Why Jeff Lynne found working with Brian Wilson difficult: “What’s he trying to do?”
Jeff Lynne could justifiably be called a student of classic rock. Despite having his own sound with ELO, Lynne was able to take the best of what he had learned from everyone from The Beatles to Del Shannon and fuse them with grander spectacles whenever he went into the studio, making the kind of Jimi Hendrix and Chuck Berry leads played by violins and cellos. No producer of the modern age would be where they are without The Beach Boys, but when Lynne got the chance to work with Brian Wilson, he was slightly reluctant.
For any producer looking to go into the studio, having Wilson beside you is already bound to be nerve-racking. This is the same guy who wrote ‘Good Vibrations’ and created recording techniques that no one had thought were possible, so how are you supposed to sit next to him and think you can come up with something just as good out of the blue?
It’s not easy, but it helps when you realise Wilson is one of the nicest people in the music industry. For all of the business side of The Beach Boys, Wilson was always into music for the simple joy of being able to put melodies together, but his first solo album with Lynne on production did have a few hangers-on in the background.
This was part of Wilson’s much-maligned 1980s period, where he would find himself under the watchful eye of Dr Eugene Landy. While Wilson would break free from Landy’s grasp later, Lynne remembered little getting done some days because of how much input they had on the production.
When talking about making the record, Lynne remembers the songs going through multiple hands, saying, “It was a tiny bit difficult, yeah, but only because of the way it was structured, with all the doctors and that stuff, and you have to go through this chain of events before you do anything. Like you’d lay down a tape, a little rough thing of a song that I wrote with him, and suddenly someone’s got a copy of it, and they’re playing it to the record company saying, ‘Look at this! What’s he trying to do?’”.
Regardless of the shady therapist involvement, the songs are actually a lot more indicative of where Wilson was at the time. Although they weren’t reaching the same levels as Pet Sounds or anything, it’s easy to see why the eventual biopic Love and Mercy got its title from one of the songs on this record. This was a man desperate to get out of his situation and find something better, and given Landy looking over his shoulder, ‘Love and Mercy’ sounds like a cry for help.
The process didn’t taint Lynne’s experience working with Wilson, though, eventually saying, “They’re all nice guys. Brian’s lovely. It’s a shame he’s got so many problems with all these people messing him up”. Luckily, Wilson would break free of Landy soon enough, eventually going so far as to have his name revoked from the credits on the album for songs he allegedly helped write.
Lynne did his best behind the producer’s chair, but Wilson was far from the last time he would mingle with fellow rock legends. He was halfway to The Traveling Wilburys, and chances are, if he hadn’t learned the dynamic of Wilson’s session, he might not have been able to balance everything going on with The Beatles Anthology.
