Brian Wilson and the Difference between Composers and Performers

He "just wasn't made for these times," nor for any other particular time, but (paradoxically) he was made for *all* times ...

Album cover for The Beach Boys’ 1966 album Pet Sounds

Brian Wilson died a few days ago. As most of you no doubt already know, he was the creative genius behind the Beach Boys’ best music. He composed and arranged the songs, directed the studio musicians and played multiple instruments himself, and produced the recordings. At his best, his music was light years ahead of all but a tiny handful of his contemporaries.

Songwriters/Producers vs Musicians/Singers

In a recent post on Sigma Game, Vox Day said, “Musicians are, by and large, midwits at best when they aren’t drug-addled retards. But songwriter/producers tend to be intelligent introverts.” This observation rings true of the difference between Brian Wilson and the rest of the Beach Boys, such as Mike Love, who still tours under the Beach Boys banner, although he’s the only one still left from the original band. Great musicians and singers definitely do have a real gift, but the difference between their genius (such as it is) and that of great songwriters/composers is one of kind rather than degree. You could take Mike Love in his prime and turn all his abilities up to eleven, and he would still be missing something essential that Brian Wilson had that made him one of the greatest, if not the greatest, composer of the rock era.

Sure Mike Love wrote, or rather co-wrote, a few songs, like … Kokomo. And sure, Kokomo was fun and catchy and a big hit and all, but it really represents the peak of Mike Love’s artistic vision. It wasn’t the kind of song that would leave anyone wondering where the music could have gone next, if the song hadn’t ended. It doesn’t inspire anything beyond some absent-minded singing while you listen to the song playing on the radio as you navigate stop-and-go traffic on the freeway on your drive home from work. It’s the perfect song to listen to while your brain is empty and distracted. It’s just not the kind of song that you can listen to with your full attention, eyes closed, mind awake, just enjoying the way all the moving parts fit together into a harmonious whole that brings the beauty of another realm down to Earth. A song like that requires the singular genius of a composer and producer like Brian Wilson.

For comparison, first listen to Kokomo:¹

And then listen to God Only Knows (from the album Pet Sounds):

The finished product sounds so natural and complete, that it’s hard to imagine all the prosaic and unglamourous work involved in transforming that vision from a kaleidoscope of abstract ideas in Wilson’s imagination, to the individual notes being played by a veritable orchestra of top musicians, to a final master tape with all of those sounds layered on top of each other at the desired audio levels and perfect timing, with all the complexity and precision of a handmade Swiss clock. Below is part one of a two part video documentary giving a glimpse into what that process was like:

Interestingly, there seems to be a similar dynamic distinguishing great comedians from great actors. When Seinfeld episodes first came out on DVD, some friends and I rented some discs from the first season on our weekly visit to Blockbuster Video. One of the bonus features on these discs was the option of watching the episode with commentary from various cast members or producers. I remember being struck by the marked difference between the quality of commentary of the actors (Jason Alexander, Julie Louis-Dreyfuss, and Michael Richards) vs. that of the creators (Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David). On episodes narrated by the actors, their commentary was completely surface level. Trite stuff like, “Oh, so-and-so was an extra on this episode. I remember seeing him in such-and-such movie and thinking it was really a great role for him.” Or, “I remember when we filmed that scene, the air conditioning wasn’t working and it was really hot that day.” Just meaningless chatter. But on the episodes that had commentary from Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, their commentary was often even funnier than the episode they were commenting on. Much of the time, their discussion was only tangentially related to the episode or the events on screen. They were just two really smart and creative guys with a lot of interesting life experiences who enjoyed making counterintuitive connections between seemingly unrelated things and finding humor in the absurdities and indignities of everyday life. Listening to the commentary of the actors, you would never know what it was that made the show so successful; you could only guess that if you listened to conversations between the creators. The minds of the actors just worked totally differently than the minds of the creators.

