Gary James' Interview With The Beach Boys'
David Marks



David Marks is not a name you often hear associated with The Beach Boys. But he knew The Beach Boys in the earliest of days. You see, he lived across the street from them in Hawthorne, California. He played on their records. He toured with them. And then, he went on to record and tour with some of music biggest names, including Warren Zevon and Delaney And Bonnie And Friends. He's got a fascinating story to tell, or should we say stories. And he told many of them to us.

It's a real pleasure to speak with Mr. David Marks, "The Lost Beach Boy."

Q - By the time you were twenty-one you had been signed to five different record labels. I don't see anybody doing that today.

A - I don't think they have record labels anymore. (laughs)

Q - That's why they couldn't do it today!

A - A&M, Warner Brothers, Liberty, it's escaping me the other ones I forgot. Capitol.

Q - Did Herb Alpert of A&M Records personally sign you to the label?

A - Yeah, and Jerry Moss, his partner. I don't know if The Tijuana Brass had a release on A&M before The Marksmen. They must have. His wife was Dory and I think he was on Dory Records before he started. Anyways, Russ Regan, the guy who named The Beach Boys and was an independent promotion man at the time Murry Wilson hired to promote The Beach Boys, he is the one who got my band, The Marksmen, on A&M and Warner Brothers 'cause he was friends with all of those guys.

Q - Those record labels, A&M in particular, took the time to sign you. Did they take the time to promote your music?

A - Well, I had two releases I think on each of the labels, Warner Brothers and A&M. Later on in life when I became an adult I heard rumors around what was being signed of the organization back then. Roger Christian was one of the sources too, that Murry Wilson was kind of putting the black ball, kibosh on my career, saying they can't play Marksmen records because if they do we can't give them the new, exclusive Beach Boys release. It was kind of like blackmail. Murry was mad at me because I wouldn't let him manage me, The Marksmen. I said, "Murry, that's why I quit The Beach Boys, because of you. Why would I want you to manage my band?" So he got mad at me for that, the same way he did his own son Brian when he started his band, The Sunrays. He wanted to compete with The Beach Boys. That was after I refused him the managerial position in my band. They were called The Renegades. They were like a little, local, Blues band and he (Murry) turned them into a Beach Boys clone. He wrote the songs for them. Actually, Murry wasn't a bad songwriter to tell you the truth. He wrote a couple of pretty cool songs I guess. He had a lot of good points too. Without Murry, there probably wouldn't be a Beach Boys.

Q - Murry Wilson didn't know a lot about managing a band, did he? He had no prior experience, did he?

A - Well, he dabbled in show business. His main thing was he imported large machinery from England, like a lathe the size of a Volkswagon or a drill press. He'd sell one or two of those and that would sustain the family for a year and he would dabble in music. He played the organ and his wife played the piano. She actually taught all us kids how to play the piano when we were little. So, he was a brilliant businessman. He applied that business savvy to the music business 'cause business is business, and he did know about the music business somewhat. He was friends with Hite Morgan, who had a recording studio and a label, Candix Records. Our first song, "Surfin'" was on Candix Records. We recorded it at his studio because Murry had made his acquaintance. Murry actually knew Lawrence Welk too. So he had one foot in the music business and one foot in the machinery business. But like I said, he was a brilliant businessman and he applied that to the music business and was able to get us a deal on Capitol Records after every other label in town had turned us down already.

Q - When Murry Wilson went to Capitol Records, who said yes to The Beach Boys? Was it Voyle Gilmore or Nik Venet?

A - I don't know what the pecking order was at the time over there, who had the seniority or the rank. I know Nik Venet signed us. I think he was responsible for bringing the band into Capitol Records. Now, I don't know if he needed the approval of the higher-ups or not. He was the head of the A&R department, so he probably did it on his own. I know that position in record labels had a lot of turn-over because if an A&R man had one bomb or flop, he was fired. (laughs) But anyway, Nik Venet stuck his neck out and he signed us to Capitol and it paid off for everybody.

Q - I guess so! That Capitol Records building still stands, thanks in part to the releases and re-releases of Beach Boys records.

