Becoming Acquainted With Brian Wilson

When I heard the news that Brian Wilson died a few weeks ago at the age of 82, it occurred to me that I knew nothing about him. Or, for that matter, his most famous association, The Beach Boys. It further occurred to me that, given Wilson’s long life and many accomplishments, I needed to do something about that. These occurrences goaded me into what I do best – a deep dive down the rabbit hole that is Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys.

Of course, I knew who the Beach Boys were. I still remember when the song “Good Vibrations” was playing on the radio in the fall of 1966 (I could have sworn it was summer, but never mind), and how it was 7-year-old me’s favorite song in the world at the time. My older cousins had the record and I would pester them to play it every time I visited. As I got older and “oldies” stations became a thing, The Beach Boys were always a favorite that seemed to operate on a little higher musical level than most contemporary groups of the first half of the 1960’s. That was, however, about all I knew. So, blank slate that I was, I began my dive.

Wilson family photo c. 1960. From left, Brian, Carl, Audree, Dennis, Murray (1)

Brian Wilson was born in 1942 in the working class town of Inglewood, California. Which, as it turns out, is several miles from any beaches with decent surfing. His siblings Dennis (1944) and Carl (1946) came soon after. The family moved to Hawthorn, California and the boys had a fairly typical lower middle-class upbringing for the time, although their father was apparently far more abusive (both emotionally and physically) than the norm. Brian had a head for music from the beginning, learning to play piano on his own.

I wrote a few years ago that Brian had been a fan of The Four Freshmen, a quartet that straddled pop and jazz in the 1950’s, but did not understand just how big of a fan. Brian would spend hours deconstructing the group’s tight harmonies and quickly shifting chords, so that he could understand how quartet’s unique sound was made. He was also a fan of George Gershwin, particularly “Rhapsody In Blue” (another topic covered here.) All three Wilson boys were good singers, and Brian would coach them on harmonies. Their slightly older cousin, Mike Love, would sometimes join in.

The Beach Boys c. 1963. L-R: Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Brian Wilson. (2)

In 1961 those four and Brian’s high school classmate Al Jardine formed a group they called The Pendletones. Dennis Wilson was the only active surfer in the group and had suggested surfing as a theme to Brian for songs. It turned out to be a good suggestion. The boys’ father, a frustrated song writer, had some local music contacts and introduced the group to a guy at Candix Records, which changed the group’s name to “The Beach Boys” and recorded Brian’s tune “Surfin”. It became a local hit along the west coast. Candix soon folded, however, and after being turned down by some other record companies they caught a break with Capitol Records in 1962. In June of that year, when the brothers were just ages 20, 18 and 16, their first Capitol single was issued – “Surfin’ Safari” with “409” on the B side. Both sides turned out to be solid hits all across the country.

Brian Wilson in a recording studio c. 1965 (3)

The Beach Boys was a group of five guys, but there is no mistaking that during its hitmaking years, Brian was the band’s leader and creative force. Brian was a sponge that soaked up the entire record-making process, and was perhaps the first person to simultaneously write, arrange, perform and manage the recording process as producer. He came to consider the control room as a separate musical instrument which allowed him to get the sound he wanted as he mixed and combined sounds on the 3-track mono equipment being used at the time.

A favorite of mine from the Beach Boys hitmaking era is “The Warmth Of The Sun”, for its complex harmonies and the simple beauty that Brian Wilson loved putting into his music. I find it amazing that this is the product of a 22-year old kid. And I learned that the high, falsetto voice that is a fixture of the early Beach Boys’ sound was Brian.

But by 1964, Brian was showing signs of fatigue or possibly early signs of mental instability. He had hated touring with the band, and caused them to hire a replacement for touring – the first one was a then-unknown session musician named Glen Campbell. Brian, meanwhile, would stay at home to write music and make records. His process would involve recording everything but the vocal parts, which would be added when the group returned from touring.

