The story of how in 1963, Sacramento teenager Fred Vail became the Beach Boys’ promoter and later manager sounds like something out of a Hollywood script.
That might explain why Vail’s life story and his relationship with the seminal surf band are being made into a docuseries. One of the executive producers is Beach Boys musical genius Brian Wilson.
The docuseries will feature Vail’s collaboration in 1970 with Wilson on a mysterious never-released country album, “Cows in the Pasture.” At Wilson’s urging, Vail, the band’s manager, sang vocals. As part of the documentary, the album is finally being completed.
That fact is no less improbable than the tale that led Vail to the Beach Boys in the first place.
Radio station gofer to promoter
Lifelong friend Ron Beatty recalls Vail always being passionate about the music business. Even in junior high, Beatty said, Vail had his “eye on tomorrow.” By age 13, Vail was working at multiple radio stations as a gofer, soaking up information from DJs.
“He stuck his nose in the door. And he kept it there,” Beatty said. “And if they shut that door, he would come back with a nose that was a little bit bruised the next day.”
Vail’s early love of music was nurtured by the man who founded Sacramento’s iconic Tower Records. Vail became life-long friends with Tower founder Russ Solomon, who opened his first store on Watt Avenue in 1960.
“I used to take my bike to visit Russ on Saturdays and look at the latest records,” Vails recalls fondly, “and he turned me on to stuff I might be interested in.”
By age 17, Vail was already a veteran in the music business, working at radio stations such as KXOA and KRAK.
“You bring the DJ coffee or cigarettes, you answer the request line, you’d bring them the weather from the UPI, or Associated Press teletype,” Vail said. “And you’d learn to be a DJ through hands-on experience.”
In his junior year at El Camino High School, Vail ran for Commissioner of Entertainment. He lost. But he ran again his senior year — and won.
“My campaign promise was: If you elect me commissioner of entertainment, I’ll bring big-name recording artists to the high school for assemblies, which was totally unheard of.”
But then he pulled it off.
Over the span of his senior year — Vail was in the class of 1962 — he persuaded singer Johnny Crawford, who was also a child star in the “The Rifleman” TV series; surf music pioneers Jan & Dean; and Motown legend Smokey Robinson and The Miracles to perform at a Sacramento high school.
“Before I graduated,” Vail recalls, “I became the most popular guy on campus because I had brought these incredible shows to El Camino.”
Even after graduating, now a Sac State freshman, Vail was not quite done with high school. The class of 1963 turned to Vail’s magic again when they asked the 18-year-old to dream up a concert fundraiser.
Vail was not afraid to dream big. He set his sights on a breakout surf band that had released two hit singles: “Surfin’ Safari” and “Surfin’ U.S.A.” — the Beach Boys.
Vail decided to book Memorial Auditorium, even though he had a shoestring budget and the band — one member, Carl Wilson, was still in high school — had never headlined a concert outside of Los Angeles. In May, 1963, weeks after his 19th birthday, Vail picked up the band at the Sacramento Municipal Airport in his parents’ 1954 Chevy wagon.
“You’re just a kid just like us,” Vail recalls an astounded Carl Wilson telling him.
But the kid had nearly sold out the show by calling in favors to a slew of the radio stations he had been working at over the years. The stations ran free promos.
At the concert, Vail was a calming force. Panicked after their first set, when the band had already blown through their material, Vail told them the kids would be fine if they played much of the same 35-minute-set again.
When Vail told the band the concert cleared more than $7,000, the Beach Boys, who had been earning $250 for their Los Angeles gigs, hired Vail on the spot as their concert promoter.
It was the first of many concerts in Sacramento. A live album recorded in 1964 in Sacramento, also Vail’s idea, topped the charts. It’s difficult to hear the band over the shrieks.
Ultimately, Vail promoted four Beach Boys shows in Sacramento in 1963 and 1964, as well as others across Northern California, including one in Marysville, hours after John F. Kennedy had been assassinated.
Vail recalls intense discussion with Brian Wilson’s father, Murry Wilson, about whether they should cancel the show.
“We didn’t know what to do,” Vail said, “so I called the mayor, who said he thought kids were already out of school, so it would have been hard to get the word out.
“I led a moment of silence before I brought the boys on stage. I said: ‘This has been a tragic day for our country. We’ve lost our president.’ It felt like that moment went on for 20 minutes, but it was probably 20 seconds.
