The Unexpected Way David Leaf Built Trust in the Music Industry

The Question Behind Greatness

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Join me every week as a hill. Um, lift us, and we humble and we have some. Join the conversation. I appreciate you listening in.

SPEAKER_02 0:36

What does it really take to become who you want to become? My next guest, David Leif, writer, filmmaker, historian, and professor of music at UCLA, has spent a lifetime answering this question as he has worked with music's most legendary figures and bands, including the Beach Boys, the Beatles, and the Bee Gees. Because most people only see greatness from the outside. They see the headlines, the accomplishments, the public image, but they rarely get to understand the inner life, the choices, and the courage it takes to become something meaningful. But what makes David's story especially compelling is that it all started with a bold vision at just 19 years old to write a book about Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. No clear roadmap, just belief, curiosity, and the epiphany to move toward what called him. And today, that same lesson is what he passes on to his students in Westwood. How to move through life with more clarity and find your and find your way, excuse me, into clear waters. And I think that's a lesson for everyone on the final exam. With gratitude, it's an honor to welcome you to the podcast, David.

SPEAKER_03 1:39

Thank you. It's great to be with you. We had a wonderful time at the at the book festival in in Tucson. So uh I'm I'm thrilled to see you again.

Sinatra And The Frame Around Art

SPEAKER_02 1:47

So, David, I'm curious. You've worked with incredible artists such as Quincy Jones, Billy Joel, Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Barry Gibb, and most notably Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. What's it like to be in their presence?

SPEAKER_03 2:01

Uh it's a privilege. I I learned uh many years ago, I was a production assistant on a Frank Sinatra special. And I remember the producer saying to me, Hey kid, come on, we got to go over to rehearsal. And I was so naive about television production, so inexperienced, I didn't know they rehearsed television shows. And we drove onto the Burbank Studios lot, he parked in his special producer spot, and we walked into a big sound stage, and at one corner of the sound stage was the Nelson Riddle Orchestra, Nelson Riddle and Mr. Frank Sinatra. And we took two folding chairs and we sat down maybe 10 or 15 feet away. And the producer Paul Keyes said to Hey Mr. S, how's everything going? He said, Good, Paul, you're ready for us to run the show. And Paul said yes. Mr. Keyes said yes. And they ran the show. And within one minute of the start of their first song, I realized that what I wanted to do was be in that room with those kind of people. I it's like this is where I want to be. I want to be fame-adjacent, if you will. And I want to be be there doing something meaningful. And by the end of the production, what I realized is that what Paul Keyes did was that he had put a frame around this great piece of art and presented it to the public on television. And I thought to myself, I think I can do that. I think I know how to do that. And so that that really set me on a path of how do I work with great artists in in a way that benefits them and the world.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

What gave you the nerve and to do something so bold that today most people would never consider or take? I mean, where did the courage come from?

SPEAKER_03 4:03

You know, I I don't know. I sort of joke that when when I was five years old, my parents told me I was special and I believed them. Um I never had any lack of confidence. And I where that came from, um, you know, I think it had a lot to do with my up. My parents expected me to do great things. And so I I I was I needed to live up to that expectation. I also felt that I had been given opportunities uh in the world that I grew up in, that it was up to me to do something meaningful, not just become successful, but to actually contribute in a positive way.

SPEAKER_02 4:52

Again, that's something that I guess it's the your inner spirit that drove you from your environment.

