How Beach Boys ‘genius' Brian Wilson brought sun-kissed California to world with some of the greatest songs ever made

The Sun

a day ago

GOD Only Knows how Brian Wilson created pop's most sublime tunes.
The death of The Beach Boys icon at 82 marks the passing of one of the few artists who genuinely deserved to be called a 'genius'.
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He was the composer, performer and producer Sir Paul McCartney looked up to.
Despite penning all those era-defining songs with John Lennon in The Beatles, Macca placed God Only Knows above them all — and admitted that 'it reduces me to tears every time I hear it'.
He performed the song with Brian in 2002 and, as you won't be surprised to hear, 'broke down' during the sound check.
Among Brian's other best known songs, mainly co-writes, were Good Vibrations, Surfin' USA, I Get Around and Wouldn't It be Nice.
Last night, his children said in a statement: 'We are heartbroken to announce that our beloved father Brian Wilson has passed away.
'We are at a loss for words right now. We realise that we are sharing our grief with the world. Love & Mercy.'
His daughter Daria added: 'I don't know what to say. I loved him in ways I can't explain. He was my dad.'
Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards Ronnie Wood said he was 'in mourning'.
John Lennon's son Sean Ono Lennon described the loss of 'our American Mozart'.
And Nancy Sinatra said: 'His cherished music will live forever as he travels through the Universe and beyond.
Brian Wilson's last ever performance of iconic Beach Boys hit just two years before his death aged 82
"God bless you, sweet Brian.
'One of the biggest thrills of my life was singing 'California Girls' with Brian.'
Brian was born in Inglewood, southern California, in 1942, the first son of Audree and Murry Wilson.
From a very early age, he was recognised for his musical gifts.
He had perfect pitch and could sing back phrases sung to him as a baby.
Brian had a difficult relationship with his dad.
He, along with his siblings, suffered psychological and physical abuse by their father.
The singer's 2016 memoir, I am Brian Wilson, paints Murry as 'violent' and 'cruel', but also suggests that some claims against him were exaggerated or unfounded.
Murry had remembered how, after hearing only a few verses of The Caissons Go Rolling Along, Brian, then an infant, was able to reproduce the tune.
At 12, the Wilson family acquired an upright piano, which Brian spent hours and hours teaching himself to play.
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He and his younger brothers, Carl and Dennis, got into the pop sounds of the day — R&B, rock 'n' roll and doo-wop.
Despite being partly deaf in one ear, Brian joined Carl and their cousin Mike Love to form a high school group, Carl and the Passions, later bringing in Dennis and Al Jardine to form the Pendletones.
Brian co-wrote the group's first song, Surfin', which, in turn, inspired their record label to change their name to The Beach Boys.
The rest, as they say, is history,
As the chief inspirational force, he brought the sun-kissed Californian lifestyle — surfing, fast cars and parties — to a world emerging from post-war austerity into the Swinging Sixties.
The band had adopted a clean-cut, college-boy image, sang about dreamy California Girls and be- came the West Coast's answer to The Beatles.
Brian married his first wife, Marilyn, in 1964 and marital strains were to influence the lyrical direction of his masterpiece, The Beach Boys' eleventh album, Pet Sounds.
Later that year, Brian had suffered a panic attack on a flight just hours after appearing on TV show Shindig!
This prompted him to give up live appearances to concentrate on writing and production. His giant artistic strides began.
It's also worth noting that this was the era of psychedelic drugs, notably LSD, and Brian was one of countless musicians to try them out, curious about their effect on songwriting.
So came a huge change of tack in his career, leading to his rare mastery of instrumentation, harmony and recording technology.
In his later years, Wilson was a man of few words who let his music do the talking.
'A SPIRITUAL RECORD'
He struggled with mental illness and found interviews uncomfortable.
But, during the times I met him, I found him polite and gracious and steadfastly sincere.
In 2016, during a promotional visit to London, I asked Wilson to describe his happiest memory of making Pet Sounds — to some, the greatest album of all time.
