Brian Wilson, the tragic genius of the Beach Boys, dies
The founder of the Beach Boys, who revolutionized pop during the 1960s, was 82 years old.
BarcelonaBrian Wilson, one of the absolute geniuses of pop, a giant with a fragile soul who forever changed the history of popular music, has died at the age of 82, his family has confirmed. With the band he founded, The Beach Boys, Wilson took the three-minute pop song to its pinnacle, with hits like And get around, Help me, Rhonda, Surfing USA and Good vibrationsBut his masterpiece was the album Pet sounds (1966), a pop symphony with sublime arrangements and melodies that includes classics such as God only knows and Wouldn't it be niceHis death is a terrible loss that comes only two days after Sly Stone's, one of the other great protagonists of the musical revolution of the decade.
Wilson will go down in history as a gifted creator of harmonies who brought the octopus to formal maturity with productions of unprecedented sophistication and complexity. At the same time, his is a tragic figure marked by the abuse of a tyrannical father, the Beach Boys' first manager, and also by the successive crises and mental health problems that led him to seclude himself for two decades in his mansion, away from the studios and the stage. It is impossible to assess Wilson's work without imagining for a moment everything he could have created if in the late 60s the consumption of LSD during the recording sessions of Smile wouldn't have caused him to have a nervous breakdown.
Born in 1942 in California, Wilson was the eldest of three brothers and the son of a songwriter frustrated by his lack of success. Wilson and his two brothers, Dennis and Carl, along with their cousin Mike Love and a friend, Al Jardine, founded The Beach Boys in 1961, a youth rock and roll group with a special emphasis on vocal harmonies: Surfing USA, Surfer Girl and Fun, fun, fun were some of his first achievements, songs with addictive melodies that evoked the teenage lifestyle of 1960s California. But Wilson wasn't content with creating pop sweets to conquer radio and the charts, with which he pushed himself to play and experiment; melancholy under the light of the California dream. And get around and California girls These are two examples.
'Pet sounds', the masterpiece
In 1964, after a nervous breakdown, Wilson decided to leave the concerts in the hands of the rest of the group and concentrate on recordings. With resources and time, his artistic ambition led him to experiment increasingly as a composer and performer, introducing arrangements that broke new ground in pop music. The climax of this period is the masterful album Pet sounds (1966), crowned by the legendary single Good vibrationsIt's no secret that the Beatles – and especially Paul McCartney – make the classic absolute God only knows– listened thoroughly to this album, which marked a direction that would culminate in the psychedelia of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967).
Despite the discomfort of some of the Beach Boys – especially Mike Love – with the experimental direction he was taking the band, Wilson persevered in his musical research and embarked on the creation of a new album, Smile, a project so ambitious and complex that it was meant to be "a teenage symphony dedicated to God." Unfortunately, the cocktail of drugs and the musician's emotional fragility ruined the recording sessions, marked by his erratic and paranoid behavior, as he became increasingly trapped in his mental labyrinth. Smile acquired legendary status, a great cursed masterpiece of rock. Unable to complete the album and unable to remember his own ideas, Wilson locked himself in his Bel-Air mansion while the Beach Boys continued making albums and touring without him.
The 70s and 80s were years of seclusion, litigation, and sporadic recordings, as well as the nefarious influence of the fake therapist Eugene Landy, who took advantage of Wilson's poor mental health to control his finances and even his career: he even signed Wouldn't it be niceA second marriage and a professional diagnosis of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia put Wilson's life and career back on track. In 1999, he embarked on his first solo tour and in 2004 made the seemingly unthinkable a reality: completing his cursed album, Smile.
The musician's last twenty years were spent between tours, tributes, and more or less noteworthy albums. Established and acclaimed, Wilson starred in documentaries and biopeaks as Love and mercyThe musician even reunited with the Beach Boys and performed in Barcelona in 2012, but the most vivid memory that we Catalan fans of Wilson have today is surely the exciting performance he gave in 2017 at Primavera Sound, dedicated almost entirely to the album. Pet soundsAccompanied by his brother Carl Wilson, among others, it was one of those concerts where tears flowed without shame.
