My Interview With Adam Marsland

With his Chaos Band, Adam Marsland recorded an album playing tribute to the songs of Dennis and Carl Wilson. This interview revisits his time with this material.

Would a Chaos Band tour be possible playing Dennis and Carl songs?

Adam Marsland: We did do such a tour in 2006. It did alright, but it was expensive to put on. We wouldn't rule out doing it again if the interest was really there, but again, it's a very expensive show to take out on the road.

I think it would be funny to do a version of this concept only playing the songs of Mike Love and Al Jardine. What do you think?

AM: We actually almost approached Al to do it. I can't remember why we dropped the idea.

How does it feel to have the official release of "Wouldn't it Be Nice (To Live Again") since your band covered it years before it's release?

AM: I'm glad people will stop bugging me to make a copy for them! We knew that it would be Alan Boyd's head if it ever got out. So our official line was that we didn't have a copy, that we'd returned them all when we were done.

How did you come into contact with Evie Sands?

AM: We met through mutual friends and hanging around the same places and through another friend, wound up going out to dinner one very late night and got along like a house on fire. So I started looking around for things that we could do together musically and it took off. I didn't know who she was at the time. I had to google her later.

Can you describe how it was to experience hearing WIBNTLA and others when most of the world hadn't heard it?

AM:  My reaction was, "Now the Surf's Up album makes sense." I was knocked out by the song but it also, I realized, represented a gap in what that album was supposed to be, and why it doesn't quite achieve the heights of the albums that preceded it.

In 50 Sides of the Beach Boys, you describe the way Carl plays major seven chords. I play them like this occasionally and they sound great. Any other chord shapes unique to Carl or Dennis?

AM: Dennis was a fairly orthodox keyboard player, actually. Of the three brothers, he had the most "normal" playing style. He had more of an arpeggiated thing whereas Brian and Carl both tended to play "rhythm", playing thick chords on the quarter or eighth notes, which intrigued me when I first heard it. It was an interesting and, dare I say it, very "humble" kind of playing style.

But it's true that Carl's keyboard playing style was, from what I can tell, kind of odd. He was apparently left handed which might account for some of it. I've seen some video where he's playing the root note on his left hand, and he just hit it with his whole hand like a karate chop. And I'm like, "whoa! Where did that come from?" Or maybe he was just hung over that day.

Thanks Adam.