Brian Wilson: The Gentle Genius

“I’m not a genius. I’m just a hard-working guy.” – Brian Wilson

For someone who put surf culture on the map in America, it’s ironic that Brian Wilson didn’t surf. However, he swam in a glorious ocean of sounds to become a poet laureate of pop music.

The story of Brian Wilson is similar to too many other deeply creative types. The sensitivity required to access the muse didn’t align with the harshness of Real Life, such as the pressures of fame or his tyrannical father, Murray.

On one hand, Murray shaped Wilson and his brothers, Carl and Dennis, into disciplined musicians (see also: The Jacksons and their father Joseph). On the other hand, his abuse laid the groundwork for the issues with drugs and mental health that plagued Brian throughout his life. Murray was known to remove his glass eye and force Brian to look at the empty socket. When Brian became deaf in his right ear, it was suspected that Murray had caused it with a sharp blow.

Still, Brian’s gentle genius persevered. “In My Room” describes his retreat from his father’s abuse and his gateway to creativity.

“Jesus, that ear.” Bob Dylan once remarked. “He should donate it to the Smithsonian.” He’s not wrong. As with Mozart, Prince, or Lennon & McCartney, the source of Wilson’s genius is a mystery. How is a middle-class California boy inspired to add sleigh bells, bike horns, and a theremin to pop songs?  Where did those sublime chord progressions and harmonies come from?  God only knows.

For a time in the 60s, the Beach Boys soared, but changing tastes affected the group’s fortunes, and that hit Brian hard. In 1969, he discovered that Murray had forged his signature and sold his publishing catalog out from under him. He retreated into drugs, beginning a well-documented slide into erratic, eccentric isolation.

My very first concert was the Beach Boys (1976). At one point, the band brought Brian on stage. He was overweight, tentative on his feet, clearly out of it.  Stories had circulated in the press about how he stayed in bed all day, had a sandbox under his piano to inspire him, and was supervised by Eugene Landy, a “psychologist” in the controlling mode of Wilson’s father. Brian had become something of a joke. In 1982, the band kicked him out.

Over the following decades, Wilson gradually regained his health, his publishing, and happiness with his second wife, Melinda. He continued to chase the sounds only he could hear through complex projects like the concept album Smile (begun in 1966 and only released in 2011). A notorious perfectionist, his bandmates referred to him as “the Stalin of the studio.”

Despite his personal and professional challenges, Wilson ultimately received his “roses”: induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the Beach Boys (1988), a Kennedy Center Honor (2007), and multiple Grammys.

Still, the mantle of his gifts weighed heavily on him. In a 1988 interview with Rolling Stone, he admitted, “Being called a musical genius was a cross to bear. Genius is a big word. But if you have to live up to something, you might as well live up to that.”

One of my colleagues recounted meeting Wilson several years ago, as he sat alone backstage at a Taylor Swift concert. He approached, telling Wilson how much he appreciated the music that he’d created.  My colleague was struck by his response: he simply beamed. No ego, no attitude, that was all Brian wanted to know: that his music had meant something. It was that pure.

There’s nothing that can be written about the treasure that is Brian Wilson that hasn’t been expressed by everyone from Paul McCartney to Bruce Springsteen, Sting, or a million fans. Whether it was sunny odes to beach life or beautifully simple tunes about complex human conditions (“Love and Mercy”), Brian Wilson channeled a gorgeous light (Californian or otherwise) through his music.

-Cindy Grogan

Photo: public domain