Fred Vail, the former manager of the Beach Boys, spent a day in November with Brian Wilson at his home, giving him updates on Cows in the Pasture, the long-lost country album that Wilson produced with Vail on vocals. Vail, with producer Sam Parker, is gearing up to finally release Cows in the Pasture and had been collaborating with Wilson. On Wednesday, he was shocked to learn that his longtime friend had died. Wilson was 82.
“The three Wilsons are finally back together,” Vail, 81, tells Rolling Stone. Brian’s bandmates and siblings in the Beach Boys, Dennis Wilson and Carl Wilson, died in 1983 and 1998, respectively.
“Sixty-two years, that’s how long we were buddies,” Vail says of his relationship with the visionary songwriter and producer. “Some great memories, some great moments. They all fly back at me: meeting them at the old house in Hawthorne; sitting on the floor at Capitol, when he mastered Pet Sounds; at Columbia, when we recorded ‘Good Vibrations’; and then all the shows at the auditorium in Sacramento that I emceed.”
It’s Vail’s voice that introduces the Beach Boys’ 1964 live album Beach Boys Concert — “Now, from Hawthorne, California, to entertain you tonight with a gala concert and a recording session…the fabulous Beach Boys!” Recorded in 1963 at the Memorial Auditorium in Sacramento, California, the concert, which Vail promoted, landed him a job as the Beach Boys’ manager, putting him front and center to witness key events in the group’s history.
“I remember being with Brian the night that Kennedy was assassinated, when he and Mike [Love] wrote ‘The Warmth of the Sun,’” Vail says.
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When the childhood home of the Wilsons was designated a California landmark in 2004, Vail again emceed for his friend. “When I introduced him, I said, ‘If I was alive in the 1800s, I might have gotten a chance to work with Stephen Foster, and if I’d been alive in the first half of the 20th century, I might have gotten to work with Irving Berlin or Cole Porter,’” Vail says. “But God had better things in store — I got to work with Brian Wilson.”
Parker, who first met Vail in 2014 and is spearheading the Cows in the Pasture album and accompanying film project, says the magic of Wilson’s music was that it spoke to everyone. “It spoke to Fred and I, and it brought Fred and I together through our love of the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson,” Parker says. “I’m eternally grateful to have the opportunity to work alongside Fred and Brian in completing this album that these two best friends started 55 years ago.”
