Brian Wilson
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- For other persons named Brian Wilson, see Brian Wilson (disambiguation).
| Brian Wilson |
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Brian Douglas Wilson (born June 20, 1942, in Hawthorne, California) is an American pop musician, best known as the lead songwriter, bassist, and sometimes lead-singer of the former American rock band The Beach Boys (of which he is also a founding member and the main producer, composer, and arranger). Although changing trends in music sometimes rendered Wilson's earlier work unfashionable, he is now acknowledged as one of the most significant and innovative musicians and composers of 20th century popular music.
Wilson showed an early talent for music and quickly developed into a skilled singer, songwriter, arranger, and musician. He was driven into music at a young age by his sometimes-abusive father, Murry Wilson. He is 96% deaf in his right ear, and yet while Wilson now maintains it originated at birth (when he was a child he was told he leaned to the left to hear), it was previously widely reported that it was Wilson's own father who was responsible, causing the deafness in an early beating of the younger Wilson.
Early influences included The Four Freshmen and Chuck Berry, among others. Wilson admired Phil Spector, considering Spector both a mentor and rival. (The two collaborated on one song, which was never completed; the backing track was later used for a public service announcement, featuring The Blossoms. Brian released it in 1964 as "Don't Hurt My Little Sister.")
Wilson was a perfectionist in the studio, and often upset the other members of the Beach Boys with this incessant drive for perfection. Though one of the first users of an eight-channel multitrack tape recorder, he shunned stereophonic sound, preferring (as Spector did) to work in monaural — not because of his partial deafness, but because he believed stereo gave an incomplete "sound picture" if the listener wasn't directly between the speakers.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] The Beach Boys
Wilson formed The Beach Boys in the early 1960s with his brothers Carl and Dennis, his cousin Mike Love and schoolfriend Al Jardine, who was briefly replaced by David Marks. They were originally named The Pendletones by Mike Love, the name being derived from Pendleton shirts which were fashionable at the time. Russ Regan, who was involved in promoting the group's first single "Surfin'", is credited in Wilson's autobiography with renaming the group. However, the Beach Boys didn't find out about the change until they saw the new name on the "Surfin'" single's label.
In 1965, Wilson felt he could not play live with the band as well as write new material, so Glen Campbell, a regular session musician, replaced Wilson for three months of tours before quitting to pursue a solo career. Bruce Johnston then joined the band. Wilson steered the group to huge success around the world and they scored a string of international hits between 1962 and 1967, including pop classics such as "Surfin' USA," "Fun, Fun, Fun"," "I Get Around," "Help Me Rhonda," "California Girls," "Wouldn't It Be Nice," "Good Vibrations," and "Heroes and Villains." He also produced records for other artists, including Glen Campbell and the Honeys, but with nowhere near the success he had with the Beach Boys. He also co-wrote many of the biggest hits for Jan and Dean during this period.
Until mid-1967, the international success and popularity of the Beach Boys put them among the world's biggest acts of the time, such as the Beatles, who later cited Wilson's work as a major influence. Wilson in turn considered the Beatles his other chief rivals, though he and fellow bassist-keyboardist Paul McCartney, born only two days earlier than himself, became friends.
Wilson's creativity reached its apex during the mid-1960s with the Pet Sounds album (which, according to Paul McCartney, inspired the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band). Various music polls have named Pet Sounds one of the greatest pop albums ever recorded, having reached 2nd place on the Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
This was immediately followed by their biggest chart success, the million-selling #1 hit single "Good Vibrations." Wilson then began work on a new album, originally called Dumb Angel but soon re-titled SMiLE, on which he collaborated with lyricist Van Dyke Parks. However, the combination of resistance from within the group and Wilson's own growing personal problems led to the cancellation of the project in May of 1967.
Wilson also was the owner of a health food shop in Hollywood that lasted a year from its founding in the summer of 1969, the "Radiant Radish."
[edit] The Dark Ages
After production of SMiLE ceased in May 1967, Wilson prepared a single release of its central song: "Heroes and Villains". It stalled on the charts, briefly peaking at #12 in America. Psychologically overwhelmed by these failures and the birth of his first child in 1968, Wilson began to take on a diminished creative role within the Beach Boys. He all but stopped writing songs and was frequently seen partying in the company of songwriter Tandyn Almer and Three Dog Night singer Danny Hutton. It was during this period that he was introduced to cocaine. Any hope of Wilson assuming his former mantle were crushed in 1969, when the single "Break Away" - produced by Brian and co-written by him and Murray - reached a dismal #63 on the American charts.
