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Toronto Sun
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Toronto Sun
'MIND-BLOWING': Ex-Barenaked Ladies frontman recalls performing with Brian Wilson
Published Jun 12, 2025 • 4 minute read Brian Wilson performs as part of Nissan Live Sets on Yahoo! Music in Los Angeles, Wednesday, July 30, 2008. Photo by Chris Pizzello / AP Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account TORONTO — When Steven Page penned an ode to musical visionary Brian Wilson, he never expected to share a stage with the Beach Boy, perform alongside him nor hear him sing 'Brian Wilson' to a roaring Toronto audience. But in the summer of 2000, Page says he felt an 'absolute dream come true' when all that happened during Wilson's tour stop with Paul Simon at Toronto's Molson Amphitheatre. Page says he knew Wilson had performed the song at previous concerts and expected to hear it, but not as the opening number. As news of Wilson's death broke Wednesday, Page looked back fondly at the memory of being in the audience while a musical hero sang Barenaked Ladies' 1992 hit 'Brian Wilson.' 'Every musician in Toronto was sitting around us, and they all kind of turned their head to look at me,' said Page, who later joined Wilson and Simon for the encore to sing Wilson's 'Love and Mercy' and the Beach Boys' 'Fun, Fun, Fun.' Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'And I thought, like, do I stand up and wave, or do I hide, or what do I do? I mean, just absolute dream come true.' Wilson's family posted news of his death to his website Wednesday. He was 82. 'Obviously, (I was) sad to hear that Brian had passed. It's been a tough couple years for him, I think, with his declining health and the loss of his wife, Melinda,' Page said. Page wrote the song 'Brian Wilson' when he was a 19-year-old student at Toronto's York University, drawing inspiration from his own struggles and eager to see more empathy in discourse about mental health in the music industry. Even though he named it after the much-lauded musician who faced highly publicized mental health struggles, Page says he was actually not a great fan of the Beach Boys before then, considering them 'lightweight and not as musically evolved.' He changed his tune after a classmate made him a mixtape. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Page said he always felt Wilson was depicted in the press as a 'rock 'n' roll casualty' and wanted to bring more empathy and nuance to discussions of mental health in rock music. 'Even then, as a teenager I could hear in the music this kind of struggle between light and dark and that really appealed to me,' said Page, who split with Barenaked Ladies in 2009. The tune became a hit for the band and a staple in their live set. Eight years after it appeared on their debut album 'Gordon,' Barenaked Ladies recorded an album at the same L.A. studio used to make the Beach Boys' classic 1966 album 'Pet Sounds.' Page says their producer at the time, Don Was, said he had a surprise for the band and introduced them to Wilson and his wife, Melinda. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Page says during that meeting, Wilson played them a recording of his rendition of 'Brian Wilson,' which appeared on his 2000 live album, 'Live at the Roxy Theatre.' 'It was amazing to hear this song that I wrote in my parents' basement when I was a teenager being sung by one of the most important composers in the history of mankind. Even if it was a joke, it was mind-blowing,' Page said. 'At one point where I sing: 'If you want to find me / I'll be out in the sandbox wondering where the hell all the love has gone / Playing my guitar and singing and building castles in the sun,' he changed it to 'playing my piano.' He just turned to me and said 'I don't play guitar.'' Page also recalls performing 'Brian Wilson' with the Barenaked Ladies at a pre-Grammy tribute celebration honouring Wilson in 2005, when he was selected as the MusiCares Person of the Year. The group performed an a capella-style version of the song and was the only act that played a song not written by Wilson. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Page said the Beach Boys' harmonies were 'hugely' influential on the Barenaked Ladies, which also boasted a five-man lineup. The Beach Boys, he said, gave the group 'a palette to choose from that didn't really exist in music without them.' 'On top of that, Brian's adventurousness in the studio — as far as choices of instruments, the way the songs can flow in and out of each other — those are the kinds of things that, as we matured as musicians, continued to excite. And still continue for me to excite and inspire me.' 