Why Brian is still Smiling

With a new album, and the old one that nearly finished him, Brian Wilson is back on song. By Mark Edwards

In the 1960s, Brian Wilson transcended all our expectations. Forty years later, he’s doing it again.

Back then, Wilson redefined pop music. Wilson’s band, the Beach Boys, was engaged in a three-way race with Bob Dylan and the Beatles to tear up the rule book of popular music and reinvent it as the most vital art form of the late 20th century. When the Beatles went into the studio to record Sgt Pepper, their benchmark was Wilson’s masterpiece, Pet Sounds. The task they set themselves was to better it. For years, the consensus was that they had. Sgt Pepper regularly topped polls as the best album of all time. More recently, however, we have begun to think that they failed. Pet Sounds now tops those polls.

Okay, so fashions change. Many of Wilson’s 1960s contemporaries disappeared off the cultural radar for exactly that reason. They couldn’t keep up with changing times. Wilson disappeared for other, much sadder reasons. That Wilson had a breakdown during the recording of his Smile album is well known; what bears repeating is the fact that he was effectively out of action for the best part of two decades. Yes, later Beach Boys albums would carry a couple of his songs, some of them among his best, but the man himself was suffering from severe mental illness. It seemed obvious that Wilson - emotionally and physically damaged by the bullying of his father, further weakened by drugs, and finally unable to cope with the pressure of living up to his own achievements - had joined the list of rock casualties. A solo album in 1988 contained a couple of wonderful songs - Love and Mercy, and Melt Away - but not much else, and when the proposed follow-up, ominously titled Sweet Insanity, was shelved by the record company, most observers drew a line under Wilson’s career.

In recent years, however, Wilson has shattered our expectations all over again. A 1998 solo album, Imagination, showed signs of the old magic, but crucially, Wilson, billed as co-producer, did not seem to be in charge in the studio. It didn’t sound like a real Brian Wilson album. Instead of dis- appearing for another decade, however, Wilson followed Imagination with a series of tours, in which he showcased his acknow-ledged masterpiece, Pet Sounds, and his lost masterpiece, Smile.

If few of us thought that Wilson would ever be able to tour his old songs again, even fewer of us thought he would make a really good new album. But that’s just what he has done. Gettin’ in over My Head, released on June 21, showcases Wilson playing with the musicians he tours with, largely drawn from the Wondermints. Crucially, it is produced by Wilson himself - and it shows.

No, it isn’t another Pet Sounds or Smile. If the Beatles in their prime couldn’t match that peak, Wilson in his sixties isn’t going to, either, but there’s plenty of evidence that Wilson’s gift for melody — and, of course, perfectly layered vocal harmonies — is intact. As so often when elder statesmen make albums, there is a handful of guest spots from famous peers. Elton John shares lead vocals on How Could We Still Be Dancin’ and reveals that he would have made a very good Beach Boy. Eric Clapton adds some urgent lead guitar to City Blues; Wilson and Clapton is a combination that makes less sense on paper, but it works well here. Admittedly, Paul McCartney’s duet on A Friend Like You will strike some as simply too twee, but others will welcome the chance to hear the two old rivals working together.

My phone interview with Wilson at his California home has something of an abrupt start. As far as I’m concerned, his PR is ringing me to fix a time when Wilson will call. But she simply says: “I’ve got Brian for you,” and he’s on the line. Apparently, he is taken by surprise too, because the first thing the living legend says is: “Hi, Mark, I have to go to the bathroom.” And the line goes quiet. A couple of minutes later, Wilson returns.

I haven’t been sure what to expect from a man who, in his autobiography, describes himself as “a little brain-damaged”, and the bathroom break has upped my nervousness considerably, but in fact Wilson is upbeat, enthusiastic, fast-talking. The only obvious sign of his troubled past is that he would clearly prefer to steer well clear of discussing his feelings in any depth. His biggest hits include some of the happiest songs ever written; elsewhere in his catalogue - ’Til I Die, Caroline No - you’ll find some of the saddest. These days, however, he’s determined to stay buoyant.

“Yeah, I go to extremes,” he says. “From happy to sad. I like to stay happy, though. Who doesn’t like to stay happy? You have a good laugh and a good cry and you feel better.”

Thus when we talk about his guest stars, Wilson’s main impression of them is purely professional: “Elton got his part in three takes. He was sensational”; Clapton “took an hour and a half, but he nailed it”; and McCartney “is a wizard, a vocal wizard. He learnt the whole thing, sang it and was out of the studio in 40 minutes”.