After the failure of "Break Away", Wilson spent the majority of the following five years in his bedroom sleeping, taking drugs, and overeating. Most of his "new" contributions were remnants of SMiLE (i.e. "Surf's Up"); those that were genuinely new reflected his depression and growing detachment from the world ("Til I Die", the EP "Mount Vernon and Fairway"). Reportedly, Warner Brothers was so desperate for material from Wilson that the single "We Got Love" (co-written by Ricky Fataar, Blondie Chaplin, and Love) was scrapped in favor of "Sail On, Sailor": a song mostly written by committee (including Almer and Parks) that happened to draw its initial germ from a Wilson chord sequence. It would be the Beach Boys' most successful single release in years.
In 1975, Brian's wife and family enlisted the services of controversial therapist Eugene Landy in a bid to help Brian, and as a by-product, help revive the group's ailing profile. In 1976, Landy managed to help Brian into a more productive, social frame of mind. New albums were recorded, and for the first time since 1964, Brian started to regularly appear live on stage with the band. This situation continued for a few years, but by 1982, his mental state had deteriorated even further; he was taking large amounts of cocaine; he weighed over 300 lbs; and was in danger of losing his life.
Eugene Landy was once more called into action, and a more radical program was undertaken to try and restore Brian to health. This involved firing him from the Beach Boys, isolating him from his family on Hawaii and being put onto a rigorous diet and health regime. This, coupled with long, extreme counselling sessions, brought Brian back to reality. He was certainly fitter, healthier and more conversant than previously, but he was also under a strict level of control by Landy. Brian's recovery continued as he joined the band onstage in Live Aid in 1985, and recorded a new eponymous album with the Beach Boys.
It was variously reported that Wilson had either schizophrenia or bipolar affective disorder. Dr. Landy's treatment regime was not a recognised treatment for either of these mental illnesses. Landy had given Wilson high doses of psychotropic drugs, which over time can cause significant neurological damage. When Landy was fired again, these drugs stopped. Some years later, after his second marriage, he was diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder and a schizo-affective disorder which caused him to hear outside voices. According to the new Peter Ames Carlin biography of Wilson, Catch A Wave, Wilson's drug regimen has been reduced to a mild combination of antidepressants, which keep him functioning far more normally than he has in decades, enabling him to record and tour.
[edit] Solo career
Wilson launched a career as a solo artist in 1988 with limited success. It is possible that his efforts in this regard were both encouraged and hampered by Landy's influence. Partly due to the control that Landy exercised on his life, Wilson stopped working with the Beach Boys on a regular basis after the release of The Beach Boys in 1985.
Brian released a solo album, Brian Wilson, in 1988 and a memoir, Wouldn't It Be Nice - My Own Story, in which he spoke for the first time about his troubled relationship with his abusive father Murry and his "lost years" of mental illness. It is widely understood that although it was written following interviews with Brian and others, Landy was largely responsible for the book, in conjunction with People magazine writer Todd Gold. The book describes Landy in terms that could be called practically messianic. In a later lawsuit over the book, Wilson testified in court that he hadn't even read the final manuscript. As a result, the book was taken out of press some years later. It should also be noted that the book used parts of other Beach Boys books written by Gaines and Leaf without crediting the sources. They also altered these "borrowings" to put other people's words into Brian's mouth.
Landy's illegal use of psychotropic drugs on Wilson and his influence over Wilson's financial affairs was legally ended by Wilson's brother Carl. Brian married Melinda Ledbetter in 1995 and subsequently the couple adopted two girls, Daria and Delanie, and, in 2004, a son, Dylan. He has two daughters from his first marriage to Marilyn Rovell, Carnie Wilson and Wendy Wilson, who would go on to musical success of their own in the early 1990s as two-thirds of Wilson Phillips.
Also in 1995 he released two albums, albeit not containing any new original material, almost simultaneously. The first, the soundtrack to Don Was' documentary I Just Wasn't Made for These Times, consists of rerecorded versions of songs from his Beach Boys and solo catalogue produced by Was, along with a 1976-vintage demo recording. The second, Orange Crate Art, saw Wilson as lead vocalist on an album of songs produced, arranged and (mostly) written by Van Dyke Parks, and was released as a duo album under both men's names.
His final release as part of the group was on the 1996 album Stars and Stripes Vol. 1, a group collaboration with select country music artists singing the lead vocals. After considerable mental recovery, he mended his relationship with his daughters Carnie and Wendy and the three of them released an album in 1997 titled "The Wilsons."
Wilson released a second solo album of (mostly) new material, Imagination, in 1998. Following this, he learned to cope with his stage fright and started to play live for the first time in decades, going on to play the whole Pet Sounds album live on his tours of the United States, United Kingdom and Europe. In 2004 Brian astounded the pop world by performing SMiLE (his legendary unreleased Beach Boys album abandoned in 1967) live, debuting at London's Royal Festival Hall, February 20th. The shows were immediately hailed as amongst the best live gigs ever. [citation needed]
A new studio album, Gettin' in Over My Head, was released on 22 June, 2004. It featured collaborations with Elton John, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, and his deceased brother Carl Wilson. Eric Clapton played on the track "City Blues." The album was almost entirely composed of re-recordings of unreleased material, and was not very well received.
