OUR FIRST DATE WAS WITH BRIAN WILSON, by Kev Nixon
Down in Cornwall, all the way to the metatarsal that lies within the ‘foot’ England, there is a village called Bodelva which is the location of The Eden Project, a place of such awe-inspiring magnitude, it could easily be the eighth wonder of the world. Essentially it is a multi-faceted real-life museum of the earth’s natural habitats such as rainforests, which have been recreated within a complex of several huge adjoining domes housing thousands of plant species. But outside in its botanical garden, it also holds concerts and pop festivals known as The Eden Sessions.
Back in 2004 I noticed that Brian Wilson and his considerable band were booked to play The Eden Project in July, and they were performing the great lost album ‘Smile’ in its entirety, so I rang the promotor and managed to get a couple of tickets. At the time I was fairly newly in love with the woman who is now my wife, but she was taking some woo-ing, so I decided it would be great to take her to Cornwall to see Brian play ‘Smile’.
Given this gig was in July, and that Cornwall is the number one UK holiday destination in the UK, I thought it might be fun to go camping, so I booked an upmarket campsite for the first night, and safeguarded the idea from any unsavoury weather issues with a plush hotel for the next. It was a good job I did because after Brian came off stage, it started raining and didn’t stop for three days.
The 1967 ‘Smile’ project is one of the great enigmas of modern music, as Brian set about attempting to ‘reply’ to The Beatles 1966 album ‘Revolver’ (even though the UK version was never released in the US). Brian was so obsessed with The Beatles that he had already done this whole ‘reply’ thing once when he told everyone that his previous album, the astounding ‘Pet Sounds’, was his reply to The Beatles 1965 album ‘Rubber Soul’. Now he was going to top that and deliver ‘Smile’ as the greatest album ever made, but it was not to be.
It was during the many months of recording ‘Smile’ that Brian took way too much LSD and consequently his mental health issues began to accelerate, and the voices in his head got so bad that he suffered a full nervous and schizophrenic breakdown, causing him to take a long break from work (and from LSD), to concentrate on getting himself healthy again. Nevertheless, some of the ‘Smile’ tracks began to emerge, and their label Capitol released three singles in a row that stand today as perhaps the greatest trilogy of hit singles in pop music ‘God Only Knows’, ‘Good Vibrations’ and ‘Heroes & Villains’. How do they stand next to ‘Eleanor Rigby’, ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and ‘All You Need Is Love’? That’s a tough one.
The Beach Boys greatest asset was that it was a band full of lead singers, as opposed to just singers-who-sang-backing-vocals. The voices of brothers Brian, Carl, and Dennis Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, original member Al Jardine, and newest member Bruce Johnson were all vocally top-level, consequently each song was open for bids on which of the six lead singers’ voice would sound best, and that was always Brian’s decision. This is the reason why Carl sang the lead vocal on Brian’s greatest song ‘God Only Knows’ (much to Mike Love’s eternal disappointment). It was like having two sets of John, Paul and George, and with drumming-brother Dennis being vocally up there with Carl and Brian, the unique properties of their sibling voices (e.g. The Everly Brothers, The Andrew Sisters etc) took them to a new level, hence their harmonies remain the greatest in all of pop music.
At the time, my wife was not so familiar with such detail about Brian, or The Beach Boys, but such was the magical performance that we witnessed, especially the incredible extended version of ‘Heroes & Villains’ that it had a lasting effect. We had such a great time that we bought a holiday home in Cornwall, and named each room after a Brian Wilson song.
Many years later, I met Brian in Detroit when I went to his soundcheck at the Fox Theatre to tell him about our music college DIME Detroit, and I also told him this story. To my utter amazement, a tear trickled down his cheek and he spontaneously hugged me, and as I watched him do his soundcheck from just a few feet away, the sensitivity of his music seemed to reach a whole new level. Thank you Brian, for taking pop music way beyond its boundaries, especially in Cornwall.
(Below: The writer with Al Jardine and Brian, Fox Theatre, Detroit 2015)
