Meet Brian Wilson’s Secret Weapon: Darian Sahanaja

In the years after the long Smile tour, rumors of a Beach Boys reunion tour swirled. Oddly enough, Sahanaja had never actually seen a Beach Boys concert. “As a teenager I refused to see them because Brian wasn’t playing with them,” he says. “I was a little snob. I was such a fan of their production and recordings that the live performances always seemed dumbed down to me. I just couldn’t appreciate them as live performers when I was younger.” 

He made up for lost time in 2012 when he played about 85 concerts with the reunited Beach Boys. “We had Al Jardine as a guest singer [on Brian’s 2006 tour],” says Sahanaja. “And I just remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, his voice!’ It added so much authenticity. And then later to have Mike Love and Bruce [Johnson] and all those voices together. Those guys have something very, very special and magical.”

Not long after the Beach Boys reunion tour fizzled out, Sahanaja got a call from the producers of the Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy. “They had just cast Paul Dano to portray 1960s Brian,” he says. “They knew they had a great actor on their hands, but they wanted to know what kind of musical potential he had in terms of pulling off scenes that involved performances.” He flew out to New York and met the actor at the piano room in a Brooklyn music shop. “I didn’t know what to expect,” he says. “I loved him as an actor, but was worried I might be dealing with some prima donna with an attitude.”

His fears were quickly put to rest when he discovered that Dano was very polite, humble and extremely willing to learn. “He seemed like some of the fans I meet at shows that are extremely reverent about the music,” he says. “Much to my surprise, he had a great feel for the music and had done a little bit of singing in stage productions. He had never played piano and didn’t read music, but he was a fantastic study.”

Sahanaja’s work with Dano was so successful that the producers asked him to take on an expanded role, but he was hesitant. “I didn’t want to get involved with one of those Hallmark takes of this story,” he says. “There have been so many of those. I asked to meet with the director, Bill Pohlad. The first thing he said to me was, ‘I’m not interested in making the typical biopic.’ He said he wanted to capture Brian’s creative process in the studio during the making of Pet Sounds and Smile.”

Most biopics have the actors lip-syncing to archival recordings, but they were determined to avoid that route. “I just thought we could do better,” Sahanaja says. “And if we’re trying to portray some of the greatest players of all time in the Wrecking Crew, they should be real musicians. It’s a major pet peeve of mine when the actors playing musicians in movie are unconvincing, so I ended up gathering some of my super talented musician friends to play the parts.”

Sahanaja also worked extensively with the prop department to get the right vintage instruments. “It was really funny,” he says. “The prop master said to me, ‘Oh, you want them to be functional? You want the amps to work?’ Normally they just fake it and fix everything in post.” To make everything even more authentic, they filmed at original location of United Western Recorders (now EastWest Studios) where Pet Sounds was created, restoring it to exactly how it looked in 1966 and 1967. “It was such a thrill to play in that room,” Sahanaja says. “And 80% of the music you hear during those sessions is live. The rest were recordings of early takes so they can show a work in-progress.”

Dano also sings himself throughout the entire film and even plays the piano. “He worked his butt off and absorbed himself into the part,” says Sahanaja. “Something like ‘Surf’s Up’ is tricky for even an experienced keyboard player, let alone for somebody who has never played.”

The movie won rave reviews when it hit theaters in early June, just weeks before Sahanaja hit the road with Wilson for a tour in support of his new album No Pier Pressure. “When I did that first tour never in my wildest dreams did I think that 16 years later we’d still be out there doing it,” he says. “Over the years many people have thanked us for helping Brian out and that’s really sweet, but it’s really about the music. For so many years people thought the Beach Boys were superficial and insignificant. I used to take physical beatings from neighborhood boys for being a fan. Brian’s legacy was lost for a long time, so it’s been nice to see it get restored. It’s nice to have played a little bit of a part in making that happen.”

Wilson recently announced that he’ll celebrate the 50th anniversary of Pet Sounds next year with a European tour that will mark his final time playing on the continent. Does Sahanaja think that Wilson’s touring days are winding down?

“I gotta be honest,” he says. “Each of the past five years I thought to myself, ‘Well, this is probably going to be it,'” he says. “Brian is an interesting guy. He can be pretty lazy and you never know if you’re pushing him to do something he doesn’t want to do. But you don’t want him to veg out and just sit around all day and become a couch potato. He does have an aversion to anything that seems like work, but there’s that moment when he’s playing ‘God Only Knows’ or ‘Good Vibrations’ and we get that big applause and I love seeing that energy and love just take him over. He’s like a child in that he doesn’t feel it until it’s actually happening. It’s so sweet and it’s what keeps me going. Hopefully as long as he wants to continue doing this, I’ll be there.”