The relationship between Everyday Zen, Brian Wilson, and the Beach Boys
By Rob Roman
Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys and Zen? What are you talking about? Those guys were all drugged out, weren’t they? In 1983 during the Ronald Reagan Administration, they were uninvited to the 4th of July party on the mall in DC, weren’t they? What does any of this have to do with Everyday Zen?
Okay, Okay, hold on, I’m getting to that….
You know all the major hits like Surfin’ Safari, Little Deuce Coupe, Don’t Worry Baby, California Girls, Help Me Rhonda, Surfin’ USA, Wendy, I Get Around, Fun Fun Fun, etc.
Brian Wilson even wrote Surf City, which gave Jan and Dean a number one hit way before the Beach Boys got a #1 hit, which made his dad literally hit the roof with anger. Brian went on defiantly to collaborate with Jan and Dean on some dozen other songs anyway. He liked Jan and Dean and that was that.
Well, yeah, mostly the “druggies” were Brian Wilson and his brother, drummer Dennis Wilson (Died in December 1983). Brian Wilson stopped touring with the band in the end of 1964, to concentrate on writing, composing and studio work, so his drug use did not affect the performances. Yet his lack of contact with his closest people prevented any interventions.
James Watt, on a “mission from God” and as Secretary of the Interior decided to boot the Beach Boys out of the Fourth of July Celebration on the Mall, and he replaced them with God’s choice: Wayne Newton and the US Army Band.
He could do this because he was Secretary of the Interior and that includes being in charge of the parties.
James Watt was Secretary of the Interior under President Ronald Reagan. He was a bit of a j*rk. His goal was to level the environment because trees, as we all know, make carbon dioxide and he was the man who, by God, was gonna stop Rock-N-Roll.
This Dr. Seuss character thought God wanted him to wreck the Environment and Stop Rock-N-Roll. He would get those damm Beach Boys out of the 4th of July Party, by God, because God wanted Wayne Newton and the Army band.
There would only be “clean living”, “decent” Americans, no “bad elements” were gonna come in there to listen to those Satanic Beach Boys, by God.
As for James Watt – Smokey the Bear don’t like him. Bambi hated his stinking guts.
LOL!
Some people had James Watt’s number even before he became Secretary of the Interior.
Even the Ayatollah of Rock-N-Rolla don’t like this dude very much.
It was a strange dynamic between Brian and his father, Murry. Murry Wilson was a musician and a record producer. His love of music greatly influenced Brian, who was the oldest of the brothers. Brian showed musical talent from a very young age. Murry was very tough and demanding, and all the brothers agree without him, they would never have done all the work necessary to make it big in the music business. Their father also got them noticed, recorded and played in their first tracks.
Murry Wilson was a strict disciplinarian and Brian claims he hit him in the head with a two by four so hard it made him permanently deaf in his right ear. When he became overbearing in the recording studio, Brian fired him as Manager of the Beach Boys. Murry retaliated later by selling the rights to all of the Beach Boys hit songs in 1969 for $700,000. These rights are worth over $34 Million today.
Summer in Paradise – An excellent later day Beach Boys tune about the ENVIRONMENT
Brian was obsessed in high school and earlier with a group called the Four Freshman. I listened to them, and I don’t get it at all. But this group had strong vocal arrangements, like a barbershop quartet, with one guy singing falsetto, another guy singing alto, and a baritone and a bass. They also played a few instruments. This would become the structure of nearly every Beach Boys hit, almost all songs were stand alone voice songs. The instruments really were adding texture and emphasis.
Update: I listened again to the Four Freshman, and i totally get it now. They are really amazing.
Brian learned to sing the really high registers that the four Freshman used in their vocal arrangements. Carl, the youngest of the three sons, played guitar well and also had a fantastic voice. Dennis, the middle son, also had a great voice. Dennis learned to play the drums. Then older cousin Mike Love, who used to sing with the Wilsons, became the lead singer with his “everyman” voice. Al Jardine, a neighbor who also had a good voice and played guitar at a young age, also joined the group.
So generally all songs would be based on the vocal harmonies and could stand alone as A Capella arrangements. The instrumental music garnished the vocals. Dennis Wilson was the only Beach Boy who actually surfed. He raced cars and boated. Writing songs about the beach life, surfing, racing cars, hanging out around town, and chasing beach girls became the theme of most Beach Boys songs.
Mixing vocals comparable to an angelic choir with cutting edge R&B instrumentals and vary earthy lyrics were the combined force of the Beach Boys. This was the winning combination that brought them to almost instant stardom and would carry them on a wave of fame lasting the rest of their lives. It didn’t hurt to have a Dad in the record business. This probably sped things up, but they would have gotten there anyways, based on all their talent.