'He really is one of the greats. He is like Beethoven and Paul McCartney all mixed together,' Page said. Randy Bachman, former Guess Who guitarist and Bachman-Turner Overdrive frontman, also played tribute to Wilson in a social media post where he referred to the Beach Boys as being 'like family' after playing several shows with the group in the '60s. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'They were the American answer to the Beatles. They wowed everyone with the songs, structures, vocals harmonies … We lost one of the greatest composers and messengers who took jazz harmony, put it to a Chuck Berry beat and made a new genre of music,' Bachman wrote. According to a post on his Facebook page, Wilson became an honorary citizen of Calgary in the city's famed white hat ceremony in 2011. Love concerts, but can't make it to the venue? Stream live shows and events from your couch with VEEPS, a music-first streaming service now operating in Canada. Click here for an introductory offer of 30% off. Explore upcoming concerts and the extensive archive of past performances! World Celebrity Sunshine Girls World Sunshine Girls
Yomiuri Shimbun
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Brian Wilson, Beach Boys Visionary Leader and Summer's Poet Laureate, Dies at 82
AP file photo Brian Wilson performs as part of Nissan Live Sets on Yahoo! Music in Los Angeles, Wednesday, July 30, 2008. Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys' visionary and fragile leader whose genius for melody, arrangements and wide-eyed self-expression inspired 'Good Vibrations,' 'California Girls' and other summertime anthems and made him one of the world's most influential recording artists, has died at 82. Wilson's family posted news of his death to his website and social media accounts Wednesday. Further details weren't immediately available. Since May 2024, Wilson had been under a court conservatorship to oversee his personal and medical affairs, with Wilson's longtime representatives, publicist Jean Sievers and manager LeeAnn Hard, in charge. The eldest and last surviving of three musical brothers — Brian played bass, Carl lead guitar and Dennis drums — he and his fellow Beach Boys rose in the 1960s from local California band to national hitmakers to international ambassadors of surf and sun. Wilson himself was celebrated for his gifts and pitied for his demons. He was one of rock's great Romantics, a tormented man who in his peak years embarked on an ever-steeper path to aural perfection, the one true sound. The Beach Boys rank among the most popular groups of the rock era, with more than 30 singles in the Top 40 and worldwide sales of more than 100 million. The 1966 album 'Pet Sounds' was voted No. 2 in a 2003 Rolling Stone list of the best 500 albums, losing out, as Wilson had done before, to the Beatles' 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.' The Beach Boys, who also featured Wilson cousin Mike Love and childhood friend Al Jardine, were voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. Wilson feuded with Love over songwriting credits, but peers otherwise adored him beyond envy, from Elton John and Bruce Springsteen to Katy Perry and Carole King. The Who's drummer, Keith Moon, fantasized about joining the Beach Boys. Paul McCartney cited 'Pet Sounds' as a direct inspiration on the Beatles and the ballad 'God Only Knows' as among his favorite songs, often bringing him to tears. Wilson moved and fascinated fans and musicians long after he stopped having hits. In his later years, Wilson and a devoted entourage of younger musicians performed 'Pet Sounds' and his restored opus, 'Smile,' before worshipful crowds in concert halls. Meanwhile, The Go-Go's, Lindsey Buckingham, Animal Collective and Janelle Monáe were among a wide range of artists who emulated him, whether as a master of crafting pop music or as a pioneer of pulling it apart. An endless summer The Beach Boys' music was like an ongoing party, with Wilson as host and wallflower. He was a tall, shy man, partially deaf (allegedly because of beatings by his father, Murry Wilson), with a sweet, crooked grin, and he rarely touched a surfboard unless a photographer was around. But out of the lifestyle that he observed and such musical influences as Chuck Berry and the Four Freshmen, he conjured a golden soundscape — sweet melodies, shining harmonies, vignettes of beaches, cars and girls — that resonated across time and climates. Decades after its first release, a Beach Boys song can still conjure instant summer — the wake-up guitar riff that opens 'Surfin' USA'; the melting vocals of 'Don't Worry Baby'; the chants of 'fun, fun, fun' or 'good, good, GOOD, good vibrations'; the behind-the-wheel chorus ''Round, 'round, get around, I get around.' Beach Boys songs have endured from turntables and transistor radios to boom boxes and iPhones, or any device that could lie on a beach towel or be placed upright in the sand. The band's