A Program for Mass Liberation in the Form of a Brian Wilson Review

Excerpt from conversation with my father 7/31/08

"Yeah I'm really excited for the show."
"Yeah."
"I hope he plays a lot of the weird stuff. I just found bootleg of a show from last year, and he plays "I'd Love Just Once to See You"
"Yeah."
"Y'know, the song from Wild Honey."
"Yeah."
"There's no way Brian can actually be picking the set lists if they keep dragging out stuff like that."
"Yeah."
"I mean I love the track, but I doubt Brian thinks it’s the apex of his craft y'know? I'm sure he'd rather play "Good to My Baby" or something."
"Yeah."
"My big worry is that he really dumbs down the set list for the festival crowd. If I wanted to hear Endless Summer I'd pull it out of the basement."
"Hmm?"

8/1/08
The debate has been churning ever since Brian Wilson was announced as the Friday night headliner at The Newport Folk Festival. What place does Brian Wilson have playing at a folk festival? His music is the antithesis of sparse Americana and his persona adds nothing to the long running dialogue on authenticity, probably the most interesting thing about the genre four decades removed from Dylan. The old Newport Folk Festival made it's reputation on musicians who remained cognizant of their role as cultural preservers; sort of walking and talking and singing wax cylinders with "Field Recording, Kill Devil Hills, 1904" on their cardboard cases. The new Newport Folk pays little mind to such preservation, as evidenced by Brian Wilson, The Black Crowes, and Jimmy Buffet holding the weekend's most esteemed slots as acts like the Felice Brothers and other young folk acts got busy in the smaller side stages.
A persistent debate on the pop side of the fence was whether Brian Wilson would make any concessions to the historic festival. An acoustic set? Maybe lead off with "Sloop John B" or "Cottonfields", two folk songs that Beach Boy Al Jardine convinced Brian to rearrange into pop masterpieces. Left out of the conversation were several facts: 1. The Friday night concert would be held at the International Tennis Hall of Fame, arguably the most perfect venue for crystalline symphonic pop outside of the Sunset Strip. 2. The audience had the choice to buy tickets for individual days. Brian Wilson would not be justifying his music's place in the pantheon of American culture, or even American pop culture. He would be playing a set for his fans. 3. Most importantly, in his hyper-insulated mental state, Brian Wilson simply does not care. In the words of Mojo writer Mat Snow, Brian's music is "unclouded by its absolute disconnection to the world as experienced by any alert person over the age of 12."
See, in the post-Landy, post-Smile world of Brian Wilson, he can be happy, but never quite healthy. Years of drug abuse, overprescribing, and mental strain have taken a toll that simply cannot be surmounted by any amount of good reviews, feel-good articles, or even turning the failure of his twenties into the triumph of his sixties. His support system, composed of his wife Melinda, his acclaimed band, and assorted friends, shield him from pressure and ensconce him in a bubble, where it is always the early 60's, the sun is always out, and he is free to act like Spector is still pumping out hits in the studio next door.
In that bubble the tennis court in Newport was no different than any other outdoor concert he had done or would do that summer. It was just another occasion to break out "Dance, Dance, Dance", "Do It Again", and "Surfer Girl" to a demographic eerily similar to Parrotheads. Brian looked slightly bored. He checked his watch a couple times, as if he wasn't quite sure how long his songs were. Those like me who hoped that he would give us an advance look at the That Lucky Old Sun song cycle, premiered live at London's Royal Festival Hall in September of 2007 would be sorely disappointed.

