‘Fire’: The Beach Boys song Brian Wilson thought was cursed
Sun Ra was an incredibly interesting musician who believed that sound could accomplish much more than just being an enjoyable piece of art. He thought he was sent here from another world to play music, something that was a universal language and didn’t need translating. He also believed that when he played out of tune or out of time, it resulted from higher powers making him do so.
“You got to be ready when you play with this band…when the harmonies move in a direction that they seemingly are not supposed to move in and still fit, you got another message from another realm from somebody else, and Superior Beings would definitely speak in other harmonic ways because they’re talking to something different,” he said to his trumpeter, Ahmed Abdullah before his first band practice, “You have to have chord against chord, melody against melody, and rhythm against rhythm. When you have that, you’re experiencing something else.”
While many people look at music as a means to simply listen to artists give their take on love, politics, and partying, for some, it carries much more power than that. Artists like Sun Ra believe that their music has something contained within it, which means it has powers separate from just the sound it makes. When people think like this, their relationship with music stops being healthy and becomes borderline obsessive.
Many people have said that The Beach Boys’ music alone is proof that something beyond this world exists. For most, this came in a positive way. For instance, Courtney Love found herself so moved by the song ‘God Only Knows’ that she said it acts as proof of a higher power.
However, Brian Wilson was once tormented by the power of his music, as he felt that one of the songs he and the band were working on was cursed. He became so terrified of the track and supernatural power that was potentially embedded within it that he refused to continue working on it.
In 1967, the Beach Boys were working on Smile, which led to them attempting to write a song called ‘Fire’, which was also referred to as ‘The Elements – Part 1’. It was going to be a part of all four elements, so there would be pieces called ‘Water’, ‘Earth’, and ‘Wind’. Wilson was obsessing over his music to the point that it became unhealthy, and those around him noted these sessions as being some of the last before his psychosis was an issue.
This is represented in that while Wilson was recording ‘Fire’, a building nearby had burned down, and he was worried that the song he was writing and pining over was cursed and was responsible for burning down the building. “I began to think that we started that fire somehow, mystically,” said Wilson, “I was able to get a hold of all these drugs and they messed me up, they messed my mind up. I took the LSD, and that just totally took my head off.”
Wilson was frightened and decided to step away from the track. He didn’t revisit it until 2004 when he made Brian Wilson Presents Smile. While the track took decades to finish, it came with a reward, as the album earned him a Grammy.
