When Brian Wilson recorded the 1992 track that satirised his mental decline
Unfortunately, Brian Wilson’s ‘creative genius’ tag soon became enmeshed with his mental health struggles in the pop memory.
It’s a trope culture has tried to shake off over the years: that of a creative genius battling through psychological pain and anguish to arrive at their artistic brilliance. Be it Vincent van Gogh or Virginia Woolf, the lore surrounding their self-destruction can all too often veer into romantic valourising of mental illness, which robs such creative figures of their human complexity.
However, one’s art is born from the life they’ve lived, so it becomes difficult to extricate Wilson’s gleaming pop heights from his well-reported psychological collapses in The Beach Boys’ turbulent story. As early as age 22, Wilson suffered from nervous breakdowns and derogatory voices in his head, a critical collage of internal putdowns possibly shaped by the alleged abuses of his father, Murray, who would berate and physically hit the young Wilson.
To cope, drink and drugs would take over his life, leading to severe disruptions in The Beach Boys’ output and the eventual help from controversial therapist Dr Eugene Landry.
When Ability Magazine asked Wilson what impassioned him beyond family and music in 2006, the Beach Boy veteran quipped a simple response: “Humour. It lightens my day when people are funny”.
An ability to laugh at oneself has carried much of humanity in all its trials and tribulations, standing as a universal torch in the dark that gets most of us through our lowest ebbs, and Wilson’s no exception. The Beach Boys captain was enjoying something of a solo career peak in the late 1990s, a series of acclaimed shows following 1998’s Imagination culminating in his first-ever solo live record two years later.
Fans would have noticed the new numbers on Live at the Roxy Theatre, including ‘The First Time’ and ‘This Isn’t Love’, as well as a curious excerpt of one 1992 single written in his honour.
Supposedly, Barenaked Ladies frontman Steven Page wrote ‘Brian Wilson’ in his parents’ basement at just 20 years old. Deploying The Beach Boys maestro as an avatar to explore life’s hurdles, Page lyrically weaves Wilson’s chapters of the Landry years, mental health downturns and his later obesity as a parallel to his own uphill battle, leaning into The Beach Boys’ pop oeuvre as the ultimate musical respite. Legend has it that Wilson himself visited the band when cutting 2000’s Maroon, who showed them his take on their namesake Wilson nod and asked them, “Is it cool?”
Sure enough, Wilson would unveil his Barenaked Ladies cover a capella with his live band, opening Live at the Roxy Theatre’s second disc after member announcements, flashing a that piquant humour which fuelled the more eccentric end of The Beach Boys’ leftfield pop in earlier years: “And if you want to find me / I’ll be out in the sandbox / Wondering where the hell all the love has gone / Playing my piano and building / Castles in the sun / And singing ‘fun, fun, fun'”.
