The Story & The Storyteller
PART 1: THE STORIES WE TELL
Joan Didion wrote, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” We seek meaning even, and perhaps especially, in tragedy, in order to give ourselves hope. We seek out tales of redemption in hopes that we, ourselves, may be redeemed. We weave webs of serendipity in hopes of finding our own significance, a place of our own in the seeming randomness, chaos, and mundaneness of our daily lives. We tell ourselves stories in order to live.
The story I’ve most needed “to live” in recent years was told to me in the form of a wonderful film: Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson and the Story of SMiLE. It is the story of what is perhaps the greatest accomplishment of the greatest composer of our time. It begins as the story of a man who, just as he was soaring to new creative heights, seemed to have his spark largely extinguished. What followed was decades of intense suffering. The film gracefully allows the curtain to drop, so to speak, on the specifics of that suffering, focusing, instead, on the accomplishment of the seemingly impossible: the completion of SMiLE almost 40 years later.
It is the story, as the title suggests, of a beautiful dreamer and his beautiful dream. It is a story that tells us that, against all odds, beautiful dreams can come true. It is a story about the tenacity of that creative spark, which, once lit, can never entirely be defused, even in the most vulnerable of spirits. This film told me the story I have most needed, and that I still need.
The man behind this incredible film, David Leaf, of whose work I am quite a fan, characterizes all of his work this way: “Everything was about telling a story.”
And what an incredible story David (he insisted that I refer to him by his first name) himself has lived. He is best known, perhaps, for his nearly life-long work of telling the story of Brian Wilson through various projects, most notably his landmark book on Brian, newly updated as God Only Knows: The Story of Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys & the California Myth. Yet the entire trajectory of his life has led him in many fascinating directions.
According to David, one of the questions that is present in his work is, “What’s the origin story?” While this question is applied to the icons whose stories are told in David’s work, his own origin story is, itself, of great interest.
David hails from New Rochelle, New York. Think of The Dick Van Dyke Show. More than a mere “bedroom community” near New York City, New Rochelle represented a cross-section of the America of that time, representing a number of different backgrounds. His elementary school sat between a middle/upper-middle-class neighborhood and public housing — -“the projects” — -and was integrated. There were also other kids bussed into his school “from the south side of town.” Most interestingly, a teacher at the high school was the mother of one of the murdered Freedom Riders.
As he recalls, David’s storytelling began in his childhood. I asked him what made him first believe that he could be a storyteller. His response is indicative of his wit:
My father was a great storyteller. My mother too. All I did was read books — -biographies especially — -and we got at least four newspapers every day. I endlessly watched stories on television, and I thought, “I can do that.”
But I believe I became a storyteller as a way to not get caught when I lied to my parents. I wasn’t allowed to have comic books, but I would buy them anyway, and I would hide them, and I would think, “What happens if they find them?” So I would concoct this elaborate story as to how the comic book ended up in the bookcase behind the encyclopedia. And I would say, “Well, if they say this, I’ll say this.” I had to make the story bulletproof, that it actually could be a credible story.
I also remember sitting in 9th grade biology next to a classmate who was a very talented illustrator, David Bloom. And together, we would create miniature comic books.
David’s earliest aspiration was to be a sports reporter. His first paying job was precisely that. New Rochelle’s local newspaper, The Standard-Star, would hire the sports editor of the high school newspaper to write the stories about the high school games. It wouldn’t be until college, as music editor for his college newspaper, that he would have his first experience in the world he would become so closely associated with in his professional life: in the fall of 1971, he wrote a review of the Beach Boys Surf’s Up album. It was his first public expression of his obsession with Brian Wilson and the story of SMiLE.
David had wanted to work in television, and after college, he got a taste of it. In the summer of 1973, he was the news assistant at WNEW radio, before moving on to work in the news department at a television station on Long Island. Among his daily duties was to edit the coverage of the Watergate hearings, to determine which highlights were to be presented on that night’s 6 o’clock news. This was an early experience in story-telling, in editing video, in learning how to frame a narrative.
In 1975, David moved to California. Regarding his intentions in relocating, he explains: “When I moved to California, I had a lot of dreams. I had a lot of goals. Certainly one of them, if not the top of the list, was to write a book about Brian Wilson. That seemed very improbable. I wanted to be a writer on a sitcom. My education, such as it was, came from watching television, and I had watched fifteen years worth of situation comedies every night of the week. From The Honeymooners to The Mary Tyler Moore Show. I also wanted to be in the music business, somehow. I didn’t know what that meant exactly.”
As he notes, “Where do you start in the business? You start at the bottom.” Among his first few jobs in California were positions as summer relief in the mailroom at Casablanca Records and as backdoor receptionist at Tandem Productions, Norman Lear’s company. (A few decades later, this would come full circle when he wrote/directed/produced documentaries for a Norman Lear DVD box set!)
David also worked on a handful of TV specials. It was during one of these shows, on which he was working as a production assistant, that he would have a revelatory experience. Responsibilities as production assistant were that of a “go-for,” fetching lunch, copying and delivering scripts as needed. The producer on this show was a man named Paul Keyes.
The epiphany moment came during this show, Sinatra and Friends. One day, Paul Keyes — Mr. Keyes — said to me, “Come on kid, we’re going over to rehearsal.” And I was so naive. I knew so little about television, I didn’t even know they rehearsed TV shows. Anyway, we went into a giant soundstage at the Burbank Studios, and it’s almost completely empty, except in one corner is an orchestra, the Nelson Riddle Orchestra.
Nelson Riddle is standing at the podium.
