Anybody who knows me knows I am a hardcore Beach Boys fan, so this hits me really, really hard.
Of course, I knew this day would eventually come ā sooner rather than later. I even kind of joked about it over at TOP:
But it seems like for Wilson that the past year or so has been especially tough with his wife dying, and the public announcement that he would be going into a conservatorship and 24/7 care due to dementia.
The man led a tough life filled with physical and mental abuse, drug addiction, and incapactitating mental illness. Some 50 years ago, I doubt anybody would have predicted that he would long outlive his two brothers, but here we are.
In other words, Iāve been steeling myself for this news for a while now. That doesnāt make it hurt any less. I take solace in the fact that his creations and talent will live on forever, and will continue to inspire musicians across all genres for generations to follow.
Thereās any number of videos, photos, or other media of Brian I could pick to close this out. Instead, Iāll post this track by avant-garde rapper JPEGMAFIA where he justifies himself as āyoung Black Brian Wilsonā:
Still canāt believe Iām gettinā paid off this art today (Damn, Peggy)
Iām the medicine man (Yeah), keep a zip in my hand (Yeah)
I do work on the stage (Haha), I still feel like a fan
Uh, when I pass I hope everything I did matter to you, baby, if it didnāt
Fuck it, when my body frigid (Yeah), all this music gonā keep Peggy livinā
Itās the young, black, Brian Wilson
Smile at these crackers who want me dead (Ack)
Fire helmets wonāt protect your head (Brrt)
Donāt get sent to Jesus filled with lead, lilā nigga
ETA:
Post about when I saw Brian Wilson perform in 2019:
The term āmusical geniusā is overused, but Brian Wilson really was a musical genius. Even tracks like Good Vibrations, which the average person probably doesnāt think much about other than it being some old song, is kind of insanely good, if you know much about music. Itās kind of nuts, really. Even the Beatles were kind of blown away, and a little intimidated, by it. RIP.
For me a musicianās passing that unexpectedly hit me hard was Chris Cornell. I always liked his music but never really counted myself as a hardcore fan, but after his passing i was listening to his music and realized that so much of his music was basically the theme song for so much of my youth. And yeah sure i could say the same for other artists of that era but there was something about his music that just stuck out.
Anyway when i had that realization that his music was more important to me than i realized and that he was dead i justā¦ cried. I still have a hard time listening to his music, i get the feels but maybe enough time has passed that i can enjoy it again. Maybe.
But back to your post, its sad that Brian Wilson had a hard life and a difficult end of it at that. At least heās now resting in peace and left behind a hell of a legacy.
He really was, and for much of his life he didnāt like to be called that. Iām sure part of it was due to the pressures of trying to live up the expectations placed upon him, to his own impostor syndrome doubts brought about from some of his high profile failures. I feel like once he started to get his shit together after being released from Eugene Landyās evil influence, he didnāt embrace it so much as warm up to it a little more. He was quoted as saying something along the lines of, āif you have to live up to something, it may as well be thatā.
But back to the āmusical geniusā ā he wasnāt classically trained in the academic sense. (Not saying he came up from nothing ā he grew up in a musical household, and had a highly trained ear, but itās not like he was a Mozart-like child prodigy playing complex arrangements when barely out of diapers.) He benefited from an innate understanding music and theory, and perhaps most of all had a willingness to break all the rules.
Whenever Iāve heard classically trained musicians talk about things that Brian wrote, I often hear them marveling over certain chord changes and unconventional signatures that simply shouldnāt work, but yet they do.
Good Vibrations had so many innovations that we never appreciated at its time. Things that are taken for granted today ā especially how it was lot of little pieces recorded in different studios and then carefully spliced together to make a complete song. These days most music is done like this (of course, itās all computerized versus being done by hand carefully splicing tapes together). Wilson called this āmodular recordingā and intended the ill-fated Smile album to be like this with a whole bunch of bits and pieces that could be combined into any number of songs. For a later example, the Beach Boysā Love You album was almost all Brian screwing around with synthesizers. In 1976.
As the story goes, the band could have kept going along with wildly artistic and experimental stuff, but there was a Mike Love-led contingent who wanted to stick with the commercial stuff that sold well and the Brian Wilson-led continginent who wanted to push the limits of what they could do. Ultimately the Mike Love contingent won out and you ended up with what would become a pure nostalgia act with mostly forgettable releases from the late 1970s up until their final album in 2012. (Which, to be fair, was way better than it had any business being mostly because Brian wrote most of it.)
