Bruce Johnston and Mike Love

By Paul Freeman [July 2011 Interview]

The Beach Boys needed to add a new member in 1965. Brian Wilson didn’t want to go on the road anymore, feeling more at home in the studio. Glen Campbell had filled in, but was ready to embark on a solo career.

Fortunately for the band, they found the perfect new collaborator - Bruce Johnston. Johnston, with frequent partner Terry Melcher, had produced a lot of appealing surf music, including The Rip Chords’ “Hey, Little Cobra.”

In addition to being an imaginative songwriter and vocal arranger, skilled with harmonies, Johnston had displayed ample talents as a recording artist.

It worked out beautifully. Forty-six years later, Johnston is still a key component in the Beach Boys music machine.

Over the years, Johnston, who had a classical piano background, was asked to involve himself in writing and producing, as well as singing and serving as the band’s bassist.

He came up with possibly The Beach Boys’ most beautiful non-Brian song, “Disney Girls.” For Barry Manilow, Johnston penned, “I Write The Songs.’”

In 2012, The Beach Boys will celebrate their 50th anniversary. There have been rumors of a reunion, bringing Brian Wilson and Al Jardine back into the fold. In the meantime, Johnston, 69, still has fun, fun, fun singing with Mike Love and the rest of the current band.

POP CULTURE CLASSICS:
To what do you attribute the timelessness of the Beach Boys’ music?

BRUCE JOHNSTON:
I think that, seriously, Brian and Mike just nailed it on the head, in the very beginning. And just about being young and doing these things we do all over the world, but from a California point of view. But it’s not that much different in Sweden than in L.A., really. Other than it’s colder.

They kind of nailed that and attracted people to these young guys, The Beach Boys. And who knew that Brian had all this amazing talent inside him that could have worked in any century? It just kept going and getting bigger.

And certainly, as wonderful as the beginning was, it got even more interesting, musically, in the middle, from my point of view.

PCC:
At that point, did you find that what Brian was creating was surprising you, the layering and the growth that was happening?

JOHNSTON:
Well, you know it was musical layering, not track layering. Think about that. All that stuff that attracted everybody, after that first initial rush, to The Beach Boys, is layered in the arrangements. It’s not layered by having 16, 24, 48 tracks. The success was not built on that. That’s what’s the most amazing part about it. It was based on a guy who heard it all in his head.

PCC:
His perfectionism, did you just find that worth the result? Or was it difficult to deal with?

JOHNSTON:
Wouldn’t you think that was Brian’s call? He’s crafting those arrangements to the melodies. If you look into the classical world, look at Rachmaninoff. Brian certainly could play what he was trying to express symphonically on the piano and then combine it, so it’s piano with his voicings also in the symphonic arrangements, if you will. I look more at arrangements as you’d arrange for a singer. But the brilliance of Brian is that he did that with just this endless multitrack inside his head.

PCC:
What were the dynamics that each of the other band members brought to the table?

JOHNSTON:
Carl loved Chuck Berry and Brian loved The Four Freshmen and Mike loved doo-wop. And Al loved it all. And Dennis was on fire originally about surfing. ‘Here you play drums, Dennis!’ [Chuckles] So they brought great things to the table, but, really, if you think that, if Brian had had the tracks to do the vocals himself, it wouldn’t have the same sound as the different timbres brought by each person vocally to his arrangements, when they would record it. Not to mention lead voices, too.

PCC:
The fact that the band was established already, when you came in, was that an easy transition?

JOHNSTON:
You know, what was interesting, Brian, just organically made it easy. It was never my desire to be in a band or have a career recording. I was more interested in writing, of course, and interested in the mechanics of how someone with an ear for music could run a business and kind of combine both things, kind of protect the artist and protect the investment. That’s kind of where I wanted to go.

But Brian [Chuckles], I was just filling in for 10 seconds. And Brian asked me to the studio just as the ‘Summer Days, Summer Nights’ album was being recorded, the biggest new hit in that was ‘California Girls.’ He had some tracks. He hadn’t done any vocals. And he just said, ‘Come over. Why don’t you try to sing with us? And he just gave me a part.’

