Sad news. Long troubled, when I saw him in 2002 was touched but disturbed by his state given the joy of the music, the affection of the fans, and his vulnerable state. His mental illness has been long known, but dementia is a new thing – though maybe to be expected given all that problematic brain activity.
I saw written that Yoko Ono has dementia, too.
Musical abilities sometimes hold relative to the decline of intellect in dementia patients. I will resist the obvious gag based on Brian and yoko.
https://theblast.com/578724/beach-boys-brian-wilson-conservatorship-filed-suffering-dementia/
Recent features about Yoko have been illustrated with pictures that are at least ten years old.
I’m slightly nauseated by the way that BW has been exploited over the last twenty years. Still, I’m sure it’s what his dad would have wanted.
Exploited? He’s been as happy as he could have been, with a loving and loved wife. He’s been under medication for decades (specifically, for voices in the head), and generally been looked after and cared for. You have to go back a long way, to Eugene Landy (and before that, Brian’s crowd of vampire hangers-on in L.A., and before that, his father) for the exploitation tag to have meaning. But there’s always been someone close to him to help him stay alive. Part of him was shut away forever in ’66, when he stopped touring, and that part never came back.
The shows can be great if you close your eyes. Open them and it’s a freak show. Pop music has always been care in the community for fuck-ups but BW is an unedifying spectacle and I do wonder at the morality of the people who are making money out of it.
I dunno. There’s a lot of love for the guy whenever he appears, and he must feel that. What’s the alternative? Stick him in a rest home? Unscrupulous bastards making money out of musicians is an old, old story – and they weren’t going to make a special case for him just because he’s ill.
Given that Melinda his wife of the last 20-odd years only died a few weeks back and that men of BW’s age often follow their wives fairly quickly, his long-term prognosis does not sound good.
Saw him in Dublin in 2017 when he must have been even frailer and more confused than when V saw him 15 years before. Rather than the sublime music I’d seen and heard from the stage, my memories of that night are of coming away feeling rather uncomfortable.
Worryingly, there are apparently moves to get some kind of conservatorship that will allow him to continue doing the projects he wants to continue doing.
Did I read the John Lennon story about BW on here? Basically it’s something like 1974 and Brian Wilson bumps into Lennon and talks excitedly about what a fan he is and how great it is to finally meet him. Lennon responds in the same manner, saying much the same kind of stuff back to him.
Lennon’s companion says that it’s amazing that they haven’t met before…Lennon explained that they have actually met many times and that they have the same conversation each time.
The story I read was from Alice Copper at the 1974 Grammys when Copper was there with Lennon & Bernie Taupin
“As soon as Brian walked away, John looked at both of us and casually said in his typical Liverpudlian accent, ‘I’ve met him hundreds of times. He’s not well, you know.’””
While today’s news is very sad, this was 50 years ago, so he’s survived a long time & been creative for much of it.
Stagestruck for a mo, I thought you said Alice Cooper.
As did I!
Alice Copper a lesser known member of the Copper Famiy of Rottingdean.
“All coopers are bastards”
– too right, I fkin hate barrels.
Especially if it’s my turn
“Blue Ming Auto Carrot” – you knew who I meant.
That’s right, The Mascara Snake!
Interesting thoughts from everyone here. My feeling is that practicing a skill, being active, doing things you like, and people liking it, is good therapy. If it causes distress, it isn’t. Things can go from one to the other. One of the biggest problems I see in patients is a lack of activity, purpose, and validation, and so people go down nefarious routes for this. BW could make music or play old tunes and get paid for it. I’m sure the conditions under which he toured were better than our own holiday arrangements. But now, it’s time for withdrawal, and a quiet, kind life.
Other demented recluses are jack Nicholson. And Bruce Willis.
There’s a short social media clip of a faintly bemused Nicholson being berated to sign multiple autographs. “You working on any movies, Jack?” “Ummm, nope”
If the recent documentary Long Promised Road is anything to go on – and yes, I know docs are carefully edited – he seems as content as anyone with his mental illness and horrific experiences might be. His interviewer did a sterling job of asking the right questions while pulling back any time he saw any agitation. Is Brian happy on the road? Probably not as happy as we’d like to be, but perhaps better with a routine, a band that do all the heavy lifting and an adoring audience than left with his demons in a big house every day. Should his tours have been so extensive? Almost certainly not.
