a lot of mixing, he would end up exactly what he wanted for a mono sound. Now, to come and split that for stereo, especially when you cut it on three track-and Brian cut on three track most of the time- and suddenly there was four track, then there was eight track and sixteen track. In the old days, you´d go and cut it on three or four track. If you did a three hour session it would take you as many hours to dub it down. And that was it. Now if you did a three hour session on sixteen track it takes you a week to dub the thing down because every time you boost one track you overcome something on another track. You just really go crazy until you learn how to bring up what you want without losing something else.
MAG: Would you elaborate a little on that?
RC: You want to feature something, but you don´t want something else to be gone. By the time you put a limiter on the total product it´s going to bring up what it hears and diminish what it doesn´t. The limiter is like second-guessing what the actual dub-down man wants the product to sound like. Finally, within the last few years they have developed little computer mods to remember what´s on a certain track and how much the limiter has to diminish the total response of what is there individually and collectively. This way young producers just don´t go out of their minds! The equipment and the capabilities of the facilities that are available now are really such a challenge that they´re so versatile and so amazing in what they can do. It´s inconceivable for a producer to keep in his head just exactly what he wants to come out. The computers can keep track on that. But Brian didn´t have that at that time.
MAG: So because the technique wasn´t there, he didn´t do “Pet Sounds” in stereo?
RC: No. He would have it, but he had never worked or spent that much time with eight track and things like that. He didn´t need it. Other musicians could use an eight track to bury sounds or work around what they wanted or didn´t want. Brian didn´t.
MAG: If Brian had recorded “Pet Sounds” in stereo do you think that would have made a significant difference in its reception?
RC: As far as the critics are concerned, it might have. It´s really hard to say why it wasn´t well received. I always thought it was. But I´ve come to understand since then that it wasn´t well received by a lot of critics. Crawdaddy magazine and people like that were starting to come out and say good things and bad things about records. Brian would be very sensitive about criticism.
MAG: How did Capitol feel about it? Were they pleased with the change in The Beach Boys´ music? Here was an album that was not just another collection of surfing sounds, more of the same music for which there was a built-in audience.
RC: Capitol was run by different people then, who really didn´t listen to their artists that much. To them artists were the people who came up and pounded on their doors a couple of times a year to get advances. They´re much more sensitive to the needs of the artists today. They have to be because so many other companies give the artists whatever they want within reason to keep that act happy and to keep their records coming out. With Brian, he would knock himself out doing something really great and really a milestone in young rock music communication. He´d spend a lot of time and puts his whole self into it. He´d be so high about it and have such a great feeling about it. Then he´d take it up to Capitol and somebody would say. “Uh, just a minute Brian. I can´t talk to you. I´ve got Tak Shinto on the phone, who´s an oriental musician, and we got an album coming out on him .” Nobody´s ever heard of him since then, Tak Shinto is good. I´m not putting him down. I´m just saying that Capitol should have been much more sensitive. They could have kept The Beach Boys there if they´d made them happy. They just didn´t treat Brian at that time with the respect that he should have had. To them he was a tall kid who wore sneakers and drove up from the beach every once in a while to bug them. They didn´t realize that they had the most creative young talent producer in the country.
MAG: Is there any incident along these lines that can recall?
RC: I remember in 1963 when Capitol had a record out by Kyu Sakamoto (“Sukiyaki”). It was either number one or number two at the time. Capitol threw a party at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel up on the veranda around the swimming pool. I had an invitation that said, “You and a guest.” Well, Brian and I were in the studio that afternoon writing or something. We were talking about this new act that Capitol had, and Brian said he wondered what the guy was like. I said that I had an invitation as a disc jockey to meet him, and asked if he´d like to go meet him, and asked if he´d liked to go along. Brian said, ” I don´t know. Do you think it´d be okay?” I said sure. So he went home and put on a coat and a tie. I was doing a movie over at MGM at the time, I met him someplace and we went over to the hotel, where I presented my pass. Somebody from Capitol came over and took Brian aside and said, “you really shouldn´t be here because it´s like you´re trying to horn in on Kyu Sakamoto, and we really don´t think it´s your place to be here.” Brian said to me, “I´d better go.” I said, ”Hell, no. You are my guest. What is this?” Another Capitol executive, a diplomat who really held things together there for quite a while, came over and asked me what the problem was. I said that Brian and I had been writing for the last few days to get the last songs for the “Little Deuce Coupe” album or whatever it was and we just took a break and came over and now you´re stiffing him and that´s not right. He said ” No, no-no-no.” That´ s just one example about how some of the early powers at Capitol didn´t make Brian feel as good as they should have made a creative genius like Brian feel… Since then Capitol has realigned their whole corporate attitude towards young creative talent and guys there now are making suggestions and getting things done the way they should be done. It´s developed into a much better commercial thing.
