Taking Baby Steps with Brian Wilson

On November 7th, Oglio Records re-released Brian Wilson: Live at the Roxy Theatre, the first post-humous release since Brian's passing last June. It's available on vinyl for the first time as a 3LP box set, alongside a 2CD set and digital edition. You order it directly from Oglio here:

I had the honor of speaking with Darian Sahanaja, a fixture in the Brian Wilson band since the mid 90's. We talked about how Darian and his fellow Wondermints band members got involved with Brian and talked about his memories from the last 30 years of playing with the Beach Boys legend. From backing Brian for radio shows to consulting on the Brian Wilson biopic, Love and Mercy, Darian was gracious enough to reflect back on the past 30 years as well as celebrating Brian's legacy in the present, on tour with Al Jardine.

(Interview edited for clarity and length)

Soundtrack Your Life
Hi, so Darian, do you remember when you were kind of contacted to join Brian's backing van like what were your initial expectations of that partnership?

Darian Sahanaja
I mean at the time myself and three of the guys that ended up being in Brian's band, we were our own band called Wondermints and we were an active band throughout the 90s and there was a quite a cool little pop movement here in LA that that sort of was intentional with the Silverlake scene and things like that happening in LA in the 90s, so we were doing our own thing and we had played a tribute show for a fundraiser in 1994. It was a tribute to Brian Wilson so everybody was playing Brian's music, but Brian decided to secretly show up and he was backstage. Apparently, the story is that my band was performing and he was in the dressing room and he perked up. He liked what he was hearing, we met him later that evening, and he started coming to some of our shows.

Then Brian had been invited to do some radio shows and interviews during the mid 90s. He was asked if he wanted to play some music along with the interview and he would agree [to that], but he wanted to have a back up band and he would request us to be his backup band.

So, we get to 1998 and Brian is working on a new on a solo album at that point called Imagination, and he's co-producing it with a guy named Joe Thomas who was out of Chicago. When that album was wrapped up, it was suggested that Brian do some promotional shows for the album and it was at that time they decided to put a band together. Now, Joe being from Chicago, [he] had a bunch of contacts of musicians that he liked to work with him in the Chicago area, where as Brian had his mindset on us being band. Anyway one thing lead to another and what ended up happening was [creating] a hybrid band of like half Chicago people, and then us. That's how we became the band.

Again, one thing lead to another, and the next thing I know, we're being whisked off to Japan for the summer of 99 and then towards the end of the year by fall, Neil Young had invited us to play his Bridge School Benefit, and so it was just sort of like "wow this is all happening." You know And that's kind of how we got acquainted with with Brian as far as the being in his band

SYL
So when you joined the band, it was never discussed. "Okay, let's go hit the road and then do a live album right after that."

Darian
No, by the time We recorded the Roxy shows that was just a little over a year of being together as a band and so much happened [so quickly]. My memory of starting out was it was all very precarious - like is this really gonna happen or how long can we sustain this? It just got better and better and we all clicked and Brian became way more comfortable with us and [it's] sort of amazing actually that he had that much confidence and that we as a band [could] support him in that way. You know he's just not a natural performer. Actually, very much socially stunted if you know what I mean.

SYL
Right

Darian
Getting up in front of an audience was was really brave of him you know? The last show I ever played with him which was three years ago, he's always been an awkward presence on stage, but there was always this charm in it, and it's very endearing and some of the things he says in between songs are some of my favorite moments on tour just because he was so genuine.

SYL
That's great.

Participant
But I do believe that once He heard the first notes of us playing. It just gave him a sort of a sense of security and... I always described it like we provided this nice cushion like a mattress for him to kind of lie back on. He was a lot more comfortable being up there as a result.

SYL
It's funny because he said it was very precarious at the beginning and then a couple years later you're helping him complete Smile. So do you wanna reflect back on that experience?

Darian
Yeah, well where do I start? Everything was just done in baby steps, you know? After that first year of just getting him up and going, and seeing if this was even a viable venture, we sort of started to explore what the possibilities were and we started off by adding more songs out of Pet Sounds in. Knowing that [Pet Sounds] was his sort of his pinnacle album, then it was decided "why not do the whole album start to finish?", so that became the new goal and we met it. And people came in droves, which was nice. And so I think we had it was 2000 the end of 2002 we had just finished Pet Sounds. A particular gentleman - he was an American actually, but he was stationed in London and he had been overseeing the shows that were being performed at a place called the Royal Festival Hall in London and so he was the one that got us out there and lined all that up for us. We had a really great successful couple of visits to England playing the royal festival hall in London playing Sounds and those went off very very well. I just remember after the very last show of the Pet Sounds tour, we were all kind of sitting around to sort of celebrating raising glasses with champagne or whatever. At one point somebody said "well how can we possibly top this?", and I remember Brian's wife Melinda was sitting at the table and she looked at me and she looked back at the promoter and she just said "well I think there's only one thing that can top this, Smile."
I remember at the time sort of like laughing a bit because what was this Smile that we were going to do?

