The Beach Boys’ Dennis Wilson released his first solo album, Pacific Ocean Blue, in August 1977. A track, “Rainbows,” written by Carl Wilson and Stephen Kalinich with Dennis in the summer of 2026, is featured in the Phil Lord and Christopher Miller sci-fi film Project Hail Mary, starring Ryan Gosling.
The soundtrack to Project Hail Mary includes “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” – written and performed by Kris Kristofferson, “Pata Pata” – written by Miriam Makeba & Jerry Ragovoy, performed by Miriam Makeba. The Beatles’ “Two of Us,” penned by John Lennon & Paul McCartney, is in the movie but not implemented on the soundtrack.
“Rainbows” has also been heard in the dark comedy television miniseries DTF St. Louis, created by Steven Conrad.
Kalinich, in 1974, wrote the initial lyrics to “Rainbows” with his frequent collaborator Dennis, who provided the melody, and Carl then helped shape the music before it was added to 1976’s Pacific Ocean Blue, produced by Dennis and Greg Jakobson. The LP was engineered at Brother Studios in Santa Monica by Stephen Moffitt, Earle Mankey, and John Hanlon.
Reading the biography of Kalinich on his website, we discover a unique “American poet and lyricist, who has been in our record collections for over a half a century: When Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson, two of the most prominent icons in rock history, recorded “A Friend Like You” by Kalinich and Wilson on Brian’s album featuring Elton John and Eric Clapton, it was a testament to the lyrical poet at the height of artistic achievement.”
His website further explains his contributions to popular culture.
“An originator of the California sound, Kalinich rose to fame as a young man when he began writing songs with Brian and Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys on their Warner Brothers/Reprise record label. During his 30-year collaboration with the group, it became “America’s #1-selling rock band,” according to Billboard. Brian Wilson described Kalinich as a “poetic genius” and credited him with stunning the music world by unleashing Dennis Wilson’s full creative potential.
‘“Be Still” and “Little Bird” by Kalinich and Dennis Wilson, incorporated on the Beach Boys’ Friends album, brought a new spirituality and self-awareness to rock music of the late 1960s. “Little Bird” went gold with the Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations boxed set and has been recorded by international musicians. The Beach Boys’ second anthology, Hawthorne, CA, contained Kalinich’s “A Time To Live in Dreams.” His “California Feelin’” is among the all-time hits on The Beach Boys Classics Selected by Brian Wilson and appears on California Feeling, a collection of Kalinich’s songs by the MsMusic record label.
“Songwriter P. F. Sloan, most famous for “Eve of Destruction,” recorded Kalinich’s epic poem “If You Knew” and “Soul of a Woman” on Sail Over in 2007, the poet realized his lifelong dream of working with his mentor. Among the other vocalists who have recorded Kalinich’s lyrics are Mary Wilson of the Supremes, singing “You Dance My Heart Around the Stars”; Odyssey, whose recording of “Magic Touch” was a top 40 hit; and Randy Crawford, with “Only Your Love Song Last.”
“Actor Stacy Keach recorded Stephen’s “The Magic Hand,” and Beach Boy Al Jardine’s EP A Postcard from California features actor Alec Baldwin reciting Kalinich’s “Tide Pool Interlude.”
“After being lost for nearly forty years, Kalinich’s “A World of Peace Must Come” was rediscovered and appeared on Light In The Attic Records’ 2008 CD boxed set devoted to his poetry. Another early composition, “Leaves of Grass,” was released on this CD, accompanied by Mark Buckingham and produced by Carl Wilson.”
In the mid-sixties, I would see this Stephen John Kalinich around Hollywood, but I didn’t talk to or even know him. He had relocated to Los Angeles after attending Syracuse University. He had been in a fraternity on campus with Felix Cavilere, who would attain fame with the Rascals. Kalinich also knew the legendary Syracuse football players on campus, Jim Brown, John Mackey, and Ernie Davis.
Since 1969, I probably have had 20-30 lunches or dinners with Brian Wilson, often with Stephen Kalinich. The first songwriter signed to Brother Records in 1967.
