Brian Wilson, RIP

He can be seen not only as a musical genius, but as a metaphor of California's tragic story arc over the last 50 years.

Brian Wilson, 1942 - 2025

For some strange reason, earlier today my mind ran back to Jan & Dean, the Beach Boy imitators (though some say percursor) that were, in my neighborhood at least, equally big news. Having grown up in the Pasadena area, you can understand loyalty to the duo that gave us “The Little Old Lady from Pasadena.” Though I have to add that I hold my maximum fondness for their “Anaheim, Azusa & Cucamonga Sewing Circle, Book Review and Timing Association.”

Needless to say, the similarity to the Beach Boys was entirely superficial, and dissolved on any serious listening. The news today of Brian Wilson’s passing will hit as a significant marker for the passing of the baby boomer generation.

The very best account ever written about the Beach Boys comes from Michael Anton (a native of Santa Cruz), who is rather busy at the moment in his post as director of policy planning in the State Department, and wingman to Steve Witcoff in the negotiations with Iran over their nuclear program. But every Beach Boys fan should run, not walk, to read Michael’s 2012 article in the Claremont Review of Books, “Paradise Lost and Regained: The Beach Boys’ Smile Is an American Masterpiece.”

A couple of samples:

Paul McCartney proclaimed “God Only Knows” the “greatest song ever written” and Pet Sounds “a total, classic record.” Legendary Beatles producer George Martin would later say of the Fab Four’s most famous album that “Without Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pepper wouldn’t have happened…. Pepper was an attempt to equal Pet Sounds.” . . .

Brian’s most artistically ambitious collaborations to date had been with Tony Asher, who penned most of the words for Pet Sounds and also for the single “Good Vibrations.” Brian described the latter as a “pocket symphony” in three movements. It took 90 hours in the studio to record and was, at the time, the most expensively produced song in history—indeed it cost more than most albums—and became the Beach Boys’ first million-seller. . .

The tragedy is what might have been. Brian Wilson was one of those rare composers whose work only got better and deeper as he matured. In this, it’s fair to compare him not just to the Beatles—”Surf’s Up” is at least as far beyond “Surfin'” as side 2 of Abbey Road is from “Love Me Do”—but also to Beethoven and Verdi. Every song and every album was better than the one that came before. Until he imploded. We’ll never know what else might have emerged from his fertile, functioning brain.

Read the whole thing.

RIP.