The highs and lows of meeting my hero Brian Wilson

The last image I saw of Brian Wilson alive was of him being led into a cinema to watch a screening of yet another documentary about the Beach Boys, the group he created and took to worldwide mega-success. I was watching it on YouTube, and the event was one of those plush Hollywood affairs. Wilson arrived in a wheelchair, pushed by minders. His face was entirely without expression. Some old friends waved at him, but they drew no response. He probably didn’t know where he was or who all these people were. He was off in his own private Joe Biden zone. I sensed he wouldn’t be long for this world. He was 82 and he’d accomplished enough and suffered enough. Let him rest.

So I was saddened but not surprised when the news came through of his death on Wednesday. The obituaries that have flooded forth have been mostly heartfelt, respectful and packed with relevant career and personal details: his birth in June 1942, his modest beginnings, growing up in Hawthorne, California, and the group he formed with his younger brothers Carl and Dennis, their cousin Mike Love and a friend from the neighbourhood when all were still teenagers. Brian was their composer and arranger, merging the close harmony style of 1950s vocal quartet the Four Freshmen with a gut-bucket rock rhythm à la Chuck Berry. Extraordinary success followed.

Wilson’s early back-story is full of remarkable achievements. He and his group first spearheaded the surf craze of the early 60s then briefly switched to car racing before blossoming into America’s most successful pop/rock act of the mid-60s. Only the Beatles rivalled them. It was a heady time.

Then something happened. As early as 1964, Wilson had experienced nervous breakdowns. A gawky, somewhat awkward youth, he simply wasn’t wired for the demands that big-time showbusiness placed on him. As a child, he had endured the cruelty and violence of his father Murry, an amateur songwriter. Wilson said of him: “He drank too much and became a monster – and he didn’t know how to deal with his son’s fears. Whenever I got afraid, he would yell at me or slap me.”

Refusing to tour with his group, Wilson continued recording with them while maintaining a fairly reclusive existence. For a while, this arrangement worked well. In 1965 he wrote and recorded California Girls, the Beach Boys’ biggest and most anthemic hit to date, and in 1966 he unleashed the album Pet Sounds as well as another masterpiece single, Good Vibrations. A follow-up album – supposedly to be released in 1967 and entitled Smile – was eagerly awaited by the taste-makers of the hour.

But Smile never materialised, and this is where the whole downslide in Wilson’s life comes into play. The Beach Boys still released albums but their old mentor seemed to recede into the background as the other members attempted to pick up the slack and steer the ship themselves. Every now and then, a photo might appear of an overweight, unshaven man looking a bit lost. That was pretty much the extent of Wilson’s public profile in the early 70s.

Drugs were often cited as the reason for Wilson’s dysfunctional decline during this era. Certainly his use of LSD in the mid-60s had a lasting, negative impact on his psyche. Drugs certainly exacerbated his problems. But they weren’t necessarily the cause. Something deeper and more mysterious was triggering his malaise.

This was partly why I moved to Los Angeles in 1975 — 50 years ago almost to the day — to do my own investigation into what had really happened to the man known as the Beach Boys’ “troubled genius”. I say “partly” because the main impetus driving me was that I’d been such a fan as an adolescent that I needed to know if the talent he once possessed was still there. Occasionally you’d get glimpses, but he couldn’t seem to follow an idea through. Co-workers who had tried to record with him in the 70s told me it was like dealing with a guy with an advanced case of attention deficit disorder.

Long story short, I first got to meet and interview Wilson for the NME five years later, in 1980. He was not in good shape. At first, he seemed an imposing figure. Well over 6ft tall with 300lb of weight and a shapeless beard, he looked like the kind of man parents warn their children about talking to. The house he was living in was a rental (he’d recently divorced) and the vibe in the living room where we both sat was both gloomy and somewhat surreal. Wilson was cogent when he spoke but something else was going on in his brainsphere. His body would frequently flinch involuntarily. Our interview lasted exactly half an hour. It ended abruptly when he jumped out of his seat, stammered an apology, explained he had to see his psychiatrist early the next day and rushed out of the room.

After that, through almost all of the 80s, the sorry saga of Wilson and his mental problems continued to evolve. There were the infamous Eugene Landy years when Wilson was placed under the strict supervision of a megalomaniac shrink best described by a co-worker as “just like Charles Manson only he hasn’t killed anyone yet”. (Wilson and Landy had worked together briefly in the late 70’s too.) At first, Wilson seemed to respond well to his new master. He lost a ton of weight and became more socially outgoing. But Landy gravely overstepped his role as Wilson’s caretaker and was attempting to control all aspects of his life, often to corrupt ends. He also prescribed Wilson medication that was later proven to be harmful to his fragile state of mind. During their time together, in 1987, Wilson released his first-ever solo album, a costly affair marred by Landy’s insistence that he and his girlfriend write most of the lyrics. It sold poorly and a second album was rejected by the record company.

In the 90s, though, things took an upward swing. Wilson’s in-laws went to court to successfully banish Landy from his life. He met and married his second wife, Melinda, who provided him with a much-needed emotional anchor. Slowly, as the decade progressed, one could note an ongoing improvement in Wilson’s social skills and musical ambitions.

Wilson was also blessed during that decade to find a backing group ideally suited to playing his often eccentrically arranged orchestrations. The players  – known around their home base of LA as the Wondermints – were diehard fanboys who strove to replicate every sonic detail lurking in Wilson’s Beach Boy back catalogue. As they were still young-ish and bubbling with enthusiasm, they managed to rejuvenate the songs and provide Wilson with a musical comfort zone he could feel secure in.