Brian Wilson discusses his latest effort, “Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin,” in an hourlong segment for Boston University NPR affiliate WBUR-FM that’s now accessible via podcast at the station’s website.

Wilson was the guest for “On Point with Tom Ashbrook” in a segment that WBUR officials invited me to join in on to offer a little historical and musical perspective. I interviewed Wilson recently about the ambitious project that brings together two composer-performers from drastically different times and places.

Ashbrook samples several songs from the CD that was released Tuesday during the course of the conversation; he also fielded several calls from station listeners during the live broadcast Friday morning.

The album also will be highlighted with another Wilson interview slated to air Sunday morning on NPR’s "Weekend Edition," which is carried in the Los Angeles area on KCRW-FM (89.9) in Santa Monica and KPCC-FM (89.3) in Pasadena.

--Randy Lewis

Photo: Brian Wilson at his Beverly Hills home. Credit: Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times

The publishing company that control the rights to the Beach Boys’ 1966 hit “California Girls” isn’t suing Katy Perry and rapper Snoop Dogg over her recent, similarly minded chart-topper “California Gurls,” as has been reported in stories circulating on the Internet.

But Rondor Music International has sent a warning to Perry, Snoop — a.k.a. Calvin Broadus — and their co-writers and publishers arguing that Beach Boys founding members Brian Wilson and Mike Love should receive co-writing credits because Perry’s record lifts the phrase “I wish they all could be California girls” from the original record.

“Using the words or melody in a new song taken from an original work is not appropriate under any circumstances, particularly from one as well known and iconic as 'California Girls',” Rondor said in a statement issued Wednesday. “Rondor Music, who publishes the works of Brian Wilson and Mike Love, is committed to protecting the rights of its artists and songwriters, and with the support of the writers, that is exactly what we are doing.”

Wilson and Love each told The Times recently that they are fans of Perry’s song, which spent six weeks in the No. 1 slot on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart. In the version that includes a rap from Snoop Dogg, the Long Beach rapper speaks the line near the end of the record, the first single from her new album, "Teenage Dream," set for Aug. 24 release.

"The melody is infectious, and I'm flattered that Snoop Dogg used our lyric on the tag," Wilson said. In a separate interview, Love asked, “What’s not to like?”

Publishers, however, have different agendas than musicians, hence Rondor’s letter of notice to Perry’s camp. “We have established diminutive claim,” Rondor’s statement said. “It is up to the six writers and various publishers of ‘California Gurls’ to decide whether they honor the claim or not.”

-- Randy Lewis

Photo: Perry and Snoop Dogg at the MTV Movie Awards in June in Los Angeles. Credit: Mario Anzuoni / Reuters

  
The announcement last fall that Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson would pay tribute to the music of George and Ira Gershwin, including completing songs left unfinished at George’s untimely death in 1937 at age 38, gave reason for both anticipation and consternation.

Anticipation at the prospect for a meeting of kindred but disparate spirits across time: one the quintessential musical voice of the Jazz Age in New York, the other the prime architect of the rock era’s California myth of hot rods, bikini-clad girls and fun in the sun.

Consternation because much of the beauty of Wilson’s once-wondrous voice had been ravaged for nearly 30 years by personal and professional traumas, from which he’s been charting a steady recovery in the last decade. But the question looms of what the creator of “Good Vibrations” and “California Girls” could bring to the revered canon of one of America’s cornerstone teams from the Great American Songbook.

At a listening session Wednesday night in West Hollywood, an audience of about 100 invited guests, including record company executives, journalists and others, got a listen to the result, “Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin,” the album scheduled for release Aug. 17.

Rolling Stone quotes former Beach Boy Al Jardine saying that the surviving original members of the group will reunite for at least one concert in 2011 to mark the 50th anniversary of the band’s first release, “Surfin’.”

But that’s news both to Mike Love, the founding member who controls rights to the Beach Boys name, and to Brian Wilson, the group’s creative mastermind who has pursued a variety of ambitious solo projects and tours over the last decade.

Wilson’s manager, Jean Sievers, told The Times this week that he has no plans for Beach Boys reunion activities -- and Rolling Stone quotes her to that effect -- and that he is focusing his attention on his forthcoming solo album “Brian Wilson Reimagines George Gershwin,” in which he has recorded his versions of several Gershwin classics and completed two song fragments left behind by the composer at his death in 1937.

Love also issued a statement recently regarding Beach Boys' 50th anniversary reunion rumors, stating:

The Beach Boys continue to tour approximately 150 shows a year in multiple countries. At this time there are no plans for my cousin Brian to rejoin the tour.  He has new solo projects on the horizon and I wish him love and success.  We have had some discussions of writing and possibly recording together, but nothing has been planned.

--Randy Lewis

Photo of the Beach Boys -- Al Jardine, left, Mike Love, Carl Wilson and Brian Wilson, front; drummer Dennis Wilson, rear -- performing in 1964 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium for "The T.A.M.I. Show." Credit: Dick Clark Productions

The runaway hit single of the still-young summer of 2010 is Katy Perry's bubbly "California Gurls." More than just a bouncy ode to sun and fun in the Southland, it's something of a long-delayed female take on the same theme famously celebrated 45 years ago in the Beach Boys' "California Girls."

Perry bypasses the region-hopping comparisons that the Beach Boys founders Brian Wilson and Mike Love engaged in for their song, but both salute the ongoing appeal of the sight of beautiful women in bikinis on a beach near the surf.

So I put the question out to Wilson: What do you think of this variation on your theme, and are you flattered or infuriated by it?

"I love her vocal," the Beach Boys' creative mastermind said Monday through his manager. "She sounds very clear and energetic."

UPDATE on July 21 at 4:17 p.m.: Mike Love also has become a Perry fan.

“I think she’s really clever,” Love said Wednesday, reached at his hotel in Medford, Ore., where the Beach Boys were performing that night. “We have a lot in common now: We both have done songs called ‘California Girls’ and we’ve both kissed girls and liked it.”

Perry’s song, he said, “obviously brings to mind our ‘California Girls,’ it’s just in a different vernacular, a different way of appreciating the same things. The Beach Boys have always accentuated the positive, and hers is a positive message about California Girls, so what’s not to like?”

Wilson also liked the version that includes a guest rap by Snoop Dogg that makes a nod to the original.

"The melody is infectious, and I'm flattered that Snoop Dogg used our lyric on the tag," Wilson noted. "I wish them well with this cut."

Little wishing appears to be necessary. "California Gurls" just completed a run of six weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and has sold more than 2.6 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan, with the vast majority being digital downloads.

Perry's musical homage has done so well that the obvious follow-up for the Santa Barbara-born singer might just have to be "Gud Vibrations."

-- Randy Lewis

Left photo: Brian Wilson poolside at his home in 2008: Credit: Karen Tapia-Andersen / Los Angeles Times

Right photo: Katy Perry and Snoop Dogg. Credit: Mario Anzuoni / Reuters

On the surface, the Beach Boys and Vic Chesnutt are among the most polar opposite artists you could draw inspiration from. The former embodied California optimism and pristine, grand vocal harmonies; the latter made album after album of piercingly intimate Southern gothic folk rooted in literature and his harrowing life story. But then again, "God Only Knows" is kind of the saddest song ever written, and until Chesnutt's suicide last year, he seemed to have made peace with the idea of death and redemption on his final album.

A bevy of L.A. folk-inclined artists will explore the legacies of each at "A Tribute to the Beach Boys:  A Backyard Benefit in Support of the Sweet Relief Musician's Fund" on June 19.