Brian Wilson (other)

Brian Douglas Wilson (born June 20, 1942) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer who co-founded the Beach Boys. Often called a genius for his novel approaches to pop composition, extraordinary musical aptitude, and mastery of recording techniques, he is widely acknowledged as one of the most innovative and significant songwriters of the 20th century. His best-known work is distinguished for its high production values, complex harmonies and orchestrations, layered vocals, and introspective or ingenuous themes. Wilson is also known for his formerly high-ranged singing and for his lifelong struggles with mental illness.

Raised in Hawthorne, California, Wilson's formative influences included George Gershwin, the Four Freshmen, Phil Spector, and Burt Bacharach. In 1961, he began his professional career as a member of the Beach Boys, serving as the band's songwriter, producer, co-lead vocalist, bassist, keyboardist, and ''de facto'' leader. After signing with Capitol Records in 1962, he became the first pop artist credited for writing, arranging, producing, and performing his own material. He also produced other acts, most notably the Honeys and American Spring. By the mid-1960s he had written or co-written more than two dozen U.S. Top 40 hits, including the number-ones " Surf City" (1963), " I Get Around" (1964), "Help Me, Rhonda" (1965), and "Good Vibrations" (1966). He is considered among the first music producer ''auteurs'' and the first rock producers to apply the studio as an instrument.

In 1964, Wilson had a nervous breakdown and resigned from regular concert touring, which led to more refined work, such as the Beach Boys' ''Pet Sounds'' and his first credited solo release, "Caroline, No" (both 1966), as well as the unfinished album ''Smile''. As he declined professionally and psychologically in the late 1960s, his contributions to the band diminished, and legends grew around his lifestyle of seclusion, overeating, and drug abuse. His first comeback, divisive among fans, yielded the would-be solo effort ''The Beach Boys Love You'' (1977). In the 1980s, he formed a controversial creative and business partnership with his psychologist, Eugene Landy, and relaunched his solo career with the album '' Brian Wilson'' (1988). Wilson disassociated from Landy in 1991 and went on to tour regularly as a solo artist from 1999 to 2022.

Heralding popular music's recognition as an art form, Wilson's accomplishments as a producer helped initiate an era of unprecedented creative autonomy for label-signed acts. The youth culture of the 1960s is commonly associated with his early songs, and he is regarded as an important figure to many music genres and movements, including the California sound, art pop, psychedelia, chamber pop, progressive music, punk, outsider, and sunshine pop. Since the 1980s, his influence has extended to styles such as post-punk, indie rock, emo, dream pop, ''Shibuya-kei'', and chillwave. Wilson's accolades include numerous industry awards, inductions into multiple music halls of fame, and entries on several "greatest of all time" critics' rankings. His life was dramatized in the 2014 biopic '' Love & Mercy''.

1942–1961: Background and musical training

Childhood

Brian Douglas Wilson was born on June 20, 1942, at Centinela Hospital Medical Center in Inglewood, California, the first child of Audree Neva ( Korthof) and Murry Wilson, a machinist who later pursued songwriting part-time. His ancestry includes Dutch, Scottish, English, German, Irish, and Swedish origins. Brian's two younger brothers, Dennis and Carl, were born in 1944 and 1946. Shortly after Dennis' birth, the family moved from Inglewood to 3701 West 119th Street in nearby Hawthorne, California. Brian, along with his siblings, suffered psychological and sporadic physical maltreatment from their father. His 2016 memoir characterizes his father as "violent" and "cruel"; however, it also suggests that certain narratives about the mistreatment had been overstated or unfounded.

From an early age, Wilson exhibited an unusually high aptitude for learning by ear. His father remembered how, after hearing only a few verses of " When the Caissons Go Rolling Along", the infant Wilson was able to reproduce its melody. Murry was a driving force in cultivating his children's musical talents. Brian undertook six weeks of accordion lessons, and by ages seven and eight, he performed choir solos at church. His choir director declared him to have perfect pitch. The family's acquisition of a piano shifted his focus from accordion, leading him to spend hours mastering favorite songs. He learned how to write manuscript music through a friend of his father.

Wilson sang with peers at school functions, as well as with family and friends at home, and guided his two brothers in learning harmony parts, which they would rehearse together. He also played piano obsessively after school, deconstructing the harmonies of the Four Freshmen by listening to short segments of their songs on a phonograph, then working to recreate the blended sounds note by note on the keyboard. Moreover, Wilson owned an educational record titled ''The Instruments of the Orchestra'' and was a regular listener of KFWB, his favorite radio station at the time. Carl introduced him to R&B, and their uncle Charlie taught him boogie-woogie piano. Both brothers would frequently stay up listening to Johnny Otis' KFOX radio show, deliberating over its R&B tracks and incorporating them into their musical lexicon. Carl remarked that by the age of ten, Brian "could play great boogie-woogie piano!"

Carl remembered the numerous years when Brian's life revolved solely around listening to Four Freshmen records and playing the piano for extensive periods. Dennis portrayed his elder brother as a "freak" who preferred listening to records over activities like baseball. One of Brian's first forays into songwriting, penned on paper when he was nine, was a reinterpretation of the lyrics to Stephen Foster's " Oh! Susannah". In his 1991 memoir, he recalls writing his first song for a 4th grade school project concerning Paul Bunyan. In a 2005 interview, he said that he began composing original music in 1955, when he was 12.

High school and college

In high school, Wilson played quarterback for Hawthorne High's football team, played baseball for American Legion Ball, and ran cross-country in his senior year. At 15, he briefly worked part-time sweeping at a jewelry store, his only paid employment before his success in music. He also cleaned for his father's machining company, ABLE, on weekends. Wilson auditioned to sing for the Original Sound Record Company's inaugural record release, "Chapel of Love" (unrelated to the 1964 song), but was deemed too young. For his 16th birthday, he received a portable two-track Wollensak tape recorder, allowing him to experiment with recording songs, group vocals, and rudimentary production techniques. Wilson involved his friends around the piano and would most frequently harmonize with those from his senior class in these recordings.

Written for his Senior Problems course in October 1959, Wilson submitted an essay, "My Philosophy", in which he stated that his ambitions were to "make a name for myself ..in music." One of Wilson's earliest public performances was at a fall arts program at his high school. He enlisted his cousin and frequent singing partner Mike Love and, to entice Carl into the group, named the newly formed membership "Carl and the Passions." They performed songs by Dion and the Belmonts and the Four Freshmen, impressing fellow classmate and musician, Al Jardine.

Fred Morgan, Wilson's high school music teacher, noted his aptitude for learning Bach and Beethoven at 17. Nonetheless, he gave Wilson a final grade of C for his Piano and Harmony course due to incomplete assignments. Instead of a 120-measure piano sonata for his final project, Wilson submitted a shorter 32-measure piece, earning an F. Reflecting on his last year of high school, Brian said that he was "''very'' happy. I wouldn't say I was popular in school, but I was associated with popular people."

In September 1960, Wilson enrolled as a psychology major at El Camino Junior College

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