cinememoir | Beautiful Dreamer: What We Still Need to Learn from Brian Wilson

by Steve Wagner

The glass was raised, the fired rose,
The fullness of the wine,
A dim last toasting.
While at Port, adieu or die.
A choke of grief, heart-hardened eye,
Beyond belief, a broken man too tough to cry.
— From “Surf’s Up” by Brian Wilson & Van Dyke Parks

“‘Surf’s Up’ is a premonition of what was going to happen to our generation, and what was going to happen to our music. That some great tragedy—that we could absolutely not imagine—was about to befall our world. There are some very disturbing, clairvoyant images in ‘Surf’s Up’ that seem to say, ‘watch out, this is not going to last.’”
— Jimmy Webb, in Beautiful Dreamer—Brian Wilson and the Story of Smile

Planned album cover for Smile by The Beach Boys - artwork by Frank Holmes — Planned album cover for *Smile* by The Beach Boys - artwork by Frank Holmes

In the summer of 1969, when I was 8 years old, my dad, mom, sister, and I drove from St. Louis to Colorado Springs to spend a couple weeks with my Aunt Ginger and her kids. Memories from that trip, now over fifty years ago, persist like blurry polaroids—reading Mad magazines, playing with the Lite-Brite toy in the dark, burying a deceased pet parakeet in the back yard, crawling on red rocks at the Garden of the Gods. And, oh yeah! Watching Neil and Buzz land on the moon. But as thrilling as that was, for me the most indelible and impactful experience of that summer vacation was staring at a Capitol “swirl” 45 record turning round on a little record player as I listened to the two mesmerizing songs—“Help Me, Rhonda” and “Kiss Me, Baby”—over and over and over again. I had never heard anything like these songs. I wanted to know as much as possible about these Beach Boys. What my cousin Carol told me about them was a shock. She said, “The one who wrote those songs, Brian Wilson, went crazy. He’s in an insane asylum now.”

Okay, this was communicated through “kid” vernacular, but as it turned out was quite close to the truth, and it scared and fascinated the hell out of me. From that moment on, I sought to learn and understand everything I could about what had happened to this man. Because, to me, the Beach Boys were happy, carefree, and fun, fun, fun! I just couldn’t fathom how the guy who wrote and sang those songs could be sad. What went wrong? What had happened to Brian Wilson?

It would be nearly ten years before I found anything resembling an answer to that question. Music was hard to come by in those days, especially for a little kid. Even through my teen years, there were only so many grass-cutting dollars available for record buying, and the competition for that tender was fierce—owning each Beatles and solo-Beatles album was still my primary directive, and new records by the Stones, the Who, and Led Zeppelin et al were coming out all the time. And the Beach Boys were then experiencing a difficult period in their history; aside from the ubiquitous Endless Summer hits compilation—which seemed to be in every household—they were largely off the radar. But I remained fascinated by them, and amassed a fair collection of their songs, mostly in the form of cheap, blatant cash-in, slapped-together packages on fly-by-night labels I found in the cut-out bins. Still, every time I listened to the Beach Boys, I wondered what had happened to Brian Wilson.

Then, in 1978, a book came out called The Beach Boys and the California Myth, and it unlocked the door and allowed me a few steps inside the mystery. It told the equally exhilarating and heartbreaking story of the Beach Boys, in particular Brian and how his creative and personal life had been derailed by the failure of an album called Smile. The sad tale, in brief:

By 1966, Brian Wilson was likely the most esteemed composer and record producer in America; his innovations in recording, experimental vocal approaches, and novel multi-tracked instrumental combinations were setting a new standard. Few American musical artists survived the onslaught of the British Invasion, but in fact, the Beach Boys thrived, and effectively became the Beatles’ primary influence and creative competitor. Derek Taylor, in a 1967 press release that began with the infamous laud “Brian Wilson is a genius,” marveled, “He alone in the industry is at the pinnacle of the pop pyramid—full creator of a record from the first tentative constructions of a theme to the final master disc. Brian is writer—words and music—performer and singer, arranger, engineer, and producer with complete control even over packaging and design.”

