Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road

[Jesse Screed]

I'm still wondering about this man's journey.  Somewhat poignant, but uplifting at the same time.  The late Taylor Hawkins even shares his recollections of Brian Wilson.

The new documentary American Masters – Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road follows Wilson on a drive through Los Angeles with his longtime friend and Rolling Stone editor Jason Fine. With Fine behind the wheel and Wilson selecting the music, they reflect on the formative and creative periods in Wilson’s life as they revisit the places that helped to shape his career.

The filmed road trip provides an intimate look into Wilson’s recollections and is bolstered by memorable concert and studio footage as well as interviews with Wilson’s admirers and those close to him, including Al Jardine (co-founder of The Beach Boys), Don Was (record executive), Bruce Springsteen (musician), Elton John (musician), Nick Jonas (musician and actor), Jim James (My Morning Jacket), Jakob Dylan (Wallflowers), Gustavo Dudamel (conductor and music director) and the late Taylor Hawkins (Foo Fighters), among others.

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/stream-brian-wilson-documentary/21858/

 

 

 

Edited June 18, 2022 by Jesse Screed

[bitflipper]

Synchronicity. Minutes before seeing this thread I received a text message from someone who doesn't normally text me, saying "you gotta see this Brian Wilson doc". I've only caught the preview so far, since I don't watch television, but I understand there is a free app that lets you watch PBS shows. Will check that out.

[Jesse Screed]

4 hours ago, bitflipper said:

Synchronicity.

Believe it or not, you were the first person I thought of who might like this.  You turned me on to Brian Wilson several years ago, in the old forum.

 

4 hours ago, bitflipper said:

I understand there is a free app that lets you watch PBS shows. Will check that out.

FWIW, I was able to watch it on my laptop just by clicking on the link and choosing the watch full program tab. 

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/stream-brian-wilson-documentary/21858/#full_length1

 

Edited June 18, 2022 by Jesse Screed

[bitflipper]

Maybe I just need to be logged in. I'll create an account.

Rather than be frustrated, I watched something else: The Mavericks on Austin City Limits. That there was some good sh*t. Great band. I never got too excited about them in the past, but this show was mostly in Spanish, and strangely not understanding the lyrics makes the music more enjoyable. French Canadian prog does the same for me.

[PhonoBrainer]

I watched the new doc and for me, I don't see as much genius as apparently everybody else on the planet does. I feel like I'm missing something. I am impressed with how he's survived the multitude of tragedies and trauma, and keeps being creative. But when I set just the music aside and examine it on what I think may be it's merits, I dunno. A lot of his compositions are certainly good, but not much of it really sticks the landing. For me at least.

For my next trick, I'll tell you what a hack Shakespeare was from a point of view of no credibility whatsoever.

Edited June 19, 2022 by PhonoBrainer

[Bapu]

We just watched Long Promised Road. We enjoyed it but I have to say when Don Was said "It worked" about Brian's prayer to make a better album than Rubber Soul, well... that old Mr. Don was mistaken.

[bitflipper]

Agreed. But let's not forget that Sgt Pepper was partly inspired by and greatly influenced by Pet Sounds, according to Sir Paul himself.

[craigb]

39 minutes ago, bitflipper said:

Agreed. But let's not forget that Sgt Pepper was partly inspired by and greatly influenced by Pet Sounds, according to Sir Paul himself.

The album or a private fetish? ?

?

[Bapu]

1 hour ago, bitflipper said:

Agreed. But let's not forget that Sgt Pepper was partly inspired by and greatly influenced by Pet Sounds, according to Sir Paul himself.

Agree on that too. Mebee a tie called on that one?

[craigb]

10 minutes ago, Bapu said:

Agree on that too. Mebee a tie called on that one?

Is that a looking-glass tie? 

[Starship Krupa]

On 6/18/2022 at 10:56 PM, PhonoBrainer said:

I watched the new doc and for me, I don't see as much genius as apparently everybody else on the planet does. I feel like I'm missing something. I am impressed with how he's survived the multitude of tragedies and trauma, and keeps being creative. But when I set just the music aside and examine it on what I think may be it's merits, I dunno. A lot of his compositions are certainly good, but not much of it really sticks the landing. For me at least.

