I Am Brian Wilson

by Brian Wilson

  The most rewarding thing about the whole experience was to see what people took away from the movie, mainly the idea that mental illness should be handled in a humane and straightforward way. It’s a struggle like any struggle. It’s something I’ve had to carry around most of my life, and something that really kept me off balance until I learned how to get my head around it—and to have people around me who helped me do that. So many people wrote us or called to say that the movie helped them deal with similar problems in their own life, with family or friends.

  One of the people who wrote was Michelle Obama. She helped set up a partnership between the movie and the Campaign to Change Direction, an organization that encourages people to see mental illness differently. I have met other presidents and First Ladies. I have played for queens. But I’m not sure that I have ever been prouder than when we made that arrangement with Campaign to Change Direction. I mean, I always knew that my music was inspirational. I could always look out into a crowd and see people dancing to “California Girls.” But I didn’t always feel the same way about my life. There were times that I worried about it, that I felt it was shameful, that I felt I couldn’t be honest about the things I was thinking or the voices I was hearing. Making the movie was a challenge because it was an honest self-portrait, and when people responded to it the way they did, it made me proud of my life also. To be told that other people could learn from it and get stronger was even better.

  CHAPTER 10

  Today

  So hard to answer future’s riddle

  When ahead is seeming so far behind

  So hard to laugh a childlike giggle

  When the tears start to torture my mind

  So hard to shed the life of before

  To let my soul automatically soar

  But I hit hard at the battle that’s confronting me, yeah

  Knock down all the roadblocks a-stumbling me

  Throw off all the shackles that are binding me down

  —“Long Promised Road”

  I didn’t write “Long Promised Road.” Carl did, with Jack Rieley, for Surf’s Up. It was the first song Carl really wrote for the band, and I loved the message of it. We put it out as a single and “’Til I Die” was on the B-side. The song was about the kinds of things that Carl was feeling, and they were also the things that I felt all the time. It was hard to feel happy and light when there were sad things in my head. It was hard to feel free when I was tied down. But the only choice was to try. When I woke up in 1971, or in 1975, or in 1995, or in 2015, I had pressures on me. Did feeling those pressures make me stronger? Did the times when I felt bound help me soar? I struggled through so many things and slowly, over time, found things that helped me. I found love. I found a support network. I found the right doctors and the right medications. But in my struggle, I had to pass through the wrong things. I made mistakes with people I loved, and people I loved made mistakes with me. I can’t believe that some of them are gone. Carl is one of those who are gone, but his songs live on. And I keep going because of them and because of songs like theirs. I hit hard at the battle that’s confronting me.

  When I was watching Love and Mercy on the big screen, I thought about the small screen, too. I thought about Mike Douglas, the talk show host. I was on his show in the mid-’70s, right around the time of 15 Big Ones. That was kind of a famous interview because he asked me about my meditation mantra, which was supposed to be a secret, and I told him it was “eye-neh-mah.” At a different part of that interview, Mike Douglas was asking about how I kept going through all of it: through the drugs, through the lawsuits, through the bad feelings that came up between me and the people closest to me. I had an answer ready. “My name is Wilson,” I said. “Maybe that’s where I got the will.” My career, off and on, had taken a beating. My body had taken a beating. My brains at times took a beating. But I tried to keep my spirit going. I was a survivor. I tried to survive every day. Lots of that came from my dad. People might say that he was one of the things I had to survive, but he also helped me figure out how to do it. He taught me how to be tough. He showed me a way to be the kind of person who has to forge ahead. Whenever I’ve been told to stop—by someone who thought they had power over me, by something that happened around me, by the voices I heard in my own head—I kept going.

  I kept going, and I keep going. I have an idea for another album. It’s an album about time and music. It would be all the songs that inspired me through the years, rearranged and sung the way they sound to me. It’s in the early stages still, but I have started to pick out the artists. I want to do Buddy Holly. I want to do “A Beautiful Morning” by the Rascals. I’m definitely going to do “Be My Baby,” with all instruments doubled: two pianos, two guitars, two basses, plus horns and drums. Oh, and “Tenderly” by Rosemary Clooney. I can’t leave that off. That’s the song that taught me to sing.

  And I like to think about people I might want to work with. I’ve worked with so many. I think about writing a song with Paul McCartney. I am not sure if he would really want to. I was thinking about Barry Gibb, too. I really admire the guy. He is like King Kong. He and I could probably work something up together. We met at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame back in 1997. I presented them for their induction. They sang “To Love Somebody.” Before the show Barry came down to meet me and he just sat in the room. I heard later that he was nervous. I was nervous, too.

  Today or tomorrow or the next day I’ll have some breakfast and take a walk and watch Wheel of Fortune and then check in on the score of the Yankees game. The season is just starting. I might go to my son Dylan’s basketball game. I’ll work on songs. There’s one, “Loop de Loop (Flip Flop Flyin’ in an Aeroplane),” that’s about an airplane. I cut a demo for it back in the late ’60s but I haven’t finished it the way I want.

