I Am Brian Wilson

by Brian Wilson

  Finally Gene left. There were lots of reasons why he left. But the final straw was when I started seeing Melinda and she got enough looks into my life to see what Gene was doing, and that even if he had helped me once, he wasn’t helping me anymore. Thanks to Melinda calling my mom and brother and helping them get the goods on Landy, Carl and his lawyers started working on freeing me from the situation and I started feeling more courage. Still, even after people figured out that Gene was doing nothing good for me, he was around for a while. He got into my music. I remember one real fight with him. He had started out charging me something like $25,000 a month for treatment. I don’t remember the exact number. But there were so many other expenses. He was living in my Pacific Palisades house and remodeling it with my money. He was taking his family to Hawaii for a month and sending me the bill. And the monthly expense kept increasing. In the late ’80s I looked once and it was $30,000. In the early ’90s I looked again and it was $35,000. I couldn’t stay silent. “What is this bill here?” I said to him. He looked at me like he didn’t understand the question, but he understood it fine. “I thought I’d charge a bit more,” he finally said. I lost my temper with him. That helped me see that his days were numbered.

  When Gene finally left that second time, I tried to get back on my feet. In some ways, I was happy. It felt like a tremendous weight was gone from my shoulders. My steps were easier. Still, there were days when I was too depressed to do anything. I couldn’t go to a restaurant or to the movies. I could deal with it by getting angry, but I wasn’t sure what was making me angry. I could throw a can in the air or kick something, but that didn’t solve the problem really. I slowly got back to being me. It took me a while. After all, it was nine years of bullshit.

  Or was it thirty years of bullshit? I said that I don’t know how far back to draw the line that led to Landy, but I do know one point the line passed through. That was in 1964, at Christmastime. I was with the band on an airplane going to Houston to play a show at the Music Hall there. Just a few days before, we had returned to Los Angeles from Tulsa, where we played their new arena. In the airport I started to feel like I was slipping away a bit. At first I thought it was about my marriage. Just a few weeks before, I had married Marilyn. I was a young husband, only twenty-two, and she was an even younger wife, just sixteen. I was happy we were married, but I was worried, too. My thoughts about love and romance were all confused. How do you ever know if you’re the right person for someone or if someone is the right person for you? A few months before, we were all hanging out and I noticed her talking to my cousin Mike Love in a way that I thought was a little too friendly. That night I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  “Do you like him?” I asked.

  “Sure,” she said. “He’s a great guy.”

  “No. I mean do you like him?”

  “That’s ridiculous,” she said.

  “Is it? Be honest with me.”

  She tried to calm me down and eventually did, but the thought was still there at the airport.

  But that was only a small piece of a bigger puzzle that was falling apart faster than I could put it together. The band was huge. We were more than famous. When we hit number one in Sweden with “Surfin’ Safari” back in 1962, we laughed about it. Number one in Sweden. But “Surfin’ Safari” also went Top Twenty in the US, and then it seemed like there were Top Ten hits all the time: “Surfin’ USA,” “Surfer Girl,” “Be True to Your School,” “Fun, Fun, Fun.” It was hard to get any higher than that because of the Beatles. They were on Ed Sullivan in February of 1964, and in April they had all five of the top spots in Billboard. That week we were at thirteen with “Fun, Fun, Fun.” In May we released “I Get Around,” and that went into the Top Twenty when songs by the Dixie Cups (“Chapel of Love”), Mary Wells (“My Guy”), and the Beatles (“Can’t Buy Me Love”), still, were at the top.

  Then in July something changed on the chart. The top song wasn’t by the Dixie Cups or Mary Wells or the Beatles. It was by us. “I Get Around” was number one, right above “My Boy Lollipop.” I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t just Sweden anymore. “I Get Around” was also our first gold record. And it wasn’t just how many people were buying our records. It was how people were talking about our records. They made us out to be the next great pop act after the Beatles, though we had been putting records on the charts for years. And some people were saying we were even better, that our songs were more interesting or sophisticated or created more positive energy.

  When we played “I Get Around” and “Wendy” on Ed Sullivan in September, that cinched it. We were in striped shirts and white pants, an outfit that would become kind of like our uniform. It was the Beach Boys’ equivalent of the Beatles’ mop tops. That’s how we were remembered. The stage was a trip. Someone had the idea of putting roadsters next to us. We played around them. I couldn’t really absorb any of it then because I was performing, but I have seen it since. I’ve always loved the way the girls screamed when they showed a close-up of Dennis at the drums. And Mike had a funny little dance that he broke out when Carl was doing his guitar solo on “I Get Around.” We did four more songs at the T.A.M.I. Show a month later, which was really an amazing concert: not just us but the Miracles (with Smokey Robinson, one of the greatest singers and songwriters ever), the Supremes (with Diana Ross), Marvin Gaye, Lesley Gore, Jan and Dean, James Brown, the Rolling Stones, and even Chuck Berry. Can you believe a lineup like that? And we were right in the middle of it.

  It made me happy, but it made me dizzy also. When I started, I just wanted to make music with my brothers and my friends and leave the business to my dad, who was managing us. We were a family band in every way. But that year we got big, things changed. It was scary for me. We got going really fast. I was kind of a dumb little guy. I didn’t really acknowledge we were famous. Every now and then I would, but I was so busy cutting records, writing songs, and going on tour that I didn’t have a chance to sit down and think about it. So instead there was just this exciting feeling that was sort of sickening. We were climbing, but what was up there when you went even higher? And what if you fell? That made me nervous and afraid, and I closed my eyes and tried to feel brave.

  That December, at the gate in the airport before we flew off to Houston, nothing was working and my bravery was gone. “I don’t want to go on that plane,” I told the band.

  “I don’t know how else we’re going to get to Houston,” Mike said.

  “I can’t be on it. I won’t be on it.” I called my mother and told her to come pick me up. She laughed a little and told me not to worry. But that worked about as well as closing my eyes.

  We boarded. The plane went faster and faster down the runway, lifted off, and started climbing. What was up there when we went higher? I heard the other guys talking. Dennis said something about a girl he was supposed to call back. Carl said something about the harmonies on “I Get Around.” Then my thoughts swarmed and I blacked out. To me I blacked out. To everyone else it looked like I was screaming and holding my head and falling down in the aisle.

  When we got to Houston we went straight to the hotel. In my room I quieted down, which didn’t mean that I calmed down. Mike and Carl visited me. I stared straight at the window like it was a wall. I had so much going on inside my head, but I couldn’t make sense of any of it.

  The next day I flew right back home to California while the rest of the guys went and finished the dates. Glen Campbell replaced me the next night in Dallas, and then they went on to Omaha, Des Moines, Indianapolis, and Louisville. When they came back to LA, I called a band meeting. “I’m not going to play with the band anymore,” I announced.

  “You’re quitting?’ Carl said.

  “No. I just mean that I’m not going to play onstage. I want to stay home and write songs.”

  The guys didn’t believe it at first, but I said it enough times for them to eventually believe me. Glen pinch-hit for me a little while longer, but soon he wanted to do his own solo trip
, so the band hired a guy named Bruce Johnston. Bruce was a staff producer at Columbia Records who had played in a group called the Rip Chords. He had a similar falsetto to mine.

  I stayed at home and wrote. At first it was great. I had some songs I was working on that I thought would really stretch what music could do. Those songs turned into The Beach Boys Today! and Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!), and then they turned into Pet Sounds, and then Pet Sounds turned into SMiLE, and then SMiLE turned into nothing. Along the way the pressure started to pile up again and the blackouts happened again. The voices in my head happened, too, more and more often. I was trying to make this amazing music, and the band was rehearsing all the time, and I couldn’t handle the pressure. I couldn’t always figure out how to balance the time by myself thinking of songs and the time with other people playing them. I knew that I couldn’t do it on the stage, but then there were times when I thought I couldn’t even do it in the studio.

