“You’ll feel better right away”: Brian Wilson was fearing death until a 1972 hit made him smile again
If you were to just listen to The Beach Boys’ instrumentals, you’d think that Brian Wilson had never experienced a down day in his life. Full of joy and whimsy, with textured parts making up a pop-rock symphony, their songs sound like happiness bottled.
But under the surface, there has always been more. On ‘In My Room’, a track taken from the band’s third album, the sweetness of the song holds some darkness. Singing about feeling safe and comforted in the confines of his bedroom, Wilson was exploring his early experiences with anxiety and agoraphobia, which would both worsen in the coming years: “Now it’s dark, and I’m alone / But I won’t be afraid / In my room,” he sang as a sadly prophetic omen for the times to come when he would refuse to leave his house.
Burdened with the band’s success, Wilson’s mental health failed him. Suffering from depression and schizophrenia, the artist struggled immensely, occasionally having to retreat fully from the group, or sometimes going all in during a period of manic devotion. In his life, those battles had a huge impact too, colouring his relationships but also leaving him vulnerable to exploitation, like the treatment he experienced from Eugene Landy in the 1980s, as the therapist manipulated major business control.
There were extended periods where Wilson was simply out of action. “I was taking some drugs, and I experimented myself right out of action,” he later admitted, “I’d sometimes go and record. But basically, I just stayed in my bedroom. I was under the sheets, and I watched television.”
Yet every time, something would coax him back out of the dark period, and every time, the fix was likely music.
Whether it was making music or just listening to music, Wilson’s devotion to his art and to his passion for a good song was always a saviour. There was always a great and heartening song to be found that could help the situation.
That was true even in his old age. In 2017, when Rolling Stone spoke to the then-74-year-old, he admitted that while depression is a lifelong struggle, there are still rousing songs to help. Speaking about a more recent bout of depression, he said, “I got through a pretty rough night. I had a hell of a time. I was scared of dying and going through all kinds of shit, and a song got me through it”.
He named the song, “You know Danny Hutton’s [Three Dog Night] song ‘Black & White’?” he said. It’s not a new song by any measure, released in 1972. But as Wilson remembered the track in the 2010s, it became a repeat listen, always there to raise his spirits with the joyous rock-pop sound and catchy groove.
Recommending it to anyone and everyone currently stuck in a downward dip, he said, “If you ever get in a pinch, boot up ‘Black & White’ on your cellphone. You’ll feel better right away”.