  There are other, newer songs, too. I sometimes have ideas one by one. Sometimes they come in bunches. But I also spend time thinking about my old songs. In 2016 I’m thinking about Pet Sounds. My band and I are playing the whole record. We performed first in Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, and now we’re in the United States. The biggest show will be at the Hollywood Bowl. It might not be the biggest crowd, but it’s the most significant show. The Beach Boys played there almost yearly in the early ’60s. We were there in 1963, in 1964. The band played there in the summer of 1966 on a big bill that also included the Lovin’ Spoonful, Chad and Jeremy, Percy Sledge, Love, and the Byrds. I wasn’t onstage then. I wasn’t playing shows. I was at home, thinking about the songs I had just written. Those songs were Pet Sounds. That 1966 show happened about a month after we released the album.

  This year’s show will be a fiftieth birthday for both the show and the album. Fifty years. Some days it seems like just a few months ago I was back at Western, United, Gold Star, and Columbia, cutting the tracks. Other days it seems like it’s an eternity away. Fifty years.

  I can’t remember so much about my own fiftieth birthday. It was around the time Dr. Landy was leaving. That was a new birth in a way. Maybe I should have started counting at zero all over again. I can remember the fiftieth birthday of the Beach Boys. That’s a recent memory. And now the album that people think is our greatest is turning fifty also. My band is different now. Al Jardine tours with me, and we’re still rocking, along with his son Matt, who sings all my high parts from the ’60s. He does a great job. And Blondie Chaplin, who played with the Beach Boys back in the early ’70s, is in our band also. He went from the Beach Boys to the Rolling Stones and stayed with them for ten years. Can you imagine that? Blondie brings a great energy to the band. He walks all over the stage with his guitar with a kind of Keith Richards vibe.

  I love Pet Sounds. The melodies on that record are so beautiful. The arrangements and experiments are so cool. We did amazing things then, and they’re still amazing when we return to them. Music has always been the light in dark times. It’s my number one thing, and Pet Sounds is the number one record. The last word of the album is no but the album
is a big yes. And that’s what I want to keep working toward, whether it’s with old music or new music, old collaborators or new ones. That’s what I want to work toward with love and with mercy: the big yes.

  And this big yes will happen right here at home. Melinda will be there with all the kids. Sometimes when we play in LA, we let my son Dylan help out delivering water backstage. They give him his own walkie-talkie and a code name, Wizard. The first time he did it, he was a little disappointed that he had to turn in his walkie-talkie at the end of the night. I am in my tour bus now, with Wizard and the rest of the family, and we’re heading toward the Hollywood Bowl from my house. Glenn, our bus driver, is taking everyone tonight. I am in the captain’s chair in the front, thinking it all through. Melinda, Gloria, and the kids are on the couches. Everyone is talking. Everyone is happy. It’s a family trip in every sense. When I first started touring with this band back in the winter of 1999, Daria was just an infant. Delanie, Dylan, Dash, and Dakota Rose weren’t even born yet. Now they’re all so big. They remind me of a song I once wrote, “Little Children”: “Little children, they’re marching along.” They’re not all grown up yet, but Daria and Delanie are getting there. Dylan, Dash, and Dakota Rose will join them soon. Time flies by.

  We get off Mulholland Drive and make a right on Coldwater Canyon Drive. We go down the hill until we hit Sunset Boulevard and make a left. We pass the Whisky, where I played with the Boys a few nights in 1970, and the Roxy, where we cut my live album in 2000. Then we pass some of the studios where I spent so much of my life and created so much music. Ocean Way is back to its original name, United. It’s on our right. If I look to my left, I can see the Capitol Tower, where we started out, where we rose to fame, where they told me they didn’t think Pet Sounds was heading down the right path. But here we are, fifty years later, playing it live at the Bowl. I can see some planes overhead. They’re coming from the Los Angeles airport, where I sat at the gate at Christmastime 1964 and waited to go to Houston. I didn’t know what would happen to me on that flight. I didn’t know where it would lead. And maybe those planes can see Hawthorne, where my house used to be, where my brothers and I, up in our bedroom, began to sing.

  There’s so much of the city going out in all directions, in time and in space. I would never live anywhere but here. It’s my whole life. And then we’re hanging a left—passing the huge Hollywood Bowl sign that says TONIGHT, BRIAN WILSON, PET SOUNDS 2016, SOLD OUT—and climbing up the hill to the backstage area.

  The Bowl is still empty, but my head is starting to fill with thoughts of the show, you know? My routine starts. It starts with questions. What if the audience doesn’t like the show? What if they don’t like my music? Suppose the goddamn voices start coming at me while I am onstage? I go through this every time. But then I start thinking through who will be in the audience. It’s almost everyone I know. It’s Melinda and the kids. It’s Gloria. It’s Carnie and Wendy, too. It’s Jean Sievers. It’s all my friends. This is the biggest concert of the tour, and the guys and I are ready.

  We do our preconcert circle up, and everyone says how much they love the music and how lucky they are to bring it to the audience. “We’ll give a great show tonight,” I say. “We have to. We’ll kick ass out there.” Then I’m backstage, asking myself questions, answering them again, imagining my way forward into the first notes of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and that cannon of a drum beat, as big as anything Phil Spector ever recorded. There are so many people who are no longer here: friends, parents, brothers. I love them and I miss them. But I am here. I am here for them. I am here for myself. I am here today. I push myself up out of the chair and head for the stage.

