Poor Brian Wilson

I love The Beach Boys. So much better than The Beatles imo. It’s a shame Mike Love is such a dick.

What has Carne been doing?

The Beach Boys lost their charm after Brian's break. It all began to sound forced.

Brian was one of the first musicians to arrange and engineer his own music in the 60s and he was barely 20 years of age. The pressures of his abusive father, supporting his entire family, writing, performing, recording, and touring 3 albums per year finally broke him. He turns 80 next year, pretty amazing that despite all he is the last Wilson brother standing.

Brian Wilson is a genius - a musical genius - and they tend to be a tad eccentric. But he certainly is a great talent.

[quote] Mike Love wrestled control

The word you were looking for is WRESTED.

This music video is hilarious and awful at the same time. Brian was obviously forced to do it against his will.

What's a good Beach Boys song? They never sounded that great to me, but maybe I never heard the good stuff.

Love & Mercy was a fantastic movie about his life, focusing on his mental breakdown. Paul Dano was brilliant as the young Wilson and John Cusack was an odd casting choice for his later years.

R8 The scrapped SMiLE project is the peak of Brain's artistry.

I watched their really early appearances on Ed Sullivan on YouTube recently, and Wilson sounds amazing and looks very sensitive and so determined. In the video footage of the engineering of “Good Vibrations”, Wilson seems in a creative trance. It’s really fascinating.

It’s sad how much of his life got off track because of poor mental health care and treatment. You’re vulnerable if you’re rich, sensitive and trusting.

He’s been touring for quite a while now, frequently with al jardine and he has been stable for many, many years. He’s quite active on social media and has seemed to have finally found some kind of peace in his life.

Alice Cooper's story of how he introduced Brian to John Lennon:

And LOVE AND MERCY documented his tribulations beautifully.

Watch if you want to see an underappreciated but critically acclaimed gem:

Thanks for the thread, OP.

I’m ashamed to say I lumped the Beach Boys in with Pat Boone without knowing anything about their original song writing or age differences.

Since r10 posted the Beach Boys' version of SMiLe, which I agree is the best of the best, I'm going to post this odd little video I happened upon a couple of minutes ago on youtube. Al and Brian sing "Sloop John B" in 2016. It's worth it just for the chimes.

I saw Brian perform Smile with the Wondermints in DC in 2004. [italic]The[/italic] concert of my lifetime. I like the Beach Boys more than any other group, the Beatles, Bruce, anyone.

My Brian Wilson story. My best friend and I were at a car wash and we saw Wilson. He's a huge Beach Boys fan but is also aware of his mental problems. Against my advice, he still went up and very calmly said he was a huge fan of his music. Brian was sitting down waiting for his car, drinking a soda. After my friend spoke to him, he emptied his drink on the floor and walked away. The lady who was with him thanked my friend for being his fan but said that he's just very, very shy and uncomfortable around fans.

why take a photo of someone without their permission like that, I don't understand those people

Completely agree, R19. I find that picture disturbing as well. Especially when it's captioned by calling him "Poor Brian Wilson" and used to discuss what may or may not be mental illness. It's bullshit.

Most people have dined alone in some "low-brow" establishment. That last part is unspoken, but I have no doubt that is the part of the photographer's "story". And then people wonder why celebrities don't want to interact with "fans".

He's a man who decided to go out, and get something to eat.

R19 It's not a mean photo. The man is dressed head to toe in Gucci.

The whole thing is meant to mock. The photo, the title of this post, the conjecture framed as a sympathetic story.

Unclutch, ladies.

That video at R7 is an abomination. Simply awful. Hard to believe it even is officially “The Beach Boys”. The lyrics, the rapping, the whole Baywatch rip-off, the tinny synthesized drums. That was the Kokomo era when cynical, money-grubbing, all-time asshole and, of course, Republican Mike Love had taken control of the whole thing. I didn’t think Brian was involved in any of that music, but he does briefly appear in that shitshow video, looking very fat and uncomfortable. God damn, it’s terrible.

Wow r7 that was pretty terrible! More evidence of great artists of the 60s and 70s making some terrible decisions in the 80s. This was the same time The Jacksons did 2600 Jackson St., which was equally embarrassing.

[What has Carne been doing?]

Carne Asada Wilson has been busy hitting up all the taco trucks around LA.

Brian Douglas Wilson (born June 20, 1942), turns 79 next month. Reportedly is worth $100 million.

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Adore BW. The Beach Boys were not “so much better” than the Beatles but they are wonderful.

My personal favorite is Heroes and Villains. Here’s Brian performing it. His voice still sounds great.

R28 gave me a laugh with his “sparing Yoko Ono.”

