by Lewis Shiner
The decor was schizophrenic: plaid drapes and pole lamps and heavy Spanish furniture, mixed with Lava Lites and orange-and-blue wallpaper and campy religious icons. It was all I could do not to rub the curtains between my thumb and forefinger, or pocket an ashtray for a souvenir.
Downstairs there were glass doors that led to the pool. A slide curved down to it from the roof of the house. In the steam from the pool I smelled chlorine, perfume, cut grass. Of the four people who splashed around in the shallow end my attention went to Brian right off. First because he was so big, six four and really starting to put on weight. There in his baggy trunks, as he straddled a child’s inflatable horse and almost sank it, he seemed larger than life.
Especially next to Van Dyke Parks and his wife, Durry, who could have been a couple of elves. Both had their glasses on, both still had dry hair. The fourth person in the pool was Diane Rovell, Brian’s sister-in-law, wearing a blue bikini with a huge white T-shirt, probably one of Brian’s, over it. Brian’s wife, Marilyn—Diane’s sister—sat in a lounge chair. She wore a purple one-piece bathing suit with a built-in skirt. Her hair, which was blonde at the moment, hung down around her shoulders from inside a loose white cap. She was in a bit of a heavy phase herself.
Anderle walked me up to the edge of the pool and Brian looked over at us. He was laughing at something. My first impression was exactly the one I’d expected from his photographs, only stronger. It wasn’t his musical genius that came out, or the sensitivity that sometimes went over the line into neurosis. It was his niceness. I wanted him to be my friend.
“Brian, this is Ray. He says he’s with RCA. But I don’t want you to talk any business tonight, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah, sure, I promise.” He paddled over and we shook hands. “Hey, Ray. You want to put on a suit and join us?”
“Uh…yeah. Yeah, I’d love to.”
“David, could you…?”
“Sure, Brian.” He showed me where to change and waited for me to come out. I put on a madras suit that made me suck in my gut and wonder where I got the nerve to talk about other people’s weight problems.
Back at the pool Anderle said, “This time it’s goodnight for real.” He looked really tired. I was afraid to ask how late it was.
Brian sang “Good-night, Sweetheart” as he waved good-bye, leaning backward on his inflatable horse until the last few words came out as a gurgle. With a tremendous splash he went completely over on his back, his legs stuck out of the water and kicking. Diane laughed and Van Dyke and Durry smiled nervously. I got in at the shallow end and shook hands with all three of them and said hello to Marilyn. She had a bemused look on her face like this happened all the time, which I guess it did. Finally Brian came up like a sounding whale. He splashed water all over the yard and sent Louie, the weimaraner, into a barking fit.
It made me giddy, like being in love or suddenly rich, like my inside was too big for the outside. I leaned over and made this trumpeting noise, blowing a lungful of air out over my tightened lips. If you do it with your mouth just touching the water it echoes like crazy.
Brian stopped and stared at me. “Wow, man, how did you do that?”
“I don’t know. It’s something my old man used to do.”
“Do it again.”
I did and Brian laughed like a little kid. His face was angelic. “This is far-out,” he said. Then he leaned over and did it himself, same pitch, everything.
“Okay,” he said, suddenly serious. “Van Dyke, you do this.” He clapped his hands with water between them.
“Come on, Brian,” Van Dyke said. His voice was nasal and high, like it came from high in his throat. “Do we have to get into another whole production thing?”
“You’ll love it. Just try it.”
Van Dyke reluctantly started to clap his hands.
“Slower,” Brian said, moving his hands like a conductor. “Okay, Ray, do your thing.” I did my walrus noise and Brian came in on top of me, in a higher key, somehow making the sounds reverberate together.
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “That sounds like…have you ever heard whales sing?” It was 1966, the Songs of the Humpback Whale album was still years away as a pop event.
“Singing whales?” Durry said.
“Whales!” Brian said. “That’s it! It’s perfect, man, we can get whale noises for the water thing in the ‘Elements.’”
“Brian, you’re crazy,” Van Dyke said.
Brian said, “If everybody was crazy”—and Van Dyke and Marilyn and Diane all joined in as he said—“then maybe we’d have world peace.” And Van Dyke said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
“You’ll see,” Brian said. “I’ll do it and it’ll be great.”
It all felt real. I just felt like any minute somebody was going to turn and point at me and scream that I didn’t belong.
Durry whispered to Van Dyke and he said, “Brian, it’s three o’ clock. We’ve got to go home.”
“Don’t you want some more hash? We’ve got some more hash. Mare, go get some hash for these people.”
Marilyn said, “They want to go home, Brian. Let them go home and get some sleep.”
“Yeah, okay.” He looked at me and his eyes lit up. “How about you, Ray? You want some hash?”
“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
Brian hoisted himself up the ladder and padded into the house. I got out and looked around for a towel. Marilyn, still bemused, pointed to a pile of them on one of the lawn chairs. Durry grabbed a towel and started in. Van Dyke shook my hand and said, “Nice to meet you.”
“You too,” I said. I stopped myself before I told him how much I liked his Song Cycle album, which hadn’t been recorded yet.
They headed for the front door and I followed Brian into the den. He stood in the dark in front of the jukebox, his baggy swimsuit dripping onto the carpet. I wrapped my towel around my shoulders, cold now that I was out of the heated pool.
I thought Brian had simply spaced out. Then he said, “Have you heard anything from Smile?” He was still staring at the jukebox.
“Just ‘Good Vibrations.’” I wasn’t sure what was recorded at that point, what I could safely claim to have heard.
“That was Capitol’s idea, to put the single on there. If it was up to me, I’d do the whole album new.” He punched a couple of buttons on the machine. “Listen to this.”
The record was an acetate, a demo cut right in the studio. It was scratchy and distorted from all the times Brian had played it. I heard his voice count off, then there was a high piano, a French horn, a bass, then a wall of pianos, Spector style. By the time the drums came in I had recognized “Child Is Father of the Man,” the song that had been playing over and over in my head. There were four or five vocal parts on the demo already, chugging along on the word “child.” It was no different from the version on the bootlegs, but to hear it there, in Brian’s house, gave it incredible power.
Then Brian started singing, a high falsetto that wove in and out of the other parts. The song was totally transformed, filled with sadness and triumph. My eyes started to tear up there in front of him. Brian didn’t seem to notice. When the take broke down on record Brian kept at it for another few seconds, still with that lost look on his face.
“Wow,” I said, eventually.
“I just thought of that. Pretty neat, huh?”
“It’s great.”
“I got to remember that part.” He went over to a mahogany coffee table next to the couch and rummaged around in a drawer. “I’ve got this really groovy pipe, I think it was in here…yeah, here it is.”
The pipe was clay and looked like a kazoo with a couple of blue jay feathers hanging off it. Brian opened a crumpled piece of foil and rolled up an oily green pellet of hashish.
“So,” he said, “RCA records, huh?” He took some matches from a dish on the tabletop and fired up the pipe. “You think you might want to do Smile?”
“Davi
d said he didn’t want you to talk business.” Brian handed me the pipe and I took a small toke. Easy, Ray, for Christ’s sake, you’ll get stoned and God knows what’ll happen.
Brian shrugged. “So we don’t say anything to David.”
I gave the pipe back and breathed out smoke. I’d never actually had hash before, only marijuana. The smell made me dizzy and my heart beat like crazy. I could see perfectly in the dark.
“Look Brian…” He sat crossed-legged, eyes closed, holding a lit match over the ball of hash. His eyes opened in slow motion and he took the pipe away. I said, “I have to tell you the truth. I’m not with RCA. But I can help you just the same.”
His eyes got jumpy. “What are you saying, man?”
“You don’t know me, but I know you, because of your music. I know more about you than you can imagine. I would never do anything to hurt you. You have to believe me.”
