Brian Wilson : 1942-2025

I grew up thinking the Beach Boys were pretty weak. My parents didn’t spin Beach Boys records, they spun The White Album, Sgt. Pepper, and lots of Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, and AC/DC. The Beach Boys were way too much sunny beaches, hot rods, and surfer girls for me to a. relate to, and b. really care about. Granted, this was the late 70s/early 80s. My still developing brain was hearing Van Halen’s “Light Up The Sky” in our family living room, not “Surfin USA” or “I Get Around”. All of that felt very antiquated to me, even at the age of 5-years old. Between Disney story albums I was spinning a scratched up copy of Kiss’ Destroyer on my Fisher Price turntable. The Beach Boys couldn’t compete, man.

I do remember a time in high school where I came out into the kitchen and my dad asked me if I ever listened to The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. He told me it was supposed to be this revelatory record that even got John and Paul’s ears perked up. I was like “No. And the Beach Boys? I don’t think so”, and I proceeded to the basement so I could practice some Rush songs on my guitar. As the years went on I found out my dad actually did like The Beach Boys, but he was more of a Jan and Dean fan(“Dead Man’s Curve” was pretty metal for the early 60s.) I think he was trying to connect with me, but as a pretentious teenage music snob I didn’t get it then.

Fast forward a few years to 1997 and I saw Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights in the theater. The second to last song that played, during sort of the epilogue was “God Only Knows”. You’d think at the age of 23 I would have heard that song by then, but it was new to me and it affected me in a very deep way. “I may not always love you/but as long as there are stars above you/you never need to doubt it/I’ll make you so sure about it/God only knows what I’d be without you”…that opening line laid in my chest like a 12 lb bowling ball. After seeing the movie I immediately went through my CDs and found a copy of The Best Of The Beach Boys that my wife had bought at some point and fell in love with songs like “Surfer Girl”, “In My Room”, “Good Vibrations”, “Heroes and Villains”, and of course “God Only Knows”.

For my following birthday I asked for the Pet Sounds Sessions box set and listened to it ad nauseum for weeks at a time. I found myself really loving the ‘vocals only’ demos and found a whole new appreciation for Brian Wilson’s arranging and how he got this almost angelic feel out of the harmonies. Brian, Carl, and Dennis singing together was like a holy experience. They were connected so deeply, and Brian knew their strengths and made magic out of them. As someone who was just getting into writing and recording music Brian Wilson offered a template for what to aspire to as a writer, arranger, and vocalist. As much as I loved(and still love) The Beatles, they never came close to what Brian Wilson did with vocals(maybe Abbey Road‘s “Sun King” did.)

Not long after that I found a used copy of Smiley Smile, the truncated version of what Smile should have been originally. Since I didn’t know what Wilson had in mind for Smile, Smiley Smile offered up some wonderful bits that felt like they’d been thrown together last minute. It had some great songs on it like “Heroes and Villains”, “Vegetables”, “Little Pad”, “Good Vibrations”, and “Wonderful”. In retrospect I compare it to something like Pavement’s Wowee Zowee, the difficult and oddball follow-up to Pavement’s breakthrough Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. The Beach Boys followed up the monumental Pet Sounds with Smiley Smile. That’s either insane or genius. Or both.

Strange memory about Smiley Smile. I bought it in the summer of ’98. I was sick most of that summer as I had a band with two of my cousins and a drummer we found with an ad in the paper. We played lots of shitty local bars and at that time you could still smoke ’em if you got ’em back then. I think that was the sickest I’ve ever been during that summer. Bronchitis, double ear infections, throat infections, and I owe it all to smokey bars. I was home a lot healing up and listened to Smiley Smile incessantly. It’s lo-fi quality, oddball songs, and overall outsider feel was a nice accompaniment to heavy doses of antibiotics and codeine-laced cough syrup.

I bought Brian Wilson’s completed Smile with the band Wondermints as his backing band in the early 2000s and really enjoyed it. He was older and he didn’t quite have that angelic falsetto that he had 40 years prior, but the songs and arrangements shined. It wasn’t until 2011 when they released the album as it had been intended that that record truly shined for me, and I felt the magic of those songs. Hearing the songs as they were recorded in the mid-to-late 60s truly showed how ahead of the curve Brian Wilson was. And along with Van Dyke Parks’ beautiful and ornate lyrics Smile kind of takes on a life of its own. It feels of its own world; psychedelic and timeless…spiritual and cosmic. Smile feels like a moment in time that will forever stay itself and while the album plays nothing else is going on in the world. Time stops for those songs.

Brian Wilson was this gentle, pained soul that found solace in writing songs and sharing them with his brothers, then the world. He felt safest in his room(as did I when I was younger.) He was hurt by his dad’s greed, got lost in LSD to pat down the pain, and never quite found his way back to earth. For 50 years he was sort of in-between here and there, occasionally leaving his shell to remind the world of his genius. Then, he’d go back into the shell and lock himself tightly in. He told us as much in songs like “In My Room” and “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times”. Despite growing old, I think Brian Wilson was forever a kid and he was amazed and frightened by the world around him. An open-hearted artist that was always looking for a way to make the world we live in a little better through his art. And despite where the world is right now, if I hit play on Pet Sounds, Smile, Surfs Up, or Friends I know I’ll feel better. At least for a little bit.