Latest news with #PetSounds
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I yearned to be a California Girl – but I lived in Burnley': readers on their love for Brian Wilson
I remember the Christmas after my mother's death in 1989 when I was 15, I purchased the best-of collection from Asda, interested to see what I would hear. It had the hits, of course, but also a few of the deeper cuts from Pet Sounds and onwards. To say this changed my life is an understatement – Brian's music, harmonies and subject matters struck an incredible chord in me. It did exactly what he existed for, bringing comfort to a heart and soul that needs it. I've been a fan ever since – I saw him at the Royal Festival Hall on his first Pet Sounds tour, watched him perform Smile in utter disbelief and wonder in Liverpool, while finally introducing his amazing show to my beautiful wife at the Summer Pops in Liverpool. Quite simply the greatest musician to ever live, in my opinion. Stephen Woodward, 50, Liverpool I first heard California Girls when I was 10 years old. I yearned to be that tanned girl with the bleached blond hair. However, I lived in Burnley, a northern mill town with grey skies and a surfeit of rain! Nonetheless, the Beach Boys' music transported me to those white sandy beaches, fringed with palm trees and lapped by the Pacific waves. As I got older, the music of Brian Wilson evolved, too. Those exquisite harmonies and lyrics continued to move and enthral me. He was a musical genius and his music still manages to evoke in me every human emotion possible. Catherine, Leeds It was 1988 at the Savoy Hotel, London, when I had my brief but indelible encounter with the Beach Boy myth and legend. I was in my formative years as a portrait photographer, and Brian Wilson was being revealed to the press by his doctor and manager, Eugene Landy. Stepping out of the lift on to the top floor, I was greeted by the ethereal melodies of a piano drifting through the corridor – Brian was composing in his penthouse suite. His two assistants greeted me with smiles. I set up my lighting and asked Brian to sit – he looked deeply into the lens and froze. After just three frames, the assistants intervened, politely informing me the session was over. Before I left, the assistants insisted on photographing me alongside him. Two polaroids were required – one for litigation purposes and another as a personal keepsake. For the first one, I played my best poker face. For the second, the memento, I decided to playfully raise an eyebrow. I snatched the Polaroid before the ink was dry, bid them all adieu and beat a hasty exit. As the image developed, two figures surfaced from the darkness – Brian and me, shoulder-to-shoulder, both with raised eyebrows! To me, in that moment of lucidity, Brian was gentle and respectful. That's how I remember my encounter with the legend. Gavin Evans, photographer, Berlin I grew up in Corby in the 90s and felt about as far away as possible from the Beach Boys' music. I think that's precisely why I fell in love with it. It felt transportive. I had the chance to see Brian Wilson perform Pet Sounds in Barcelona in 2016, which felt close to a perfect moment, the kind of thing I'd dreamed of as a child. When my first child was born 18 months ago, Pet Sounds was the first music I ever played for her. Jack Roe, writer and photographer, Liverpool I cannot help agreeing that Brian was the Mozart of the US and in spite of all plaudits he remains vastly underrated. If I play At My Piano for Swiss friends who are probably far less aware of the Beach Boys, they all love the beautiful melodies even without the affectionate and tender lyrics. The man was gentleness and love personified. Most people seem unaware of his later work, some of which definitely rivals his finest Pet Sounds moments for its amazing harmonies, arrangements, tender poetic lyrics and haunting melody. He was courageous over a testing lifetime and leaves a wonderful musical legacy. Kingsley Flint, 76, retired, Cossonay, Switzerland Musical composition isn't an exact science: most of us could shove a few chords together to make verses and a chorus, put it in a 4/4 time signature and voila! There's the basis of a pop song. But carrying that series of chord progressions to a higher form, and communicating feeling that touches almost all human souls who hear it, is what Brian Wilson did. Through his music, Brian invited us to grow up with him, and we did. Eamon McCrisken, 58, language coach, Spain I never met him but he did phone me up in 2005 after I donated to a charity appeal for the tsunami where he promised to ring everyone who donated a certain amount. One day, my wife and I were eating and let the phone go to the answering machine when it rang. I've never moved as quick as when I heard his unmistakable voice saying: 'Hi James, this is Brian Wilson calling from California.' Luckily I caught him before he hung up and got to tell him how much his music meant to me. I'll treasure that call forever. James Ellaby, 44, senior content writer, Manchester As a teen, I thought the Beach Boys were a bit naff. Later in life, having grown up a fair bit, I bought Pet Sounds and a greatest hits compilation on a whim, and was floored on first listen by how Brian captured and blended the essential dichotomy of life: beauty and ugliness, happiness and sadness, optimism and pessimism, ennui and joy. His music made me smile and cry, sometimes simultaneously, in a way that no music had before. Now, I feel a hole in my heart knowing that Brian is gone and that the world has lost a musical oracle, and I wonder: can anyone ever make us feel these things again? Lachlan Walter, 46, writer, Melbourne, Australia Since I was about 10, I have loved the music of the Beach Boys. By the time I was starting to date, finding and losing love, Brian's songs were there soundtracking my life like he knew me and I felt I knew him. I think all his fans felt a profoundly deep affection for him, an empathy for his suffering and a desire to make him feel as happy and loved as he made us feel. One memory about him particularly stands out for me. A few months after I first saw Pet Sounds live, my daughter was born. She was crying in my arms and I sang God Only Knows to her and she stopped crying straight away – it's our song now. Oliver Learmonth, 55, creative artist, Brighton In January 2002, I was at home in Holland when I found out Brian would be playing the whole of Pet Sounds in London the following week. How had I missed this news? As I quickly found out, the gigs were all sold out. No matter, I had to go. I invented a spurious excuse to visit my company's office in London, and the following Monday I was at the Royal Festival Hall box office at 10am, to be told: 'We occasionally get returns from ticket agencies. You could try coming back at 5pm.' I was there at 3pm, ferreting among early arrivals in the hope of a spare. No luck. But at 5pm, the box office had a couple of returns. Pricey, but what the hell: side stalls ticket W24 was mine, and canyoueffin'believeit, this turned out to be the front row on the right side of the stage, only a few feet from guitarist Jeffrey Foskett's head. At 50, I was as excited as a kid at Christmas. Andy, 74, retired administration manager, Preston
New Statesman
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
The genius of Brian Wilson
When David Bowie died in January 2016, much of the British media – which, by that point, was largely run by those who had grown up in his pop-cultural shadow – sank into that specific sort of mourning only fans are capable of: deeply felt, self-reflexive, nostalgic for what a stranger had brought into their lives. This included the New Statesman, where I was a staffer at the time. After the news broke, our focus in the office pivoted abruptly from whatever internal Labour Party matter was on the editorial planner (probably anti-Corbyn resignations) to Bowie's music, his persona, his influence not only on pop and rock but on the worldviews of generations. He became our cover story. It's hard to imagine the death of someone like the Beach Boys co-founder Brian Wilson, who passed away this week, receiving similar treatment outside the music press, even though he was once by far a bigger star than Bowie. That's understandable, in a way. The Beach Boys, a phenomenon in their long-ago prime, have for years been maligned with a reputation for being the antithesis of cool. They were America's biggest-selling and perhaps most acclaimed rock'n'roll group of the early-to-mid-1960s, whose chamber-pop masterpiece Pet Sounds still lurks near the top of countless 'greatest albums of all time' lists. (It has been at second place on Rolling Stone's for decades.) Yet, by the early 1970s, they were largely dismissed as burn-outs, eclipsed by more overtly introspective singer-songwriters, harder-edged bands such as The Doors and awesome hit-makers from the fast-evolving soul and disco scenes. If they prematurely turned into old news, a hangover from the past, it was perhaps because they had once helped to define an era, and that era was over. In effervescent songs such as 1963's 'Surfer Girl' and 'Little Deuce Coupe', they had not only reflected Californian preoccupations with surfing and cars but had also turned them into symbols of a very American fantasy of postwar freedom. Even their more personal pieces, such as 1965's 'Please Let Me Wonder', with its chorus that so perfectly captures the hopeful uncertainty of young love, had sold the decadence of an increasingly wealthy, ascendant America that could offer its people the precious luxury of introspection. The fraught, more paranoid decade that followed, which in the US probably began in earnest with the Watergate scandal in 1972, brought a new cynicism that made the innocent promises made by these teenage symphonies feel all of a sudden hollow, at least to many. The US mainstream eventually re-embraced the Beach Boys and, under co-founder Mike Love's stewardship, the group came to embody a kind of proto-normcore conformism. They never quite reclaimed coolness. In 1983, Ronald Reagan's then interior secretary, James Watt, nixed the band's Independence Day gig at the National Mall in Washington, DC, citing fears that rock music would attract 'the wrong element'. George HW Bush, who was vice-president at the time, personally intervened and forced Watt to apologise. The Beach Boys were friends, after all. In 2020, a later incarnation of the group accepted a booking to play at a hunting group event at which Donald Trump Jr was a scheduled speaker. Lame. None of this, of course, was Brian Wilson's doing. The genius behind the Beach Boys, who wrote, produced and orchestrated the band's most enduring records, had stepped back from his role as band leader as his mental health deteriorated, while working on what was intended to be Pet Sounds' follow-up, Smile. The increasingly strung-out Wilson abandoned that project in 1967, and his time at the top, competing with the likes of Paul McCartney, effectively came to an end. But his talent remained. In his more lucid moments, it would emerge in songs such as the haunting 1971 Beach Boys track ''Til I Die' and albums including his weird-and-wonderful 1995 Van Dyke Parks collaboration Orange Crate Art. Best of all was 1977's The Beach Boys Love You, a surprisingly lo-fi synth-pop record featuring songs about the solar system and 'honkin' down the gosh-darn highway'. In its own style, it's an equal of Pet Sounds or Smile, which itself was finally completed in 2004 as a solo album. Wilson's sad, well-documented struggles following his mental collapse had the effect of insulating him from Love's tarnishing of the Beach Boys brand, and critics have admitted the best of his work into the US rock canon. But his music is all too often afforded a different kind of appreciation to what Bowie's, say, or Bob Dylan's work enjoys. Where those singer-songwriters are considered heroes of their own creative destinies, Wilson has long been spoken of by many as a sort of victim of his own wild imagination, talent and mind – a savant, rather than a true master. In the studio as a young man, though, he was 'in charge of it all', as the session player Carol Kaye once recalled. And I don't think he ever lost that capacity to expertly make us feel and fantasise, and let us wonder. Like the most accomplished of his peers, he shaped our worldviews, in his case crafting a vision of a more playful, gentler America that should and could still exist. In these pretty dark times, surely there's not much cooler than that. [See also: Addison Rae and the art of AgitPop] Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Related
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Brian Wilson, R.I.P.
BRIAN WILSON, LEADER OF THE BEACH BOYS and one of the greatest influences on pop music of the 1960s, died Wednesday at the age of 82. Details of his death have yet to be disclosed, but he had been diagnosed with dementia and suffered from what his doctor termed 'a major neurocognitive disorder.' Wilson is most likely to be remembered for his mastery of the recording studio, where he pursued his vision with singleminded tenacity. His control has been likened to that of celebrated film auteurs. Born on June 20, 1942, in Inglewood, California, Wilson as a boy in the '50s absorbed from rock-n-roller Chuck Berry an appreciation for hard-driving rhythm and catchy lyrics, and from the Indiana-based quartet the Four Freshmen he acquired a taste for pristine harmony and the haunting sound of a high falsetto lead voice. In high school, Wilson formed a band with his cousin Mike Love; his two younger brothers, Dennis and Carl; and a classmate, Al Jardine. The Pendletones, as they were briefly known (a play on the brand of a popular shirt, Pendleton), recorded Wilson and Love's 'Surfin',' in 1961. The two wrote the song at the suggestion of Dennis Wilson, who was enamored of surfing. Brian Wilson was an avowed non-surfer. In a brilliant bit of marketing, 'Surfin'' was released under the band's new name, the Beach Boys. Many of the songs that followed in the next four years—'Surfin' Safari,' 'Surfer Girl,' and 'Little Deuce Coupe'—explored similar topics: beach life, California, teenage life. Wilson's greatest achievement came in 1966 with the album Pet Sounds. By this time, he had absorbed another influence, the 'Wall of Sound' pioneered by producer Phil Spector in his work with the Ronettes and other groups. Relying on multitrack recordings, with layer building on layer, and on the use of a cadre of topflight studio musicians known as the Wrecking Crew, Wilson brought to pop music a new level of sophistication in Pet Sounds. (Paul McCartney and George Martin attested to the influence of the album on the Beatles' 1967 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.) Join now The songs of Pet Sounds, nearly all of them composed by Wilson, explored more serious topics than the Beach Boys had dealt with in the past: the struggle of fitting in ('I Just Wasn't Made for These Times'), the challenge of finding one's true self ('I Know There's an Answer'), and the small hopes and immense promise of love ('Wouldn't It Be Nice' and 'God Only Knows'). 'Wouldn't It Be Nice' packs a symphonic variety in two and a half minutes of music, with harmony vocals darting in and out, tympani strokes lending an air of grandeur, an interlude introducing a dreamier musical atmosphere, and a pronounced slowing down before the resumption of the original tempo. Pet Sounds was followed by the single 'Good Vibrations,' perhaps the Beach Boys' best-known song. An ambitious follow-up album, SMiLE, was planned but progress ground to a halt. As chronicled in his autobiography, I Am Brian Wilson (cowritten by Ben Greenman), he observed, 'It was too much pressure from all sides: from Capitol [Records], from my brothers, from Mike [Love], from my dad, but most of all from myself.' Wilson's relationship with his father Murry was uneasy, the father subjecting the son to physical and verbal abuse. Beginning in the mid-1960s, Wilson resorted to alcohol and drugs because his 'head wasn't right.' He would be diagnosed with depression and schizoaffective disorder. In the mid-1970s he came under the care of Eugene Landy, a controversial psychotherapist who inserted himself into Wilson's business dealings in an exploitative way; the first sentence of Landy's 2006 Los Angeles Times obituary says he 'was denounced as a Svengali for his controversial relationship' with Wilson. (Their relationship is examined in the 2014 movie Love and Mercy.) Wilson worked off and on with the Beach Boys in addition to releasing solo albums, including a self-titled album in 1988. In 1995 he teamed with Van Dyke Parks on 'Orange Crate Art.' Two years later, he performed on The Wilsons, featuring his two daughters Wendy and Carnie Wilson. He won Grammy Awards in 2005 and 2013. His last album, At My Piano, was released in 2021. Brian Wilson's talents were so considerable that musicians of today remain awed by his creativity. Illustrative is the reaction of Gen-Z producer and composer Isaac Brown, who has a YouTube channel on which he posts videos of himself reacting to older music he'd never heard before. Listening for the first time to 'Good Vibrations,' Brown, at the beginning of the song, wears an engaged look that gives way to one of curiosity. What is he hearing? Where is this song going? When the first chorus arrives ('I'm picking up good vibrations') and the eerie theremin enters, his expression turns to bafflement. 