Brian Wilson

Brian Wilson’s death at the age of 82 came just days after Sly Stone’s at exactly the same age, another of the giants of the 60s departing from the stage. And there’s no doubt Brian Wilson was among the giants of that decade, the pop culture decade that played such a huge part in creating the world that we live in. Brian Wilson’s genius on those recordings the Beach Boys made in the 1960s is pretty much beyond compare. By the age of 21 he was producing mini- symphonies, elevating pop music (itself only a decade old) into an artform. His musical genius is evident in his songwriting, his skills at arrangement (his brothers' and bandmates' harmonies, the cream of LA's session musicians and entire orchestras), and his production (Good Vibrations, splicing together different recordings, the weirdly smooth but out of kilter psychedelic pop of songs like Surf’s Up and ‘Til I Die, the phased, magical sound of Feel Flows written by his brother Carl, the spooked eeriness of In My Room).  
Good Vibrations is a hymn to teenage emotions, love and lust as religion and mystery, something unknowable, the ultimate 60s pop song with theremin and harmonies, the most expensive single ever recorded at the time- and worth every cent.

'I don't know where but she sends me there...'

Good Vibrations

He had another side to his genius too. Brian Wilson grew up in Inglewood and Hawthorne, those south Los Angeles suburbs that grew as the city sprawled in the 20th century, post- war America's economic boom fueling mass expansion of the cities, rows and rows of identical houses with driveways and gardens and picture windows. His father was a brute, physically and emotionally abusing Brian and his brothers Carl and Dennis. Despite those domestic difficulties Brian grew up in post war California, the place at the centre of the most advanced consumer society in history, a utopia where every (white) family owned their own perfect home, where everyone had a well-paid job for life, where everyone owned a TV and a car, where the shops were always full and the ocean was always blue, where the 20th century dream was a reality. Brian knew, and you can hear it in some of his earliest songs, that there was something wrong with this, that there was a hole in the American Dream, that utopia had an emptiness. The beach, the tan, the perfect smile, the ice cold Coke bottle with a straw, the surf, the girls, the little Deuce Coupe, the endless sunset and forever summer- it wasn’t the answer. 

In 1963, following a run of singles most of which celebrated surfing, The Beach Boys released Be True To Your School. What could be more wholesome than that?

Flip the disc over and there’s Brian’s first real moment of fragility, the melancholy that emanates from much of his work, and maybe a sign of the mental health problems that affected him all his adult life. In My Room is an aching plea for solitude, a song about wanting to be away from the world and although the lyrics suggest his room is a place of safety, the minor key eerie beauty of the song suggests something else.  

In My Room

You’re So Good To Me, California Girls, Don’t Worry Baby, Wouldn’t It Be Nice, God Only Knows, Caroline No, I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times, I Know there’s An Answer/ Hang Onto Your Ego… all these songs have that at their core, a sadness, a searching quality, an answer to a question that you don't want to ask and can't be found.

You're So Good To Me

This melancholy and emptiness inside Brian Wilson- no amount of 20th century consumerism can fill it and as Brian discovered LSD couldn’t fill it either. Nor could religion. Pet Sounds is a sumptuous, perfect pop album and also the sound of a man welling up, his eyes filled with tears but he’s not sure why. 

In 1968 Brian invented pop culture’s first real moment of nostalgia, nostalgia for the early 60s, the desire to get back to a pre- Kennedy assassination, pre- Vietnam world where everything was simpler. ‘It’s automatic when I talk to old friends/ The conversation turns to girls/ We knew and their hair was long and soft/ And the beach was the place to be… let’s get back together and do it again’.  

And then in 1971 called time on the whole thing...

Surf's Up

In the 70s he struggled with mental and physical health problems. The other Beach Boys filled his absence with their own songwriting but he could still create absolute magic, his own version of psychedelia that mixed doo wop and barber shop quartets with 60s pop and tape effects. The albums Sunflower, Surf’s Up and Holland are peppered with Brian’s genius, with otherworldly songs that have a huge emotional power not least Surf’s Up, Sail On, Sailor and ‘Til I Die. There were various comebacks, upheavals, arguments, battles and re- unions, ill health and moments of resurrection. I never saw him play live but know people who did and who talk about it in terms of religious experience. A diagnosis of dementia in early 2024 meant that Brian's death was not unexpected but even so, what a loss.

'Til I Die

'I'm a cork on the ocean/ Floating over the raging sea/ How deep is the ocean?'
He was a one off in many, many ways. RIP Brian Wilson. Sail on.