This period saw Brian and the group heading in different directions. Brian’s music began to move beyond the teen pop/beach music that had made them famous, but this caused some friction. Brian had kept complete creative control of the process of the album “Pet Sounds” which was released in 1966, but he got a lot of pushback from some members of the group (don’t mess with “the formula”), from Capitol Records (which had a cash cow) and the larger family, including his parents (which also had a cash cow). “Pet Sounds” did not sell as well as prior albums, but was highly influential in music circles and put the Beach Boys on par with The Beatles as an innovative force. No less a light than Paul McCartney considered “God Only Knows” from that album as one of the most amazing things he had ever heard. I do not disagree.

Following Pet Sounds, the single “Good Vibrations” was made using Brian’s “modular” style of creating parts of music like building blocks and then mixing them all together. It was an incredibly expensive venture, that involved something like 20 recording sessions at 4 different studios (each chosen for a specific sound or vibe) and generated 90 hours of tape over a several month stretch. It was a groundbreaking record that some called a mini symphony. It was musically complex yet was full of pop “hooks” that made it the group’s first No. 1 record. It is funny how I had heard the record hundreds of times but had never really listened to all of the amazing things going on in it. But there they are.

Nobody knew it at the time, but Good Vibrations would mark the end of The Beach Boys’ incredible run of popularity. Brian’s follow up album, to be called “Smile”, got bogged down in a combination of group disagreements and Brian’s own worsening drug habit and mental condition. The project was shelved after months of work and hundreds of hours of recording, and Brian stepped back and ceased trying to exercise creative control. It was a terrible situation for him – the group (and his family in general) did not want to follow his creative lead, yet they would not sanction his doing independent projects.

The Beach Boys from the 1970’s. L-R: Carl Wilson, Al Jardine, Mike Love, Dennis Wilson, Brian Wilson (4)

The next 15 years saw Brian working less and less with the group. He would occasionally write some great songs, but The Beach Boys singles got little air play and the albums sold poorly, despite some being well reviewed. Their only real success in the late 60’s through the mid 70’s was as a touring band that continued to play the old hits with only occasionally adding newer material. I have listened to much of that output, and many of those post Pet Sounds albums hold up quite well – I particularly like “Wild Honey” (1967) and “Sunflower” (1971). But without Brian’s lead (both vocally and in general), they just didn’t sound like “The Beach Boys” as people had come to know them.

Then, after a long and hard road of addiction, recovery and psychiatric interventions that sometimes were as harmful as they were helpful, Brian’s life started coming back together in the 80’s. He started recording again and later assembled a touring band and went on the road – something quite out of character for him. And even more out of character was his decision to put together a live show featuring the music of his long-abandoned “Smile” album. There is an excellent documentary on that process, called “Beautiful Dreamer” (available on YouTube) and is one that I recommend watching. The Smile show went on to great acclaim and put Brian Wilson back into a period of prominence in the world of music.

Brian Wilson’s musical legacy is highly varied. Try searching for something like “Brian Wilson’s Best Songs”. You will find many lists, but not one will look like the others. And each of those lists has good reasons for looking the way it does. It is a worthwhile exercise to listen through some of those lists. Some will be old favorites (like “Fun, Fun, Fun” or “Help Me Rhonda”) while others will probably be new to all but the most hard core Wilson/Beach Boys fans (like “Surf’s Up” or “Til I Die”). Still others will be “gee, I didn’t know that was The Beach Boys” (like “Heroes and Villians” or “Darlin'”).

I did not expect this topic to lead to a religious angle, but I found one. Wilson was evidently a man with a fairly traditional Christian view, and his “Our Prayer” is evocative of early Christian polyphony from the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, which came on the heels of the Gregorian Chant in sacred music. Listen to something by Palestrina (like this Kyrie from the Pope Marcellus Mass) and see if you don’t agree.

