Frank Marshall and Thom Zimny’s new The Beach Boys documentary, streaming now on Disney+, is more of an origin story about Southern California’s most beloved band, somewhat controversially only fleetingly covering any interpersonal conflicts, drug battles, legal battles, or almost anything that happened after 1974. However, the film ends by skipping ahead to the present day in a way that surely all fans can appreciate: with surviving band members Mike Love, Brian Wilson, Al Jardine, David Marks, and Bruce Johnston amicably sitting together on the sands of Malibu’s Paradise Cove, the very site where the photo shoot for the cover of Beach Boys’ first album, Surfin’ Safari, took place.

The sweet scene — which was filmed in September 2023 (five months before it was reported that Wilson is suffering from dementia), and is deliberately presented by co-directors Marshall and Zimny sans audio — ends The Beach Boys on a figurative high note. But it could have ended the film on a literal high note, with a group singalong that took place on the beach that day.

“We sang a cappella. We sang ‘Their Hearts Were Full of Spring.’ We sang ‘Fun, Fun, Fun.’ We did few other little songs, and it was just really like a reunion of sorts,” Love recalls. “All the other negative stuff that people talk about just evaporated and went out the window. … I know I was touched by the fact that Brian and I were able to sit and talk about things that we had experienced together so many years ago, more than 60 years ago, and that we could still sing and remember our parts to the Four Freshmen song.”

Audio of the seaside singalong didn’t make it into The Beach Boys, although a few shots of Jardine strumming an acoustic guitar and Love crooning while sitting next to Wilson, during what Marshall has called a “joyful family reunion,” appear in the movie trailer. “You’d have to ask Frank Marshall where that footage is, because we were mic’d and it didn’t make the cut, literally. I don’t know. You could probably come up with it,” shrugs Love. (UPDATE: A publicist for the project said “the sequence was designed and shot to be a montage for the end of the film, with voiceover and music already in place. We see them reunite, laughing, singing, and having fun, but it was never meant to be a scene.”

Fans will surely hold onto hope that the footage, very likely the last time that these five will ever sing together, eventually surfaces as an extra on a DVD set. But in the meantime, in the Q&A below, Love discusses his bond with Brian despite everything they’ve endured, dispels some “fallacies” examined in The Beach Boys, and reveals if there is any hope that he and Brian will ever collaborate again.

LYNDSANITY: I was especially moved by the final scene in your documentary, when all of you sitting are on the beach. It’s a lovely way to end the film. What was the vibe that day between you guys?

MIKE LOVE: It was amazing, because Brian’s been going through a lot of problems with his physical being, but the fantastic beauty of that whole situation was that he was remembering things that happened during our high school years, like when I took him to a football game with Dorsey High School and Fremont High School at Fremont… or when I had a senior trip to go to Catalina and I invited Brian to go with me. He and I were very close back in those times, and he would come over to my house and we’d get kicked out of the house by my dad because he had to get up so early to go to work at Love Sheet Metal. We would go out in his Nash Rambler and listen to the radio and sing Everly Brothers songs. We had so much fun cracking each other up. So, [that film shoot] brought back so many great memories. We sang a cappella. We sang “Their Hearts Were Full of Spring.” We sang “Fun, Fun, Fun.” We did few other little songs, and it was just really like a reunion of sorts. All the other negative stuff that people talk about just evaporated and went out the window — kind of like it does when we get together around a mic and do those harmonies.

With Dennis and Carl gone, and Brian dealing with all his health issues, it must have been very poignant for all of you to come together like that, after everything that’s happened in the past 60 years.

I think everybody was similarly affected. I know I was touched by the fact that Brian and I were able to sit and talk about things that we had experienced together so many years ago, more than 60 years ago, and that we could still sing and remember our parts to the Four Freshmen song. It’s a cappella, and the beauty of that type of music and singing influenced us so greatly; those are the distinguishing harmonies that make the Beach Boys sound so unique. When we got together originally, it was not because we were wanting to be famous or thinking we were going to be well-known around the world or anything like that. We got together because of the love of harmonies, the love of singing together.

