The Brian Wilson song that reduced his producers to tears
Throughout his career, Brian Wilson was known for penning truly sumptuous songs that mixed beauty and joy with existentialism and heartbreak, and few other songwriters and producers have ever been able to match his talents. The Beach Boys’ primary songsmith conceived the majority of the group’s hits, and while early material that covers surfing, fast cars and chasing girls is hardly an emotional rollercoaster, you only need visit a record like Surf’s Up to realise that there’s far more depth to his themes.
The ironically-named 1971 album is far from the only example of Wilson’s work that manages to pull on the heartstrings, though, as there are plenty of other tracks that are capable of bringing a tear to the eye of the listener scattered throughout the band’s discography. The Pet Sounds album track ‘Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)’ has the capacity to render me a trembling mess every time I listen to it, and if you don’t consider ‘God Only Knows’ one of the most gorgeous love songs ever written, then I wonder if you’ve even got a heart to be tugged at in the first place.
While the Beach Boys was his primary outlet for songwriting for most of his career, there have been times when it wasn’t straightforward for him to realise the full potential of his creations, due to a combination of his fluctuating mental health and tensions boiling over between the familial ties in the band. While he never had any major spats with his brothers, Carl and Dennis, he was often at odds with their cousin, Mike Love, whose irascible temperament led to friction between the two, and serious debates over artistic direction.
There have been plenty of occasions where Wilson and Love’s ongoing feuds have almost led to the disintegration of the band, but it was when Love decided to abruptly cancel plans for a 2012 comeback tour that Wilson began to truly question the future of a band that had been part of his life for over 50 years. This tumultuous episode led Wilson down a path of despair, and the resulting material that he chose to write for his next solo album directly referenced his grievances about the future of the band.
The track ‘The Last Song’ ruminates on the idea that the Beach Boys may not have been able to continue as a group, and while the song was originally written as a duet for Wilson to perform alongside the then rising Lana Del Rey, she backed out and left Wilson to the task of performing is alone. It was when it became a solo piece that the song was given its truly heartbreaking quality, and with Wilson’s voice being much more strained in his older age, there was an even greater sense of longing and pain in his words.
The song’s producer and bass player on the track, Don Was, said in an interview that “there’s something about Brian signing off with it, saying, ‘This is it, this is my last song.’ It’s really intense,” and continued by saying that “if ‘The Last Song’ turned out to be his last song, can you imagine? Wow. That’d be some coda.”
While Wilson may not have intended for it to be the final song in his career, it did end up being the closing track on his 2015 album, No Pier Pressure. Was continued by saying that the experience of being in the studio with him performing it to him and drummer Jim Keltner brought the two to tears when he recited the line “if there was just another chance for me to sing to you / there’s never enough time for the ones that you love,” with Was saying to Mojo Magazine that “we realized we were playing his coda.” While Wilson has thankfully gone on to record further material, it certainly would have been an extraordinary way to say farewell to an illustrious career.
