• Home
• Forum »
• GV Quarterly
• Band Profiles
• Reviews
• Music
• Albums
• Contact Us

Brian Wilson founded the Beach Boys in 1961 and was the bands leader, main composer and producer. The other founding members were: Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Mike Love and Al Jardine. In early 1962, Al Jardine left the Beach Boys and was replaced by David Marks. Al Jardine returned to the band in August 1963 and David Marks left around the same time. In late 1964, Brian Wilson quit touring and after a short touring stint by Glen Campbell, Bruce Johnston joined the band and would stay until 1972 when he quit. In 1971 The Beach Boys was augmented with the addition of Blondie Chaplin and Rick Fataar. Chaplin left The Beach Boys in 1973 and this was soon followed by the departure of Ricky Fataar in the spring of 1975. 1978 saw the return of Bruce Johnston for the completion of the L.A.(Light album) and in 1983, Dennis Wilson tragically drowned.
In 1988 Brian Wilson released his first solo album, and was effectively no longer a member of the band. In 1998 Carl Wilson died of cancer. In 1997, David Marks made a brief return as a member of The Beach Boys touring band, but left again in 1999. Today, the surviving members of the founding Beach Boys are doing there own thing: Brian Wilson (with his band) has pursued a successful solo career since 1998. Al Jardine tours and performs with his son and Brian Wilson’s daughters and has recently toured with Brian Wilson, while Mike Love still tours extensively with The Beach Boys touring band (along with Bruce Johnston)

Profile:

The eldest of 3 brothers born to Murry and Audrey Wilson, Hawthorne California. Brian Wilson was a founding member of The Beach Boys. A talented musician at a young age, he assumed the roles of composer, arranger, producer, keyboard player, bass guitarist, lead and harmony vocalist in the fledgling group that would become one of the most important bands in the music industry.
As a boy he would often plead with his mother to make his younger brother Carl take part in three-part harmony with them. This early practise paid off when along with his brothers Carl and Dennis, cousin Mike Love and neighbours David Marks & Al Jardine, the decision was made to try their luck as a band. The unique vocal blend that they achieved allowed Brian to frame his exquisite melodies with gorgeous dense harmonies no other band could match.
By all accounts a shy timid young man, his prowess in music gave him a natural authority to lead the group as they honed their skills in the studio and on stage. He had devoted every free hour to listening to and dissecting the most intricate detail in records he liked – especially the harmony style of the Four Freshmen and now he could add those dense harmonies to modern rock rhythms. He increasingly found the strain of writing, teaching, recording and touring too much to bear and in 1964 on an air flight, he suffered his first nervous breakdown. He stopped touring (with only a few exceptions) and his place on the road was taken first by Glen Campbell and then by Bruce Johnston.
His father Murry (a brash bullying man prone to rages) undoubtedly ‘drove’ the boys hard to succeed and make records but in truth, it was Brian who had the talent and the ‘ear’. He only had one working ear (his right ear had been damaged either from birth or from one of Murry’s heavy blows), but oh what an ear. Studio outtakes reveal a relentless quest for perfection in the sound committed to tape. He quickly assimilated the latest production techniques - especially those of Phil Spector. As Brian Wilson’s talents and ambition grew, he progressed to standards that demanded the skills of crack session musicians. He formed a strong bond with those seasoned professionals who came to respect him as an exceptional talent. The competitive spirit that his father had knocked into him (literally), drove him to better the records the Beatles were releasing, and he worked tirelessly to produce the famous Pet Sounds album. A work of complete perfection, it changed the expectations of musicians and serious listeners for years. The backing tracks for the songs employed a wide range of instruments and percussion objects and made full but subtle use of the latest studio technology. Mostly though, Brian used incredibly clever music to effect mood changes in the listener. Always an innovator in the use of chord changes he could take a song off into any key and return it beautifully – witness ‘Let’s Go Away For A While’. The album was essentially a journey through teenage introspection and with the intention to raise the quality of the words to match this new music, he recruited the services of Tony Asher to write the lyrics. This was a new direction for the group and on their return from another successful tour there was some questioning of the movement away from a proven formula. However the group was won over and laid down the best vocals of their lives. It wasn’t easy for them though. Brian insisted on not just perfect pitch and phrasing – he demanded (and got) just the right timbres to achieve the effect he wanted. In some cases the tracks were predominately Brian’s own multi-tracked voice. It was hard work but the end result was worth it. Pet Sounds is regarded as a milestone in popular music - an artistic triumph - but a modest commercial success… in America at least. Brian needed a big hit.
Before he completed Pet Sounds he had started working on another new track which was taking weeks to get right. He had recorded it in a modular style using different recording studios for each section to get just the sound he wanted, and he was still searching for a way to bring it all together in a coherent flowing form. When he did, Good Vibrations was a smash hit all around the world. Lauded as a musical genius and emboldened by the artistic triumph of Pet Sounds and the commercial success of the groundbreaking Good Vibrations, Brian embarked on his next goal. It was to be a teenage symphony to God and it was to be called SMiLE.
In his mind it was to be laid out on a broad canvass. It would explore themes like ‘Americana’ and the ‘Elements’ and would be his most ambitious work to date. The lyrics would need to be raised yet another notch too. For this project he chose Van Dyke Parks. They set out to create sections of the most evocative music and prose to match the scope and ambition of SMiLE. Months passed and Brian was having the same difficulty in assembling the various modules of SMiLE into a coherent whole that he had experienced with Good Vibrations. The music was radical – revolutionary for the idiom even, and the lyrics? The lyrics were poetic certainly, but they were abstract too, and this caused serious differences with Brian’s erstwhile songwriting partner Mike Love that could not be reconciled. This lack of support coupled with record company pressures for new product and Brian’s fragile state of mind (some say exacerbated by self-medicating drug use) caused the project to be abandoned.
In the following months, Brian suffered another nervous breakdown, relinquished full control of the group’s direction, and watched the Beatles take his crown on the back of Sgt. Pepper. A collection of songs were hurriedly recorded in a simple ‘bare’ R&B form and released on an album ironically titled ‘Smiley Smile’ to appease the record company. The album also featured the track Heroes & Villains, which Brian had laboriously crafted to be the follow-up to Good Vibrations and which didn’t match its success - but perhaps nothing could have followed Good Vibrations. For the rest of the 1960s and much of the 1970s Brian Wilson was a part time Beach Boy - but still the provider of occasional ‘jewels’ for the albums released by the group. Throughout this period Brian descended into an unhealthy and troubled state and eventually the help of a high profile ‘therapist’, the late Dr. Eugene Landy was sought. Landy took almost complete control over Brian’s life and managed to restore Brian to at least a functioning shadow of his former self. But he became greedy, billing ever-higher fees & expenses and also forced Brian into ill-judged public appearances prematurely. The Beach Boys also needed Brian back. A major ‘Brian’s Back’ promotional campaign was engineered to take full advantage of his ‘recovery’.
