LOVE REMEMBER ME
Dennis Wilson’ Dreams Delivered
by Ben Edmonds
NOTHING MUCH WAS EXPECTED FROM DENNIS WILSON
The second of the three Wilson brothers was the source of the image adopted and set to music by the Beach Boys in the early sixties and sold to the world as the soundtrack to the California dream. Perfectly curling waves, fast cars, girls on the beach – such was the stuff of Dennis Wilson’s adolescent dreams, and it became the cornerstone of the Beach Boys’ storied career. It didn’t hurt that he looked the part to perfection. Handsome, tan and athletic, one shake of his roguishly long sunstreaked locks was enough to unleash torrents of teen screams prodigious even in those longago days of mania.
These were substantial assets, to be sure. There’s also no denying they were of the superficial variety; matters and manipulation of style, not substance. Despite the occasional anomaly – like the fact that it was wildchild Dennis who introduced the group to Transcendental Meditation – it seemed that he was destined to be the perennial Beach Boy afterthought, forever the kid who’d been forced into the family band by his mom, and assigned the drum chair because it was the only instrument left. That he was often replaced in the studio by session pros didn’t seem to bother Denny much. He was happy to ride the crest of the cheers, cash the checks, crash the cars, and provide his bandmates with the inspiration for songs from “Surfin’” to “Fun, Fun, Fun.”
Then a funny thing happened on the way to the bank of disposable pop celebrity. Dennis Wilson turned out to be an artist.
The distance he had to travel can be measured in the reaction of Daryl Dragon. Before he became half of the Captain and Tennille, the classically-trained son of composer/conductor Carmen Dragon was a touring keyboardist for the Beach Boys, giving him a ringside seat to the creative awakening of Dennis Wilson.
“I was sitting out in the bleachers during a sound check,” Dragon recalled, “when I heard these amazing piano chords coming from the stage. I looked up and it was Dennis, which kind of shocked me. Like a lot of people, I only knew him as the wildman drummer. I didn’t even know he played piano! When I asked him who’d composed the gorgeous music he was playing, he said, “I did.” I was floored. Dennis had none of the formal training I’d had, but these were chords my instructors would’ve killed for. He didn’t know the names of the notes, nothing. He just played around with notes until he found the ones that matched what he was hearing in his head. The richness and instinctive innovation of his chords reminded me of the composer Richard Wagner whom Dennis had never heard of…”
The 1976 announcement that Dennis Wilson had been signed to James William Guercio’s CBS – distributed Caribou Records and would become the first Beach Boy to record a solo album was greeted with puzzlement. Few had noticed when his songs began appearing on the band’s albums, though the beautiful ballad “Forever” from 1970’s Sunflower has become something of a standard. He collaborated with bandmates but had also developed a creative support system independent from the group, principally co-writers Daryl Dragon, poet Steve Kalinich and Gregg Jakobson. Just as his appealingly ragged voice lent a soulful edge to the band’s pristine harmonies, his material often colored outside the Beach Boys sandbox. Yet insiders doubted that anything would ever come of the Caribou pact, citing Denny’s willingness to hand over solo tracks whenever his band came calling, and an overabundance of scattershot energy that inevitably short-circuited his well-intentioned beginnings.
The release of Pacific Ocean Blue the following year proved them wrong. Not only had Dennis Wilson delivered an album, it was a great one.
Pacific Ocean Blue would not exist without the belief of James William Guercio, who was playing guitar with Chad & Jeremy on a 1966 tour when he was befriended by Dennis. As a result of that friendship, a decade later the successful producer, manager, studio and label owner agreed to work with the Beach Boys.
“Dennis would play me songs when we were on the road,” Guercio recalls. “At sound check, late at night in hotel rooms. He just blew me away with his raw talent. I could also sense an injured bird there. He was way more talented than anybody gave him credit for. When I first heard “Forever” I didn’t believe Dennis had written it. But then he’d sit at the piano and play these changes, incredible harmonic progression that were far ahead of most musician I’ve worked with. There’s also a spiritual side to his music that touched me. His is some of the most personal, heart-wrenching music I’ve ever heard. But he’d play things and then you’d never hear them again. I said, ‘Dennis, you’ve got to get this stuff down. Here’s a blank canvas, go fill it up.’ I just gave him the opportunity. Pacific Ocean Blue is his moment and his masterpiece.”