innocent appeal survived the group's increasingly troubled backstory, whether Brian's many personal trials, the feuds and lawsuits among band members or the alcoholism of Dennis Wilson, who drowned in 1983. Brian Wilson's ambition raised the Beach Boys beyond the pleasures of their early hits and into a world transcendent, eccentric and destructive. They seemed to live out every fantasy, and many nightmares, of the California myth they helped create. From the suburbs to the national stage Brian Wilson was born June 20, 1942, two days after McCartney. His musical gifts were soon obvious, and as a boy he was playing piano and teaching his brothers to sing harmony. The Beach Boys started as a neighborhood act, rehearsing in Brian's bedroom and in the garage of their house in suburban Hawthorne, California. Surf music, mostly instrumental in its early years, was catching on locally: Dennis Wilson, the group's only real surfer, suggested they cash in. Brian and Love hastily wrote up their first single, 'Surfin,'' a minor hit released in 1961. They wanted to call themselves the Pendletones, in honor of a popular flannel shirt they wore in early publicity photos. But when they first saw the pressings for 'Surfin,'' they discovered the record label had tagged them 'The Beach Boys.' Other decisions were handled by their father, a musician of some frustration who hired himself as manager and holy terror. By mid-decade, Murry Wilson had been displaced and Brian, who had been running the band's recording sessions almost from the start, was in charge, making the Beach Boys the rare group of the time to work without an outside producer. Their breakthrough came in early 1963 with 'Surfin' USA,' so closely modeled on Berry's 'Sweet Little Sixteen' that Berry successfully sued to get a songwriting credit. It was their first Top 10 hit and a boast to the nation: 'If everybody had an ocean / across the USA / then everybody'd be surfin,' / like Cali-for-nye-ay.' From 1963-66, they were rarely off the charts, hitting No. 1 with 'I Get Around' and 'Help Me, Rhonda' and narrowly missing with 'California Girls' and 'Fun, Fun, Fun.' For television appearances, they wore candy-striped shirts and grinned as they mimed their latest hit, with a hot rod or surfboard nearby. Their music echoed private differences. Wilson often contrasted his own bright falsetto with Love's nasal, deadpan tenor. The extroverted Love was out front on the fast songs, but when it was time for a slow one, Brian took over. 'The Warmth of the Sun' was a song of despair and consolation that Wilson alleged — to some skepticism — he wrote the morning after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. 'Don't Worry Baby,' a ballad equally intoxicating and heartbreaking, was a leading man's confession of doubt and dependence, an early sign of Brian's crippling anxieties. Stress and exhaustion led to a breakdown in 1964 and his retirement from touring, his place soon filled by Bruce Johnston, who remained with the group for decades. Wilson was an admirer of Phil Spector's 'Wall of Sound' productions and emulated him on Beach Boys tracks, adding sleigh bells to 'Dance, Dance, Dance' or arranging a mini-theme park of guitar, horns, percussion and organ as the overture to 'California Girls.' By the mid-1960s, the Beach Boys were being held up as the country's answer to the Beatles, a friendly game embraced by each group, transporting pop music to the level of 'art' and leaving Wilson a broken man. The Beach Boys vs. The Beatles The Beatles opened with 'Rubber Soul,' released in late 1965 and their first studio album made without the distractions of movies or touring. It was immediately praised as a major advance, the lyrics far more personal and the music far more subtle and sophisticated than such earlier hits as 'She Loves You' and 'A Hard Day's Night.' Wilson would recall getting high and listening to the record for the first time, promising himself he would not only keep up with the British band, but top them. Wilson worked for months on what became 'Pet Sounds,' and months on the single 'Good Vibrations.' He hired an outside lyricist, Tony Asher, and used various studios, with dozens of musicians and instruments ranging from violins to bongos to the harpsichord. The air seemed to cool on some tracks and the mood turn reflective, autumnal. From 'I Know There's an Answer' to 'You Still Believe in Me,' many of the songs were ballads, reveries, brushstrokes of melody, culminating in the sonic wonders of 'Good Vibrations,' a psychedelic montage that at times sounded as if recorded in outer space. The results were momentous, yet disappointing. 