The Beach Boys’ landmark Pet Sounds, released in the Spring of 1966, was essentially a Brian Wilson solo album, in that he composed, arranged, and produced all the music, and sings nearly every lead and harmony. Considered a masterpiece and definitive recording, the album marked Brian’s progression from child to adult—its postmodern production values, emotional cohesiveness, and musical invention mirroring the evolution of a generation maturing beyond the concerns and language of youth. It also turned the Beach Boys into trans-Atlantic superstars—they were voted “Best Group” by Britain’s esteemed New Musical Express in their year-end poll, topping even the Beatles.

Encouraged by the critical acclaim of Pet Sounds and the commercial success of the global #1 single “Good Vibrations,” released in October ’66, Brian endeavored to take his creative vision even further with Smile, an album he described as a “teenage symphony to God.” Employing as his primary lyricist Van Dyke Parks, a gifted young songwriter and session musician, Brian set out to create an advanced form of American music, with lyrical impressionism marking a progression in American poetic language. Employing the “modular” production techniques perfected on “Good Vibrations,” the Smile songs would distill the American mythos through references to myriad preceding musical styles—classical, jazz, gospel, doo-wop, R&B, barbershop, Hawaiian, avant-garde, exotica, musique concrete, comedy, jingles, marches, and American standards—while the lyrics would evoke America’s sundry landscape and complicated history, as seen through the eyes of a bicycle rider journeying from Plymouth Rock to the Sandwich Islands.

Written and recorded over a ten-month period in late 1966 and early 1967, Smile was highly anticipated, even capturing the attention of Leonard Bernstein, who hailed Brian’s import on the 1967 CBS documentary special Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution; while Los Angeles Times’ music critic Tom Nolan singled out Brian as “the seeming leader of a potentially revolutionary movement in pop music.” But Smile was not to be. After several anticipated release dates in 1967 came and went, the Beach Boys announced that the album had been “scrapped” and would not be released. The reasons given at the time were either vague or non-existent, though it was speculated that the project failed because of pressure from the record company, Brian’s conflict with other Beach Boys, and his increasing drug use and mental deterioration. Effectively, the group’s indifference and impatience and Capitol’s demand for fresh commercial product proved too much for Brian’s fragile psychology. His ensuing nervous breakdown ended his creative stewardship of the Beach Boys and with it his function as a leading artistic innovator for his generation.

After reading The Beach Boys and the California Myth, I was fixated with Brian Wilson and began searching for any snippet of music from or reference to this chimeric album with the passion of Sir Galahad questing the Grail. I snatched up the Beach Boys albums (Smiley Smile, 20/20, Sunflower, and Surf’s Up) that contained songs once intended for Smile. In the 1980s, bootlegs of more material became sporadically available, and, in the early ’90s, a Beach Boys box set was released containing over ten minutes of previously unreleased Smile music, bringing an even clearer picture of what the album was intended to be during the heady days of the “Summer of Love.” Like many serious Brian and Beach Boys fans, I sequenced all the Smile songs I could find onto cassette tapes attempting to recreate the album. Learning that many of my rock heroes, like Paul McCartney and Lindsey Buckingham, had also made their own Smile tapes made me feel part of a greater community, a group of musical sleuths who, like me, were trying to unravel the mystery and intuit what the album just might have been.

In Spring 2003, an announcement was made that floored Brian Wilson aficionados worldwide: in February 2004, Brian would perform Smile in its entirety at London’s Royal Festival Hall. I’m sure many of us held our breath as we wondered whether he would actually go through with the show, but he did, and it was a major success. Following that premiere, Brian embarked on a critically acclaimed Smile tour of America with his stellar new band, and in September 2004 he released the album Brian Wilson Presents Smile. The wait—for 38 years since the first recordings were committed to tape in 1966—was seemingly, at long last, over.