PCC:
And the role just seemed to fit for you?

JOHNSTON:
It fit for me easily, because I’d never done much harmony singing with people. We were just at that stage in the music business where, technologically, we had stereo, which was great. We had beautiful microphones. Tape was wonderful. 20 to 20,000 cycles. That’s the range of the ear and the tape. And you could do a limited amount, if you wanted to sing with yourself, you could bounce around a few tracks. So that’s about the most I was ever able to sing. I was on staff at Columbia Records. So I had full access to the studio. So I was able to get onto those three-track recorders and four-track and bounce voices around.

But in The Beach Boy world, I was able to cut to the chase and sing those parts live, brand new, instead of trying to stack them up. Here’s a bunch of guys with really great voices and different timbers and you could sing and hear the parts instantly.

PCC:
It must have been great for you to have your role expanded, to where you were writing and producing?

JOHNSTON:
No, I would have to disagree with that. I don’t think that’s so great, because the only reason there was room to do that was because Brian was kind of withdrawing. If you ever were to go over how many songs I wrote in Beach Boy world, it’s not very many. And that’s because of a couple things. I didn’t think my songs fit. And I used to kind of think, maybe if I put one or two or three of my songs in, it just takes up space that Brian won’t be able to park his talent in.

There was a thing we had in those days, called product requirement. So, as Brian pulled back, later on in ‘60s and the ‘70s, those albums were still due, based on contracts that you signed and they come with budgets and you owe them eventually, unfortunately. And advance of royalties on that. And, because you’ve proven yourself, they advance you significant royalties. So you have to do those albums. And as Brian kind of burnt out temporarily, you still had to deliver those albums. So that’s why other guys started writing, because we had an obligation.

And production, compared to Brian, he has more talent in his little finger than I have in 10 lifetimes of what I do.

PCC:
Well, ‘Disney Girls’ certainly stands amongst the band’s best songs. Was that something you crafted for the band? Would it have been something you would have written otherwise?

JOHNSTON:
That’s just the way I write. That wasn’t anything other than a really nice song. I was able to weave the voices into it, oohs and aahs. Not that it was ever a hit, but it sold millions of copies riding around other people’s albums. People just loved the lyrical point of view. And the melody. That’s just one of those nice accidents.

PCC:
When the huge success of ‘I Write The Songs’ came, did that make you think maybe your career would take a different direction?

JOHNSTON:
Well, no. That’s the kind of song, had it been a Beach Boys’ song, maybe it could have been number one and I would call that a career ender. It would be like The Rolling Stones recording ‘Tie A Yellow Ribbon.’ You know? We even recorded ‘Seasons In The Sun’ and rejected it, which sold eight million singles worldwide by The Poppy Family. There’s just certain things you don’t record.

PCC:
Yet it worked so well in the other setting.

JOHNSTON:
It worked in the other setting, because Barry Manilow was new. Ultimately, I know the sales figures. From then till now, it’s 22 million albums and three million singles. Now, in Beach Boys world, It might have been a hit. But it would have been so wrong for the band to make that kind of a recording. You know, having a hit song, you have to cast it correctly. Some songs you just have to back away from.

PCC:
Was it frustrating when some people actually thought Manilow wrote the song?

JOHNSTON:
Uh, well, wouldn’t you be? You know, when someone’s singing ‘I write the songs....’ He sat on it for a year, because he just said, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is a hit and if I record this, I’m going to have to go through the rest of my life having to explain it.’ And finally, Clive Davis just said, ‘You have to record this song.’ And so he went so over the top production-wise, thinking this would never work. And it’s his biggest-selling single. Not necessarily his best.

My best song is ‘Disney Girls,’ not ‘I Write The Songs.’ His best recordings, to me, are ‘Mandy’ and ‘Weekend in New England.’ But we’re down the road. So now we’re definitely with Barry Manilow in terms of music today - yesterday’s news. McCartney, yesterday’s news. Stones, yesterday’s news. Beach Boys, yesterday’s news. Kinks, yesterday’s news. The window opens. The stage lights up. And fate has your reward for a while. And then, it shifts to other talent on the planet.

