Fans of the Beach Boys are a curious breed. We can’t just listen to the music. We need to do something with it. We need to spread the word. Take, for example, my good friends Matt and Greg Coffey who spend a few hours every Tuesday night hosting their wonderful Beach Boys Talk web series. Or, for that matter, take a look at my book Tired of California: The Beach Boys Holland Revisited. Or give a listen to the spectacular forthcoming album from London-based musician Jeremy Warmsley, American Daydream. It’s a loving, heartfelt tribute to the genius of Brian Wilson that perfectly captures the good vibrations of the band’s Pet Sounds and Smile eras. Being a fan of the Beach Boys (and now of Jeremy Warmsley), I reached out with a few questions…

Let’s start with the Beach Boys. What do you love about their music? 

Oh man, where to start? As a musician myself, I like to think that I’m drawn to sophisticated and unusual arrangements and instrumentation, surprising harmonic turns and powerful performances, and the Beach Boys certainly have all that. But past all that there’s just something incredibly emotional about their music that defies all my attempts at analysis or categorisation.

And beyond that there’s just that deep, deep Beach Boys rabbit hole that you can lose yourself in for years. From the myriad unreleased albums (American Spring is a favourite right now) to the unbelievable anecdotes (Dennis meeting Charles Manson for the first time 36 hours before recording “Be Still” comes to mind), and all the session out-takes we get on box sets — the Pet Sounds box set taught me how to produce music, really.

And finally… Sometimes the Beach Boys are just a bit crap. And I love that too.

Where did the idea for turning your love for the Beach Boys into an album come from? 

Inspired by the likes of Sufjan Stevens, Owen Pallett and Joanna Newsom, I’ve often used high-concept ideas to give projects a reason to exist. For instance, my other musical project — a duo with my wife, the filmmaker Elizabeth Sankey — is called Summer Camp and our first album Welcome To Condale was set in a fictional Californian suburb. It was just a fun setting for the stories we were telling in our songs. And my last album, A Year, was twelve songs, one for every month. 

When I was deep, deep, deep into the BB rabbit hole in late 2019, I decided I wanted my next album to sound like Pet Sounds: Part Two. But I couldn’t think of a good reason to do that. Meanwhile, I was reading every Beach Boys book I could get my hands on and boring my wife rigid with every random BB fact, until she finally suggested that I make an album about Brian. So it’s her fault really!

I have to say that I’m completely bowled over by American Daydream. It feels like the soundtrack to a musical, complete with characters and, given the subject matter, plenty of drama. Do you have any plans to adapt it to stage? 

Wow, thank you so much. Only a few people have heard it so far so that really means a lot to me. Despite that, you’re actually not the first to suggest that. My feeling is that a stage show about the Beach Boys would really have to only have music by the Beach Boys or it would just be a huge disappointment. Imagine turning up to American Daydream: the Beach Boys Story and not hearing “Good Vibrations” or “God Only Knows” – it would be bewildering. 

Fair enough! In addition to making a number of overt references to the Beach Boys and their music, I feel like you’ve also given die-hard fans plenty of subtle nods to play with. How did you decide which details of their story to include in your musical narrative? 

Well, as I mentioned, I read about a thousand books about Brian and the Beach Boys (including Mike and both of Brian’s autobiographies – though I somehow missed your book about Holland), and then let it marinate in my head for a couple of months. Then I made a list of all the most memorable things I could think from their story that had stuck in my head. I went back and fact-checked everything, and a few nuggets didn’t make it onto the final album. Other things were just too hard to cover: I wanted to dive deeper into the whole Eugene Landy thing (Brian’s abusive therapist) but I just couldn’t find an angle that didn’t feel distasteful. I also wanted to give Carl, Dennis and Mike their own songs but ultimately I realized that this album was Brian’s story, not the Beach Boys story.

Big Beach Boys nerd question: Are the clicks in “Spiral” a reference to Brian’s autobiography Wouldn’t it Be Nice? They sound to me like a camera shutter. 

Great question, and one which I leave to the listener to decide!

I’m struck by the fact that you address Brian Wilson directly in many of the songs. What was behind that decision? 

I’ve never thought about that before. It just felt natural I suppose.

As beautiful as the music on your album is, you’re not sugarcoating anything. Much of Brian Wilson’s biography is painful, and you deal with it in an open manner. How did you strike a balance between the darkness and light of the story you were telling?

I do believe that being open and upfront about mental health is a good thing. My wife actually went through a major mental health event in 2020, when the album was about halfway done – after giving birth to our son, she suffered terribly from severe post-partum anxiety and was hospitalized for a month. Thankfully, she made a full recovery. She was really instrumental in pushing me to make sure the album didn’t shy away from that side of Brian’s life. (If it seems like I mention her a lot – she’s really my closest collaborator as I self-produce my music – and we write songs together in our other project, and I produce on her films. So thank you Elizabeth!)

As I said before, there was plenty of moments that felt too painful to really confront any more directly than I did, so I’m really glad that it felt balanced to you. 

The production on the album is amazing. I mean, you’ve really captured the mid-to-late-sixties Beach Boys sound—right down to that ringing snare drum. What was your recording process? 

I’m really glad to hear that from you. I don’t like to discuss the recording process publicly because I feel it affects how people hear the music. The main thing was colossal amounts of research – I listened to every track the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson ever released, all the session tracks from the box sets and plenty of bootlegs too. I have to mention the videos of Joshilyn Hoisington which were an incredible resource, plus the people in #beach_science on the Beach Boys Discord, especially Will and John, who always seemed to know which drum machine or synthesizer was used on every song. The Sail On podcast was another great resource.

(I also want to add that I don’t mean to hoard production knowledge – if anyone ever wants any specific tips I’m always happy to talk production – I’m on jeremywarmsley at gmail dot com.)

The harmonies are amazing. Are you singing all the parts? 

Once again, thank you so much. I can’t sing as high as Brian or as low as Mike but I do my best! Elizabeth bolsters a few high harmonies here and there. I would name my tracks in Logic after band members to get me in the right frame of mind…

You also have a couple of big names on the album—members of Brian Wilson’s touring band. Is that right?

Yes, Probyn Gregory played tannerin (the theremin-like whistling sound heard on “Good Vibrations,” “Wild Honey” and “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times”) on “Beach Girls” and Paul Von Mertens played wind instruments on a track which sadly didn’t make it onto the final album (though I will hopefully be releasing it later). Other notable musicians included John Brode (of Sail On and #beach_science) played bongos on “Brother Sound,” my good friend Pete Fraser who  played clarinet and sax on several tracks, and one Kristin Weber who played violin on “A Day in the Life of Brian.” Funnily enough, I didn’t realise when I booked her, but it turned out she had played violin on the 2020 “Add Some Music” remake!

What’s next? 

I have no idea! I was thinking about applying the American Daydream concept to another musician but it feels a bit formulaic. I actually got really into classical music over lockdown, so I was thinking about trying to make an album about Beethoven, but that feels like it might be biting off a bit more than I can chew…