There's a great quote from you saying, "When the Beach Boys started I wanted us to be a folk group. As it turns out the group has become America's balladeers regarding music, the folk myths, the experience of this country." Speak about the folk element you brought into the band.

We became the storytellers, but it wasn't just my story. It was the story of the generation, an innocent generation of kids that hadn't;t really been through a major war. We were a postwar generation. I was born right after World War II started actually. Never went through any conflicts. All we knew were the good times. We didn't know about anything bad but getting good grades in school and winning lots of football games. That was our reality. Our reality was very pure. No drugs, nobody smoked. God, if you smoked they cast stones on you. Carl actually did start smoking early on and it drove Brian and I crazy.

Was Dennis the band's rebel?

Oh yeah, Dennis was the rebel. I guess Dennis must have smoked, but it always seemed to me that it was Carl who had started smoking around the sessions and it was Brian going like this, waving his hand, "Carl, get rid of that thing! I can't stand it." Finally I think Dennis caught on to smoking as well, like brothers will.

Dennis wasn't originally going to be a member of the Beach Boys, right?

Yeah. He wasn't even slated to be in the band. We asked him to leave because he was such a rebel. But because Audree broke down and couldn't handle it, we said, "We can't do this. It'll ruin the family's peace of mind." [laughs] And Dennis turned out to be a really great drummer, a really great force. But he was always, always stirring the pot. He was one of those guys who could never stay still.

Were you surprised at how Dennis blossomed as a songwriter and artist?

Oh yeah, I like his music better than some of our stuff. When I listen to his music now it's like, "God, that's better than anything we've ever done."

You mean his 1977 solo album, Pacific Ocean Blue?

Yeah. I just like it. It's strong, original and melodic. Great production. Of course, you can thank Jimmy Guercio for that because Jimmy believed in him too, and he really made it great.

Having a writer like Brian Wilson in the band, were you intimidated presenting songs?

It was intimidating, oh God, yeah. When I brought "Sloop John B" to him I was almost trembling. I was thinking, "Am I wasting Brian's time doing this?" But apparently not, because the next day he cut the track on it and it became a huge hit for us. But he didn't bother to stop to acknowledge it, you see. When guys have that kind of capacity for absorption, sometimes they don't acknowledge where they get their ideas from. And I do that too. I'm sure that i borrowed melodies form other songs that I'm not even aware of. But Brian has forgotten the origin of my contribution to "Sloop John B" as distinct from the folk song. I showed Brian the chords and he sucked it up like a sponge. With his immense talent for recall, the next day he had arranged a brass section to track the song, and it was ready fro singing the following day. It is truly a masterpiece.

You also brought in "Cottonfields."

Yeah, but that was just a watered-down version of "Sloop" [laughs]. But there's only one or two of around, and they're gems and we put our style on it.

Was Brian welcome to the input of others in the band?

Oh yeah, he was welcome to it, but we didn't really want to impose our ideas on him. Now Mike was different. Mike was happy to impose himself on Brian, and he would do so actively around the microphone. "I don't like this word, I wanna change this word." "No, this doesn't fit, let's do this phrase here." So he was always adding his own values as if it were a competition. I didn't want to impose my own values on him because it was working. Why change it? If it ain't broke, why fix it? Mike stresses competition as if it were a virtue, and Brian would rather switch a lyrics than fight over it.

When you quit the band early on to go to dental school, how long were you out of the band before you returned?

When I left things were happening for the band. Big time. We had already cut "Surfer Girl," "Surfin' Safari." We had worked on "Surfin' USA" at the piano, but we hadn't recorded it. So I knew what was in the can.

What brought you back into the Beach Boys?

Just before the summer of '63, Brian called me and begged me to come back into the band. By then i was kind of fed up with school, and Brian was feeling pressure form Murry to tour to support the album. He sent me a dub of the new single, "Surfin' USA" backed with "Shut Down" to help me prepare for the tour. I had already worked on "Surfin' USA" in its inception so I knew that quite well, but I had to learn "Shut Down."

