The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [57]
And I would do it like a child. That’s the secret. . . . I’ll tell you something. During the first moon shot, there was a press conference just before the launch. There was a group of Very Important American Journalists there, and, thank God, there was also my dear friend Walter Cronkite among them. And Cronkite sent me a note—we were in the same room because the press was interviewing the astronauts via TV—asking me if I wanted to ask them a question. “Put a question to them? Thank you.” And I wrote down my little question—three words—and sent it to Cronkite.
The other questions went on and on . . . about the fuel and not the fuel, about the gas and the starter and the trajectory . . . I didn’t understand anything being said. You know, I wrote a book about the conquest of the moon and I still don’t know how and why a rocket goes up. I’m very proud of that. And I didn’t understand the questions of the journalists, who were extremely pompous. Everybody was pompous. And then Cronkite said: “I have a question here from Oriana Fallaci.” Pause. And he didn’t ask the question. (He was marvelous, he was a real actor.) Then, dramatically: “The question is: Are you scared?”
Well, after discussing it with Aldrin and Collins, Neil Armstrong was elected to take the walk. “Well,” he hesitated, “you know, the adrenaline goes up.” “Ah, bullshit. Say you’re scared!” I yelled out loud to everybody in the press room. “Who cares about the adrenaline? Tell me, tell me, fear, fear! Walter, ask them about fear!”
And that was the question of the child. If you asked my youngest sister to put a question to the astronauts, she’d say: “Are you afraid of going to the moon?” Of course. That’s what she’d want to know.
BRIAN WILSON
by David Felton
November 4, 1976
Right now there’s the new album, ‘15 Big Ones,’ the tour [Wilson’s first with the Beach Boys in five years] and the TV special. Why all this burst of energy at this time?
I can only consider how my energy has bursted. I have refrained from sexual experience. I’m trying out this yoga—I read a book. It showed how if you repress sexual desire, not your kundalini but a similar type of energy is released when you don’t have sex. It’s been a couple months now I haven’t had any sex. That’s just a personal answer.
Very personal, I’d say.
Yes. Also because it was spring. To tell you the very truth, it was springtime. It’s just like they always say, in spring you start hopping, and we started hopping a little before the first of spring—we got our album and stuff.
This is the first spring in a long time, though.
Yeah, right. Well, we started hopping a few springs ago but we really hadn’t been serious about it like we were this time.
Maybe it was the combination of spring and the sexual repression.
Yes, I think that that was probably it.
Do you find it difficult to get into writing?
Yeah. Lately I have found it difficult as heck to finish a song. It’s a funny thing. Probably not much of a song left in me, you know, if any, because I’ve written so many, some 250 songs or 300 or whatever it is. And it just doesn’t seem as vast [yawn], the creativity doesn’t seem as vast. That’s why we did a lot of oldies but goodies this time on our album. That got us going, as a matter of fact.
I haven’t yet heard this album. Are you going into some new areas?
Not that I can think of. The only areas would be into Transcendental Meditation, using that as a base. We believe in it, so [yawn] we feel it’s our responsibility, partially, to carry the Maharishi message into the world. Which I think is a great message. I think the meditation is a great thing.
You’ve just recently become more involved in that yourself, haven’t you?
Yeah. I meditate and I also think about meditation. Which is funny. I think about Maharishi, about just the idea of meditating. It gives me something.
Do you think that might help you write more?
Oh, yeah, I think that’s gonna be the answer. As it progresses, I think that I’m going to gather more peace