The album Brian Wilson said he would never listen to
Brian Wilson seemed to be put on this Earth to make his audience smile. For as long as he has been able to put melodies together, Wilson’s way of understanding harmony has provided joy to so many people for generations, whether talking about having fun in the summertime or getting in touch with his innermost feelings. While Wilson may have seen the merit in any kind of music, he admitted that there was one album by his brother, Dennis Wilson, that would never be on his turntable.
By the time The Beach Boys began, the entire band had become a glorified family affair. Ever since they started putting together their first songs, Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson were musically joined at the hip, taking inspiration from some of their favourite vocal groups like The Four Freshmen and the famous Phil Spector ‘Wall of Sound’.
As Brian started to explore different avenues with his music, he found his way forward when listening to The Beatles’ Rubber Soul for the first time. Since the Fab Four were looking into new territories, Brian wanted to push himself and his bandmates forward, resulting in him putting out an answer record with Pet Sounds.
While Brian was on the verge of being a musical genius throughout those sessions, everything would come to a halt when putting together songs for the album Smile. After having different mental breakdowns trying to get the album made, Brian would also consult help from the infamous Eugene Landy, who would go on to manipulate him and step over his bounds as a therapist to make sure the creative cash cow didn’t suddenly dry up.
Around the same time Brian was having his struggles, Dennis was going through his own set of problems. After surviving drug-related episodes, Dennis would also fall prey to the Manson family, barely escaping with his life when moving houses and not being home when members of The Family showed up at his house.
While Dennis’ demons eventually got the better of him after a mysterious drowning in the early 1980s, he did find time to make a solo record called Pacific Ocean Blue, made up of a handful of songs that he cut with his brothers. Although the actual tape features a few gravelly performances from the rock legend, it’s still one of his more solid releases, including tracks like ‘You and I’ and ‘Farewell My Friend’.
Despite supporting his brother as his own songwriter, Wilson said that he would never listen to it, recalling in his memoir, “I have said that I have never heard it, that I won’t listen to it, that it’s too many sad memories and too much for me. I haven’t ever put the record on and listened through it the way I have with other records or the way other people have with that record. If I want to know what Dennis’s soul sounded like, I can just remember the songs.”
While Pacific Ocean Blue gives a different look at the musician sitting behind the drums on all those Beach Boys classics, it’s still a fine piece of California sunshine that should be celebrated amongst the main studio albums in the band’s catalogue. Brian might not like to look through the album in one sitting, but he knew that the best way of communicating with his brother was through song.
