People meditate themselves because they are just trying to feel better, and transcendental meditation is a natural mental technique that you can perform and that provides that relaxation and also a little bit of broader perspective.
The studio part, to me, can be pretty laborious. You're inside for hours on end and can be pretty frustrating to get the sound you hear in your head to come out of those speakers.
The Beach Boys already had about four or five albums under our belt when these newcomers, The Beatles, took the U.S. by storm in early 1964.
We've had hassles, ups and downs, ins and outs, failures and triumphs. We're human beings, and we're not perfect. And we're mortal. But the Beach Boys is musically a tremendous body of work that transcends individuality and time and national boundaries.
'The Warmth of the Sun' was a very beautiful song that Brian and I wrote in the time period associated with President Kennedy's assassination. We didn't write words about that, but it was around that time we recorded that song, and there's a lot of emotion involved there.
The name 'The Beach Boys' is controlled by Brother Records Inc., which was founded by the original members of the Beach Boys and whose sole shareholders voted over a decade ago to grant me an exclusive license to tour as 'The Beach Boys.' With it, I've felt a great responsibility to uphold, honor and further our legacy.
I love playing the Hard Rocks; they've got a great stage, great lighting, great sound, and not so humongous; its more intimate, so we love playing theaters and clubs where the audience has a really good chance to see and hear the group and where the acoustics are good. I like it when we can hear what we're doing.
I actually have heard of acts who only do their new album, and don't do their hits. I've never been in that mind set.
If you ask any couple who have been married 50 years or longer, they will tell you they've experienced it all. The same is true of the Beach Boys.
Every summer, my grandparents would rent a house on Balboa Island. They had the house next to Bob Hope's. I've been going down there all my life, to that whole area.
Meditation was a turning point for me. It helped me deal with a lot of stress and has given me a lot of relaxation.
Maybe out of the fifty top Beach Boys songs, I was probably the co-writer and singing lead on forty of them.
What we look for when we need to find someone who can fit in with our music, the vocals and the harmonies and the way they blend are very important to us because if you listen to Beach Boys music, the harmonies, not only are the notes being sung, but there's a blend to it. The voices have to blend.
In the spring of 1968, The Beatles and I were invited by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to travel to Riskikesh, India. Riskikesh has been an important spiritual place to many millions of people over the years. It is situated where the Ganges River flows out of the Himalayas, and to be in that atmosphere was something incredibly special.
I meditate every day, which is profoundly restful and restorative. It wipes out a lot of the fatigue. That's my secret weapon.
I know there's millions of problems in the world, but if you dwell on those, then you're going to be miserable. I think my meditation helps me to transcend and get beyond the grip of all the negativity and regenerate from within a more positive attitude, which comes in very handy when you're going to do 150 concerts a year.