“What do you mean you know things? What kind of things?”
“I know Mike Love doesn’t understand what you’re trying to do. He hasn’t heard any of the Smile stuff, has he?”
“No. The guys just got back from London.”
“When he hears it, he’s going to freak.”
“Yeah, probably. He hated Pet Sounds. He said ‘Good Vibrations’ was ‘avant-garde crap.’”
“I know what’s happening here. Everybody thinks you’re crazy. You took acid and it was this incredible religious experience, only nobody else wants to know about it. Every time you try something new, every time you hear some new sound in your head, everybody fights with you. You’re growing and opening out and nobody can keep up with you. Am I right?”
His eyes were wide. It took him a long time to nod.
I said, “Sooner or later, everybody realizes you were right. But the next time they still fight you all over again.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I just know it. You’re moving so fast now, there isn’t anybody in the world who can keep up. The thing is, if you’re not careful, they’re going to drag you down. Between Mike Love and Capitol Records they’ll drag you down and wear you out and the record will never get made.”
Brian lit another match and fired up the hash. He took a huge hit into his lungs and held it. “No way, man,” he said through clenched teeth. “This is going to be the greatest fucking album ever. Better than Spector, better than the Beatles.” He blew a cloud of smoke around his head.
“Being good is not enough,” I said. He held the pipe out to me and I shook my head. “Timing, Brian. You got to have timing. How many songs have you got for this record? Fifteen? Twenty?”
“Something like that.”
“Pick a dozen and finish them. Finish them now. Before you play it for anybody else. Get the whole album finished and turned in.”
“I can’t do that, man. Carl has to sing ‘Wonderful.’ I need Dennis’s harmonies. Besides, I can’t go around Mike. He’s always been part of the group. He’s family. They all are.”
“If you wait for them you’re going to lose it.”
“How do you know that?”
“I just do. If I told you how I know you wouldn’t believe me.”
Brian toked up another huge lungful of hash. It would have brought a horse to its knees. “Try me.”
I sat for a while wondering what I should tell him, and then it just started to come out. “For the sake of argument, let’s say I was from the future. Let’s say I know everything that’s going to happen if you wait for Dennis and Carl and Mike.”
Brian was so huge. He was like some kind of bear or something, looming over me. I could see his eyes, bloodshot from the pool and the drugs, glow in the dark. “Tell me,” he said.
“You play the tapes for them. Mike hates it. He says, ‘You’re blowing it, Brian. Don’t fuck with the formula. Surfing and cars, Brian.’ He calls Van Dyke in and demands to know what ‘crow cries uncover the cornfield’ means. Van Dyke refuses to explain himself and quits in a huff. Capitol demands to hear what you’ve got and they hate it too. You lose momentum. You know the album is brilliant, but your confidence is shaken. It’s so hard to keep pushing. You fool around, start more new songs and don’t finish them. You think if you get it perfect enough, everybody will have to like it. Suddenly it’s June and there’s a new Beatles album out. It’s called Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
“You’re joking.”
“No. It’s got songs that run together and repeated themes and sound effects. It’s not as good as Smile, but it is really good, and it takes the world by storm. It’s acknowledged as rock’s first masterpiece. It takes the heart right out of you and you never finish Smile. Never.”
The first emotion across his face was disbelief. Then he said, “This is too weird. You couldn’t be making this up.” He got up and shambled around the room. “Fucking hell.” He walked all the way around the room four times and sat down again. “Sergeant what?”
I told him.
He closed his eyes and sat that way for a long time. Finally he shook his head once, slowly, in a big arc, and stood up again. “Are you hungry at all? I am totally starved.”
“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
We changed clothes and went out to the garage, which was still open to the night. Brian got in the right side of the Rolls and for a second I thought he meant me to take the wheel. Then I realized it was probably still set up for right-hand drive.
I fumbled for a shoulder harness that wasn’t there, and Brian said, “You like it?” I nodded. He hadn’t started the engine yet. He just sat there in the garage, turning the wheel. It occurred to me that Brian was really stoned and the steering wheel was on the wrong side of the car. Maybe this was not a good idea.