Brian Wilson (5)

Brian Wilson was a tremendously talented but highly tragic figure. His musical gifts are without dispute, and the first 4 years of his work was enough to support his entire family for the rest of their lives, whether from royalties or in content for a lifetime of performances by the group that remains active under Mike Love, one of two surviving members of the original Beach Boys (Al Jardine is the other). The tragedy is that Brian was prevented from developing his musical ideas for so many decades, whether because of his drug use or mental health, or because of his family who worked so hard to harness Brian’s output for their own use. The best part of the story is that Brian Wilson became the guy who ultimately seems to have survived his demons and who finished his life with the triumph and recognition he deserved. And because he left us so much great music.

  1. Photo source – brianwilson.com
  2. Capitol Records publicity photo, c. 1963
  3. Photo source – uk.pinterest.com/pin/rocking-rollers
  4. Photo source – www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool
  5. Photo source – brianwilson.com

33 thoughts on “Becoming Acquainted With Brian Wilson”

    • I do indeed! And I’m sad to say that at the time (I was graduating from high school in 1979 and let me tell you, my life looked JUST like that beach scene in the commercial… 😉 ) I knew “good vibrations” more as the Sunkist slogan than as the original Beach Boys song that it was.

      Like Jim, I’ve grown to very much appreciate the Beach Boys and particularly Brian Wilson’s contributions more and more as time has gone by. Nowadays I often find myself hearing one of their songs and thinking that it’s much finer and more complex than whatever I thought about it back in the day.

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      • Yes, a lot of pop music is fun but it’s like Kool Ade in that there’s not much substance to it. Wilson’s music is much more like a good wine or whiskey in that there are lots of subtle things to appreciate on repeated listenings.

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    • I do! I suspect it came out at a time when the group was happy to accept a large check for use of the song. They had some lean times in the 70s – something they had never experienced from the very beginning.

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    • Thank you! I saw your comment yesterday and edited the text (as I smacked my forehead with a Homer Simpson-like “Doh!”)

      Your selection is another great song! There are so many to choose from!

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  3. A great 4th of July read! I have to admit, as a Chicagoan/Milwaukean in the “fly-over”, I was way more of a Jan and Dean fan than The Beach Boys, altho both covered the “California Surfing” lifestyle, I was more enamored of the “hot car/drag strip” focus of a lot of the Jan and Dean radio play songs, and bought my first album, Jan and Dean (Drag City) at 10 years old (along with the Ventures). Slightly later in life, I became a fan of The Beach Boys vocal harmonizations, and you can actually find vocal only music “strip-outs” on You Tube if you want to wonder at their skill! Pet Sounds was when I really started paying attention, altho their fans and even some of their members hated the direction, I loved it. I’ve always thought “God Only Knows” would be my wedding song. I didn’t find out until later in life of how in awe the Beatles were with Brian Wilson, and how stunned they were by Pet Sounds! No doubt about the info that Mike Love was most likely the jerk that never wanted them to progress beyond their early years, and most of the tension of the band changing has been ascribed to him. Google “Mike Love is a Jerk”, and you won’t be disappointed by the breath and width of the negative comments about him! For some reason, I can’t stand to watch him today…

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    • I read that Brian Wilson was close with Jan & Dean, and even wrote Surf City for them. And after Murray Wilson found out, Brian caught hell for “giving away our hits”.

      I think that but for Brian Wilson, Love would have spent his life in his father’s sheet metal business. Love gave Brian a lot of blowback, and the only way Brian was equipped to respond was to retreat. After the other Wilson brothers died, there was nobody to act as a check on Love. Like in the way he (as the one with the legal right to the Beach Boys name) fired Brian and Al Jardine in the middle of the 50th anniversary tour.

      But as the front man for live performances through the years, he deserves credit for keeping the band going as a touring outfit which was the only source of revenue when the new records stopped selling.