A - Yeah, and Beatles and Frank Sinatra.

Q - Glen Campbell.

A - They were talking about turning the Capitol Tower into condos at one point a few years ago. I don't know what they do with all that office space. The recording studios downstairs are operating. They do radio shows, voice-overs. My solo career was actually launched before The Beach Boys were actually conceived. I went to Richie Podolor studio with John Maus when I was ten. I saw the inside of a recording studio before Brian (Wilson) ironically. It was our friend John Maus who ended up being of The Walker Brothers. They were big in England. John Maus was our neighbor and he and his sister had a record out. It was a local thing in L.A. It didn't make it very big, but he did have some gigs around town. I used to see him go play when I was ten, so he was like my first mentor. My mom was friends with his mom and he reluctantly gave me a couple of guitar lessons in the beginning, but we became great friends. So, he was responsible for my whims of having a hit record on my own. My wild idea in my head, a long time before I even got into The Beach Boys. I played with the guys. Carl (Wilson) and I started learning guitar together. He was twelve. I was ten. John showed both of us how to play some stuff that he learned from Ritchie Valens, some of the strumming things we did in our ballads like "Surfer Girl" and "In My Room". All the ballads had the strumming thing in it, like of like the song "Donna" by Ritchie Valens.

Q - Did John Maus have Ritchie Valens as a student?

A - No. They were contemporaries. They kind of hung out together. Johnny went to his house in Pacoima and hung out. They just jammed together. Showed each other things. They were equally as proficient on the guitar I would say, but they taught each other different techniques. Ritchie Valens was into almost that Rhythm 'n' Blues, Rock 'n' Roll hybrid style. He was very unique. I thought he made a big contribution to the Rock 'n' Roll world actually. His untimely death. He made that one album which is a masterpiece.

Q - Did John ever talk to you about Ritchie Valens' personality?

A - No. You know, I've only had one thing in common with people and that's music. We never talked much. The people I'm closest to, I don't talk to very much. (laughs) My best moments are when I'm playing music with a band. No, he never mentioned Ritchie Valens' personality or any conversations they had. He would say, "Look what I picked up from Ritchie this week," and do this little strumming thing on the guitar. A lot of people lived around us too, like Chris Montez and all the surf bands like The Bel-Airs and Eddie And The Showmen and The Marquettes. They all came from the south bay area of Hawthorne (California) and Inglewood.

Q - Lucky you! You grew up in the right place at the right time with the right stuff.

A - I know. My mom was determined to move out here to California from Pennsylvania when I was born to see movie stars. So, when I was seven years old, as fate would have it, we moved in across the street from the Wilsons. I don't know if there's such a thing as fate. I think that things might be planned, pre-destined. All the bands that make it with a large catalog of hits like The Beatles or The Rollings Stones, Aerosmith, those kinds of bands, it's the chemistry between the people that makes it happen. It's the spiritual, inner connection and just the vibration it causes having that particular combination of people together causes that magical, musical sound. If one element was missing it wouldn't quite be the same. The magic happens.

Q - Did your mother see any movie stars?

A - Yeah. Our first place we moved to was a little, pink motel across from Metro Goldwyn Mayer in Culver City. So we saw a lot of different movie stars in their little sports cars. Then we would go to; I'm like seven, eight years old, my mom would like to go to the movie filmings out in Corbinville at a ranch where they had an old ghost town out there. They would film a lot of westerns out there. I remember we went to see Alan Ladd.

Q - Did you ever see Marilyn Monroe?

A - No, but I got to meet and have dinner with Annette Funicello. (laughs) She was something. Back in the '60s they had a big concert at The Cow Palace in San Francisco. Channel 7 had a big string of TV series. It was like 77 Sunset Strip, Maverick with James Garner. They had all these people at one dinner. They had us as the band. Annette was there. I was fourteen. It was a great thrill, a big deal to meet and actually be in the presence of those people I was watching on TV as a young child. It was kind of surreal being in the midst of all these great actors.

Q - I was watching a TV bio on The Beach Boys many years ago and they had it that Murry Wilson and his wife went on vacation and they gave the kids some money to buy food with. The kids went out and bought musical instruments. The parents came home and what to they see? The kids in the living room, playing their instruments. Was that the start of The Beach Boys? Did it happen that way or was that fiction?

