Out and About -July-issue-

56 | OUT AND ABOUT COSTA BLANCA
CELEBRITY PROFILE
BRIAN WILSON
Brian Douglas Wilson (born June 20, 1942) is
an American musician, singer, songwriter,
and record producer who founded the Beach
Boys. Often called a genius for his novel approaches
to pop composition, extraordinary musical aptitude,
and mastery of recording techniques, he is widely
acknowledged as one of the most innovative and
significant songwriters of the 20th century. Wilson
is also known for his lifelong struggles with mental
illness.
Raised in Hawthorne, California, Wilson’s early
influences included George Gershwin, the Four
Freshmen, Phil Spector, and Burt Bacharach. In
1961, he began his professional career as a member
of the Beach Boys, serving as the band’s songwriter,
producer, and co-lead vocalist, bassist, keyboardist,
and de facto leader. After signing with
Capitol Records in 1962, he became
the first pop artist credited for
writing, arranging, producing,
and performing his own
material. He also produced
other acts, most notably the
Honeys. By the mid-1960s, he
had written or co-written more
than two dozen U.S. Top 40
hits, including the number-ones
“Surf City” (1963), “I Get Around”
(1964), “Help Me, Rhonda” (1965),
and “Good Vibrations” (1966).
In 1964, Wilson suffered a nervous
breakdown and resigned from regular concert
touring, which led to more refined work, such
as the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and Wilson’s first
credited solo release, “Caroline, No” (both 1966).
As his mental health deteriorated in the late 1960s,
his contributions to the band diminished, and he
became much-mythologized for his lifestyle of
seclusion, overeating, and drug abuse. In the 1980s,
he formed a controversial creative and business
partnership with his psychologist, Eugene Landy,
and relaunched his solo career with the album
Brian Wilson (1988). Following his disassociation
from Landy in 1991, Wilson started receiving
conventional medical treatment. Since the late
1990s, he has recorded and performed consistently
as a solo artist.
From an early age, Wilson demonstrated an
extraordinary skill for learning by ear. Speaking of
Wilson’s unusual musical abilities prior to his first
birthday, his father said that, as a baby, he could
repeat the melody from “When the Caissons Go
Rolling Along” after only a few verses had been
sung by the father.
Brian liked nothing more than to gather his
friends around the piano ... Most often he’d
harmonize with ... friends from his senior class.
Written for his Senior Problems course in October
1959, Wilson submitted an essay, “My Philosophy”,
in which he stated that his ambitions were to
“make a name for myself ... in music
Wilson, brothers Carl and Dennis,
cousin Mike Love, and their
friend Al Jardine first appeared
as a music group in of 1961,
initially under the name the
Pendletones. After being
prodded by Dennis to write
a song about the local watersports
craze, Wilson and
Mike Love together created
what became the first single for
the band, “Surfin”. Around this
time, the group rented an amplifier,
a microphone, and a stand-up bass for
Jardine to play. After the boys rehearsed for
several weeks in the Wilsons’ music room, his
parents returned home from a brief trip to Mexico.
Eventually impressed, Murry Wilson proclaimed
himself the group’s manager and the band
embarked on serious rehearsals for a proper studio
session.
When Candix Records ran into money problems
and sold the Beach Boys’ master recordings to
another label, Wilson’s father terminated the
contract. As “Surfin’” faded from the charts, Wilson,
who had forged a song writing partnership with
local musician Gary Usher, created several new