Once again, as vigilant and observant as I fancy myself, I had not prepared for this day to come, really ever.
I was too young to appreciate you when you first entered my life, but then the thing that entered my life that I associated with you was Pet Sounds, which I tolerated because there was obviously something important about you. Mind you, I wasn’t even a Beatles fan yet.
After that happened, you made a lot more sense—not only Pet Sounds, but everything that preceded it, and everything that succeeded it too. Your relationship to your peers, by blood or industry, took on context. You had so many advantages, particularly over your friendly rivals (rival friends?) across the Atlantic; and when one such advantage was a uniquely evolved ear for melody, harmony, and chord progression, it got a lot harder for even the similarly able to keep pace.
You were great at instrumental bridges. Then you became great at vocal bridges. That, I think, must have been an especially bitter pill for the Middle Eight Folk to swallow.
But you acknowledged your debts to them in turn. And they loved you regardless, because you won everyone over with your talent. They recognized that where you went was where pop music simply had to go. Not only pop music, but pop production. Your obsessive tendencies paid off in charts and arrangements that evoked Phil Spector and Nelson Riddle in equal measure. Even the Wrecking Crew, whom it must have taken a lot to surprise, didn’t know the extent of what they were signing on to by going into the studio with you.
Your perspective has lent shape to everything. On my way home from work earlier today, before it occurred to me that even a Wednesday just shy of your birthday was susceptible to anything, I was listening to Rumours, and I thought, man, it must drive Lindsey crazy how many versions of albums are out there today. Thanks to streaming, you can access just about any mix of any song. This mix put his voice so close it was as if I were in the room with him; I could hear the ragged edges, could hear him trying to tamp down the emotion at points before it overcame him. I was like, my God, had he glimpsed the future of casual listening, he would never have left the studio, the thing would never have seen the light of day, and maybe his bandmates would have killed him, as if they would have needed another reason. And that’s you. The perfectionist-producer mindset has you all over it. Every artist who turns out music at breakneck speed and who vanishes for years at a time and who leaves enough takes in the vault to fill several more releases is following in your footsteps. And funneling the emotion into the work…don’t get me started.
The decision to make you and Pet Sounds the focus of the podcast was due as much to circumstance as to organized passion. I had just watched Love & Mercy for the first time and it had dawned on me how well I’d learned the album, note for note, over the decade and a half since I had been introduced. We were in lockdown, I finally had the means to jump into a medium I’d spent a few years getting to know, and there wasn’t much more thought involved. My co-host, like the Wrecking Crew, may have gotten more than he bargained for. I arguably did as well. I listened to enough sessions to drive me to tears and to settle any doubt in my mind as to the finest pop album ever made. And what was most important about it was that it wasn’t only you, just as the project it inspired wasn’t only me. It took the village.
Spending too many words on this farewell will only highlight how inadequate they are. I don’t want to live in a world that you’ve left—that seems the definition of inadequacy—but someone whose work is so alive and integral to life here can never truly leave. Your music’s roots are too deep by now. Anyway, why am I giving it roots, as if it were formed in earth, when I should be comparing it to the ocean?
In memoriam Brian Wilson, 20 June 1942-11 June 2025, reunited at last with your brothers and with Melinda. God only knows what we’ll be without you.
Dedicated to the people of Los Angeles and the state of California (and across the US) resisting the terror tactics of ICE. Your patron saint may have taken a new form, but he has not abandoned you, and we stand with you.