A - Nothing is ever cut and dried, black and white. What happened was the instruments were rented from a place called Hogan's House Of Music on Hawthorne Boulevard. So, we had to bring them back in a few days. But it was because Brian was getting these big brain storms that the music started to flow through him relentlessly and he just had to try out these ideas. So, he rented a bass guitar. I rented a Rickenbacker. Al Jardine had like this upright bass that he played 'cause he was really into The Kingston Trio. He wanted to be in a Folk band, so he had this upright acoustic bass. That was his instrument. Brian hit the snare drum with his finger. Carl played his guitar unplugged. It was an electric guitar, but it wasn't plugged into anything. He stuck a mic down in front of it and that's the way the first recordings were done. I had been rehearsing with them. One day they snuck out and recorded without me. I was really mad. My feelings were hurt. I did get to do the next session, which was a demo of "Surfin' Surfari", "409", and there was three songs on the demo. Those were the ones that Murry shopped around and got us a deal on Capitol Records with. So then I was appeased. (laughs) That's the only thing Al did in the beginning. He didn't think the band was folky enough, so he went on to pursue his Folk career and we went on to do more of a Rock 'n' Roll thing. Brian got sort of enamored with Carl and my electric guitar stuff that we were doing with Fender guitars, trying to emulate Chuck Berry. Brian mixed his Jazz vocal arrangements in with that and we created this hybrid thing that no one had ever heard before. It really went over well with the Jazz vocals and the Rock 'n' Roll guitar. Grungy, garage sound over these beautiful vocals. It was kind of a paradox almost.

Q - You and Carl attended public school as The Beach Boys were gaining popularity and you guys had to leave because you were starting to create a commotion. What does that mean? Would girls scream when he walked down the school hallways? Would the guys get jealous and try to beat you up?

A - Yeah. There was some of that, definitely. I kept it quiet for almost a year. When I was in the eighth grade the word got out. Someone had seen my picture on the back on an album and it did cause a disturbance. The girls started paying more attention to me. Dennis had already quit by then, but the girls were already paying attention to him before that anyways. The football players, the athlete guys were kind of jealous. They were doing sports so they could get chicks. Chicks were kind of paying attention to us guitar players. I did get some threats from these athletes in school. One day they cornered me at a pizza joint after school and they were going to cut my hair off with scissors. Back then everyone had their head shaved. It was the style. The surfers had a little bit longer hair thing going on. Mine just kind of got ridiculous, down to my collar. They had their scissors and everything. It was just like out of a movie. I can't believe it. Dennis pulled up his red Corvette, walks in like John Wayne. "Is there a problem here?" "Oh, on sir." I jumped in the car with him and we took off. That was lucky for me because I was about to get my ass kicked. There were no guns yet. It was a friendly punch in the face.

Q - Did Dennis go on to a private school?

A - No. He just dropped out when he was sixteen. He went surfing. To answer your question, the first thing they did was get tutors for us on the road. That didn't work. So we ended up quitting public school, like you said, and went to Hollywood Professional School which was a private school on Hollywood Boulevard back then which all the movie producers and child stars went there.

Q - Did Mike Love go to that school as well?

A - Mike was a full-grown man when we started The Beach Boys. I was fourteen. Mike was twenty-one. It was funny, my dad would put his arm around Mike and say, "You're the oldest, so take care of..." I can't use the language, but Mike has been taking care of me ever since.

Q - Did teachers ever give you strange looks or ask you what life was like on the road?

A - No. By the time we became household names we were already away from school. I never really graduated until I was thirty years old. I took the GED. I made it halfway through the tenth grade in public school and then I tried to do the tenth grade over again at the private school and only made it halfway through. So, I didn't until my daughter was three and I was twenty-nine or something and decided to get a GED. I still haven't caught up with my daughter. She was smarter than me when she was three and I still haven't caught up. I tried to get a diploma to show her I wasn't a dummy. (laughs) It was a detriment when I tried to get into music school. I was twenty-one years old and I went back to Boston and tried to go to Berklee School Of Music and they said no because I didn't have a high school diploma or any formal, private music lessons or any of that kind of junk. But the guy around the corner had the New England Conservatory Of Music. He took me in and showed me some composer techniques. He was a resident composer at the college so he moonlighted and taught me a bunch of stuff. So that was cool.