Nelson Riddle was the revered arranger, orchestrator, and bandleader who worked with many legends such as Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Rosemary Clooney, Nat King Cole, and so many others.
So there’s Nelson Riddle, there’s the orchestra, and standing next to him is Frank Sinatra. And we take a couple of chairs, and we sit down, maybe ten, fifteen feet away from the stage, and my boss, Paul Keyes, says to Mr. Sinatra, “How’s it going, Mr. S.?” And he says, “Good, Paul. You ready for us to run the show?” And Mr. Keyes says “Yes,” Nelson Riddle hits a downbeat, and the orchestra starts playing one of Sinatra’s classics.
And in less than a minute, the following thoughts went through my head: One, when I was in grammar school, I played trumpet for a year, but I sure didn’t play like those guys. Two, I sing. I love to sing. I even briefly had a group called David Leaf and the Twigs. But I sure don’t sing like that guy. Three, at this moment, this might be the coolest place in the universe. And four, what can I do to earn a place here? That all went through my head instantaneously.
Throughout the entire process of working on this show, David “listened and observed” how various situations were handled.
When Mr. Sinatra and the director got into a dispute, I watched quietly. When Mr. Sinatra was unhappy with one of the stars on the show who had not properly rehearsed her song, I saw how he deftly dealt with it. After the dress rehearsal, I watched how Mr. Sinatra and the producer talked about what needed to be changed. I went to the editing sessions. I watched how the show was put together.
And when it was over, what I realized, and I think it may have become one of the guiding principles of all the work that I did afterwards, or at least most of it, was that what Paul Keyes had done was essentially curate the work of a great artist. Like a museum curator. He had put a frame around it, a television frame, and he had presented it to the public the way you would hang a great painting in a museum. And I thought to myself, “I can do that.” Now, where I got that confidence from, I can’t tell you. But I know I thought that and believed that when the show was over.
One more anecdote from this experience provides a keen insight into the work ethic that would be apparent in the quality of David’s subsequent work:
After the taping was over, my job was to carry the master tapes from NBC Studios to the facility in Hollywood where the show was going to be edited. At 9:30 on a weeknight, it was maybe a ten minute drive. When the tape operator handed me these two giant big reels of tape, two-inch tape in those days, I said to him, “You know, I’m not planning on getting into a car accident. Pacific Video is only a few minutes away. There’s no traffic.” I said, “But I’m the lowest paid guy on the show, and I’m being entrusted with the masters. What would happen if I got into a car accident?” And, without missing a beat, he said, “You’d never work again.” I wasn’t scared, but it was a lesson in how every job has to be done perfectly.
As I explain to my students, it doesn’t matter what job you have, doing it perfectly is the bare minimum. Doing it with a smile on your face and enthusiasm and a willingness to do whatever is needed is how you get noticed.
Once I started writing on shows and was dealing with producers on a creative level, or I began producing, myself, I took a lot of lessons from what I had experienced on that Frank Sinatra special.
David Leaf’s life and career has been a tightly woven web of serendipity. At the center of this web lies a book, originally published in 1978. The Beach Boys and the California Myth, the first major book written about Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, established him as not only the foremost authority on Brian Wilson, but also solidified his burgeoning reputation as an insightful writer about music. He had already been writing a column in BAM (Bay Area Music), and he began a fanzine called Pet Sounds to write specifically about the Beach Boys. This fanzine would secure him the contract for his book.
This book, and the relationships formed as a result of it, would lead to many of the moments that would follow in David’s career. The Beach Boys book led to another book, on the Bee Gees. In a particularly marvelous turn of events, David was present in the studio the night Barry Gibb recorded his vocal to “Too Much Heaven.” As he recalls of that evening:
I’m sitting on the couch. Behind me at the board are the two engineers. In front of me is the glass. And on the other side of the glass is Barry Gibb. He’s lowered the lights, and he’s singing the lead on a song I’ve never heard before. I’m thinking, “Is this as great as I think it is?” A song called “Too Much Heaven.” And it turned out, yes, it was as great as I thought it was, and in the scheme of life, I was not only there when he sang the lead vocal and when the Bee Gees performed it at the United Nations when they donated it to UNICEF, but I was there some twenty years later when Barry Gibb and Brian Wilson were in a hotel room in Cleveland, as Brian Wilson was rehearsing that same song, to sing at the induction of the Bee Gees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So, it seems like pretty much everything meaningful that happened in my career, in a kind of a domino effect, came from me moving to California, and then starting this Pet Sounds fanzine, which led to the book.
In the 1980s, David worked for a music variety show called Solid Gold, “maybe the last of the great broadcast music variety shows.” The show featured a series of notable hosts, as well as a weekly countdown of the Top 10 songs. As a researcher, the job was not demanding and allowed him time to write the 1985 update to The Beach Boys and the California Myth.
This book would also play a significant role in landing David his first writing job on a network special, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Beach Boys, in 1986.
While working on Solid Gold, David also had the opportunity, in 1987, to work on a book and museum exhibition to honor the 25th anniversary of A&M Records. Through this, he met many legendary artists, including, of course, Herb Alpert himself. He reflects on his experience of being around so many great artists backstage at Solid Gold: “I didn’t think about it at the time, but now looking back, it gave me a comfort level, an ability to talk to them, where I didn’t come across as a fawning fan.” In a twist of fate, since 2010 David has been teaching at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music. The classroom he teaches in is named for Lani Hall, Herb Alpert’s wife, and lead vocalist for Sérgio Mendes and Brasil ’66, a group which recorded for A&M Records.