This decade, I conducted a series of interviews with Kalinich about his fascinating peripatetic Southern California journey.
Q: After you moved to Los Angeles in 1964, I seem to recall you did poetry readings and encountered a 12-string guitarist from New York who had just come to town.
A: I was living at the YMCA in Hollywood in 1964. At the time, I had been doing poetry readings with the singer, pianist, and poet, Esquerita. It was before I signed with the Beach Boys’ Brother Records as a staff writer around 1967.
I went out with someone to an after-hours club. There was a guy with a 12- string guitar, a very good player. We started singing Beatles songs together at the party, and a man came up to us and said you guys sound great. “I have a club in downtown Los Angeles called Mrs. G’s.” I think that was the place. Over the next few days, we all exchanged numbers. He offered us an evening there to just sing Beatles songs.
We had no rehearsals. Jim McGuinn picked me up one early evening in his car. As I remember, it was a TR3 or TR4 convertible. I did not have a car. I was living at the YMCA then on Hudson in Hollywood for $15 a week. Harry Hall was the director. So, Jim and I played at this club. They were not overly receptive, but seemed to like us. The promoters were very encouraging and receptive.
Jim played a song of his, “It Won’t Be Wrong,” co-written with Gene Clark and Harvey Gerst, who designed the sound at the Ash Grove club. It was electric. The air sizzled. Jim was in the Beefeaters before the Byrds, who recorded it as well. This was almost 60 years ago. We did the gig, and he gave me his phone number.
He was the first person to take me to the Troubadour club before I met Doug Weston. the owner. He played in the front room, and people would bring their guitars. He was so good. There were no Byrds, he wasn’t Roger McGuinn yet, and I did not know Brian Wilson or the Beach Boys. Yet, Jim introduced me to many people he took me to a few other places. He was just a young guy hoping to play music. Jim was very kind and nice to me. I wonder if he would remember…”
In my March 2026 conversation with Stephen about the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, he reminded me of numerous eateries where I joined him and Brian, which, even with my memory, I had forgotten about. Various pizza joints, steak houses, the chocolate milk shakes at Stan’s Drive-In coffee shop, and the trays of French fries at Tiny Naylor’s with carhop service so we could eat in Brian’s white Mercedes-Benz.
In the mid-seventies, Brian would pick up Kalinich at his apartment in Brentwood, write songs, go get something to eat, and a couple of times they’d invite me to join them at the Delores Drive-In on Wilshire Blvd.
More French fries. More acne.
My most vivid lunches with Stephen and Brian were at Warren Stagg’s H.E.L.P (Health, Education, Love and Peace) restaurant in 1969-1971. H.E.L.P. was a popular organic-vegetarian restaurant located in Los Angeles on 3rd St. by Fairfax Ave.
“At the H.E.L.P. restaurant, Brian, Mike, and I loved the seaweed salads and boysenberry shakes,” Kalinich reminisced.
“Mike suggested the somewhat comical concept of Rent-A-Poet for me to help expose his lyrics and my poetry around town. Mike was extremely kind to me. He took me all around Beverly Hills, introducing me to people like his tailor and Sky Saxon of the Seeds, when I was working at a flower shop in Brentwood. Mike also offered me the use of his car at the time, a Rolls-Royce, if I needed it. It felt like I was in a dream. Carl produced my first record, ‘Leaves of Grass,’ at Studio B at Capitol Records in Hollywood.
“Just before the spring of 1968, Mike Love suggested a United States tour of the Beach Boys promoting Friends and a lecture on meditation by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
“Mike was deep into Transcendental Meditation. The group wanted me as the opening act, doing poetry. They bought me a new wardrobe at the Sy Devore shop, but promoters didn’t want a spoken word artist on the bill. They did a few concerts, and the tour was cancelled. The Beach Boys then went on a 1968 tour of the South with Buffalo Springfield and the Strawberry Alarm Clock.
“In February 2026, I read poetry opening for the Strawberry Alarm Clock at The Whisky A Go Go.
