CityLife

Brian Wilson the dark genius of pop

Former Beach Boy Brian Wilson

Should any young musician be looking for a hero with a work ethic worth emulating, they could do worse than look to Beach Boys frontman and pianist Brian Wilson.

In just five years, from 1962 to 1966, Wilson penned and produced a staggering 11 albums – including the band’s most celebrated Pet Sounds record – an achievement that seemed so insufficient to Wilson that he turned to drugs to make his creative juices flow even faster.

That’s where any emulators should probably stop looking because the pursuit of even more laudable greatness did send Wilson round the twist.

He did – and still does, by all personal accounts – hear voices; the result of such excesses with a diagnosis of bipolar schizoaffective disorder.

Wilson’s drug dependency didn’t stall the momentum of the band, who released two more albums in 1967, another two before the decade was out, and another eight during the 1970s, but it largely brought an end to his input for almost a decade.

But that obsessive dedication to music making, as well as the surf rock sound he and his band pioneered and his characteristic ability to mask dark lyrics with light sounds, is what makes Brian Wilson unique and as  respected a songwriter as John Lennon or Paul McCartney.

And it’s his back story – the beaten child of a brutal father and failed musician who overcame decades of battling drugs and mental illness to get back on stage and became a dad again to five adopted children – that makes him such a compelling character.

More than 40 years on from when his prospects first nose-dived because of drugs, then, Wilson finds himself  happy to be back at the top of his game – as a solo musician.

Over the past five or six years, he has become a festival staple, at which he performs many of the Beach Boys hits as well as some of his solo work.

More recently, he has toured his Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin show to great international acclaim – an idea that grew out of an album of classic Gershwin pieces, including Rhapsody In Blue, Summertime and They Can’t Take That Away From Me, and saw Wilson complete two unfinished George Gershwin pieces.

And it’s this that the 69-year-old legend brings to the Bridgewater Hall next week. Expect a few cheeky Beach Boys numbers woven in along the way, too.

Brian Wilson
Bridgewater Hall, Tuesday 13th September
£45/£50.