Politics And A Crash Course In Power

Storytelling That Can Change Outcomes

SPEAKER_03 4:59

Well, it was in my it was my environment, but it was also the world I grew up in. I grew up in in the 1960s, and I was very, very aware of politics. I wasn't an activist, but I I remember uh I don't even know why, I was so obsessed with who was going to be president. Um maybe it came about because when I was 11 years old, President Kennedy was assassinated, and suddenly uh it was important. But I remember staying up late the night of the California uh Republican convention uh in 1964 to see if Nelson Rockefeller or Barry Goldwater would win the nomination. Um and and much to my disappointment, uh Rockefeller lost. Now I grew up in New York, and he was the governor of New York, and and uh he seemed to to espouse the kind of values that I did. And and so that was my path in in terms of my my political persuasions. And then when I went to college, and and I was in school in in Washington, D.C., and my dorm was was literally fly five five blocks from the White House. My dorm was five blocks from the White House, and it faced Pennsylvania Avenue at 21st Street. And uh again, I sort of joke, we got tear gassed whether we wanted to or not, because it was in the midst of the anti-war uh movement. And I I remember a friend of mine, uh Ronnie Rossman from high school, he was in the same dorm as I says, Come on, Leaf, man, we're gonna go see Norman Mailer speak. And we went to see him speak, ironically, in Lafayette Park, the same spot across from the White House where the January 6th uprising took place. And we listened to him for a little while, and then we heard what I can only describe as jackboots on the streets of Pennsylvania Avenue. And at Pennsylvania Avenue at the White House, it's it's it's level, but as it goes down to 15th and 14th Street, it goes downward. And so we saw coming over the rise uh the civil disturbance unit of the Washington, D.C. police uh wielding giant clubs, wearing masks that looked like Imperial stormtroopers. Whoever designed that for Star Wars must have seen these guys, because that's what they looked like. And they came at us with clubs. And of course, we ran, uh and we ran back to our dorm. And I said, What was going on? I we I had studied the Constitution in seventh grade, had a great history teacher. And I knew we had the right of assembly, and I knew we had the right of freedom of speech. So, what had we done wrong? What we had done wrong was have this gathering in President Nixon's front yard. And he didn't want an anti-war demonstration in his front yard. And so the unit had been called and we had been uh demolished. Uh the the event ended, and and and so began my real uh politic politicization, if that's politization, I'm sorry. Uh I became much more uh active, much more aware of what was going on, much more interested in in talking about it, thinking about it. And and you know, I was studying journalism in my freshman year, and I had read uh as part of a part of homework, we had read a biography with Edward R. Murrow, who's a legendary broadcaster, first in radio and then on television.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

CBS, right?

SPEAKER_03 8:57

CBS. And what I came to understand was the way you told a story could actually change the outcome of the story. And that fascinated me. Because kind of the uh to use the the dragnet cliche, just the facts, ma'am, um anyone could come up with just the facts, although we now live in a universe of alternate facts. Um but but uh to me uh uh the higher calling was telling a story that was ma uh telling a story that mattered um in a way that could possibly change the outcome. And that became meaningful uh a couple of years later when I discovered the Brian Wilson story.

SPEAKER_02 9:49

And how did you come up with the Brian Wilson story?

SPEAKER_03 9:52

You know, I had been uh a Beach Boys fan in the 1960s, but I was a the Beatles were my religion. I was a Beatles fanatic. So I had bought a couple of Beatles, uh I had bought a couple of Beach Boys singles, I'd gone to see them in concert, but uh in no way in shape could you call me a fanatic. And then I read this story in Rolling Stone magazine in the fall of 1971, written by uh uh a journalist who became a friend, Tom Nolan. It was a two-part cover story on Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. And if you think about where I was in my life at that time, we were it was a time of youthful outrage. We were angry about what was going on in the world. I remember I went to the very first Earth Day at the Washington Monument in the spring of 1970. So we were gonna change the world. And when I read about what was going on in Brian Wilson's life, uh, and and read this interview with him, it inspired me to buy the Beach Boys' new album, which was the the idea of the story. It was a promotion piece for the for that as well. And it was called Surfs Up. And the title song was one of the main songs from this album that the article explained to me had been shelved called Smile. And when I heard it, it was like, well, this is just as beautiful, if not more so, than the article said. And it was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever heard. And I thought to myself, why would anybody not want this music to come out? And the song just prior to Surfs Up on the album, a song called Till I Die, struck me as kind of a it was like in my room, except as a song of resignation. But what I heard more than the lyric, or as much as the lyric, was that Brian Wilson still had the musical abilities, he still had his gifts intact to express enormously deep feelings. And that's when I became obsessed, uh, if you will, and my roommate and I went down the rabbit hole as much as one could in those days. And my roommate said something to me that really changed my life. He said, Well, if you're so upset about all of this, why don't you do something about it? And I thought to myself, okay, I'm gonna move to California, write a book about Brian Wilson, become his friend, and help him finish Smile. And, you know, now that I look back on that moment, you know, over 50 years ago, I realized that I was on a mission, that this music had called to me, that the story had called to me, and that I was determined to do something about it. Even though I knew nobody in the music business, uh I was moving 3,000 miles from home.

