What Was And What Might Have Been: A Lost Interview with Brian Wilson

NOTE: It's 1988, Brian Wilson had just launched his solo career with the release of the eponymous Brian Wilson album, and Jeremy Gluck gets to interview him – "without doubt the apex of my journalistic career" – spending several hours in his company. Some of the interview appeared in the Guardian (entitled "Good And Bad Vibrations"), some in Sounds, but there is a whole chunk that hasn't seen the light of day in the subsequent 23 years. Until now.... Their lengthy dialogue provides plenty of evidence of Brian's confused state of mind and his then almost total dependence on Dr Eugene Landy. With the benefit of hindsight of course we now know that accusations against Landy of brainwashing, drugging and isolating his patient, then benefiting from an improper business relationship with him, ultimately cost Landy his professional license and reputation and in 1992 he was barred by court order from contacting Wilson. But all this was in the future. The Brian Wilson album was critically well received but didn't sell in any great numbers, and a second Eugene Landy helmed album, Sweet Insanity was rejected in 1991 by Sire Records and was never released. It wasn't until 1995 that Brian got busy again with his non-Beach-Boys career.