[edit] SMiLE resurrected
Hot on the heels of this new album, on 28 September 2004, a re-recorded version of his previously shelved SMiLE album was released. The album had reached mythic proportions within Beach Boys fandom, and the 1966/1967 sessions had been heavily bootlegged. The 2004 recording featured his touring band which consists of former Beach Boys guitarist Jeff Foskett and members of the Wondermints and others, including backup singer Taylor Mills, and is a Brian Wilson solo album. Notably, the song "Good Vibrations" featured Tony Asher's original, temporary lyrics instead of the more familiar ones penned by Beach Boy Mike Love from the 1966 single version of the song.
Ironically, Wilson, long known for using the human voice as an instrument (both his own, and also those of The Beach Boys), won his first Grammy award not for harmonics, but for best rock instrumental, the SMiLE track "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow (Fire)." He released the award winning two-DVD "Smile" set, consisting of a documentary and a live presentation of the work. He toured the USA for the second half of 2005, as well as releasing a Christmas album for Arista Records, called What I Really Want for Christmas. The release hit 200 on the Billboard chart, a rarity for a holiday offering, though its sales were meager. Wilson's remake of the classic "Deck The Halls" became a surprise Top 10 Adult Contemporary hit.
Though no longer a part of The Beach Boys touring band, Brian Wilson remains a member of the Beach Boys corporation, Brother Records Incorporated.
[edit] Recent events
Recently, Brian Wilson cameoed in Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century as Daffy Duck's spiritual surfing advisor. He also made a musical appearance on the 2005 holiday episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, performing "Deck the Halls" for a group of children with xeroderma pigmentosum (hypersensitivity to sunlight) at Walt Disney World, which specially opened at night for these children.
He is back on the road again performing both newer material from his solo career, as well as his classic albums 'Smile' and 'Pet Sounds' with his latter-day band.
On the U.S. Summer tour of 2005, Wilson debuted a brand new song called "Walking Down the Path of Life." The harmony laden, spiritual ode was also performed at several Hurricane Katrina benefits in the fall of 2005. The song, a medley with "Love and Mercy" by himself and band-members, has also been released as a charity CD-single for victims of the hurricane.
On July 2, 2005 Wilson performed for the Live 8 concert in Berlin, Germany.
Inspired by Des Moines, Iowa, resident and lifelong fan Jim Hufford (Iowa Jim), Wilson and his wife Melinda organized a campaign in which he promised to telephone fans who pledged more than $100 to the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. This was partially due to Hufford having doubts it was actually Brian Wilson posting on his brianwilson.com messageboard. Jim challenged Brian to call him and in return would make a $100 donation to a charity of Mr. Wilson's choice. In the end, Brian Wilson promised to match all the Katrina donations himself. ("If we get $10,000 dollars, I'll give $10,000"). In all, over $250,000 was raised.
In 2005, former bandmate Mike Love controversially sued Wilson over "shamelessly misappropriating... Love's songs, likeness, and the Beach Boys trademark, as well as the 'Smile' album itself" in the promotion of SMiLE and an exclusive CD collection issued through a British magazine to promote the release. ([1]) Wilson's representatives have responded on the official message board that the lawsuit is "meritless" and that Brian "will vigorously defend himself" in court. ([2])
In late October, 2006, Wilson performed in both days of the Bridge School Benefit Concert at the Shoreline Amphetheatre in California. He appeared to be having trouble singing and walked off the stage, throwing down his microphone, before the last song ended.
On November 1, 2006, Wilson kicked off a small, but highly anticipated tour [3][4] celebrating the 40th anniversary of Pet Sounds. The concert, at UCLA's Royce Hall in Los Angeles, was attended by a sell-out crowd, who accorded Wilson multiple standing ovations. Wilson was backed by a 12-member band, which included one-time Beach Boy Al Jardine (who himself received a standing ovation) and long-time bandmate and musical director Jeff Foskett ([5]). After a long set of oldies, most of which were written by Wilson, the band performed Pet Sounds in its entirety.
On November 14, 2006, Wilson was inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame by legendary Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, and performed a short set at the ceremony.
On November 17, 2006, Brian performed the "Pet Sounds" album at the Orpheum Theater in Boston. During this series of performances for the album's 40th anniversary, where Al Jardine was playing as well, Brian autographed the boxes of 300 dolls that were only sold at these concerts.
On November 18, 2006 Wilson and his 12-member band, including Al Jardine, played golden oldies--including the entire "Pet Sounds" album--for a sell-out crowd at the Warner Theater in Washington, DC. The atmosphere in the theater was electric. The audience clapped, sang, and (in the uppermost tiers of the balcony and front rows of the orchestra section) danced along to music that harked back to an earlier age, a simpler time of innocence and growing up. In the few moments of silence, various members of the audience yelled out "We love you, Brian!" The audience honored Wilson and the band with several standing ovations. Wilson appeared to enjoy the evening spent with a very appreciative audience.