Was David Marks out of the band at that point?

No. I replaced Brian. He was a very secretive person. He'd do things and then he'd tell his dad later. [laughs] ... I don't think he told Mike or Murry. Brian didn't want to tour anymore, and he needed the voices that we'd started with 'cause David didn't really sing that well. The harmonies started to get more complex. "Surfin' USA" was a big challenge, and Dennis sang my parts when I was gone. See, Dennis wasn't singing either, until I left. And then he started filling in for me, which was nice. He had an innocent, warm sound. And then David would play rhythm guitar, that was about the extent of that. I came back and I felt uncomfortable because then Dennis wasn't singing anymore, and I always felt real bad about that. That was a real shame. Dennis put all his efforts into drumming, and also he hated rehearsals. [laughs] It got him off the hook, so I shouldn't have felt bad. He was able to go out and party and drive his cars. Actually, at times we went off and partied in my 1950 Ford, but I don't know if we ever made the beach because the damn thing was breaking down [laughs]. But we must have because Dennis taught me how to surf in front of the Hyperion plant, a sewage treatment facility in El Segundo. It must have been the dirtiest water in Santa Monica Bay [laughs]. Anyway, Brian was literally forced back into the band when David left.

Was David fired because of Murry's dislike for him?

No, he was being a total jerk. [laughs] Murry just did what any manager would have done. It was getting very divisive. David was only 13, might have turned 14 by then. It was rough. My twin boys are now just 13, and I can't imagine them handling that kind of pressure. David's a very nice guy now by the way, he's a really neat person.

Was success what you imagined it would be? The band never stopped in the '60s, touring and recording. Everyone in the band was working themselves into the ground.

Yeah. Everyone but the lead singer and the drummer. Mike would always be looking at his watch. "I'm way too busy for this, get your parts together." So they'd set up a separate mike for him and he could tool of while we were out there grinding out the parts singing these millions of songs and basically split.

And Dennis?

Dennis didn't have to do diddly. He was off the hook [laughs] for vocals. He would put on the drums, but after a while we had studio musicians playing so he was - not to take away anything from Dennis because boy, he sure showed us what kind of writer he became. Everybody's got their time. My theory is you've got to know your own true value and just hold on to those values because at some point your going to be able to express those values. Timing's everything.

The band's output at that time with Surf's Up and Sunflower is rightfully acclaimed as some of the group's best work. But the albums were not being accepted on a major commercial scale. How did you deal with that?

It was just another element of change, the metamorphosis. We were always up long hours. I remember never getting any sleep [laughs]. And he was around, this kid here, [Matt]. He was just born and he never slept, so i was up half the night with him and in the studio half the day and on the road half the year. It was a pretty busy experience. Matt was a great kid. He just didn't sleep those first two years.

Do you view the Surf's Up, Sunflower period as a watershed of creativity as a band?

Yes. We were forced to go into creative hyperspeed because Brian was retreating in the opposite direction as fast as we were in the other direction. Carl and I had to piece together "Cool, Cool Water." That song was a 48-hour mixdown. I saw two sunrises on that. Bruce and I were just delirious and desperate. We were all just walking around like zombies. So weird. How could anything take so long? And we had to reconstruct Surf's Up because we couldn't get Brian to finish it. So Carl ended up singing half of it and we kept Brian's original verses. And I think Carl sang the middle parts. It was like reconstructing the Smile album in a way. That's what that period kind of represented.

The rest of the band started to take over production duties - Carl, in particular, did a wonderful production job on "I Can Hear Music." Did Brian ever compliment the band on one of your own productions?

No, no [laughs]. We were using his house, we were in his living room. He probably should have insisted that we pay rent or something. But he didn't care. It kind of bugged him after a while that we were thumping around the house so much and Marilyn started getting a little tired of it.

Matt Jardine: It seemed like Brian was so burnt at that time, the touring, the manger, his dad, the music.

