Farewell, Mozart of Pop

Inside rehearsals with Brian Wilson

MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES

With Brian Wilson’s death we have lost the only musical genius ever to match – sometimes even surpass – Lennon and McCartney’s. Though Brian’s genius was all about sculpting in sound and the sweet permutations of his voice with those of his younger brothers, Carl and Dennis.

No superstar was ever more troubled yet, against all the odds, he outlived Dennis (accidentally drowned in 1983) and Carl (died from lung cancer, 1998.)

This piece on him and the Beach Boys appeared in 1977, when some reporters were granted extraordinary access to their subjects but didn’t mention themselves in the story, as is the custom today.

So I didn’t add that at the end of the interview in their rehearsal-room they played ‘Barbara Ann’ just for me. I lay awake half that night, saturated in the thrill of it.

The Beach Boys: Not All Fun, Fun, Fun

Wherever Brian Wilson goes, his cousin Steve is never far away. Cousin Steve sits in the hotel room as Brian wanders fitfully back and forth, a tall, helpless-looking figure with shorn hair, white cotton trousers and eyes that can suddenly fill up with terror or tears. Sometimes the eyes close; the bristle-bearded face is uplifted in silent, pleading anguish.

Then Cousin Steve appears beside him, talking in a murmur and kneading the muscles of his neck. It is done with evident tenderness and concern.

For Brian Wilson to be even visible is a historic event in popular music. He is the founder of the Beach Boys, undisputedly the greatest American Rock and Roll band, still intact after a career spanning 18 years. As a songwriter he ranks with the select few, in any idiom, who have created a potent and self-contained dream world. To Wilson we owe the California idyll of surfing, sun and hotrod cars apotheosised in songs such as 'Little Deuce Coupe', 'Help Me Rhonda' and 'Fun, Fun, Fun' which brought happiness, ironically, to everyone but their composer. Throughout the past decade Wilson has been ill and disturbed, a recluse unable to perform with his band or even finish the writing of a song.

The Beach Boys' story forms a chapter of modern American mythology. In 1960, then a 19 year-old high school student, Brian Wilson formed a band with his younger brothers Dennis and Carl, their cousin Mike Love and Brian's school-friend Al Jardine. Their early records celebrated the cleanly outdoor pursuits and inamorata of Californian youth, with fresh white vocal choruses superimposed on urgent black Rhythm and blues, From this they developed intricate harmonies and studio techniques, culminating in the album Pet Sounds in 1966. Soon afterwards came Wilson’s epic single Good Vibrations, a multi-track oratorio that made the Beatles’ Tomorrow Never Knows seem unambitious by comparison

The years have been kinder to the other Wilson brothers.

Dennis, age 35, and Carl, age 33, are respectively lean and plump, bearded and long-haired West Coast conservatives.

Each is king to a private retinue; each acknowledges Brian, in his solitary torment, to be the source of all melody inspiration. His brothers grow alert when Brian stumbles, as by instinct, to the piano. His touch there is firm. 'Nice change, Brian,' Carl says interrogatively. He waits, as all do, to hear what Brian will play next.

So it always was, Carl remembers, when they were growing up in Hawthorne, Los Angeles. Their father, Murry Wilson, himself a would-be songwriter, had a small import business. Brian was always the dominant boy, gifted in languages, sport and mimicry. Carl remembers lying in bed at night in the room the three brothers shared, helpless with laughter at the stories Brian told him.

Grown-up Brian remembers this, too, pauses in his wandering and suddenly smiles. As a boy he had a pure soprano voice. His brother Dennis remembers him running home from school in tears because the other boys had teased him about it.

His musical imagination developed in early adolescence. For inspiration he turned, not to the anodyne pop music of the day, but to the early 1950s close-harmony singing of groups like the Four Freshmen. He schooled his two brothers in drums and guitar and part-singing, reaching for chord-sequences beyond the comprehension of other teenage musicians. His harmonic skills are the more remarkable because all his life he has been totally and incurably deaf in his right ear, the result of being struck on the head with a wooden spar by his abusive father.

The first instruments were bought with lunch-money left for them when their parents went on holiday to Mexico. Their name, inspired by a brand of beach-shirt, was to be the Pendletones until a friend casually rechristened them the Beach Boys. Their first concert appearance, in 1960, was for $5 apiece in Long Beach, at a memorial concert for a dead singer called Ritchie Valens. Despite a largely black audience, their appearance was as successful as any they have since made. No one in the band can remember playing to people who did not enjoy their music.

It was after a European tour in 1965 that Brian ceased to appear with them in concert. While they continued travelling, he laboured in the studio, staying in touch by telephone. Carl remembers being rung up in North Dakota and hearing the outline of 'Good Vibrations' played by Brian down the telephone.

The whole Pet Sounds album was planned and largely recorded before Brian summoned the others to fill in their vocal parts. The album established a precedent in studio wizardry as well as in length of preparation. Somewhere in California, Carl Wilson says, there is an entire shelf of tape canisters housing unused material from 'Good Vibrations' alone.

Brian's mental turmoil and gradual isolation stemmed from fear that he would be unable to surpass the Pet Sounds music: his mind buckled under the necessity of going one better. He had dabbled in drugs and was haunted by a fear that his deafness might spread. From this exile came a single album called Smile, rumoured to be masterly but unlikely now ever to be released

Brian inspires affection and forbearance in an industry not noted for its humane qualities. There is his cousin Steve, always there to massage his neck when the horrors come. He has been happily married for 14 years to a kind and understanding wife. Another factotum called Rocky describes how Brian's weight has been brought down from 16 stone and his consumption of cigarettes reduced from 60 a day to three or four. He hasn't touched drugs for a year and a half, Rocky says with pride, and he runs miles each week on a treadmill rigged up for him at home.

The band has now broken from rehearsal on a sound stage at Pinewood Studios, just outside London. 'Rocky, can't I have a smoke in the break?' Brian pleads. 'Can't I, Rocky, please? I'm working hard, Rocky, honest. I've got no high notes.' He sits at a piano to demonstrate that his voice, still pure and high like a teenager's, is unsullied by cigarettes. 'Okay, now, change key, Rocky orders. Brian obeys. 'Again,' Rocky orders him. 'Again.'

The remaining two Beach Boys defer to their leader while remaining calmly individualistic. Al Jardine, the bass-player, is wry and school-masterly. Mike Love, the vocalist, studies advanced Transcendental Meditation in Switzerland and has a sharp way with clumsy radio interviewers. Neither has known contentment as great as that to be found by singing and playing in the Beach Boys. 'What we've evolved from our being,' Mike Love says, 'is that harmony feels good.' Al Jardine remembers their last Wembley Stadium concert when he was tortured by earache, but still went on with the performance. 'It's like being a doctor. You can be sick, but you still prescribe the drugs.'

In recent years, both the younger Wilson brothers have produced solo albums. Each drew on the confidence of superstardom, and a coterie of superstar session-men. Each wondered, with some trepidation, what Brian would say.

"When my record was finished, Brian was the first to hear it,' Dennis Wilson says. 'In the middle of some tracks he'd say "I can't stand this" and walk out of the room. Sometimes he'd laugh. Sometimes he'd cry. I guess he was thinking that he'd seen me grow up as a musician.'