PCC:
That whole time when The Beatles and The Beach Boys seemed to be inspired by one another, was that exciting for you to be caught up in all of that?

JOHNSTON:
You’re perhaps the only person that gets it. I always get that comment as competition. Absolutely inspired. It’s like the bands started at the same time on two parallel planets. And I remember flying to England, on a break. I’d been in the band barely a year. And this is the opposite of ‘Don’t shoot the messenger.’ ‘Pet Sounds’ had not been released in Europe. And I had two copies of it and I took it to England and eventually played it for Lennon and McCartney. And they kind of distilled the feeling from ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ on their ‘Revolver’ album in ‘Here, There and Everywhere,’ from that album. But Brian really was inspired by the ‘Rubber Soul’ album, to go ahead with ‘Pet Sounds’ and craft a front-to-back, connected album in theme.

Yet the label somehow managed to convince Brian to put ‘Sloop John B.’ on it. ‘Yeah, we need some hits.’ [Chuckles]You know? And ‘Sloop John B.,’ we could have recorded it when I joined the band. The track was made at the time of ‘Summer Days, Summer Nights,’ which had ‘California Girls’ on it. But ‘Sloop John B.’ never got in there. So here’s this wonderful album. And ‘Sloop John B.’ has nothing to do with anything, as brilliant as it is. Yet, overall, ‘Pet Sounds’ is a coveted album. And Beatles, of course, going back to McCartney, he loves ‘God Only Knows.’ It’s a perfect song. Only 10 lines of lyric.

PCC:
It must have been a great time, given the adventurous nature of the music scene then.

JOHNSTON:
Well, you know, being a single guy, and never getting involved in drugs, just like Al Jardine and Mike Love, never involved in drugs, my head was always clear. And I just instantly joined this train that had successfully pulled out of the station. And there I am, from a producer on staff at Columbia Records to being one of The Beach Boys. It was so cool! And the music was so brilliant. And I was part of it. And it was really great.

We have this ‘Smile’ package of recordings, which is coming out probably in October. And I remember how painful that was for Brian, with people trying to convince him that, ‘Gosh, if you take these drugs, they’ll expand your creativity.’ And it was very difficult right after ‘Pet Sounds’ to do that album.

But I listen to it and lyrically, the lyrics were just way out of reach of human beings that were young. Yet it was clever as anything. I was thinking, ‘Gosh, this is the kind of album that you make as a solo album for Brian and put it on their classical label and then invite us to kind of guest-sing on it.

I’m a neighbor of Jeff Bridges, who’s a surfing pal. And a great actor. He’s been nominated five times. I live in Santa Barbara - Montecito. Been nominated five times and finally he won an Academy Award. But what he would do was, he would do a really successful, commercial movie, and very well, and then he would go off and do an independent movie. So I was thinking, ‘Gosh, this is something that Brian should make like a modern classical album’ and EMI, at the time, had Angel Records as their classical label. But it just never happened.

It was a difficult album. And if you listen to the vocals on it, everybody worked really hard on it, but Brian just kind of couldn’t finish it. I don’t know if his solo version of ‘Smile’ is a finished album in his head. I don’t think, when you get this ‘Smile’ package, you’re getting a finished album. But it’ll be very interesting. To me, it’s kind of like getting an amazing necklace, like a woman would wear some three-thousand, billion karat diamond necklace, but it’s not put together. It’s on the table. And they’re going to assemble it. Well, that’s like ‘Smile.’ It never really got assembled and finished. Yet, it’s still worth looking at it on the table with the felt cloth in this upcoming release.

PCC:
Will you add some of those songs to the set?

JOHNSTON:
Well, we do ‘Heroes and Villains,’ because it kind of rocks along. We do several symphony shows and we’re able to dig up half of ‘Pet Sounds,’ we’re able to add it and we’re able to do ‘Heroes and Villains’ from ‘Smile’ and it sounds really wonderful.

