The death of a towering figure such as The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson marks the closing of a chapter in the history of music and is another reminder that rock’s golden generation is passing into the twilight right before our eyes.
As the tortured visionary behind The Beach Boys, Wilson helped shape the world in which we live today, providing the soundtrack to everyday life via timeless pop masterpieces such as Good Vibrations, Wouldn’t It Be Nice and California Girls.
Long before Wilson’s mental-health struggles derailed his career in the mid-1960s, and decades before his recent decline in health, these songs were already eternal, their brilliantly vulnerable melodies and heartfelt lyrics destined to live forever. Along with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and a handful of others, Wilson provided the soundtrack to the past 70 years of shared human existence. With his death, something has been lost – yet there is comfort in knowing his music will be with us in perpetuity.
He was also a cautionary tale, a gentle soul ill-suited to the demands of the music industry and ultimately derailed by its vices. Desperate to compete with The Beatles, he turned to LSD as a creative tool. This disastrous relationship would push Wilson over the brink and spiralling off into galaxies from which he never quite returned.
That he was a pop savant was beyond dispute: driven by his rivalry with Lennon and McCartney, The Beach Boys’ single Good Vibrations and the 1966 album Pet Sounds confirmed pop music as an art form. Wilson was also instrumental in the creation of the concept album, with records such as Surf’s Up – a weird, difficult piece about environmental decay and the collapse of the United States as relevant today as when The Beach Boys released it in 1971.
Famously, Wilson couldn’t surf. The songwriter behind Surfin’ Safari and Surfing USA preferred the quiet reclusiveness of the recording studio to the teeming beaches of the South Bay area of Greater Los Angeles, where he was born and grew up with his brothers and future Beach Boys bandmates Dennis and Carl. (Their cousin Mike Love would join them as the group’s vocalist.)
Wilson’s songs conjured with the cliche of California as a sun-kissed paradise. But there were always shadows amid the light. Stardom would ultimately prove too much for a contemplative individual who never quite got over his abusive relationship with his father, Murry, for many years The Beach Boys’ manager.
“People say I’m a genius – it’s a compliment,” Wilson told me in 2014. “Having that [pressure] on me gave me the goose. It goosed me to want to make something really special. As soon as we finished Good Vibrations I knew we would have the number-one record in the nation. In the end it went to number three. Well, that’s close to number one. I was happy. There isn’t a [note] on that record I would change.”
During that conversation he came across as thoughtful and introspective – though he took issue with the idea that he was perpetually melancholy. It was more that the spotlight was not for him.
“People say I’m a sad person,” Wilson said. “Well, the songs are sad. Pet Sounds is a sad album. Caroline, No, that is a very sad song. Generally, I would consider myself a mellow individual. I like playing to crowds of 3,000 or 4,000. I’m not like Paul McCartney, who can play to 20,000 people. I’m not that sort of person.”
