Music genius – Brian Wilson and the wind

Once in one of his songs, Brian Wilson described himself as “a leaf on a windy day” that is whirled through the air – “Until i die”. That was in 1971 and he believed that it doesn’t take long. His gardener should take out a grave, he said. You had to imagine the singer, composer and producer of Beach Boys as an unfortunate genius who only lived from coffee, sugar and cigarettes – heavily overweight in his pajamas in his bed, which he hardly dared to leave. More or less over decades, because he wanted to invent a new music, which he only heard in his head: a symphony for teenagers and the dear God at once, called “smile”.

At the end of 1966 he started. The single “Good Vibrations” appeared, the production cost $ 50,000 and lasted six months, it is the most expensive single of all time. Three and a half minutes, made from 90 hours of sound material. No comparison with the surf singles that the Beach Boys made famous in the early 1960s and the Wilson had to come up with in the chord. Like his model Phil Spector, Brian Wilson was one of the first musicians to understand the studio as a musical instrument. And albums as a separate art form: At the beginning of 1966 he created the masterpiece “Pet Sounds”, which impressed the Beatles so that it was in 1967. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club band «. “Smile” should be the ultimate answer to that, but it only appeared in 2004. It all took forever. It was only at the end of the 1980s that Wilson was able to move halfway again. The advice of his psychiatrist Eugene Landy was important: “If you hear voices in your head, just change the transmitter, as on the radio”.

The family was to blame. Brian Wilson was teased, beaten, despised. First of his monstrous father, then from his cousins, less of his brothers with whom he formed the beach Boys, but also from his first wife.

Brian Wilson survived all of her. A peaceful man who at some point everyone was good and – like Sean Lennon – called him the “American Mozart”. He died last Wednesday, nine days before his 83rd birthday. The wind carried him for a long time.