Beautiful Dreamer--Brian Wilson and the Story of Smile (movie) — *Beautiful Dreamer--Brian Wilson and the Story of Smile* (movie)

Brian’s completely re-recorded Smile in 2004 not only exceeded the expectations of the most cynical critics and fans, it showed just how close to completion the album had been in 1967. I bought the album the day of release and listened to it non-stop for weeks, and then, on November 4, 2004, I was in the audience for the final concert of the first Smile tour, at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. The magic in the air was palpable, and I, like scores of fellow attendees, was in tears for most of the show. When I was able, while marveling at the stunning music, to reflect on the historical import of Smile and the nearly supernatural resilience of its troubled composer, my heart swelled with emotion, respect, and relief. Brian’s personal journey, perhaps the most perplexing and lamentable in rock history, had, against all odds, realized a transcendent and redemptive finale.

The incredible artistically and culturally potent story of Brian Wilson and Smile, which took me decades to decipher in “real” time, is one you can experience in a single sitting, thanks to a moving documentary, Beautiful Dreamer—Brian Wilson and the Story of Smile. Written and directed by David Leaf, the film combines rare footage of Brian and the Beach Boys at work in the mid-60s; Brian and his late-career musical colleagues finishing Smile and preparing for the debut concert in the early 2000s; and insightful interviews with both Brian and Van Dyke, as well as many of the creative collaborators, session musicians, and close friends who were there when all the brilliant music, interpersonal drama, and Brian’s psychological collapse unfolded.

Leaf, a filmmaker responsible for many superb music documentaries, including the acclaimed The U.S. vs. John Lennon, was the author of the aforementioned The Beach Boys and the California Myth; as such he was uniquely qualified to cohere the labyrinthine chronicle of Brian and Smile into an easily understood and deeply engaging presentation. Wisely, he resisted the urge to get fancy with film, not trying to match the complexity of the Smile music with his direction and photography. Establishing a clear understanding of his enigmatic subject and a concise history of the Smile project was daunting enough, and Leaf accomplished both with the empathy and instincts of a quiet, but confident storyteller.

Beautiful Dreamer and an accompanying concert film of the Smile premiere in London were released in a double DVD package in May 2005, and it seemed to complete the “quest” for Smile for me personally—I had the “finished” work in the form of the Brian Wilson Presents Smile album; I witnessed an unforgettable performance of the entire album in concert; and I now had an in-depth, historically accurate summary of the story in a documentary film that hits all the right notes. However, in 2010, my connection to the film, and Smile, deepened considerably.

I was the director of the San Francisco Art Exchange, a gallery specializing in rock photography and original album cover art, and we had recently begun representing Sir Peter Blake, the renowned British pop artist and art director for the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album cover. Blake had created the art for Brian’s most recent album, That Lucky Old Sun, and we learned that Brian was willing to do some promotion on Blake’s behalf. After a bit of back and forth, we were able to affect what I can only describe as a dream come true: Brian and a few members of his band would come to San Francisco and perform a short concert IN OUR GALLERY for a few select clients.

And he did! I will forego the details, because it was totally one of those “had to be there” experiences, but the simple fact is that I not only met Brian, I was beside him and his band for hours. I was able at one point to express, in as few words as possible, my deep admiration, great honor in meeting him, and heartfelt thanks for all the inspirational music he had gifted the world. He looked me in the eyes, and said, quite emphatically, “Thank you, man, for being so cool!” Words cannot express how much it meant that Brian would say this to me.

The four players with Brian that day were the core of his band, all featured prominently in Beautiful Dreamer: keyboardist and musical director Darian Sahanaja and guitarist Nick Walusco, both of the revered LA group the Wondermints; multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Scott Bennett, who was Brian’s collaborator on most of That Lucky Old Sun; and guitarist and singer Jeff Foskett, an exceptional vocalist who had been singing Brian’s famous falsetto parts for the Beach Boys and solo Brian on tour since the late 70s. These four musicians were key to Brian’s legacy, and to the re-creation and ultimate success of Smile. Expressing my gratitude to each of them was almost as meaningful for me as meeting Brian.