So, if I heard you correctly, you say you were singing together on the [Paradise Cover] beach when you guys all got together to shoot that final documentary scene?

Yeah.

Where’s that footage? Is that going to be on some director’s cut or DVD extras? We need to see that!

Well, you’d have to ask Frank Marshall where that footage is, because we were mic’d and it didn’t make the cut, literally. I don’t know. You could probably come up with it.

Wow. It’s interesting to hear about all this, because the negative stuff is what people tend to focus on, but that’s not a big focus of this film. The film is more of an origin story.

It touches upon it a little bit. I mean, Dennis Wilson, the poor guy, couldn’t get off the drugs and the alcohol and his life ended way too early, 1983. He drowned, but he was under the influence. And Carl, he started smoking when he was maybe 12 years old, and the statistics aren’t good — he passed away from lung cancer a little over 25 years ago. Those are tragic things… there’s absolutely no doubt that negative things have happened over the years. But the beauty of this documentary, I think, is it focused on what the Beach Boys are known for globally, and that is our harmonies and our positivity. “Good Vibrations” was rated by a psychologist in Sheffield, England, as the No. 1 song for making people feel good. That’s pretty darn special, that our song creates so much positivity and in spite of the things going on at the time.

Friction in family bands is not uncommon, but sometimes friction can make for good art. And one takeaway I got from this film is that the sometimes tense dynamic between you and Brian was at the core of the Beach Boys’ art.

Well, the thing is, there was no friction between Brian and Mike, OK? That was other people. It was either Murray Wilson or Dr. Landy or subsequent people who controlled Brian’s life. Now Brian needs help physically, but because he’s got challenges physically, but mentally, his long-term memory is there, clearly as anybody’s. And if it’s just he and I, there is no friction. We go back to childhood. The first time I ever remember Brian singing, it was on my grandmother Wilson’s lap singing “Danny Boy,” and he would charm the birds out of the trees. He had such a beautiful, clear voice. His falsetto voice, that high voice… it sounded like angels singing. So, that’s a fiction that there’s any negativity or friction between us. What the chemistry was is he was so inordinately, brilliant at structuring chord progressions and harmonies, and I would come in with hooks and lyrics.

But surely you are aware that the Brian/Love conflict is at the heart of the Beach Boys mythology.

It was put out there on purpose by certain people, but anyway, to me, no. … For instance, they said I didn’t like the Pet Sounds album. I named it! I came up with the name Pet Sounds. And I went with Brian to play it for our A&R person at Capitol Records. It was the Capitol Records salespeople that couldn’t understand what was going on with Pet Sounds. But somebody said that I didn’t like it. That’s bulls—, so to speak, because I sang on everything that was called upon. We did maybe 25, close to 30 takes on one section of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” to make it perfect. And I called Brian “dog ears” because he could hear sounds that obviously other human beings couldn’t. I called him a “Stalin of the studio” because he was such a taskmaster when he said, “Do it again!” I said, “That was perfect,” and he’d go, “No, do it again!” There’s one CD of the Pet Sounds boxed set that has just the vocals; if you listen to those, it’s pretty fantastic. … My point is, that is an absolute mistruth that I didn’t like the Pet Sounds album. I don’t know who said that or what, but it took on a life of its own. But I know it’s B.S.

Where do these mistruths come from, then?

I don’t know. I could come up with theories and ideas or individuals who have been negative towards me, but it’d be a waste of time. The fact is our music thrives, has survived, and has even gotten more globally well-known through streaming and other things.

It was shocking to me when the film noted that it took 34 years for Pet Sounds to even go gold. The film also said that the perceived failure of that album at the time broke Brian’s heart. How did you take it? Did it break your heart?

