For now, Wilson is busy enough with new projects. The Gershwin album, for one, had been on his mind for years. When Disney approached him a couple of years ago to lend his signature sound to an album of songs from Disney movies, he agreed to do it—and sold them on his Gershwin idea as well. Disney gave him a list of 25 songs it felt would be appropriate, and he selected 11, including such usual suspects as ’S Wonderful and Love Is Here to Stay, popularized by such artists as Ella Fitzgerald and Gene Kelly.
The real coup came when he was offered access to more than 100 unfinished Gershwin compositions by Warner/Chappell Music, working with the Gershwin family. He picked Will You Remember Me?, an outtake from the 1924 musical Lady, Be Good!, and a 1929 fragment. Working from piano demos, he had Scott Bennett, his lyricist and a multi-instrumentalist in his band, write words. Given total artistic freedom, they crafted a pair of original songs: The Like in I Love You and Nothing but Love.
“I felt so thrilled to think that I was going to ‘work’ with George Gershwin. I blew a gasket in my head. I couldn’t believe it,” Wilson said. As he spoke, his kids could be heard in the background. Wilson, 68, and Melinda have adopted four children, including a boy, Dash Tristan, who joined the clan last year. (His first marriage, to Marilyn Rovell, yielded daughters Wendy and Carnie, chart-toppers themselves in Wilson Phillips.)
Wilson isn’t the first rock star to put a new spin on the Great American Songbook. But this isn’t just another covers record. The Gershwins have been Wilson-ized. A big chunk of the album is made up of a four-song suite from the landmark 1935 African-American opera Porgy and Bess. Orchestral arrangements by Paul Mertens, his woodwinds player, play up the sinister subtext in Summertime and It Ain’t Necessarily So. Then there is I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’, stripped of its words and remade as a harmonica-driven jaunt to 19th-century America. “That was my wife’s idea to make it an instrumental,” Wilson said. “We tried to make it interesting with a Little Deuce Coupe-in-California shuffle beat. We tried like hell to get it to work.”
What really sets the album apart is the idiosyncratic flavour Wilson’s vocal arrangements bring to numbers traditionally sung solo. The mood is apparent right from the album’s opening snippet—“the pretty part” of Rhapsody in Blue, in which violins are replaced by Wilson’s wordless vocals, stacked as high as the Empire State Building. “I did that so that I could show off my voice. I have a very good harmonic voice,” he points out—as if we didn’t know.
These days, of course, the trademark falsetto of long ago has given way to a gruffer set of pipes, frayed by past smoking and substance abuse. That said, he is in good vocal form, and chose songs based on his current register. He has been taking that voice on tour as well, which is surprising given his notorious stage fright. “For about an hour before I go on stage I feel all nervous as hell,” he admitted. “Then, as soon as I hear the first note the band plays, I’m okay.” So, will he tour behind the new release? “We don’t know yet. We’re thinking about it,” he said.
Meanwhile, speculation grows about a Beach Boys anniversary reunion. Repatriating Wilson is the key to any celebratory plans, but he remains non-committal. “I really don’t know what’s going to happen with that one. I don’t think anything,” he said. There may be a studio project brewing, however. Mike Love, who continues to front Beach Boys shows, told Maclean’s he and Wilson have had a couple of conversations about a project. “But he’s been busy and we’ve been touring,” Love said. “So getting together would probably have to wait until the fall.”
Few would have expected the return to mental and physical health Wilson has enjoyed, although he has to keep working at it. “I walk at a park down about a mile from my house almost every day,” he said. “But I gained 25 lb. over the last two months. I have to get on a good diet.” He still has the Disney movie songs project. He adds he’d like to make “a really good rock ’n’ roll album sometime.” You could say he took his retirement when he spent years in bed alone with his demons. “I don’t plan on retiring. If I retire, it’s kind of like saying I’m getting lazy. And I don’t think I want to be lazy.”
Mark Dillon is currently writing a book, 50 Sides of The Beach Boys, to coincide with the band’s 50th anniversary next year.
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