In truth, it was possibly the only thing that could top what we had just done and so, I'm thinking like yeah, that's true as far as as far as the tour campaign that would be an incredible thing to to the tour on, but I had no idea what that meant at the time and so we kind of sat on that. But the promoter in that moment, just sort of like up the ante and said well, "I would like to commission the Brian Wilson Band to come back and perform whatever iteration of Smile you'd like."

It just became the next thing, sort of incremental - we had been moving step-by-step. And by that time, it was well "yeah OK, Smile, what does that mean?" I spent several months going over over the concept with Brian and just trying to figure out what are we gonna do. Are we just gonna go up there and play little fragments and play 30 seconds of an unfinished peace and have people applause and then do another 45 seconds and then another? I had no idea what Brian wanted to do. But I think that was sort of the mission at the point, it was like an assignment. How are we going to perform this music live and that just was one step after another. I would play some of the music for Brian, some of the unfinished pieces, which was a challenge to itself because you know a lot of that music was sort of Brian had a lot of a lot of baggage there you know.

SYL
Right.

Darian
I'm sure that He just had a lot of negative feelings towards towards that music just because you know the rejection and the failure in all of that lot A lot of negativity there and so I just I just remember trying to navigate the positive in the hopes of having him to listen to the music as just music opposed to memories and weird associations you might have with with that music. I think we got there you know, I think he was starting to reconnect with the music in the present as opposed to the past, which was very important. That was a very important step for him to take. When he brought in Van Dyke Parks to get back involved, that was when it really became official to me like, "Wow OK this is we really are working on this finishing some of this up." So by the end of 2003 we had all of the pieces together and it was just all about trying to get Brian ready to perform it and of course that was a huge challenge itself. So as I mentioned before everything was, baby steps. But we got that done, we performed it in Early 2004 and we're talking like a 10 minute standing ovation, grown men crying, Paul McCartney in the audience. It was the stuff of dreams.

SYL
Yeah

Darian
I just remember thinking at the time, "I just want this not to suck." My criteria would always be what would what would impress me if I were in the audience and so it was it was nice at least get to that level of just having the music together and it be well orchestrated and well performed. But then there's then there's the other level that you're trying to reach, which is the emotional one and whether it really connects with people and after that first night, I thought "Wow people are really responding this in a positive way." And of course it was just so wonderful for Brian and Van Dyke to see that see that love and acceptance, and him sort of reclaiming all of that was just great for Brian. He did yet another step to another level or he turned another corner. I should say like at that point he just gained even more confidence as a solo artist. And I think with the small stuff I remember also thinking "Well this is this is really really nice."

I [was] just I'm curious how it would stand a test of time. So, I remember after that successful early run of shows that it was decided that we should capture it for Recording, and again it was I don't think it was ever our intention to finish the Smile album the way it may have or should have could have come out in 1966-67. It was just more about. Performing that music live but when we did people, apparently people just thought well this is this is like a finished thing you know it's finished conceptual piece and so we just recorded it as is and we released it as an album. Again it got some really great reviews and and again I thought well this is nice, but I just wonder how how long it will stick with people you know but here we are 20 years later and I'm still meeting people, like young people that told me that it was either seeing a lot of the performance or listening to the album that got them into music you know and then inspired them to become musicians and things like that and so I'm so grateful for all that.

SYL
Yeah

Darian
I mean, that's when I [felt] like wow OK we really did something special.

SYL
Yeah, I remember when it came out. I bought it on the day came out and I remember just like listening to it like over and over again for like a month. I'm was really excited about it.

Darian
And what did you what did you think?

SYL
I never thought that album would ever be in some sort of completed form so I was anticipating it and I thought it was amazing. I really love that album still. Do you have any thoughts on the beach boys smile box that that came out in 2011?

Darian
You know I haven't really done a thorough analysis of it because I think by that point I was sort of not burnt out on it, but I just I mean I've done so much of that down and dirty research during the 80s, so by the time that came out I was I was very happy to hear it. Obviously the sound quality. The fidelity of it is like the best you've ever heard. I was glad that it was officially. I think that one of the discs like a sequenced album.

SYL
Yeah, it was.

Darian
They used our live performance as a blueprint or a template for that so there was a part of me that thought "That's really great. "I'm not sure that that's exactly how it would've been released back in 66-67 seven but [that's] fine by me And if Brian was happy with it, then you know I'm fine. Why? What did you have thoughts on it?

SYL
Just kind of curious on you know the fact that it's kind of modeled after what you and Brian had put together and then I think I've also read that you were you know a huge fan of the album before you even met Brian so it's just kind of a whole full circle sort of thing.

Darian
Oh yeah, yeah Yeah, I mean In the end, it just sort of came down to Just really came down to the outcome of how Brian would respond to all that music when I was playing it for him. I was playing all the snippets and how he reacted to some of them in 2003 compared to how he may have done with them back in 66-67, who knows? I just had to come again like as I said, I had to navigate positive at that time because he was sort of hit and miss with some of that stuff, but some of the stuff he warmed up too, because there was no way we were gonna do like one little snippet without doing another one because they were so sort of musically and conceptually similar. So I kind of wanted him to sort of discover all that or rediscover all that on his own. I wasn't [going] to force anything on him, never was there a time where I said "No Brian, this should be on [there]", like that was just not my way at all. I just played it.

SYL
Right that doesn't seem like a good way to work with Brian.

Darian
No, no no in fact, he may shut you down even further if you did it that way, but just kind of let it unfold organically and so much of it was emotional, so he might have an aversion upon first listen but then when he hears another piece that's maybe less triggering for him, he might then open up to a certain musical passage that then allows him to be more open to the other passage. then all of a sudden they all
start to kind of come together, just because he's now thinking of it as just music you know as it's sort of living and breathing in in the current state as opposed to something kind of trapped in a dark vault from the past.

SYL
So I think it was around the 2011-2012 where Al Jardine and David Marks were brought into the band How was it incorporating them, kind of knowing their history with Brian? Were you a little starstruck having some of the original memory in the band now?

Darian
I'm sure you know I had not never worked with Al up until that point and of course, I'm a huge fan, but you know in the end they just they were just nice guys. They were just regular guys. David, was obviously in the really early days just adding that sort of surf garage and element to the early sound And then Al, God, what can I say about? His voice is just he really is the glue of that blend if you have three Wilson Brothers, bin the core Dennis didn't didn't really factory as much as Brian and Carl but when you get this when you get Brian on top and then Carl And then Mike down below and Al, who's not related at all, can come in and just add that. Sometimes, I describe Al's voice is being somewhere between the Wilsons and and Mike Love, he has that punch that Mike has, but he has the sort of the rich harmonics that the Wilsons have and so that blend is just one of the greatest in music history, really.

SYL
Yeah, I just remember being so excited when I got to see them on tour with Brian I mean all the shows were great before then, but you know just to kind of see David and Al on stage with Brian was just such a huge thrill for me

Darian
Yeah, of course you know Brian being Brian, [we've] gotten so used to the way we do our shows with the very minimal like talking in between songs and Brian is such an anxious person, so he's always wanted to get to the next song as soon as possible. I just remember when we started up with Al ,and Al was more like a storyteller. I think one of the first shows we played with him, he started to tell a story about "Surfer Girl", right before we were to perform it, which is great for the audience. So he started to tell us a story and Brian just cut him off
"OK so let's get to the song."

It's so ironic because I'm I'm touring with Al now. He got the Brian Wilson band back together and we're doing some shows with him in celebration of Brian, the legacy. It's about the music but also Al will tell stories about Brian and it's just really nice. I think it's really cathartic for Al as well. You know he just lost a dear old friend this year, so going out on the road helps deal with things emotionally and and also able to sort of somehow connect with Brian on that level

