What was your reaction to the Smile material, which made the Pet Sounds stuff seem very straight forward?

We were working on Pet Sounds and all that stuff at the same time. That's probably why it seems like a year out of my life without sleep. I like the Smile material. I like everything except crawling around on the floors snorting like pigs. The swine section. I hated that. Everyone was high but me. I was the only one that didn't take drugs. I was the square, so Brian made us crawl around on the floor and snort like a bunch of pigs on a section of "Heroes." You hear a bunch of snorting and swining... It was like being trapped in an insane asylum. I was emotionally depressed by a lot of that stuff because to watch people go through that and you have to kind of make like you're part of that but you're not, you're sober... But somehow we got through it. Nobody overdosed and everybody made it through it.

There's a mystique about the Smile album among fans. Do you think the album should come out or stay on the shelf?

It's not finished. It shouldn't come out. It's just all these fragments. "Cool Water," "Surf's Up," "Cabinessence" - there just all over the place. But then there are titles, I remember the titles like "Barnyard." I liked "Barnyard." I thought that was neat. I have an acetate of that.

Van Dyke Parks lent a very surreal and literary approach with the lyrics on Smile, very much the antithesis to Mike's Chuck Berry lyrical style.

I loved Van Dyke's lyrics. I just loved how he painted the songs with words. His ideas were great. I didn't care what they meant. It didn't matter to me. Love was always trying to pinpoint Van Dyke saying, "What does this mean?" And he would go, "I don't know, I was high." [laughs] Mike would go, "That's disgusting. That doesn't make any sense." [laughs] But it didn't have to make sense, it didn't have to have a hook. If it works, it works.

When you sang lead on "Help Me Rhonda" I understand you had a hard time getting the vocal right. Why?

I did have a hard time with it. I don't really know. Some kind of meter thing in there. I never really tackled a lead much before. I was always interested in the backgrounds. Carl and I were always on the harmonies, but to take a lead was a big leap forward. And this was not an easy lead, to be honest with you. It was pretty different. I was happy that Brian asked me to sing the lead. Brian had this idea of how he wanted it and I had an idea of how I heard it, and that's basically what you get [laughs].

What would he be looking for in a lead vocal - emotion, intonation?

All of it. I think the part that was hard was [sings "Rhonda you look so fine"], the length of "fine", that was the part, to be specific with you. It could have been sung quicker or longer, and I just heard it longer and he heard it shorter. I think it kind of came out halfway in between [laughs]. The hardest part was dealing with Murry and everybody in the studio. They were fighting among themselves over the production and that was really tough. I was out there for hours.

Murry Wilson is viewed as a very difficult character. Obviously he did care and love his family deeply. What did he bring to the mix?

Well he had a child prodigy on his hands. He simply had a limited ability to cope with it. Murry was a salesman. Draw your own conclusions. Always selling something. Very aggressive and tough-minded. Taskmaster.

Was Murry as tough on his sons as reported?

Oh yeah, tough. He just didn't have a sensitivity that Brian and the boys needed. These kids were real tender-hearted kids, except for Dennis... But Dennis did have a tender side. He exhibited the tough side because he was like his dad, exterior wise. You had this dichotomy going on in the family. Audree was real soft and nurturing and Murry was real tough, like a bull.

Was Murry a good manager?

Probably not. I'm sure we could have done better. Don't mix family with business. That's probably the worst thing you can possibly do, management-wise. Just to manage a group, I wouldn't want to do it.

And how do you fire your dad?

You can't. The whole thing is impossible from the beginning. He should have let the reins go and allowed someone else to do it and stood back and let it happen.

This must have been a difficult situation when the group had to eventually fire Murry as your manager.

All three of the boys went home and took care of it, that's all I know. I'm sure Brian took the brunt of it.

Did you have a good relationship with Murry?

No, not really. Murry did have a big heart too. I think he wanted to like me, but he was mad at me for first of all quitting the group and then coming back and letting Brian stay home. And then I think he appreciated me more because he realized i was helping build the musical foundation for the group. But at first he was really angry with me.

Was Murry's relationship with Mike similar to yours?

I'm sure they hated each other from the beginning. Oh yeah. Brian was handing off all the leads to Mike, and Murry would have preferred Brian to hand it off to his own sons. He wanted his family to have the power and be the dynasty. He couldn't relate to any of us.

Tell us about bringing "Cottonfields" for the band to record. It was a big hit in England.