I thought it was a missed opportunity by Capitol Records. They didn’t necessarily know how to promote the Pet Sounds album. It’s hard to say why it didn’t get that recognition, but it always had recognition from musicians. For instance, Bruce Johnston took that record to England, and Derek Taylor, who had been the Beatles’ publicist, was our publicist at the time, and he set up a bunch of meetings for Bruce. But Keith Moon of the Who said to Bruce, “You better get up to your suite. John [Lennon] and Paul [McCartney] are waiting to hear Pet Sounds!” And so, Bruce played the record to those guys twice through, and that inspired them to do whatever came after that. There was a lot of reverence towards Pet Sounds. McCartney came to a party in Malibu for Carl Wilson’s birthday, and he said to Brian, “I was driving along Mulholland Drive playing Pet Sounds with tears in me eyes. When are you going to give us another Pet Sounds, Brian?” That’s Paul McCartney. … So anyway, irrespective of what it sold or didn’t sell, that’s kind of fantastic that one of the leading. most creative and successful songwriters in the universe felt like that about our album.

Smile was another important, groundbreaking record that wasn’t understood or appreciated at the time.

Well, Brian shelved that album, as you know. They did “The Elements” and they were doing the “Fire” session, and there was a fire around town somewhere. Brian was under the influence of something or other, and felt that the “Fire” session had caused that fire down the road, so he actually got overwhelmed and put that album away. … That was a challenging time, because Brian was doing a lot of stuff that he might’ve been better off not doing — LSD, things like that. You don’t make all the greatest decisions when you’re under the influence of that. At least that’s my observation. Some of the [Smile] stuff was too much under the influence, although I sang on all the records and I participated on it and there was some beautiful music and fantastic tracks. But there’s some challenges to it that we didn’t handle very well. The enormous amount of drugs being done — that was challenging. There were several of us that didn’t do the drugs, Bruce and Al and myself. But then the Wilsons were very involved in a lot of non-prescribed medications.

Well, a lot of people were experimenting with drugs in the ’60s, and there is this idea that some artists make their best work by expanding their minds on substances of various kinds.

That’s possible. But I’ve always thought that people are creative in spite of rather than because of [drugs]. That’s my personal opinion. Maybe people who listened to Timothy Leary would have a different opinion: “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” That was his motto, but it wasn’t mine.

Did you resent it at all when Brian went in that direction? Did you feel it derailed the band?

Well, what the documentary describes, but maybe doesn’t really describe properly because you can’t describe everything, is there’s two bands… the recording band and the touring band. I think that’s something people lump all together, but there are two distinct different bands. And the touring band went through all kinds of evolution as well. I mean, one time we had Charles Lloyd in the band, or Glenn Campbell. Another time we had Blondie Chaplain and Ricky Fataar from the South African group called the Flames. They’re fantastic musicians. … There’s the two different bands, so if an individual like Dennis was all screwed up on drugs and alcohol, we would actually ask them to not be part of the group for a while. We just told them, “Get yourself together.” We tried to get Dennis to go to rehab, but he would maybe go for one night. And it doesn’t work that way. And unfortunately, he was unable to get off that stuff. But he is still part of the group. Every night onstage we have our video and we show Carl doing “God Only Knows.” We have tons of footage of Carl Wilson and the rest of the band as well. We have [footage of] Dennis Wilson playing the drums and all this kind of thing. We honor everybody’s contribution. That’s the way I feel it should be done.

I’ve always been involved in the live music part of it. I mean, the recording process is one thing, and the albums we did in the studio are great, but the live music has had an enormously powerful effect on bringing happiness to millions of people over the years. I have more to be thankful about and to be appreciative of and more blessings from seeing the [live] effect of “Good Vibrations” and “Kokomo” — songs that I had a lot to do with lyrically and singing musically — and all those great songs. I would never say anything negative about Brian’s contribution, for sure, but I would say that truthfully — and I think he agrees with this — that he probably shouldn’t have done certain things that he did, in terms of lifestyle choices.

What do you think Carl and Dennis would think of this film?

They would like it, because they’re in it! [laughs]

There’s a moment in the film where you actually tear up talking about the love you have for Brian. Is there any possibility of you two musically collaborating again, or has the sun set on that for various reasons?