He dove into the sessions without much of a gameplan. “Dennis was never a long-range thinker,” says Gregg Jakobson, who co-produced the album, co-wrote many of the songs, and somehow managed to keep Wilson on track. “Dennis was the most present person I’ve ever known. He was so focused on each song that he hardly thought about it as an album. That was my job. He just kept recording. Having a studio [Dennis and Carl Wilson had purchased Brother Studio from the band] and the belief of a label freed him to accept his identity as an artist apart from the group. His reservoir of musical ideas had been building up for years, and it just poured forth.”
Jakobson says he can remember few instances of Dennis listening to other music. This makes perfect sense. His music sound only peripherally like the Beach Boys. It also sounds like nothing else. You can call the majestic “River Song” white California gospel, but that doesn’t begin to convey its singularity. Not that the album was at all avant-garde; that was not its intention. It embraced the direct and familiar as a means of achieving intimate connection, always the objective of any Dennis Wilson enterprise. Those who’d followed his artistic maturation were not surprised to find Pacific Ocean Blue distinguished by its balladry. Its idea of “rock” was slower, moodier, with an undertow of latenight funk. Even when his music is lushly orchestrated, as the ballads often are, it never loses its simple, hand-crafted, natural character.
Because there were few precedents, and no musical agenda beyond honest expression, is music was free to become what it would. It is guided by instinct: interludes rise abruptly before dissolving back into the body of the song, new sections navigate unexpected turns. This was not self-conscious sonic architecture or compositional device. The effect is akin to experiencing the thoughts as they cross his mind. You feel the inspiration, not simply as its painted memory. Wilson’ voice, even in its most wobbly and wayward moments, was full of such commitment and passion that it hotwired his simple lyric sentiments. “Thoughts Of You,” to cite but one example, carries so much unfiltered emotion that it can make listeners slightly uncomfortable at first, as if they’re overhearing something far too personal. It’s simple, but as deep as the ocean. This is true soul music.
I was lucky enough to spend some time with Dennis Wilson as he was finishing Pacific Ocean Blue. Then an executive at the Beach Boys’ former label Capitol Records, I had a band recording at Brother Studios in Santa Monica. Co-owner Dennis was a fixture at the studio’s pinball machine, and anyone foolish enough to be baited into challenging his supremacy (like yours truly) would be swiftly dispatched and then made to pay with late afternoon breakfasts at neighborhood coffee shops. He never failed to find something in his pockets for the homeless we’d encounter along the way, and he made me do the same. “Cough it up!” he’d command. “You work for Capitol Records, don’t you? Well, I helped build your fucking office!”
Despite a romantic life that seemed in perpetual and dramatic flux – its melancholic ebb and flow is his album’s great theme – Denny was generally upbeat, talking constantly about a boat called The Harmony he was restoring and his plans to make a life on the water. (Harmony with nature is the album’s other great theme. Beyond its expressions of ecological consciousness, the music itself is infused with elemental rhythms, gentle sea breezes, the rocking of the ocean and the pull of the tide.) Though he was immensely proud of the album nearing completion, it was already in his rear view mirror. “Man, I’m halfway into the next one,” he cackled, as amazed as anyone by his creative outpouring. On every level Dennis seemed to have found new dreams. It was easy to imagine a future in which Dennis Wilson would never stop recording, where somebody would just show up every so often and take away enough tracks for another album.
The warm critical reception and healthy sales that greeted the release of Pacific Ocean Blue suggested that such a future might be within his grasp. That “next one” acquired the tentative title “Bambu” and a songlist bolstered by several contributions from jazz musician Carli Munoz, then playing keyboards in the Beach Boys touring band. According to Carli, “Dennis wasn’t that fast when it came to mastering technique. He had to work hard at it, and he did. But he was very quick to get the feel, the soul of the music. He wanted to get down to the bone, and then to the marrow. He took chances. He had no brakes, and he didn’t think about consequences. He went for it right now. That makes for passionate music, but it can be a hard way to live.”
