2 w. ago ‘His music documented an America that no longer exists’: Brian Wilson’s brilliance, by key collaborator Van Dyke Parks

Wilson bought Parks a Volvo when he’d barely met him – and together they brought sublime poetry to pop. He remembers the making of Smile, Surf’s Up and moreIt was the Beatles’ publicist Derek Taylor – who I met backstage at their first concert at the Hollywood Bowl – who first declared “Brian Wilson is a genius” as part of a [1966] publicity campaign. I knew that word would come back to haunt Brian and it did: from then on he was competing in a world of heightened expectations, but he did that very bravely all his life. He was basically forever competing against a previous version of himself, but as the great American beat poet Lewis MacAdams said: “If it’s not impossible, I’m not interested.” As for lyrics, you can’t beat “I’m a cork on the ocean” [in Til I Die] for a redux of thought from a Beach Boy. I will call that genius and I think the word does apply to Brian.He had so many gifts. One of them was mutual empowerment. He brought out the best in everyone around him. In the stud...

Culture

3 w. ago Beach Boys genius Brian Wilson hailed as a 'true giant' by music legends

Beatles star Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Elton John and Bob Dylan were among the famous faces paying tribute to Beach Boys frontman Brian Wilson following his death at the age of 82

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3 w. ago Elton John hails Brian Wilson as the 'biggest influence on my songwriting ever' as tributes to Beach Boys genius pour in

Posting on Instagram, Sir Elton said Wilson was ‘always so kind to me’ and ‘the biggest influence on my songwriting ever’

Politics

3 w. ago The man who invented the Sound of Summer: He was the genius behind The Beach Boys, but his abusive father drove him to years of ruinous drug addiction

From his brutal childhood - beaten so badly by his monstrous father that he was deaf in one ear - to his decades of paranoid, drug-addled seclusion, he fought a constant battle against the world.

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3 w. ago Whether wistful or euphoric, Brian Wilson made pop’s most overwhelmingly beautiful music

He was the Beach Boys’ resident genius, seeping melancholy into even peppy teenybopper hits. Beyond all the myths about his life, that brilliance is still intoxicatingBrian Wilson, visionary creative spirit for the Beach Boys, dies aged 82Brian Wilson: a life in picturesIt’s fair to say that no one who bought the Beach Boys debut single in 1961 would have realised they were in the presence of genius. Surfin’ sounded exactly like what it was: one of dozens of cheap, hastily-recorded singles released on a tiny independent label to cash in on the burgeoning craze for surf music, albeit a regionally-successful example of type. You might easily have expected to never hear of the band who made it again.But the 19-year-old Brian Wilson was determined – he was the taskmaster that had relentlessly drilled his unwilling younger brothers Carl and Dennis into learning to harmonise – and a quick learner. The leap in quality between Surfin’ and its 1962 follow-up Surfin’ Safari was striking. The ...

Politics

3 w. ago AP PHOTOS: Beach Boys visionary leader and summer's poet laureate Brian Wilson

Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys’ visionary and fragile leader whose genius for melody, arrangements and wide-eyed self-expression inspired “Good Vibrations,” “California Girls” and other summertime anthems and made him one of the world’s most influential recording artists, has died at 82.

Politics

3 w. ago Brian Wilson dead aged 82: Tributes paid to legendary Beach Boys singer and songwriting genius

‘We are at a loss for words right now’, his family said as they announced the death of the hugely influential musical star

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