Afterwards, sitting outside Brian Wilson’s house, staring out over the valley, David Leaf says that Brian changes his opinions all the time, that what we just heard was only representative of what he thought and felt today, this lunchtime. “Later,” he says, “he might sit down and write a song specifically for The Beach Boys.”
Plainly, his indecisiveness is actually a tremendous volatility. And seeing someone still so patently talented being torn apart by what is, ultimately, fairly trivial shit, is awfully sad.
But then again, he is an ill man who appears, for once, to be being properly looked after. As Melinda said: “Basically, we call a spade a spade now; it’s Brian suffering from depression. Before, people tried to hide it. You don’t have to be afraid to tell somebody that you’re hearing a voice in your head.”
The old stories about Brian Wilson finding incredible solace in his music are all true, and the things he says shows that he has at least some perspective and a tenacious grip on reality; his own situation is far stronger than many people are prepared to give him credit for.
“If I’m scared, I’m gonna be good scared,” he says. “ I don’t wanna be fucking scared. Not this bullshit about I can’t do it, I can’t walk out my door, I’m afraid of The Rolling Stones, I’m afraid of Phil Spector. That’s bullshit. Life is a big scare test for me.”
“You wanna hear the tip of all tips? To hear it is to handle it. I figured that out. I was going through a lot of hell, a lot of confusion, a lot of sorrow, right? And I was hearing things, I’d hear a record on the radio or I heard someone talking and I said to myself: ‘To hear it is to handle it.’ I finally got that, ‘cos before’ I could hear it and I couldn’t handle it. So if I can handle what I hear, hey! Fuck you, I’m gonna be cool – that’s all there is to it. It’s a heavy-duty thing but, believe me, it doesn’t take much, man.
“It just takes a slight, little voice, a slight, little idea to make my whole fucking day… that’s all.”