Chuck Berry???

He is the dunkard.

Comparing the Beach Boys to the Beatles is just ludicrous. The Beatles explored many more musical directions than the Beach Boys who at base were a close harmony group which has a certain kind of beauty but also some limitation in terms of what you can do.

It might be fairer to compare them to the Byrds or Buffalo Springfield, or their offshoots. Neither of those bands or their descendants really had much studio-based innovation, unlike the Beach Boys. OTOH, Outside of Brian, the Beach Boys never really developed their musical base in really novel ways. Songs like the execreble "Kokomo" were weak returns to their base, much like the late 80s CSN stuff, but in the 60s and early 70s, the Byrds/Buffalo Springfield ecosystem did all kinds of stuff within a folk-rock idiom. They were the American Beatles, not the Beach Boys.

The Beach Boys were a great group and Brian of course was the mastermind. But I won't lie that the absolute worst concert I've ever gone to was Brian Wilson's "Pet Sounds" tour a few years ago. Essentially what we got was a senile decrepit old man who had two people have to help him out onstage and then he sat behind a keyboard staring into space for two hours with the very occasional moment of lucidity, and nothing but off-key singing.

I fully get why the man is a living legend and he sells tickets because people want the chance before he passes away, but nothing prepared me for this. Granted, not every 78 year old can be Mick Jagger or Paul McCartney but it felt like this guy wants to be anywhere except on a concert stage

Brian Wilson had a horrible upbringing. His father was downright insane. I shudder to think what his father did to him because my mind goes a very dark place with that without meaning to deep down. One of the things which has been written of and quoted from by Brian Wilson himself is that his own father one time served him a covered platter for dinner which had human excrement as the main course. Deranged freak his father was. I'd be sitting at a table waiting on my supper by my own self too at the age of 80 and y'all know darned well he probably has a driver waiting for him in the parking lot anyway.

I think Brian Wilson was and is basically a modern day classical music composer who just stayed within the pop music genre. His solid inherit command of different instruments, composition skills for vocals and instrumentation, and recording techniques scream classical but are pop. He should have retired years ago and R34 shows a good example as to why but it's not like he's criminally insane like the late Phil Spector or anything so leave him be I say.

"Kokomo" sucked from start to finish but because of my age I learned who the Beach Boys were from that song and don't regret it. They were a wonderful group!

I read an article about him many years back, but after he'd pretty much lost his mind. Someone asked him about his children. When Carne was mentioned he said "she's the fat one, right?".

@R8-quote: "What's a good Beach Boys song? They never sounded that great to me, but maybe I never heard the good stuff."

I love this song, but they have many great songs, imo. I do not think they reached the level of the Beatles, but again everyone had their own opinions and musical tastes.

Sorry I misspelled Carnie's name above.

[quote]Comparing the Beach Boys to the Beatles is just ludicrous.

Tell it to Brian and Paul, r33.

He likes to tour R34, I saw the same tour and though guarded he was having a great time and his band is great. Al Jardine was with him as was Al’s son Matt who is a great singer. Much better than the Mike Love version of The Beach Boys.

Brian Wilson is incredible. Loved his guest appearance on Janelle Monae's last album.

[...]

He was a brilliant composer and ahead of his time. He wrote beautiful harmonies but was permanently damaged by LSD and other drugs that he did in the 60's along with the abuse by his father who was the Beach Boys' manager. It took him years, even decades to recover. I loved the video at R29. It caused me to go down a Beach Boys rabbit hole on YouTube.

Another shout out to Love and Mercy. Until I watched it, I had no idea what a musical genius Wilson was or that he'd suffered so much mental illness.

[...]

Schizophrenia is more about crap in the chromosomes.

[...]

Carnie was in a commercial recently and they hid her behind a piano.

LSD and marijuana can exacerbate pre existing or dormant mental health problems. Syd Barrett, Peter Green, Danny Kirwan and Skip Spence were also casualties of 60s drug culture.

He looks like he should be in some senior center putting together puzzles instead of performing on stage. The poor guy is not well cared for if he can't live off the $$ he has in peace.

Whenever I think of Brian Wilson, I think of the scene in "Walk Hard: the Dewey Cox Story" when he makes his Pet Sounds-like album

R35, the story is reversed. It was actually Brian who shat in a plate and gave it to his dad for dinner.

Brian is mentally ill - just like his father was.

Dennis sure was hot.

Why would he name his daughter Meat?

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R19 Seriously, almost anyone looks pathetic sitting alone in a restaurant booth.

R33 I didn't know that Stephen Stills posts on DL.

One tends to forget all of the people that contributed to his success and that of the Beach Boys. Producing the albums and dealing with the diva that Brian was was a lot of work. My now dead friend Jack Riley was a producer - like George Martin for the Beatles - for the Beach Boys. He said he was lucky to survive working with Brian - you never knew what was going to happen from one day to the next - even hour to hour in a single day. I wonder how much of Brian's success was Jack's work.

R59 Van Dyke Parks was instrumental in shaping Pet Sounds and few people realize that Tony Asher wrote the lyrics to God Only Knows.

Van Dyke Parks wrote the lyrics to Smile, r60. Tony Asher was involved with Pet Sounds.

The Smile Sessions, released in 2011. I bought the 2-CD version.

[...]

Brian Wilson is pretty fucking great.

Damn R53

Oh, god not this again. Stop with the genius thing. Yea he had a few really good songs but he had more treacly tripe than gems. Sure the harmonies are really good but most are on dull dirgy songs like Caroline No. The songs are old-timey that don't stand the test of time.

Dennis was coupled with Christine McVie. She tells of how he tried to make a heart shaped design in her garden. Instead, he ruined her garden, didn't complete the heart and then sent her the bill.

R67 He did serenade her with a heart shaped garden of roses. Then he burned her pool house down and sent her the bill for the whole thing, lol.

An early sign of Wilson's lack of control came when, as a token of his love for McVie, he hired a team of people to dig up her back garden into a giant heart shape. He was intending to fill the heart-shaped hole with roses, but he never got round to it. "My lawn was now just a big pile of dirt. He had all these people holding a candle around the edge of it, slowly sinking into the mud. Then he got up on the balcony and proposed to me. Then he sent me the bill for the work. I suppose his heart was in the right place."

Wow, R34, that was truly painful to listen to. If I'd paid good money for that, I'd be pissed.

[...]

80 years olds should NOT be singing.

R72 I still think Grace Slick was 100% right about elder rock stars:

[quote]"You can do jazz, classical, blues, opera, country until you're 150, but rap and rock and roll are really a way for young people to get that anger out", and, "It's silly to perform a song that has no relevance to the present or expresses feelings you no longer have."

[quote]80 years olds should NOT be singing.

Not only that but Brian never evolved as a songwriter. His melodies are all those 60's teen throwbacks.

For [R8] --- "In My Room" -- their gorgeous harmonies. Have always loved this song from back when I lived in 'my room' at my parents' house.

Also: 'Don't Worry Baby'

Both short and hella sweet

Happy Birthday, Brian (June 20, 1942)

Mike Love's son who is in the new, fake Beachboys tried to engage my friend in a threesome. He apparently was really wierd and my friend declined.

I think Brian is tremendous. My mum had Pet Sounds and I'd listen to it as a child, along with Sergeant Pepper and After the Gold Rush etc. Loved those old vinyls, still have them.

"Vinyls": one of those words we didn't use to need, like "bareback" and "landline."

A new documentary premiered at Tribeca this week.

"Little Saint Nick" is the WORST Holiday song of all time.

He's no "genius."

I put the Beach Boys on shuffle in iTunes, but I have 2.2 days' worth of songs, so I won't get to hear them all today. The first one that came on was my Pet Sounds favorite, "You Still Believe in Me." Happy Birthday, Brian, and thanks for the music and the memories.

The video of Sloop John B at r16 is an absolute gem. Glad to see Brian and Al Jardine still recently performing together, with the gorgeous harmonies intact.

R80 Oh?

Bob Odenkirk talks about the origins of his Brian Wilson parody song "Mouthful of Sores" (and David Cross rpointedly efrains from discussing his parody of Eric Clapton's "Tears In Heaven.")

R53, Dennis appeared to be sex on a stick. His story is just as insane to me.

I am the only DLer who loves Wonderful Christmastime. It makes me ache with nostalgia.

Carnie does a lot of cooking videos on Instagram and is pretty fun. She’s an attention whore but pretty harmless. Considering the insanity on the Wilson side she and her sister came out pretty well.

[quote]"Vinyls": one of those words we didn't use to need, like "bareback" and "landline."

Obviously you never lived among the horsey set.

Is he the one who hung out with the Manson family and banged all those dirty hippy chicks?

No, r89, that was Dennis Wilson, Brian's drummer brother.

I buweeve in cwedit wharaah cwedit is dew. He doesn’t gwet it fwum me. I like the Stones.

Hi there, I am a young, recovering Brianoholic and I can tell you a few things.

The Beach Boys to the zoomer generation, is the favourite band of the youthful neurodivergent. Which isn’t a bad thing. In The Beach Boys -based communities, there are people who are only fascinated with the happenings within the band, not an actual appreciation of the music or creativity. This largely discounted the band in my eyes, because I could never find a real person that liked listening to them, only people who could tell me when Brian Wilson took a shit in 1982.