“It may have been unconventional to perform that night, but JFK connected so strongly with young people. It felt right to be together.”
Afterward, Vail and the band drove back to Sacramento, where they were staying in a hotel. Vail said he remembers it feeling strange to count out all the proceeds from the show.
“It was a warmish night, and we were jammed in there. Murry and I had to dump all the money out from the show from these shopping bags filled with cash onto these two twin beds. We were counting crumpled dollar bills, occasional fives, quarters and nickels.
“Meanwhile, Brian and Mike Love were working on a song that they started the day before called ‘Warmth of the Sun.’” The song became a Beach Boys classic, which Love and Wilson later said shifted to capture the emotions they and the country felt about the Kennedy assassination.
On the 50th anniversary of the assassination, in 2013, Love wrote in an article for the Huffington Post, “I’ll never be able to hear or perform that song without recalling the loss of President Kennedy 50 years ago. ‘The Warmth of the Sun‘ was filled with a depth and a range of feeling rarely experienced in the life of any performer or band. Every time we sing it, the memory of that day is present. It is transcendent.”
Sitting on the floor listening to ‘Pet Sounds’
Vail and Brian Wilson developed a special bond. Vail recalled listening to the album “Pet Sounds“ in 1966 for the first time, “sitting on the linoleum floor at Capitol Records with my right shoulder against Brian’s left shoulder. Other than the Beach Boys and the Wrecking Crew musicians and the engineer, I believe I was the first person to hear “Pet Sounds.”
Vail’s voice cracked as the now-79-year-old discussed “Pet Sounds,” ranked by Rolling Stone Magazine as the second greatest album of all time. “Brian is our generation’s Mozart. The album is brilliant from side one cut one, ‘Wouldn’t it Be Nice’ to side two ‘Caroline No.’ There was Louis and Banana, Brian’s dogs barking, the train whistle going by.”
Recalling sitting on the ground at Capitol Records, Vail said, “Brian looks over at me and he says, ‘Well, what do you think?’
“And I said: ‘Brian, it’s amazing! I heard instruments there I’ve never heard on a rock and roll record.’ I know that meant a lot to Brian, because he was getting pushback from Capitol Records, who were worried it was too out there.”
An improbable stint as a country singer
Brian Wilson was in his creative prime, but he also famously struggled with mental health issues and drug addiction, causing him to curtail his live performances. Vail kept promoting Beach Boys shows with others playing Brian’s role, including Glen Campbell, who performed for Vail back at El Camino High School.
By 1970, Vail was serving as the Beach Boys manager. “Brian was doing better at that point,” Vail recalls. “I put together a ‘Brian’s back’ themed show at the Whisky a Go Go, in LA.”
One day, Wilson summoned Vail to meet with him, but wouldn’t say why.
“I went to the Saharan Motor Inn (where Wilson was working out of) and knocked on the door, and there’s Brian. And I said, ‘OK, what’s all this secret stuff? What’s going on?’ And Brian looked at me and said, ‘Fred, I want to do a country album. And I want you to sing.’
“I said, ‘Well, Brian, have you written any country songs?’ And he said, ‘Well, no. But I’ve heard you sing country and I know you can sing, and I want to do a country album.’
“I was pretty shocked. I sang in an a capella group at Sacramento State. But I’m a behind-the-scenes guy, not a behind-the-mike guy. But this was Brian; he created ‘Pet Sounds.’ You just kind of go with his genius.”
Vail’s love of country traces back to his teenage days as a Sacramento radio gofer, when he got a big break at the age of 16.
“I had worked as a gofer at KXOA for a year and a half. They decided that they were going to go country on their FM channel. Jack Lawson, the operations manager said, ‘Well, Fred, you know, country music, you got a pretty elaborate record collection.’ And he said, ‘I’ll make you a deal.’ He said: ‘It’s summer, you’re free, I’ll make you the morning guy. And I’ll make you the program director if you can bring in your record collection.’”
The inspiration to have Vail sing an entire album came to Brian Wilson from those early days when the band toured Northern California in Vail’s family’s 1954 Chevy station wagon.
Vail recalls: “I love country music, and when I picked up the boys, invariably I would have a country station playing, a Johnny Cash song or Don Gibson, who sang the original, ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You.’ The boys, understandably, were into Top 40 stations, the kind that played their music. So we would switch back and forth. I would croon when a country song was on. It was kind of a running joke. I guess Brian noticed I had a nice voice.”
