The love and mercy of Brian Wilson

My mother used to tell me about vibrations.
I didn't really understand too much of what
that meant when I was just a boy.
To think that invisible feelings,
invisible vibrations existed scared me to death.

—Brian Wilson

Brian Wilson once said that the song “Be My Baby” by the Ronettes was as important to the world as Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. He felt so inspired by it that he sat down and somehow wrote a better one. He created “Don’t Worry Baby”, one of the greatest songs of the 20th Century. It might be the Beach Boy’s crowning achievement. Brian was all of 22 years old.

I say “might” because there are maybe a dozen other contenders. Most notably “Good Vibrations”, “In My Room”, and “God Only Knows”. But first things first.

Brian Wilson was not like you or me. Depending how you look at it, his mind either didn’t work right, or was simply distracted by angels. He could only hear out of one ear. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder. He experienced auditory hallucinations. LSD and other drugs surely contributed to his mental decline. Brian’s relationship with his abusive father didn’t help either. But nobody really knows. Maybe the world was just too mean a place. He was too gentle a soul. He wasn’t made for these times. But despite all this, Brian always seemed a lovely man. Childlike. Guileless. Easy to love. He had family. Friends. I don’t know if he was capable of happiness the way you are I understand it, but what he created is testament to his bouts of pure joy. I think Brian Wilson lived in fear, and the only thing that made him brave was being near a piano.

Nobody could get to him there. If there were still voices in his head, they were now relegated to singing the harmonies.

He can rest now. The voices are gone. The fear has finally abated. I don’t believe in heaven. But I wish I did. I’d hope it has a piano. Maybe one placed in a large sandbox. Reserved just for him.

The word “genius” is tossed around like a football. I don’t know what it means. But there’s a musical club. Beethoven. Bach. Mozart. The usual suspects. They seem somehow out of reach. Unworldly even. Like they descended from Mars. In reality, just a trio of weirdos, largely dismissed in their own time. Broke. Miserable. Drunk. Majestically flawed. Yet somehow able to make beautiful noise that, even all these years later, is still capable of stopping the heart. God only knows what types of voices they had in their own heads.

If you listen to “Good Vibrations”, it’s all of that. It’s all of them. It’s classical pop music that nobody, not even the Beatles, could top. Or even contemplate. It’s 100 different songs combined to make one……a 3 and a half minute symphony that could never have been created by a man with a normal brain. I was trying to think of another way of saying that last sentence. Something more elegant than “normal brain”. But I couldn’t think of anything more fitting. “Good Vibrations” comes from a higher plain. It comes from a spectrum we still don’t understand. If you asked Brian Wilson if his own inner torment was worth “Good Vibrations”, he’d surely say yes. It took him months to record. 90 hours of studio time. 17 different sessions in multiple studios. Scores of musicians sitting around hoping that Brian wasn’t going mad. He’d tell them what to play. Sometimes he’d SHOW them what to play. He’d sometimes arrive at a session, think things over, and split without recording anything. He would splice this piece to that piece. It was an enormous jigsaw puzzle that was created in fragments. All the fragments were complete only in his head. Nobody had any idea what the fuck it was going to sound like until they heard his final mix.

It changed the world. It made what seemed impossible, possible. It turned a medium once thought simplistic and even trite into an art form we’ll be talking about as long as we talk about Mozart’s Requiem.

As good as “Good Vibrations” is, I think “God Only Knows” is even better. I don’t know the right words to describe something as perfect as this song. But if you insisted that I come up with an actual definition of “genius”, I’d say that it was whatever it took to create “God Only Knows”.

We lost Sly Stone earlier this week. Now Brian Wilson. I was watching TV last night when I got a text saying that Israel had just bombed Iran. The news is like a relentless, cold rain. A world without Brian Wilson seems a little meaner than it was before. Our world cannot afford these types of defections.

I immediately thought of his song “Love and Mercy”. Brian singing these words in an almost childlike quiver….

I was lying in my room
And the news came on TV
A lotta people out there hurtin'
And it really scares me

Love and mercy, that's what you need tonight
So, love and mercy to you and your friends tonight

After that…..there wasn’t much more I could add.

It took me a while to fall asleep. But I did. And the sun came up today. Sometimes I wonder if it’s going to tomorrow.

Love and mercy.

Brian deserved a better world. But then again, if he found one, maybe he would not have been Brian Wilson.

In a bit…

—tf