SYL
Yeah, I'll have to go check that tour out

Darian
I don't know if you've heard anything about what we're doing, but they've been releasing 50 year anniversary archival releases for the past 15 years or so they've been releasing box sets. The next one coming out is the 50 year anniversary of the stuff that was done at Brothers Studios in the mid to late 70s Including the 1977 album Beach Boys Love You, which happens to be one of my absolute favorite albums of their entire catalog mainly because it's practically a Brian Wilson DIY effort, so it's probably the Brian's most personal effort after pet sounds. I don't know how familiar you are with it but it's just chalk full of songs that are so, just incredibly honest and listening to the songs there's just a sweet sort of childlike aspect to them. He plays practically every instrument on it so it's become kind of a cult record as well, because you can just feel Brian's total personality is just wrapped up into that album. And so so going out with Al, we were trying to figure out what we can do, "Are we just gonna go out and play hits?" or "Are we're gonna do something a little more special?" and we ended up deciding we are just gonna play a few songs from that era, but then it ended up that Al was really enjoying the songs off of Beach Boys Love You. He didn't have a lot of involvement back in 1977 because it was practically a Brien solo effort so it was nice for Al to sort of rediscover this. He hadn't listened to the record in a long time and of course he associated it with being maybe an unimportant, uneventful record because it didn't sell very well and they were caught between labels and things like that, so he just sort of had written it off over all these years, but he acquainted himself with the songs and just in the past for five months, he's just come to really love the songs, so we're just having a lot of fun performing songs like "Johnny Carson" and "Solar System", because you just feel the Brian personality that we all have known and worked with Brian for 25+ years, [so] playing these song [is] like having him in the room again or having him on stage with us again.

SYL
Now that's awesome. So, for the movie Love and Mercy I think you're listed as like a musical consultant for Paul Dano.

Darian
Yeah.

SYL
How was it working with him especially because he was playing a version of Brian that is so different from the Brian that you worked with?

Darian
Yeah, I mean it's interesting [that] you ask that because watching the finished film I remember thinking, "I didn't personally know that Brian in the 60s" so it was really hard for me to truly know how realistic those scenes were, where as the 80s Brian portrayed by John Cusack was much closer to the Brian that I knew. It was strange experiencing watching the film because though I can relate more to the later years, I have a much stronger affinity towards the 60s material because that's the stuff that got me into the Beach Boys in the first place and that's that sort of the iconic Brian Wilson, that you know you see in photos. You're sort of idealized Brian Wilson. So, I was just kind of going by what I've read and what I've heard in plate recorded audio playback of how that Brian Wilson of 1965-66 was. The producers called me and told me that they had just signed Paul Dano to portray the young Brian and of course my first reaction was "Wow that's awesome because I think he's a fantastic actor." I love him and I love everything I've seen up to that point and it also gave me kind of a clue as to what kind of film it was gonna be you know by hiring somebody like Paul. You knew it was not gonna be your sort of conventional biopic. It's gonna be something a little more.

SYL
Yeah

Darian
I was already very excited about that, but they asked me questions about how there would be some scenes where Paul would be required to play the piano and possibly sing. [The producers] just asked me what my thoughts were and they thought "do we need to give Paul piano lessons?" or things like that. My thought was that you wouldn't want to give him conventional piano lessons because Brian didn't play conventionally, so if you're trying to portray Brian Wilson at the piano, you don't want somebody that looks like they're like an accomplished trained pianist because Brian was never like that. So, I was just telling them things like that and then one thing after another, they asked "Would you be interested in flying to New York and meeting up with Paul and just kind of assess things?" I said sure, so I was flown out and Paul Dano had lived in Brooklyn and he had a music store that he liked that had a like a little piano rehearsal room in the back where we should meet up. Then we did and again, I didn't know what to expect. I loved him as an actor, but I didn't know what he was like in real person and in real life I didn't. I was hoping you wasn't gonna be like some you know. Sort of snotty sort of...

SYL
Entitled

Darian
Yeah, sort of like a self-absorbed guy, but he was quite the opposite. He was just such a cool guy, really laid-back and really into the music, really into the artistry of Brian. I know just in the end, I just remember thinking wow he is a guy I could meet at one of the clubs or something when I'm seeing a band in LA, so that was cool. We hit it off right away and he sat down at the piano. I didn't know what I was expecting, but he was pretty competent as far as like you know, putting his hands down on the keys and holding them down and sustaining and letting them go. I didn't know what it is, but he was very musical. We just needed to figure out what songs he was gonna be required to be playing on camera and so I had to do things like you know make cheap charts for him like big diagrams with the keyboard notes - things like that so that. I got to hand it to him. He really worked his tail off and for not being a piano player. He really practiced and practiced so that he [could] play those not easy to play songs like "Surfs Up" or like "God Only Knows" They said there was that aspect, and then there was the singing, and I was really really surprised to hear how nice of a voice he had. You know he could sing in tune. I just kinda had to guide him to get him into a more of a Beach Boy style phrasing. So then they did use some of his real singing and most of his real piano playing.

