Beach Boys’ Wilson sunny about album

By SOLVEJ SCHOU

The last song reminisces about co-founding the group with his brothers.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Brian Wilson sat on a plush couch in his living room, smiling nervously.

On the Beach Boys visionary’s back porch, his family’s 15 pooches yip and scramble over each other. Inside, photos of he and wife Melinda Ledbetter’s children — 11-year-old Daria, 10-year-old Delanie and 4-year-old Dylan — lace the walls.

The two-story house, snuggled deep into a gated hillside community in Beverly Hills, is immaculately clean. A swimming pool overlooks the sun-drenched valley below. It all resembles a postcard.

“I’m happier now than I was a year ago,” Wilson said in a recent interview. “I started exercising and I started eating more of the right food and I started feeling better. I just get up in the morning and say my prayers.”

Gangly and tall, his graying hair swept back into waves, the wizard songwriter and composer behind such ‘60s Beach Boys hits as “Good Vibrations” and “California Girls” stares with sharp blue eyes, frequently fidgeting.

A lot has changed for the historically reclusive Southern California native, who speaks with a slight slur, a result of his drug-abuse past and medicated journey through mental illness.

He is a second-round father at the age of 66 (musician daughters Wendy, 38, and Carnie, 40, from his first marriage, tour as The Wilsons). After 2004’s long-awaited rock opera “Smile,” and a 2005 Christmas release, he has a new, ambitious solo album, “That Lucky Old Sun,” due out Sept. 2. He is touring behind the material, pushing through years of stage fright.

“I think the new album is just as good as anything the Beach Boys ever recorded,” said Wilson. “Playing these songs live, I feel proud.”

Two years ago, he said, he recorded 18 songs then chose 10 last year for Capitol Records/EMI. He came up with the album’s lush orchestration and music, while 43-year-old bandmate Scott Bennett scribed the lyrics, with colorful narrative interludes by Wilson’s longtime collaborator Van Dyke Parks.

The outcome is a blend of uptempo pop and piano-based ballads. The title track, a cover of Louis Armstrong’s “That Lucky Old Sun,” flows into the bouncy anthem “Morning Beat,” setting the album’s tone.

“Van Dyke Parks, Brian and Melinda thought this should be a love letter to Los Angeles. At this point, Brian was 65 years old and it just felt right to embrace his legend and be a bit nostalgic,” Bennett said.

Songs such as “Forever She’ll Be My Surfer Girl” touch on Beach Boys melodies while “Mexican Girl” adds a dash of salsa flavor. “Midnight’s Another Day” and “Oxygen to the Brain” reference Wilson’s dark days in the ’70s and ’80s, when he receded from the spotlight into isolation, drugs and weight gain.

Wilson called “Midnight’s Another Day,” which skirts on a solitary piano melody, his favorite song, “kind of introspective, kind of how I feel around people.”

The album’s last song, “Southern California,” reminisces about co-founding the Beach Boys in 1961 with his late brothers Carl and Dennis, and ends the album on an uplifting note. Wilson sings, “It’s magical/ Living your dream.”

“Yes, Brian had a rough time of it, with his mental health, but I would kill to have the kind of catalog he does, and tour everywhere with his brothers like he did,” said Bennett, who confirmed that Wilson “is on a heavy dose of antidepressants.”

Regardless, Wilson has hit a creative stride in his life.

Inspiration comes at night when he sits down alone at his Yamaha synthesizer and grand piano in his purple-curtained music room.

“When I go to the keyboard, I feel holy, like an angel over my head. I feel very holy. When we did [the Beach Boys hit] ‘God Only Knows,’ I felt holy about that, too. A godly something comes through me,” Wilson said. “I’m always thinking about melodies. The melodies come from my brain, and my keyboards. I play a really pleasant keyboard. It sounds so pleasant it makes me want to write melodies.”

But life as a busy dad and touring musician can be overwhelming, describing a house full of children and dogs as “very loud” and “a madhouse.” He frequently goes to a nearby park and takes walks.

“The kids make me feel a little jumpy,” he said. “Sometimes I want to get out of the house to get away from my kids but I love my kids a lot. I love my kids. ... Quiet time comes around 10 at night when I go to sleep. It’s peace of mind. Things run smoothly at night. During the day, things are more rough.”

Questions about the Beach Boys’ current status get a lukewarm response. Wilson, who also formed the band with cousin Mike Love and then-school friend Al Jardine, split with most of the group’s surviving members years ago amid legal squabbles. Love and later Beach Boys bandmate Bruce Johnston tour as the Beach Boys Band, while Jardine has his own Endless Summer Band. Wilson stresses the subject’s touchiness.

“We don’t want any publicity about me getting back with the Beach Boys, cause I don’t want to. They’re not my group anymore. That’s Mike and Bruce’s group now. I’m on my own, and I would rather do that than go back to the Beach Boys,” he said.