Q - You studied Jazz and Classical guitar. What were you hoping to do with that? Become more diversified in the studio?

A - I left a pretty cool studio musician career. I was doing a lot of sessions for a couple of different producers and then I left that to go back to Boston to study Classical and Jazz like you said. I was just falling in love with the guitar and I wanted to learn everything about it and my career was on hold at that point. I was just focusing on the art of guitar. I didn't even think about making money with it. I was making pretty good money as a studio musician. They didn't even know my relationship with The Beach Boys. I was just making it on my own merits as a musician, which I kind of dug doing. I was digging that and so when I got back I was in Boston for a couple of years. When I got back that was all gone. I had been replaced by different people coming up. So that was just a little bit of a shock. Everything turns out for the best.

Q - As a studio musician who were you working with? What albums were you on?

A - Well, Danny Moore and his little brother Matthew Moore had a bunch of songs that he had written. So, I met him through the White Whale Record guys like Warren Zevon and The Turtles. Matt Moore was working with White Whale Records, so I met him. Mike Curb had a little producing studio on Hollywood Boulevard, Continental Recording Studio, and Larry Brown was his producer guy. He was our age too, seventeen at the time. All three of us were seventeen at the time. And so Mike Curb put us in his studio. We produced two albums called "The Moon". The band was called The Moon and we did two albums for Liberty Records. The same old story. For some reason they just went belly-up as soon as our record came out. So, it got air play on the East coast, but no one could buy it. It wasn't distributed to stores or promoted. Nowadays it's available on i-Tunes. It's a two cassette package that you can get on the internet. I was in another band at the same time. They were called The Colours. The guy from that band had given us two songs to do in The Moon, so it was like an inter-related thing there. Danny Moore was the same producer who had written "Shambala" for Three Dog Night and "My Maria for B.W. Stevenson and he produced some stuff for Kim Carnes. When he called me to do guitar work in the studio back in the late '60s it was for... All the guys in The Christy Minstrels decided they were going to do solo albums. So, Danny was producing these guys and he would call me. We had union sessions and we'd get double scale for playing on those guy's records. They all did an album. Paul Potash, Mike McGuinness, Donny Brooks. Also Kenny Rogers was around too before he made it big. Kim Carnes. Rita Coolidge. So, Danny was producing all these people and he would have me come in and play on their demos and also his brother Matt in The Moon. So, that took up quite a bit of my time. I lived right down the street from the studio. There was Paramount Studios, Continental Studios, Gold Star before they tore it down. I think they tore it down. But yeah, that was quite an exciting time. Warren Zevon. Leon Russell. Delbert McClinton.

Q - Were you on the first five Beach Boys albums, or was it six?

A - What happened was Brian was pressured to do a whole ton of material in two years. I think our contract said you had to do four albums in a two year period of time. We were flooded with material and recordings. Some of the stuff I was on, it just overflowed onto the next album after I had left. After I had stopped recording with The Beach Boys the residual stuff that I had played on leaked onto the next couple of albums. And then there were tons of compilations and re-releases, "Endless Summer", just tons of re-releases. I think "Endless Summer" went Double Platinum, Triple Platinum. That stuff sold a lot. I was always on at least half of the things they re-released. Officially I would say the first five albums during my stay there.

Q - Over the years, did people come up to you and say, "Didn't I see you on the cover of a Beach Boys album?" And you would say what?

