Did he really have a beach environment set up in his living room? No? Just a pile of sand, maybe?
I heard him claim once that he didn’t do that. I’ve heard people say he did. I’ve heard other people say he did not. I don’t know who’s verifiable and who’s not.
Thanks in advance!
ISTR a photo in one of the numerous Beach Boys books – maybe even in his “autobiography,” Wouldn’t It Be Nice, or Timothy White’s book – that shows Brian actually playing the piano in the middle of a great big sandbox in his living room. I can’t find it online, though.
Weird dude. Apaprently he’s covered “Brian Wilson” by the Barenaked Ladies a few times. The lyrics are kind of insulting to him.
Yup…he did have his piano set up in a sandbox, he was having writers block and he thought if he recreated the beach it would help him write better.
Okay then! Thank you!
Yeah, it was during the “Smile” sessions, which almost led to a complete mental breakdown for Brian.
/hijack/ One thing I noticed about the Wilson brothers: Dennis drank to excess, Carl smoked to excess, and Brian did drugs to excess. So which one is still alive?
Brian Wilson was a weird guy, and no story about him is completely implausible.
Still, the “artificial beach” story seems odd, because he was so far PAST writing songs about surfing and the beach by that point! It’s hard to imagine he’d be inspired by sand at that point.
Besides, even in the days when he WAS writing about surfing and the beach, he was relying on imagination and second-hand stories from brother Dennis. Brian admits he never surfed and almost never went to the beach. Its ironic, really, that so many people have moved to Southern California over the years, looking for the scene Brian Wilson wrote and sang about, when he really didn’t know much about that scene himself.