I think I get where you're coming from. The thing is, though, with a genre like the teen pop of the 60's, it's hard to assess it taken away from the context of the times, the audiences, even the technology used to create it.

One of the things I try to do when I create music is have it communicate a vibe of place and time. This could be my actual surroundings at the time, or it could be an imaginary. Brian Wilson did and does this really, really well. I don't think that it's a coincidence that the ability to create art that evokes so strongly so often goes along with mental health issues. The more aware of and sensitive to their surroundings a person is, the better they're going to be able to do it.

Brian Wilson's 60's hits with The Beach Boys are the sound of California. Endlessly influential. Like The Beatles, the "genius" included being able to stay on top of the cultural zeitgeist and provide a soundtrack to it. Both acts were made up of people from the generation just prior to the Baby Boomers. Both acts came along and music started to sound different from what had come before.

With acts that are that popular and influential, we take so much about their sound for granted because yes, now it sounds kinda ordinary. It sounds ordinary because we're still so heavily influenced by them today.

With Brian Wilson, and I say this as a lifelong fan of his and his band's work (up until 15 Big Ones, that's where I get off the boat), there is some hype where you have to allow for events in his life. He was so far gone for at least 20 years. I remember going to see I Just Wasn't Made For These Times and crying because I, like many Beach Boys fans, had believed that he would never come back. There was a joke in LA in the late 70's about "I brake for Brian Wilson" bumper stickers because he had a reputation for running around drunk and high in his bathrobe (or less). We're kinda psyched that he's with us at all.

Also, there was that difficult transition that he and The Beach Boys kind of failed to make out of the 60's, artistically and commercially. the mythology says that Brian wanted to explore more complex themes with artier lyrics and was dragged down by others around him with narrower vision, bla bla bla. Well, maybe, somewhat, but he was also a child abuse survivor who could obtain as much of any recreational drug as he wanted. So the band's output of hit singles dried up substantially after Pet Sounds. There are plenty of people who love Beach Boys music who pretty much only know about the early sun 'n' fun and boy-girl material. So I think writers feel the need to educate their readers about how there's more going on under the surface and about the great material on subsequent albums into the 1970's. I was a fan in high school in the late 70's, and it was not cool music to like. So for me, having the world "catch up" to my own personal taste from back then feels good, and this may be similar for a lot of people.

So, I dunno, how do you define "genius" in the pop music world? The guy learned guitar, piano and complex harmony arranging mostly by ear while he was still a teenager. He was switched on and confident enough to manage recording sessions in LA's top studios with LA's top session players while he was still only 21. That seems kinda genius-y to me.

Take a close listen to "California Girls" and "Good Vibrations" and keep in mind the years they were made, how old Wilson was when he and the others made them, and that nothing else before them sounded like that production-wise. No outside arrangers, no outside producers or A&R men or mix engineers (as far as I know).

Edited June 22, 2022 by Starship Krupa

[PhonoBrainer]

14 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

I think I get where you're coming from.

Thanks for that, many good points about the context of the times. I liked the part about that bumper sticker! That's pretty LA.

So a prodigy, then? Whoever figured out the harmonies on the hits certainly knew what they were doing.

I never got into the breadth of the catalog but as the average listener, my fav song of theirs was "God Only Knows" . . .and even as good as those moving parts are, awesome melody over the changes, there's that part that has always struck me as a compositional wtf, the failure to resolve, at 0:42.  

I probably need to check out more of their stuff, to be fair. But as the Beatles continually come up as a point of comparison, really that's a bit of a reach, isn't it?

And as I grew up Californian in the 60s and 70s, are we really so sure that particular slice of zeitgeist is so culturally critical? Let's see, cars, beach, fun, surfing, chicks. Got it. Are there any cultural fruit that hang lower? 

No disrespect to my friends in Australia!

Anyway it's all just opinion without much basis, as I said I'm working off the hits I've heard on the AM radio. Maybe Wolfman Jack should have ventured off-catalog more. 

