“I miss hearing him”: Brian Wilson on his favourite singer out of The Beach Boys
When talking about The Beach Boys, the world mostly zones in on one person. We talk about Brian Wilson as the mastermind of the group, and, in a lot of ways, that’s true. He wrote the songs, he composed the music, the majority of the work came from his brain. But he wasn’t the only part at play in making the magic.
Despite their sunshiney public image, the history of The Beach Boys is a dark one. It’s especially dark because it’s fraught with personal, and specifically familial, trauma. It goes right back to the ultimate core of the majority of the members. When Brian Wilson first got into music, his brothers were there. In their family home, Brian, Dennis, and Carl learnt how to harmonise and that natural sibling synergy is what powered the sound. When Brian came to start the band formally, the story goes that his parents made him include his brothers in a classic parenting move to make sure everyone felt loved and rivalries were kept on a low.
Brian was the oldest though, so it feels inevitable that the band would be shaped in his image. He also became the most obsessed with the project, which turned to a serious detriment. The group and Brian’s perfectionism over it destroyed him in a lot of ways. In 1964, he had a complete mental breakdown, pulling away from live performance. That only made him even more neurotic in the studio, though, and as his experiments with LSD and psychedelics only pushed him deeper into hallucinations, later diagnosed as schizoaffective disorder, the artist was heading towards another collapse.
By the end of the 1960s, he had to step away entirely for a minute, being largely absent from their 1969 album 20/20 after checking himself into a psychiatric hospital. That moment became the ultimate test for both Brian and the band. Having to take his hands off the wheel, he was forced to rely on his brothers and trust in the talent he’d always seen and believed in but was often shadowed by his own.
This was the moment that Carl Wilson shone. Taking on a good amount of the lead vocals while Brian was away, he also stepped up as a co-producer, working with studio outtakes previously recorded by his older brother and building the album into something great. It was a moment when he stepped out of Brian’s shadow, proving himself as an artist, a band leader and a producer – but Brian already trusted in Carl’s greatness.
“My brother Carl is probably my favourite singer,” Brian told Rolling Stone magazine in 2016. Especially praising his voice, Carl coloured so many of Brian’s all-time favourite Beach Boys songs, picking out “‘God Only Knows.’ ‘Darlin’’” as his top two.
“He was incredible,” he said. Given that on all of the Beach Boys’ tracks, it’s often harmonies that lead the way, making it hard to pinpoint who sings what and which voice is the one shining through, it’s often the case that the band’s shared vocalists don’t get their flowers. But Brian Wilson implores people to listen, and specifically listen out for Carl.
It’s also a tender thing. Carl Wilson died in 1998. Their other brother, Dennis Wilson, died in 1983 – meaning that Brian was left on his own with these recording to remember them by. “I miss hearing him talk, the things he has to say,” Brian said, with Carl’s lead vocal tracks being just another way to connect to his late sibling.
