Beach Boys founder David Marks spoke to Jason Barnard in February 2021 about the group’s formation, the recording of their early hits, playing with Dave and The Marksmen, The Moon, reuniting with The Beach Boys and current shows with the Surf City Allstars Band.
First of all a huge welcome David. Before speaking to you today, I read your brilliant book with Jon Stebbins ‘The Lost Beach Boy’.
Yeah. Any brilliance in there would be attributed to Jon.
And one of the brilliant things about that book is that it shows how your life in your early teen years was intimately intertwined with the Wilson family.
Well, not only teen years. I actually moved in right across the street from the Wilson family when I was seven years old. And my first introduction into the neighbourhood was Carl Wilson and Dennis Wilson who were, I don’t know, let’s say maybe seven and 10. I don’t know. But they were throwing garbage across the street because our street was the border between Inglewood and Hawthorne – the two different cities, corporate cities, but now Inglewood is part of Osborne but back then they were going ‘Inglewood sucks! Hawthorne rules!’ and they were throwing all kinds of car parts and garbage across the street and so that’s how we bonded. Strange isn’t it?
There’s so many interesting aspects to those years. I’ve heard that you learned guitar from John [Maus] Walker of the Walker Brothers.
That’s true. My mother was friends with his mother and so Johnny’s mother forced him to show me a couple of guitar chords. But I remember first time I saw John and his sister Judy they were up on the stage at the Hermosa Biltmore [a hotel] in Hermosa Beach California doing a little concert for the book club that my mom and his mom belonged to. I was maybe nine or 10 and I saw his Stratocaster and something clicked inside my soul. Anyway Johnny, he taught me some stuff, and I transferred it over to Carl. Carl and I both got guitars around the same time. I was 10. He was about 12. And so every day after school we’d practice at my house listening to records, learning Chuck Berry, all these guitar riffs mainly and all the surf genre stuff. John was actually connected with Ritchie Valens. He was a pallbearer for Ritchie’s funeral, God bless him, and he was giving us the stuff that he was learning from Ritchie Valens which was at that time, when you’re a nine or ten-year-old, was like the king of rock and roll to me. That guitar sound just never left me.
And as well as learning guitar, you were hearing Brian Wilson across the street on piano and some of the early steps he was doing for the melodies on material like ‘Surfer Girl’.
Yeah. At the same time that me and Carl were practicing our guitar licks, Brian was at the piano studying Four Freshmen harmonies. He was maybe a junior or a senior in high school at the time and he was taking music classes. So he was pretty up on Bach and the Four Freshmen and he fell in love with those harmony, the jazz harmonies that the Four Freshmen would sing and he translated that into Beach Boys music and he heard Carl and I doing those Ritchie Valens strumming things like (sings ‘Oh Donna’) – that kind of stuff and so he said ‘Wow. That was great. That’d be great on ‘Surfer Girl’.’ So he enlisted Carl and I to play strumming guitars on ‘Surfer Girl’ and that was one of the first songs he wrote.
When you look at the first big hit for the Beach Boys certainly nationwide in the US, the way that you helped or brought in that tougher guitar sound to the group with Carl really lifted the sound of the band.
Well it wasn’t really a surf sound. ‘Surfin’ Safari’ was our first national hit and it was more of a Chuck Berry kind of thing. Dennis Wilson, Carl Wilson and myself would get together at the high school, Hawthorne High, and play actual surf music, which occurred by accident. It was mostly instrumental and it was just buried in reverb, like Dick Dale and The Ventures and we were studying that kind of stuff at the time before Brian became proficient at his catalogue and so the surf music was an accident. The Ventures didn’t know they were a surf band and Dick Dale didn’t know – well, Dick Dale knew – but the kids would use their music to watch Bruce’s surf movies at their high school auditorium and they would just pick music to play along with it because there was no sound and they would pick The Ventures and stuff like that. So the genre was born in that way. Then, right after, almost at the same time, The Marketts and Dick Dale and all the offshoots of the surf instrumental genre were born and that’s what Carl and Dennis and I were doing before the Brian Wilson surge of genius. So when the Beach Boys came out with ‘Surfin’ Safari’ the lyrics were definitely surf and created the fantasy of ‘Let’s go to California and be in the beach in the sun’ but the actual sound was borrowed from rock and roll like Chuck Berry and stuff like that. We had our own interpretation of it which became sort of unique especially with Brian’s jazz harmony arrangements on the vocals. It just was a unique thing. Nowadays it’s a common sound. But in 1962, I don’t think anyone had heard anything quite like that before. That’s why when The Beatles came out with their dry hollow-body electric guitars it was very foreign at first but then, when you got used to it, it was the best thing ever but we were used to hearing our guitars buried in reverb and The Beatles had this little dry kind of thing going. I actually met George Martin. I think he was the genius behind all those early Beatles’ records.
I think, in a way, The Beach Boys were, certainly in the early years when you were in the group, in many ways were more advanced than The Beatles. ‘Lonely Sea’, for example, has a melancholia, it’s got the harmonies. The arrangement is immaculate. You saw Brian and Gary Usher write that didn’t you?
Yeah. There’s an interesting back story to that. When the Wilsons were throwing car parts across the street there was a little guy named Greg Jones down the street who was my age and he was riding his bike up and down the street. We became fast friends and his cousin was Gary Usher from Boston. When The Beach Boys happened several years later Gary rushed out and I remember sitting in the room with the two, Gary and Brian, and Gary said ‘Here. I have an idea on the guitar I’ve been playing for a while.’ And it was the little arpeggiated thing that is kind of the basis of ‘Lonely Sea’ and he just played it for him. He didn’t have anything, just those chords and Brian went ‘Cool. I like that. I’ll write some words.’ And then Gary helped write ‘409’ and a couple of other things. I remember 10 in the evening when Gary was revving up his motor in his Chevrolet – it wasn’t a 409, I think it was a 356 or something – but the neighbours were all really pissed and Brian had my tape recorder out on the corner to record this engine sound that ended up being the intro to ‘409’. The memories – some of them are still fresh. I have a couple of pink brain cells left I guess.
What was also special in that period was the way that you and Carl complemented each other on guitar. You seem to have a real understanding with each other. When you look at ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.’, it’s just an amazing blend of guitar.
I was an only child so I spent all my time at the Wilson’s house and Carl and I would sneak off and smoke cigarettes and stuff but, when we played our guitars… Well. Let me start from the beginning. Audree Wilson, the mother of the Wilson brothers, she, as a little girl, wanted to play the piano in the worst way, but they couldn’t afford one. Her family couldn’t afford a piano, so what she did was she drew piano keys on the kitchen table and practiced that way. She knew where her fingers were going but there was no sound. I’m sure she heard it in her head and then when she finally got to a real piano, she actually was able to play. So what happened was the three Wilson boys and myself, she sat us all down and taught us how to play little riffs on the piano, the same ones, and I think that made us a little tighter as a band and how the brothers had a very special vocal blend because they had the same voice – they were brothers. Carl and I had that kind of thing going on the guitars. We became one guitar. He would take off and do a solo and I would back him up with the heavy one/five rhythm and stuff…. and I forgot the question, I’m sorry.
I’m talking about the way that you and Carl played. It was just like you were almost in harmony in terms of how you complement each other. Carl often on lead, yourself often on rhythm. It’s a wonderful sound.
Right. I did answer it, I guess. I think that we had a connection above ourselves that joined our guitars. We were sitting down and studying those records and learning everything we could and then, when it blended with the band… Dennis didn’t really care for music or whatever. He was out doing other stuff – racing cars, surfing, doing girls and stuff and so. Brian had to almost beat him up to get him into music and one day Brian just handed him some drumsticks and Dennis didn’t know drums but he ended up inventing his own style which was emulated by very many popular people – The Who and stuff like that. The bottom line is, every one of those Wilsons were a musical genius in their own right. Murry [their father] also. He played the organ and wrote songs. He wasn’t too shabby. Dennis didn’t know it, but he was a musical genius and he expressed some of that in his later years. Carl, of course, one of the most stellar voices ever. What can I say?
You played so many shows. I’ve read that you played over 100 shows in 1963 alone and you were still, what were you 13? 14?
I remember having my 13th birthday at the studio around three in the morning we were celebrating but when I went out on my first tour with the Beach Boys I was 13, I guess. I remember having my 15th birthday on the road in Wheeling, West Virginia. We played at an amusement park and the owner of the amusement park took us to his yacht club afterwards and celebrated my 15th birthday, I remember. I was on the road and my 64th birthday was on the road also. I had many birthdays on the road actually and I’ve missed it. I hope this virus thing lifts pretty soon. I think we’re going to be able to go out and play for the people and make them happy again.
Definitely. There’s a great story about when you’re recording the Surfer Girl album. The sessions would often go to early hours of the morning and you and Dennis would go out for chili dogs. I thought that was really evocative.
Wow. I don’t know how that little secret got out. But when Brian was inspired, whether it be 2am or 4pm, he would act on that and we’d be off doing something stupid and he’d recruit us whether we liked it or not. He threatened to punch us in the mouth if we didn’t sing because, when he was inspired, he acted on it. And I believe that that’s most of what’s Brian Wilson’s genius – when he heard it in his head, he knew how to manifest that and he went right into the studio, before he forgot it, and he got the band together. He knew how to do that. His enthusiasm was just like… I’ve never seen such enthusiasm. He was just focused right on that and he admits he was a conduit to God’s work with all of his creativity but we’d go in the studio sometimes three in the morning and Carl and I actually had to quit public school and go to private school which didn’t pan out very well either. Well, we did make some really good social connections but….
We mentioned about the number of shows you were recording. You were so young and it must have been such a pressurized environment and then there’s that story about you and the guys in the car with Murry Wilson and you saying ‘I quit the band’ and then Murry holds you to it.
Everybody quit the band every day. I think Brian quit the band a million times! Dennis didn’t. He didn’t quit because he didn’t consider himself even a member. He’d be off doing everything else that his big brother made him. ‘Come and play drums and sing in the studio’ but that happened to be a like a political move by an adult, Murry Wilson, who happened to be our manager at that time, who was fired shortly after that, by the way. I didn’t even know I had the power to fire Murry Wilson but I loved the man because he was like my second father. He taught me a lot and he was responsible for The Beach Boys’ success but he had a dark side where he would steal money from children but, God bless him, I think he’s been forgiven. I quit in the car. We picked him up in the middle of one of our mid-western tours because he’d heard that our manager he had hired, who was a former manager of The Ventures, actually, he was giving us prostitutes and whisky and stuff. So the word got out and Murry fired him and flew in to take over for the rest of the tour and, on the way to the airport to pick Murry up in a rented car, Brian said ‘Hey. Let’s all get pipes and when dad gets in the car, we’ll roll all the windows up and we’ll all light our pipes.’ Because Murry was an avid pipe smoker and, at that time, Brian couldn’t stand smoke. He was very against it. Anyway, Murry got in the car at the airport and we started driving to our next gig in Chicago, I don’t know where, New York maybe? I don’t know how it happened but Murry was sitting shotgun and I was right behind him in the back seat and we got into some kind of a stupid argument. I was a disrespectful kid and Murry was all business. So he took the opportunity at that time, when we started making really big money, to try to get me out so he could form a family corporation.
So he used intimidation and all the tricks against a 15-year old to scare him out of the band. It didn’t work because we had several contracts for the upcoming year for concerts and stuff, so I had to stick that out but, as time went on, I was more adamant about leaving because, in the meantime, I got my own band together and I was writing my own songs and Murry was putting the pressure on me. My mom, she fancied herself as my manager but she didn’t know what the heck she was doing, poor girl, and so Murry just rolled all over us because he was very savvy in the business world but, on the other hand, I’m very thankful to Murry for all the fun stuff and things I got from being involved with The Beach Boys and the Wilson family. They gave me a musical education, a chance to see the world. Thank God I moved in across from the Wilsons, I’ll tell you that.
Absolutely. It’s amazing how it pans out. I think you alluded to it briefly earlier so, after this period where Murry was holding you to that, there was the period in time where you were still doing some recordings with the group as well as touring because ‘Be True To Your School’, I think, was in that era where you’d kind of quit the band but you were still with the band?
Yeah. There were some recordings that we did. Capitol put an enormous amount of pressure on Brian – like two albums a year. That’s, like, nuts. That’s why the Surfin’ U.S.A album was most half instrumental and a lot of them Dick Dale songs but, for the most part, Brian would be walking down the hall and see a cuckoo clock and go ‘Hey. I’m going to write a song about that cuckoo clock’ because he needed all this material, and most of it was silly. The music was kind of sophisticated but the words were really kind of silly. But people liked it. It was happy. We were trying to poop out two albums a year and a lot of the material leaked over into after I left the band, into like the Shut Down Volume 2 album. Some of the songs I was on before made it to that album because that was like the next album after I quit the band in quotes ‘quit the band’. I just stopped showing up. I didn’t know it but I still owned a fifth of the band and the trademark. I didn’t lose that until 1972.
But even after you had quit the band, I’ve read that you played guitar on ‘Don’t Worry Baby’. That was after the period that you definitely left the group and that was a session helmed by Brian. Is that true?
I stopped doing road tours with the band, kept on going to the school that Carl and I were going to and, after school, I’d go over to where Brian was living, down the street from my school. After school, almost every day. And the band, in the meantime, was on the road. Al Jardine took Brian’s place on the road singing the high falsetto parts and playing the bass, which happened way before I left actually, and we thanked him for that because Brian didn’t want to tour and so Al saved the day but Brian took me in the studio a few times. One of the times he says ‘I want you to play lead on something’ and I was all excited, right, because Carl was usually doing most of the leads and so I got to the studio and he had me do these, like, chop chords [imitates the tune] and I said ‘Is that it?’ I thought it was one of Brian’s practical jokes because he did that a lot because I thought I was going to be able to show off my chops and do all my fancy lead stuff and he had me doing those chords in the guitar break in ‘Don’t Worry Baby’ which became iconic. But at the time I was pissed because I wanted to do my fancy Eric Clapton riffs, although I didn’t know who he was then.
And you mentioned it before briefly about your own band, Dave and The Marksmen. ‘I Wanna Cry’ seems to combine US and British influences?
Yeah. During the last days with touring with The Beach Boys and recording with The Beach Boys…. Dennis sprained his ankle and he couldn’t do our upcoming gigs so Carl had a friend at Hawthorne High named Mark Groseclose who was Carl’s buddy who was an excellent drummer, so Carl got him to fill in for Dennis on maybe two or three gigs. But that was it and then Mark went back to his band which was called The Jaguars, because they all played Fender Jaguars, and it was in a garage across the street from Mark’s house. I liked the way Mark played with us on those few gigs that he was sitting in for Dennis and so I went to The Jaguars’ rehearsal in the garage and said ‘Hey. I’m taking over the band and it’s now going to be called…’ kind of like Hitler or something. Anyway, they agreed because I happen to have been writing some pretty cool songs that Brian didn’t want to have anything to do with because I wasn’t really that respected because I was, what, 15? I don’t know, 14? And Brian had this electric surge going for a genius and people like Gary Usher and those guys were his own age and they had a communications thing going, a rapport, so I couldn’t hope to co-write with Brian. So I went off and commandeered this garage band and called them Dave and The Marksmen and the guy who named The Beach Boys, Russ Regan, was a promotion man that Murry hired to promote the band. He liked my band The Marksmen so he got me a deal on A&M Records. Actually we were the first band signed to A&M. Well, technically the second, because the first band was Herb Albert’s Tijuana Brass, who owns the label. So we recorded some tunes for them and they put them out and we did a couple of tours around, well, the whole state of California – which is almost like a country in itself. And then that bombed pretty well because I heard rumours that Murry blackballed my record from being played on the radio because, when he heard me practicing across the street was the time when he was really feuding with his son Brian, because Brian didn’t want his dad to be involved musically or in the production of the record. So Murry scampered across the street to try to commandeer my band to compete with Brian, which was absurd of course. And I said ‘No Murry. You’re one of the reasons I quit the Beach Boys so get the fuck out of here.’ Right. So he was pissed and he got The Sunrays which actually he hired me to do some sessions for The Sunrays too. There was another band that he got to try to compete with Brian and so as a result of me being rude to him and turning him down he would tell the DJs in LA that ‘If you play Dave Marks’ record then you won’t get the new Brian Wilson release. I’ll give it to the other station.’ He’d tell all the stations that. Actually it was Roger Christian, who was a DJ on one of the biggest stations in LA at the time, who co-wrote some songs with Brian ‘[Little] Deuce Coupe’ and ‘Shut Down’. He was the one who leaked that rumour about Murry blackballing me so he would know. Although I have no hard feelings, because I didn’t find out until I was an adult, so ‘Big Deal’ – right?
Is that a Rickenbacker I hear on ‘I Wanna Cry’?
Yes it is. That song, yes. You’re right. We started doing fusion. Surf English Invasion fusion because The Beatles had just came out. I remember going outside of my house and Carl was getting in his car and Carl, he got us all to go to this Jay Sebring’s hair cutting place in Hollywood where we got a poofter job on our hair with spray lacquer and all that crap. I didn’t want to put up with that, so I just washed it and let it hang and ironically it looked like a Beatle’s haircut and Carl goes, ‘Hey. You look like one of the Beatles.’ And I went, ‘What the hell is a Beatle?’ But the next day we went up to San Francisco. Carl said ‘Hey. The Hard Day’s Night movie came out in San Francisco.’ It’s the first place it came out so we took a plane up there to watch that movie and, of course, it changed our lives, especially for Brian when he heard Rubber Soul but, yeah, I went back and applied what I had learned to my band. What came out after ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’? It was about the first year of The Beatles’ big success in the US and, at first, I hated it because there was no reverb on the guitars but then I learned to love it after hearing it for a while and I tried to incorporate it into my band with surf music which was kind of weird. It didn’t really work. It didn’t mix very well. It was like Jeff Beck playing with Brian Wilson on a tour or something like that you know?
And, in a similar way to Dave and The Marksmen, although the next band that you were in didn’t enjoy massive commercial success, has in a similar way been reissued, undergone a renaissance and again is very popular and that’s The Moon. So was that you and Matthew Moore predominantly?
Actually the next band after The Marksmen disbanded was…. actually, we had a great time in The Marksmen. We did two tours of California. The second one was a review with Eddie and the Showmen and Kathy Marshall ‘The Queen of the Surf Guitar’ and we had a ball but after that the drummer from The Marksmen, Mark Groseclose, Carl’s friend from high school and I joined a band called The Band Without A Name which was with Eddie Haddad and his brother Albert and their cousin Dennis and they sang and they had musicians backing them up. But anyway, we ended up just being Casey Kasem’s backup band, we’d go out and do gigs at high schools and stuff and back up all the hit singers of the day that didn’t have their own band because we went out and did a couple of tunes and then would back up the whole show and we did a couple of recordings but nothing happened with those either and then it was The Marksmen. My old friend Terry Hand, the drummer in Eddie and The Showmen introduced me to Matt Moore because they were affiliated with the same record label – White Whale Records – which actually are our old friends from Westchester near the airport in LA. They were called The Crossfires [which included Terry Hand, Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan]. We’d have the Battle of the Bands at P.O.P. [Pacific Ocean Park] in Santa Monica but they ended up being The Turtles and they were on White Whale too and so was Warren. Warren Zevon was on White Whale, so that’s how I met him also and Matt liked the way I played and he had a friend Larry Brown who was connected with my curve who was now a Nashville mogul but at that time he was a lawyer so he gave us the key to his studio. He had a thing called Producers Workshop [which started life in 1966 as Continental, a recording studio designed and built by Larry for Mike Curb – probably best known for his Mike Curb Congregation and being Karen Carpenter’s boyfriend] and we did two albums and it was called The Moon on Liberty Records [the first being entitled Without Earth]. Unfortunately Liberty Records was in the process of going belly up so the airplay that it was getting on the East Coast, Midwest, kids couldn’t buy it because Liberty couldn’t distribute it or promote it. So, anyway, that was unfortunate because that was a pretty good band.
When you listen to material like ‘Give Me More’, albeit the sound had moved on, there’s that Beatles Pepper element to it.
It did. And Bee Gees. Matt was influenced by… Matt Moore was a genius, and he might still be, I don’t know. He doesn’t call me any more but at that time those songs were really cool and they just adapted to our musicianship perfectly.
When you look at ‘Give Me More’ and the material from the Without Earth album you can hear that psychedelic sound.
We actually took a whole bunch of LSD and then sat down in the professional state-of-the-art recording studio and put on the album Sgt Pepper. Now, we had access to all of these huge studio monitors – Lancing JBLs – and then we had all of this EQ stuff on the sliders on the board, the console, and we could adjust the sound. We could pull out a guitar – we could just eliminate certain frequencies and pull out the guitar or bury the guitar because we’d turned down the frequencies and then turn up the drums, so it was a very cool experience. Probably wouldn’t have done it without the psychedelic drugs but, yes, the answer to the question, it was very influenced. Matt Moore was very influenced by that album.
You’re on lead vocals on ‘Brother Lou’s Love Colony’ aren’t you?
‘Brother Lou’s Love Colony’ and ‘She’s On My Mind’. Those songs were written by Gary Montgomery and Jack Dalton who had a band called the Colours and some of the members of the Colours were my old surf buddy band. Guys like Robbie Edwards from the Eddie and The Show Band. I became very close friends with Gary and Jack. Ended up being some of my very best friends and I did an album, their second album, with them, the Colours [Atmosphere]. We were trying experimental stuff. I just improvised over all their songs. Some of it might be annoying, but some of it’s brilliant. We did a few live gigs too. Seattle and Oregon, Wisconsin, Portland – those places. It didn’t last long. That was on Dot. I was in on that because of Matthew Moore’s big brother Daniel Moore who actually [co-]wrote the hit song ‘My Maria’ [with B. W. Stevenson, who had a top 10 US hit with this in 1973]. And he worked with Kim Carnes and he wrote ‘Shambala’ by Three Dog Night. He was a big producer [and produced Atmosphere]. I got a lot of work because Danny would hire me to play guitar and all the Christie Minstrels were all doing a solo album, so we got a lot of work out of that. Danny introduced me to Jack and Gary and I’m Gary’s daughter Anna’s godfather. He died but he left behind some brilliant, brilliant music and he just dropped by the studio one day when we were recording Moon stuff and he played us those songs and we fell in love with them and Matthew says ‘Well. I didn’t write those. Why don’t you sing lead?’ I also played bass on those songs too. It was a very fun time. We lived in that studio. We had pizza boxes and oxygen tanks and stuff because we didn’t know what day or night or what month it was. We’d stay in there and just record.
And you did a quite a bit of session work in the 70s. Your guitar sound became a bit more sophisticated as time moved on?
Yeah. That was thanks to Matthew’s older brother Daniel Moore. He would hire me for sessions and, as a result, I would meet some of the best musicians in the world – Jim Keltner – there’s a list – Delaney Bramlett, Leon Russell – the list goes on. He gave me a chance to play with all these guys – James Booker. Geez. I don’t know. Daniel liked the way I played guitar. It touched him. He thought I was soulful so he hired me for a lot of stuff. And then when I left to go to Boston I lost my studio status to Greg Beck who was sort of an understudy but a brilliant guitarist and Daniel started hiring him because I was in Boston. So when I came back from Boston after two years or so I was surprised to see that I wasn’t able to pick up where I left off. People took my place.
Your path seems to cross occasionally with The Beach Boys and, sometimes, Mike Love would ask you to potentially come back in the band. It seemed to happen every decade. By the late 90s you were back for a few years?
Well, it turns out that it’s like the Mafia. You can’t really leave The Beach Boys except in a pine box! I tried to disassociate myself but how can you do that when it’s your whole basis of your being? You started doing it when you were 10 with those people across the street. So it’s just part of me and I can’t really shake it so I learned how to just accept it for what it is. Mike started pestering me to be back in the band in the early 90s, which I ended up doing, and I’m glad I did. Even before that like, through the 60s and 70s and 80s, I would always end up sitting in with them somewhere or going to Brian’s house for something or other. You really can’t cut that big of a part of your life. You can’t just snip it off and forget it, which I tried to do, and it just didn’t work out.
Some people seem to think that there might be an issue between you and Al Jardine. But I don’t think that’s the case.
Well, Al and I started off kind of on the wrong foot. He was Brian’s age, kind of an adult, and I’m like 14 or 15 or whatever and I’m squirting tea in his ear with a squirt gun at the airport. It was Dennis’s idea, by the way. Mixed with soap, I might add. Al was thinking, ‘What is this stupid kid doing here?’ Right. Until I started playing guitar. But then, somehow… Well, let me just start by saying, I mentioned this a little while ago, where Al Jardine saved the day. We thought when Brian decided not to tour with us anymore and stay home and write songs and produce records with other people – some of the times – we thought we were through. I mean, how can a band exist in the 60s without going out on the road and promoting their albums, right? So Al steps back in. Al was on the first record ‘Surfin’’, played the upright bass and sang and Brian hit the snare with his finger and Carl played an unplugged electric guitar and Audree sang backgrounds or whatever and so when Brian decided to quit touring bands – he’d still do live performances on TV or at the Hollywood Bowl – but, for the most part, Al came back and toured with us and saved the day. He played Brian’s bass parts and sang Brian’s falsetto parts brilliantly. It sounded like Brian and saved our asses because then we were able to go out and tour and promote our records while Brian stayed home and wrote songs and produced records. So that was his first love. And then Al came back to do some vocals and a little bass playing on the Surfer Girl album. So I imagine I could safely say there are six Beach Boys, not seven or nine. I mean Ricky (Fataar) and Blondie (Chaplin) were only there for a minute – one of Carl’s whims – but they are brilliant and I love them both but… And then Bruce (Johnston), he’s a Beach Boy, but he didn’t join the band until like they were almost fizzled out in the early 70s, I guess – late 60s, whatever? But Bruce is very talented. He’s one of the best piano voice leading arrangers there is and you really can’t tell it that much about going to a Beach Boys concert. But, well, you can hear songs he wrote and tell how talented he is.
You were on Al’s solo album a decade ago on the track ‘Driving’ with Brian Wilson. That must have been a really nice moment when Al invited you to record?
Yeah. When I got back playing and touring with the band in the 90s, Al was still kind of like ‘What are you doing here? What happened?’ because he was clueless and Mike was plotting against him behind his back so he didn’t know what the heck I was doing there. I didn’t either. I was being used as a pawn. I didn’t know what I was doing there and, in the meantime, in creating bad vibes, it just so happened that Al Jardine and myself decided that there’s really no reason for us to be adversaries. There’s some kind of a thing that happened behind our backs, going out and having fun without us, and we suddenly realized we’re not adversaries and so we just joined up and he liked the way I played as a man and forgot about the squirt gun incident and we became very close. We wrote on the tour bus throughout the 50th [anniversary tour] and then when we played with the Jeff Beck/Brian Wilson fiasco and the Brian tour before that actually too. I was very honoured to have him ask me play on his solo stuff and to have Brian on the record too – that was exciting. And I had him sing on one of my desktop things I was trying at home and we just realized there’s no reason. I mean, we never really feuded. He accused me of stealing his band though at one time, but I explained to him that we’re professionals and when there’s work… So, yeah, we’re pretty good friends. He calls me every now and then to see how I’m doing.
Great. It must have been even more special when all the surviving founder members of The Beach Boys got together to record That’s Why God Made The Radio and on the 50th anniversary as well?
Yeah. It was a little bittersweet. On one hand it was the best thing that’s happened to me in a really long time. On the other hand it was anticlimactic and slightly disappointing because it didn’t continue. We were getting offers. I mean we’re only supposed to do 50 gigs because it’s the 50th anniversary and blah blah blah. But then suddenly we started getting offers from Europe and Asia pouring in and we ended up doing almost 80 gigs on that 50th anniversary tour and then Capitol wanted us to do another album and offers for shows kept pouring in. ‘Hey this is it guys.’ And then Mike decided that he was making more money with just him and Bruce and refused to do any of it because, I think, he might have had a pretty good reason. I mean he didn’t have any control really over the touring thing. He was disappointed because he didn’t get to be with Brian as much and he was losing money. Let’s face it. It is a business. That’s what Murry Wilson drove into us when we were kids, so I don’t think people should demonize Mike for that. It was a little disappointing for me because I didn’t have anything else going at the time so I went to Egypt and went in the Great Pyramids.
