Bad Vibrations: Brian Wilson Sues Collaborator

After canning his iron-fisted father Murry Wilson as the Beach Boys manager in 1964 and getting a separation order from his psychiatrist/manager Eugene Landy in 1991, Brian Wilson again wants out of a business/personal relationship.

Yesterday, in California Superior Court in Los Angeles, Wilson filed a suit against collaborator Joe Thomas seeking damages and a breakage of their 1997 joint venture. As part of the suit, Wilson seeks a declaration freeing him to work on his next album without Thomas, who helped produce and arrange Wilson's 1998 album, Imagination.

Wilson and Thomas began working together in 1996, when the pair co-produced the Beach Boys tribute album Stars and Stripes. The pair got on so well that they built homes next door to each other outside of Chicago. After Imagination was released, Thomas played piano on U.S. dates with Wilson's band earlier this year, but did not accompany Wilson on his Japanese tour.

Wilson may be announcing more West Coast dates on Friday.

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

More Song Stories entries »

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