SPEAKER_02 12:58

Yeah, I was just gonna say, I mean, you're driven by purpose, David, but didn't you have any doubts? It's like, what if, right? Uh what if I don't like did I make a mistake? Did any of that uh uh enter your mind?

SPEAKER_03 13:13

As I said earlier, I I just hadn't confidence. I mean, I remember sitting in in um in homeroom in high school, reading an article in in the high school newspaper and saying to the to the to my friend next to me, I said, I could write better than this article. And and the guy in front of me turned around, he said, You really think so? I said, Absolutely, and he said, Well, I wrote that article. If you're if you're such a a great writer, come to the to the to the newspaper office. And I did, and and I became the sports editor of the school newspaper. I was determined actually to be a sports writer and a sports caster at that point in life. It was Brian Wilson and his story that changed completely my goals, or or almost completely. I I did actually work as a sports writer and a sports caster in in the in the 70s after I got out of school. But but it my my goal, what what was driving me was uh Edward R. Morrow. Tell his story in a way that changes the outcome of the story.

Trust Built Through Emotional Security

SPEAKER_02 14:17

Beautiful. That's great. Speaking of Brian Wilson, how did you earn his trust?

SPEAKER_03 14:22

It's a really hard question to answer.

SPEAKER_02 14:26

I think I mean it's like me going and saying, okay, I want to write about Taylor Swift, and you know, good luck.

SPEAKER_03 14:33

It was my it was his friends who helped me earn his trust because they they believed in the sincerity of what I was doing when I was writing the book. And they said, Well, you know, if you're writing a book about Brian, you really ought to spend some time with him. So one night when he was at their apartment for dinner, they invited me over, and not to interview him, just to hang out, just to get to know him a little bit, so I could understand the person he was, not some fantasy that I had from the music or from what I had read, read in a magazine article, but but but just to get to get to know him. And so the fact that his friends that he trusted um sort of endorsed me, if you will. Um that's that's how I became uh his friend. And and it was a time in his life when he was getting separated from his first wife and going into hospitals, and and and really he had nobody on his side. Um and uh the the phrase that I use has to is is is what when we talk about love, we talk about unconditional love. The way he put it was emotional security. Uh, did the people around him give him emotional security? And when you remember that he grew up uh in abuse in an abusive household, you understand why that was so important to him.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

Yeah, I think that's certainly uh a life lesson that I think that applies even today is you know, beyond just the worries about doing your homework or finances, it's about that emotional security that allows you to become the best version of yourself. That's what gets, I think, the fuel to be of service to others. Because without that, then you are lost, right? Then you are perhaps anxious, you have worries, you have anxiety. You know, the list goes on with what people today experience, you know, mental health. I think that's part of one of these foundational things that can allow them to grow, um, in my opinion. And that's why, you know, with this podcast, it's just amazing to hear storytellers like yourself in terms of you know what it it what human spirit is and how well I think I think I think the answer to your earlier question is you know, how did I know I could do it?

SPEAKER_03 16:58

Is I came from a place of unconditional love and emotional security. So I knew I knew what it was, and I knew how to I knew how to offer it.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

Oh, man, that's that's great. I mean, imagine what the world would be like if uh if everyone had that innate spirit in them. I mean, again, we all live our our and I believe that uh you know this is my personal philosophy, but we all are fighting our karmic past, and how do we progress from that, you know, throughout the years and have that emotional maturity that applies within yourself, but you know, it's a teachable moment for your your kids or perhaps the community around you. So I think that's really important. And going back to Brian, though, I mean, again, having this inner relationship over time, did you see the beauty of the gift, the insecurities, or the burden of pressure um throughout his different stages in life?

