5. The Beach BoysPet Sounds
CF: It’s one of those things that everybody can agree on, music that’s adventurous for its time and the vocals and harmonies are beautiful.
TW: And the lyrics are extremely personal. You feel that you’re being spoken to.
CF: It was when the Beach Boys, as they say it nowadays, took it to a whole new level. I liked them before, but when we first heard these as singles, I realised, oh boy, this is some serious art.
TW: It took it beyond the Jan and Dean era. It wasn’t about surfing anymore. It was about the complications of being a young person coming of age and trying to find one’s place in the world. It was deeply moving and I always loved the magical singing.
CF: We had an opportunity to meet Brian Wilson once, in all places, Ibiza.
TW: He also came backstage…
CF: Oh yes, this is a good story. Before Ibiza, we were shooting the Talking Heads movie Stop Making Sense over three nights in Hollywood. Various celebrities would come backstage. It was the last night of shooting and I was standing there with Peter Gabriel in a big crowd backstage and all of a sudden everything parted. Brian Wilson came through. It was evidently unusual for him to go out, and he said “I would like to meet Tina Weymouth” and then, what did he say to you Tina?
TW: I was hiding in a corner because I knew that if I partied and if I showed pleasure David Byrne would just give me hell the next show we did. He’s a very jealous guy and hated for anybody else to get any attention, especially me. So when Brian Wilson sat down I got up to leave because I thought “David’s really going to hate this”. Chris held my wrist and said “Tina, he wants to meet you”. So now I was going to have to endure any displeasure from David because I couldn’t possibly be rude to Brian Wilson. All he said was “Oh. You’ve cut your hair.” It was still pretty long. I said “Don’t you like it?” and that was pretty much the end of the conversation.
