Brian Wilson created the ultimate surf sound with dry hair

,, Surfing? That is way too dangerous! I tried it once and then my surfboard almost landed in my eye! So nothing for me.  »

He was allowed to be the founder, leader, writer, singer and producer of the most famous surf band of all time, The Beach Boys, yet Brian Wilson prefers to keep his hair dry. On Wednesday his family announced that Wilson died at the age of 82. He had been suffering from dementia for some time.

His musical career went stormy: Wilson grew from teenage idol to visionary (but also tormented) genius and is one of the greatest pop composers of his generation. His enormous oeuvre evolved from simple, sweet and good to complex, surreal and megalomaniac.

In addition to the necessary spiritual suffering, Wilson had to overcome another handicap as a child. He was deaf to his right ear, although his statements changed: sometimes it was a congenital ailment or a football accident, then again a swipe of a bully from the neighborhood or corrective tick of his tyrannic father Murry.

From The Pendletones to The Beach Boys

The latter was the driver of the instrumental surf band in which Brian Baste with his younger brothers Dennis (drums) and Carl (guitar). Supplemented with cousin Mike Love (singing) and childhood friend Al Jardine (guitar/vocals), they recorded a picture as The Pendletones, named after Surfers popular shirts. To their surprise, the record company turned out to have changed the band name. Suddenly they were called The Beach Boys.

The single ‘Surfin’‘ Taken: to the satisfaction of the masses, an instrumental genre had suddenly received sweet voices. With easy -to -hear songs about sun, sea, beach, fast cars and beautiful girls, The Beach Boys became the ultimate interpreters of the Californian dream.

Follow -up hits such as ‘Surfin’ USA‘ (rather literally copied from rock ‘n’ roll hero Chuck Berry’s’ Sweet Little Sixteen ‘),’ Surfin ‘Safari’ and ‘I Get Around’ were the perfect soundtrack for a carefree existence with the toes in the sand.

The fact that only Dennis surfed did not matter. On the covers, the band members invariably posed with a surfboard under their arm, preferably in identical bars shirts – also that long, loggic bass player with the bolle, round head.

He did not dream of perfect waves, and actually not the stage. The studio was his paradise. There Wilson shook the earwigs carelessly from his sleeve and he was ridiculously productive: between 1962 and 1965, The Beach Boys released no fewer than ten albums.

Although as the main supplier of new songs he initially also spent on tour playing and singing (often drowned out by screaming teenage girls) after the necessary panic attacks to invaders. Then he could continue to write.

‘God only knows’

Plate number eleven was the biggest creative (and only later commercial) Klapper. On Pet Sounds (1966) was nothing more to be found of elementary rock ‘n’ roll with the Kolderieke doo-wap-Koers. Wilson’s mastery came to full bloom in polyphonic arrangements in which he scored the dream of California a universe, to the hereafter.

Whoever is jealous of the supreme being and wants to know what it sounds like in heaven, must listen to ‘God Only Knows’, and then preferably alone the version With only the so -called vocal tracks, the isolated voices. Everyone who hears the merger harmonies feels like in the infinite clouds of encouraging comfort, eternal youth and true love.

Without Pet Sounds The Beatles never had Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) Made, Paul McCartney would admit later. « As an upbringing for their lives, I bought a copy for all my children, » he said with a later reissue of the album. « You are only formed musically when you have heard this album. »

Evil demons

Unfortunately, pure beauty is often accompanied by tragedy. Wilson’s massively acclaimed political vote also turned out to be permanent in his head, only as beautiful angel’s singing but like an Evil demons choir. There were always those voices, he confessed in his candid memoirs I Am Brian Wilson (2016), and they wished him the worst.

Those mental ailments (schizophrenia, depression, delusions, paranoia), associated addictions and (too) highly tense expectations left him early beaches. As successor to Pet Sounds and reply on St. Pepper the album had to and would Smile Become a revolutionary masterpiece. But in the musical arms race with The Beatles, the madness eventually won.

How close he came close to his ultimate legacy, was the world hit ‘Good Vibrations’, a complex cocktail from Pop, Rock and Psychedelica with pioneering leading roles in the chorus for both sawing cello and crying therin-a double scoop in the rock’ nour roll. The number still counts as an unparalleled monument. But no matter how genius, Wilson was only satisfied with exhausting recording sessions in four studios (and fifty thousand dollars) after six months, to the horror of the rest of the band. According to them, he started losing all the sense of reality.

For the song ‘Fire’ he let everyone wear firefighters and fired a fire in the studio. When a building burned down in the same street a few days later, he deleted the song for conviction that there was witchcraft. Smile Never appear. ‘Good Vibrations’ appeared on the replacement well -maker Smiley Smile (1967).

Baambrugge

No less megalomaniacs were the recordings of Holland (1973). Although they took place in a converted barn in Baambrugge, Wilson had all the necessary equipment shipped from his studio in Los Angeles. Costs: two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The album is the last valuable achievement of The Beach Boys.

Then the W followedIpheoutwashed away surfers would say. At Wilson they were again not waves, but drugs. « Coke every day, » he confessed against Rolling Stone. ,, Just bags of snow around me, which I look like crazy. I broke myself, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I was a useless greenhouse plant.  »

With the smooth and over -produced comeback hit ‘Kokomo’ (1988) from The Beach Boys, he had no interference anymore. A well -intended attempt by friendly musicians to reconstruct his lost life work led to his fifth solo album Brian Wilson Presents Smile (2004), but it did not come close to what had ever been in his head, he admitted. Yet he went on tour with it.

Despite all the hardships and delusions, he did not regret one thing, he said at a late age. The fact that he had once let his house complete with sand where his piano stood was an excellent idea. « If you close your eyes, it’s just like sitting on the beach. »

To share

Mail the editors