Pent Sounds: Brian Wilson’s bizarre songwriting secret of “abstaining from orgasm”
“Well, they all use the same guitar pick.” The line sets up the plot in the classic rock opera Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny, which explores the idea that all of the best guitar players in the world are only so exceptional because they use a guitar pick forged from the devil’s tooth. Angus Young, Jimmy Page, and George Harrison, all of them are connected by one guitar pick, and that’s the magic behind the music.
Obviously, the film is fiction, but many people have previously said that the only reason musicians can make the exceptional art that they’re famous for is that they’re in cahoots with Beelzebub. Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page could only play the way they could because of supernatural forces, or so the story goes. It’s silly to even remotely consider this.
That being said, given geniuses are so few and far between, it is worth considering whether they’re all sharing a secret about how you write a fantastic song? Why can some people excel in the field while others fall flat at the second note? Most people would say it’s just talent and hard work; however, Brian Wilson has a secret way of achieving musical excellence and keeping his cool.
Throughout the ‘60s, there was no escaping the fact that Wilson was one of the most exciting musicians on the planet. His work with the Beach Boys was completely revolutionary, as the sweet-sounding harmonies, surf rock and exciting melody made for some of the most beautiful-sounding music that had ever hit the airwaves.
Wilson was very open about the fact that he did have a very specific secret when it came to being successful both in music and in life, and it was something that his father instilled in him from a young age. You’ve heard of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll? Well, it turns out that if you want to excel in the latter, you need to disassociate from the former.
“I have a secret here. I don’t tell anybody my secret,” he said in an interview in the ‘90s, hinting at having the untold truths that every creative needs, “I have a secret… I’ll tell you anyway: I don’t have any sex, ok? The secret is abstaining from orgasm. Einsteinian formula that if you abstain from having an orgasm for, say, 10 years, you create a void in your brain.”
Wilson went on to explain that he had been told to abstain from orgasm from a young age and, when putting it into practice, felt the benefits almost immediately. “My Dad told me in high school: ‘Son, now you’re gonna be going through a lot of hell as you grow up, and the one thing you should never do is you should not have orgasms and masturbate and you should not fuck with girls’,” he recalled, “And I tried it out. I’d been jacking off all summer, y’know? And toward the end of summer, I’m going into my junior year in high school and my Dad lays that on me.”
He continued, “I go there and I try it out and I say: ‘What the fuck is this shit? Hey, wait a minute man, I like not coming better than coming!’ And I kept going that way for a long, long time and finally I came to the conclusion that I’m gonna tell people my secret.”