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      • I flipped by “A Capitol 4th” on TV the other day, a show I don’t generally watch. After years of living in D.C., I know how those things work, i.e. the enthusiastic “crowd of citizens” in the cutaways they show are basically all selects from the military and government agencies (and in a roped off area), if you actually ARE a local citizen, you can walk down there, but you won’t get anywhere near camera range (or the performances). Anyway, I was surprised to see The Beach Boys performing, and by The Beach Boys, I mean Mike Love. This is what we used to call at PBS, a “zombie band”, i.e. a band usually made up of maybe one of the original members, or maybe none, but the current copyright holder. They usually use those bands in those “Music of Your Life” PBS shows they run as fund-raisers. Needless to say, I couldn’t watch it; most of the band members didn’t look like they were alive when The Beach Boys actually “broke” big in the 60’s!

        I think we can all thank technology for being able to watch the originals on YouTube. I still heartily recommend those vocal only “strip-outs” on YouTube to be in awe of their harmonizing abilities!

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvNXPkK7JY8

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      • The BB are notable for never breaking up, and always having at least 1 original member. Love was always the front man at concerts, so he’s probably the best choice for an oldies/nostalgia focused version of the BB.

        I just listened to the link, and it sounds like someone pirated the voice track. Brian basically had everything done but the vocals when the group got back from a tour.

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  4. Shortly after Wilson passed I listened to sound bites of the twenty “best” songs of the Beach Boys (can’t remember whose list it was). Recognized most of them but the list also included the lesser-known ones you profile here. “Our Prayer” is beautiful and unexpected. “‘Til I Die” is one where you second guess whether it’s really The Beach Boys. And “The Warmth of the Sun” is solid, as you say, considering it was very early in their years. Didn’t know anything about Wilson’s backstory (nor that of the group). It always seems genius is accompanied by the demons from the darker side of life. Glad to read in this case it wasn’t a complete downward spiral.

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    • I find it amazing how little is known about the group or the guys in it. Possibly because Brian, as the early leader, never really sought publicity. Everything I read said that he was a gentle soul who was all about the music but was pretty terrible at everything else in life. He credited his second wife for giving him the emotional security to create again.

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  6. The Beach Boys were very much a part of my teen years – so thanks for this great summary of Brian Wilson’s life. Also thanks for pointing out ‘Our Prayer’. I do not remember having heard it before, but yes to the comparison to Gregorian Chants. (I will have to dig out our CD or Album of Gregorian Chants – have not listened to it for a long time!)

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    • The group’s pop era ended just as I was getting old enough to pay attention. But what a catalog he left behind, whether you like the beach hits or the more serious stuff. And this is one of few stories where someone as troubled as Wilson became was able to come back from the brink and experience success again.

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  7. I was a big Beach Boys fan growing up in central Wisconsin. I had a number of their albums and played them a lot. I never had any knowledge about what was actually going on musically and knew little about the group and its members until later years, but I liked listening to them.

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  8. I enjoyed this post about Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys very much JP … here is a band I can identify with. 🙂 I saw them in concert four times altogether in the mid-70s, twice in the Summer of 1976 at Pine Knob Music Theater and at the Toronto Exhibition. Those mid-70s sets were, just as you said in this post, for the most part all of their oldies but goodies that the crowd knew by heart. My college friends and I always got lawn seats, but since it was an outside venue, it didn’t matter where you sat, as the music carried and the crowd was on their feet while clapping and singing to the music more than they ever sat down during the concert. Except for reading about his court-ordered conservatorship the last year of his life after his wife passed away, I had not thought a lot about Brian Wilson over the years, but after his death, I found myself watching a lot of tribute videos on Twitter/X and YouTube and reading about the group’s heyday, Brian’s brilliant contributions to their success, then how he became a recluse for a while due to some of the issues you wrote about. When I did my recent post about “Sunseekers” I was tempted to write about Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys because they epitomized Summer and fun in the sun back in the day. His birthday was even near the Summer Solstice – June 20th.