This project stands out in memory for another reason, a connection to his esteemed book on Brian Wilson: “My office was right next door to one of the key figures I had interviewed for my book back in 1977, a man named David Anderle. So, I was now seeing David Anderle just about every day. My life seems to go in these waves but it seems to always come back to the same place, which is my passion — obsession — for Brian Wilson and his art and music.”
During this time, David was working on yet another project, serving as writer and co-producer for the National Academy of Songwriters’ Salute to the American Songwriter from 1986–1988. “That’s where I really began to appreciate the art and craft of songwriting, because I met all these amazing songwriting legends, like Livingston and Evans, who had written ‘Mona Lisa’ for Nat King Cole. It was just staggering. Lamont Dozier. Carole King. Thom Bell. Jimmy Webb.” The 1986 program was significant as one of Brian Wilson’s first solo appearances, as well. These shows also served as the inspiration for one of David’s UCLA courses, “Songwriters on Songwriting.”
One of David’s earlier aspirations had been to be a sitcom writer. “After writing a lot ‘spec’ scripts,’ I got my first staff job in 1988 on The New Leave It To Beaver.”
I wanted to be a sitcom writer. I was a class clown, always. Instead of being serious, I was always coming up with a punchline, making people laugh, not necessarily at appropriate times. That’s part of what a sitcom writer needs to be able to do, to be in a room with a bunch of people and come up with smart-ass lines that are funny.
David recalls one particularly memorable episode:
There was one episode with a teacher. The producer who had hired me, a great guy named Brian Levant, who had worked on Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley, said, “Is there any way you could get Brian Wilson to be the teacher, play the teacher?” And I was like, “He’s not really an actor.” He says, “That’s okay. He doesn’t have that many lines, and there’s a song we want him to sing along to.” So I asked, and sure enough, one day, there he was on the set, playing Mr. Hawthorne. We named the character after the town where Brian had grown up and gone to high school.
In 1988, the Writers Guild went on strike and, apart from his mornings on the picket line, David was left with time on his hands. Bob Merlis, who was the head of publicity at Warner Bros (who had helped David in the early days of the Pet Sounds fanzine that had led to the book contract) asked David to work on promotion for Brian Wilson’s first solo album.
So I found myself working for Warner Bros. Records, writing what is probably the longest press kit in history, also working on an electronic press kit, and perhaps most significantly, meeting with Lenny Waronker, then the president of Warner Bros. Records on a regular basis, as we tried to navigate the unbelievably complicated world in which Brian Wilson was living at that time. But here I was, working to help promote and market and sell a record, to help publicize my hero’s first solo album. It was challenging but extremely gratifying. It was a complicated and insane time. It takes up an entire chapter of God Only Knows. But I learned a lot about the music business and Brian during that time.
The 1990s would begin a particularly productive period in David’s life. “If you look at my resume or my IMDB page or my website, there’s a head-scratchingly large number of programs. And not everything’s listed. People will ask, ‘How did you find the time to do all that?’ And the answer is, I was a workaholic.” His career would take three simultaneous paths.
One of these paths was his freelance writing career. David was hired to write for awards shows and tribute shows. He wrote for the Billboard Music Awards for nine years, starting in 1992. This led to a particularly wonderful moment where Tom Petty complimented David’s book on Brian Wilson, an occasion that has been immortalized in a marvelous photobomb involving Tom Petty and George Harrison. In fact, maybe David accidentally “invented” the photo bomb that day.
Also in 1992, he began to direct and produce profiles for Disney’s Salute to the American Teacher, which he describes as a “great experience in how to tell a story visually.” David considers his work on 1998’s tribute to Christopher Reeve to be “some of my proudest work, especially the profile of (the late) Travis Roy.”
Also significant in unexpected ways was a short series he wrote and co-produced, The Spirit of Rock And Roll. That’s when he first met the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, Dion. As with many things in his career, that experience came full circle. He is currently in post-production on a feature documentary on Dion. As David comments, “My career seems to zig and zag all over the place. But everything is somehow connected.”
In the 21st Century, all of his work really began to pay off. In 2000, there was a brilliant feature documentary on the Bee Gees. And then what we Brian Wilson devotees refer to as “The Tribute.” David was involved with creating and was, indeed (with the late, great Phil Ramone and his friend Chip Rachlin), the driving force behind, An All-Star Tribute to Brian Wilson, which took place at the Radio City Music Hall on March 29, 2001. It was a most extraordinary event, where many great artists (Elton John, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Sir George Martin et al ) gathered in concert to pay homage to the tremendous influence of Brian’s music. A “behind the scenes” account of this rather marvelous event can be found in the brand new update to David’s book.
David would find himself working on one other significant tribute in 2001. America: A Tribute to Heroes was telecast ten days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Actors and musicians paid tribute to those who were lost in the attacks, honored the courage of the first responders, many of whom made the ultimate sacrifice that day, and offered hope and healing to a frightened and brokenhearted nation through the power of song.
In the early 1990s, David’s career had begun to take a second path, as he began to write and produce documentaries. One of the first was Be My Guest, about the making of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. At the time, he knew little about animation, so this experience was very much a “crash course.” He reflects, “It comes down to the same thing over and over again: storytelling. What’s the story we’re going to tell that’s going to keep the audience engaged?” One of his earliest writing/producer credits also drew upon his love for the Beatles: You Can’t Do That! The Making of ‘A Hard Day’s Night.’ And in part inspired by that experience, a quarter century later, he created a course at UCLA called “The Reel Beatles.”