Brian Wilson at the San Francisco Art Exchange

Astoundingly, less than a week after Brian’s visit to our gallery, his Smile collaborator Van Dyke Parks played a small club show at the Swedish-American Hall in San Francisco. My wife and I were of course there for this ultra-rare performance—Van Dyke had never toured before and was making only a few special appearances throughout the US to support a band he was mentoring, Clare and the Reasons (brilliant, check them out). As luck would have it, I bumped into him in the hallway before the show. We shook hands, and I thanked him in much the same way I had thanked Brian. I asked him if he knew Brian had just been in town at the gallery, and he said, “Thank you. Yes, I knew that. I just talked to him yesterday,” before walking away. That was it, but I was and remain blown away by this synchronicity. I had met the two reclusive creators of Smile within days of each other!

There is, I believe, a strong argument to be made that Smile is the most ambitious, far-reaching in scope, and psychologically layered work of American art in the last half-century. That topic will have to wait for another day; however, I will suggest here that Smile is ultimately a symbol for much more than simply an album we had to wait 38 years to hear. This is because the story of this innovative creation not only represents what happened to Brian Wilson, and what a terrible loss that was, it also contains the key into why Brian fell into madness, addiction, and despair, and by extension, why we as a society are suffering the same disorders and also failing to reach our highest potential.

The key, the answer, the reason why, is child abuse.

Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks working on Smile in 1966 - Clasper Daily-Peter Reum Collection — Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks working on *Smile* in 1966 - Clasper Daily-Peter Reum Collection

It’s no secret that Brian was horribly abused by his father, Murray; the top-shelf biographies of Brian and the Beach Boys have not shied from this fact. The accounts of Murray’s cruelty in these volumes turn the stomach and are too numerous and distressing to divulge here. Suffice to say the abuse Brian endured was both physical and psychological, beginning when he was little more than a baby and continuing well into his mature years. Widely disseminated bootlegs of Beach Boys recordings featuring Murray mercilessly badgering Brian during sessions have been the talk of fans for years. As has the fact that when the band finally found the nerve to fire him as their manager in 1965, Murray formed a Beach Boys soundalike group called the Sunrays to compete with them. And hired detectives to follow Brian while he was working on the Smile album in 1967. And sold Brian’s music catalog behind his back for a paltry 700k in 1969, costing his son tens of millions of dollars, a betrayal that reportedly drove Brian to the brink of suicide.

Beautiful Dreamer, while making no direct inference that child abuse is the real villain in Brian’s story, allows several of its subjects to touch on the matter, beginning with Brian himself: “My dad was a very, very hostile, messed-up man, with a lot of hatred in him.” He then demonstrates a physical disorder he exhibited when he was young, whereby he would walk hunched over, with his arms shielding his chest, or as he describes, “with my right hand over my soul. I would walk around at school afraid of being hit, because my dad hit me so much.”

Several of those closest to Brian at the time of Smile also cast doubt on the common narrative that drugs caused his breakdown. Van Dyke draws attention to Brian’s work ethic and suggests that the proof was in the pudding: “Don’t let the marijuana confuse the issue here. If you look at the amount of work that was done, and the amount of time it took to almost finish it, it’s amazing. It’s a very athletic situation, very focused.” Journalist Michael Vosse, who worked as Brian’s personal assistant, is blunt: “I just think that drugs are the biggest red herring in the Brian Wilson story. I just don’t buy it at all. I think a lot of issues that had been festering inside this guy, that he had managed to compartmentalize so that he could make his music, may have burst out of their boundaries.”

I agree with Vosse, and believe it is critical to understand Brian as, first and foremost, a victim of child abuse. I understand why biographers and documentarians are reluctant to draw this conclusion overtly; it is only responsible to withhold such judgement when one is not a degreed physician or psychiatrist. But we have been dancing around this assessment for decades, and there is no more value in skirting the undeniable: Brian’s drug abuse, mental deterioration, and clinical depression are but symptoms of the abuse he suffered as a child. His traumatic response only compounded and became visible as his family, band, and record label, driven by monetary desire and, in many cases, jealousy, abandoned him just as the pressure was reaching its zenith.

