In July 1964, the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart was occupied by two similar songs. Both were pop rock numbers that grew out of the doo wop tradition, built around strong harmonies. Both were performed by well-established early ‘60s groups.
For the first two weeks of the month, the Beach Boys’ “I Get Around” was at the top. The second half of the month saw The Four Seasons’ “Rag Doll” take over at number one.
But the musical landscape was in the middle of massive upheaval brought about by the British invasion. The Four Seasons would remain a solid hitmaking outfit over the remainder of the decade, putting six more songs into the Billboard top ten. They would not see the number one spot again until the ‘60s were a distant memory.
What did the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson mean to rock music in the 1960s?
The Beach Boys would fly higher. Throughout the rest of the 1960s, they would score eight more top ten hits, plus another five in the top twenty. They would hit number one with songs in both 1965 and 1966.
Why did the Beach Boys become the most significant American band of the 1960s while the Four Seasons began to fade? The answer lies in one name.
Brian Wilson, who died this week at age 82, was the oldest of three brothers who formed the Beach Boys in the early ‘60s. He was also the group’s primary songwriter, one of its lead vocalists, and its bass player in the early days. But he was so much more.
Wilson was the creative force behind the Beach Boys’ instantly recognizable sound – a sound that would help build rock and roll into a mature art form. Both of his brothers, Carl and Dennis, and his cousin, Mike Love, would make major contributions to that sound, but everyone recognized Brian as the visionary.
In an era when precious few performers produced their own albums, 21-year-old Brian began producing the band’s records from their third studio release, Surfer Girl, in 1963. The Beatles did not produce themselves. Nor did Bob Dylan, or the Rolling Stones, or the Velvet Underground, or the Doors.
Frankie Valli, lead singer of the Four Seasons, did not write or produce any of the group’s hits. That was handled by others. Does that explain why The Four Seasons were not able to maintain their sensational early ‘60s success as the musical landscape shifted through the decade? Maybe.
It is probably more accurate to say that the Beach Boys continued to soar because they had a writer and producer who had an unquenchable passion for taking pop rock to new and thrilling places.
Brian Wilson was layering the jazzy vocal harmonies he loved in the Four Freshmen atop a bed of guitar-based rock that came directly from Chuck Berry. It was there on the very first track of their very first album. He wrote “Surfin’ Safari” with Mike Love and arranged the harmonies that supported Love’s lead vocals. The song cracked the top 20.
A year later, he would borrow even more directly from Chuck Berry for “Surfin’ U.S.A.” and make it into the top ten. Wilson was providing the soundtrack for the American teen dream of beaches and bikinis, fast cars, and soaking up the SoCal sun.
The history of the band suggests that if Love had taken control of the band, that’s exactly what the Beach Boys would have continued to do, and had that been the case, they almost certainly would have gone the way of the Four Seasons.
Brian Wilson had other ideas. He watched the way Dylan and the Beatles were inspiring each other to try newer forms of music. He heard how producer Phil Spector was building his walls of sound for bands like the Ronettes and the Righteous Brothers. Wilson didn’t want to keep up with those titans. He wanted to surpass them.
So in 1966, Brian Wilson left his indelible mark on rock music. The album Pet Sounds. The single “Good Vibrations.” Songwriting and studio wizardry that had never been seen to that point and which has rarely been equaled since.
His obsessions took their toll. Wilson was a perfectionist who struggled under the bright lights of performance. He had stopped touring with the band a few years in so that he could concentrate on writing and working in the studio. That intense passion, coupled with a fragile psyche and ongoing battles with Love and an emotionally abusive father, led to serious mental health problems.
Wilson had a vision for another album that would surpass Pet Sounds, but the struggles he faced prevented him from realizing his vision for many years. The album was to be called Smile, but Wilson simply could not complete it. The rest of the band put out a stripped-down version called Smiley Smile in 1967.
But Wilson rebounded very well with Wild Honey, a somewhat less ambitious blend of R&B and pop-rock that came out at the end of ’67. From that point forward, Brian took a step back from both writing and producing, allowing other members of the band to take leadership roles. Eventually, Brian would step away from the band entirely.
But his ability to create spectacular music didn’t disappear. After getting treatment for his mental health issues, Brian released several intriguing, if uneven, solo albums and eventually completed his version of Smile in 2004.
He followed that up with a series of eclectic albums which yielded plenty of gems. He collaborated frequently with Van Dyke Parks on That Lucky Old Sun in 2008, followed by two albums: one featuring George Gershwin songs and another comprising songs from Disney. None of these albums were even close to the cutting edge of pop the way his output in the ‘60s had been, but they remain wonderful listens.
His last major album came out ten years ago. No Pier Pressure saw him back in fine form, performing original material with the likes of Kacey Musgraves and fun’s Nate Ruess. He had also reunited with the surviving members of the Beach Boys by this point and sang several songs with his longtime bandmate Al Jardine.
Brian survived both of his younger brothers. Dennis died in 1983, Carl in 1998. It seems oddly fitting that Brian passed away the same week as Sylvester Stewart, AKA Sly Stone. The two men were born within a year of each other and came of age in California at the birth of rock & roll.
Both became songwriters, band leaders, and visionary producers who pushed American music to wondrous heights in the 1960s.
Brian Wilson’s densely melodic music and heavenly vocal harmonies have impacted musicians from early in the rock and roll era, and he figures to remain an influence well beyond his death.
Dylan said Wilson “made all his records with four tracks, but you couldn’t make his records if you had a hundred tracks today.”
Fast forward about half a century. Janelle Monáe said nobody could sing harmony on her 2018 album Dirty Computer other than Brian Wilson.
Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon and Bruce Springsteen … they all considered him a giant. Neil Young compared him to Mozart. Jimmy Buffett called him a hero. Linda Ronstadt claimed Wilson had no equal in pop music. Leonard Bernstein, Quincy Jones, Philip Glass … the list goes on and on and is not merely confined to pop music.
From Iggy Pop and Henry Rollins to Questlove and Bruno Mars, I don’t think there is a single musician from the rock era who is considered a genius by his peers more than Brian Wilson.
I’ll let U2’s Bono have the final word today: “The genius of his music is the joy that’s in it. I know that Brian believes in angels. I do too. But you only have to listen to the string arrangement on 'God Only Knows for fact and proof of angels."