It was a very successful record as well – especially the single. It must have been top five.
Well I think the hype… I don’t know if it sold many but it was – you can do anything with the media and I think the public was tricked into thinking it was bigger than it really was. We had to go on QVC to sell the stuff. But it might have sold some. I don’t know. It really wasn’t typical Beach Boys. I think the song was good. It was written by nine people who weren’t really affiliated with any of the Beach Boys but I did like the song. It started off like [sings the chorus to Silhouettes by The Rays – later a UK Top 10 hit for Herman’s Hermits] – that song back in the 50s. You’re probably not old enough but that was a rip-off from the 50s tune but I liked it. I thought that it could have been a potential great vehicle for Brian but I don’t think Brian was that involved with it. He was there just to okay stuff. ‘Is that okay, Brian?’ ‘Yeah. Just give me some art candy.’
You mentioned it – about the 50th anniversary tour. You sang ‘Getcha Back’ didn’t you?
Oh yeah. I had never heard of that really because I wasn’t really up with the Beach Boys catalogue other than the stuff I played on and shortly after that. And Mike said that, when they did that tune, he really had Dennis in mind to sing it because Dennis had more of, I guess, a soulful roughened voice for that kind of style. [It was The Beach Boys first release since Dennis had died in a drowning accident in 1983.] So he thought that I kind of sounded like him a little bit and assigned me for that. Because he wrote it – Mike wrote it [with Terry Melcher]. So he had me sing that song about date rape.
Even after that 50th anniversary tour Mike would sometimes invite you as a special guest to play live with him and Bruce.
After the 50th?
Yeah.
I did a couple of tours with Mike after that and God bless him too because he had to sneak me out on the road because powers that be weren’t really approving of that and I really needed it at the time. God bless him he bailed me out and gave me a few dates with him on the tour and very grateful for that and he saved my life a couple of different times. I remember when we were in Hawaii playing for a month touring and I was, I don’t know, 14 or 15 whatever and I was kind of drinking a lot and I remember going to Mike’s hotel room, drunk, and he was talking to some girl out on the balcony so I sat on the railing on the balcony and started to go over. It was several storeys up. I would have been dead for sure. But he grabbed my ankle and he didn’t miss a sentence or a word with the girl he was talking to. He didn’t even look at me. Just in his peripheral vision – grabbed my ankle and said ‘Watch it, kid’ and I would have been like dead if he hadn’t done that. So he has literally saved my life a few times.
Wow. And we talked about Al Jardine’s project with you and Brian, but Brian invited you and Al on his song ‘The Right Time’ [on No Pier Pressure] and that was after the Beach Boys material.
Right.
Again, that must have been really cool to get together again.
Yeah. There was another song too. I forgot the name of it. [‘What Ever Happened’.] There’s two songs I think. That was was really cool. Another gift that I couldn’t have dreamt of but when you’re in your late 60s and you’re going back with your childhood friends to do a song in the studio, it’s really cool and I guess those tunes got some acclaim.
You seem to be, certainly in relation to the Beach Boys, a unifying figure. You’ve got Brian and you’ve got Mike and you’ve got that sort of dynamic, but you seem to be able to shift from playing with Mike to recording with Brian, for example, and that’s a really nice thing.
Yeah. Well you have to remember that these are my childhood friends. I know they’re much older than I am, but they were the only people that I had when I was a little kid and I learned a lot from them. Not all good. But they were my influence when I was growing up. Being raised by Dennis Wilson and Mike Love, it’s like being raised by wolves – no… kidding. I never really screwed any of those guys over because I wasn’t in the position to. I never sued anybody and I didn’t have any arguments about writers’ royalties or any of that so I stayed out of all that crap and, as a result, I was able to stay on good terms with most of the people involved, with my band mates, which is great because I love all of them. So I wouldn’t want to have any adversities with any of those guys and luckily they view me as sweet.
Now, one of the reasons we’re here today is to talk about Surf City Allstars, a band that you have recorded with and also play live with. You have a Surf City AllStars version of ‘Little Deuce Coupe’. Do you want to tell us about that band?
Yes. That band is made up of former Beach Boys band sidemen guys. John Stamos recommended Philip Bardowell for the Beach Boys when Carl left and Carl hand-picked Philip because he’s a genius and plays and sings brilliantly and so he’s one of the Allstars. David Logeman runs the band. He’s the manager and the booking agent. He’s the drummer and he played with Frank Zappa and Mike Love and one of the best drummers in the world, like, my favourite. I used him in my blues band back in Atlanta many years ago and then, well, Gary Griffin started off doing keyboards and singing. He was the guy in the full house band with John Stamos. He’s very talented. Works for Brian a lot. Whenever Brian goes out, before the pandemic happened, it was with Gary, so we had to replace him with Aaron [Broering]. Al and Matt Jardine [one of Al’s sons] used to be in the band with us until they started going out with Brian quite a bit and maybe Al and David Logeman might have had a falling out. I don’t know. But on bass is Chris Farmer who was the musical director for the Beach Boys for many, many years. When I started back with him in the 90s, Chris was there playing bass and singing brilliantly and he almost looks like a Wilson. And who else? I guess that’s the whole band.