SPEAKER_03 17:57

Th there were always people who wanted something from him.

SPEAKER_02 18:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 18:01

So I was determined to be somebody who didn't want anything from him. Okay. As were his closest friends, people like Danny Hutton of Three Dog Night, uh, my late wife, um, her best friend. We didn't want anything from him other than for him to be himself and to be well. So we were we were kind of cheering him on, and and throughout Los Angeles, it was this it was as if there were guardian angels who were looking out for him at various moments. Um in her in her biography, Linda Ronstadt tells a story of Brian showing up uh one night at her place uh asking for he held out a handful of change, and he said, I don't have enough money to do my laundry. Uh and she said, Well, let me get some change, and they went to a local laundromat. And and he said he said he wasn't hitting on me, but his the backseat of his car was just filled with dirty laundry. And so you imagine you know, she was already a successful singer, and and here is is is this legendary artist who had given the world so much with his music, so much good vibrations, if you will, that that okay, let's go to the laundry and do your laundry. And they, you know, and so they sat there and and did that. Uh I I met another guy uh uh who's who's a a rock journalist, and he remembers driving down Sunset Boulevard one day on a way to a visit his a friend, and there was this guy weaving in the middle of the street. He didn't know who it was, he just pulled over to the side of the street and he he got the guy got the guy out of traffic. And when he did, he realized it was Brian. And and so, as I say, there were there were people who were looking out for it. Um and and uh you know one of the saddest things I ever heard Brian say was, yeah, my family loves me when I make another hit. And and so uh, you know, again, his people like Harvey and Linda and and Debbie and Eva and I, we weren't, and Danny especially, um, we weren't looking for anything other than for him to be okay. Which maybe that was the biggest ask of all, for him to be okay.

SPEAKER_02 20:43

Wow, that's uh that's powerful just because again, we all have expectations that we have on others, right? Do this for me, please. Or if you give me X, I'll give you Y. But, you know, again, in this world of unconditional love and just let a person be, right? I think that opens up doors for trust and respect that uh, you know, you carry these memories for your life.

SPEAKER_03 21:08

Absolutely. I I I remember, you know, I think it was the the uh Christmas of 1980. Uh even I went to the hospital that Brian was in and just brought him a small artificial Christmas tree just so he could have a little bit of the spirit of Christmas in his hospital room.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

Yeah, I mean you you think that a person who's a public figure, right to fame, you know, has everything he wants, but I guess it just comes down to what does the heart want, right? And that is part of that emotional security.

SPEAKER_03 21:42

Well, what Brian wanted was to make music and and eat a hamburger or or a steak, you know.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

He uh In and Out, right?

Friendship Lessons From Brian Wilson

SPEAKER_03 21:53

You know, it sounds simple, but the music he wanted to make, uh most particularly in the year. 1966, when he when he composed, arranged, and produced pet sounds, and did the same with good vibrations, and then made the smile music, was he felt in his own words that he was creating a a teenage symphony to God. He believed that he was a conduit for God. That it was that the music was coming through him, that he had been chosen to bring this music to the world. And so there were people who supported him completely in that regard, and there were people who didn't.

SPEAKER_02 22:39

What did you learn from uh Brian throughout the years of your friendship?

SPEAKER_03 22:42

You know, I I refer in my book to the church of Brian Wilson. In that those of us who who uh uh an old uh friend of mine, uh the late Bob Haynes, he nicknamed us the Brianistas, people who who devoutly believed in what Brian was doing musically and that it was important. And and I think what I what I believed is you know, if Brian believes so strongly in this, if Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Elton John and Sir George Martin all think he's a genius, who is anybody to disagree? You know, and and so it was I was signing on to his vision.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

That's incredible. What do you think Brian learned from you? That's really the harder question, I thought.