Simultaneous to his freelance writing career and the beginning of his producing career, much of his energy was also dedicated to helping Brian Wilson, with whom, in the years since the first edition of The Beach Boys and the California Myth was published, he had formed a solid friendship. Once Brian was freed from “prison,” as Brian entered into a new phase in his life and career, David became almost omnipresent. “As his friend, I was helping to manage what was now becoming a significant [solo] career. Slowly but surely, it was unfolding.” With Brian, David worked on the release of two landmark box sets, as a compilation producer and liner notes writer for 1993’s Good Vibrations box set, and for the magnificent The Pet Sounds Sessions box set, released in 1997. The liner notes for the Pet Sounds Sessions are the gold standard for well-researched liner notes that shed light on a monumental album. David also participated (and has two significant credits) in an authoritative documentary by Don Was, I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times. As Brian Wilson began to record again and tour, David was right there to support him.
As David’s producing career took off, many of the programs he was making are what he refers to as “father and son programs.” This concept originated from childhood memories of his father sitting him and his older brother down to watch the Marx Brothers movies that were constantly being shown on television. He describes his approach to these types of programs: “I’m going to assume you know nothing about these people, the Marx Brothers, Martin and Lewis, whoever it is, and I’m going to tell you a story about them that’s going to make you a fan.”
David relates a memorable anecdote about working on a program about Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis:
Jerry Lewis was a very, very smart man. In our lengthy interview, he was full of fascinating stories and anecdotes. When we wrapped our first shoot, he stood up and he said, “That was good.” He said, “If you had asked me to be funny, I would have walked out of the room.” The three-part docu-series was being constructed around the Martin and Lewis appearances on The Colgate Comedy Hour. And I said to him, “Why would I ask you to be funny? I have twenty-eight hours of you and Dean being funny. I needed you to tell me a story.” And he just nodded. I got somebody to take a picture of he and I together, and that was pretty cool. Jerry Lewis! I think that was one of my earliest pictures — earliest selfies — with an icon. Because ordinarily I was too shy to ask.
Throughout the second half of the 1990s and first decade of the 2000s, David and his production partner made a number of “father and son” programs for PBS pledge programming. These PBS specials included programs on Andy Williams, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Rosemary Clooney, Nat King Cole, and Ricky Nelson, to name a few. “It was great fun and very satisfying to work crafting pieces about these legends,” David says. Peter Lynch, who was the editor for a number of these specials, as well as the feature-length documentaries that were made during this time, elaborates on what made these programs so magical: “It really was all about honoring the performance of the artist, and with those shows, the full performances. It wouldn’t just be little snippets, but it would really be the whole piece so that you could enjoy it… Cherry picking all those old shows for the absolute best moments, but then letting them breathe and be the actual moments that they were.” In this way, by showing these complete moments, viewers, especially younger viewers such as myself, who hadn’t been around to appreciate many of these artists in their own time, were able to gain a greater sense of appreciation for these legends.
David shares another insight into his approach to storytelling in these programs: “With each show, find at least one person who’s going to be the one who drives the program forward as the story unfolds.” For example, in the show on Rosemary Clooney, this person was her nephew George, whose first Hollywood job was to drive his aunt around on tour. In the Andy Williams special, it was Andy himself, as well as his music director for The Andy Williams Show, Dave Grusin. Interview footage would be interwoven between the musical segments. “The key to making any kind of non-fiction television is to get great sound bites,” David continues. “Because I was genuinely interested in the subject, and came to the interviews with a certain passion and knowledge base, I was a surrogate for the viewer. We got great interviews from people.”
Simultaneous to these programs, David began to write, direct, and produce feature-length documentaries.
I had shown that I could tell a story in a book. I had done mini-documentaries on a lot of different shows, whether it was an Elvis tribute, or Christopher Reeve tribute or the Salute to the American Teacher. My production partner and I had shown that we could tell stories in these PBS specials, interweaving music. And so the big challenge that was coming my way was, could I tell a story that would hold an audience for two hours? One story for two hours.
The first of these feature-length documentaries would be on a group with whom he already had a relationship from a previous project: the aforementioned Bee Gees. This documentary would be a two-hour special edition of the A&E Biography series, and would be called Bee Gees: This Is Where I Came In. He had already, of course, written a book about them in 1979. He had been there in 1997 when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (by Brian Wilson!). It was a special project for David, too, because unlike the other projects he worked on which focused primarily on artists and entertainers of his parents’ generation, the Bee Gees were a group from his generation. He had been a fan of theirs since first hearing “New York Mining Disaster” in 1967.
The all-important question guiding this project: What was the story David was going to tell about them?
I felt like I was on a mission again to tell a story that would remind people how great the Bee Gees are, that they aren’t just the band who had some songs in Saturday Night Fever but had this long and spectacularly successful career as great record makers, as great songwriters, as great singers, as great artists. And so that was the goal I had in the back of my mind during the making of that documentary.
The first and most extensive interview for that project was conducted with Barry Gibb. Afterwards, David turned to his production partner and said, “‘We don’t need to talk to anyone else. He just told us the whole story.’ That’s how good his interview was. However, when you’re going to tell the story of a group, it can’t be just one person talking, especially when the other ones are maybe fifty yards away. So obviously I interviewed all the brothers and their wives and Mrs. Gibb, their mother, and Robert Stigwood, which was a whole adventure in itself.”
Stigwood, the former manager of the Bee Gees, lived off the coast of England on the Isle of Wight. David had to travel there to speak with him. Yet, it was important that his voice be part of this story. Sir George Martin was also among those interviewed.