He must have been exhausted... We were working on "Heroes And Villains" just prior to his withdrawal and we were excited. Actually Brian was so excited, more excited than the rest of us about the way "Heroes And Villains," the single, had come out. We went down to a radio station, I think it was KRLA, and burst in on the jock and played the record. Brian wanted to be the first person to play it for L.A., for the whole city to hear it, and it just didn't have any punch. There was no sonic value in it. The song was great, but the sonic value was bad. We were experimenting in the studio with limited equipment. We had just finished "Good Vibrations" in Columbia Studios with the greatest equipment ever made at the time, state-of-the-art limiters and compressors and equalizers and the most exotic microphones and state-of-the-art recording machines. And the next thing we did is we decompress and we take the Beach Boys P.A. system, take it home and break it down. It was designed by our engineer, set that up and used that as out playback monitors and rented a 16-track machine. And that was our studio. So no matter how good you are, it's gonna be limited to the equipment that you are able to record with. I'm trying to figure out how why we went from United-Western and Columbia to Brian's living room. I'll have to ask [Steve] Desper, our engineer about that. It must have been a conception of his and Nick Grillo, our manager at the time. There must have been something related to costs. It was certainly costing an arm and a leg to record at these studios. So "Heroes And Villains" had no sonic energy, I can't explain. If you listen to the record it's kind of flat. The mastering maybe could have helped. I don't know if it was mastered properly. All I know is it took a while for it to kick into gear. Anyway, I think that really deflated Brian. I think he just completely went into tailspin, because he thought that was his masterpiece. An I did too. I really thought it was great, but I could hear the difference. I could hear the edge was gone. There was no edge on the vocals, there was no edge on the track, there was no edge on the piano. In fact we didn't even have the piano that we started with which we used. That tack piano is the key to the whole song. If you listen to our first o set, it had a bunch of permutations of "Heroes And Villains." And sonically you hear where it's going, and we just never get any closure. It's a lot of loose ends. So finally we got closure, but we lost the sonic part of it. We lost the value of the musicianship. Then I think we had these crummy instruments too. I think we had this Baldwin organ, a beautiful organ, I shouldn't say crummy. The Baldwin organ company decided to give Brian his organ, very nice. But Brian became so obsessed with this organ that everything became focused around this organ. "The Woody Woodpecker Symphony," I don't know whether you've heard that one. [laughs] That was brilliant actually. I loved that. There, that one fit the organ. But every darn song on the album we had to have the organ on it. It was one of those very strange things. Brian got very quirky. And "Heroes And Villains" was played on that damn organ, and I didn't like that sound. It was just a bit much. I think that's where the musicianship became strange. Western Records is where I think we did the track for "Heroes" in studio three with this great tack piano. It could have been Columbia. Both studios were really important. I think we used Columbia more for the vocals for Pet Sounds and Smile and we used Western for the track.

Would the band be constantly rolling tape?

Yeah, oh bother. There would be people rolling tape behind people rolling tape, that's how some of these bootlegs have gotten out. Secret tape machines running in different rooms when you're mastering. It's unbelievable the piracy that's going on. There's bootlegs out with complete recordings of whole albums. People were running two-track machines while we were mastering in another room, and they were taking it. They were just as good as masters. [Steve] Desper explained it to me. It's gotta drive poor Capitol Records crazy. I feel sorry or them, but well, hell, they made a shitload of money. And we're losing money too aren't we? [laughing] Because we don't get paid on those.

Brian had a major breakdown on a plane and decided to quit touring.

He broke down on the plane right next to me. He started just getting very emotional. He started weeping. He was just very weepy and wanted to go home. He'd never been that way before. He was a strong guy, a good pal.

It was the amazing pressure getting to him.

Oh yeah, God almighty. I could have broke down myself. We were all just exhausted, but we were all just a little tougher, that's all. He had a real emotional breakdown.

Were you surprised in Brian's sudden jump in creativity?

Yeah, I couldn't figure it out. We came back from Japan, and here we had this massive amount of music already laid out for us to sing and we hadn't even heard any of it. It was the Pet Sounds material. That's really where I noticed it.