Maybe this is the slightly odd response of a man whose illness has left him with extremely limited social skills, and so he has no anecdotes about hanging out with other stars; but, again, maybe it’s the response of a great producer doing his job: dealing with musicians. Wilson does reveal that he first met Elton John in the 1960s, when he came to watch a Beach Boys recording session. Wilson played Good Vibrations, then turned and asked John - at the time, completely unknown - to play some of his songs.

If Wilson polices his feelings carefully in conversation, he still uses his songs as an outlet to explore them. How Could We Still Be Dancin’ is, he says, “all about how we survived all those terrible years. We’re still alive. Still kicking. Still dancing. I didn’t always think that I could live through it. Didn’t think I would. But I did”.

The title track is, on the surface, a love song, but it can also be read as a comment on Wilson’s life in the past few years, constantly stretching the boundaries of what he can achieve (“It’s all I can do to keep from falling off the tracks”). One of his key achievements is having the confidence to take control in the studio again. Only a few years ago, Wilson — unarguably one of the greatest record producers of all time - admitted in an interview that he didn’t even have the confidence to make decisions in the studio.

The new album, however, sees the return of Wilson the auteur.

“Yeah, I produced this one. I’m hearing the whole thing in my head again. Not the whole thing, maybe, but I’ll hear the sound of the drums, some of the guitars.” Wilson says much of this renewed confidence stems from working with a band who understand his music. Although it seems barely credible, while Wilson was making the Beach Boys’ greatest records, the rest of the band were relentlessly criticising his work. Hardly surprising, then, that Wilson obviously revels in working with the Wondermints.

“Oh, they’re swell. The best group I’ve ever played with. Met ’em in a club in ’97, heard them play some Beach Boys songs. Loved it. They’re better than the Beach Boys. They know what I want, and they give me what I want, and then they can also throw in a lot of their own ideas. They’re very creative.”

If the Wondermints offer the fragile Wilson the support he needs to work well in the studio and on stage, elsewhere, this role has been taken on by Wilson’s second wife, Melinda. The album dedication to Melinda, “whose love and encouragement inspire me to share my music”, would sound corny coming from anyone else, but in Wilson’s case, this seems to be a simple statement of fact. It was Melinda who told him that he had to start touring again and who also convinced him that he could do it.

If his current relationships seem healthier than his old ones, that hasn’t stopped Wilson remembering the old Wilson family vocal magic. One of the album’s highlights is Soul Searchin’, which uses an old vocal recorded by Brian’s brother, Carl, in 1995, three years before his death, but builds an entirely new track around it. Wilson says it has “a similar soul kind of feeling” to the 1970s Beach Boys track Sail on Sailor. Those who like the early Beach Boys will prefer Desert Drive, a deliberate attempt to re-create their early surfing and car songs. “Yeah, I wanted to recapture the feeling of the Beach Boys. It’s a song about going to Las Vegas, with some of that Beach Boys old-time rock’n’roll chugga-chugga-chugga,” says Wilson.

If you wanted to criticise Gettin’ in Over My Head, you could argue that Wilson is locked in the sounds of the 1960s and 1970s, and clearly, he has little knowledge of the current music scene. At one point, he says: “Rock’n’roll has died.” I tell him that, actually, it seems very healthy right now. “Oh, I hope so,” he says.

But if Wilson is working with the sonic palette of 30 or 40 years ago, you could say the same of dozens of new bands who have arrived on the scene over the past few years, so it hardly seems like a criticism at all. It certainly won’t be a valid criticism of Wilson’s next project: a completely re-recorded version of the Smile album, which is due out this autumn. Although Wilson has been playing the album live for a while now — and brings it back to the UK later this month — going into the studio to remake the album that “caused” his breakdown must have been daunting. “Oh, no,” he counters, “I was keen to do it.” And you get the sense of a man who is currently quite deliberately sewing up the loose ends of a life that came unravelled. “Oh, absolutely,” he says. “I’m definitely making up for lost time.” He laughs. “There was so much of it.”

Gettin’ in over My Head is released on EastWest/Rhino on June 21; Smile is scheduled to be released on September 28. Wilson will tour in July, including playing the Eden Project, St Austell, Cornwall, on July 16 and six dates at the Festival Hall, SE1 (July 24, 25, 27, 28, 30 and 31)

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