Yeah, I know. I wanted another "Sloop John B." I tried to introduce a country influence, and I don't think that it worked 'cause people weren't into country at the time - steel guitars, Red Rhodes on steel guitar. I think it sent the wrong message to people. I wanted to use the live band, which I did, which I think worked kind of good. Dennis agreed. He thought it was a good idea. So he went in there and played for me, and the guys went along with it. We went into Sunset Sound and we all set up and played it live. It was really good. But again, sonically it didn't come out crisp or sharp. And it's undefinable. I don't know how Brian got those sounds.

In 1967, the Beach Boys were slated to play the Monterey Pop Festival, but the band dropped out at the last minute. Was it a mistake not to play the festival?

Oh yeah, we should have played. Just politically it didn't work out. We were having problems with whoever was running it at the time. I think our management was having problems with their organizers.

At that point, the group began to be viewed in music circles as passe, albeit you were writing and recording some of your best and most creative work.

Yeah, we should have done it. We ended up doing the Monterey Pop Festival in '71 or '72. That worked well for us. We were very well received there.

Speak about the band - you, Dennis and Carl in particular - starting to blossom as songwriters around the 20/20 album.

"Cottonfields" really started that. I showed it to Brian, and we did a very strange version of it on the album. The album version seemed kind of stilted and stiff and didn't;t have the "Sloop John B" magic that I was hoping for. Again, I was trying to capture that great Pet Sounds era that we had going. And it just didn't have it. I wasn't satisfied with it. So when we did the live version, it really worked. The steel guitar player, again, may have been taking it a but too far. I mean Beach Boys country really wasn't an exiting idea then. It did pretty good with that last outing [Stars And Stripes]. "Cottonfields" became a hit in England, South Africa, the Netherlands. We had to rudder a ship without Brian being there. He was in the studio with us, but he was retreating from producing. He started to underproduce like he did with "Break Away." Dennis started producing material, Carl did too. Dennis and Mike stated writing together too. Dennis was kind of scattered, but he found the piano as his instrument. He could lock into it with his feelings. It became a real lock, and all sorts of stuff started pouring out of Dennis that we didn't know existed. Part of him began to really focus. Dennis wasn't as fun-loving at that point. He became more moody. He was more into his music. That was the Manson period too. He got involved with that.

Were you frightened by Dennis' involvement with Charles Manson?

No, it was just irritating 'cause they were always around and it was "Charlie this, Charlie that." And then he had this little thing that he and Charlie worked out. It was just a melody, a melody in "Never Learn Not To Love." Not the melody, but there was a mantra behind that. Then Dennis wanted to put it in everything. I though, "Oh boy, this is getting to be too much."

Friends was the Beach Boys album where you really began to blossom as a writer. You co-wrote five songs on that record.

That was Brian and I really coming together as friends. We'd always been friends, of course, but we were obviously seeing more of each other at that time and our relationship as a writing team just blossomed. He opened up to different people. It depended on who was around at that time. I was around a lot at that time at the house in Bel Air. "Friends" was a nice one we co-wrote. It was the title of the album, and it's all about being friends. We'd go play and write. Brian would take the keyboard, and we'd just talk it out.

Please comment on "Wake The World."

Same thing, same period of time. We were just sitting around in his kitchen. This was the mansion in Beverly Hills. We called in the Bellagio House. It was where we did all the recording. We'd get together in the morning. A lot of activity took place in the kitchen. There were these huge freezers. We were always in Marilyn's kitchen. We were in there as much as in the studio. God, we ate well. "Be Here In The Morning" was another good one. Carnie wants to sing that one stage. She sounds great on that.

Brian has often sited the Friends album as a favorite of his.

Maybe because it was an emotionally stable period for him. He was feeling a little bit better about himself. I remember him being pretty stable and happy then because we were obviously working together and he was still being very creative. He was always thinking musically and needed someone to bounce lyrics off of, a sounding board. Brian was real manic in the sense of wanting to get songs finished. I was that way too. He just wanted to get something finished because the guys would be coming over every day. We'd always go over to the house every day. I think Brian was looking for a new direction too. I think we both found the same path and kind of explored that path.

"Transcendental Meditation."

That was a silly song. It was not my favorite lead. I think we poked some fun at TM.

What did TM do for you and the rest of the band?

It was good. It kind of settled everybody down a little bit. Dennis never bought into it. Brian actually found the technique. He's the one that actually turned us on to it. Mike became addicted to it. Both Brian and Mike have similar unsettled emotional feelings, and I think that is his medicine. Otherwise you reach out for drugs if you're not careful. So it's kind of a good substitute for drugs.

