“Really bad memories”: the song Brian Wilson never wanted to listen to again
When The Beach Boys released Pet Sounds in 1966, they reached the summit of the musical mountain.
The record was a triumph in studio recording and ultimately set out the blueprint for albums like Sgt Pepper’s to follow. But such an ascent to the glittering heights of musical stardom brings with it the natural descent, and for The Beach Boys, that fall came straight after the fact.
The writing process for Brian Wilson’s masterpiece was truly gruelling, with creative decisions laboured over to a detailed degree that induced a state of madness within the iconic songwriter. Studio sessions were known to be outrightly abandoned should the end product not be up to scratch, and so ultimately, the label spent the equivalent of $500,000 on the record. To say The Beach Boys poured everything into the iconic album was an understatement, and so naturally, they had very little to give in the years after.
Their ‘67 follow-up Smiley Smile was a clear indication of this creative fatigue, and so the steady decline into irrelevance began. But in 1970, the band shot one last fire of innovation into the sky, like captains going down with their ship, to deliver an album that would, in parts, stand the test of time and rival some of the ideas on Pet Sounds.
Sunflower was by no means as accomplished a body of work as Pet Sounds, but songs like ‘All I Wanna Do’ and ‘Cool Cool Water’ showed glimmers of a band at their very best. And the album saw Brian Wilson’s troubled brother Dennis taking much of the songwriting duties and, in turn, showcasing his introspective and profound style that, when done well, made The Beach Boys an even more compelling outfit.
But the track ‘Forever’ served as a painful reminder of that legacy to his brother Brian, who simply couldn’t listen to it after Dennis’ tragic death 13 years after the album. After struggling with substance abuse and personal issues, he drowned after diving into the water to retrieve items from his former boat.
Elaborating, “Brian said ‘Forever’ was ‘a song that brings back bad memories’ because he goes, ‘And now I’m going away / But not forever’ and then he died, you know, so I don’t really listen to it very often.”
He continued, “I try to keep it off the concert set because it brings back really bad memories. Yeah we got harmonically very very into it you know a very extremely tight harmony sound you know and it brings back a real memory that I know I didn’t want to deal with.”
The oversight of Sunflower as a record seemed rather indicative of Dennis Wilson’s legacy altogether. He was tragically overlooked for his contribution to the band and music as a whole, and ultimately died without knowing his true worth. ‘Forever’ and Sunflower serve as a glittering soundtrack to that worth, which helped craft a legacy for the band outside the iconic work of his brother and Pet Sounds.