SPEAKER_03 23:41

Well, you know, he he was he was really a very sweet soul, and he loved to laugh. And I made him laugh because at heart I'm I'm a smart aleck, I'm a I'm a comedy writer, and uh he uh one day he went to Hollywood Boulevard and they had these souvenir shops for tourists where you can buy what looked like fake Oscars. And he he went there and he came to our apartment in Santa Monica with two trophies for me. One was world's greatest comic, and the other was world's greatest writer. Um, and you know, I cherish those to this day because you know they were they were hardly gold plated, let alone uh you know the real real awards, but they came from him. So for him, um he trusted me to tell his story to the world. Um and I I could do nothing to betray that trust. Uh so that so what did I learn from him? Uh maybe I learned how to be a friend.

Teaching Dreams With The Four Ds

SPEAKER_02 24:54

And I think that's beautifully stated because we all in this journey of life need a friend. We need our community, we need our support system to get us through, you know, perhaps any challenge or struggle or worry uh that's happening within a person at that time. And that leads me to my next question, David. And this is again phenomenal. I've certainly learned a lot. I think I've can honestly say I'm a better person just by listening to your story and wisdom through yourself and through the eyes of Ryan. But it's true. Um you teach now at UCLA and outside the instruction and homework itself, kind of along the same lines that we're just speaking of, you know, what are you trying to pass on to the students?

SPEAKER_03 25:40

Well, I I feel that my courses aren't really academic. It's not chemistry. You know, I actually say to the students, I said, this is not organic chemistry. Don't complain how much the work is. You're listening to music, you're you're you're watching people talk about music, you're you're watching music documentaries. I don't want to hear about there's too much work. Um what I'm trying to do more than anything, and the courses I teach, I teach a course called Docs that rock on music documentary, I teach a course called The Real Beatles, R-E-E-L, about how the how we saw the Beatles. I don't analyze the music. And I teach another course called The Legends of Songwriting, in which amazing songwriters come to my classroom and sit at the piano or hold an acoustic guitar and take us through their life in song. And what I'm trying to teach the students is best exemplified by one of the stories that the great songwriter Jimmy Webb told in class, where he was in the field, plowing the field on his father's farm. And he had a little transistor taped to the handlebars, and as he's doing that, he's listening to the music and dreaming that one day his songs will be on the radio. And I and I talk a lot about origin stories in my classes because I want students to understand that at some point everybody was a 19-year-old with a dream. Now, how do you make that dream come true? And so I came up with something called the four Ds, uh Four D's of Success, if you will, and their discipline, dedication, devotion, and determination, that nothing is going to stop you from pursuing uh your dream. And I say, look, you know, I tell them the story of me and Brian Wilson and smile, and that I had this dream when I say when I was your age. It only and I say it only took me 33 years to make it come true. And and and and and so, you know, if look, you and I say to the students, you are the sm smartest kids in the country. You got into UCLA. You're sailing along on the good ship UCLA. You've made it to my classroom, and I feel like my job is to help steer them out into clear waters before graduation so they understand the real world and what it takes to succeed in the real world.

SPEAKER_02 28:18

Yeah, that's uh, and you mentioned that it's those four D's. Do they ever give you a yeah, but? It's like, yeah, but Professor Leaf, right? And how do and how do you respond to that?

SPEAKER_03 28:33

Well, Randy Newman was a guest in my songwriting class one time, and my he heard the four D's. He said, You forgot the fifth D, and I said, What's that? And he said, Depression. Because as an artist, um, you know, you would have these depression depression periods or depression lives where you're trying to make, you know, you're making music out of thin air. Um, but this the only thing the students ever asked about the 4Ds was, what about destiny? Did I believe in destiny? And I said, well, I'm gonna quote, and I don't, I said, I don't know whether this is Mark Twain or the great Dodgers announcer Vin Scully or somebody else, but destiny is where preparation meets opportunity. And then I tell them about all the times I had opportunities, but I wasn't ready for them. And I said that your job, talking to the students, is to be ready for those opportunities. I explained to him, I said, look, you know, when I was, I wrote for the high for the high school newspaper and for the college newspaper. My first article about music was in 1971 for the college newspaper. And at Brian Wilson's funeral, I'm the person offering the eulogy. How does somebody go on that journey?

