(#61): remembering Brian Wilson
Brian Wilson changed my life. That sounds a bit over-the-top, because I never met him and the majority of his musical catalogue published long before my birth. But that’s the amazing thing about good art: it endures and transcends. I don’t just love Wilson’s music, I feel it. I grew up taking music and voice lessons. One of my teachers once said that you’ve never really heard music until it moves you to tears. I didn’t understand what she meant that until I got into The Beach Boys.
Their music is everywhere. My kindergarten teacher played “Kokomo” every Friday at school (notably NOT written by Brian Wilson), and we all danced around the room. I remember asking my Dad about the songs “Surfin U.S.A” and “Fun, Fun, Fun” (why’d her Daddy take the T-Bird away?) as a kid. My high school chorus did an arrangement of “Catch a Wave.”
For most of my life, I assumed The Beach Boys just made easy, ethereal California pop. I didn’t get into their discography until 2015, after I started reading some of the interviews Brian Wilson and John Cusack did for the former’s biopic, Love & Mercy (2014). I’d never known or heard about the abuse Wilson and his brothers endured from their father, his struggles with his mental health, or that he’d been manipulated for at least a decade by his psychiatrist. How could someone who experienced so much pain create so much art the feels like the sun on your face? It wasn’t just the music either: if you watch Brian Wilson in interviews, or read quotes, you’ll notice his gentleness. In a world that demands and rewards disaffected hardness from men, Brian Wilson defied that, embracing and embodying softness with himself and others.
After Jason and I watched Love & Mercy, we obsessed over The Beach Boys and Wilson’s solo stuff. Understanding him helped us truly hear what he created, and the more I listened, the more I believed in his genius. Wilson captured the nuances of human life, not only in his lyrics, but also in sound. Life’s grandeur, nonsense, longing, heartbreak, joy, simplicity and complexity are all present in his compositions.
During his career, he claimed songs just kind of tumbled from his mind. In the film, Paul Dano, who plays young Wilson, said while working on Pet Sounds: “The music part, it’s worked out in my head, but... I don't know anything else except that it should... it should sound like, you know, a cry, but in sort of a good way or something.” When you listen, his vision makes perfect sense:
At the time, a lot of people thought Wilson’s music and art were weird. Pet Sounds, now considered one of the greatest and most influential albums of all time, commercially flopped. Later, he suffered a nervous breakdown during the recording of the album, SMiLE, and abandoned the project for decades. He finished it in 2004, and called it his “greatest accomplishment ever.” Wilson didn’t make art to amass a fortune; he made it as an expression, extension, and reflection of himself, his experience of the world, and his hopes for it.
Now, when so many people can’t write so much as an email without ChatGPT, it’s even harder losing artists who epitomize the deeply human need to engage in the creative process. Still, there’s a time and a place for cheap laughs and lame art. Hell, Wilson even once declared his favorite film Norbit. What a disappointment that we’re out of opportunities to see more of the world through his interpretation.
Brian Wilson was vulnerability incarnate. He was himself, wherever he was. He felt the world deeply, and wasn’t afraid to talk or write a song about it. Despite the fear that consumed him while observing our scary world, he never lost hope. There are endless claims that suffering begets great art, but when asked how he coped with the negative voices he heard daily, Wilson said: “I try to use love as much as I can.”
The memory of his earnestness, genius, and whimsy moves and haunts me. I worry about its rarity, and for some reason, his death confronted me with the childlike fear I’ve carried for the past two years: “Are we all going to be okay?”
He left the answer in so much of his music: hopefully. That’s why I walked down the aisle to “Surf’s Up,” at my wedding, which culminates in an otherworldly chorus about hope found in the uncontaminated innocence and wonder of childhood. It’s also why we chose “Love And Mercy,” off Wilson’s 1995 solo album I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times, as the last song of the night. Jason and I sometimes worry we care too much, we’re too sensitive, we’re not tough enough. We worry about why the world is so randomly cruel. Wilson acknowledged all the same angst, but suggested the path for survival depends on an open heart, giving each other as much love and mercy as we can muster.
His work, and presence on this Earth, didn’t just make pop more pleasurable, it made life more bearable. His songwriting and his story are a reminder that beauty and pain collaborate in making a full life. In navigating the pressures of his, he forged un-extinguishable light, that the whole world’s lucky enough to bask in, forever.
Thank you, and drive safely, Brian.
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You made it! Sending love, and leaving you with another favorite: