Brian Wilson, the legendary American musician, songwriter, singer, record producer, and co-founder of The Beach Boys, passed away last Wednesday, June 11. He was 82.
As the primary songwriter for The Beach Boys, Wilson employed striking harmonic sophistication and innovative recording techniques. In 1964, he stopped touring with the band to focus on writing and recording. Meticulous in the recording studio, Wilson demanded the highest standards.
In his memoir, Hallelujah Junction, composer John Adams lists Wilson among his earliest influences:
What particularly enchanted me about the popular music of the time was its harmonic ingenuity…A song like Brian Wilson’s “Good Vibrations” took the standard pop song through a tonal hall of mirrors, moving into remote keys with an effortlessness that gave the music its feeling of endless delight. “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” another Beach Boys song by Wilson, begins with an eight-beat introduction in A major played on the harp, which is followed, after a single thwop on the drum, by the main tune in the remote flat submediant key of F. This kind of tonal surprise was nothing new in the classical or jazz world, but appearing here in the context of a standard rock-and-roll song it felt novel and fresh. More than any other songwriter of that era, Brian Wilson understood the value of harmonic surprise.
In a recent Facebook tribute, my colleague, Richmond Symphony principal percussionist Cliff Hardison, writes that Wilson’s music “helped me heal, and will always be a major part of my life.” Hardison calls The Beach Boys‘ monumental 1966 album, Pet Sounds, “an American Masterpiece.” It was this album which directly inspired Paul McCartney and The Beatles album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Wouldn’t It Be Nice
Brian Wilson’s glistening falsetto, and the pristine tuning of The Beach Boys is on display in Wouldn’t It Be Nice, the opening track of Pet Sounds. Completely deaf in his right ear from childhood, perhaps a result of his father’s abuse, Wilson mixed songs in mono. Here, I have opted for the stereo remix, but I encourage you to listen to the original mono version as well for comparison.
God Only Knows
Unfolding with a continuous rhythmic heartbeat, God Only Knows contains vague echoes of the Baroque arias of Bach and Handel. Harmonically, the song is not moored to a single tonal center, instead drifting between E major and A major. Additionally, the typical formula of the 32-bar pop song is subverted. The song concludes with a vocal canon. Twenty studio musicians played everything from sleigh bells, accordion, harpsichord, and plastic orange juice cups to a piano with tape covering the strings.
Here Today
Brian Wilson commented, “Here Today was a work of art in my opinion. It was an assertive track with utilization of basses played up higher. The trombones gave it that masculine touch.”
I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times
A dazzling example of recording technology, I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times includes an Electro-Theremin.
Caroline, No
The closing track on Pet Sounds, Caroline, No unfolds with the serene hypnotic quality of Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies. The recording involved twelve session musicians, playing harpsichord, flutes, guitars, basses, and vibraphone. Included in the percussion was an empty water cooler jug, struck from the bottom with a mallet. Wilson wrote the song with Tony Asher.
Good Vibrations
With a classical sense of development, Good Vibrations follows the extended format of a Pocket symphony. Cliff Hardison observes that it involved “over 30 session musicians, from February to September of 1966, and over 90 hours of tape, making production costs estimated in the tens of thousands of dollars…the most expensive single at that time, and the longest to record. Yet it remains one of the most influential pop recordings in history.”
Recordings
Featured Image: Brian Wilson performing in 2017, photograph by Kevin Winter
I have a ton of respect for Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys – creative, innovative, sophisticated, and musical. Perhaps it’s a matter of musical taste but for me, Sly Stone, who died a week before also at the age of 82, is way more interesting and important as a pop artist, whose Family Stone helped create an entire genre of music that lives on today as FUNK but also became the DNA of hip hop culture, another American-birthed worldwide music movement. Catchy tunes artistry is one thing, creating an entirely new genre with catchy tunes is another. Again, this doesn’t devalue Wilson’s BB’s work, just puts it in a larger perspective. Funk fests are still held all over the country while California surf music has been relegated to music history.