In the mid-to-late 60s, as pop shifted in tone and invention, the group’s music changed accordingly as Brian Wilson’s formative obsession with the epic soundscapes of Phil Spector gave way to an anxiously competitive fascination with the increasing sophistication of the Beatles’ songs. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images They were quintessentially Californian songs about cars and girls and surfing – though only one of the group, Dennis Wilson, ever actually rode the waves.īrian Wilson in the studio circa 1970. From the early to mid-60s, when pop was young and loaded with the promise of the new, the Beach Boys released a series of singles that evoked all that youthful optimism, songs such as Surfin’ USA, I Get Around and the classic California Girls. I Am Brian Wilson is a beguilingly honest account of what it is to be Wilson, fractured genius, even if it is often meandering and only occasionally enlightening about the other sounds he once heard in his head – the beautiful melodies, complex harmonies and vaultingly ambitious productions of his finest songs, which are, by common critical consent, among the greatest ever written.
As Brian puts it: “The story of my dad is the big can of worms because it’s connected to everything else.” His exacting standards, enforced by constant beatings, is perhaps the key factor that propelled his most gifted and fearful son into an obsessive pursuit of musical perfection and a subsequent spiral into sustained and, even by the standards of the time, excessive drug use.
He remains a haunting presence in Brian’s life to this day, the first and most damaging voice of disapproval.
Hovering over them all is the controlling figure of the late Murry Wilson, their one-time manager, whose ruthless ambition and abusive behaviour left its mark on all three of his sons. Wilson’s story is essentially a family saga, inextricably linked with those of his brothers, Carl and Dennis, his cousin Mike Love, and his close friend Al Jardine – the first and classic lineup of the Beach Boys.
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