Til I Die: Brian Wilson Kept Rock ‘n’ Roll Sunny Side Up

There’s a strong case to be made that Brian Wilson invented vibes, and I think we’re at the point where it’s entirely possible at least one generation doesn’t know that’s colloquial for “vibrations.”

But there are many generations who don’t know “excitations” isn’t actually a word, though, so touché. “Excitations” is Mike Love’s contribution to “Good Vibrations,” one of the most celebrated pop-rock songs of all time because it sounded like no pop-rock before it and not a single tune that followed its trajectory to the top of Billboard’s Hot 100 since. (The closest analogue might actually be Travis Scott’s multipartite “Sicko Mode,” which is pretty far off indeed.)

Wilson’s story is one with a clear hero and plenty of villains (his abusive father, his manipulative therapist, gaping rectum Love himself). But there’s an airtight case that Wilson strongly interpreted rock ‘n’ roll as a way to sustain innocence rather than corrupt it.

That doesn’t mean he didn’t do a fuckton of psychedelic drugs. But Wilson’s greatest vice was artistic ambition, which, despite the prolonged conception of SMiLE tanking his mental health, was not out of control. His ambition did not outrun his ability; this is a man who tried to match both “Be My Baby” and Rubber Soul and most would agree he succeeded. While The Who and Jimi Hendrix smashed up their instruments and the Rolling Stones leered with Satanic snake oil in their engines and the Beatles spent the second half of their band life deconstructing and subverting the teenybop image of the first, the Beach Boys were a massive bulwark against social rebellion: “Be True to Your School,” “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times.”

 

VIDEO: The Beach Boys “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times”

This tack would have absolutely sucked ass if Brian Wilson was not the creative force behind it all, one of the most astounding to ever do it. And somehow he was the rebel in his own unit, encouraging and steering the band towards expansive, psychedelic pastures until the resultant sales decline prompted the others to say enough’s enough. Every single artistic triumph by the Beach Boys is rooted in Brian Wilson, and I say that as someone who doesn’t hate “Kokomo.”

Even moreso than The Beatles, Wilson was melody’s best friend among ’60s rockers, and for all of his amply documented widescreen experiments, he never abandoned it. Both the linchpins of the British Invasion and their outnumbered American counterparts worshipped Chuck Berry and his signature riffs, but the Beach Boys layered onto them even older artforms, especially doo-wop on compositions like “The Warmth of the Sun” and “Surfer Girl” that captured Wilson’s fine-tuned head voice at its peak, modulating as smoothly into the highest pitches as the theremin on “Good Vibrations” did. These were elegant and formal in a way the Beatles never showed interest in. Wilson’s sense of competition wasn’t clear compared to other ‘60s legends because he wasn’t an angry young man, certainly not political, not even remarkably girlsick. He really was just in it for the sounds, which is how the supernaturally lovely “Don’t Worry Baby” stood up to anything Phil Spector ever put his name on.

 

VIDEO: The Beach Boys “Don’t Worry Baby”

But Wilson didn’t preach purism any more than he did his desire to advance from it; “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” may have come off pompous from any other voice. From Wilson it was alienation in earnest, not by necessity or transgression. He didn’t want to be lonely, but he also didn’t want to tour with his family group. As we now know, his mental unhealthiness was as quintessentially California as his surfer anthems. Because no one can sustain innocence into adulthood, much less someone working in a transgressive art form by default, Wilson’s mastery didn’t have any particular place to go as the 1970s unveiled harder rock, sultrier soul, noisier punk, and stranger electronic developments. The long-unreleased SMiLE and its acid-goofy counterpart Smiley Smile were about as far as the Beach Boys went into the experimental, which netted plenty of worthy rewards like the trip-and-a-half “She’s Goin’ Bald,” but that doesn’t even take us past the Summer of Love.

 

 

Around this time they released their greatest LP, Wild Honey (sorry, love Pet Sounds’ three hits and “I Know There’s an Answer” but the rest is kinda loungey for me), which is both the hardest-rocking Beach Boys album (this is relative) and the most soulful (this is inarguable). It’s a piano-banging garage’n’B delight with no mythos whatsoever and plenty of fun singalong boogies like “A Thing or Two,” Carl Wilson’s righteous stab at then-17-year-old Stevie Wonder’s “I Was Made to Love Her,” and Brian’s tough “Here Comes the Night,” which the group later felt suitable to revamp a decade later for the disco era. Brian Wilson began to withdraw from the group and plenty of other things as the ‘60s waned, and almost anything they ever did that fans celebrated after that was a composition he was feeling agreeable to dole out to them, including 1971’s “Surf’s Up,” another SMiLE breadcrumb.

The highly synthesized 1977 curio The Beach Boys Love You was his baby, the final cycle he oversaw for the group, and the Beach Boys’ last great album. None of that’s a coincidence, and neither is the fact that he was getting too old for lyrics like “Roller Skating Child” to be taken at face value. Telling then, that the follow-up Adult/Child never materialized. Wilson famously overcame his drug-hobbled psychoses, abusive therapist, idiotic run-ins with his own group, largely frivolous lawsuits from Love than culminated in Love kicking him, Al Jardine and David Marks out of the Beach Boys in 2012, a decision no one respected.

 

 

His personal demons quieted down, but the only masterpiece Wilson released after the ‘70s was a lookback. It was a big one, though: 2004’s version of SMiLE , at last recreated, restored and released under his own name like it belonged, with the invaluable help of his longtime live supporters the Wondermints. That and personal peace seemed like a good reward at the end of a plenty troubled journey through all the usual ups and downs we associated with the cursed term “genius.” Innocence was never an option, but the man put a lot of heart, soul, and falsetto into convincing people they could maybe return to it while bopping their heads to “Fun, Fun, Fun” or slow dancing to “Don’t Worry Baby.”

Whole generations of countercultural navel-gazers have strove to recreate Wilson’s harmonized whimsy, from Elephant 6 to Animal Collective to this year’s Yung Lean track “Teenage Symphonies 4 God,” a reference to SMiLE’s original intent. But he just wasn’t the navel-gazing type.

Wilson’s visions were big and his execution of them was inspirational. And he knew his “Heroes and Villains” well enough to not let the villains win.

 

VIDEO: The Beach Boys “Good Vibrations”