Denny’s dream future never arrived. No matter how fast he moved he couldn’t outrace his demon’s, not all of which were of his own making. The volcanic energies that powered his, no-hold-barred assault on life eventually overwhelmed a physical circuitry compromised by years of testing the limits. Once his creative momentum was lost in the mounting of personal chaos it was never regained. By the time of Wilson’s accidental drowning death at 39 on December 28, 1983, Bambu had already been an abandoned ruin for half a decade. Yet the music, much of it had never been fully brought to life, refused to be buried with its creator. As the years passed, discerning listeners discovered the Dennis Wilson songs scattered like small jewels throughout the Beach Boys catalog, causing them to seek out old vinyl copies of Pacific Ocean Blue and furtively trade pirated discs of unfinished Bambu material.
Many of the people who helped Dennis capture this music were also unable to let it go. John Hanlon was a Brother Studio tech until Dennis pointed in his direction and told him it was time for him to become an engineer. “He’d encourage anybody who showed a spark of creativity to jump right into the fire with him,” says Hanlon, still in awe of Wilson’s boundless generosity as of his musical genius. The engineer was haunted by one of the album’s unfinished outtakes. “I heard ‘Holy Man’ only once,” he explains, “when we did a rough mix of it in March of 1976. Then it sat in my head for 31 years. I couldn’t hear it anywhere else. They hadn’t done any vocals, but it was a such a magical melody that I would’ve done anything just to hear the track one more time.”
He finally got his wish, and the rest of us got to much more. Thanks to the enduring commitment of James Guercio, these two discs were lovingly and painstakingly assembled by John Hanlon and Gregg Jakobson. At last Pacific Ocean Blue is rescued from my worn, scratchy vinyl and restored to its original sonic grandeur. Dennis Wilson’s music is ultimately about the act of becoming, and the rest of the selections on this deluxe edition are like snapshots from various stages of that process. Whether rough sketches or finished master, they are beautifully presented but definitely not retouched. Apart from one overdubbed surprise, these songs are frozen in the moment Dennis last worked on them, but mixed as the masterworks-in-progress they surely were.
Hanlon’s memory did not exaggerate the worth of “Holy Man,” and this listener feels almost as strongly about the unfinished track “Common,” which sounds like Dennis introducing brother Brian Wilson to Van Morrison. Jim Guercio hears a movie in the instrumental version of “Cocktails.” That so many of us find so much even in his partially painted canvases tells you about the depth of Denny’s inspiration, and its ability to inspire others.
Still, listening to this material can be a bittersweet pleasure. Bambu was launched in high spirits. Its initially looser rock & roll orientation was like raucous shore leave after the comparatively melancholy sailing of Pacific Ocean Blue, and Dennis added new musical colors to the mix – New Orleans exuberance, Caribbean spice – with swashbuckling abandon. But Wilson’s art unflinchingly reflected his life, so you also sense the encroachment of shadows as heavier chords appear, and hear in his voice, the price the singer was already paying. Dennis disguised none of it. “’What you see is what you get’ is a cliché,” says Gregg Jakobson, “but it was invented to describe Dennis Wilson.” He wanted to experience everything, and to give us nothing less.
Dennis had looks, he had charm, he had immense talent. More than anything, the guy had heart. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the following recollection by John Hanlon. It was prompted by the passing of Otto “Pop” Hinsche, father of friend and Beach Boy associate Billy Hinsche. Pop had been beloved, stabilizing figure to Dennis, helping Wilson weather the death of his own father. “Dennis showed up at the studio and said there was something he had to do,” Hanlon remembers. “He went into the studio and lost himself at the piano. I got to be a fly on the wall and listen as he found the melody and this song emerged. He wrote ‘Farewell My Friend’ and we recorded it the same night. There’s sadness because Billy’s dad was gone, but what comes through is how much love Dennis had for the man. It’s like a quiet celebration of what his life meant.”
