What happened during Brian Wilson’s very own “lost weekend”?
When we talk about a famous musician having had a “lost weekend”, most of the time, it’s in reference to the period of time when John Lennon famously separated from his wife, Yoko Ono, and had an affair with his assistant, May Pang. While this tryst lasted much longer than a weekend, stretching for 18 months from the summer of 1973 until early 1975, he wasn’t the only pop star who had previously made a name for himself in the ‘60s experiencing some sort of inner turmoil and his US opposite, Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, was also having a “lost weekend” of his own.
Lennon’s affair with Pang had actually been orchestrated by Ono herself, but while they were undoubtedly in need of time apart from each other, it didn’t necessarily do the former Beatle any good, and he resorted to drinking large amounts of alcohol to deal with his struggles. In his final ever interview with Playboy in 1980, Lennon revealed that “I was out of control, and nobody was looking after me, and I needed somebody to love me, and there was nobody there to support me, and I just fell apart.”
Around the same time, Wilson had lost his father, Murry, and descended into a period of self-destructive behaviours that saw his already fragile state of mind deteriorate further than it had in the past. Wilson had already retreated into the background while recording the band’s last few studio albums. Still, his agoraphobic tendencies would be heightened by the death of the domineering Wilson patriarch, with whom Brian had endured a fraught relationship throughout the height of the group’s fame.
Wilson already had a history of mental breakdowns and regularly had episodes where he would live a hermitic lifestyle and rarely surface from his bedroom, where he would write songs. However, this period also saw Wilson’s productivity decline. Not only was he a recluse to his friends and bandmates, but he would regularly shut himself away during daylight hours, only emerging at night to engage in the more damaging habits that plunged his life into disorder.
Instead of convalescing at all hours of the day in order to process his grief, Wilson was regularly inviting friends over to indulge in cocaine and alcohol abuse, with the likes of Harry Nilsson, Keith Moon and even Lennon himself being among the guests at Wilson’s home. It wasn’t just Lennon experiencing marital issues as a result of his increasingly reckless behaviour either, as Wilson’s marriage to Marilyn Rovell became just as strained during this period as well.
If you were to ask Wilson himself what happened during this period, you might not get the most accurate or even coherent response as to how his very own “lost weekend” panned out, but it represents a period in which his previous spells of productivity were reduced to nothing due to the addictions that were spiralling out of control. If Lennon believed he was falling apart, Wilson’s dependence on drugs and alcohol and growing obsessions with over-eating and reading pornographic magazines at the same time were perhaps even more destructive.
Of course, Wilson would make a return to music in 1975, but it wasn’t the grand return to form that many fans had been eagerly awaiting. The Beach Boys’ comeback record with Wilson, the ill-received 15 Big Ones, was a mere shadow of what he and the rest of the band were capable of and is often regarded as one of the band’s low points. However, while Wilson never fully recovered and was often prone to bouts of ill health brought on by his later-diagnosed schizoaffective and bipolar disorders, this “lost weekend” of his own from 1973 to ‘75 is perhaps the darkest period of his personal and professional life.