 

 

 

[craigb]

1 hour ago, PhonoBrainer said:

...I grew up Californian in the 60s and 70s...  Let's see, cars, beach, fun, surfing, chicks. Got it.

 

...Maybe Wolfman Jack should have ventured off-catalog more. 

That was me as well!  It was a great time to be there (San Diego area for me until moving up to Orange County in the late 80's).  That said, I'm sooo glad to have gotten out of there before mass-stupidity hit!

 

Loved the Wolfman Jack comment too.  Ok, I'm off to reminisce for a while... ?

[Starship Krupa]

4 hours ago, PhonoBrainer said:

And as I grew up Californian in the 60s and 70s, are we really so sure that particular slice of zeitgeist is so culturally critical?

Well, IMO the documentary really drives this point home in the interviews with the musicians who, unlike you and Craig and I, aren't from California. I'm thinking of Bruce and Elton here.

Springsteen created anthems that captured the cultural zeitgeist of New Jersey. I had never been to New Jersey when Born To Run came out, but it resonated with me. A taste of another world. And it occurred to me while listening to him speak about The Beach Boys that maybe he decided to do for his childhood home what Brian (and the lyricists he worked with) had done for Southern California.

I was born in San Diego and spent my childhood in Los Angeles until my family moved away in the early 70's. We moved to Mississippi. I pined like crazy for Los Angeles throughout my adolescence, which was when I really got into The Beach Boys. They were a lifeline to me during my exile.

So it wasn't so culturally critical to me while I was actually living in Southern California, but it sure was after I left.

Another thing: one of my favorite painters is Norman Rockwell, who is often dismissed as a kitsch artist. However, I watched a PBS documentary on his life which touched on his wife's struggles with mental illness/alcoholism. Those quaint New England village scenes? Some of that came from the fact that the family moved to Stockbridge, MA to be near the Austen Riggs psychiatric center. This was so that she could be an outpatient there instead of an inpatient. And it clicked for me: yes, there's an underlying wistfulness in his paintings. He was painting life as he wanted it to be, not as it actually was for him.

Brian's work was similar: he never had the idyllic California adolescence depicted in the early music. Rather he grew up with a horribly abusive father, who beat him so badly that it ruined his hearing in one ear. Whacked him upside the head with a 2x4. So there's a wistfulness and longing buried in the music (which he wrote, usually leaving the lyrics to others). When exiled from CA, that wistfulness started to resonate hard with me. Not for going into deeply here, but at the time, I was having my own troubles with alcoholic/rageoholic parents.

And I'm in no way suggesting that it's necessary to know these things about these people to appreciate their work. The opposite, actually. It just answered the question for me why this stuff that appeared as such fluff on the surface resonated so much. I mean, my taste in music includes things like Steve Roach, Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, The Stooges, and The Dead Kennedys. That stuff is a little easier to understand why I would like it: it's dark and angsty.

Yada yada, anyway, it's also my opinion that with great art, it's built in that it's not going to connect with everyone. It won't because how can anything that resonates so much resonate with everyone? My own examples of music that a lot of people whose tastes I respect love and that I just don't care for are The Jesus and Mary Chain and Captain Beefheart. Try as I might. But isn't that as it should be? Art communicates and evokes emotions. Let me tell you that especially among my musician friends, it's blasphemous to admit that I don't just love the snot out of JAMC and Captain Beefheart. They are sure that there's something in it that I just haven't gotten yet, but maybe I am getting it and just can't relate to the emotions being conveyed. Listening to anything Frank Zappa did after the 60's, for me it's like being stuck at a party with some arrogant dick who's sure he's smarter than everyone else in the room and wants to let the world know. And sure enough, in interviews and recollections, he comes off as an arrogant dick who's sure he's smarter than everyone else in the room.

I can blow hot air all day long about how great The Beach Boys music is to me, and maybe something I say will cause you to reconsider and find something in it, but also maybe you do get it and it just isn't for you. Maybe I can ease confusion about why people go on about it.

But I can certainly understand if it sounds like a lot of superficial fluff and peddles a California fantasy world that's too obviously lovable.

[craigb]

Reminds me of this: