The mysterious story of hardest song Brian Wilson ever worked on
Much to the dismay of procrastinators everywhere, it reportedly took Brian Wilson only 45 minutes to write The Beach Boys’ ultimate masterpiece, ‘God Only Knows’.
While it is easy to feel inferior about your own life achievements in the wake of that fact, it is worth noting that not all of Wilson’s compositions arrived quite so fully-formed.
Whichever way you spin it, Brian Wilson is undeniably among the greatest songwriters of all time, and records like Pet Sounds, in particular, changed the course of musical history forevermore. Even the greatest writers, however, are struck with writer’s block every now and again – particularly when living the rock and roll lifestyle of no sleep and copious amounts of mind-altering chemicals, as Wilson was for much of The Beach Boys’ tenure.
Wilson’s mental health struggles were as extensive as they were well-documented, and they tended to be spurred on by his unshakable drug habits, which began to peak around the late 1960s and early 1970s. Inevitably, these habits had a major impact on the quality of his songwriting output, but it certainly didn’t stop him from churning out songs and albums on an impressively regular basis. Still, there were certain tracks and various projects which never seemed to work as Wilson so desired.
One such song that the songwriter was forced to wrestle with, however, boasts a particular mystery. During a 2015 Q&A with American Songwriter, Wilson was asked about which of his songs took the longest to perfect. “Probably ‘Gone Away Ghost,’” he responded. “That one took about a month to write.”
“I was trying to get the chords together,” the songwriter continued. “It took me about two weeks to get the chords right and another two weeks to get the melody and the words.”
Six weeks isn’t a huge amount of time within the realm of the music industry, but it certainly doesn’t fit in with Wilson’s typical timescale, carving out masterpiece tracks in the space of a few hours. That quote does raise a few questions, however. Namely: what is ‘Gone Away Ghost’?
Over the course of Wilson’s extensive discography, either as a solo artist, Beach Boy, or external collaborator, he has never released a song with that title. So, given the fact that the host of that Q&A didn’t push Wilson for a further explanation on what that song actually is, ‘Gone Away Ghost’ has been the subject of a lot of speculation in the years that followed.
There are numerous possibilities of what the song could be, and why nobody seems to have heard it. One prevailing school of thought is that the interviewer misheard or misquoted the songwriter, but then, which of his songs has a similar-sounding name? ‘Kona Coast’ isn’t far off, but Wilson wasn’t even listed as a songwriter on that 1978 effort by The Beach Boys. Another realm of possibility is that ‘Gone Away Ghost’ was the working title of a track which was later renamed but, again, it’s difficult to think of any Wilson track to fit in with that narrative.
Arguably, the most likely possibility, then, is that ‘Gone Away Ghost’ is an unreleased track, although it isn’t known from what era of Wilson’s output, or whether it was a solo effort. Perhaps, in fact, the song was so torturous to work on that, in the end, the songwriter decided to scrap it altogether – ultimately, we may never know. Still, if a track by that name ever surfaces on a box set or deluxe track listing, just know that Brian Wilson pored over it for weeks on end.