'Really?' he exclaims. 'Whoa.' When the chorus returns, he exclaims, 'I don't even know what to do with this.' As the music comes to an end, he concludes: 'I cannot believe this song exists. I love this.' A follow-up video in which Brown listens to Pet Sounds for the first time ends with him gobsmacked by the creativeness and even bravery of the album's harmonies, lush instrumentation, and production. As Brown's reaction suggests, even after more than a half century, the best work of Brian Wilson retains the power to surprise and delight. Share this piece with a friend or family member who loves the Beach Boys. Share
Hindustan Times
13 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Brian Wilson and the bliss of bubble-gum pop
CLEAN-CUT, SMILING, wholesome—the Beach Boys ruled the American airwaves in the early 1960s. Their music was as sunny as a Southern California morning: easy to sing along to, but underlaid by complex harmonies and instrumentation that reward relistening. Brian Wilson—who died on June 11th, aged 82—was one of three brothers in the group and wrote most of their songs. Bob Dylan joked that he should 'will [his ear] to the Smithsonian' and Paul McCartney called 'Pet Sounds', the band's baroque masterpiece, his favourite album. Here are five essential tracks.'Surfer Girl'The pining ('Do you love me? Do you, surfer girl'), extravagant promises ('I will make your dreams come true') and gently modulated harmonies make the Beach Boys sound like the coolest doo-wop group on the quad. Anyone who listens closely to the spiky guitar in the middle section and the wailing vocals at the end will hear a group that both embraced and winked at convention. 'God Only Knows'Mr McCartney called this the greatest song ever written. John Lennon, among others, probably would have disagreed. Still, there is something irresistible about Carl Wilson's ethereal tenor, Brian Wilson's unconventional instrumentation (including sleigh bells, French horns and harpsichord), the lyrics' sweet sentimentality and the way the song seems to come unspooled in the middle before putting itself back together. 'Sloop John B'Many artists recorded this Bahamian folk song about a homesick sailor before it caught Brian Wilson's attention. Johnny Cash performed it as Texan calypso; the Kingston Trio as soft, folky pop. Mr Wilson made something more complex, with both harmonies and instrumentation as swift and precise as a Swiss watch, and—unusually for pop songs of the time—an extended a capella riff in the middle. The lyrics are melancholy, but the Wilson brothers have never sounded happier than when they are pleading to go home. 'Good Vibrations'On its surface, this is a fun, conventional—two verses, a bridge, a chorus—and poppy tune about seeing a pretty girl. But it may be the peak of Mr Wilson's production skills. Heavily layered, it features woodwinds, strings and an electro-theremin. As with so much of their work, people can enjoy it for the band's artistry or simply because it is an earworm. 'Summer's Gone'The musical equivalent of the sun setting into the Pacific, this is the last track on the last Beach Boys album featuring Mr Wilson, released in 2012. Sweetly melancholic and reflective, the harmonies and instrumentation are pared down compared with the band's earlier work, and the lyrics clearly come from someone closer to the end than the start of his life: 'Summer's gone, / Gone like yesterday / The nights grow cold / It's time to go'. Get 360° coverage—from daily headlines to 100 year archives.
Economist
21 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Economist
Brian Wilson and the bliss of bubble-gum pop
CLEAN-CUT, SMILING, wholesome—the Beach Boys ruled the American airwaves in the early 1960s. Their music was as sunny as a Southern California morning: easy to sing along to, but underlaid by complex harmonies and instrumentation that reward relistening. Brian Wilson—who died on June 11th, aged 82—was one of three brothers in the group and wrote most of their songs. Bob Dylan joked that he should 'will [his ear] to the Smithsonian' and Paul McCartney called 'Pet Sounds', the band's baroque masterpiece, his favourite album. Here are five essential tracks. 'Surfer Girl' The pining ('Do you love me? Do you, surfer girl'), extravagant promises ('I will make your dreams come true') and gently modulated harmonies make the Beach Boys sound like the coolest doo-wop group on the quad. Anyone who listens closely to the spiky guitar in the middle section and the wailing vocals at the end will hear a group that both embraced and winked at convention.