SPEAKER_02 30:01

And I think a lot of it is not being true to yourself, but staying patient with yourself.

SPEAKER_03 30:07

It's it's both. Uh I was impatient. I I you know, and I had I had other career goals as well. I wanted to be a sitcom writer, I wanted to write movies. Uh I never ever expected to make documentaries, and I made quite a few of them.

SPEAKER_02 30:27

James Brown and John Lennon being two of them, right?

SPEAKER_03 30:29

Uh The Night James Brown saved Boston and The U.S. vs. John Lennon, which was kind of my revenge film uh from against Richard Nixon for for the time I had been in DC, and as I say, we were getting tear gassed. Um a wonderful film called The Bee Gees. This is where I came in uh about that legendary group, and and of course, uh beautiful dreamer Brian Wilson in the story of Smile.

SPEAKER_02 30:59

Right, which right here.

SPEAKER_03 31:03

Well, that's that's that book is is is is ironically, that book came out 20 years after the documentary, and it happened because I I had a publisher in London I was working with, who I had done a book uh called God Only Knows in in 2022. And not only did I title it after one of Brian's most beautiful songs, but I also, when people said, Why did I choose that title? I said, because often the answer to the question is, why did this happen? Why did Brian do this, or why did the Beach Boys do that, or why did I do what I did? I said, God only knows. So there's a certain inexplicable quality to all of it. There, there's there's kind of not necessarily a definitive answer. But a few years later, when I told uh my publisher I wanted to do a 20th anniversary book for the movie Beautiful Dreamer, he said, What do you have in mind? And I said, I want to do a movie from that would I want to do a book with all of the interviews from the documentary because only about one or two percent of it actually makes it into the film. And he said, No, interview books don't do well for us. But if you do it as an oral history, we we we'll do we'll do that. And uh my heart sank because I knew how much work an oral history was going to be. But at the end, he in the end, in the end, he was right. And and the way I describe the book is imagine if you were sitting in the middle of a big room and there's maybe 20 or 30 people surrounding you in a circle, and each one tells a piece of the story, and then another person picks it up, and another person picks it up. And all of these people were eyewitnesses or participants in Brian Wilson's journey, including Brian, who who gave us a gave who, after a number of difficult attempts, gave us a great interview for the for the for the documentary. I remember once he said to me, David, ask better questions, which was something no one had ever had said to me before.

SPEAKER_02 33:16

Well, hopefully I've done justice to you and to the legacy of Brian Wilson by asking these particular questions that I had in mind.

SPEAKER_03 33:24

You you have, you know, it's it's it's it's interesting trying to encapsulate this journey in you know a half hour or so, because you know, how do you how do you take a life and and shrink it down like that?

SPEAKER_02 33:40

Right. Well, beyond just the artist, right? It's really more about you and you know, the storytelling that you share to your students, you know, your journey, how you were able to, you know, be on the path of destiny, I would like to say, that you were on. And so I think, you know, beyond just the artist itself, it's the biographer of the artist, which I think is equally important. That's really what I wanted to highlight for the citizens of Yog Nation, I would say I I call it. And I and I'm I think I'm more nicer than Richard Nixon, by the way.

SPEAKER_03 34:13

So I'm I'm quite sure sure it's your you know it's zero to a hundred. So yes, you're you're you're you're you're at the hundred. The the um the the the thing that uh you know is true about me that that has to do with everything I've done is my parents were great storytellers. And uh I'm a storyteller. It doesn't matter what story I'm telling. I I I feel like I have a uh a born instinct as to how to tell a story. And I I think that's just that's just a gift.

