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The Beach Boys haven’t topped the charts with a new song since 1988’s “Kokomo,” but for music writer and GW alumnus David Leaf, the story of the band and their frontman Brian Wilson is still worth telling.
Leaf — an author, director and music industry professor at UCLA — does just that in his new book, “God Only Knows: The Story of Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys & the California Myth,” out Thursday. The book is an expanded version of approximately 150 pages of a biographical opus Leaf, originally published in 1978, chronicling Wilson’s career and creative frustrations as the main artistic mind behind many of the band’s hits such as “Wouldn’t it Be Nice” and “Surfin ‘ USA.”
Leaf wanted to tell the story of the iconic band and its innovative leader from his time as The Hatchet’s music editor in the early 1970s, during which he said he assigned himself albums and concerts to review, including Beach’s Boys.
“The first pieces I wrote for The Hatchet were about Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys,” Leaf said. “And there I began to tell the story I was going to tell.”
Leaf attended GW from 1969 to 1973, studying business administration after realizing that a degree in journalism would be too much work. He said he first discovered Wilson and the Beach Boys while at GW about five years after their commercial peak. He said he went to a now-defunct record store near 13th Street and Avenue in New York City called Record City, where he saw a copy of Rolling Stone with the six long-haired Beach Boys sitting on the cover. The magazine features part one of a two-page profile of the band.
He said the article enlightened him about Brian Wilson’s musical genius and the dysfunctional family that made up the rest of Wilson’s band. Both themes are prevalent in Leaf’s 1978 book, where he describes how the other members of the Beach Boys, particularly Wilson’s cousin Mike Love, prevented the artist from achieving his full musical ambitions, criticizing some of Wilson’s more personal work in the albums “Pet Sounds” and “SmiLE”.
A week after seeing the magazine, Leaf said he returned to the record store to buy a copy of the Beach Boys’ 17th album, “Surf’s Up,” which he praised in his review in The Hatchet.
“Both for their music and the return of Brian Wilson, who is definitely one of the best songwriters on the pop spectrum, it’s good to have them back,” Leaf said in his 1971 Hatchet review of the – the band’s new album.
Leaf said discovering his passion for telling the stories of the artists he admired prompted him to move to California, where he would continue to write a book about Wilson, befriend him and help him finish his abandoned rock album “SmiLE”. A version of the album, “Brian Wilson Presents Smile”, debuted in 2004 and Leaf produced a documentary for the release.
Leaf accomplished the first two goals of befriending and writing a book about Wilson in 1978 when he published The Beach Boys and the California Myth. The book chronicles Wilson’s early career, including his rise and the struggles he faced both creatively and personally, and includes interviews with Wilson and many close to him.
He said that trust is one of the factors that brings him closer to the living artist as a trustee. Leaf said Wilson spends most of his time with people on his payroll, so he reveals his personality more around people who will tell him what they really think without fearing that they’re only saying what he wants to hear.
He said the two have a normal friendship, going swimming together, having dinner with their wives and singing in the car.
“I mean, we just laughed a lot,” Leaf said. “He’s fun to be around.”
Friendship still has its less normal parts. Leaf said the musician would ask Leaf to come on tour with him because Leaf would be the only person there as a friend, while everyone else would be there as colleagues.
“Friend, cheerleader, semi-ghostwriter, author, director, tribute producer, I filled many roles in his life,” Leaf said. “But what matters most to him is his friend.”
Leaf said that while he acted more like a journalist trying to explain Wilson to the world in his 1978 book, the new edition focuses more on his own friendship with Wilson, the adventures the two shared and personal memories from home and abroad. the road.
“Obviously you can go to Wikipedia and read endlessly about anything, every album that someone has done, every tour that they’ve done, all this information is there,” Leaf said. “So what I write is no longer valuable. The value is in telling stories that only I can tell.”
One such adventure was when the two met England’s late Queen Elizabeth II in 2002. Leaf said he accompanied Wilson on a trip to Buckingham Palace, where he was invited to play at the Queen’s Jubilee. He said guests had been instructed not to speak to the Queen unless she spoke to them first – a rule Wilson promptly broke by exclaiming “Hello Queen!” as the monarch walked by.
Leaf also decided to change the title from the original “The Beach Boys and the California Myth” to “God Only Knows: The Story of Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys & the California Myth.” He said the extended title incorporates the name of one of Wilson’s most beloved songs to recall the spiritual nature of his music, in which the artist believes God speaks to the listener. And by adding the song title and Wilson’s name, Leaf said he wanted readers to understand that this is a book about the creatively prolific but artistically challenged Wilson, as opposed to the entire Beach Boys.
“The truth is, when it comes to his story and why things happened, you can literally shrug your shoulders and say, ‘God only knows,'” Leaf said. “Because there are things that cannot be explained.”
Leaf’s writings about Wilson helped readers realize and continue to understand the sheer influence of the eternally complex artist’s music and his triumph over his creative struggles.
Forty-four years after the book was originally published, Leaf’s published work has reached all corners of the music industry. He said he received praise and compliments for his work from famous artists, including when he ran into legendary rock artist Tom Petty backstage at the 1991 Billboard Music Awards.
Leaf remembers Petty standing next to him backstage and leaning in to say, “Great book, man.”
“People who mattered recognized what the book was because they already knew who Brian was and were excited that someone had put it into print,” Leaf said of the interaction. “So I think what I did was I put Brian Wilson’s story into print in such a way that it couldn’t be denied.”
This article appeared in the September 19, 2022 issue of Hatchet.
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