Brian Wilson

RIP to a musical legend. I am not a fan of his work but respect him immensely for it.

I remember a long time ago there was a tune I had heard that I thought was kind of catchy (but not catchy enough that I knew the title of it or was inspired to buy the CD) with a corus that went "[. . .] I’m just lying in bed like Brian Wilson did [. . .]", anyway, many years later (probably ’06) I was listening to NPR and they were talking about Brian Wilson and I learned the song was Brian Wilson by Barenaked Ladies.  On the program I was listening to they were talking about Brian Wilson’s battle with depression and all the time he spent in bed (like a year?); at the time I heard that on NPR I had just seen my career as an overpaid underworked lazy union airline mechanic going down the drain and I was finding nursing school to actually be Hell School . . . at that time I felt that a year in bed sounded pretty good.

Later on (like 2014) I was going through a funk and working two back to back 16 hour 3p to 7a shifts on weekends (sat afternoon into sun morning & then sun afternoon into mon morning) and when I got home Monday morning it seemed like I was almost sleeping from when I got off work Monday morning until I went back Saturday afternoon.  At that point I became more interested in depression and its effect on sleep habits and Brian Wilson.

So then I ordered two books--the first one I read was BRIAN WILSON WOULDN’T IT BE NICE My Own Story WITH TODD GOLD, and if anyone is interested in reading about Brian Wilson, my advice is do not waste your time with that one.  The second one I read was Catch A Wave The Rise, The Fall & Redemption of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson by Peter Ames Carlin (which turned out to be decently written and an interesting read).  But what I also learned in the second book was that the first book was NOT written in Brrian Wilson’s own words, but in Eugene Landy’s words, and according to Catch A Wave, Landy was a psychologist who basically manipulated Wilson for a few years.

Anyway, I found Catch A Wave to be interesting and a much better read than WOULDN’T IT BE NICE, and if you are looking for something to read about Brian Wilson, I would recommend that one.

RIP. He wrote and produced the best American music of the 60’s.

I have been anticipating this for a while. Brian is now finally resting in peace.

The Beach Boys were the first live concert I attended, at The San Jose Civic Auditorium in the Summer of 1964. I spent that summer listening to their All Summer Long album every day. A year later they had been relegated to the Oldies category, no longer culturally relevant (along with many other early-60’s musical acts).

I didn’t bother listening to their Today! and Summer Days (And Summer Nights!) albums, or the now-legendary Pet Sounds. Pet Sounds was followed by an album entitled Smiley Smile, which contained their hit single "Good Vibrations". Suddenly the BB were cool again, so I gave SS a listen. WTF?! Nothing could have prepared me for how odd (in a good way) the album was (is), and I became obsessed with it. To find out why, read the chapter on the making of the album in a Outlaw Blues, a great book written by Paul Williams (not the songwriter/singer).

I played the album for the guitarist in my High School garage band, and he was as impressed as I with what he heard. Smiley Smile became for us a litmus test of other musicians. If you got it, you were "in". We of course got Van Dyke Parks’ (Brian’s collaborator on what was going to be the Smile album) Song Cycle album, which had been released in November of 67. Double WTF! Song Cycle is still quite capable of blowing your mind.

Now follows a personal story, one some of you (one of you at a minimum) may want to skip. You’ve been warned! 

Years passed, and that High School guitarist (now also a pianist) and I were recording his songs (he majored in music at San Jose State College and then the University of California at Riverside) in a little studio we built in his garage. I was engineering, with a pair of small capsule condenser mics, and Revox 2-trk. and Teac 4-trk. recorders. By the Summer of ’75 we had a demo tape done, and the songwriter suggested we fly to Los Angeles and submit the tape to a few record companies. And while we were at it, go to Brian’s Spanish-style mansion in Bel-Air (we knew what it looked like from the pictures of it on the Sunflower album cover) and deliver a copy to him. The songwriter wanted to have Brian produce us in a pro studio. How naive was that?!

We arrived at Brian’s house on Bellagio Road, and walked up to the wrought iron gate that was in the middle of the stucco wall in front of the house. I rang the buzzer, and a voice that I assumed was Brian’s wife Marilyn (I was familiar with it, having a copy of The Honey’s album) asked "Yes?" I introduced us, and asked if Brian was home. Duh. Did we really think she was going to invite us in?! She responded "Yes he is. What do you want?" I told her, and she said to leave the tape at the gate. I did, and we drove back down to Sunset Blvd., contemplating what had just transpired. Not comfortable with having left our tape out in the elements (there was a gardening crew working in the property), we went back up to  the house. The tape was nowhere to be seen.

It wasn’t until the following year that Brian’s condition was revealed to the world. We of course never heard back from him, and the songwriter/pianist informed me he had decided to not pursue a professional career in music. I still have the tapes (and the Revox), which contain some wonderful music. The songwriter passed away in his sleep in early 2009, a heart attack at age 56.

Okay, now to the important part of my post. After having heard Pet Sounds, I of course went back and listened to the Today!, Summer Days, and Pet Sounds albums. On Pet Sounds I heard a song I now consider one of the (if not THE) greatest ever written: "God Only Knows". The song is a master class in composition, and for those interested enough as to why that is so, the video below explains it all.

https://youtu.be/PjPN9zRUrgI?si=IXBsgx0oYei7MSC9

I kind of wonder how many people were influenced by the The Beach Boys’s songs in their decision to move to California.  I’d say it’s more than we think.  A lot of beautiful women from the Midwest and East showed up at the beach in the 60s.