Well, I think as long as Brian is alive and can get to a piano, he’s going to be able to do just fine. As far as collaborating musically, if that were permitted, and if we were able to do that, that also would be really great. But I’m concerned about his physical wellbeing. What I think I’d like to do is just go by his house and visit, not with any preconceived notions of doing anything, but just to see how he is and just hang out together. I think there’s enough history and enough music that’s been done that we can celebrate and be grateful for, and honored by people’s positive feelings and remarks and stuff. … It’s more important for me to just go and see Brian, because when we’re together, we go back to childhood and all the other stuff that has been a burden to him, and an annoyance to me perhaps, goes out the window. It’s irrelevant. It doesn’t mean anything.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

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In February 2023, Al Jardine was sitting in a private loge box at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre with his on/off Beach Boys bandmates Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Bruce Johnston, and David Marks, watching the Grammys’ all-star salute to the band he co-founded with Love and the Wilson brothers six decades ago in nearby Hawthorne, Calif.

“It was nice,” Jardine recalls wistfully of that night. “I remember I told Mike, ‘We should all get back together and work again, tour again.’ And he looked at me, then looked at Brian” — who was sitting at the opposite end of the balcony from Love — “and said, ‘I don’t think he can do it.’ He said, ‘The way he is now, no.’ I thought to myself, ‘Well, that’s pretty rude. Why can’t he just give it a try?’ That bothered me. … But Mike just didn’t have an open mind to that, and you can’t force people to work together if they don’t want to work together. That’s too bad. It would’ve been an ideal time to do it.”

Fast-forward to May 2024, and the 81-year-old Brian Wilson has just been placed under a court-ordered conservatorship because, according to legal documents, he is suffering from dementia. Love is currently over in London promoting the Frank Marshall/Thom Zimny-directed documentary The Beach Boys, which premieres May 24 on Disney+, while Jardine has chosen to spend the weekend on the opposite end of the Earth, performing Beach Boys classics with the Licorice Pizza All-Star Band at Sunflower Farm Music Festival benefit in Maui.

But Jardine doesn’t seem very bitter. Yes, occasionally during his conversation at Maui’s Woodrose studio, where the Licorice Pizza All-Star Band are rehearsing, he throws in a sarcastic barb about Love’s current “little Beach Boys band” lineup and how “Brian and I are like second cousins to that situation, so it’s just kind of sad.’” Or, there’s a sadder moment when he realizes that now, with Dennis and Carl Wilson gone and Brian presumably retiring for good, “We don’t have any Wilsons. I’ve never thought about that. We’re Wilson-less.”

But Jardine says he’s still in regular communication with Love. “We talk a lot, actually, in spite the fact we aren’t in the group together anymore. We actually do. It’s funny how you can kind of set things aside,” he muses. And he remains optimistic about Brian’s condition, saying, “He’s hanging in there. I think he’s better now than he was, because the guys in his band have been visiting him. The Brian band comes over and they sing songs. They all get together and sing.”

And Jardine, at 82 years young, is optimistic about his own musical future, brightening as he talks about a few solo songs he “can’t wait to share with everybody” in the coming months. “We don’t have to have to finish and master 10 or 12 songs to release an album anymore,” he points out — a surprising statement from a man who played on some of the most important LPs that kickstarted and defined the album era, like All Summer Long, which turns 60 this year, and, of course, Pet Sounds. “You don’t even need four songs! That’s gone now. If you have a good song, you can pretty much put it out there and people can hear it.”

Jardine has recorded an “incredible” and “very bluesy” song called “Highway 101″ that’s about “going to Mexico and enjoying yourself back in the ’50s or ’60s,” as well as a remake of “Crumple Car” (“a cute little song about little rusty car; I just love that little tune”) by his friend Denny Aaberg, who gave Jardine permission to rewrite some of the lyrics. But then Jardine casually mentions a “little thing” he recorded a while back with another friend, Neil Young, before divulging more details.

