Wouldn’t it be nice

An appreciation of Brian Wilson.

What’s the big news today? The Wisconsin State Journal reports that the City of Madison is making it easier to subdivide large lots in the quest for greater housing density. (Stay tuned on that one!) The Wall Street Journal leads with efforts to roll back rules on power plant pollution. The on-line New York Times goes international with a jet crash killing 200 medical students in India. 

No, the big news is that Brian Wilson has died, age 82. It’s what Dave Zweifel, our old editor at The Capital Times, called “a talker.” It’s what real people are talking about that day, never mind what the experts deemed important. The Werkes believes that culture is critical — that it, not the economy, decided the 2024 presidential election, for instance.

Where else but America could produce an Elvis Presley? Is anything more America than the Beach Boys?

 You had to be young

… in the 1960s to fully appreciate how the Beach Boys captured the fun fun fun of being alive — even if daddy didn’t have a T-Bird. JFK had not yet visited Dallas. The Beatles had not landed at La Guardia. With the Beach Boys, everybody had an ocean across the USA — even in the farm fields of Sun Prairie WI. So please indulge this senior’s lament, because the heroes of our youth are leaving us.

Horny boys showering after phy ed class made “Bah-bah-bah, Bah-bah-brah Ann!” reverberate off the wet tile. Getting ready for school one morning, our leatherette-encased Arvin transistor radio emitted the most amazing “Good Vibrations.” The Beach Boys always made you feel the breeze in your bushy bushy blond hairdo. (Yeah, we tried blond hair dye.)

Attending a Beach Boys concert at the Dane County Coliseum, the question was whether Brian would show. (Don’t remember the answer.) We did not know his troubles. He and the Beatles regarded each other as competitors. Lennon & McCartney and sometimes George wrote songs for the Beatles; George Martin (“the Fifth Beatle) arranged and produced. Brian shouldered those responsibilities almost solo. 

→ A must: Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road

 Suffered for his art

Icarus knows this story. Flying closer to the sun — ever higher like his distinctive falsetto voice — he crashed to earth under the pressure of a competitive industry and suppressed demons. Eventually, the emotional captive of an controlling psycho-therapist, with barely suppressed memories of a physically and emotionally abusive father. We have panic attacks and depression in our own family.

“That is why I wrote those happy songs, I try to get as close to paradise as I can. I try to steer clear of heartbreaks.” — Brian Wilson

Give the protest song its due. But who plays Phil Ochs on their iPhones? We dig the gritty realism of The Animals. “In this dirty old part of the city,” Eric Burdon growled, vowing “We got to get out of this place if it’s the last thing we ever do.” We don’t know if he ever did.

But Brian Wilson did get out of his bad places! At least, through his music. We read that Paul McCartney called “God Only Knows” the greatest ever written. (How many popular musicians write about God?) For us, it’s “In My Room.” Simply arranged, with minimal instrumentation, the five Boys give harmonized voice to the safe place Brian Wilson created:

There’s a world where I can go and tell my secrets to
In my room
In my room (In my room)

In this world I lock out all my worries and my fears …

Now it’s dark and I’m alone but I won’t be afraid
In my room, in my room.

We hear hope and security amidst a troubled world. The teen years, we’ve come to appreciate, are more troubled than once thought. [UPDATE: Another observation: contrast the sun-splashed innocence of 1960s California with the seeming dystopia of today’s mismanaged, fire- and riot-ravaged state.]

Blaska’s Bottom Line: Maybe, what the world needs now (we hear Dionne Warwick) is more Beach Boys and less P Diddy. 

Where is your safe place?