You’ve got to understand. It’s nearly 2012. A lot of the people who interview me weren’t even born. And now, take it down to our audience, the general audience is going to fall asleep, if we go too deep. We have to be very careful. It’s like programming for television. They develop shows and then they slide the new one in the middle of it. That’s how we have to pretty much program - in this country, not in England, in this country - some of the more esoteric recordings. Yet, with the symphonies, we can kind of expand it a little more. But we can’t do 159 symphony dates. You’re lucky, if you do 20 a year. And that would be a lot.

PCC:
Obviously, it’s exciting for the audience every time they hear the classic Beach Boys tunes, but can you keep it fresh for yourselves?

JOHNSTON:
I would take us, to see, if you want to see people that are classic that are singing these songs without the older singer vibrato. You know? It gets me nuts when you hear that vibrato. And we sing straight tones and in the keys they’re recorded in. And it’s very cool. We have every note written down, in our book, just the way an orchestra or a big band would have. If you were to play Count Basie, you’d play his book. Or, I think the best arranger ever on the planet - and Brian and I used to talk about this a lot - was Nelson Riddle, which is Frank Sinatra’s secret weapon. But everything is written down. So everything is meticulously written down and recreated on stage in our world.

PCC:
The fact that you came from a classical background, studying piano, does that make it that much more gratifying, knowing that you’re part of a musical legacy that will last for centuries?

JOHNSTON:
You know, that’s a good thing to say, because you’re interviewing me as I’m about to go down and sing at Interlochen Music Academy. Now, when I was 13 years old, my parents had the foresight to send me to this camp, a summer camp, eight weeks, and they had concert bands, string quartets, woodwind quartets, symphony orchestra, choirs and we’re playing there tonight. And that probably, single-handedly, put me on the right path, musically. All of a sudden, I could be with kids my age, all the way through high school, I was 13, they were all the way up to 18, much better players at 18, but I would spend eight weeks of finally getting all the bits and pieces of music that I had ever heard, live, in rehearsals, performance, every day, every day. And that kind of plugged me in.

And later on, you start little bands in high school, because you want to meet girls and want to sound like the radio. Okay, cool. And then you go on and start recording, if you’re very lucky. And you start very young. And then I kind of fell into Brian’s world, as he was really starting to use the Wrecking Crew, Phil Spector guys for the tracking, while we would be out on the road. I got there just in time to hit the great stuff.

It’s kind of like the Gershwins wrote all those hits, but I got there in time for ‘Rhapsody in Blue,’ when he expanded all of that.

PCC:
Are there any unfulfilled musical dreams for you?

JOHNSTON:
Well, my plan - can you believe a guy has a plan for 70 years old to 80? - but our whole country has gotten healthier, believe it or not, even though we see a lot of obese kids and stuff, we’re still aware of health and we’re living longer. And I look at Clint Eastwood and he’s smart enough to kind of get a little behind the camera and keep going. What I want to do is, I want to just cast my net.

You know, I did a Rip Van Winkle after I wrote ‘I Write The Songs.’ I just kind of packed up the writing and danced in the Beach Boy concert world. And some recording, of course, like ‘Kokomo.’ And raised a family, financially on it, beautifully, four sons, the third’s about to start graduate school. So I’ll have three grad school guys and one with a business degree, courtesy of anyone who’s going to read your interview.

So my little goal simply is casting the writing net. Because, when I watch the Academy Awards, when I watch the Emmys, that song, whatever it is, no longer is a song anybody knows, other than seeing it in the movie or hearing it on TV. Generally the songs today that get awarded are songs that you don’t hear. So I kind of thought, ‘Well, wouldn’t it be great to be a little old-school and write some great stuff, place it and actually get it so people hear it. So if it ever gets nominated or ever wins, it’s a song someone would know, as opposed to,’Gee, I haven’t heard that before.’

Randy Newman almost apologized for winning the Academy Award. I went to high school with him. He’s the greatest. But I get it. He knew he was Mr. Lucky this year.