SYL
That's awesome. I wanted to know how much you actually worked with him.

Darian
Oh it was great and also that then led me to the production producers. I think they ended up thinking like "Wow this guy knows a lot about this stuff maybe, we should ask him to help out on other scenes." because obviously I didn't see the film but so much of cool stuff is in the studios, right? That's like my bread and butter right there. That's like my favorite stuff and so I started to suggest "Oh maybe it should be like this and like this." I think they were like "Wow. Would you be interested in being hired as a consultant?" That became the most fun part for me - [recreating] the Pet Sound Sessions. Because part of why I'm not the biggest fan of musical biopics is because 90% of the time you're seeing somebody play an instrument on the screen and it does not match what your hearing.

SYL
Yeah.

Darian
When I met the director that was really great for me too because I could tell that he was into getting all of that accurate as well. I remember talking to the prop guy and giving him a list specific gear - guitars and amp things like that and I remember him saying "OK so you want this amp do you want this guitar..." and I said something like "Yeah and you make sure there are strings on it." and he goes "OH YOU WANT IT PLAYABLE?" He just wasn't used to that - like this prop guy was so used to just having that stuff as props.

My whole goal [was] to get real musicians and they let me hire a bunch of my friends. to play the wrecking crew guys and to not just mimic, but actually be playing the parts through the amps and making real sound so that even if they did go back over and and and replace the sound the audio and post that it would at least have that that real sort of feeling and visual feeling that they're actually the musicians actually playing.

Well, the nice thing was that I had rehearsed with those guys, written out all the parts and and we were actually at Western three which is the studio that that Pet Sounds was recorded in. We are there, I want to say the day before the shooting day and I just wanted to get everybody in their positions. I wanted to make sure everybody's got their instrument and to run through this, so we ran a segment of the song. And it was sounding you know I just wanna make sure everybody's got together so that when they when they put the track on and they play along with it, it's gonna be you know it's gonna feel authentic well we ran it as is with all the amps turned on and everybody playing and it just sounded like a live performance of the track so we ran that and and then the band stops, and then I just hear like clapping from behind me I turn around and it's the director who popped his head in with the cinematographer and they just kind of wanted to check things out and he just looked at me and he said "Why do we even need to track?

He decided to completely change his approach and he thought "I'm gonna do this documentary style." This is great. Paul can be in the room with the musicians and everybody's playing and it sounds like a real session. I said, "yeah that's the point." and so that was a really nice. That was a really nice thing that happened as a result of having like real [musicians] - it sounds like you're in the room with a bunch of people playing instruments.

SYL
That's so cool and I love hearing about that.

Darian
Yeah, It was fun. It was really fun.

SYL
All right one last question before I'll let you go. Do you have a favorite needle drop of a beach boy song in a movie a movie or TV show?

Darian
Any movie or a TV show? No one ever asked me that! There are quite a few, but the one that just hits me right away is the Drew Barrymore film, "Don't Worry Baby" comes on at the very end ... Never Been Kissed. I think that what it was called.

SYL
Yeah

Darian
Emotionally it's really nice. Otherwise it's the scene from Us. [They use] "Good Vibrations" in that. Have you ever seen that film?

SYL
Yeah

Darian
It's [used] in a very disturbing part of the film, but it's it's impressionable as well. What's yours?

SYL
I think it's in the movie Three Kings with George Clooney.

Darian
Three kings... oh yeah, when they're driving around.

SYL
Yeah.

Darian
"I get Around" or something?

SYL
Yeah, "I Get Around". Yeah, I think that's my favorite.

Darian
Yeah I think I remember liking it, but "I Get Around" is such an important song for me. It was the song that got me into The Beach Boys. I first heard the song on the radio in 1974 when I was a kid. I just started getting into the radio, like listening to all the top 40 and stuff and I just [became] obsessed, and then "I Get Around" came on and it just blew my head off.

They played it on the radio like on radio and it was also coinciding with the fact that the Endless Summer compilation had come out, which also happened to be the very first album I ever bought. As a result of hearing "I Get Around" on the radio, I ended up buying [it], but that album had just come out and it was sort of like this renaissance of of Beach boys in the in 73-74.

SYL
Thank you so much for your time