Nelson Twins Hear Echoes From Their Father’s Life

Matthew and Gunnar Nelson, the twin sons of ‘50s TV and rock heartthrob Rick Nelson, played a show recently that carried an overwhelming sense of deja vu, once removed.

They’d been invited to headline a songwriters’ showcase for a group of TV music directors, yet they were treated rudely by the evening’s other performers because of their history as teen heartthrobs in their early-’90s pop-metal band, Nelson.

“We had this epiphany,” says Matthew, 33, seated on a couch next to twin brother Gunnar in the latter’s Studio City apartment. “It was probably how our dad felt--obviously on a smaller scale--after he got booed off the stage for being different.”

Their father, of course, had transformed a negative experience of his own into his last Top 10 hit, “Garden Party.” Nelson was dissed for playing the Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women” at a 1972 rock oldies show at Madison Square Garden, and from that came up with one of his best-known songs.

That song was written when Matthew and Gunnar were gearing up for kindergarten, but its message was never more timely.

“Those people didn’t accept him. He didn’t look right and his past was a little different,” Matthew said. “We felt very much the same way. We finally said [quoting ‘Garden Party’s’ refrain]: ‘You can’t please everyone, so you’ve gotta please yourself. Do your own thing--I don’t care what you think anymore.’ It was the most liberating experience I’ve had as an artist in my life.”

With each year since Rick’s death on New Year’s Eve 1985, in a plane crash in Texas in which his fiancee and five band members also died, the bond with their father seems to strengthen.

It’s a reflection both of the brothers’ increased interest in family roots and of conscious efforts to keep his memory alive, for themselves and for the public.

Those efforts have yielded two related projects for the Nelson twins: “Rick Nelson--Legacy,” a new four-CD boxed set from Capitol Records, and a string of shows and a companion CD, “Like Father, Like Sons,” in which they sing many of Rick’s hits--something they’d long resisted.

“We’re still writing, still playing, still recording, still releasing records on our own label every year,” Matthew said.

“But now it’s OK to tip the hat to our dad, because he was our best friend, and we really do miss him. Truthfully speaking, and the past has shown, if we don’t do something, nobody will, and one thing we can’t let happen is for our dad to fade away.”

The brothers will revive his memory and music tonight at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, mixing such Rick Nelson hits as “Garden Party,” “Hello Mary Lou” and “Fools Rush In” with hits from their own multimillion-selling 1990 album, “After the Rain,” and material they’ve recorded since.

Partly because of Matthew and Gunnar’s famous pedigree--the Nelsons are the only family with members from three generations who have charted No. 1 hits--partly on their good looks and partly on the upbeat melodic hard rock they wrote and sang, “After the Rain” created a rabid following for the twins that Matthew said was 90% teenage girls.

Digging Into Archives Revealed Happy Surprise

That set them up for the same credibility battles their father fought once he became a pop star in 1957 after singing Fats Domino’s “I’m Walkin’ ” on the TV show “The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet.”

One of the pleasant surprises for Matthew and Gunnar in digging through the Nelson archives for the boxed set was hearing tapes of their father’s earliest recording sessions.

“You know what? He was producing the sessions,” Gunnar said, proudly. “You could hear how involved he was in the sound. . . . Back in the days when there was technically no official producer on a session, 16-year-old Ricky Nelson knew exactly what he wanted to sound like, and he was making it happen. He was 80% of the production and Ozzie was 20%. And that was really kind of neat to hear.”

Their father struggled with shifting pop trends, something Matthew and Gunnar know too well. And Rick Nelson’s split from his wife, Kristin Nelson, was traumatic for Matthew and Gunnar as well as their sister, actress Tracy (now 37) and brother Sam, an aspiring musician who is 26.

During tough times, Rick always found comfort in music, as have his sons. “[Music] not only [kept] the two of us together,” Matthew said, “it kept our heads together through some really horrible times, like their divorce and him being gone.”

Music also helped them weather their fall from favor with the public and their record company when “hair bands” of the late ‘80s gave way to grunge rock.

Five years passed between their debut and their second album, “Because We Can,” which moved them onto the country-rock path their father helped blaze 30 years earlier. In the mid-’90s they even moved to Nashville, but both are back home in Southern California--Matthew lives near Gunnar in Studio City--and both feel drawn back to a sound that’s more pop.

“We’ve definitely gone through one complete cycle of our career already,” Matthew said. “We’ve been through our share of ‘My God, could you believe that show?’ and ‘Boy, this is a huge check!’ to ‘What? We’re getting sued by our T-shirt company five years later?’ . . . But we’re only 33, and we’re ready for another shot at this.”

Not surprisingly, another lesson from their father comes up.

“It’s weird,” Matthew said, “because he always used to say that a career is a series of comebacks. He was coming back all his life, and we do the same thing, emotionally and musically.”

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* Matthew & Gunnar Nelson, today at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. 8 p.m. $29.50 to $31.50. (949) 496-8930. Web site: https://www.thenelsonbrothers.com.