“Neil’s plaintive voice, it’s so beautiful. It’s just spectacular. It gives me a chill,” gushes Jardine, who recorded with Young when the two remade the Beach Boys’ “California Saga” for Jardine’s 2010 solo album, A Postcard From California. “We did a couple of songs together then and I said, ‘Hey, could you put your voice on this one? I’ve got this idea…”

Jardine says that unreleased 2010 outtake, “My Plane Leaves Tomorrow,” is about “a new soldier going to war. He’s just beginning to understand why he joined [the army]. He had nowhere else to go. He was looking for a purpose, that kind of thing. … It’s pretty deep. It’s not necessarily [an anti-war song], it’s just about the reality of it and what happens to a young man when he’s inducted or joins up. You don’t really know where you’re going to be next, and it’s kind of scary, but it’s also kind of beautiful. I have to finish mixing down that one later this month. I’d like to get it out there as quick as I can.”

A very different track Jardine has in the works is “Islands in the Sun,” which he describes with a sly chuckle as something “Mike Love would be incredibly jealous of! It’s very ‘Kokomo’-like in vibe, musically. A lot of fans always want to hear ["Kokomo"] and we’re kind of sick to death of it, to be honest with you. So, I’ve spoken to Mike about this in the past, about this particular song ["Islands in the Sun"], and he never got back to me about it. He doesn’t seem to be interested in going back to ‘Kokomo,’ and I kind of get it, because he’s probably thinking in other ways now as an artist. But this, God, it’s right down the ‘Kokomo’ landscape, about an island in the sun. And it’s been long enough now — Jesus, it’s been 20 years, actually almost 40 years, since ‘Kokomo.’ I think it’s about time for another one. So, look out, Mike — you could’ve sung the lead!”

The Beach Boys’ Johnston actually sings on “Islands,” along with Jardine’s son and Endless Summer Band-mate Matt, but Al takes the lead, explaining with a shrug, “My speaking voice is kind of quiet, but I can belt it out when it requires. It’s just something that happens to you inside. … And I’m singing a part that is so interesting in the intro. I can’t believe I even did it myself, but it’s actually triple-tracked in a baritone, the way Mike would sing his baritone parts because he has that excellent low voice, which is a big part of the Beach Boys’ harmonies. But somehow, I came out with that inner voice; I don’t know, it just happened. And I’m going, ‘How did I do that?’ But Mike’s going to go, ‘You ripped me off!’ So, we will see what happens. Mike, just know I told you so.”

Jardine says it was Brian Wilson who “basically taught me how to sing, in the style that we’re singing now. I was a folk singer originally when we created the band; I was more from the folky, Pete Seeger, Kingston Trio era, that kind of thing. And Brian taught me how to sing more current things. … The family voices were always important, but I happen to also be able to sing pretty good, and it just kind of worked. I can’t explain it. … We were really good in the studio, but it was actually more fun singing live. It was a good era, a very innocent time — and we got a No. 1 album out of it,” he adds, referring to Beach Boys Concert, which became the first live LP to top the Billboard album chart, also 60 years ago.

Beach Boys Concert is actually Jardine’s favorite Beach Boys album, associated with his fondest recording memories. “We had the most fun recording live because we sang better live, I think,” he explains. “The best of our [studio] albums were a little bit of torture. It wasn’t a lot of immediate gratification. It was such hard work all the time. It was like having a job, like working in a steel mill or something. You had to go. You didn’t want to go, because you knew it was going to be hot or it was going to be difficult — not just physically, but mentally — to show up every day and every night. We usually started working later in the night. Brian would wake up, who knows, at 1 in the morning, and say, ‘Hey, I got something. Come down to the studio.’ So, that got to be kind of normal, and that normal was constant. We had Pet Sounds and Smile, and working on two of those projects at the same time, that was like burnout time. I enjoyed singing five-, four-part harmony, so my favorite stuff was the early stuff that we cut our teeth on.”

Jardine hasn’t stopped hoping he’ll sing with Brian again. “His voice is still great; it’s a different tone now, different timber,” he insists. “I’d like to have him finish a vocal on something that’s on my Postcard album, actually, because he did a beautiful counterpart, but we had a modulation in the song and he didn’t sing the modulation for some reason. I thought I could just grab it and put it on a whole song, which is an old trick we used to do. But he needs to sing the modulated part. It’s on a song called ‘And I Always Will,’ which is a real beautiful ballad. He’s amazing. He’ll come up with a part you can’t even imagine, and you go, oh yeah.”