Listen to this incredible harmonizing. Puts the Four Freshman to shame, in my opinion.
When they first started playing, Brian Wilson was 19, Dennis Wilson was 16, Carl Wilson was 13 and still in High School, Al Jardine was 19 and Mike Love was 20. Brian, Mike and Al had played together in High School and had been in some talent shows. Surfing and Surfing Safari were their first 2 hits. I Get Around was the first of 4 number one hits. So there were three brothers, a cousin, and a guy down the street, who were mostly harmonizing, with very little instrumentation, singing songs about surfing racing and girls. Now, look at what Wikipedia says about the Beach Boys:
“The Beach Boys are regarded as the most iconic American band and one of the most critically acclaimed, commercially successful, and widely influential bands of all time, while All Music stated that their “unerring ability… made them America’s first, best rock band.”
“The group had over eighty songs chart worldwide, thirty-six of them US Top 40 hits (the most by an American rock band), four reaching number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.”
“The Beach Boys have sold in excess of 100 million records worldwide, making them one of the world’s best-selling bands of all time and are listed at number 12 on Rolling Stone magazine’s 2004 list of the “100 Greatest Artists of All Time.”” – Wikipedia
It is believed they actually sold
more than 300 million records.
How is this possible? Some say it is from everyday Zen.
In other words, really, unknowingly, Zen principles were involved. There’s something in the songs that just grabs you. There’s a goodness, as well as a coolness, to the music of the Beach Boys. In ’61 to ’64, the Beach Boys were just enjoying their new found fame and having fun touring and playing while promoting their albums. But as early as 1964, Brian left the touring to go home and produce in the studio. His goal was to beat the hits produced by Phil Spector and even the Beatles. That was a really lofty goal at that time. This was the musical genius of Brian Wilson.
Early in the Beach Boys career, Brian Wilson toured with the band, until 1964.
Phil Spector was the guy who invented the “Wall of Sound” and produced all these major hits:
Be My Baby – the Ronettes,
Da Doo Ron Ron – the Crystals,
You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling – the Righteous Brothers,
Then He Kissed Me – The Crystals,
To Know Him Is to Love Him – the Teddy Bears,
Spanish Harlem – Ben E. King, and
River Deep Mountain High – Ike and Tina Turner,
and many more.
Here is a good example of what Brian Wilson was up against if he wanted a #1 Hit on the Billboard charts.
The Beatles were at the front of the British Invasion. At that time, these albums were chock full of hit records:
Please Please Me (1963), With the Beatles (1963), A Hard Day’s Night (1964), Beatles for Sale (1964)
And here was Brian Wilson, 22 years old, saying he was going to beat all these guys by getting a bigger hit and a better album.
The incredible group harmonies of the Beach Boys with Rythym and blues instrumentals and the subject matter of the beach and surfing lifestyle could not be beat. But by, 1964, Brian Wilson was “all surfed out” and looking for new materials and themes.
Brian Wilson thought Phil Spector was bugging his house. Well, maybe he was…
The many faces of Phil Spector
Murry Wilson just could not take the fact that it was his son’s musical gifts, not Murry’s business savvy, or music know how that was lifting the Beach Boys into super stardom and the riches and fame that went with it. Yet, Brian’s true motivation was to show that Rock Music didn’t have to be evil. Rock music should be for bringing good into the world. He wanted his music to lift people’s spirits and transport them to the world that “should be”. That’s what Pet Sounds was all about, and Brian Wilson certainly delivered on all of that.
Look at the lyrics from Good vibrations:
“I, I love the colorful clothes she wears
And the way the sunlight plays upon her hair
I hear the sound of a gentle word
On the wind that lifts her perfume through the air”
“Close my eyes
She’s somehow closer now
Softly smile, I know she must be kind
When I look in her eyes
She goes with me to a blossom world”
“I don’t know where but she sends me there”
and Wouldn’t It Be Nice:
“Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older
Then we wouldn’t have to wait so long
And wouldn’t it be nice to live together
In the kind of world where we belong”
“Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true
Baby then there wouldn’t be a single thing we couldn’t do
We could be married
And then we’d be happy
Wouldn’t it be nice”
And how about this?
This is Carl Wilson’s amazing voice in a spectacular version of I Can Hear Music.
After driving the record company crazy with a bank breaking budget and almost a year of waiting, this is what Brian Wilson came up with.
Baaaaaaaaaah!
The Pet Sounds album cover
Brian Wilson was the ultimate optimist. He wanted to do far more than bring good into the world through music.
He wanted music to serve as proof of the existence of God.
There have been many times when Brian Wilson talked about “hearing voices in his head”. He also heard violent and mean voices in his head. At the same time, Brian could also hear every note of 64 instruments playing in his head, but he did not attribute this to the same source as the “voices”.
Brian pissed off his neighbors by painting his Mansion at 10452 Bellagio Rd
in Los Angeles, California, a Deep Purple. 🙂
At times, entire melodies came through in Brian’s head, but he explained that this was not from the same source as the “voices” he heard. The first (Sweet Music) he attributed to God and the second (Noise) he attributed to Satan, for want of a better term. He explained that when he heard this music, it came straight out of the soul, straight out of love, and straight from God.
So, when Brian was with his love, and was happy, he no longer heard the voices. Instead, he could “hear music, sweet, sweet music”.
I first became aware that there was more to the Beach Boys than meets the eye when I was listening to all these surfing, beach girls, and racing songs, and then out comes this song about introversion, fear, and isolation called In My Room:
There’s a world where I can go and tell my secrets to
In my room, in my room
In this world I lock out all my worries and my fears
In my room, in my room
Do my dreaming and my scheming
Lie awake and pray
Do my crying and my sighing
Laugh at yesterday
Now it’s dark and I’m alone
But I won’t be afraid
In my room, in my room
In my room, in my room
In my room, in my room – IN My Room by The Beach Boys
That’s pure Brian Wilson.
Brian Wilson going “Incognito”?
There was also another Ballad called “Warmth of the sun.” Very bluesy and very hopeful. A person who lost a love finding solace in the warmth of the sun, It’s a warmth that never ends. In fact, the singer is the warmth of the sun. So this band had depth and a range of feelings that makes their music timeless. It’s all very spiritual, and Brian found the vocal arrangements to be very spiritual as well.
Okay, so why are you talking about Zen when Brian did a LOT of drugs? Brian had problems with his father, who was very strict and not very loving. There was physical abuse in the home and terrific psychological abuse. Brian may also have been wanting to expand his consciousness in order to write new and better music. Instead of bringing the music maker in his soul closer, I think he pushed it further away. Brian finally ended up taking his drug use to such an extreme that he literally destroyed his mind. He sank into a huge depression and ended up staying in bed for three years.
Brian could be seen going to the store in his bathrobe, etc. Brian became another Howard Hughes, locked away in his room.
Brian Wilson (front left) next to Al Jardine, and Mike Love is in the back on the right
Zen in everyday living is really referring to the music that did come to Brian and came into the world through Brian and the mixture of celestial voices and earthy lyrics along with modern Rhythm and Blues arrangements that was the Beach Boys.
This is the cooperation of the ordinary, everyday life or the Relative – and the Celestial and Godly, or the Absolute.
Brian Wilson also said that other than a month of accordion lessons, he was entirely self taught. Self taught on the piano, on the guitar, and in music generally.
Yet at the age of 24, studio musicians who had worked on the best pieces and for the best producers for decades were amazed at Brian’s musical and composing talents.
After Brian Wilson completed the Pet Sounds Album, he was severely disappointed that it didn’t sell as well as he hoped it would. Brian went into a deep depression and was very upset.
After Pet Sounds, the Beach Boys were #1 in the UK, even beating out the Beatles on their own home turf.
What Brian didn’t know was that the greatest composers, musicians and producers in the music business and in the world, including Paul McCartney, were listening to this album and saying it was the best thing they had ever heard. Paul McCartney even said that “God Only Knows” was the most beautiful love song ever. Good Vibrations was thought to be one of the best songs ever written and produced. Beach Boy Al Jardine said that Good Vibrations was before its time then and might even be before its time today. Pet Sounds today is considered to be one of the greatest albums of all time.
The iconic rendition of Good Vibrations
This kind of communion with the eternal cannot be assisted by drugs without some very adverse effects that go along with it. But if you have faith that this connection is there inside you, and has always been, you can find it if you still the mind and create room for it to materialize, to surface and grow, you can find the eternal in ordinary life. “Ordinary life fits the absolute like a box and its lid” – they say in the Zen world. They also say – “Cultivate the Empty Field”.
A more recent Beach Boys performance
This kind of magic and power really is inside all of us, we just need to know how to access it. Zen Meditation is a way to access it. Cousin Mike Love of the Beach Boys and also, Al Jardine are long time students of TM (Transcendental Meditation). Like the Beatles, who went to India to learn from the Maharishi, the Beach Boys also made that journey. But you don’t have to go to India to find peace of mind and a stillness that allows creativity to happen, you can find it right where you sit.
You don’t reach creative powers by trying to reach creative powers, however. You reach it by reaching that stillness, That stillness that creativity grows from and passes through – and it all starts by quietly sitting and breathing in and out,
in and out.
This video of Brian Wilson doing Good Vibrations is really worth listening to
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