  I didn’t know who to talk to. I didn’t really tell the other guys in the band. I might have said a word or two, but I could tell from the way they were listening that they didn’t really understand. Once I told my dad and he narrowed his eyes and said, “Don’t be a pussy. Don’t be a baby. Get in there and write some good songs.”

  And that’s what I did. I wrote some good songs. But through the whole thing, I was sinking. Later on, much later, I would have a support network to help me figure out what to do when I was sinking. I didn’t have that then. I had problems instead. People would look at what I was doing and look past it. It was “Brian—he’s an eccentric guy” or “That’s just Brian being Brian.” But no one ever really tried to look into what was happening with me and my mind and get me out of there.

  When Dr. Landy left, he left me to my freedom. I can’t say that I knew what to do with it right away. I had been on a routine for a while, and being off the routine was relaxing in lots of ways. I was kind of in a holding pattern, but not a bad one. I hung out with Melinda mostly. We would go to lunch and drive around. We would go to Hollywood Boulevard and the movies almost every night. Melinda used to laugh because I would spend hundreds of dollars on souvenirs like I was a tourist or a junk-aholic. We listened to the radio sometimes. K-Earth 101. It’s an oldies station in Los Angeles with a huge broadcasting range. People can hear it as far south as San Diego and as far north as Bakersfield. When we were just starting out, they called it Boss Radio. It began broadcasting in 1941, just before I was born. It broadcasts from Mount Wilson in the San Gabriel Mountains. I’m not named after the mountain and it’s not named after me, but it’s a happy coincidence. At night Melinda and I would listen to artists like Johnny Mathis, Nat King Cole, Randy Newman, and Kenny G.

  Music circled me as an idea. One of the first people I called when Landy left was Andy Paley. Andy had a great history in pop music. He worked with lots of people and worked with me on the first solo record. If Landy was the bad part, Andy was the good part. When I started to get that feeling again about making music, I called him. “Let’s write some new tracks,” he said.

  We wrote a song called “Soul Searchin’.” We wrote a song called “Desert Drive.” We wrote a song called “You’re Still a Mystery.” We wrote them with the Beach Boys in mind because Don Was, the producer and bassist, wanted to do a Beach Boys record. That didn’t pan out because Carl didn’t like the songs—I don’t know why. Then Sean O’Hagan, from the band the High Llamas, was going to do it. That didn’t happen either. The whole project just weirded out. Anyway, when we were writing, we didn’t use a big professional studio, and usually we didn’t even use the four-track in my house. We just sang and played and recorded on a boom box. When songs got better and they were ready to be picked off the tree, then we booked studio time for me. I would call friends like Danny Hutton, who sang with Three Dog Night, and he would come in and help flesh things out. It felt the way it sometimes did in the old days, and that was freedom. But it was hard to imagine doing any of it alone. I needed Andy there with me, or at least someone I trusted who would keep me encouraged. I was scared as hell to go and make new music. It was always a combination of scared and excited for me. I didn’t see it as an album yet. I was never really sure where it would all end up.

  Sometimes I would play the new music for Dr. Marmer. Steve Marmer—he was the doctor I went to after Landy left, and he was one of the people who helped me get my balance back. They say there are three things that matter when you are dealing with mental illness: finding the right support network, finding the right medication, and finding the right doctor. Dr. Marmer was definitely the right doctor. Dr. Landy had bullied me about music. He had bullied me about everything. Dr. Marmer talked to me about it. If I said I was thinking about music, he told me that he thought it was a good idea. If I played him a new song or part of one, he was supportive. And even though sometimes we talked about my thoughts and feelings, sometimes we just talked about music. And not my music, even—classical music or singers that we both liked. Lots of the things I was thinking and feeling then, or trying not to think and feel, came out only when I talked about music. Later on, Dr. Marmer came to see a show of mine and he was so happy. He couldn’t believe that the onstage me was the same me in his office. He couldn’t believe that I could be in command that way. The truth is that I will never really be comfortable up there, but I know how to tough it out and get through it. And whether I’m comfortable or not, it’s a place where I can be what I am.