And what pressure it was! From 1962-66, the Beach Boys were subject to a nearly impossible-to-deliver contract with Capitol Records, signed and encouraged by Murray, calling for three albums and six singles a year, while also playing a backbreaking tour schedule of 250-plus live shows per year. The weight of these demands fell largely upon Brian, who, barely out of his teens and acting as composer, arranger, singer, and producer, delivered nearly thirty Top 40 hits and a dozen gold albums during this period. He suffered his first nervous breakdown in late 1964 when, unable to cope with the physical demands of these responsibilities, he decided to quit the touring Beach Boys to remain in Los Angeles to make their records, now mostly with session musicians. Murray didn’t take this development well; he berated Brian as “weak” and “slacking off,” while Brian was nearly single-handedly delivering to Murray (and his band, and their record company) immense wealth and prestige.

The abuse of Brian extended from Murray to within the band itself. Mike Love, by most accounts an egotistical bully who owed his career to Brian’s talents, was physically intimidating and a constant source of criticism, especially when Brian worked with other lyricists. Love begrudgingly acquiesced to recording Pet Sounds, while constantly begging Brian to “not fuck with the formula.” Even after Pet Sounds established the Beach Boys as on artistic par with the Beatles, he remained skeptical and difficult. When Brian brought Van Dyke into the fold, Love all but declared war on both men and the music they were creating. Perhaps he understood intuitively that Brian had finally found a true collaborator, one who understood and matched his artistic impulse, honored his genius, and had the ability to soar with him to the most tremendous creative heights. He also likely understood that, with Smile, Brian was dangerously close to giving the game away while leaving his abusers behind. For Love, as for Murray and Capitol Records, the scuttling of Smile wasn’t a product of that old cliché, “artistic differences,” but a self-serving business decision that enabled Brian’s abusers to assume control of the Beach Boys brand.

The fall of Brian Wilson was epic in its reach, and has fueled a deepening cultural dialog on his mythos and art. His belated late-career “comeback” and broad critical praise in the 21st century—especially after completing Smile—may have finally brought the man some long-deserved redemption, and even some personal peace of mind, but it cannot undo the abuse he endured nor cure his severe trauma; he still suffers from acute paranoid schizophrenia and auditory hallucinations. Is it any surprise that a composer of music, a person with an extraordinary sensitivity to sound, would relive their abuse in the form of audible phantasms?

It is ironic, given the tragic story of their leader, that the Beach Boys have maintained such an aura of “good vibrations” in the popular imagination for nigh on six decades. A merely cursory look at their catalog in total reveals a dark shadow lurking behind the sunny veneer. Brian’s oeuvre contains some of the saddest songs ever written: “The Lonely Sea,” “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times,” “Caroline, No,” “Till I Die.” The sadness in the Pet Sounds music is unmistakable and one of the main reasons the album is so endlessly, deeply moving. Beach Boys lyrics might be odes to love and fun in the sun, but the music often belies the deep pain of its composer, a man trying to express the inexpressible through the only means he can.

For Brian, music was self-medication. Never was this more apparent than with Smile, where he was, in some sense, trying to create music that would at once bring a smile to the world and transform his personal sadness into joy. Perhaps he was also trying to replace the terrifying voices in his head with the sounds of a divine presence that could save him, a “teenage symphony to God” meant to soothe the savage beasts in both his life and his mind. But whatever Smile represented to Brian personally, for us now, for an American culture that has clearly lost its bearings, it is symbolic of something far more insidious, and its implications deserve our attention.

Appeal to the Great Spirit by Cyrus Dallin — *Appeal to the Great Spirit* by Cyrus Dallin

The Beach Boys are much more than a beloved musical group, they are a symbol of America—they are in fact often referred to as “America’s Band.” They are also a family band, and one originating in California, itself a symbol for the American dream, the paradise to be found at the end of our collective journey. Through this lens, Brian’s troubling story can be understood as a microcosm of the American story, because child abuse is, in essence, violence perpetrated on the vulnerable, an attack on the very idea of innocence. It is an assault on spiritual serenity through physical dominance. It is corruption overcoming virtue, might making right. This is the shadow of the collective American psyche. Our suppression and abuse of indigenous peoples, African Americans, gay and transgender people, the non-religious and non-Christians among us, and, last but not least, women and children, is as American as apple pie—or as the Beach Boys, for that matter.

