cwburch

There seems to two camps among those who grew up with Rock ‘n Roll in the 60’s about the Beach Boys. Some people dismiss them as a “Surf/Car/Girl” Band, a lightweight fad that was blown out of the water by the British Invasion and Motown. Some people say Brian Wilson was a musical genius who was on the verge of taking Rock to some new and wonderful places when his emotional problems and drug abuse took him down.

Let me put my cards on the table: I sit in the second camp. There are a hundred bands that had better musicians than the Beach Boys, and a lot of their lyrics were unabashedly adolescent, but when it comes to harmony and composition, they were second to none. The fat harmonies of a Beach Boy ballad take me back to the sweet dreams adolescence like nothing else. “Pet Sounds” and “Smiley Smile” (the shadow of “Smile”, perhaps the greatest rock album that almost was) showed a promise of some great new directions.

So with my bias out in the open, the documentary Brian Wilson – I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times was interesting, insightful and moving.

There are extensive interviews with historians and professors of music, John Cale, Thurston Moore, Tom Petty, Lindsay Buckingham, Linda Ronstadt, David Crosby, Graham Nash, Randy Newman, Van Dyke Parks, ex-wife Marilyn Wilson, his daughters Carnie and Wendy, his brother Carl, his mother, and Brian himself.

Brian plowed into music as a world that could be his friend, his confidant. It is fascinating and touching to see how much of the sweet music of his adolescence was born out of conflict in his relationship with his father: wanting to please him, wanting to compete with him, wanting to escape from him.

As he got further into music and further into drugs, he began to deconstruct traditional harmonies, traditional musical relationships, and I would suspect, his own relationship with reality. In Brian Wilson you see another story with the threads of creativity and madness tugging at the soul of an artist.

There was a period where Brian Wilson did not get out of bed for 2 years. (His mother eerily and matter-of-factly recounts that his father had the exact same experience.) There was a period (somewhat glossed over in the film – possibly for fear of litigation) where he was under that care of a psychiatrist who was more dominating and controlling than his father.

Brian Wilson today wears the scars of the personal battles that he has fought. His speech is sometime slurred, and his voice can no longer hit the high, pure notes that it once did. But there is something noble and moving about this man who has survived his own madness. And when he sings “Do It Again” with his daughters, there is a sense of sunlight, a sense that maybe he will be ok.

As a “DVD experience” there is nothing spectacular in the way of audio or video (the entire documentary is shot in Black and White). And there are some unanswered questions: What of his relationship with the rest of the Beach Boys now? Mike Love, for example, is conspicuously absent.

But I’m glad I watched it. It brings a little closure and understanding to the story of one of the geniuses of Rock ‘n Roll.

anglagard

I saw it on cable last year and it is wonderfully entertaining. I plan on getting the DVD eventually, and I recommend it to anyone who likes music documentaries.

burgeon

Thanks for mentioning this DVD, I didn't realize it was out there - I'll check it out. (and great review by the way!) Brian Wilson was a genius and the Beach Boys were a great band. I love their "Good Vibrations" box set - there's lots of studio outtakes, and some unreleased stuff. You can really hear their creative process, and it's great. I, for one, have never heard of a musician who denies that "Pet Sounds" is at least one of the most influential albums in rock 'n' roll.