MG: Would you tell us something about why Brian stopped touring with The Beach Boys after the end of 1964?
RC: It was tough for Brian on tour, although he did at first. Traveling is always an exhausting thing. You can´t really create that much unless you´re left alone. It´s very hard to create when you´re overworked and a million different people want a million answers. You get an idea, an inspiration, and you can´t follow through with it. Brian preferred solitude a great deal of time. He just didn´t have any when he was on the road. When he´d get back in town he was exhausted. But Capitol would say, “We need an album.” It was just really tough for Brian to tour and front the group with Mike. A lot of groups when they go to record say, ”Well, let´s see, Jimmy Webb´s got a new thing out, let´s try and do that; or so-and-so´s gonna overdub, let´s do that. But Brian wrote all his own stuff, and arranged and produced it. That plus the travel was just a little too much for him. At that time Glen Campbell was between hits. He hadn´t really hit the second time around, outside of “Turn Around Look at Me,” which he had in ´61 for Challenge, which was pretty good. So Glen toured in Brian´s place for awhile, till his own career took off. Then Bruce Johnston, of course, came in ´65. But Brian basically just preferred solitude, to be left alone to create.
MAG: When did you stop working with The Beach Boys?
RC: Brian and I kind of drifted apart after about ´65 because I had gotten involved in a situation. Back in 1961 or ´62 I had written a thing called “Last Drag.” An engineer named Charlie Underwood, Tony Butala, who was the lead singer in The Lettermen, and Gary Paxton, who produced “Monster Mash,” and Bob Todd, who worked with ABC for awhile, wanted to produce a record with me doing a narrative. We recorded “Last Drag.” It was a real simple thing with me narrating and just some percussions, a sax blowing fifths, and not too much else. Nothing ever happened. I never signed a contract or anything. I never got paid, but it never sold. Later when I did “Shut Down,” I used a couple of lines that were similar to what I´d written in my original song “Last Drag.” All of a sudden when “Shut Down” hit the charts, I heard from Tony, my friend from The Lettermen. I´d been greatly responsible for helping The Lettermen with their careers, and playing their product. I was doing an all-night show at the time and played Lettermen albums all the time because I liked their music. I think nine out of ten Lettermen albums sold were sold in Los Angeles. At the time at KFWB was one of few stations on the air all night playing pop music. So, definitely, my playing the things had something to do with their sales. Here comes Tony later, and he´s going to sue me because of two lines in a song that I´d written on a hit that never happened. A contract that I never signed with the publisher because I was the writer. So I used the two lines again. He was going to sue The Beach Boys because they stole a song of his! I couldn´t believe it. I think about it now, fifteen years later, and I still get mad. Anyway, Charlie Underwood and Tony called Murry Wilson and said they were going to sue because of this and this. Mr. Wilson was a little concerned that if Brian wrote with me there would be trouble. Brian and I wrote sixteen songs in the course of two years. Then the threat of this lawsuit popped up and we never really wrote together after that.
MAG: What was the last song you wrote as a team?
RC: It was the movie “Muscle Beach,” a song called “Muscle Bustle.” I called Brian and we got together and wrote it. That was the last thing we wrote, and that was in 1964. The Last Beach Boys thing we wrote was “Don´t Worry Baby.”
MAG: In the years since then The Beach Boys have had a rough time. After “Good Vibrations” they never had another number-one record. In fact, they never had another top ten record, and they only had one top-fifteen record afterwards. What happened?
RC: Basically, Brian wasn´t singing. He quit producing and singing in ´68 or ´69. He never really got back into it that strong until they just came back with “Rock ´n Roll Music.”
MAG: So Brian has just re-emerged. It´s been a long time.
RC: Yes. It´s been seven years. Things go in seven year cycles anyway in the music business.
MAG: Do you think the climate is right now for The Beach Boys to be big all over again?
RC: If Brian doesn´t have too much pressure on him as a businessman. If he can be left alone to create. It was tough for him after selling “God Vibrations.” If you had to talk to a number of musicians or producers or mixers at studios or disc jockeys or music directors, and you talked about the top ten most fantastic records production-wise, right up there with “A Day In The Life” by The Beatles would be “Good Vibrations.” They´re awfully hard to top! Like “Good Vibrations” is a stage play in three acts set to music. It changes just like “A Day In the Life.” It takes you from here to there, sets the stage, resolves the mood and gives you a message along with it. There´s only one thing tougher than getting a hit in the record business. That´s following it up!
