Why Dennis Wilson was “dumbfounded” by his brother Brian: “He is a master”
Not every great band is meant to work like a democracy. For every act where it feels like everyone should get a fair say in how a song is supposed to go, there are always going to be artists that act as an overseer of the group while the rest of the band just add their sonic spice on top of everything else. While Dennis Wilson had the potential to write great songs with his brothers in The Beach Boys, he was shell-shocked that Brian Wilson had all that talent in just one person.
Granted, if you looked at The Beach Boys’ track record in the beginning, you wouldn’t necessarily see future classics in the making. A song like ‘Surfin’ certainly helped get the ball rolling, but compared to what they would do later on songs like ‘Good Vibrations’, this feels like the garage rock version of what they were supposed to be doing.
Once Brian got to learn about the mechanics of the studio, he turned into the rock and roll version of Mozart on half the band’s greatest hits. Even though Mike Love slapped his name on a few songs and his brothers Carl and Dennis could write songs as well, the knowledge of harmony was never as good with Brian out front.
In fact, Pet Sounds feels more like a Brian Wilson solo project that just happens to have the rest of the band backing him up. He may have been diplomatic when bestowing vocal duties on everyone in the group, but no one else in the band was going to be able to come up with the Bach chorale-style vocals in the middle of ‘God Only Knows’.
Whereas Love tried his best to match Brian, Dennis admitted he was never going to get anywhere close to his brother, saying, “He is a master, musically. I am dumbfounded at him. I am in awe of him. When you sing on something like ‘In My Room’ and then sit back and listen to what he’s done, not just with my part, but with the song… then you realise. I’m devoting my life to Brian on a musical level, and the rest of the group all feel the same way. When Brian plays something for us, we just gape. It gets very emotional.”
When you look at what many of his songs are about, though, that vulnerability might go hand in hand with what makes the songs work. ‘You Still Believe In Me’ might sound immaculate, but hearing Wilson’s voice soar on the line ‘I wanna cry’ is still one of the most beautiful vocal runs in rock music. It sounds like it’s coming from a man in pain, but it’s still one of the most romantic songs they ever wrote.
Outside of expressing his own feelings, Brian was also an expert arranger when it came time to fit every one of the band members into the song. While Brian could produce almost every note with his own voice if he wanted to, he knew that there was some familial magic that came from him and his brothers harmonising together, especially when they all sang the tighter harmonies on ‘California Girls’. Dennis could gawk in amazement at everything that Brian could do, but his voice was just as important to their sound as anyone else’s.
