Brian Wilson - 1942-2025

  by Nick Dent-Robinson

published: 8 / 7 / 2025

Nick Dent-Robinson pays tribute to Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, who died in June. Brian Wilson, the brilliant and visionary leader of The Beach Boys, has died in his native California just nine days before his 83rd birthday. His genius for innovative writing, arrangements and his determination to “use the recording studio as an instrument” made him one of the world's most influential recording artists. The Beach Boys were one of the most successful rock bands of the 1960s and achieved more than 30 singles in the Top 40, worldwide record sales of over 100 million with their album ‘Pet Sounds’ voted Number 2 in Rolling Stone's list of the best rock albums of all time – narrowly losing out to The Beatles' ‘Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band’. Born in Inglewood, California, Brian Wilson was raised in a musical family. His father Murry was an amateur songwriter and pianist and younger brothers Dennis and Carl both played instruments at an early age. Brian learned guitar and boogie woogie piano and was a child soloist in the local choir where he was lauded for his perfect pitch and ability to memorise a tune almost instantly. He was taught how to write manuscript music and arrange instrumentation by the time he went to high school. Subsequently he has talked about his early inspirations which included Gershwin, Mozart and Bach. By his early teens, Brian was teaching his younger brothers and his cousin Mike Love to sing harmonies and soon these three had joined Brian and schoolfriend Al Jardine to form what they described as a “neighbourhood musical group”, rehearsing in Brian's bedroom and in the garage of his parents' home in Hawthorne, Southern California. Initially, they wanted to call themselves ‘The Pendletones’ but noticing that surf music was starting to catch on locally, Dennis Wilson suggested they cash in. Brian and Mike Love hastily composed ‘Surfin’ and, with some persuasion by their first record label, they agreed to become ‘The Beach Boys’. Initially father Murry Wilson acted as the group's manager but, soon after ‘Surfin’ achieved chart success, he was displaced. From then on Brian - who was increasingly overseeing their recording sessions - took charge and The Beach Boys were to become one of the few bands from the 1960s to enjoy huge success without an outside producer. From 1963-66 The Beach Boys were rarely out of the charts, enjoying huge hits with ‘Surfin' USA’, ‘I Get Around’, ‘Help Me, Rhonda’, ‘California Girls’ and ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’. Their harmonies were clever and intricate whilst Brian Wilson's bright falsetto contrasted perfectly with Mike Love's nasal, deadpan tenor. Mike Love would lead on the faster songs but Brian Wilson would take over on the slower, more reflective and darker numbers like ‘The Warmth of the Sun’ or ‘Don't Worry Babe’. Recording techniques were evolving fast and Brian Wilson has said he was hugely influenced by Burt Bacharach as well as Phil Spector's Wall of Sound at this time. The sleigh bells featured on ‘Dance, Dance, Dance’ as well as the complex mix of guitars, horns, percussion and organ in the overture to ‘California Girls’ are examples of this. By the mid-1960s, The Beach Boys were being held up as America's answer to The Beatles - a friendly competion that both bands embraced enthusiastically. In 1965, when The Beatles' first studio album, ‘Rubber Soul’ was praised as raising pop music to a true art form with its more sophisticated lyrics and music, The Beach Boys were determined to produce something more innovative. Brian Wilson worked obsessively for months using various studios, dozens of musicians playing a range of instruments from violins to bongos to a harpsichord and even consulting an outside lyricis, Tony Asher. Eventually the album ‘Pet Sounds’ emerged with the single, ‘Good Vibrations”. The album's tracks included ballads, reveries, innovative brushstrokes of melody - all culminating in the sonic wonders of ‘Good Vibrations’. The record was widely acknowledged – not least by The Beatles – as a masterpiece. People like Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and The Beatles' producer George Martin were hugely impressed and ‘Pet Sounds’ was described as a unique “concept” album...the first time that term had been applied to any pop LP. The Beatles were not slow to rise to the challenge. ‘Revolver’ and ‘Sgt Pepper’, their next two albums, drew upon the Beach Boys' vocal tapestries, melodic bass lines and fine harmonies plus the innovative use of various new studio recording techniques. Soon, ‘Sgt Pepper’ became the album to beat. All eyes turned back to The Beach Boys and Brian Wilson. He started work on his own intended masterpiece - “a teenage symphony to God” - that he called ‘Smile’. He worked with American lyricist Van Dyke Parks and produced a whimsical cycle of songs about nature and American folklore. But the other Beach Boys were unsure about the commercial merits of the material. And Brian Wilson – who had long been fragile psychologically – spiralled into a vortex of drug-induced mental illness and alcoholism. He became very depressed and overweight and work on ‘Smile’ was delayed and then abandoned – though a few elements of the record did emerge later. For many years, Brian Wilson withdrew into seclusion and The Beach Boys descended into an oldies act, out of touch with the late 1960s and 1970s. - Though the band's 1974 “Endless Summer’ greatest hits album did sell well and in time this helped re-establish them as a live performance act. Brian Wilson's difficulties continued, the joy in his songs rarely being reflected in his personal life. His childhood had been difficult with his father resenting Brian's musical abilities and frequently getting into rages and hitting Brian and his brothers. Brian had married his teenage sweetheart Marilyn and they had two daughters but the ordeals of his own childhood had left Brian terrified of parenthood and he would stay away from home for days to avoid contact with his daughters. The marriage ended by the mid-1970s. Brian had now lost interest in music. But, in 1986, Brian agreed to go on a date with a woman named Melinda Ledbitter who had answered an advertisement to buy his car. She recalled, “I just knew immediately that Brian wasn't crazy. I'd never met anyone so honest or willing to share their feelings. I knew he just needed someone to love and be loved by.” After years together, in 1995 they were married and, in Melinda's care, Brian made the most unexpected of recoveries. He even completed his masterpiece ‘Smile’ and went on to tour again with The Beach Boys – including a rare UK appearance at Fairport's Cropredy Covention in Oxfordshire in 2018 where I was fortunate enough to see him. Sadly, Brian’s two younger brothers Dennis and Carl had died by then. Melinda also died at their Beverly Hills home last year and Brian, who had recently developed a form of dementia, was lost without her. But it is good to reflect that, as Brian himself commented when he was at Cropredy, “Since knowing Melinda, for the first time in my life I have actually been living and feeling the words of my music.....'Oh, my my, what elation....Gotta keep those lovin' good vibrations' - which is great, isn't it?”

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