A - To this day I put my friend as responsible for this thing that happened to me in Bon's Market. I walked in. I was in my twenties then and I was really scruffy with really long hair and a long beard, bags under my eyes, crappy clothes, and she was like a Gypsy lady or a hippie lady, and walks up to me and says, "Hey, aren't you this little kid that was on the back of those Beach Boys albums?" The hair stood up on the back of my neck and I got goose bumps on the back of my arms 'cause it was pretty eerie. How in the heck would she possibly... unless one of my friends put her up to it. I don't know. To answer your question, no, not regularly. Sometimes nowadays after the 50th Anniversary Tour people are starting to recognize me a little more like at Denny's Restaurant or something. They'll be a middle-aged guy with a Hawaiian shirt on who knows what I look like. (laughs) But for the most part I'm pretty anonymous. It's funny because everybody knows Brian Wilson's name. It's a household word. I've seen him sit down in the middle of a family at a McDonalds in an airport and they would just say, "Who's this creepy old man?", and have no idea who he is. Not a clue. But then they'll all see Mike Love walking through the airport and they'll point, the little children will point and say, "Beach Boys", but they don't know his name. It's weird. All the other bands, people in the band are well known as individuals, but for some reason that was never the case with The Beach Boys. It's kind of weird.

Q - You were once offered the position of lead guitarist in Paul Revere And The Raiders and you turned it down because you didn't want to wear a revolutionary war costume. Did you think that was silly or demeaning?

A - That was part of it. I was put off by their revolutionary Paul Revere outfits. That's just kind of a little joke. The real reason why I turned things down back then, I turned several opportunities down, that should have been the name of my band, Missed Opportunities, I was actually very dedicated and loyal to my own band. I didn't want to abandon those guys in mid-stream. We were recording and we had a lot of gigs. We were touring California. We did a couple of tours of all the cities in California, which was a lot of fun. We did that with a couple of surf bands. It was like a package deal. So, that was the real reason I turned Paul Revere And The Raiders down, but I did think it was kind of silly and demeaning to have to wear that kind of stuff. It was just copying all the other people at the time like The Beau Brummels. A lot of bands were doing that theme. They'd pick something, pilots or something, plus the reason I stopped doing The Beach Boys' stuff too is I didn't leave overnight. It took us several months to fulfill contractual commitments for gigs and tours. I stuck to my guns and I left the band. It was because I wanted to produce and write my own stuff. I wanted to be Brian (Wilson). It didn't quite work out, but it was a lot of fun writing, recording and producing songs back then. I didn't think I had anything to lose. I just wanted to experience that and I got to experience that.

Q - When Glen Campbell was a Beach Boy he really didn't care for the screaming girls. Did that audience response bother you?

A - Yeah, we loved the attention. Our amps were huge. We could play louder than they could scream. We had problems with our P.A. systems and our voices a lot 'cause we'd always have to use whatever was at the venue. We had to settle for their P.A. But nothing could overpower the Dual Showmans with two fifteen inch Lansing speakers, one hundred watts. We had like three of them on stage. We loved the attention. I remember being pinned up against a chain link fence on the way to the bus after a gig by a million screaming teenage girls. It was great. A little scary.

Q - What did these girls want from you? To pull your shirt off? A chunk of your hair?

A - They wanted to consume us. I think they just wanted to kill us and eat our livers. I don't know. They would pull shirt parts off of you. They would demand autographs. It's like I said, we loved it.

Q - I know you weren't inducted with the other guys into Cleveland's Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame when they were inducted. You had to wait, and now you have been inducted. What does that mean to you to be inducted into The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame? Does it matter?

A - What matters is that my biographer, John Stebbins, wrote the book The Lost Beach Boy about my experience with The Beach Boys and also my solo stuff and personal stuff. It mentioned in the book how I was left out of that original, initial ceremony, but when the Hall Of Fame people saw that they really did a great thing. They ordered like a thousand books and invited me to come to a book signing at their Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame book store, gift shop. They also had me speaking in the auditorium, which ended up being a packed house and it was like an interview, much like what we're doing right now. I sat on the stage, two chairs, the interviewer and myself and it was a smashing success. They recognized me in the Hall Of Fame finally, which is an honor. It meant a lot to me that they would go out of their way to reconcile that. It also means a lot to John Stebbins who wrote the book about me. So yeah, it has a meaning to me. It's not something that I would throw out lightly and dismiss. It's an honor. They went out of their way to do that, which is pretty cool.

Official Website: www.DavidLeeMarks.com

© Gary James. All rights reserved.