David’s next feature-length documentary would be a particularly special one: Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson and the Story of SMiLE. In many ways, the title applies every bit as much to David himself, as it does to Brian Wilson. David reflects, “It was the fulfillment of that thirty-three-year-old insane notion: ‘I’m going to move to California, write a book about Brian Wilson, become his friend, and help him finish SMiLE.’ Everything about it was like out of a fairy tale. The fact that I made that documentary was just as fantastical a notion as the one I had in 1971. It was that big a deal.”
David had not originally intended to make this documentary.
What’s interesting in retrospect to look back on is that in 2003, when it was announced that Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE was going to be happening in February 2004 in London, we were just excited. As I wrote in the the chapter about the film in God Only Knows, it didn’t cross my mind to make a documentary. We wanted to be there as his friends to support him. There was no business calculation.
However, when Brian asked David to be there every day, every step of the way, he realized that in order to be able to be constantly present, he needed to make a documentary. Brian and his wife Melinda agreed. Always the consummate storyteller, David was able to identify the deeper meaning of this monumental event.
The goal here was to tell a story that everybody could relate to. This was not a story about the Beach Boys. This was not a story about a famous unreleased album. But it was the story about an artist, as somebody brilliantly says in the film, confronting his own destiny. And what would that mean? I had no idea what it would mean. I honestly did not know if, when it came time for him to walk up the steps at Royal Festival Hall to do it whether he would do it or not. In retrospect, that seems almost absurd. Of course he was. He was determined to go onstage and present Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE. But as his friend, I was nervous.
David was viewing events through three perspectives. As Brian’s friend, he was concerned for his mental health. It was obvious that Brian was nervous throughout the process, particularly as rehearsals began. As a fan, David wanted to see how this would develop. As a filmmaker, he was “terrified of what was going to happen.” This was, he now notes, “completely unnecessary.”
It was as triumphant a moment as any I think he’s had. Brian has had a lot of great moments in the last twenty-five years. From his first solo tour to the Songwriters Hall of Fame… playing a benefit with Paul McCartney, the Kennedy Center Honors, all sorts of awards. There’s just been a series of endless great moments. But I don’t think anything can top the ovation he got on opening night at Royal Festival Hall and what it meant to him. And to everybody there.
The ovation was endless. When it became clear that Brian could not silence the crowd, he stepped back to soak it all in, and, from David’s perspective, “breathed in and out the deepest sigh I had ever seen him take.” David tells the rest of that remarkable story in his book.
His next film was The U.S. vs. John Lennon, a film about the Nixon administration’s attempt to have John Lennon deported because of his outspoken political stance. Arguably the most artistic, as well as the most political, of David’s films, the film is a dire warning about the insidiousness of tyrants who seize upon our silence and inaction. “It was an allegory for what was happening in the United States in the wake of 9/11,” David says. “When Bush and Cheney launched their wars, suddenly there was dissent. I was a not-famous dissenter. But when Eddie Vedder and the Chicks [formerly known as the Dixie Chicks] and Neil Young came out against the war, they were ‘unpatriotic.’”
Like Beautiful Dreamer, the seeds for this film were planted when David was in college at George Washington University, and it took him thirty-three years to bring it to completion. He has so many great stories from making this film, none more fascinating than his first meeting with Yoko Ono. He interviewed so many significant figures, such as Walter Cronkite, Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky, Governor Mario Cuomo, and Gordon Liddy, and he has great stories about all of them. He tells all of these stories and more in his UCLA courses, “Docs That Rock, Docs That Matter” and “The Reel Beatles.” This film, with all the wonderful stories about how it was made, deserves an article entirely of its own.
David’s 2008 documentary, which he puts in his Top Five most significant accomplishments, is The Night James Brown Saved Boston. That film tells a story that I firmly believe should be required viewing in all history classes. In the aftermath of Dr. King’s assassination, inner cities burned in waves of anger and grief. Boston, however, was saved by the power of music, as James Brown performed an incredible and historic concert that was televised throughout Boston and maintained peace in the city. This film examines how that happened. As with The U.S. vs. John Lennon, the stories that David told me about making that film are numerous, incredible, and worthy of an article all of their own.
An additional film warrants a mention: Who is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin’ About Him?), which David produced with his production partner, John Scheinfeld, who directed it. This film blends moments of humor into the tragic story of an extraordinarily talented, yet profoundly broken, man.
As previously mentioned, David has been a professor at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music since 2010. He dryly acknowledges a certain degree of irony in this, as he admits, rather humorously, that he wasn’t the most diligent student. (As an example of his wit, when I asked him what he studied in college, his response: “As little as possible.”) Despite the apparent irony, he says that it felt very natural the first time he stepped into a classroom to teach. He credits this to the fact that “my work, whether it’s my books or documentaries, have a storytelling, educational quality to them.”
This year, he returned to telling his favorite story, and mine, the story of Brian Wilson, in what is now titled God Only Knows: The Story of Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys & the California Myth, the brilliant update to the book that has largely shaped the trajectory of his own story. It is available for purchase here.
In Part 2 of this piece, I’ll explore what it is that makes David and his work, including this book, so very special. What is the magic fairy dust sprinkled over this work that makes it worthy of such consideration?
PART 2: THE STORYTELLER
I first encountered David Leaf’s work as a child obsessed with PBS specials on musical artists of a by-gone era. I didn’t pay much attention at the time to who made these programs. As children, often we just take for granted that these programs exist. In many ways, though, I was exactly the right sort of audience for those “father and son programs” that David made for PBS. I hadn’t exactly been around when these artists were in their prime; only one (Andy Williams) did I ever experience in person. I knew very little about them, but through these programs, I was able to learn and grow in my appreciation for great music, one of the great passions of my life. The hours I spent watching these PBS programs were some of the happiest hours in an unhappy childhood.