It remains to be seen if that new version of “And I Always Will” will ever be completed, but in the meantime, Jardine is planning to head to England (ironically, where Love is at the time of Jardine’s interview, conducting his own interviews about the past) to launch his future releases. “I figure if you go overseas, you might get some good success. And then who knows, it might reverberate back,” he says. “I have to get it done — get it done in May. It’s almost too late.

“Wait, what am I saying?” Jardine interrupts himself, laughing. “After all these years, it’s never too late.”

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In 1968, the Beach Boys’ Mike Love accepted a personal invitation from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Indian guru known for developing the Transcendental Meditation technique, to take part in an advanced TM training course at the maharishi’s ashram in Rishikesh, India. Much to Love’s surprise, upon his arrival the first Westerners he encountered were his longtime pop-music rivals: Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr.

“I had traveled to the other side of the world with the expectations of total seclusion, but here I was, impossibly, in the media spotlight, as reporters from all over were trying to cover the Beatles in Rishikesh. It was hard to fathom,” Love recalled in his 2016 memoir, Good Vibrations. “The Beach Boys and the Beatles had been circling each other for the last five years on three different continents — a battle of screaming headlines and devoted groupies and demanding egos — and now I ended up with them in a remote compound with scorpions crawling around at night and monkeys sauntering right up to your dining table in search of scraps.”

George Harrison, Mike Love, and John Lennon in India in 1968. (Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images)

Speaking to Yahoo Entertainment a half-century later, Love now recalls his seven weeks in India with the Beatles (and other celebrity participants, including Mia Farrow and Donovan) fondly, saying, “There are so many beautiful, spiritual things that came out of that whole get-together.” And one of those beautiful things was “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” a track from The Beatles — aka The White Album, which is being reissued as a seven-disc, 50th-anniversary boxed set this week and was greatly influenced by the Beatles’ stay in Rishikesh. And the bridge for “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” which McCartney once described in a 1984 Playboy interview “as a kind of Beach Boys parody,” actually originated from a McCartney/Love collaboration during that retreat.

“It was fascinating when Paul McCartney came down with the Blickman steel [guitar]. It was just he and I one morning, and monkeys and crows trying to get your food,” Love remembers with a chuckle. “So, he played this rough song, but he didn’t have the bridge. So I said, ‘You gotta talk about the girls in Russia!’ Because, I was thinking about [the Beach Boys’] ‘California Girls,’ the way we sang, ‘East Coast girls, West Coast girls, Southern girls’ and all that. Well, he did, and I told him ‘Georgia, Moscow,’ and all this other stuff. Turns out he’s quite capable of fashioning a tune! And he did, and he took that concept and wrote that bridge, and he played every instrument on that recording.”

The resulting famous bridge — “Well, the Ukraine girls really knock me out/They leave the West behind/And Moscow girls make me sing and shout/That Georgia’s always on my my my my my my my my my mind” — sounded unmistakably Beach Boys-esque, and Love theorizes, “I think because I was there, [McCartney] started thinking in that kind of vernacular.”

Love, who is still a devout Transcendental Meditation practitioner, also recalls how the India visit inspired another one of The White Album’s most famous tracks. “Prudence [Farrow] was there, Mia’s sister. And John Lennon was taught the guitar fingering technique [“clawhammer”] by Donovan and used it in the song, ‘Dear Prudence,’” he says.

During her stay, a depressed Prudence Farrow reportedly became so serious about her meditation that she holed herself up in her Rishikesh chalet in an attempt to expedite the enlightenment process — so a concerned Lennon wrote “Dear Prudence” to try to coax her out of seclusion. Towards the end of the “Esher demo” version of the song, Lennon can be heard saying of Prudence: “No one was to know that sooner or later, she was to go completely berserk under the care of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. All the people around were very worried about the girl, because she was going insane. So we sang to her.”