MAG: There´s such a tremendous interest today in nostalgia, in the 1950s and early ´60s. Do you think today´s kids are looking back a little wistfully, perhaps to the era of The Beach Boys and their songs celebrating the pleasures of life in California?
RC: Yes. That´s when people didn´t have to sit down and ask what are we going to say with this record? What are we going to communicate after people have heard this record? Will they be better people for it? That´s a bunch of jive. Records and music, for the most part, are meant to entertain. I´m a big bug for movies with a Hollywood happy ending. I don´t like to go see movies where all the people you´ve come to know and love in the ninety minutes you´ve watched die in the end, and are completely unresolved in whatever they´re looking for. I feel the same thing about records. After a record is over I´ve got to say, “Gee, I really get off when I hear that and I look forward to hearing it again.”
MAG: What ´s a good example of such a record?
RC: A record like “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves,” is a fantastic piece of production. I could play that record as a disc jockey again and again and again. Every time I hear it I´ve got to say that record is really animated. You can see things happening. One reason is that Snuff Garrett, the producer-he´s produced all the Johnny Burnett songs and all the hot things Liberty had for so many years-he can just take the talent spectrum and use it. He tells his arranger exactly what he wants, or arranges it himself and makes the record really come alive. It really builds and mounts and there´s so many things he can do, and he does them. Happiness is right there even though it was a sad story in that particular record. It left you with the feeling that you were entertained by it. The thing that came along when records were going good in ´65 was that all of a sudden there was a turn to truth. Whether Dylan was responsible for it or whether it was the new society or the new where-are-we-going-in-this-world-let´s-make-it-a-better-place attitude, everybody was going off in different directions. Let´s face it. The drug culture was too much for a good thing. People used it and cropped out. You really don´t know What´s happening until you´ve been there again and again and again. Unfortunately musicians and other creative people from the beginning of time- if you want to you can go back to Edgar Allen Poe or even half of the classical entertainers- a great deal of them have been drug-motivated creators.
MAG: What do you think the value of The Beach Boys has been to pop music?
RC: They brought a great big smile to the music business. They may not have made it with the record album “Smile,” but they were just singing about the things that made you feel good. There was always a motion in Brian´s music. There was movement, progress and honesty. Youth, without apologizing for youth. In the early days, people used to put down rock and roll and say that it was really dumb. But Brian was a rock and roller, but an extremely sophisticated person. Brian had excellent taste. He was really brilliant. One of the things he´d do was to read the dictionary-a page a day. He´d know all the words! And he´d use ´em. He had such a kinky sense of humor. He´d pick up a light bulb and hold it over his head and say, “Idea.” He just really was very refreshing in his quest for knowledge. He had a curiosity that was insatiable about so many different things. He sought to write about it, and what he did. His production was always clean and sharp and always flawless. I think eventually he´ll get back that. He was interviewed by somebody not long ago and I heard it, and he mentioned me. He said, “Roger was a real guiding light for me in the early days.” That gave me a great warm feeling when I heard that. I greatly enjoyed Brian´s company. We got along great. It´s just the drugs came along and it was a different culture.
MAG: Would you write with him again when the circumstances were right?
RC: Oh, definitely. Sure.
MAG: Then we may be able to look forward to some more hits like the great ones you and Brian did years ago?
RC: I was very close to all the guys and to Audrey, their mom. They´re really sweet down-to-earth people. Success is such a tough thing to deal with. People say, “Boy, I should have that problem. Success is something I´m striving for, and if I finally have it, I wouldn´t consider it that a problem.” But people always find otherwise. You know, a couple of years ago when I was doing a million things-I had a top disc jockey show and was doing television, writing hit songs, working movies-I used to think I´d trade it all and go back to being a disc jockey in Resume Speed, Wyoming, where I ´d be left alone. But, as they say, the grass is always greener.
MAG: I know what you mean, Roger. Thanks very much for your time, and for sharing with us your very personal views about and remembrances of The Beach Boys.
MAG: So Brian has just re-emerged. It´s been a long time.
RC: Yes. It´s been seven years. Things go in seven year cycles anyway in the music business.
MAG: Do you think the climate is right now for The Beach Boys to be big all over again?