For the album he envisioned, Wilson wanted to capture the same velvet sound he heard in the Vail family station wagon. Wilson and Vail came up with a list of songs that included Roy Orbison’s “Only the Lonely,” and Hank Williams’ “You Win Again.”
There were other songs. “I did a song called ‘Kittens, Kids and Kites,’ a song called ‘Bethany Ann,’ an up-tempo song. A song called ‘Lucky Billy.’ That’s about a soldier who goes over to Vietnam.”
For about two weeks, they worked in an L.A. studio, but then Wilson, who continued to have personal struggles, dropped the project. For decades, the recordings were thought to be lost.
Enter Sam Parker
In the 1970s, Vail moved to Nashville and ultimately founded a successful recording studio, Treasure Isle Recorders, where some of Vail’s heroes such as Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Dolly Parton have recorded.
Calling them brothers, Vail says his relationship with Wilson and the other Beach Boys members was exceptionally close.
Vail organized a White House Concert where the band, including Brian Wilson, was warmly greeted by President Reagan in 1983.
Still, after Brian’s brother Dennis drowned in 1983, and Carl died of lung cancer in 1998, Vail thought his collaborations with the Beach Boys, and Brian Wilson, were over.
But more than 50 years after Vail and Wilson worked on their unusual country album, a Beach Boys fanatic and young concert promoter reached out to Vail.
Over the years, Sam Parker had devoured every book and documentary he could find about the Beach Boys. He noticed “there were always these little mentions of ‘Cows in the Pasture,’ this mysterious country album that no one had actually heard, involving Fred Vail. I became fascinated.”
In 2022, Sam looked up Fred on Facebook. It turned out they both live in Nashville.
Though separated by 45 years, the two became fast friends, having regular meetups at a coffee shop called The Well in Nashville.
To Parker’s disbelief, Vail told him something incredible: The tapes from “Cows in the Pasture” were gathering dust in his garage.
Eventually, their espresso-fueled conversations led to a creative meeting of the minds that this unfinished album needed to be completed, and they should make a documentary about that journey and Vail’s life. Parker is serving as documentary and album producer.
Complicating the project, somewhat, is the fact that Brian Wilson has recently been diagnosed with dementia, prompting a legal conservatorship to be set up last month. Vail said that move is precautionary. Wilson, he said, is still able to perform and contribute. “He has a great team helping to stay creative and engaged.”
In an Instagram statement last month, Wilson’s family said, “Brian will be able to enjoy all of his family and friends and continue to work on current projects as well as participate in any activities he chooses.”
One of those projects is “Cows in the Pasture.” Wilson is slated to be a special guest vocalist on one track and perform an original instrumental number on another. All the original music Wilson produced in 1970 will be on the album, along with Vail’s voice, then and now.
The production team is being tight-lipped about the music and has not released any of the original recordings from 1970. During his interview with The Bee, Vail sang a refrain from the Johnny Cash song “Ballad of a Teenage-Queen,” which confirmed that, yes, Vail can still sing.
“We’re just very excited to be on this journey. I’m honored to be on this journey with Fred and Brian, and everybody else that’s involved,” Parker told The Bee during a break from a recording session with T Bone Burnett in Nashville. Burnett, the 13-time Grammy winner, will appear on “Cows In The Pasture,” and is also co-producing the album with Parker.
Asked to describe the music the public will eventually hear, Parker said, “The style, it reminds me of ‘Sweetheart of the Rodeo,’ by the Byrds. You will hear Brian Wilson’s influence from top to bottom. It’s a unique sound.“
A concert is planned for 2025.
The producers are currently in Nashville, where Vail lives, and plan to spend time in Sacramento capturing Vail’s early years as a teen music promoter, when he brought the Beach Boys and other legendary bands to Sacramento.
Vail told The Bee he would be “thrilled” if the documentary could premier in Sacramento at the Tower Theater — a fitting venue, since Tower Records played a seminal role in educating and inspiring Vail.
If the stars align, Vail said, he would love to pick up Brian Wilson one last time at the airport.
“Or maybe he can pick me up in a limousine,” Vail said. “That would be nice. He can choose the music this time.”
This story was originally published March 27, 2024 5:00 AM.