Was the tour with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi a mistake?

It was just a disaster. I mean literally no one showed up... I guess Maharishi thought that we were the Beatles and that we'd bring all these people into the halls to see him. He was obviously using us as a magnet, and it didn't work. He was billed pretty highly too, and I think people didn't see that as a good mix. It wasn't the proper billing. I don't know that he got top billing, but he got equal billing, I'm sure.

The Surf's Up album carries an ecological and environmental theme. "Looking At Tomorrow (A Welfare Song)" may be one of the best songs you've ever written.

Aw, thanks. It's actually an old folk song. It came from the archives of folk music. I just rewrote the lyrics to reflect the times that I felt were particularly rough for Americans that were out of work and still are. It's kind of timeless. I remember reading something about Bessie Smith, the blues singer from the '30s, and I just kind of imagined her as being the figure in this tragedy, being down and out and then finding success at the end of her life and being able to look at tomorrow without looking back. We just performed it this year at Strawberry Festival, and it sounds so good. Our band is so good now that they just brought it up to another level.

Did you always have a great love for the environment?

Oh God yeah. That's why I moved to Big Sur. I wanted to get away from all the traffic and the pollution in L.A. It was always so congested there. My house looked out at all the smog. All I could see was the smog. I mean the Pacific Ocean was obscured by this brown haze. It really bummed me out to look at the air. It didn't take too long to figure out we were breathing it of course, so we scurried up north where the air gets cold and it's kind of pretty and clear. Big Sur is gorgeous.

"Take A Load Off Your Feet" is a fun song.

I never expected that to be on the album. That's just ridiculous. I don't know how that ever wound up on there. I invited Brian to come down. Again, a lot of this stuff was to get Brian in the mood to come down and have some fun. So I thought, "Boy, this is really nutty. Let's just do something stupid." I said, "Brian, do you want to help me?" "Sure." Anything to get everybody motivated. It's cute, but come on, you've heard "Loop De Loop" and things like that. That's as minimalistic and sappy as you can get. But for some reason Jack Rieley liked it too and said, "It's got to be on the album. That's definitely an ecology song." "Ecology? A song about your feet?" It's personal ecology. It was about taking care of your feet, and oddly enough my feet are in the worst shape they've ever been. And I haven't been wearing my Bierkenstocks.

Sunflower is sited by many, next to Pet Sounds, as the band's greatest achievement. Indeed, it was a major triumph for the band sans Brian, who was involved on a much lesser scale.

We started to take over the production. Brian simply wouldn't come down from his tower anymore. We had to finish a lot of work. "It's About Time" was Carl, Dennis and I. That's a good one. I like that production. That was mostly Dennis, and I just helped with the lyrics. Dennis and Carl did the track. It was a very powerful track. It was very well done. "Our Sweet Love" was one we finished with Brian. He just didn't want to finish it. So we kind of helped. We became completers of ideas. We all worked on his songs from time to time, and then we'd put them on the shelf. You start a song and put it away, start a song and put it away. It is a very good album. Again, we had some sonic problems, but on that album I think we overcame some of the sonic problems. That album was a smattering of different studios, that's probably why it had an interesting texture.

"At My Window."

That was probably one of my first efforts at involving the other guys. Bruce was around quite a bit. I think he sang the lead on that. I have this dim recollection of writing it and Bruce singing it and Brian trying to speak French in it. It had a nice tone to it. We had an accordion player come in and play some beautiful things on it.

Share the experience of going to the Netherlands to record the Holland album.

I resisted going from the very beginning. It was Jack Rieley's idea to go to Holland. He was enamored of Amsterdam because he had certain relationships there that he was fulfilling. We weren't aware of his hidden agendas at the time. We had no reason to go there. We were quite happy where we were. But we did feel the need to move on and do something different. It wasn't my preference to go to Holland. I think we talked about going to the south of France because that's where the Rolling Stones had recorded. That sounded a little better to me. So this Holland idea sounded crazy. He talked mainly Carl and Dennis into doing it 'cause Brian didn't want to go anywhere. He could have cared less. In fact when he got there, he never came to the studio. He just stayed in his house most of the time. We stayed in Holland for a month, maybe two. It felt like a year. My son Adam was there for a short time and fell down a flight of steps, scared his mother half to death, so she packed up and went home.