Smile does not allow this harsh truth to go unexamined. While the album is awash in triumphant Americana, with its aural allusions to the state songs of Kansas and Louisiana, poetic nods to Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Frost, and Woody Guthrie, and a sonic recreation of the transcontinental railroad through musical and vocal onomatopoeia, it tempers our majestic past with unsettling imagery: the subjugation of the Chinese to construct our railroads and dams; the deposing of Liliuokalani, the final native Queen of the Hawaiian Islands; and the Great Chicago Fire, communicated through a demonic, delirious cacophony of panicked orchestral sound, evoking wailing sirens, collapsing walls, and crackling, burning embers. In one of Smile’s most revealing passages, Brian sings: “Bicycle rider, see, see what you’ve done, done, to the Church of the American Indian.” The plight of our indigenous people was clearly on Brian’s mind at the time of Smile; he chose an image of a Ute warrior, taken from a 1908 Cyrus Dallin sculpture entitled Appeal to the Great Spirit, for the logo of Brother Records, the Beach Boys’ record label launched in 1967.

I wonder if America was more likely to have taken Smile’s pointed content to heart back in 1967; now, in 2021 I’m not sure we have the psychological mettle to face and honestly consider the implications of our abusive history. Our great land, with its vast resources and unlimited potential, is awash in shadow energy. We are so afraid of the light that some of us bask in our own darkness. The transcendent ideals of our union now a mere bargaining chip in tribal power struggles, we stumble towards the devil’s fascist bargain with the same energy we once rode to the moon. Of this I am certain: if we refuse to confront our abusive shadow—in our history, in our economic system, in our treatment of the poor and the vulnerable, and in our family dynamics—we will fail our great promise as a people, and likely take the rest of the world down with us.

One of the most effective and healing ways we as humans reflect on our past (and imagine our future) is through art, and even this time-honored spiritual (yes, it is!) practice is imperiled in contemporary America. The artist functions as the conscience of society. When we demand that our artists keep their opinions to themselves and thank us for the privilege of providing our entertainment, we do far more damage than simply disrespecting the most sensitive hearts and minds in our midst. We lose our ability to reflect, to heal, and to grow.

I am no expert on child abuse, and I thank the Great Spirit that I was given parents who nurtured, rather than abused me, but as a working creative artist for most of my adult life, I can more than intuit the pain that Brian Wilson has endured at the hands of abusers. I rejoiced when he finished Smile, not because I was finally able to hear the finished work, but because I knew this might bring him peace. Meeting him was one of the most exciting experiences of my life, but I would trade that memory in a split-second if it could affect the healing of his deep wound. He was our best and brightest musician at a time when art not only still mattered, but when our future was wide open with possibility. Brian’s story is our story, and we must learn from it.

I am reminded of a quote from author Caroline Myss, who synthesized elements of Christian, Hindu, and Kabbalah mysticism in her 1996 book Anatomy of the Spirit: “The shadow energy of the Magical Child manifests in the absence of the possibility of miracles and of the transformation of evil to good. Attitudes of pessimism and depression, particularly when exploring dreams, often emerge from an injured Magical Child whose dreams were ‘once upon a time’ thought foolish by cynical adults. The shadow may also manifest as a belief that energy and action are not required, allowing one to retreat into fantasy.”

Read that again. It is just as true for America as it is for Brian Wilson.

Steve Wagner was co-host, writer, and executive producer of the Bay Area television programs Reel Life and Filmtrip, reviewing over one thousand films and interviewing over two hundred actors, directors, writers, and musicians. As a director of the San Francisco Art Exchange gallery, he brokered sales of many of the world’s most famous original album cover artworks, including Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. He has ghostwritten or collaborated on several published books, contributed articles on music, film, and popular culture to numerous publications, and is the author of the book All You Need is Myth: The Beatles and Gods of Rock (Waterside, 2019), a study of the 1960s music renaissance through the lens of classical mythology.