It wouldn’t be until I fell deeply in love with the music of Brian Wilson that I would come to a fuller appreciation of David’s work. Brian’s music came into my life at a very dark and difficult time. Along with the music came a deep need and desire to know and understand his story. As I mentioned in Part 1, Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson and the Story of SMiLE was the story I needed in order to live. It has been, for the past three-and-a-half years, a near-constant guiding light as I navigate the challenges of life.
Of course, one can’t dive too deeply into the world of learning about Brian Wilson, his music, and his story, without coming across David’s name repeatedly. Between his documentary, the liner notes for the box sets, the liner notes he did for the “twofer” releases of Beach Boys albums on CDs in 1990, the liner notes for the 2000 re-release of Brian’s 1988 solo album, and his involvement with the Don Was documentary I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times and appearances in the A&E Biography Brian Wilson — A Beach Boy’s Tale, David’s name is ubiquitous. Elusive, however, has been the book that established that ubiquity. Everything I read pointed towards it. The works of others were often established upon the foundation that The Beach Boys and the California Myth laid. This book truly laid the cornerstone for almost all significant subsequent projects about Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys.
David’s book had long been out of print, and copies which were available for purchase online were priced well out of what was feasible for me. Thankfully, that changed this year, with the newly updated God Only Knows: The Story of Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys & the California Myth. The puzzle I have spent the past three plus years constructing finally found its greatest missing piece.
I could write at great length about this book. It is the most important book I’ve ever read, and I do read widely. It is the preeminent text on the subject of Brian Wilson. I cannot recommend it highly enough as a book about music and music history, as it tells the story of one of the greatest composers of all time. It also tells the story of personal redemption and the triumph of a great artist whose art is healing. This book is an absolute must-read.
My immense love for Beautiful Dreamer, The Pet Sounds Sessions liner notes, and, now, the updated book, led me to “connect the dots,” in a sense, to all of David’s other work, to realize that he was, in fact, the one responsible for, not only telling me the story I’ve needed for my survival these past few years, but also those happy hours of entertainment and education in my childhood with those PBS specials. This led me to scouring the Internet for everything else I could possibly find that he has made. This summer, I watched as much of his work as I possibly could. Many of these I watched several times, finding each one to be just as wonderful, just as profound, as the work that fascinated me in the first place.
As my knowledge of, appreciation for, and fascination with David’s work has grown, so has my understanding of what, in my view, makes his work so incredibly special. Not only is his work lavishly sprinkled with the magic fairy dust of masterful storytelling, it is also richly imbued with moral excellence, a characteristic reflective of the character of its maker.
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I had the great privilege of talking to two of David’s best friends in preparing for this piece: Eric Kulberg, who has known David since the early 1970s, and Kevin Gershan, who first worked with him on Solid Gold in the mid-1980s. They both said so many wonderful things about him, more than I can possibly include in this short piece. Seasoned professionals, they both spoke warmly of the connection between David’s decency and his work.
Gershan notes that, “As a person, David is generous, he’s selfless, way too modest for a guy with so many extraordinary talents.” Kulberg agrees. “He puts his whole heart into his work. Filmmakers like him don’t grow like Christmas trees.” He further notes, “He’s the kind of a person that just brings out the best in you and encourages your creativity. David’s always been like that.”
A recurring theme in my conversations with them was the importance of trust, and the remarkable extent to which David is able to gain and maintain the trust of others. Says Gershan: “If you have a bullshit detector at all, it never goes off with David Leaf, because he’s smart, he’s thoughtful, and he’s also kind.” Kulberg considers David among his best friends. “He’s somebody that I totally trust. I can’t imagine life without David Leaf.”
David himself acknowledged to me the importance of trust in the work that he does. “That trust is something you have to earn, and it gets built up over time and it can vanish in a second. You can do something that could feel like a betrayal. So I’ve always been conscious with the artists, as well as the artists’ families, and, in many cases, the estates of the artist, that when I tell them something, I’m going to do it.” David’s website refers to him as “Trusted by Icons,” a claim well-supported by the evidence of all the work he has done.
An example: A moment in the first few minutes of Bee Gees: This Is Where I Came In reveals the remarkable degree to which David had built a relationship with the brothers. Robin says, “I’m basically a very shy person. I have to really know somebody, before I reveal myself.” The fact that he is comfortable enough to admit that, let alone open up about anything else, reveals the trust he has in David, with whom the brothers had become acquainted in the late 1970s when he wrote their authorized autobiography. There is a rather sweet moment before the end credits in the DVD version of that same documentary that demonstrates the enthusiasm that Maurice had for David, as well. That relationship continues to this day with the last surviving Gibb, Sir Barry, who wrote a lovely essay for David’s 2022 update of God Only Knows, his epic book on Brian Wilson. Relationships like this are by no means insignificant and are an incredible testament to the impression that David leaves even on figures as notable as the Bee Gees.
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Renowned film critic Roger Ebert wrote: “If I were a film producer hoping to make a movie with deep appeal, I would consciously look for Elevation — remembering that it seems to come not through messages or happy endings or sad ones, but in moments when characters we believe in — even an animated robot garbageman — achieve something good. I have observed before that we live in a box of space and time, and movies can open a window in the box. One human life, closely observed, is everyone’s life. In the particular is the universal. Empathy is the feeling that most makes us human. Elevation may be the emotion caused when we see people giving themselves up, if only for a moment, to caring about others.”
“Elevation” — our visceral reactions; what makes a piece “moving.” This concept becomes reality in David’s work. As David himself describes it, “If something makes me feel, and if I’m going to do work on that subject, it’s important for the audience, as best as possible, to feel what I feel.” Kevin Gershan agrees: “That’s what he does. He leaves an impression and a visceral feeling.”
He does this by telling stories that tug at our hearts. This is no sentimentality for the mere sake of it, though. These stories touch us because they are deeply woven with compassion for their subject, an empathy that opens the door for us to understand a little bit more about the circumstances of our own lives and those around us. They reveal to us the depth of our pain and our capacity to triumph. Very important to David is our capacity to triumph over adversity. Many of his stories, especially his favorite story, that of Brian Wilson, are stories of triumph. At last, in God Only Knows, his biography of Brian finally has a triumphant ending.
Apart from his work on recognizable icons, David’s gifts of empathy and sensitivity would be expressed to an extraordinary degree in a lesser-known project he did. In 1998, he worked as a writer and segment producer on a tribute show to Christopher Reeve, who had been paralyzed in an equestrian accident three years prior. One of his segments that evening was about a young man named Travis Roy.
Travis Roy was a young and talented hockey player with a promising future. Yet, eleven seconds was all it took for his life to change forever. An unfortunate accident in 1995, in his first Boston University hockey game, brought his career to an abrupt end — and left him paralyzed. Yet, he turned tragedy into inspiration, completing a degree in communications and dedicating his life, through his Travis Roy Foundation, to advocacy and aid for others living with spinal cord injuries. He became a motivational speaker. Sadly, he passed away just a couple years ago due to surgical complications.
In the space of a film spanning just a few minutes in the 1998 Christopher Reeve tribute, David was able to tell the story of this extraordinary young man as he had lived it up to that point. Travis and his family were also present in person for the event. David recalls, after the event, accompanying Travis and his family out to the car that was waiting for them, and witnessing just a glimpse of the daily challenges of doing simple things. It was an experience that left a profound impact on him. As he told me, “This resonates so strongly with me all these years later. I’ve never forgotten the experience, the satisfaction at telling his story in a very short film and the terrible sadness and feeling of helplessness when it was all over.”
The piece is itself incredibly moving. It’s one of those stories David seems to love to tell, where it can end on a note of, if not triumph, at least hope. And the ending is so hopeful, so confident. It is a celebration of the young man Travis was, and not just a tragic story of how a talented young hockey player’s potential career was cut short so abruptly and so quickly. In just a few short minutes, David was able to convey a whole spectrum of emotions: the horrifying nature of the injury, which becomes even more sad once we realize how talented he was; the sense of purpose that Travis found in the midst of his struggles, his selflessness in wanting to use his experience to help others; the sad moment where he’s in his wheelchair watching everyone else on the ice, and he’s talking about how fleeting moments with friends helps him to forget his situation; the hope, and even confidence, that he and his father express that he will walk again; the gratitude that Travis is who he is and that he was still with them. That’s a lot to weave together in just a few minutes and David did it so beautifully. It is a truly moving piece.
But I think also it is a testament to what a genuinely good person David is, that he allowed himself to be moved by what happened afterwards, with his experience after the show. He allowed himself to feel those feelings of sadness and helplessness, to enter, for that brief moment, into the world of this young man, not just as the person descending from on high to tell his story and then go back to his own lofty world, but to genuinely be present in that moment. I think that says a great deal about him. It shows how deeply he cares about the suffering of those around him, that he does work with great sensitivity. I would argue that a piece like this is completely on par with his feature length documentaries in terms of its importance and emotional impact.
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In addition to sensitivity, integrity plays a major role in David’s work.
In the words of Mark Twain, “Character is the architect of achievements.” The achievements that David can claim from his long and immensely productive career are staggering. Yet, as he told me in a conversation in which we discussed what he would consider to be his top five or ten accomplishments in terms of his work, “Being a good person is more important than all that, living with integrity.” It is precisely this honesty which is one of the key ingredients that makes his work so special.
One of the most significant things that has drawn me to his work is his commitment to telling a story that is true but telling it in such a way that it avoids the gossipy details. The U.S. vs. John Lennon tells a great, important, and timely story without getting bogged down in the details of John and Yoko’s romantic relationship and complicated personal lives that have no bearing on the particular story being told. Beautiful Dreamer allows the curtain to drop on a certain period of particular suffering in Brian’s life that has no bearing on the story being told. And the terribly sad and complicated details about Brian’s life that do need to be included are handled very sensitively.
David’s book on Brian, particularly in the 2022 update, similarly presents an incredibly sensitive and nuanced picture of Brian and the people who have influenced Brian’s life, even in more negative ways. No one is drawn as a caricature, and the more fantastical elements of the story, the aspects of their personal lives one would find in a tabloid, are consciously omitted. This ethical decision traces itself back as far as the first issue of the Pet Sounds fanzine, in which David wrote the following mission statement: “In defining what Pet Sounds will be, it may help to tell you what it won’t be. It won’t be a scandal sheet. Although the Beach Boys have, to say the least, unusual and interesting private lives, they are entitled to their privacy. We will examine their personalities and lifestyles only to the extent that it affects the music.”
The considerable degree of consistency present in David’s work, and demonstrated in his sustained adherence to the principles he established for himself from the very beginning, reminds me of a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” One can become so entrenched in maintaining a consistent view that they are unable to, later on, challenge earlier beliefs.