Hearing SMiLE at 19 changed my life in 2016 — I haven’t been the same musician since. I largely dumped folk music as I thought this was the next journey. Five years later, I have no major regrets but me honestly losing interest in the band. Pet Sounds is beautiful and a truly timeless record, yet I have varied feelings about the other records. I’m basically interested in the era between 1965-1977. The rest before and after that SUCKS really bad.

I will be really sad when Brian dies. His magnum opus “Surf’s Up” is one of the greatest songs ever written in the singer-songwriter vernacular and will stand the test of time, along with “Wonderful” and “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder”.

Brian Wilson should not be touring. It’s a known fact that his wife is as controlling as Landy was in the 80’s — he needs out of that situation for any chance of enjoying what little life he’s got left. Or else he’ll just mumble through Pet Sounds for the thousandth time. Brian is done and over as a musician. They should close off his fake social media, expand his website as an archive, and let Brian live in active peace through his golden years. He’s a very sensitive, kind and shy person. He hates the spotlight, let his albums do the talking. I can always divulge more if you queens are interested!

I don’t know much about their history, except their music is what you think of California (well years past CA) Sun, beach, surfing, blondes.... they are the greatest ambassadors to the state’s golden era.

Also that Kevin Love is related to them. He has a lot of mental health issues too.

I’ve mostly read through his autobiography “I am Brian Wilson”. Terribly formatted, it rambles on and on like a bad run-on sentence. You can tell it was mostly his wife telling his stories in a very biased way.

Gawd, R92, just say you LEARNED to hate them.

I prefer minstrelsy. The Stones killed it. Mick shows up in that recent Aretha documentary. Shit man, why the fuck am I haunted by the Beattless and surfer rock that isn’t Dick Dale? Tell me why??? TELL ME WHY?!?!?

R95 — you’re not wrong. I don’t hate them, but I have an extremely bitter aftertaste from the fan community. It’s basically cancer, they have the worst taste in memes too. Totally discounts the band.

"The Beach Boys to the zoomer generation, is the favourite band of the youthful neurodivergent."

Is that just because of Brian's well-known mental health problems, or is there another reason? I mean you said that some of them don't even like the music.

Tell me more.

R92, if Brian is as shy and sensitive as you claim, he's going to ATTRACT controlling people - he doesn't want to control his life. His wife isn't some 30 years younger trophy, she's his age group, she handles everything. He likes that.

[quote]Brian Wilson should not be touring. It’s a known fact that his wife is as controlling as Landy was in the 80’s — he needs out of that situation for any chance of enjoying what little life he’s got left. Or else he’ll just mumble through Pet Sounds for the thousandth time. Brian is done and over as a musician. They should close off his fake social media, expand his website as an archive, and let Brian live in active peace through his golden years. He’s a very sensitive, kind and shy person. He hates the spotlight, let his albums do the talking. [bold]I can always divulge more if you queens are interested![/bold]

Oh, do divulge, closethouseboy r94. SMiLe is my favorite album of all time. I'm so glad I got to hear Brian and the Wondermints perform it live in DC in 2004. Here's an article in the Washington Post announcing the concert.

Pet Sounds is sublime

"It’s a known fact that his wife is as controlling as Landy was in the 80’s"

"Love and Mercy" is a very good film, and Paul Dano is excellent as the increasingly crazy young Brian, but it's obvious that it's about Melinda and Dr. Landry fighting over the chance to control Brian Wilson and his legacy and fortune... and it was also obvious that Brian needed someone else to run things. Obviously Melinda has done an imperfect job if she's sending an 80 year old out to perform when performing is beyond his abilities, but if he needs someone to manage his life as much as I think he does, he could have done a lot worse.

I'll always wonder about the Beach Boys, and what they could have been. They were wonderful, they sang like angels and their songs were fantastic, but they were completely of their time. They're like a time capsule of the optimism of the early 1960s, when "Camelot" was in flower and the whole world seemed clean-cut and smiling. We'll never known if they could have adapted to changing tastes, grown up in the public eye and reinvented themselves when being clean-cut went out of style, but well. The group died young and dramatically even if the members didn't, they're forever tanned and grinning in pop culture.

I'm watching Love & Mercy ight now and I knew if I came here I could find something abut Brian. I really love this movie and it makes me appreciate the music so much more. Brian was a genius back in the day. Damn but Paul Giamatti plays a filthy vicious bastard so well.

Must be rough being talented, worshiped and filthy rich. Oh, to have these problems?