On a commercial level it did work but if Brian was back, it wasn’t for long. Landy’s greed got him the sack and Brian was in the hands of minders. He was also under enormous pressure to come up with more hits for the group and the group didn’t like the music he wanted to make. He was trapped and over time descended once again into a spiral of despair, which he relieved by ‘self medication’ of epic proportions. His behaviour and health became of sufficient concern that the Beach Boys reluctantly agreed to the return of Dr. Landy and this time he could dictate the terms. Brian was spirited away to Hawaii and his life was undoubtedly saved. He released his first solo album ‘Brian Wilson’ responding to the rigorous discipline imposed by Landy (which may have been reminiscent of his late father). But there were some disturbing signs in Brian’s demeanour and mannerisms. His every move was monitored, and Landy or his assistants regularly interrupted proceedings to administer pills to ‘the patient’. A long-time fan and professional therapist Peter Reum recognised Brian’s mannerisms as a symptom of tardive dyskinesia, in which the body is subjected to excessive amounts of psychotropic medications. It transpired that Landy had misdiagnosed and mistreated Brian’s clinical condition. This tragic error and his over-involvement in Brian’s financial and musical interests resulted in Landy being ordered by the Los Angeles Supreme Court to sever all contact with his charge.
Brian subsequently received the proper treatment for his now correctly diagnosed bi-polar disorder (which had been the source of the auditory hallucinations from which he had suffered for many years) and started to rebuild his life. On the death of his brother Carl he no longer felt an obligation to the Beach Boys/Family business. In a sense he was free. Free from that onerous obligation, free from Landy… free for the first time. It was the late 1990s and he had been asked to visit a club in LA where the house band was gaining quite a reputation for their musicianship and note perfect renditions of Brian’s most demanding songs. That formidable old head started to think the unthinkable… Who would have thought it? Brian Wilson touring? Willingly? He moved into the new century with renewed vigour. He includes the entire Pet Sounds album in the concert setlist and a few other obscure songs. Nothing is beyond this band, which along with the Wondermints (Darian Sahanaja, Nick Walusko, Mike D’Amico, Probyn Gregory) comprises long time Beach Boy sideman Jeffrey Foskett and a number of session players (Bob Lizik, Jim Hines, Scott Bennet, Paul Mertens, Taylor Mills) he had met in Chicago when recording his ‘Imagination’ solo album. As with the Pet Sounds album itself in 1966, the UK audience particluarly ‘get it’. This is HUGE. They respond with waves of euphoria beamed right back at the stage and that shy timid man in the middle grows visibly before them.
Brian had been persuaded to include the previously taboo (to him) Heroes & Villains song for the first time in the finale of the All Star Tribute show in his honour at Radio City Music Hall NYC. The audience’s reaction to it there and in the UK had been so validatory that Brian started to think the impossible…
SMiLE would be presented to the world and the premičre would be on February 20th 2004 in London’s Royal Festival Hall. There, he’d said it, now he’d have to do it. Demons would have to be confronted, flash-backs resisted and still those voices. Bad vibes… but if he was ever to be free of that old debacle which had haunted him in every interview since, he would have to confront them all. And that was just the concept of doing SMiLE – how on earth could he assemble all those beautiful fragments in a coherent way now, when he couldn’t 37 years previously at the height of his powers? Well this time he wasn’t alone… he had Darian Sahanaja. Not only a enthusiastic fan of Brian and his music, he also had the interest and the musical ability to do what Brian had done with those old Four Freshmen records. Darian and the Wondermints had dissected every nuance of Brian’s works and could replicate them - even to Brian’s satisfaction. Darian had earned Brian’s respect and trust. Modern digital technology had made it so much easier to load music sections onto a laptop and rearrange them in different orders that fit musically. All of a sudden it was within Brian’s grasp… if he could just reach out and touch it. Steadily and after a few stumbles, Brian would ‘see’ the movements gel before him. Long lost melodies would pop back into his head from God knows where and DAMN, what is THAT word there? He hadn’t spoken to Van Dyke Parks for years but went straight to the phone and dialled his number from memory.
Warily the two 1967 adventurers retraced their pioneering steps and miraculously it worked. With Darian as a discrete ‘musical secretary’, SMiLE 2004 took shape. It needed to flow. It needed to be something the band could play live. It emerged as a long form piece in three movements, and it was a wide-ranging soundscape of emotion and imagery that more than lived up to the myth. Oh-oh, now he’d have to perform it. What if it bombed? After all this time and all this effort - it could crush him. Brian Wilson has never been short of courage and with the love and support of his band, family and friends the shy timid kid from Hawthorne California stepped out from the shadows onto the stage in London and bared his soul.
Grown men cried, Rock legends roared and the audience, many of whom had flown in from all over the world, rejoiced. SMiLE was finally born - it was real and no longer folklore. A beautifully recorded album followed and an intriguing DVD of its gestation produced by David Leaf.
Brian Wilson has created a magnificent canon of work. He continues to record and play live to audiences, which share in the glorious celebration of his art and his life’s struggle. He probably doesn’t realise it, but for someone, somewhere around the world, at any given moment, Brian Wilson adds some music to their day.

Brian Wilson Discography

© GV Team 2006 All Rights Reserved