“I know Prudence very well, and she’s a wonderful woman. She’s a TM teacher, like I am as well,” Love, who became a TM teacher in 1971, tells Yahoo Entertainment. “She’s taught thousands of people to meditate. She has a degree in Sanskrit from the University of California at Berkeley, OK? She’s a smart, smart lady. But very devoted too.”

In the glossy, coffee table-worthy book that accompanies the new White Album box, Beatles authority Kevin Howlett stresses, “In the 50 years since the time in India, very flippant remarks, rumors, and journalistic skepticism have tended to undermine the reality of how seriously the Beatles approached their studies there. They were very impressed by the maharishi in his teachings.” However, Love’s fondest memories of his time in India with the Beatles seem to center on Harrison, with whom he connected over an especially deep love for Eastern spirituality.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Mike Love, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr at a party to celebrate Harrison’s 25th birthday at Rishikesh, India, Feb. 25, 1968. (Photo: Cummings Archives/Redferns)

“We both loved Indian food. He loved Indian music; he studied sitar [with Ravi Shankar]. We loved Maharishi. He was a devotee of the Hare Krishna movement. I think we had a lot in common in that way,” says Love of his bond with Harrison. The two rock legends even celebrated their close-together birthdays in India. “What was really fascinating, on my birthday, March 15, 1968, the Beatles — I mean, Ringo had gone back to England, but John, Paul, and George, and Donovan — all played a song called ‘Spiritual Regeneration Movement Foundation.’ At the end of it, he goes, “Happy Birthday, Michael Love,’” Love remembers with a smile. After Harrison passed away, Love wrote a “very sentimental song” for him, “Pisces Brothers,” which appears on Love’s 2017 solo album, the Unleash the Love.

The Beatles’ stay at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram — a place where, notably, they had no electric instruments — turned out to be the group’s most creative songwriting period. Lennon returned from the trip with 15 tunes, McCartney with seven, and Harrison with five; Starr also finished his first solo composition, “Don’t Pass Me By,” during his stay. (Some reports say the Beatles returned from Rishikesh with 30 to 48 songs, but regardless, 18 of those songs eventually ended up on the original White Album release.) It soon became apparent that there were enough songs for a double album. According to Howlett’s White Album box liner notes, while still in India, Lennon sent a postcard to Starr (who’d only lasted 10 days at the ashram before flying home), saying, “We’ve got about two LPs worth of songs now, so get your drums out.”

In May 1968, the Beatles convened at Kinfauns, Harrison’s English countryside bungalow in Esher, Surrey, where they recorded 27 rough tracks on Harrison’s reel-to-reel tape deck — capturing the acoustic feel of their Rishikesh writing sessions. During a White Album press listening event at Hollywood’s Capitol Studios in September, the late Beatles producer Sir George Martin’s son, Giles Martin (who oversaw the 50th anniversary White Album box) marveled at the relaxed, joyful vibe of these home recordings — long known as the much-bootlegged, above-mentioned “Esher demos,” which now comprise the third disc of the new boxed set.

“It was like Champagne popping out of a Champagne bottle — they had so much material. And they wanted to record everything,” said the younger Martin. “None of the band members knew the songs that well. It was almost as if they were passing a guitar around a campfire, saying, ‘Paul, what do you got?’ ‘John, what do you got?’ ‘George, what do you got?’ And you can hear Ringo or someone banging a tambourine or tables in the background. … So, we had this extraordinary situation where the Beatles went from almost around the campfire, playing their demos for each other, to going into the studio.”

Added Martin: “The perception is The White Album is fragmented; it’s the sound of the Beatles breaking up. And going through all of these tapes and everything, it really isn’t.”

On the subject of friendship, Love describes the Beach Boys’ relationship with the Beatles in the 1960s as more of a “mutual admiration” than a rivalry, but says they always spurred each other on creatively, in India and elsewhere. (He proudly recalls a time when the Beach Boys’ Bruce Johnston flew to England to play the acetate of the Beach Boys’ landmark 1966 album, Pet Sounds, for McCartney and Lennon, after which the Beatles “got busy doing whatever they did” with The White Album’s equally adventurous 1967 predecessor, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.)