Does the Holland album stand up for you?

Again, it was one of those homemade studios and again we fell into the trap of trying to build a studio in someone's garage. It's kind of a romantic idea, but it doesn't work 'cause you don't have the limiters and compressors and equalizers and all the good stuff. In fact the electrical current wasn't even right, so the sonic quality wasn't that good. There were a lot of problems. It was very expensive, and no one would listen. In today's equivalent it probably would have cost millions of dollars. I like the "California Saga." It was born out of just absolute home sickness. It was more of a "get me out of here" kind of song, "I wanna be in California." A lot of good stuff comes out of being homesick and just wanting to be somewhere else.

I understand a famous comedian really loved your song "Susie Cincinnati."

Yeah. John Belushi loved the song. He just worshiped that thing. He came up to me and did that "I'm not worthy" thing and said, "I just love that song." I said, "Thank you very much. Can I sing it for you?" I think we were doing our 20th anniversary special in Big Sur, and they came up to visit the ranch and that's when he told me how much he liked the song. You'd see him as this big crazy guy running around with samurai swords, but he was really a gentle guy. Peace-loving guy. The song was about a gal I met on the way to a show in Cincinnati. Again, trying to get everybody motivated to do something at Brian's house was always a goal. So I said, "Come on, let's cut this track. I've got an idea." So all the guys were just sitting around and waiting for something to do. It's nice to have a pool of musicians who can for that. The engineers were waiting, waiting on something to get done, so we did it. It was kind of a workshop on progress, that's really what these albums were.

Alan, tell us about coproducing the Beach Boys MIU Album.

At that time Mike and I were into transcendental meditation in a very big way. It was his belief that if we brought Mohammad to the mountain that Brian would recover from his illness. Mike was certain that TM was the answer. When he finds something that works for him, he thinks that it will work for everybody. But that did not transpire. But to answer your question, we did yet another Holland adventure, which we'd already been through and built yet another studio for someone else. This was in Fairfield, Iowa. Yeah, go figure. That's where the Maharishi International University is located. It's a beautiful place. I'm not putting it down at all. I'm just thinking how we seem to finance all these incredible studios. We're kind of like the United States Army. We go and occupy and leave all these great improvements. [laughs] Working on that record was great. It gave me a chance to experiment again. But again we were dealing with lackluster equipment. It was stuff that had to be broken down and transported. But at least we were dealing with the right electrical current, unlike what we dealt with for the Holland album.

Were the songs up to the band's standard?

Well, if you notice, the production is real light. We just didn't have the technology to make a really good record. But I think the kernels of the songs are good. There's some really good stuff there. I really like the song that Brian did, that little ditty called "She's Got Rhythm." "Hey Little Tomboy" was another good one. But if you listen to them, they sound like demos, something you could do in your own home.

And "Come Go With Me" is on the record too.

That wasn't done there. It was done at a real studio in Los Angeles, and that's why it sounds so good. And that's why I put it on the album, to rescue the album because I could see right through the veneer that we were creating that there was nothing there that was sonically very interesting. I took the liberty of putting "Come Go With Me" on there because it had solid production values and it stands out. I started the track at Brian's house where we left off on the Smiley Smile album. It was actually recorded during that period when we were waiting for somebody to show up and nobody shows up and somebody had to take the leadership reins. So I began the song just by sitting around and playing the piano in Brian's living room. In fact the remote truck was there and apparently our sound system was out on the road, our P.A. system which doubled as a recording console. So Brian ordered the sound truck. We were going to do something with it. It was just sitting in the driveway, and we were paying for this thing by the hour and day. So I started the song there and then I moved over to Sunset Sound. We recorded the horns there. Wally Heider had a studio out there in Los Angeles. So we went from good to better to better. Had we not been out of the country at the time I think I might have gone to #1. But we weren't around to promote it. We left the country for a tour and came back and it was Top 10. There was a dance show that was on and we had done that I was assured it would go Top 5. But we were so tired after the Europe tour that I though, "Geez, I don't want to drag the guys back into the studio the day after we got home. Actually, we might have just gotten back from South Africa.

Dennis' vocal showcase, "My Diane," is outstanding.

Brian wrote that and Dennis sang it. Dennis had a very powerful voice. I didn't really appreciate while as a Beach Boy, but when he began to spin off doing his own material, it really stood out. I think Dennis' work transcended a lot of what we did. I don't know about Pacific Ocean Blue as a total project, but some of the songs on there were really good.