9/2/08
The obsessive Brian fans who have been waiting for an album that would reach the same heights climbed by Pet Sounds and Smile would also be let down. The first thing you notice is that this is a very different kind of production for Brian Wilson. Yes, there's all the bells and whistles (yes, really there are bells and whistles) and organs and handclaps, but it is strikingly more modern than the usual Wilson album. As a dedicated fetishist to the masterfully old fashioned descending bass lines he wrote for songs like "Melt Away" and "Child Is the Father of the Man", I was disappointed that they were relatively absent here. Perhaps it is because this is the first Brian Wilson work ever that was a live show before it was recorded. Sure, sure, the 2004 version of Smile was played live before it was recorded, but they had a trail of bootlegs 40 years long to show them how the whole thing was supposed to sound on tape.
The first song on the new record is an arrangement of the title track, a Gillipsie/Smith chestnut dating back to 1949. When That Lucky Old Sun was still just a rumor I was worried. Actually, make that Very Worried that he was embarking on one of his Ahab-ian missions to re-imagine a pre-rock tune. Like when he spent most of his hours of sober energy in the late 70's in the futile task of trying to make "Shortenin' Bread" interesting. Or the Beach Boys recording of "Old Man River" in the late 60's. With those fears in mind, "That Lucky Old Sun" is a success. At less than a minute long it doesn't wear out its welcome and instead contains a wonderful segue into the middling "Morning Beat". Yes, the album is essentially about Southern California, but since Brian Wilson doesn't experience his life quite like you or I do, it can only be about Los Angeles in the 50's and early 60's. It is remarkably similar to Van Dyke Parks' Orange Crate Art, an album that Brian sung on but did not write, in both outlook and sound. That album compositionally did indeed ape the classic sunshine pop of Brian's prime, so yes, I do mean that the Brian Wilson of 2008 sounds more like he's imitating his classic sound than he is occupying the same mental space as 1965. "Forever She'll Be My Surfer Girl" suggests that it is a retread of the Beach Boys' first ballad, but it is everything but. There are hints of the mid 60's outtake "Sherri She Needs Me", but the song is simply a giddy encapsulation of all that was fun and technicolor and wonderful about those great singles.
People who think that Smile and Pet Sounds were Brian's only decent work were probably disappointed that it is band member Scott Bennett, not the eccentric wordsmith Parks who is the main contributor. Van Dyke did, however, add the spoken word narratives that almost derail the album each of the four times they appear, such as when the aforementioned "Forever She'll Be My Surfer Girl" segues into one like a child falling off a horse. With phrases like "Pumps drunk with oil dance like prehistoric locusts on the hills to LAX" and sing song rhymes, Brian recites them with some amusement and little indication that he knows what they are supposed to mean or suggest. So goes the first 22 minutes of this 40 minute work-a blur of images of SoCal that have no secondary meaning besides losing yourself in an ocean of sound. Like when Brian sings "I've got a notion / we've come from the ocean" in "Live Let Live" and its not the words you hear but the way the rhythm of his voice suggests a train. Then it just explodes into a sunny refrain of "God almighty passed his hands on the water" as if you peeled a Clementine and a chick covered in yellow down came out.

8/1/08
About halfway through the set, Brian was getting energized, and here came the classics…first it was "The Little Girl I Once Knew", that classic stepping stone between Summer Days (And Summer Nights) and Pet Sounds that charted dismally because of those jarringly avant-garde silences before the choruses. The vibraphone was more energetic and pure rock n roll than the guitars had been all night. Next was an intimate rendition of their slightly overrated Brother-era highlight "Add Some Music to Your Day" and finally a version of "Heroes and Villains" that pleased the dancers as much as the rock snobs.
And then he was gone. Jeffrey Foskett, a portly man who plays guitar and covers the high falsetto parts that Brian used to do before medication, coke and drink destroyed his vocal range, stepped up to the microphone and murmured something about a technical problem with Brian's keyboard. Lost on him was the fact that Brian hadn't touched it all night (a regular occurrence for someone who was propped up behind an organ that wasn't plugged in for much of the 80's) and that many of us probably would rather see Brian portrayed as a stage-shy neurotic rather than a prima donna throwing a temper tantrum about technical problems. At any rate he returned on stage without his watch and blazed through a few Pet Sounds tracks and a ripping version of "Marcella".