“How could you not like [the Beatles’] songs? And they loved the Beach Boys stuff, too. … We were friends,” Love gushes. “That was a very special time [in India]. Very sweet.”

This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.

Today, May 16, marks the 50th anniversary of the Beach Boys’ landmark album Pet Sounds, as well as the RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 8 finale. So this is obviously the perfect day to announce that Pet Sounds’ arguably most beloved track, “God Only Knows,” has just been re-recorded by Season 7 Drag Race finalist Ginger Minj – as a duet with Carnie Wilson, with Carnie’s father Brian Wilson’s blessing and input.

“Our version is faithful, but it kicks it up a notch, makes it a little more modern. Our voices sound so good together!” gushes Ginger. “I was very pleased when I heard the rough cuts of it. It’s all of the same instrumentation, but a lot of it has been done with children’s instruments: toy pianos, toy horns. As cheesy as that might seem, the actual sound of the song it crazy, so good — and so inventive in a way that I think Brian Wilson would be proud of.”

(photos courtesy of Ginger Minj)

Ginger has harbored a lifelong love not only for the Beach Boys, but also for Carnie. “I always loved her, idolized her. I followed her journey, up and down with the weight and all of her personal stuff, so it was so crazy to meet her,” says Ginger. “When I was younger, Wilson Phillips’s ‘Hold On’ was one of the biggest hits of the world. At every family get-together, my cousins and I would do ‘Hold On,’ and I always had to be Carnie! I would stand there in my grandmother’s business suit while my cousins would be Chynna and Wendy.”

Carnie and Ginger first met last year at D.C. Pride, when Wilson Phillips and Ginger were on the same bill. “They were supposed to perform right after me. It started to rain, really pour down, so my set got delayed, and instead of letting people go home, I just went out there and performed in the rain and got them to stay,” Ginger recalls. “As I was coming offstage, there’s Carnie Wilson, and she says, ‘Ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod, I love you!’ And I said, ‘Ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod… I’m tired of being mistaken for you!’”

Carnie immediately clicked with Ginger’s wild sense of humor (“She laughed – and she snorted, because she’s a dork!”), and the two later connected via Twitter. “We just started talking about life in general, and then one thing led to another. She heard my single ‘Ooh Lala Lala,’ and said, ‘I want to collaborate. Let’s do something!’”

(Ginger Minj in full drag)

This was the start of a beautiful friendship. “I flew to L.A., and we were just supposed to have dinner. It turned into us finishing a three-hour dinner, going to pick up her kids, then going for frozen yogurt, and then going back to her house and watching Dance Moms while I gave makeovers to her girls. It was amazing. The girls called me Uncle Ginger. And Carnie and I bonded on a very personal level. So we decided to do a song that meant something to both of us… ‘God Only Knows’ is one of the most important songs of my life, and it means so much to Carnie; she has it tattooed all over
her body.”

Some might assume that Ginger had to lawyer up in order to get Papa Wilson to greenlight a Drag Race contestant covering one of his most iconic compositions, but as Ginger puts it, “Carnie just called her dad! He said, ‘Sure, go for it.’”

But Brian wasn’t totally hands-off. He doesn’t appear on the song, but “he wanted to make sure that the harmonies were absolutely perfect. Because, you know, he heard those in his head so vividly [when he wrote the song]. It kind of opened up my eyes to what a genius that man is. He made sure that we knew those harmonies inside and out and nailed them perfectly.”

Ginger describes meeting Brian Wilson as some sort of surreal, out-of-body experience. “I couldn’t even tell you what he was like, because I was shaking in my boots so much,” Ginger laughs. “Growing up, I loved him. He meant so much to me throughout every stage of my life. So for him to take the time to care about me getting something correct, I thought that was intense.”

Ginger’s yet-untitled debut album — which will feature production from Jean Morisson & Diego Paul Sánchez (MorissonPoe, Nile Rodgers), who produced and arranged “God Only Knows” – comes out this fall. Ginger describes it as “if you took Jennifer Holliday and Meat Loaf and put them together and they had some sort of weird musical theater baby.” God only knows exactly what that will sound like, but it’ll probably be fantastic.

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.