Brian Wilson did it for us

Reading "i am Brian Wilson," it's written in a whisper

We lost the great Brian Wilson yesterday. Though the sad truth is, due to dementia and other health issues, we didn’t have the Brian Wilson we knew and loved for a long time.

The last great song he gave us was titled “Love And Mercy” which really was what Brian Wilson wanted from each and every one of us, even if he was so modest, he’d never actually say something like that.

Reading his memoir “i am Brian Wilson” (take particular note of the non-capital letters), you find that his life, for all the sunshine and sweetness and joy he brought the world through his immeasurably wonderful music, was hell.

His father was abusive, particularly so to Brian, the most obviously gifted of all the brothers. There’s speculation that the reason Brian was deaf in one ear — that’s right, he created all that extraordinary music with one working ear — because of a whack from his father on the other one.

We lost Brian Wilson yesterday. Hope he knew how much he was loved

As you learn from the book, a singing family called the Wilsons had started a group they called “The Beach Boys” though only one of them – Dennis – could surf. Along with brothers Brian and Carl, they all grew up at 3701 West 119^th Street in Hawthorne, California, about 15 minutes from the Pacific Ocean.

That California theme – surfin’, the beach, the sun, the fun! – was something that sparked the imagination of the oldest of the Wilson brothers, an introvert named Brian who, over the next few years would become one of the sixties’ finest composers.

“You wouldn’t think this,” Wilson writes in his memoir “i am Brian Wilson” “but I almost never went to the beach as kid, even though it was only a few miles away. The first time I went to the ocean I couldn’t believe it. My dad took us, and I was so scared at the size of the ocean. Also, I had light skin that burned easily and I didn’t like squinting against the sun for hours…And there was barely any surfing either. I tried once and got conked on the head with the board. (So the songs) were more about the idea of going in the ocean than they were about actually going in the ocean. I liked to look at it, though. It was sort of like a piece of music; each of the waves was moving around by itself, but they were also moving together.”

It may be hard to believe thanks to the stunning arrival and impact of The Beatles and their hard-to-miss, record-setting appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in February of 1964 but Brian Wilson’s Beach Boys actually beat The Beatles to the Billboard charts by 17 months! “Surfin’ Safari” was the Beach Boys’ first single to hit the charts back on August 11, 1962, well before the Liverpool Lads made their chart debut with “Please Please Me” in February of 1964.

A very early shot of The Beach Boys - They’re hardly recognizable.

And they were just getting started. As Brian wrote “When we hit number one in Sweden with ‘Surfin’ Safari’ in 1962, we laughed about it. But ‘Surfin’ Safari’ also went Top Twenty in the US and then it seemed like there were Top Ten hits all the time: “Surfin’ USA,’ ‘Surfer Girl,’ ‘Be True To Your School,’ ‘Fun, Fun, Fun.’ It was hard to get any higher than that because of the Beatles.

“They were on Ed Sullivan in February of 1964 and in April they had all five of the top spots in Billboard. That week we were at thirteen with “Fun, Fun, Fun.” In May we released “I Get Around,” and that went into the Top Twenty…Then in July something changed. The top song…was by us. “I Get Around” was number one, right above ‘My Boy Lollipop.’ I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t just Sweden anymore. “I Get Around” was also our first gold record.

“And it wasn’t just how many people were buying our records. It was how people were talking about our records. They made us out to be the next great pop act after the Beatles, though he had been putting records on the charts for years. And some people were saying we were even better, that our songs were more interesting or sophisticated or created more positive energy.”

Or, as Jim Miller wrote in “The Rolling Stone Illustrated History Of Rock And Roll,” “In the Sixties, when they were at the height of their original popularity, the Beach Boys propagated their own variant on the American dream, painting a dazzling picture of beaches, parties and endless summers, a paradise of escape into private as often as shared pleasures.”

The hits kept on coming, four No. 1 hits, 55 chart hits in all, 15 Top Ten hits, almost all written by Wilson, a sensitive soul who found the pressures of providing the songs and the direction for the band overwhelming and he stopped touring, began to dabble in drugs and dealt with mental issues.

As he lays bare for all of us in “i am Brian Wilson,” he dealt with all of these difficulties, a very difficult relationship with his bullying father, problems with his brothers, the record company, life in general before meeting his second wife, Melinda (who recently passed) who was a major factor in Wilson’s triumphant return to music.

Written with the help of ghostwriter Ben Greenman, whether or not “i am Brian Wilson, a memoir” is actually an audiobook, it doesn’t really matter. It’s written in a whisper. For the shy, sensitive, and extraordinarily talented composer of all those magical Beach Boy songs to actually sit down and share thoughts, memories, impressions, pieces of his difficult life with us took courage and patience and perhaps, a willingness, an eagerness to open his life for us.

If you’ve listened to what may well prove to be his final true compositional classic, “Love and Mercy” that might be exactly what Brian Wilson wishes for - and sends out to - his audience, love and mercy. If only some of that had been spared for him.