“One of my favorite songs is ‘My Love Lives On,’ which I wrote with Dennis. It’s on the Beach Boys’ Made In California box set collection. It’s a moving, touching ballad about losing but continuing to love no matter what occurs in your life. A cry to say love is the cement and remains through all things, even if the one you love is no longer present in your experience.
“‘Little Bird’ is also on the Made In California box set. Two versions. I always love those days when we wrote ‘Little Bird,’ the innocence of that time. The sweet feeling of goodness, a real hope that peace could come back to the world before all this craziness set in.
“I was thrilled the Beach Boys performed ‘Little Bird’ on their 50th anniversary tour. It makes me feel good inside and restores my spirit. ‘Little Bird’ is a prayer of beauty and grace in a wounded world that needs healing. Without meditating daily, I could not face the overwhelming challenges of this existence.
“My main goal at this time in my life, which is my passion, that stirs me is composing, writing poems and sometimes melodies, and now painting, and the reason I do it is twofold. One, it gives me great joy and satisfaction. It fulfills me and gives me a reason for living, but my second and equally important reason for doing what I do is to bring goodness into the world and to touch, inspire, and encourage other beings to be more open to love, living love, and expressing it in practical terms that help others. I believe this will help the whole planet, and I am grateful for the gift of life, and every day I am thankful.
“I feel very fortunate that God our grace or whatever you believe in in my case I believe in God and grace brought into my experience when I was very young a person that I could send my words to the word hardly change a word and find a melody within the words incense in a sense nobody was able to do it with me like he was able to do it I have done it with Brian and PF Sloan but never so consistently as with Dennis I would give them the words or leave them on his piano he would either do it in front of me or call me when he had it. It was as if it were a gift from the universe that we got together. In my case, I never wrote from a melody in those days, not that I can’t do it, but it’s rare.
“We were in early 20s were we’re both in love I know I was, and I think Dennis was, and we shared incredible experiences as friends it was more like we were friends then writing partners we talked about God and grace people see how wild he was but he also had a sweetness in an innocent and when he would hear the music or the lyrics he would almost be in prayer
“I’m extremely grateful. I feel it was a gift from the universe for us to share. I know I received it, and it felt like Dennis received the melody, and he had a humility that I have not often found in writing partners. I wanted to pay him special tribute because I’ve never met anyone like him, and also, I could recite a poem to him, and he could take a section from it and have a melody with it from his memory. That was a rare gift to. I’m not saying it was perfect, but it was beautiful, and to experience something like that in my lifetime is majestic, and it humbles me.”
I’ve previously chronicled Kalinich for www.cavehollywood.com.
In addition, David Kessel, CEO of Cave Hollywood, filmed a video interview with Stephen that can be watched on the website.
(Harvey Kubernik is the author of 20 books, including 2009’s Canyon Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon, 2014’s Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles 1956-1972, 2015's Every Body Knows: Leonard Cohen, 2016's Heart of Gold Neil Young and 2017's 1967: A Complete Rock Music History of the Summer of Love.
Sterling/Barnes and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik’s The Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. In 2021 they wrote Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child for Sterling/Barnes and Noble.
Otherworld Cottage Industries in 2020 published Harvey’s Docs That Rock, Music That Matters. His Screen Gems: (Pop Music Documentaries and Rock ‘n’ Roll TV Scenes) was published on February 6, 2026 by BearManor Media.
Harvey spoke at the special hearings in 2006 initiated by the Library of Congress held in Hollywood, California, discussing archiving practices and audiotape preservation.
In 2017, he appeared at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, in its Distinguished Speakers Series and as a panelist discussing the forty-fifth anniversary of The Last Waltz at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles in 2023.
During 2025, Kubernik was interviewed in the Siobhan Logue-written and -directed documentary The Sound of Protest,airing on the Apple TVOD TV broadcasting service. The film also features Smokey Robinson, Hozier, Skin (Skunk Anansie), Two-Tone's Jerry Dammers, Angélique Kidjo, Holly Johnson, David McAlmont, Rhiannon Giddens, and more).
Photos courtesy of Stephen Kalinich