Anyway, back to music …

Spiritually, Brian Wilson was a composer, not a pop star.² Most people are either one or the other. A few rare prodigies, like Paul McCartney, Sting, and Prince, manage to be both,³ but most instances of music that combine true greatness with massive popular appeal involve some kind of partnership between an introverted composer and a charismatic performer, like Roger Waters and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, or like Brian Wilson and Mike Love of The Beach Boys. When these opposite polarities are brought into harmony, the result can be a mind-blowing masterpiece that transforms the culture and influences musicians for generations to come, but of course all that tension typically finds its outlet in explosive interpersonal conflicts that blow up the band (and maybe lead to the untimely death of one or more of its members) before they can reach their full potential.

Continuing the theme of Brian Wilson as composer, rather than pop star, it’s useful to compare the sound of the instrumental songs on Pet Sounds with the style of a straightforward composer and orchestra leader like Henry Mancini, who composed, arranged, and directed the musicians on The Pink Panther soundtrack, released in 1963, three years before Pet Sounds. Listening to, say, Let’s Go Away for Awhile, I hear definite echoes of Mancini’s influence.

Here’s Let’s Go Away for a While:

And here is Champagne and Quail from The Pink Panther soundtrack:

A Confederacy of Dunces?

Brian Wilson really pushed the limits of what popular music could be and broke them, but on the other side he mostly found frustration and failure, at least in America. Pet Sounds was an expensive disappointment, in the eyes of the soulless suits at the Beach Boys’ American record label. In Britain, Pet Sounds was more highly regarded and commercially successful. Maybe if the Beach Boys had been based out of the U.K. instead of America, they would have been given more leeway to pursue Wilson’s lofty vision for a proper follow-up to Pet Sounds (and thereby up the ante in the artistic competition between Wilson and The Beatles). As it was, the unimaginative accountant types at the record label cut off the funding for Wilson’s open-ended artistic explorations, leaving what should have been his magnum opus unfinished until 2004, by which time Wilson’s talents had been degraded by decades of psychotic breaks and recurring drug binges and alcoholism. 2004’s Smile was still interesting, but it ultimately stands as a sad reminder of what could have been if Wilson had been granted the opportunity to develop his masterpiece fully while he was still in his prime.⁴

It reminds me of the Jonathan Swift quote (that John Kennedy Toole uses to preface A Confederacy of Dunces): “When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.”⁵ Although I doubt that it is literally true that anyone actively conspired to sabotage Brian Wilson’s career, the effect is largely the same as if they had. The institutional gatekeepers and dolers-out of bankster funny money lack a human soul, so they simply do not see the value in the wild-eyed visions of genius, like Brian Wilson’s, unless it can be quantified in immediate returns of cold, hard cash. Anything too abstract or speculative is beyond their ability to understand. The Good, the True, and the Beautiful means nothing to them, unless it can be commodified, mass-produced, and sold for a fast buck. As a result, our culture has been tragically impoverished. (Merchants and banksters make a terrible governing elite.)

Roland Orzabal and Tears for Fears?

Now that Brian Wilson is gone, who might be the greatest living composer of the modern era (i.e., the era of FM radio, MTV, and now streaming apps)? My vote is for Roland Orzabal of Tears for Fears. When it comes to synthesizing intricate melodies, harmonies, and rhythms into a captivating song, the synth-pop musicians of the early 80s (like Tears for Fears, Talk Talk, and Howard Jones) are seriously under-appreciated. Roland Orazabal and Brian Wilson in some ways share a similar career trajectory: attain massive popularity early on with some radio-friendly pop songs,⁶ then pursue wildly extravagant artistic visions at the cost of diminishing popular success, eventually break up their bands and drift into cultural exile, but for a brief moment manage to create some artistically perfect songs and albums right in the middle of that rarified sweet spot where mainstream appeal and esoteric depth intersect. As evidence for my claim that Roland Orzabal is a contender for greatest living songwriter, I give you Sowing the Seeds of Love:

There is some odd occult symbolism in that video! Of course, The Beach Boys were into some weird stuff too. Like the Beatles, they were early adopters of the Transcendental Meditation cult of Maharishi Mahesh “Sexy Sadie” Yogi. And then they (or at least their drummer, Dennis Wilson) somehow got mixed up with the cult-leading, mass-murdering songwriter Charles Manson, whose song the Beach Boys’ recorded and released as a B-side in 1968.