“i am Brian Wilson” is about as modest a memoir as a person can write. Though it opens with a moment of personal triumph, the London performance of his long-postponed, nearly forgotten follow-up album to his ground-shaking hit “Good Vibrations” and the album “Pet Sounds” – it’s not a story of triumph.

That performance - a song cycle called “SMiLE” without the least bit of irony – Brian doesn’t do irony – is one wonderful moment. But in reading the shifts and turns of his memoir you find yourself doing two things; smiling at the memory of all the joyous, unforgettable, uplifting music he sent our way and after reading all he went through to deliver it, you want to give the guy a hug.

While the Beach Boys, musically speaking, might be seen as lightweights compared with their contemporaries The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, Wilson’s work grew increasingly intricate, complex, imaginative. So much so that “Pet Sounds”, some say was the impetus for The Beatles to come up with “Sgt. Peppers.” Whether stated or not, in Wilson’s mind and heart, it was a competition.

But while The Beatles struggled with interpersonal issues, Wilson faced other challenges, ones that could not easily be solved. He jumps right to it on Page 3 – why wait? – where Wilson explains that for many years, he has had to live with voices in his head every day, voices full of doubt and anger. “Your music is no damned good, Brian. Get to work, Brian. You’re falling behind, Brian.” He opens his book and his heart with us, strangers. Who is he falling behind? Why, let’s start with The Beatles. And keep on going. That may well be why the struggles in making SMiLE come to life brought things to a crashing halt.

Beginning as a literal band of brothers, Wilson brother Carl on guitar, Wilson brother Dennis on drums, Brian on keyboards or bass, cousin Mike Love on vocals, friend Al Jardine on guitar, their voices fit together like pieces in a puzzle, lifting Brian’s increasingly complicated compositions with the sweetest and most beautiful harmonies, almost mini-symphonies on some songs.

As Wilson’s music became more complex, as he tried to respond to what he heard in his head, he seemed to leave the rest of the band behind. They didn’t get it. Addled by mounting drug use, record company pressure and those voices, the whole process came to a halt. And the Beach Boys were done, creatively.

If you listened to The Beach Boys’ perfect harmonies, images of the beach, the sand, California sunshine and beautiful girls, you were there. Just as his California neighbor John Fogerty imagined himself in a Mississippi swamp, writing those Creedence Clearwater classics, Wilson gave us an impossibly evocative portrait of the Golden State. Listening to his songs, you almost felt you needed sunscreen.

What we didn’t hear or even suspect was what Brian Wilson faced, almost on a daily basis from his abusive father Murry, then later, from the Svengali Dr. Eugene Landy, who, as Wilson says “was a tyrant who controlled one person and that person was me. He controlled where I went and what I did and who I saw and what I ate.” And so on.

As he explains in a chapter called “Fear” just 15 pages into the book, “Not only wasn’t I completely in control of the group, but I wasn’t completely in control of myself. How do you know when a problem starts? Did it start in 1964 on an airplane to Houston when I freaked out and decided I couldn’t tour with the band anymore? Did it start in the ‘40s when my father whacked me because he didn’t like how I was acting? Did it start in the ‘70’s with drugs or long before that with the beginnings of mental illness that no one knew how to handle.”

Few artists would be as willing or as open to talk about their troubles, particularly dealing with mental illness. Happily, as he explains in the book, Brian Wilson has come out on the other side of that. And unapologetically, almost goofily open, he is happy to reflect on his life in music, sharing stories about where the songs came from, how they were recorded and so on. With some surprises.

“But our Stonesiest song ever was probably “Marcella” which is on “Carl And The Passions – So Tough.” “Marcella” isn’t deep like some other songs…it’s about a girl who worked at this massage parlor I used to go to. It’s a lust song, plain and simple, like (the Stones’) “My Obsession.”

Oh.

The book is a veritable grab bag of memories, recollections, impressions and moments. He includes a high school paper he wrote called “My Philosophy,” talks a lot about his difficult dad, about meeting Bob Dylan in a Malibu emergency room after Dylan had broken his thumb, about songs he sang and people he met, the Kennedy Center Awards and many other moments.

“i am Brian Wilson” offers us, a bunch of complete strangers, a glimpse at how Brian Wilson sees the world, his life, his music, predictably not in a straight, discernible line but the same way he hears melodies, songs, out of that one remarkable ear that Dylan said ought to be sent to the Smithsonian. The story comes in flashes, jolts, strings of notes and recollections.

It’s not an easy read, hasn’t been an easy life, one so very different than what he made us imagine through the magical, uplifting gift of his enduring music where the sun is always shining, the girls are always beautiful, and our hearts are light and happy. Love and mercy to you, Brian Wilson. At last.

BRIAN’S FINAL GREAT SONG - “LOVE AND MERCY”