In this case, the 1985 and 2022 updates to David’s book are proof against “foolish consistency.” He isn’t afraid to re-examine previous assertions and even admit nuances that perhaps he didn’t appreciate when he first set out to write. He allows his mind to develop with time, rather than being constrained by what he initially thought. The most compelling proof of that can, indeed, be found in the 1985 update, because while he writes at greater length about such matters in the 2022 update, the fact is that, in so short a time between the original 1978 edition and the 1985 update, he already was developing the perspective — and already possessed the integrity — to re-evaluate his own views.
But, as it happens, time and experience prove him right. Much of the way he saw it early on has played out in both terrible and wonderful ways throughout the rest of Brian’s story. That is a source of deep fascination for me, as well, as I have read through the book repeatedly. And the things he is most consistent on are also the most beautiful and the most true, for example the way that David always speaks of Brian’s music as music that heals, of Brian as a healer. Consistency that expresses beautiful truth is not consistently wrong; it’s unswervingly beautiful.
Consistency, for David, is not a hobgoblin, but an indication of great wisdom, keen insight, and a very sharp mind.
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David’s work has, indeed, been widely varied. The broad scope of the projects he has worked on has been staggering. I believe in the importance of his work. I believe in the stories he tells. My childhood was greatly enriched by the PBS specials he made. The Night James Brown Saved Boston is a film that belongs in history classes. The same argument could be made for The U.S. vs. John Lennon. David has told many important stories.
But, perhaps, when all is said and done, the most important thing he has done, the very thing he should be most proud of, is not found in any one accomplishment (although many of his projects are, indeed, expressions of this). I refer to his friendship with Brian Wilson.
Kevin Gershan described it to me in this way: “There is a different standard between ‘like’ and ‘love.’ Brian and David love each other.” When I consider all that this characterization really means, it casts much of David’s work in an even brighter light.
As David often says, he set out in the 1970s with a missionary fervor to alert the world to an injustice that he saw in the way that Brian Wilson was being treated. The man who had given the world some of the most beautiful music of his time was suffering terribly and his needs were not being addressed. Something was terribly, terribly wrong. David saw that and, in the great journalistic tradition of luminaries such as Edward R. Murrow, from whom he learned that journalism could be used to bring change to a situation, he made it his personal mission to bring attention to Brian’s plight. His book, The Beach Boys and the California Myth, did precisely that. In the wonderful course of things, Brian came to understand that David was on his side, and they became friends. This was not a case of opportunism, of David being yet another in a long line of people who latched on to Brian as “the goose that laid the golden egg.” David’s love and admiration for Brian has always been entirely selfless and sincere. And the projects that sprang from this friendship were projects that, in my personal opinion, always had Brian’s happiness at heart.
On a podcast, Hollywood & Levine, David said about Brian, “I don’t think he thinks he was put on earth to be happy.” When I asked him about this, he said, “I actually believe that about people. We have happy moments…but how can one look at the world and say ‘I’m happy.’ Like Brian sings in ‘Love and Mercy,’ ‘a lot of people out there hurtin’…’” At every step of the way, though, David’s mission was, simply put, to help Brian to smile (please pardon the gentle pun…). Between the liner notes intended to capture and preserve knowledge and appreciation of the music (especially to the benefit of people like me who would come to love the music at a later time), the All-Star Tribute, which showed Brian just how dearly loved he is by his musical peers as well as his fans, Beautiful Dreamer, the book in all its forms, David’s mission has been to lessen the pain and bring happiness to a man whose life, despite its tremendous suffering, has been devoted to lessening the suffering in the world by spreading love through his music. That is true love and friendship, to dedicate so much of one’s life to the happiness of one’s friend.
That friendship, I very firmly believe, is an important part of the reason that Brian Wilson is still with us. David speaks of Brian having “guardian angels,” people who have helped Brian through difficult times of his life. In his book, he relates a story about how Linda Ronstadt helped Brian, for example. And certainly, Brian’s wife, Melinda, deserves so much credit for providing Brian with the “emotional security,” to use an often-quoted and quite beautiful phrase, that he’s always needed. But David himself has been a tremendous part of that emotional security, as well, by being there to help and support Brian. When Brian was rebuilding his life in the 1990s, David was by his side, not to get anything out of him, but just to be his friend, to provide him with the support of a normal friendship. When Brian began to take steps back into his musical career, it was David who he asked to be there to help him. The film Beautiful Dreamer was made precisely because Brian needed David there in order to go through that entire process of finishing SMiLE. A significant moment that David writes about in the book demonstrates the extent to which David put Brian first, even ahead of himself. In a crucial moment, David gave Brian a choice, the ability to make a decision for his own well-being. So few people have ever given Brian choices in which his own well-being was the priority. So much of any of the healing that Brian has been able to experience in these past few decades of his life is because of having the stability of friends like David after the hell he had been through.
David has told Brian’s story many, many times (and, I hope, not for the last time!), and in many different ways. In Part 1, I quoted Joan Didion: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Great and conscientious storytellers, though, don’t just tell stories for their own survival. They tell stories so that the rest of us might live. David told Brian’s story in 1978 in hope that he might live. (He even closes the 1985 update with a quote, “Where there’s life, there’s hope.”) One of the stories David told about Brian (Beautiful Dreamer) helped me to live. The love and sensitivity David puts into his work has saved more than one life. What greater testament to the character and importance of one’s work can there possibly be?
In the words of Kevin Gershan, “I’m a fan of not just his work, but I’m a fan of him as a human being.” So am I.