Do you like the Pet Sounds material? Initially, I understand Love was confused by it?

Oh, Mike was very confused by it. I wasn't exactly thrilled with the change, but I grew to appreciate it as soon as we started to work on it. It wasn't like anything we'd heard before it. I already had a lot of classical music in my household. I already had an appreciation for that. My parents were musical. Both of them played in the orchestra, violin and clarinet. I'd bring this stuff home and play it for my folks and go, "Isn't this great?" They said, "I don't get it, but it sounds great." Elmer Bernstein said the same thing.

The Pet Sounds album did not stick with the formula.

Yeah, Mike's a formula hound - i it doesn't have a hook in it, if he can't hear a hook in it, he doesn't want to know about it.At the time there was some seriously good music that wasn't getting heard because Capitol Records wouldn't promote it. They couldn't accept it. Nobody really accepted it. Capitol hated it. I know it. They wanted some hit records. We were a hit record machine and we stop delivering those big hits. Except for "Sloop John B." I think they forced "Sloop" to be on the album because it was already a hit. They slipped it on there to increase album sales. Capitol didn't like it at all. They weren't too wrong either [laughs] because after that we had the Smiley Smile thing and it just started to go downhill from there.

England was very supportive of the band during the Pet Sounds time. Everyone from Paul McCartney to Pete Townshend was praising the album.

"Good Vibrations" wasn't on Pet Sounds. It was kept of the album on purpose to be the lead track for Smile. That was a big mistake because Smile never happened [laughs]. Isn't that weird? We disagreed vehemently on that and thought it should go on Pet Sounds.

Do you still think it should have been included on the record?

Of course! Are you kidding? Then Pet Sounds would have been a hit in it's time. I think it would have finally pushed it over the top.

How did the arrival of the Beatles onto the music scene impact on the Beach Boys?

We were out of the country when the Beatles first burst on to the scene. I wasn't that knocked out by the Beatles when I first heard their stuff. I thought it was just a little esoteric. "I Want To Hold Your Hand." I though that was just a bit esoteric. It didn't seem like they had the mass appeal that we were having, but I was obviously wrong. I grew to appreciate them. Later on in their career they were writing great melodies, extraordinary songwriting. We felt in competition with them. We were out of the country, and they came in and became big hits. It was a catch-up time after that for a long time.

Do you miss singing with Brian?

Of course! God, geez, the guy that taught us everything? The guy gave us everything we have. It's pretty damn strange. So there is a deep love. We all love Brian. I do love all our songs. Sometimes I can get too clinical about the mechanics of everything.As far as working on "Good Vibrations" it was a labor of love and "Wouldn't It Be Nice." I'm just getting to like "Wouldn't It Be Nice."

Really? Why?

I appreciate it so much now because of all the voices that the children in the band [Beach Boys Family And Friends] bring to the music, now I can hear it again. I can hear the music, and that is just so cool to hear all the parts again. On stage we could never sing all the parts because we didn't have enough voices. And the voices didn't get any better with age. I mean honestly, even mine, I'm a little rough.

I beg to differ - for example, "Loop De Loop," which appears on the new Endless Harmony compilation. You redid your lead vocal, and it sounds terrific. Why did it take almost 30 years before it was officially released?

The contribution that you asked me that I made to the Beach Boys is I see myself as a kind of completer of things. "Loop De Loop" was Brian's idea to begin with. I fully admit that the genesis idea came from his brain, but he refused to finish it. He would just leave it there dangling in front of you and you'd go, "For God's sake, this is too good to leave unfinished." So I took it to the pint that I could and realized without Brian it wasn't good enough to be released, so that's why it didn't get done for 30 years.

But you always had a soft spot for the song?

Oh yeah, yeah. But it was Brian's falsetto that I couldn't get because Matt wasn't old enough to sing then, and I wasn't happy with my part because it was built for Brian's range. And he refused to sing those falsettos. He just didn't want to sing much at all.