9/2/08
Listening to Brian Wilson; much like Syd Barrett, Roky Erickson, Skip Spence, or any amount of intriguingly disturbed musicians, we all become amateur psychologists. Like the cop walking back to his car after the show "Yeah that song "In My Room" is where he started to go crazy". I can't deny the strong psychic bond I have with Brian. The loss of hearing in one ear that sometimes makes me a difficult conversation, the difficult parental relationships, the obsession with a childhood past; I feel like I know where Brian is coming from even at his most deranged-stuff like "A Day in the Life of a Tree" or the "Mount Vernon and Fairway" suite or most of the Love You album. I have several biographies of the man and I regularly fill up my car wit nothing but Beach Boys discs and travel with my windows done imagining what kind of pain rests between the notes of those harmonies.
For me, the last 15 minutes of That Lucky Old Sun is the most satisfying quarter hour of music Brian's been involved with since the first 4 songs on his self-titled debut album, or even maybe since side one of the Friends album from '68. Never before has Brian so explicitly laid out his mental difficulties. The confessions come fast: "how could I have got so low / I'm embarrassed to tell you so" "all these voices, all the memories make me feel so alone / all these people make me feel so alone". Finally in "Going Home" he goes for the money shot that the previous songs had been building towards. A few years ago he would have been content to leave the track as a bouncy song that he could introduce in concert as "now here's a real groovy rock n roll song". Instead, now there's an incredible, crystalline bridge "at 25 I turned out the light / cause I couldn't handle the / glare in my tired eyes / but now I'm back / drawing shades of kind blue sky".

Conclusion
After a long encore, it seemed that the show was over. The band started walking off stage when they noticed that Brian was still planted at his silent piano. The man who put on his bass, but did not play more than two notes during the entire encore was suddenly stubbornly possessive of the stage and his audience. "I guess we're gonna do one more song," Foskett shouted into the microphone to rapturous applause, but the song they played wasn't one that the crowd knew. I recognized it as "Southern California" from The Lucky Old Sun live bootleg I had. It was all spartan piano and a feeling somewhere between laughing and smiling and crying and kicking at the dead leaves on the sidewalk. The crowd had been worked to a frenzy during "Surfin' USA" and "Fun, Fun, Fun" but now they didn't know what to do as the only surviving Wilson brother sang "I had this dream / singing with my brothers". Some seemed to have lumps in their throats and others made their way to the exits seemingly annoyed by such a buzz kill at the end of a feel-good set.
Who knows if Brian was in any way involved with writing this track. It is credited to Wilson/Bennett, but a bootlegged demo of the track is sung by Bennett. When you pay to close attention, those vibraphones seem more like the synths in The Police's "King of Pain" than the lounge jazz way that Brian favors the instrument. "It seemed OK to out in an overtly nostalgic way," Bennett explained to USA Today, "he should celebrate his triumphs. He's had some dark times, but he's got phenomenal songs that are going to live forever. It's OK to look back." Hence the lyrics "Oh, it's magical / living your dreams / don't want to sleep / you might miss something".
In the disc's booklet there is a photo, obviously sun drenched and taken with an analog camera. Brian is sitting on deck chair on a concrete roof staring off into the distance at the traffic in front of the Hollywood Tower. He does not seem alert or aware. Here was the essence of Brian Wilson. The singing on those records isn't harmonizing; it is the sound of wailing into pillows. He is Joan Didion's California distilled into one man: we've run out of continent, there are no more no beginnings, no more second chances, WHAT THE FUCK DO WE DO NOW?
More gently, it reminded me of the last words of Edmund Morris' bizarre Ronald Reagan biography Dutch-"Upstream, the last rays of the sun shone. I looked at the coming water, and felt, as I guess Dutch does too, the silent onrush of death." It is an odd choice for a promotional photo, but it is almost a perfect match for the triumphant final third of his new album.
The first time I listened to "Southern California" I stared at the photo and bawled my eyes out. If Brian was in the room with me I would have told him that I've wasted so much of my life listening to music because of him. He was the one who gave me that sick need to search the world for that same feeling I got the first time I listened to Pet Sounds or "This Whole World". I tried to explain to my girlfriend the sharp feeling of loss I had listening to song. "But you don't know him", she wisely pointed out. And she was right. I've spent a lot of time trying to track down the real Brian Wilson. But it's like chasing someone through a hall of mirrors. I keep turning corners and only seeing myself.