I am sure the timing regarding the announcement so soon after the death of his wife is not coincidental. I would imagine he has been suffering from it for some time. His last tour in 2022 was suddenly cut short and I thought at the time he was almost certainly done. And he has needed someone to look after him for decades so no change really
I saw him live 13 times. The last one being Pet Sounds in full (again) in 2018 in Ottawa. He was in extremely poor shape then and was more a spectator than a participant in his own concert. As Al Jardine and Blondie Chaplin were there the gig nevertheless had some merit and the band were great as always.
The first one I ever saw was in 2000 in a winery in California (Pet Sounds). It was astounding. Also saw him soon after at the Hollywood Bowl and 8 concerts at the Royal Festival Hall followed including multiple renditions of SMiLE which were equally memorable, I shook hands with him at one of those. He had a very firm handshake!
I saw him on the Smile tour, in Paris, in nineteen-oh-christ-what-year-was-it. He seemed about half there, which was a bigger turnout than I expected. The wave of love when he came on stage that went up from the audience was physically uplifting – there was no way he was isolated from that, and it’s something you don’t get from watching videos or listening to live recordings. I’ve never experienced anything like it before or since. It was obvious everyone in the band loved him, too. Not so much Love and Mercy, more like Love and Gratitude; thanks for all the wonder and beauty, Brian, for the party dances and the in-my-room comfort, and for the radio magic that opened up the world.
Wotta guy. Wotta guy.
He was at Cropredy in 2018 and it was very sad to see him helped onstage and obviously struggling, but the band were absolutely terrific and Al Jardine and Blondie Chaplin held it together. We had been at Wembley Arena for the last Beach Boys 50th anniversary gig in 2012 and the deterioration from then was quite clear. That gig must have been the last time he played with The Beach Boys, and was one of the best shows I have ever been to. The only slightly cringey moment was during the encore when he stood up from the keyboard and they put a bass guitar around his neck one more time….I suppose it had a great circular symbolism though. God bless him.
He “played” the bass guitar at all his solo shows too in the encores (until he couldn’t really stand up any more)
The late Rick Price did a quick Wizzard promo tour with Roy Wood back in the mid-70s. He later wrote about it.
” They did get us a meeting with Brian Wilson and being a complete Beach Boys anorak, I couldn’t wait.
When the day finally came, I wished I had waited. A limo took us to his house where a woman that we assumed was his housekeeper invited us in. We had already sent over a copy of ‘Forever’ for Brian to listen to and the young Wilson girls sang it to us as we drove through the gates. Roy had written and sung it in the style of The Beach Boys and we thought that the production had captured the sound that they were creating at the time. It wasn’t a piss take, it was a tribute. We sat in Brian’s music room for about half an hour, imagining that he may have created Pet Sounds and Good Vibrations sitting at that piano, before we were invited into what looked like a garage with a bed in it.
We were altogether unprepared for what followed. He was very poorly. Bloated by drugs and food, he was alarmingly overweight and totally bed- ridden. He was lying on his back and it was all he could do to turn his head to look at us. Think Elvis and double it. It was a saddening and shocking sight. All of L.A. knew about Brian’s lifestyle and the minders from Warner Brothers Records had assumed that we did too. We didn’t.
To see the genius that had created such great work in such a pitiful mess was a life-changing event. The gift that we had sent to him, clearly hadn’t helped his mental state either. He was convinced that the vocal had been done by his brother Carl and from the all too brief conversation that followed, it was obvious that the playing of our record had only served to increase his paranoia.
As I left I was sure I had just spoken to a dead man. Happily I was wrong. Although it took him twenty years, he appears to have crawled out of the hell that he had created for himself. OK Warner Brothers, now I’d like to meet him.”
This article:
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2024-02-16/brian-wilson-dementia-conservatorship-beach-boys-family-reps
is encouraging, rather than worrying. I don’t see how it could be done any better or more responsibly. Making sure he takes his meds is something that does need to be legally tracked, given the complex estate attached. Meds, keep him clean and fed and mobile. Any music projects will be as subject to change and incompletion as they’ve ever been. I don’t think he could come up with a more fitting coda than his piano album, but we never know. He may surprise us yet.