In 2006 he did backing vocals on the Neil Diamond song, Delirious Love.
[edit] Tributes
- Canadian rock group Barenaked Ladies paid tribute to the Beach Boy in their hit song "Brian Wilson" which makes reference to both his mental illness and Landy. Wilson was made aware of the song and appears to have appreciated the irony of singing it at live shows (it features on the album 'Live at the Roxy').
- John Cale had also paid tribute to Wilson in his song "Mr. Wilson."
- Similarly, so did Roland Orzabal in "Brian Wilson Said" from Tears for Fears' 1993 album Elemental.
- Long time fan Elton John mentioned Wilson in his songs "Since God Invented Girls" and "Postcards From Richard Nixon."
- Jackie DeShannon not only had Brian sing with then-wife Marilyn Rovell on the song "Boat to Sail", she included a tribute to him in the lyrics "...Brian Wilson songs are never left behind..."
- French electronica duo Daft Punk list Brian Wilson as an influence in their song "Teachers."
- British progressive rock band Marillion also mention him in their song "Cannibal Surf Babe." They speak of his insanity: "Mr. Wilson where's your sandbox and your beard, you still looking for the perfect microwave?" [6].
- Northern Ireland rock band Ash mentions him in their song "Pacific Palisades" with these lines: "I lie with candles by my bed / Brian Wilson in my head" [7].
- The band The Magnetic Fields mention Brian Wilson in the song "You and Me and the Moon" from the album Get Lost. The line simply mentions that his music is playing, "Brian Wilson, 1960 and Vine, summer kisses..."
- Brian was portrayed by actor Fred Weller in a 2000 miniseries, The Beach Boys: An American Family.
- Weird Al Yankovic's song "Pancreas" from the album Straight Outta Lynwood (2006) is a tribute to the musical legacy of Brian Wilson.
- Canadian writer Paul Quarrington based his award-winning novel Whale Music on Wilson; Quarrington also wrote the screenplay when the novel was adapted for film in 1994.
- British band Snow Patrol include Brian Wilson in their song "Batten Down the Hatch", from their 2001 album, When It's All Over We Still Have To Clear Up, with the lines: "God only knows/what Brian Wilson meant/pick out your clothes/with some real intent".
- Queens of the Stone Age often had a picture of Brian Wilson taped onto former member's Nick Olivieri's bass amp when they performed live.
- Pete Yorn released the song "Murray" on his album Musicforthemorningafter. He said he wrote the song in Australia after reading the book "Heroes and Villains," which documented Murray Wilson's tenure as hard-driving father and band manager. Several of the lyrics, such as "I know a man who lives under his covers" and "talkin' out of the left side of his mouth" refer to Brian in his "crazy days" under Landy's care.
- In the movie Grace of My Heart, the Jay Phillips character, a member of the band "The Riptides", is loosely based on Brian Wilson.
[edit] Solo discography
- Brian Wilson (July 1988) US #54
- I Just Wasn't Made for These Times (August 1995) UK #59
- Orange Crate Art (October 1995) (Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks)
- Imagination (June 1998) US #88; UK #30
- Live at the Roxy Theatre (June 2000)
- Pet Sounds Live (June 2002)
- Gettin' in over My Head (June 2004) US #100; UK #53
- Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE (September 2004) US #13; UK #7
- What I Really Want for Christmas (October 2005) US #200
[edit] See also
- The Beach Boys
- List of Beach Boys songs by singer - Brian Wilson
- List of songs by Brian Wilson
- Beach Boys Historic Landmark
[edit] References
<references />
[edit] External links
- Official site
- 2004 Larry King Transcript where they speak about Wilson's mental illness
- Un-official fan site: "Cabinessence: web page for Brian Wilson"
- Extensive discography & timeline
- Dumb Angel Magazine: Brian Wilson, Beach Boys
- Smiley Smile Dot Net: Brian Wilson, Beach Boys, and SMiLE
- Salon review of The Pet Sounds Sessions (12 November 1997)
- "After the wipe out" by Ginny Dougary in The Guardian (1 June 2002)
- "Four Decades Later, Wilson's 'Smile' Hits London" Audio review at NPR (25 February 2004)
| Brian Wilson |
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| Studio Albums |
| Brian Wilson | I Just Wasn't Made for These Times | Imagination | Gettin' in Over My Head | Smile |
| Live Albums |
| Live at the Roxy Theatre | Pet Sounds Live |
| Christmas Albums |
| What I Really Want for Christmas |
| With Van Dyke Parks |
| Orange Crate Art |
| Related Articles |
| The Beach Boys |
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