Tom Dunne: Me, Brian Wilson, and our search for the source of the Nile
When I asked Brian Wilson about the inspiration behind Pet Sounds, the answer wasn't what I'd expected.
“Are you even listening to me?” is a question that is thrown at me frequently. It’s often followed by: “What is going on in that head?”
Best practice, I find, is to just look confused, surprised and aggrieved. Then pray it goes away.
This time, instead of absorbing developments in the Donegal Covid 19 coefficient, my mind had been wandering back to the Rolling Stone Magazine’s Top 500 Albums. Statistics in Donegal were bad, but how had the newest RS poll changed so little from the original 17 years ago? The newest Top Ten entry was from 1998! I mean, really?
Have we lost the knack of making classic albums? How can Adele’s 21 (31 million copies sold, the biggest selling album of the 21st century, but only 137 in the poll) just get cast off while Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours (45 million copies) is destined to be eulogised when Mars is colonised? What gives?
Setting the table I wondered was there one album that was like the source of the Nile? The first classic album that inspired and informed what came next? Had to be a Sixties one, I thought, but which one? Pepper maybe, or Pet Sounds? But something inside just said earlier than that.
Then, as those people who share my house (family I believe) were eating, a voice in my head said “Rubber Soul”. It was Brian Wilson’s voice. Brian Wilson was speaking to me and saying “Rubber Soul”.
“Brian Wilson is talking to me?” I told the table, which on reflection was not a wise move.
Had this really happened? Had Brian Wilson really said this to me? It seemed too surreal. But my mind drifted back to a night in June, 2005. Brian was in Dublin for the screening of a film called Beautiful Dreamer, and I had been asked to host a Q&A in the Temple Bar Music Centre.
Brian being ‘in the world’ was still a bit fresh at this point. He hadn’t been quite re-absorbed into the Beach Boys yet, no major tours or profile pieces or re-issues. He was still shrouded in a fog of rumours about his delicate mental health, his reclusiveness and his fragile genius.
It hadn’t started well. We’d been introduced in the Foyer but as we chatted a fan had approached. His ‘people’ panicked and Brian was quickly ushered backstage. Strangely though I wasn’t ushered anywhere and was locked out! I had to enter through the main door, walk up the aisle and climb across the barrier onto the stage. Brian didn’t bat an eyelid.
And yes I had asked that question, which in retrospect seems almost too innocent, too obvious. “Brian,” I said, “what was the inspiration behind Pet Sounds?”
I expected him to say The Beatles' Revolver. But no, like a child giving a memorised answer by rote he said, “Rubber Soul”.
Masking my surprise (pitiful research!) I asked, “How so?” “That was the first album I’d ever heard that was perfect from beginning to end,” he said, “there were no weak tracks and all the songs belonged together. It changed everything.”
Looking at him on that stage in the TBMC it was as if The Beatles had released Rubber Soul that instant, he was blinking, his head shaking slightly, like it was still difficult to take in what they’d done. He explained that previously albums had been a few singles and then fillers, but this was different. This, to him, was game on.
That epiphany inspired Brian to immediately write 'God Only Knows' and then the Pet Sounds album. The Beatles heard that album late in the recording of Revolver. Somebody was putting it up to them at last. Sgt Pepper followed the next year.
At the end, as I thanked him he looked at me a little askance, ‘and thank you very much,’ he said smiling, before adding sheepishly, “Microphone guy”.
To be called ‘Microphone Guy’ by Brian Wilson has lived with me ever since. But to be honest, just to be in there anywhere, under any name, in that genius’s head, is absolutely fine by me.
Interviewing him never got easier. Once, giving up seeking meaningful answers I asked him to just record a jingle for me. “I’m Brian Wilson and you’re listening to Tom Jones!” he repeated over and over despite multiple corrections.
And my wife thinks my mind wanders! Ha! “Do you want tea?” she asked later.
“Rubber Soul is the source of the Nile!” I answered, reaching for a cup.
