Wouldn't It Be Nice

As I start to write today’s contribution to the blogosphere, I’m sitting here watching it snow, again.

After about four or five weeks of being missing in action, old man winter and his friends, snow and wind are back, and it looks like they’ll be hanging out on my couch like a drunken friend who doesn’t know when to put the bottle down and go home.

With winter proclaiming that reports of it’s death have been greatly exaggerated, my mind takes me to that special place where the days are long, the beer is cold, and The Beach Boys are playing on the radio.

The Beach Boys we all know were a great American band of the 60’s and early 70’s, with their creative peak being 65’-67’. The Beach Boys as we knew them are long gone. 

Drummer Dennis Wilson checked out in 1983 drunk diving for memorabilia he had tossed off his boat into the marina. Lesson kids, don’t drink and dive.

Carl Wilson, he of the angelic voice of songs such as Good Vibrations, Don’t Worry Baby, and God Only Knows, died of cancer in 1998.

Numerous legal battles between the surviving Beach Boys, Mike Love, Al Jardine, and creative genius Brian Wilson have carved what’s left into pieces of nostalgic imitations that nobody wants to see unless you’re losing your ass at the slots at Chinook Winds and have nothing better to do than sing along with Mike.

The exception here of course is Brian Wilson, the now 68 year old writer, producer, arranger, and mastermind of the Beach Boy sound, who has less business being alive than Keith Richards.

Brian went through depression, drug addiction, and serious mental illness, which ultimately led to creative and physical burnout, of which he never really recovered, thus rendering The Beach Boys a nostalgia act sometime after about 1968.

Being a very competitive person, Brian felt that he always had to one-up the Beatles, and managed to for the most part. The Beatles ‘Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band’ was a response to Brian’s then masterpiece ‘Pet Sounds’, which was in response to The Beatles ‘Revolver”.

While working on the ‘Smile’ project, which was supposed to be Brian’s ‘teenage symphony to God’, ‘Peppers’ came out and Brian was devastated. Already in the throws of mental illness and drug abuse, Brian scrapped the project, never to be heard again.

Actually, bits and pieces showed up in other Beach Boy albums through the late 60’s and early 70’s. Gems like ‘Heroes and Villains’, ‘Surf’s Up’, ‘Our Prayer’, and others.

Shortly after scrapping ‘Smile’, Brian retreated to his bedroom and the occasional visit to the piano in a sandbox for the better part of eight years, his constant companions, acid and cocaine.

He returned to help on a project or do a tour, but increasingly looked befuddled on stage. His voice, once a thing of beauty was severely damaged by his drug use and cigarettes. His creative output was basically nil, except for co-writing Sail On Sailor, and probably his last great song ‘Till I Die’

Fast forwarding to 2011, Brian Wilson is still alive and producing great music. His creative peak long past, he has at least gotten healthy, had his mental problems diagnosed and now has it under control, and is touring again with a crack band, performing his own songs as well as Beach Boy favorites that are so true to the originals it makes you forget the only Beach Boy on the stage is Brian.

In 2004 he dug out what tapes remained of ‘Smile’ returned to the studio to finish it, and released it as a Brian Wilson solo album to stellar reviews. Remarkably, we hadn’t forgotten Brian and his genius.

Most recently he released an album of George Gershwin classics titled, ‘Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin’. With vocal arrangements right out of the best of the Beach Boys, Brian re-interprets such songs as ‘Rhapsody In Blue’, ‘I Got Rhythm, and ‘Summertime'. It is truly amazing work.

To see Brian now, the daze is gone. The eyes look clear and focused, and I imagine he is finally at peace with himself and his legacy.

We can always wonder what might have been had he had a stronger mental disposition. If maybe some of the other Beach Boys could have been a Lennon or Harrison, but alas we’ll never know.

What we do have is a library of music that will live forever. It will always be there for the times when you long for that first warm day of spring. That first day that you can hop in the car, turn up the sound and blast ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ out the window, remembering the first time you did that as a kid, and knowing full well that longer and better days are on the way. And while you’re driving down the road with the sounds of summer emanating from your car, stop for a moment and remember the fragile genius whose music can still take you back, yet still move you forward at the same time, all with a smile.

Thank you, Brian. Surf’s Up.