I think even on that track and on your live shows Dean Torrence of Jan and Dean is there as well?
Sometimes Dean goes out alone with the Allstars, sometimes I go out alone with the Allstars, but most of the time we go out together, Dean and I both. We’re big in Texas and Pennsylvania and Chicago and of course Huntington Beach and those kinds of places. Before the virus we were doing maybe two or three gigs a month which is perfect for me as I’m getting old but we do great versions of Beach Boys hits. I mean those guys know that stuff in and out and better than I do. So I’m glad that they started calling me for gigs. Probably 15 years ago I started working with them. When I wasn’t on the road with The Beach Boys, I’d have something to do with the Surf City Allstars. They started off, those guys, with Jan and Dean. They were Jan and Dean’s backup band for a long time and then, of course, Jan died and everything and so that’s why Dean is with us a lot of the time because he was an original member with those guys before they started playing with The Beach Boys. It’s a good mix of musicians and very talented. Great singers and they might even be better than – no, I’m not going to say that – but it’s really a good show. It’s exciting. The music’s really… It’s not stale. It’s exciting, like, for the first time.
Before we go, I thought a really good track to finish on would be the David Marks featuring the A-Phonics version of ‘Kustom Kar Show’. First of all, do you want to tell us about what led up to recording with the A-Phonics?
Yeah. The A-Phonics are Spanish guys from Spain. Now, I guess, Franco didn’t allow any music in for a long time so they’re just now catching up and now surf music is all the craze over there, or at least it was five years ago. They invited me to something called Surf O Rama which is a little thing they have every year [in Valencia] with surf bands and they invite certain guest stars like Eddie Bertrand and The Bel-Aires and Eddie and The Showmen and those kinds of guys – surf band guys from LA in the 60s. And they happen to like my stuff and they learned it better than I know it and better than the original band had it. They just nailed it with the dual Showman Fender [classic guitar amp], dual Showmans and the outboard reverb units and the [Fender] Jaguars with the Flatwound strings. Everything was there and it was great. So we did about 10 dates. We toured Spain and packed the bars in the streets. It was a great experience – only one time experience. I don’t think we could pull that off again but, man, the people were so sweet and nice over there. Sometimes the shows didn’t start until, like, one in the morning – 1am – out in the middle of a street that they had barricaded off. It was cool. The Spanish, in Spain, is one of my loves.
‘Kustom Kar Show’ was obviously originally a Dave and The Marksmen track but that was a song that you originally offered while you were in the Beach Boys?
Yeah. The A-phonics would do an occasional show in LA or California somewhere so they stopped by a friend of mine’s studio in the San Fernando Valley and we recorded that, some Beach Boys tunes that I was on and some of the Dave and The Marksmen tunes and released a CD of that.
And so that song in particular, ‘Kustom Kar Show’, dates way back even when you were in The Beach Boys?
Oh yeah. I co-wrote that with Mark Groselose, Carl’s friend from Hawthorne High, and every time I would present a song to Brian or anybody, Audree would giggle. It would kind of set me back a few notches like she was kind of like ridiculing, [mimics Audree] ‘That’s so silly for a 12 year old, 13 year old.’ But it wasn’t any more stupid than Brian’s songs about shifts and cuckoo clocks and it had that beat. If you listen to it now, it could have been on a Beach Boys album but, like I said, before I wasn’t being taken all that seriously. It’s like, I don’t know, persecution against you. It’s an age thing. ‘Well the guy’s 12. You can’t do any of his songs.’ It might have been some of Murry’s influence too. I don’t know. But even Carl, he was doing a little writing. He couldn’t get in either. So I don’t feel so bad.
David Marks arrives for the California Saga 2 Charity Concert in Los Angeles California on July 3, 2019 – Photo by Glenn Francis of www.PacificProDigital.com
David. What can I say? It’s been a real pleasure to talk to you. What a remarkable body of music that you have. I wish you all the best with your forthcoming shows with the Surf City Allstars as well, so thank you.
Well it was a pleasure. It was a great thing to do on a Wednesday afternoon. I appreciate and thank you very much. I’ll talk to you anytime.
Further information
See the Surf City Allstars website for details of their forthcoming live dates: surfcityallstars.com
Acknowledgements
Thanks to David Logeman for his assistance.
Transcript and extra research provided by Nigel Davis.