RC: If Brian doesn´t have too much pressure on him as a businessman. If he can be left alone to create. It was tough for him after selling “God Vibrations.” If you had to talk to a number of musicians or producers or mixers at studios or disc jockeys or music directors, and you talked about the top ten most fantastic records production-wise, right up there with “A Day In The Life” by The Beatles would be “Good Vibrations.” They´re awfully hard to top! Like “Good Vibrations” is a stage play in three acts set to music. It changes just like “A Day In the Life.” It takes you from here to there, sets the stage, resolves the mood and gives you a message along with it. There´s only one thing tougher than getting a hit in the record business. That´s following it up!
MAG: There´s such a tremendous interest today in nostalgia, in the 1950s and early ´60s. Do you think today´s kids are looking back a little wistfully, perhaps to the era of The Beach Boys and their songs celebrating the pleasures of life in California?
RC: Yes. That´s when people didn´t have to sit down and ask what are we going to say with this record? What are we going to communicate after people have heard this record? Will they be better people for it? That´s a bunch of jive. Records and music, for the most part, are meant to entertain. I´m a big bug for movies with a Hollywood happy ending. I don´t like to go see movies where all the people you´ve come to know and love in the ninety minutes you´ve watched die in the end, and are completely unresolved in whatever they´re looking for. I feel the same thing about records. After a record is over I´ve got to say, “Gee, I really get off when I hear that and I look forward to hearing it again.”
MAG: What ´s a good example of such a record?
RC: A record like “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves,” is a fantastic piece of production. I could play that record as a disc jockey again and again and again. Every time I hear it I´ve got to say that record is really animated. You can see things happening. One reason is that Snuff Garrett, the producer-he´s produced all the Johnny Burnett songs and all the hot things Liberty had for so many years-he can just take the talent spectrum and use it. He tells his arranger exactly what he wants, or arranges it himself and makes the record really come alive. It really builds and mounts and there´s so many things he can do, and he does them. Happiness is right there even though it was a sad story in that particular record. It left you with the feeling that you were entertained by it. The thing that came along when records were going good in ´65 was that all of a sudden there was a turn to truth. Whether Dylan was responsible for it or whether it was the new society or the new where-are-we-going-in-this-world-let´s-make-it-a-better-place attitude, everybody was going off in different directions. Let´s face it. The drug culture was too much for a good thing. People used it and cropped out. You really don´t know What´s happening until you´ve been there again and again and again. Unfortunately musicians and other creative people from the beginning of time- if you want to you can go back to Edgar Allen Poe or even half of the classical entertainers- a great deal of them have been drug-motivated creators.
MAG: What do you think the value of The Beach Boys has been to pop music?
RC: They brought a great big smile to the music business. They may not have made it with the record album “Smile,” but they were just singing about the things that made you feel good. There was always a motion in Brian´s music. There was movement, progress and honesty. Youth, without apologizing for youth. In the early days, people used to put down rock and roll and say that it was really dumb. But Brian was a rock and roller, but an extremely sophisticated person. Brian had excellent taste. He was really brilliant. One of the things he´d do was to read the dictionary-a page a day. He´d know all the words! And he´d use ´em. He had such a kinky sense of humor. He´d pick up a light bulb and hold it over his head and say, “Idea.” He just really was very refreshing in his quest for knowledge. He had a curiosity that was insatiable about so many different things. He sought to write about it, and what he did. His production was always clean and sharp and always flawless. I think eventually he´ll get back that. He was interviewed by somebody not long ago and I heard it, and he mentioned me. He said, “Roger was a real guiding light for me in the early days.” That gave me a great warm feeling when I heard that. I greatly enjoyed Brian´s company. We got along great. It´s just the drugs came along and it was a different culture.
MAG: Would you write with him again when the circumstances were right?
RC: Oh, definitely. Sure.
MAG: Then we may be able to look forward to some more hits like the great ones you and Brian did years ago?
RC: I was very close to all the guys and to Audrey, their mom. They´re really sweet down-to-earth people. Success is such a tough thing to deal with. People say, “Boy, I should have that problem. Success is something I´m striving for, and if I finally have it, I wouldn´t consider it that a problem.” But people always find otherwise. You know, a couple of years ago when I was doing a million things-I had a top disc jockey show and was doing television, writing hit songs, working movies-I used to think I´d trade it all and go back to being a disc jockey in Resume Speed, Wyoming, where I ´d be left alone. But, as they say, the grass is always greener.
MAG: I know what you mean, Roger. Thanks very much for your time, and for sharing with us your very personal views about and remembrances of The Beach Boys.