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      • They did put on a good concert JP. My friends and I got series tickets three years in a row because, if I’m not mistaken, we had to buy the six-concert series to see the Beach Boys and Chicago, the featured bands. The rest of the series was just okay, in my opinion (America, the Four Tops and the Four Seasons – I can’t remember the last group). I would think it was the original members at that time. I’m glad I got to see them – it was nice memories with my pals, another era in the past. I always regretted I never saw the Eagles and Jimmy Buffet – both played at that venue too. The Eagles were a big deal as Glenn Frey was a local guy.

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      • Plus One for Chicago, a huge fan here! My high school sweetheart and I were enamored of them, and saw them live at Milwaukee’s Summerfest music festival, on my birthday no less, in 1970. They had left Chicago in ’67 or ’68 for California, and changed their name from Chicago Transit Authority to Chicago around that time. 1970 would have been when they were really hot and breaking! Those who were and are fans, can watch the Russian band Leonid and Friends on YouTube, doing stunning copies of the original music, with a super hot and tight horn section!

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  9. THANK YOU ! .

    I was a young man when they hit the airwaves, not quite my cuppa tea but obviously better than the pop music I enjoyed then .

    Sad to hear about Mr. Wilson’s trials in life, nice to hear he eventually overcame them .

    -Nate

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  10. That was so interesting! I knew bits of his story, but did not realize they were that young when they had their first hits. That amount of pressure would have been hard for any young person to handle back then, when the drug scene seemed to ruin so many young lives. I did not know the dad had been a song writer too.

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    • The Dad dabbled but wasn’t really successful. He managed the group for the first couple of years but was out of his depth and the boys finally had to replace him. All of the stories are that he had the boys best wishes at heart, but was undone because of his meanness.

      The middle son Dennis struggled with drugs too (and serial relationships). Carl, the youngest, seemed to be Mr. Steady of the 3.

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      • Dennis Wilson had quite the colorful history.

        Dennis Wilson was enamored with Charles Manson for a spell, and allowed several members of Manson’s “Family” to live at his house. He gave them money for food, as well as paid for their medical and dental care. (Wilson had picked up two female members of the Family who were hitchhiking.)

        The story is that Wilson tried to help Manson produce an album, but things went haywire when Manson refused to listen to the suggestions of group members to make his music more “commercial.” Wilson then grew leery of Manson – one story is that Manson was so enraged at their suggestions that he drew a knife on Brian Wilson. Dennis Wilson then moved out of his own rented house, and left his manager evict Manson and his followers.

        It was through Wilson that Manson met Terry Melcher, who was the son of Doris Day, and a successful music producer. Melcher was also initially interested in Manson, but then determined that his music would have no commercial appeal.

        The entire episode would influence events in the next few years. Wilson took Manson’s song, “Cease to Exist,” changed it slightly, and titled it “Never Learn Not to Love” without giving Manson credit or any royalities. It was featured on the Beach Boys album, 20/20.

        Manson was livid.

        Then Melcher turned down Manson, which further enraged him. Melcher had lived at 10050 Cielo Drive in Beverly Hills, and both Manson and one of his chief followers, Charles “Tex” Watson, visited him there. In early 1969, Melcher moved out of that house (some have said because he was already afraid of Manson), and the next tenants were film director Roman Polanski and his wife, actress Sharon Tate. The rest is history…

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  11. I took my time on my own deep dive which was easy because you actually did all the work and organized it! The Beach Boys made it big while I was in college but surprisingly, like you, I never knew much about them until recently. I remember figuring out their music was going to have more staying power than one generation when my son and his high school bandmates were hooked on the Beach Boys. And Nancy Reagan came to their defense! Thanks for the effort you put into this post!

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    • It was a rewarding dive for me. The downside (though it may not actually be a downside) is that their tunes continue to reside in my head, playing at all hours like unruly tenants.

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