In the Presence of a Giant

I may not always love you
But long as there are stars above you
You never need to doubt it
I’ll make you so sure about it
God only knows what I’d be without you

The Beach Boys, 1966.

I love music. Live it, breathe it. Like a courtship, I take days off from it, keeping it fresh and invigorating. Like a new love, I never stop unearthing new fantastic elements. Like a longtime love, the passion beneath never abates, however ragged, shopworn or overly familiar the elements may appear to be.

One of my great loves is The Beach Boys, who were the most popular American rock band during the Beatles’ halcyon days. Singer Jackson Browne once said that to be hip and popular at a certain time neccessitates a pendulum swing into extreme uncoolness at another, and The Beach Boys certainly suffered for their popularity.

1964. From left: Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine and Brian Wilson.

About 15 years ago, the pendulum swung back. Suddenly The Beach Boys became textbook cool. They weren’t cracking the charts or the MTV playlists, but the whispers about founder Brian Wilson’s unmatched genius soon became an insistent chatter.

For his part, Wilson spent about a quarter century in a bewildered, schizophrenic haze, on a rollercoaster ride of medication (self-administered and otherwise), psychiatric observation and suicide watches. He balloned to 320 lbs. He didn’t bathe for months at a time. He heard voices in his head. He lost his wife and daughters to divorce and disarray. He lost his way.

Brian Wilson co-founded The Beach Boys 47 years ago and changed the course of popular music.

It wasn’t a tectonic plate shift like Elvis’s ascent or The Beatles’ cultural omnipresence that marked The Beach Boys’ best music. The strength and beauty that marked their oeuvre was best explained in a musicologist’s vernacular, although not for the technical terms employed when discussing this brilliantly complex music, but rather for the palpable sense of awe spilling forth from the most learned scribes. It’s hard to sound enraptured when using phrases like:

“The ear wants to hear the music in the key of A, and is just starting to feel that it’s okay to dismiss the horn note, but then the first vocal phrase arrives on a D chord, in second inversion, leading us to forget about A as a possible home key.”

And yet so many do. The writing or verbal commentary takes on a sort of blissful hue when discussing Wilson’s work. Music is, of course, at its best when it’s felt and absorbed naturally. I mean, it just flows through you. You could no more easily explain music’s irresistible pull to a non-convert than you could quantum physics to a toddler. The potential for understanding is there…but if they don’t get it, they don’t get it.

July 8, 2008. Brian Wilson at Fallsview Casino, Niagara Falls. Photo © Len Lumbers, 2008.

Last week I trekked down the QEW to Niagara Falls’ Fallsview Casino to watch Brian Wilson in concert. For nigh on a decade, Wilson has been a touring trooper, laying waste to the myth that he’d never be able to resume a life of creativity, or even activity. He has played music no observer ever thought they’d hear in concert ever since his retreat from workaday life in the late-1960s. He “completed” the legendary, abandoned SMiLE album in 2004, and toured it. He won a Grammy Award for that one.

Last week, I watched him rip through two dozen astoundingly well-crafted pop songs with the smallest touring band he’s used yet. There was no big event or CD to promote. He just doesn’t seem to want to stop now that he’s restarted. At 66, he’s even recorded a new album of typically ambitious baroque, harmony-drenched pop.

Wilson still sings acceptably well, in good pitch but without much intonation. He doesn’t play an instrument any longer, and leans against a stool for most of the performance. He cuts a curious figure, the centre of attention for an audience that is clearly besotted with his work, and himself. We are in the presence of a giant, they seem to be saying, as they stand and applaud wildly after every song, bathing the performer in a glow of love that has to be seen to be believed. I’ve seen him in concert four times since 2000 and it’s always this way.

I guess if there was something I’d like to share with the reader, it would be to encourage them to explore their curiosity about the artists that shaped the sphere in which they performed. Buy some used CDs. Watch some old clips on youtube. Buy a concert ticket. Tony Bennett, Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, Al Green and The Who are just a sampling of the type of artistry approaching extinction. These were the giants that shaped the world we knew. Catch one while you still can.