So that’s the goal. We’ll see. I don’t know how long the Beach Boy thing will last with Mike. I don’t know. Do I know if we’ll do a reunion? We’ve talked about it, but I don’t think it would be weeks and weeks. It might be minutes, hours, who knows. But unfulfilled? My choice. I put it on Rip Van Winkle hold, because I knew I’d wrinkle, but my music wouldn’t.

One thing that I have, I have a talent for how to voice. And the best part of that is how to very conservatively present voicing, not how to show everybody how much I know, but make it the song first, voicing second.

PCC:
To serve the song.

JOHNSTON:
Absolutely. Serve the song. And what is a song for? You know I write the lyrics, too. It’s kind of you wind up, you know, when your mom or dad or your girlfriend said, ‘Oh, this is our song,’ you kind of express people’s feelings that maybe they can recognize it the second they hear it, but that’s not what they do. They don’t write songs. But you do something right and they go, ‘Oh, this is our song.’ That’s my job.

PCC:
With all the different aspects of career, is that the most satisfying?

JOHNSTON:
For me. Only speaking for me. The thing I think I do best is the songwriting. and I never wrote for anybody specifically. And I don’t think Carole King, back in the day, ever did that. She had so many hits before she made that lovely ‘Tapestry’ album. I come from the writer’s point of view.

Brian Wilson, Mike Love, those guys wrote beautiful songs. If you listen to ‘Warmth of the Sun,’ for me, that’s the best Brian Wilson-Mike Love song collaboration of all of the songs. I put them right up there with all the greats, Barry Mann-Cynthia Weill, Goffin & King, all those Brill Building, New York writers in the early ‘60s. I mean, you can go back all the way to ‘Camptown Races,’ Stephen Foster, and talk about writing. We can sit here and talk about why Cole Porter was so brilliant. But I’m thinking about the writers that were writing just really brilliant pop music from our time, from high school people listening to the radio and falling in love with the newer songs that have become classics, alongside of all those Johnny Mercer songs, Rodgers & Hammerstein.

PCC:
Hopefully you’ll be doing another solo album somewhere down the road?

JOHNSTON:
No. No solo albums. My body of work is quite small. If you look at Nashville, that’s still a city of songwriters. And really great songwriters. That’s probably the only place left. Now we’re in hip-hop and rap, which has tremendous groove to it. I’ve got to admit, you can really dance yourself silly to the recordings. And it’s fun. Lyrically, I love it, in our country that we have freedom of speech. But we don’t have good taste. We swear now in our recordings. That’s sad for me. But down in Nashville, they make beautiful recordings. So there’s always room. And I just thought, as I said earlier, I can wrinkle, but my songs don’t. That’s where my ability is. That’s what I will probably very quietly do, in the background, for as long as I’m in, or after, if the band decides to retire, after I’m retired, I’ll just keep doing that. Let me give give it a nice 10 or 11 years at it and then it’s my turn... to go surfing.

PCC:
You’ve earned some relaxation. You’ve been part of so much beautiful music over the years.

JOHNSTON:
Well, I’ll conclude with this. Did you ever see the Flintstones’ car? Well, it was pretty cool for its time. So imagine The Beach Boys going down the road and they say, ‘Hey, Bruce, we know what you’ve done so far, hop in, maybe you can help us out. It’d be great to have you.’ I hopped in. But there was no motor in it. The power came from the people sitting in the car with their feet on the ground, making it move. [Chuckles]. So that’s what I got to do. But the momentum had already started. I jumped in and had to make that Flintstones car move or I wasn’t of any use to the band.

PCC:
Well, you were definitely a big part of keeping it going.

JOHNSTON:
Well, I blame Brian and Al and Mike and Carl and Dennis for that one. I’m kind of like the first violin in the orchestra.

PCC:
The orchestra can’t have great music without the first violin.

JOHNSTON:
Well, that’s true, because he knows where the A is. And then he stands up and looks at oboe and the oboe plays that A. And everybody tunes after the first violinist says, ‘Okay, we’re going to get started.’ So I’ve got enough that I contribute.

For info, including The Beach Boys’ latest concert dates, visit www.thebeachboys.com.