“Brian was in charge of it all back then. He even picked up engineering pretty fast from [engineer] Chuck Britz. He was a bright, quiet, nice kid, with a subtle sense of humour, who heard music in a different way. He wasn’t hamstrung by rules, where the instruments were relegated to set roles, and he heard everything from the bass up. In the studio, he might change the music but never the bass. Only once, on California Girls, did I invent a lick. Brian didn’t say anything, which meant it was great!
“Rock’n’rollers in the ’60s needed studio musicians to invent the lines for them – except Frank Zappa and Brian, they knew what they wanted. Brian would turn up with the music written out, but like a high school student would write music – the stems were on the wrong side and the sharps and flats were all over the place. He’d play the song at the piano so we’d get the feel, and he’d almost always go back to the booth and talk from there, and then we’d start playing. It could get frustrating because we’d only do one tune per three-hour session, while most did four or five tunes.
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“I wouldn’t wear a fireman’s hat for the [Smile album’s] Mrs O’Leary’s Cow session. Only [string bassist] Lyle Ritz and [drummer] Hal Blaine wore them, then Brian lit a tiny fire in the trash basket, for the heck of it, but we thought, Good God, what is he doing? I thought, This is stupid. We’re not children; we’re not paid to wear a hat, we’re paid to help make hit records.
“What Brian did for pop music was great. He was kooky to start with, but he was fine until the last few dates of Smile, when the sessions were more scattered. He was cutting the music to pieces, like David Axelrod. We’d wait around until he figured out what to do.
“I saw him again in 1997, 30 years later, when I did a session for Brian and his daughters. He did seem older and different, but re-married and happy. He’d got through the worst. We did the session and I remembered, Oh yeah, one tune per date! But Brian was back in action. He was still in charge.”
As told to Martin Aston.
This article originally featured in MOJO 223.
Photo: Getty/Paul Natkin