  Discography

  Beach Boys

  Surfin’ Safari (1962)

  Surfin’ Safari

  County Fair

  Ten Little Indians

  Chug-A-Lug

  Little Girl (You’re My Miss America)

  409

  Surfin’

  Heads You Win, Tails I Lose

  Summertime Blues

  Cuckoo Clock

  Moon Dawg

  The Shift

  Surfin’ U.S.A. (1963)

  Surfin’ U.S.A.

  Farmer’s Daughter

  Misirlou

  Stoked

  Lonely Sea

  Shut Down

  Noble Surfer

  Honky Tonk

  Lana

  Surf Jam

  Let’s Go Trippin’

  Finders Keepers

  Surfer Girl (1963)

  Surfer Girl

  Catch a Wave

  The Surfer Moon

  South Bay Surfer

  The Rocking Surfer

  Little Deuce Coupe

  In My Room

  Hawaii

  Surfer’s Rule

  Our Car Club

  Your Summer Dream

  Boogie Woodie

  Little Deuce Coupe (1963)

  Little Deuce Coupe

  Ballad of Ole’ Betsy

  Be True to Your School

  Car Crazy Cutie

  Cherry, Cherry Coupe

  409

  Shut Down

  Spirit of America

  Our Car Club

  No-Go Showboat

  A Young Man Is Gone

  Custom Machine

  Shut Down Volume 2 (1964)

  Fun, Fun, Fun

  Don’t Worry Baby

  In the Parkin’ Lot

  “Cassius” Love vs. “Sonny” Wilson

  The Warmth of the Sun

  This Car of Mine

  Why Do Fools Fall in Love

  Pom, Pom Play Girl

  Keep an Eye on Summer

  Shut Down, Part II

  Louie, Louie

  Denny’s Drums

  All Summer Long (1964)

  I Get Around

  All Summer Long

  Hushabye

  Little Honda

  We’ll Run Away

  Carl’s Big Chance

  Wendy

  Do You Remember?

  Girls on the Beach

  Drive-In

  Our Favorite Recording Sessions

  Don’t Back Down

  Beach Boys Concert (1964)

  Fun, Fun, Fun

  The Little Old Lady from Pasadena

  Little Deuce Coupe

  Long, Tall Texan

  In My Room

  Monster Mash

  Let’s Go Trippin’

  Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow

  The Wanderer

  Hawaii

  Graduation Day

  I Get Around

  Johnny B. Goode

  The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album (1964)

  Little Saint Nick

  The Man with All the Toys

  Santa’s Beard

  Merry Christmas, Baby

  Christmas Day

  Frosty the Snowman

  We Three Kings of Orient Are

  Blue Christmas

  Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town

  White Christmas

  I’ll Be Home for Christmas

  Auld Lang Syne

  The Beach Boys Today! (1965)

  Do You Wanna Dance?

  Good to My Baby

  Don’t Hurt My Little Sister

  When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)

  Help Me, Ronda

  Dance, Dance, Dance

  Please Let Me Wonder

  I’m So Young

  Kiss Me, Baby

  She Knows Me Too Well

  In The Back of My Mind

  Bull Session with the “Big Daddy”

  Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) (1965)

  The Girl from New York City

  Amusement Parks U.S.A.

  Then I Kissed Her

  Salt Lake City

  Girl Don’t Tell Me

  Help Me, Rhonda

  California Girls

  Let Him Run Wild

  You’re So Good to Me

  Summer Means New Love
r />   I’m Bugged at My Ol’ Man

  And Your Dream Comes True

  Beach Boys’ Party! (1965)

  Hully Gully

  I Should Have Known Better

  Tell Me Why

  Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow

  Mountain of Love

  You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away

  Devoted to You

  Alley Oop

  There’s No Other (Like My Baby)

  I Get Around / Little Deuce Coupe

  The Times They Are A-Changin’

  Barbara Ann

  Pet Sounds (1966)

  Wouldn’t It Be Nice

  You Still Believe in Me

  That’s Not Me

  Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)

  I’m Waiting for the Day

  Let’s Go Away for Awhile

  Sloop John B

  God Only Knows

  I Know There’s an Answer

  Here Today

  I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times

  Pet Sounds

  Caroline, No

  Smiley Smile (1967)

  Heroes and Villains

  Vegetables

  Fall Breaks and Back to Winter

  She’s Goin’ Bald

  Little Pad

  Good Vibrations

  With Me Tonight

  Wind Chimes

  Gettin’ Hungry

  Wonderful

  Whistle In

  Wild Honey (1967)

  Wild Honey

  Aren’t You Glad

  I Was Made to Love Her

  Country Air

  A Thing or Two

  Darlin’

  I’d Love Just Once to See You

  Here Comes the Night

  Let the Wind Blow

  How She Boogalooed It

  Mama Says

  Friends (1968)

  Meant for You

  Friends

  Wake the World