Brian suddenly leaned forward, his eyes shining, and started to make engine noises. He ran through the gears, squealed the brakes, even missed a shift and shrugged apologetically. With my eyes shut I would have thought I was on a racetrack. Then Brian pretended to throw the car into a huge, screaming skid that ended in a crash. He rocked back in his seat and sat there in silence for a while.
“Wow,” he said at last, “Great ride. So why am I still hungry?”
I started to laugh and then Brian did too. We must have rolled around in those leather seats for five minutes, laughing. Finally Brian said, “C’mon, we can get something to eat inside.”
It turned out to be chocolate ice cream in the black-and-white kitchen. I made him stop after he put a couple of scoops in my bowl. “You live in L.A. or what?” he asked.
“No.” I could feel the ice cream where it had stuck halfway down my throat, a cold, hard pellet. I was all alone, a hell of a long way from home. I had maybe a hundred dollars in my wallet, which would be okay as long as nobody thought to look at the dates on the bills. “I guess you could say I just got here. I don’t even know what day it is.”
Brian was really going through that ice cream. He was even childlike in the way he ate, giving it his undivided enthusiasm. A hank of brown hair fell across his face and he kept pushing it back between bites. He didn’t look up when he said, “It’s Monday. November twenty-eighth. I guess actually it’s Tuesday morning now. Have you got someplace to stay?”
“Well, no, actually. Not really.”
“You can stay here if you want.”
“That’s…that would be great. Thanks.”
He stood up. “I better get to bed. There should be a couple of bedrooms with nobody in them.”
I put both our dishes in the sink and ran some water in them. Brian led me to an empty room and switched on the light by the bed. With his big hands it was like he was playing with dollhouse furniture. “Okay?” he said.
“Perfect. Thanks.”
Brian shrugged and started to turn away. I was exhausted and I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay awake much longer. I didn’t know where I would be when I woke up. What the hell. If this was all I got, it was still great.
“Brian? Think about what I said, oka
y? About Smile. The world needs that record.”
“Then we’d have world peace, right? I’ll think about it. Night, Ray.”
“Good-night.”
The room was done up in chintz curtains and matching white-painted furniture. There were stuffed toys and green-and-blue flowered sheets on the bed. There was a private bathroom, where I showered off the chlorine from the pool and used the guest toothbrush.
As I got in bed I thought again, I am truly happy. However this happened, I don’t care. I’m happy.
When I woke up it was noon. I was still in Brian’s house, still in 1966. “Thank you,” I said, to nobody in particular. I got dressed and set my watch by the bedside Westclox. If I’d known I was coming I would have packed a bag. No way Brian’s clothes were going to fit me.
I found Diane and Marilyn at the kitchen table with a guy who looked instantly familiar. He had long black hair, massive sideburns, and intense eyes. “Good morning,” Marilyn said. “Do you want some coffee?”
“I’d love some. Thanks.”
“Ray, this is Danny Hutton.”
“Of course.” I knew him from Three Dog Night, which was still a few years away. He’d had a couple regional records by 1966 and David Anderle was managing him. “‘Roses and Rainbows.’ Great song.”
“Not exactly ‘Good Vibrations.’ But it’s a living.”
I sat down between Danny and Diane. Marilyn had her back to me, pouring coffee. She said, “I talked to RCA this morning. They say they don’t have anybody named Ray Shackleford who works for them.” She brought the cup over to me and then walked away like she didn’t expect an answer.
The cup had four-petaled flowers on it, green with blue centers. I wrapped my hand around it, felt the heat sting my palm. “I told Brian the truth last night. He knows what’s going on.”
“What exactly is going on?” Marilyn said. Danny and Diane stared at the tabletop. “What did you tell Brian?”
“Personal stuff. I’m here to help him. I wouldn’t hurt him, you have to believe that.”