SPEAKER_02 34:55

Yeah, and you've certainly wrote a masterpiece, I think, with smile just because I have it, and I've you know been reading some of the artists that had been in the book. I mean, Randy Newman, as you mentioned, Sir Paul McCartney, the list just goes on. It's like, you know, wow, this is it's it's pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_03 35:13

It it's it's because of the work I've done with Brian through the years, uh those artists trust me to to be part of whatever I'm doing. And that's that's the greatest honor. When I when I sent an email to Paul McCartney's office saying, you know, would would you write a forward for for my book in 2022? And I did the same with Barry Gibb and Jimmy Webb. And and they all responded uh in different ways. Uh Paul sent a short piece. He said, he said, I don't have time to write a big forward, how will this be? So he he sent a wonderful piece. Uh Barry Gibb wrote a wonderful piece. Jimmy Webb wrote a wonderful uh introduction as well. So so what an honor for me that these legends, these people who have given the world so much beauty, so much music that that touches our hearts and souls, that they would do that for me.

SPEAKER_01 36:15

So do you ever pinch yourself?

SPEAKER_03 36:17

What's that?

SPEAKER_01 36:17

Do you ever pinch yourself?

SPEAKER_03 36:19

No.

SPEAKER_01 36:20

Oh.

A Pinch-Me Moment With Barry Gibb

SPEAKER_03 36:22

I just feel like I'm I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. And and and so yeah, there's a surreal quality to it. I'll I'll tell you one story if we have time about that. So what so after I wrote uh my book about Brian, the first book about Brian, which was called The Beach Boys and the California Myth, um, it was at a time where the Bee Gees were the biggest group in the world, and they were looking for somebody to write their biography. And a guy named Jay Levy at RSO Records read uh The Beach Boys and the California Myth in galleys and said to the publisher, I think this is the guy. So that was quite an honor to be chosen to write the Bee Gees book. It was right right after Saturday Night Fever when they were were their head just exploded. I was a Bee Gees fan from 67, but in 77 and 78, they dominated the charts. I mean, the the the amount of success they had was was staggering, unprecedented. And and and so I went to Miami where they were living and working and and uh to interview them for the book. And one night I was in the recording studio, and everybody was leaving except Barry Gibb, who was going to record a vocal, and and he's and he said, Dave, you're welcome to stay if you want. And the only other people in the studio were the were Albi and Carl, who were the the engineer producers, and they were at a desk behind me, and I was sitting on a couch right by I'm getting goosebumps just telling this story. So there's the glass, and I'm on one side of it, and Barry Gibb is on the other side of it, and he's singing a song that I'd never heard before. He's recording what's going to be uh on their next album. And it's a song, as I'm listening to it, I'm thinking, this is incredible. This song is unbelievably great. And is it just because I'm here that it's great? Anyway, it's a song called Too Much Heaven, which became a number one record for them. Uh, it was a song they donated to the United Nations uh for International Children's Relief Fund. Uh so it wasn't just my imagination, but just seeing and hearing that moment, that's a pinch me moment. So I've I've had quite a few of those pinch me moments.

The Final D Is Dreams

SPEAKER_02 38:59

Yeah, well, a pinch me moment for me is this podcast and you know what I've been able to do inviting high-profile guests, guests that have name recognition, and being a conduit to tell their stories in the hope that you know people could take away something, uh, you know, your wisdom, your knowledge, and apply to themselves. You know, because I believe that at the end, you know, we're all here to serve others, but in the manner that perhaps in your storytelling around destiny and around the free or D is it is around having that belief in yourself or reminding something of that you've had in the past that your story is able to shed a light or bring back a really powerful memory.

SPEAKER_03 39:44

So I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll lay uh before we go, I'll add one more D.

SPEAKER_02 39:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:49

And that's dreams. And and I really encourage my students to make your dreams come true. I said there's no reason they can't. The question is, are you willing to work really hard to make them come true? And one of the one of the greatest compliments I got was from a student who had taken uh one of my classes, and she sent me an email about four or five years after she graduated to let me know she had just graduated from medical school. And she wanted to let me know that that my course had inspired her. And and that that's worth more than just about anything that that uh I'm inspiring students to to make their dreams come true.

SPEAKER_02 40:34

Beautifully stated, Professor Leif.

SPEAKER_03 40:37

Thank you, Yogi.

SPEAKER_02 40:38

Thank you. All the best.

SPEAKER_03 40:40

Best to you.