Anyway, a music video like Sowing the Seeds of Love makes me wonder what Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys would have come up with if MTV had been a thing in the 1960s. Well, they did do promo videos for radio DJs, but they didn’t get the same kind of production money for these videos as MTV-era bands did, not to mention the video editing technology of 1966 was primitive compared to what was available in 1989 (when Tears for Fears did Sowing the Seeds of Love). But for what it’s worth, here is the promo video for Good Vibrations (Southern California sure looked a lot nicer and cleaner back then!):

Brian Wilson Just Wasn’t Made for These (or Any Other) Times

Brian Wilson was such a generational talent that he really “wasn’t made for these times,” but there’s probably no specific era into which he could have fit perfectly. He made music not for his own time, but for all time. Barring the West successfully committing civilizational suicide (our civilization is currently on suicide watch even as I write this), serious musicians and songwriters will be marveling over the magic of Pet Sounds for ages to come.

In the meantime,

Yakubian Ape

is starting a series on The Beach Boys that should be fun and interesting to read.⁷ (He always manages to find surprising and thought-provoking angles from which to explore what, at first glance, appear to be worn-out topics, and I’m looking forward to seeing what he does with a saga as full of intrigue and possibility as the history of The Beach Boys!)

1. To be sure, this song is catchy, and if you were a kid in the late 80s, Kokomo may well have been your introduction to the Beach Boys (minus Brian Wilson, who was not on this track). It was a monster hit, completely out of sync with the rest of the band’s catalogue. And yes, that was John Stamos of Full House on percussion in that video. Oddly enough, my youngest daughter (of the Zoomer generation) became a huge Beach Boys fan after seeing a rerun of a Full House episode where the band (including Brian Wilson) made a cameo appearance:

And then the Tanner family ends up singing backup vocals on Barbara Ann at a concert:

In this concert footage, you really see where Mike Love excelled compared to Brian Wilson: onstage charisma. And when it comes to putting the “popular” in popular music, charisma counts for a lot.

2. Pop stars tend to be all style and no substance. For every Michael Jackson or Phil Collins, there are a thousand Sabrina Carpenters and DJ Khaleds:

3. Most people would probably think I am crazy for this take, but I think that if she had ignored acting and focused instead on music, especially on songwriting, Rachel Zegler could have been one of those rare instances of a talented composer who is also a charismatic performer:

4. From The Resurrection Of Brian Wilson's SMiLE by Mark Linett & Darian Sahanaja, published in 2004 by Sound On Sound (https://www.soundonsound.com/people/resurrection-brian-wilsons-smile):

But hauntingly, SMiLE remained unfinished, and most of it was never released. Paul McCartney came up with the title of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band for the next Beatles project, and the Beach Boys' moment passed; never again did they reach the pinnacle of artistic achievement and commercial success they had occupied at the end of 1966. Crushed by the expectations placed upon him and his inability to deliver, over the next few years Brian gradually withdrew from the recording business and his group, and lived a hermit-like existence for many years, racked with insecurity and self-doubt. By the late 1990s, although he had made an admirable recovery and had begun releasing solo records and touring, nobody seriously believed SMiLE would ever see the light of day. For Brian Wilson, it seemed that the music that should have been regarded as his finest work had become forever associated with catastrophic failure.

5. Although I doubt this is literally true in most cases (the reality being that the genius is simply ignored, rather than actively targeted for sabotage), cases like Owen Benjamin’s apparently ongoing cancelation demonstrate that in some cases this is literally what happens. It’s a reminder that the Evil One bears a pathological hatred for everything Good and True and Beautiful, and those under the spiritual influence of this ultimate enemy are bound to act out its desires like unthinking animals. Now that I think about it, maybe rather than a confederacy of dunces, there is more like a cabal of NPC puppets, all having their strings pulled by the same demon which does actively engage in campaigns to subvert and destroy anyone whose art could awaken a hunger for the divine in people.

6. Although I would say that songs like Mad World, Pale Shelter, Shout, Everybody Wants to Rule the World, and Head over Heels are stronger artistically than Surfin’ USA, Don’t Worry Baby, and California Girls, great as those Beach Boys songs are.

7. The Boys from Hawthorne - Prologue