'Good Vibrations' was the group's first million-seller and 'Pet Sounds,' which included the hits 'Sloop John B' and 'Wouldn't It Be Nice,' awed McCartney, John Lennon and Eric Clapton among others. Widely regarded as a new kind of rock LP, it was more suited to headphones than to the radio, a 'concept' album in which individual songs built to a unified experience, so elaborately crafted in the studio that 'Pet Sounds' couldn't be replicated live with the technology of the time. Wilson was likened not just to the Beatles, but to Mozart and George Gershwin, whose 'Rhapsody in Blue' had inspired him since childhood. But the album didn't chart as highly as previous Beach Boys releases and was treated indifferently by the U.S. record label, Capitol. The Beatles, meanwhile, were absorbing lessons from the Beach Boys and teaching some in return. 'Revolver' and 'Sgt. Pepper,' the Beatles' next two albums, drew upon the Beach Boys' vocal tapestries and melodic bass lines and even upon the animal sounds from the title track of 'Pet Sounds.' The Beatles' epic 'A Day in the Life' reconfirmed the British band as kings of the pop world and 'Sgt. Pepper' as the album to beat. All eyes turned to Wilson and his intended masterpiece — a 'teenage symphony to God' he called 'Smile.' It was a whimsical cycle of songs on nature and American folklore written with lyricist Van Dyke Parks. The production bordered on method acting; for a song about fire, Wilson wore a fire helmet in the studio. The other Beach Boys were confused, and strained to work with him. A shaken Wilson delayed 'Smile,' then canceled it. Remnants, including the songs 'Heroes and Villains' and 'Wind Chimes' were re-recorded and issued in September 1967 on 'Smiley Smile,' dismissed by Carl Wilson as a 'bunt instead of a grand slam.' The stripped down 'Wild Honey,' released three months later, became a critical favorite but didn't restore the band's reputation. The Beach Boys soon descended into an oldies act, out of touch with the radical '60s, and Wilson withdrew into seclusion. Years of struggle, and late life validation Addicted to drugs and psychologically helpless, sometimes idling in a sandbox he had built in his living room, Wilson didn't fully produce another Beach Boys record for years. Their biggest hit of the 1970s was a greatest hits album, 'Endless Summer,' that also helped reestablish them as popular concert performers. Although well enough in the 21st century to miraculously finish 'Smile' and tour and record again, Wilson had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and baffled interviewers with brief and disjointed answers. Among the stranger episodes of Wilson's life was his relationship with Dr. Eugene Landy, a psychotherapist accused of holding a Svengali-like power over him. A 1991 lawsuit from Wilson's family blocked Landy from Wilson's personal and business affairs. His first marriage, to singer Marilyn Rovell, ended in divorce and he became estranged from daughters Carnie and Wendy, who would help form the pop trio Wilson Phillips. His life stabilized in 1995 with his marriage to Melinda Ledbetter, who gave birth to two more daughters, Daria and Delanie. He also reconciled with Carnie and Wendy and they sang together on the 1997 album 'The Wilsons.' (Melinda Ledbetter died in 2024.) In 1992, Brian Wilson eventually won a $10 million out-of-court settlement for lost songwriting royalties. But that victory and his 1991 autobiography, 'Wouldn't It Be Nice: My Own Story,' set off other lawsuits that tore apart the musical family. Carl Wilson and other relatives believed the book was essentially Landy's version of Brian's life and questioned whether Brian had even read it. Their mother, Audree Wilson, unsuccessfully sued publisher HarperCollins because the book said she passively watched as her husband beat Brian as a child. Love successfully sued Brian Wilson, saying he was unfairly deprived of royalties after contributing lyrics to dozens of songs. He would eventually gain ownership of the band's name. The Beach Boys still released an occasional hit single: 'Kokomo,' made without Wilson, hit No. 1 in 1988. Wilson, meanwhile, released such solo albums as 'Brian Wilson' and 'Gettin' In Over My Head,' with cameos by McCartney and Clapton among others. He also completed a pair of albums for the Walt Disney label — a collection of Gershwin songs and music from Disney movies. In 2012, surviving members of the Beach Boys reunited for a 50th anniversary album, which quickly hit the Top 10 before the group again bickered and separated. Wilson won just two competitive Grammys, for the solo instrumental 'Mrs. O'Leary's Cow' and for 'The Smile Sessions' box set. Otherwise, his honors ranged from a Grammy lifetime achievement prize to a tribute at the Kennedy Center to induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2018, he returned to his old high school in Hawthorne and witnessed the literal rewriting of his past: The principal erased an 'F' he had been given in music and awarded him an 'A.'
