A voice or a song can be so comforting to someone who really needs it.
Being called a musical genius was a cross to bear. Genius is a big word. But if you have to live up to something, you might as well live up to that. God damn!
Dennis surfed. I couldn’t surf. I never learned how.
I approach my music-making as an art form – something pure from the spirit to which I can add dynamics and marketable reality. Music is genuine and healthy and the stimulation I get from molding it and adding dynamics is like nothing else on earth.
I don’t think I am a genius. I believe the word genius applies only to people who can do things that other people can’t do. I can’t do things others can’t. I wasn’t a genius in high school, and I’m not now.
I hate those old falsettos, I really do, and it’s embarrassing since I’ve grown up.
I think about God, yes, and I wonder if there is a God. And if there is a God, will God please help me through my hard trips.
I was very, very surprised. I never thought I would be that loved or respected.
If there’s not love present, it’s much, much harder to function. When there’s love present, it’s easier to deal with life.
I’m not a genius. I’m just a hard-working guy.
I’ve had emotional gangsters run my life for 20 years. I pray to God with all my heart and soul that it doesn’t happen again.
I’ve never written one note or word of music simply because I think it will make money.
Musically, I am The Beach Boys.
People are part of my music. A lot of my songs are the result of emotional experiences, sadness, pain, joy, and exultation in nature and sunshine and so on… like ‘California Girls’ which was a hymn to youth. So it’s 1976 and we’re still riding on our past success. I mean I’ve gone on like that for I don’t know how long.
Some people might think that sex is the highest experience you can have. I tend to think that music is.” Spirituality amounts to love with me. I consider it the same as love. And my band members are full of love.
Surfing music is dead. It was just a summer craze for kids on the beach. I’m finished with it. The Beach Boys are out. The Beach Boys are being arseholes to me. So. I take the lesser of two evils; I’ll work on myown, solo, before I work with a bunch of guys that don’t give a shit about me… they just spit at me and kick me, no respect at all.
The ocean scares me.
There’s nothing greater than a girl… Well a kid, your daughter, but that’s a girl too.
Well, yeah, I’ve had obstacles in my life. And I have a name to live up to. That alone was a hardship for me, living up to my name. Goddamn was it hard.
You say how you feel, and songs don’t lie. Songs are the most honest form of human expression there is – there’s nothing that lies about a song.
You’re called a genius by people, and then your whole life you become the part.