Indeed. Iāll definitely be pouring one out for him today, but Iām going to try to balance that with that he gave us so much through his decades in music and was actively performing and touring up until just a couple of years ago (whether or not that was a good idea can be debated, but not right now). Iām happy he finally gets to rest.
It was unlike anything out there in Pop musicā¦ polymorphic enough to be called Brianās āpocket symphonyā, and among so many great songs from that era.
Has anyone here seen Love & Mercy, a biopic drama of Brian Wilson? Excellent film with Paul Dano brilliant as Wilson. Lots of āsong-buildingā details; sent to 7th heaven when character Carol Kayeālegendaryāappeared in the filmās Good Vibrations recording session.
I saw it recently. It was nice. Gave a good laymanās version of what Brian Wilson accomplished, even if you donāt have the musical chops to understand how innovative it was.
I saw the Beach Boys in the late 80ās. Iām pretty sure he wasnāt touring with them then. What I remember the most from the show was them doing a key change acapala (spelling?). It was amazing to hear them stay together as a group as they navigated the key change. One of those impressive stunts of musicality that has stayed with me, much like Clarence Gatemouth Brown playing the violin so fast it seemed impossible that hands could move that quickly - then topping it and going even faster.
When purists complain and ask why some particular musician (especially in classical music) plays a particular piece too fast, the general reaction Iāve seen is, āBecause she/he can!ā
Had you noticed thereās a (kind of) recent mini-series of Beach Boys videos with those same young actors? In that sense, it reminded me of Stephen Sanchezās videos (which I pointed out to our 10th grader, whoās a huge fan).
Just remembered that, for no particular reason last night*, I decided to listen to āOur Prayer.ā
*(other than itās a beautiful favorite)
Dano was phenominal and worth noting that he did a lot of his own singing. I also have to give John Cusak credit for his portrayal of middle aged BW. While to me Cusak looked nothing like 1980s Wilson (compared to Dano who was a spitting image of 1960s Wilson), Cusakās use of speech, mannerisms, and tics were so on point that it allowed me to suspend disbelief.
As a whole, for a Hollywood biopic I think it does a pretty good job even if as a fan I would sometimes get frustrated as the glossing over or complete omission of certain things. I did find the use of parallel timelines to be a brave choice and it made it more interesting.
One problem when telling any sort of Beach Boys story is that thereās a lot of āyou canāt make this shit upā reality throughout their career. There was just so much drama, tragedy, and overall weirdness that it would take hours to unpack all of it. If you start to include the āsupporting actsā like Van Dyke Parks and others, it gets even weirder.
That was one of my biggest gripes about the Disney documentary that came out recently. The bulk of its runtime was re-treading the 1960s more or less glossing over everything that happened after Pet Sounds. Thereās brief mentions of the Manson Family, but nothing about Eugene Landy, or anything about the deaths of Dennis and Carl. What it needed was an uncompromised 6+ hour Get Back treatment, not a 2 hour love fest. Unfortunately, Mike Love would never allow for this.
A truly excellent documentary series is the unauthorized but very high quality āBrian Wilson: Singer/Songwriterā that comes in 2 parts ā 1962-1969, and 1969-1982. Itās often on Amazon Prime but can also be found on YouTube if the copyright bots donāt get to it first. It covers a mind boggling amount of breadth and depth in its 5 or so hour runtime.
Thereās also the authorized Beautiful Dreamer documentary about Brian Wilson finally finishing Smile in the early 2000s. It goes into a lot of depth about the original creation and breakdown during creating Smile in the 1960s, along with the struggles and triumph to finally complete it in 2004:
Heās one of those actors who everyone has probably seen at least once in somethingā¦
In fact, he was in one of the best season 1 episodes of Deep Space Nine (Duet) as Marritza, a file clerk at a forced labor camp known for some awful atrocitiesā¦
Heās always been an interesting āheavyā and has always had the look, but he fully embraced those roles and delivered the goods.
Weāll break out our Missiles of October DVD and watch itā¦ yet again. His performance as the Russian go-between twixt the WH and the Kremlin was commanding yet nuanced; such a gift for a low-budget 1970ās tv movie.
That video actually had some airplay on 120 Minutes in late '86 or early '87. (Stan Ridgway, whoād left Wall of Voodoo, had put out his solo LP The Big Heat by then, but I digress.)
Meanwhile Iād never seen this Yellow Submarinesque video before:
It was a little difficult getting thru āDonāt Worry Babyā a little earlier, but I did it anyway (twice).