  In late 1993 I got a call from Van Dyke Parks. I hadn’t really worked with him since the late ’60s, on SMiLE, but we worked on “Sail On Sailor” together in the early ’70s. Van Dyke called me up and asked me to sing lead on a track of his. He had a song that he thought would be a perfect fit for me. It was called “Orange Crate Art.” He wrote it because oranges were such a part of the California experience, and also because people say that nothing rhymes with orange. I said I wasn’t sure if I was up for singing on the song, so he came to visit to convince me. I wasn’t busy with anything else, and it was obvious. I was just sitting in my bedroom watching the TV set. I don’t mean I was watching a show or anything. It was just the set. I liked thinking about all the things that used to be on it, all the shows I had ever seen.

  Van Dyke came in and convinced me to come record with him. When I got to the studio, the equipment was kind of like the TV. I liked thinking about all the things that used to be on it. But I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it. “Why am I here again?” I asked him. He laughed. “Because I hate the sound of my own voice.”

  I sang on that song, and I ended up singing on a bunch more. That wasn’t what I thought was going to happen, and sometimes it made me so nervous I felt sick, but we ended up with an album. The album had the same name as the song, Orange Crate Art. The whole thing was ready for me, thanks to Van Dyke. He wrote out all the lead vocal parts on charts and I came in and sang them. Then I arranged and sang my harmonies, stacking my vocals to add the Brian Wilson vibe to the record. The songs were about his ideas of California, the history of the state, and the myths that change the way people see history. At the very end, he even added a Gershwin piece, “Lullaby.” That was completely his idea, but it was an idea I liked.

  Around the same time there was another project. This one looked backward, over my shoulder. I was still a little scared to look forward. Don Was had talked about making a record with me—instead, he decided to make a documentary about my life after the Beach Boys. He had the idea to name it after one of the songs from Pet Sounds, “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times.” We came up with an idea for the soundtrack, which was to take some of our old songs and make them young again. I don’t listen to Beach Boys music that often. Sometimes it brings back some bad memories, you know? But there are times when I’ll go back and hear records and try to think about them—not what I was thinking when I made them but what they are as music.

  For the soundtrack, Don Was cut the instrumental tracks himself with great musicians like guitarist Wadd
y Wachtel and drummer Jim Keltner. Don is a great bass player himself. Then I came in and sang on them. We did “Caroline, No” again, one of the most beautiful songs from Pet Sounds. We did “The Warmth of the Sun.” We did songs from my solo album like “Love and Mercy” and “Melt Away,” and when we did those songs, we took Landy’s name off the credits, which by then was my legal right. I even cut a version of “Do It Again” with my daughters Carnie and Wendy. We all sang my original high part together. It’s a great version of that tune, worth checking out. Wendy came with me to The David Letterman Show to play it, which was nerve-racking but fun. I sat at the piano and she was in boots next to me. Billy West, who does voices on TV, played guitar with me for that performance. He got the solo.

  The soundtrack ended with “’Til I Die,” a remake of a song originally on Surf’s Up. It was one of my saddest songs, and also one of the best Beach Boys songs where I wrote all the music and all the lyrics. I remember when I wrote it. I was walking out by the water and thinking about how big everything was and how small I was, how insignificant I was—and not just me but how insignificant everyone was. Did people even matter? Life flashed by so quickly you couldn’t even grab hold of it, but people spent all of it trying to find meaning and purpose. I went to the piano and tried to capture the melody in my head, and then I wrote lyrics trying to explain all the things I was thinking and feeling.

  I’m a cork on the ocean

  Floating over the raging sea

  How deep is the ocean?

  How deep is the ocean?

  I lost my way

  Hey hey hey

  I’m a rock in a landslide

  Rolling over the mountainside

  How deep is the valley?

  How deep is the valley?

  It kills my soul

  Hey hey hey

  I’m a leaf on a windy day