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  4. Oh well, he lived a relatively long life considering his illnesses / demons, call them what you will. Much like Sly.

    I’ve never left those guys. Found out while listening to The Paul Butterfield Blues Band’s debut LP, if it hadn’t been that it would have been something just as contemporaneous.
    All Summer Long’ for me tomorrow, which I probably would have been on anyway.

    • Fuck.

      Two all time greats in one week

      The Boys were the best American band of all time for me.

      Even their failures were (and are) brilliant

      Lucky enough to see BW in Hong Kong on the Boys’ 50th anniversary tour
      and again in Dublin on his solo Pet Sounds tour in – IIRC – 2017.

      He may well also have been with the Boys (physically if not musically)
      at Wembley 50 years ago next Saturday.- one of the four or five best
      shows I’ve ever been lucky enough to see

  7. I am reminded of the mid-60’s when I and other members of my cub pack were taken to the big city, Glasgow, by our leader, Akela. After doing our cub stuff, we were taken to an Italian style café near Central Station for ice cream. It was the first time I had heard an espresso machine hissing. In the corner was one of those old juke boxes where you pressed 3 buttons and your selected single spun around and was deposited on the turntable. Sixpence (2.5p) got you 5 plays. I popped in my tanner and selected Barbara Ann. 5 times. When it came around, my song played 5 times in succession to my great delight. Others in the café were not so happy. I loved that song. It was about 40 years later before I attended a Brian Wilson concert in Glasgow’s Armadillo. There were tears that night. Legend

    • This is it. This is what genius music does to you. I know, I know, it wasn’t Brian’s song, Jan and Dean were there, and maybe the arrangement got something from others – Parks perhaps, but it was THE BEACH BOYS, and they were utterly suffused with Brian’s touch.

    • A family friend had Pet Sounds. He is about 15 years older than me (he saw The Beatles and The Beach Boys in the 60s), I went to his house in the 70s to tape some Beatles albums. He pointed out Pet Sounds, told me it was a great album, but his copy was warped, unplayable. I don’t think I heard it in full for another decade or more, it then became my favourite album of all time.

      Go forward to 2000 and I am in California on a business trip and I saw him do it in full at a beautiful outdoor venue (Mountain Winery, Saratoga), last day of summer, glorious weather. I wondered if he could pull it off, and with the help of some amazing musicians he really did. Saw him many times after that but none quite as special as that night.

  13. Maybe an over-used term, but in this instance it fits – he was certainly touched by genius, nut like most over-creatives was not truly able to translate what was in his head onto record. He tried, but it tipped him over the edge.
    It was still Brian Wilson, but not the Brian Wilson anymore.

    I knew Good Vibrations, and the 20 Golden Greats album was one of the few things in my parents record collection I nicked as soon as I had my own record player.
    But this was the first time I’d actually seen Brian and The Beach Boys
    (some Sunday Afternoon in the mid-80s ITV were playing a Beach Boys doc, and this is where I came in … John Belushi & Dan Ackroyd arresting Brian and taking him surfing)

  14. Brian Wilson’s band and his music reflected America’s 1960s optimism in microcosm. He put most other artists in the shade; so many aspired to produce anything a fraction as good as what he created. Now he’s gone away for awhile. RIP.

  15. Growing up with a peripatetic family, I discovered music through my parents’ small box of tapes. Much I thought rubbish at 6 (and I was right on most of them), but 20 Golden Greats on their giant headphones blew my mind, especially Heroes and Villains. I like think there’s something in Brian Wilson’s music that speaks to a kid – innocent, expressing feelings young inarticulacy can’t, but also with hidden textures it takes a lifetime to uncover.

    Like many here, I went to see the Pet Sounds show at the Festival Hall (I’d seen the Wondermints announce they were coming back ‘with our friend Brian’ at their Borderline show 6 months before – the biggest roar I’ve ever heard in a club). It wasn’t perfect, but I cried quite a lot a number of times.

    Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury had a groundbreaking storyline in the early 90s about Andy, a man dying long before his time of AIDS. He was determined not to die before listening to Pet Sounds, which was just coming out on CD for the first time. The end of the second to last four panel strip has Andy’s body turned away from the viewer listening to ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’. But there’s a final strip: the hospital orderly tells Andy’s best friend Joanie and his Doctor:
    ‘I found this pad in Andy’s hand. It looks like he scribbled something in it just before he died.’
    ‘What’s it say?’
    ‘Brian Wilson is God’.

      • I was at that Wondermints Borderline gig too, support from Baby Lemonade, one of those great, great nights where I knew I was with “my tribe”…

        … also saw BW do “Pet Sounds” at the RFH the January afterwards, sitting a few seats away from Supergrass, another wonderful gig… what a talent, R.I.P.

  17. In the mid 70s, I had one of those new fangled portable cassette recorders for Christmas off my parents. It came with a few cassettes, one of them being The Beach Boys Greatest Hits. It was one of the greatest things I’d ever heard, and I played it so many times I knackered the tape up.
    I will have a quiet hour tomorrow, with The Beach Boys, and drink a toast to Brian and the Boys, for giving the world the most wonderful, uplifting music.

    R.I.P Brian

  18. Only yesterday afternoon, I was walking around my local park listening to the audio book of “I am Brian Wilson” It was a bit of a shock when the news popped up on my phone a couple of hours later. A troubled genius. Rest in peace Brian.

  19. Can’t say I regret not attending any of the BB tours of Oz from what I have read of them. But I do regret not catching Pet Sounds with the Wondermints. The guy who promoted/ bankrolled that tour got done for a very large drug importation after that.

    • While the Wondermints were the driving force behind those gigs there were a number of other musicians involved. Notably ex live Beach Boys guitarist and vocalist Jeff Foskett initially, a crucial member. He later defected to the Mike Love Beach Boys band but sadly passed away a few years back

      The last time I saw Brian Wilson live he also had real original Beach Boys Al Jardine and David Marks in the band. 70s member Blondie Chaplin also appeared. This meant there were more real Beach Boys in Brian’s band than in the Mike Love version that have been touring incessantly for many years.

      Another member of the live band Scott Bennett was later convicted of rape and served time inside

  21. I’ve said before that I have found it hard to look at the glassy-eyed guy propped up behind the keyboard, which is his recent persona. But at least there’s his past persona, which is someone who was able to imagine vast pieces of music in his head and actually get people to play them… without having to write score!

    Just listening to Pet Sounds in Atmos. Quite incredible to be in the middle of this music.

    • Yes, and he was always reading the lyrics/stage announcements on a large screen. I saw him live 14 times (8 times at Royal Festival Hall), he had some good nights and some bad nights. I was once on the front row at RFH and was a little inebriated after drinking all afternoon (watching a rugby match), when he returned to the stage for the encore, I ran to him and shook his hand. He had a very firm handshake! The final time I saw him was 2018, he was in a very poor state by then, the deterioration was obvious. He shouldn’t really have been out there at that time, some said the quite heavy touring schedule for about 20 years kept him going though

  22. I was at the Pet Sounds show at the RFH in the early 2000s. One of my favourite gigs ever. The backing musicians as I recall only used real instruments- no synths. Brian was statuesque as ever but it was Brian Wilson ffs live on stage just in front of me.

    This is perhaps Brian’s last great song from 2011. A very fine eulogy and evocative video

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