Former Beach Boys Manager Speaks Out on Brian Wilson’s Death, Lost Country Album

Fred Vail is remembering the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson. In an interview with the CBS affiliate in Nashville following Wilson’s death, Vail spoke about his relationship with the band.

Vail first met the Beach Boys in 1963. They soon tapped him to be their concert promoter and later signed him as their manager.

By 1970, Wilson told Vail something unexpected: “Well, Fred, I want to do a country album.”

The idea came after Vail jokingly forced Wilson and the other band members—Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Mike Love, and Al Jardine—to listen to him sing along to country radio while in the car together.

“I would have the country station on in the car when I picked them up at the airport. They didn’t want to hear country, so they’d switch it rock and roll station, and I’d switch it back to the country station,” Vail said. “It kind of became a gag.”

That gag became the basis for recordings, which came to be known by fans as Cows in the Pasture. The recordings, which Vail sang and Wilson produced, were never released as the latter man lost interest in the project.

Fred Vail Talks Lost Recordings With Brian Wilson

Decades later, however, producer Sam Parker met with Vail and asked what happened to the recordings.

When Vail revealed he still had the tapes, the men decided to team up to release some of the music by next year. The pair is also working on a documentary about the making of the album, and planning to release it in full eventually.

Now that work will be in remembrance to Wilson, who died on June 11 at age 82.

“The last time I saw Brian was December,” Vail said. “By that time, it was pretty well acknowledged that he was suffering from dementia and/or Alzheimer’s.”

As for his late pal’s musical influence, Vail said, “To the baby boomers of the world, Brian Wilson is the Mozart, the Bach, the Beethoven. As a songwriter, as a singer, as an innovator, every moment of every day, fans all over the world are playing a Beach Boys or Brian Wilson song.”

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