'Well, I loved making God Only Knows with my brother Carl. He had a good voice,' he replied, fifty years after its release.
It was his understated but heartfelt way of paying tribute to his youngest sibling, blessed with an angelic voice, who had died from cancer in 1998.
He told me he had been striving to 'make a choir, a nice choir' with Pet Sounds.
Through Carl and the rest of the group's glorious lead and harmony singing, he succeeded.
Brian was responsible for the sweeping symphonic arrangements and wall-of-sound production that doffed a hat to Phil Spector's girl group work — but he took it to whole new places.
He gave the album weird and wonderful sound effects — bicycle bells, trains, Hawaiian strings, Coke cans and barking dogs among them.
'And we had little toy instruments,' recalled Brian.
'We just thought we'd put them in there for the kids. I knew it would be a very special album,' he continued, before exclaiming, 'I just knew it!'.
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In his memoir, I Am Brian Wilson, he elaborated further: 'I love the whole Pet Sounds record.
'I got a full vision out of it in the studio.
"After that, I said to myself that I had completed the greatest album I will ever produce.
'It was a spiritual record. When I was making it, I looked around at the musicians and the singers and I could see their halos.'
He also talked about the impact of The Beatles: 'I met Paul McCartney later in the Sixties, in a studio. I was almost always in a studio back then.
'We had a little chat about music.
"Everyone knows now that God Only Knows was Paul's favourite song — not only his favourite Beach Boys song, but one of his favourite songs, period.
"It's the kind of thing people write in liner notes and say on talk shows.
"When people read it, they kind of look at that sentence and keep going.
"But think about how much it mattered to me when I first heard it.
'I was the person who wrote God Only Knows and here was another person — the person who wrote Yesterday and And I Love Her and so many other songs — saying it was his favourite.
'It really blew my mind. He wasn't the only Beatle who felt that way.
'John Lennon called me after Pet Sounds — phoned me up, I think the British say — to tell me how much he loved the record.'
I'm in a better frame of mind these days. It feels great . . . it's like I see some light. Things make sense to me again
Brian Wilson
It's sad to think that Wilson, this architect of the band's unique sunlit sound, went on to suffer years in the darkness in the Seventies and Eighties.
Mental illness allied to drug abuse left Brian lost in a world of his own from which few believed he would return.
But his rehabilitation began in 1988 with his self-titled first solo album.
It continued with I Just Wasn't Made For These Times (1995), Orange Crate Art (1995 with long-time collaborator Van Dyke Parks), Imagination (1998) and Gettin' In Over My Head (2004).
That same year, he finally realised his lost masterpiece SMiLE.
'That was amazing,' Brian told me.
"I never ever imagined it coming out until my manager and (second) wife (Melinda) said: 'You ought to try to finish it.''
He also released a Pet Sounds Live album, but I asked whether he would consider playing the album again in its entirety in concert.
'I don't think we'll be doing that again,' he said with quite alarming frankness.
'We just thought we drove it into the ground.'
Last year, it was revealed Brian was suffering from dementia.
A conservatorship was awarded to his family, his publicist and manager after Melinda, his wife of 29 years, had died.
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At the time of her passing, Brian said, 'Melinda was more than my wife. She was my saviour.
"She gave me the emotional security. I needed to have a career.
"She encouraged me to make the music that was closest to my heart.
"She was my anchor.'
I remember speaking to Brian on his 66th birthday in 2008, when, in the company of Melinda, life was looking up for this American music icon.
Sporting a full head of brushed back grey hair, he spoke movingly about his situation. 'I walk every day for exercise so I can keep alive', he said.
'My state of being has been elevated because I've been exercising and writing songs.
'I'm in a better frame of mind these days. It feels great . . . it's like I see some light. Things make sense to me again.'
Not just God, but the whole world, knows how special you were.