Brian Wilson Declares Himself a Creative Genius: Insights into His Musical Mind

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In 1992, inspired by Christian Fevret, Michka Assayas was able to enter the world of the legendary Brian Wilson. The journalist secured a rare interview at Wilson’s home in Malibu. This meeting led to a lengthy feature of about fifty pages, which was published in the magazine at the time.

To connect with Brian Wilson, we reached out to Brains & Genius, the public relations firm he started with his psychiatrist, Dr. Landy. From there, we were directed to a law firm in Los Angeles, where we were initially met with a definitive “no”: Brian Wilson was not giving any interviews as he was in Hawaii, recording his new album.

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Several weeks later, there was a dramatic change: the lawyer changed his mind. He agreed to let Wilson meet us at his home in Los Angeles. Oh, he wasn’t in Hawaii? No. An interview would be granted, but with several stipulations confirmed in writing: no questions about 1) Brian’s “personal life”, 2) his family relationships, 3) his past with the Beach Boys. Somewhat astonished, we agreed in principle. It would be interesting to see how Wilson himself would navigate these restrictions. Oddly, during the conversation, he spontaneously commented on his relationship with Dr. Landy, whom he usually referred to as his “executive producer”. He immediately retracted his remarks, requesting they not be published—a request we honored. It is important to note that his relationship with Landy, his psychiatrist, manager, and guru for nearly ten years, had been officially terminated following a court ruling against Landy a few months before the interview, initiated by Brian’s brother, ex-wife, and daughters.

Brian Wilson lives in Malibu. To get to this residential suburb, one must leave Los Angeles to the north and take the Pacific Coast Highway. After about twenty minutes along the sea, the landscape changes to dull, soft rocks surrounded by sandy strips and sparse vegetation. To our left, odd makeshift sheds appear, flattened out, resembling oversized trailers missing their wheels. The weather is foggy, the light pale and diffuse. The landscape is wrapped in a shroud of melancholy. After a hill, the road descends towards the coast. There, a small road on the left leads to the beach. Almost at the end is Brian Wilson’s home. It’s a dark wooden slat chalet, two stories, quite unassuming among the quirky yet shabby houses that give the area a sleepy, bohemian charm of rich Californians. In front of the entrance is a sports car painted egg-yolk yellow—a Corvette—another, ordinary and worn, parked under an awning—the one Wilson uses, who only got his driver’s license a few years ago—, and a large Harley Davidson covered with a tarp. Hanging in front of the entrance is an intriguing mobile made of naively colored wooden fish, vaguely Japanese in style.

“Hi, I’m Brian Wilson.”

At the appointed time, we knock. A placid man in glasses, with long wavy blond hair, opens the door: it’s Kevin Leslie, officially Brian’s “assistant”, hired by Dr. Landy. He explains in that tired yet smooth voice typical of Californians who are comfortable both in their skin and in their mind, that Brian is on the phone with Dr. Landy for a while longer— he would specify later—and that if we entered now, it might disturb him. Could we wait outside? Five, ten, twenty minutes, half an hour pass. Occasionally, a booming laugh, very brief and rhythmic, can be heard, unintentionally conveying a kind of malevolent joy. Suddenly, as we’ve stepped a bit away, the door bursts open. I see a tall man in a short-sleeved shirt charging straight ahead, as if he’s spotted something he urgently needs. Slightly shaken, I stride forward and stand in front of him. He stops and abruptly extends his hand, saying in a brisk, almost military tone, “Hi, I’m Brian Wilson.”

His face bears no expression, just a kind of stupefaction. Barely have I introduced myself when he turns around and rushes back inside the house. He moves as if on wheels, without lifting his feet, all in one piece. He sits in his chair, saying nothing, with a stunned look. I can finally observe him closely: his face is rigid, almost stone-like. His thin mouth, nearly lipless, is tense. The skin forms a curious bulge on the left side of his neck. His very light blue eyes are like two immobile slits. No smile, but his mouth makes uncontrollable movements. From time to time, his head tilts completely backward and freezes, neck stretched and chin tilted upwards. SOS… In thirty seconds, I think to myself that this trip was madness, this meeting an absurdity. I wonder what I’m doing here, sitting in front of a man who is suffering, forced by his lawyer and psychiatrist to accept an interview that will be agonizing for him.

Like a TV host, I force myself to smile, pull out my papers, and speak as if everything were normal. To make me even more comfortable, Kevin Leslie, nicknamed “the surf Nazi” by the technicians during the recording of Brian Wilson’s first solo album in 1987, places his mini-recorder on the table: undoubtedly, the black box will be transmitted to the boss. But I soon realize that my impressions are based on appearances and preconceptions. What is certain is that Brian Wilson has suffered irreversible damage to his nervous system. For the rest, even though I sometimes had to repeat the questions several times and his responses often proceeded by association of ideas rather than any logical order, and he sometimes interjected, quite out of the blue, the language of therapy— “I’m a winner person… Life is basically a positive experience….”—Wilson is actually eager to talk, quite lucid and clear and, in his way, as present and warm as he can be. He is the only person I have ever interviewed who says exactly everything he thinks at the moment he thinks it. His responses are of a honesty and sincerity that sometimes border on crudeness—it’s no wonder his lawyer asked for a copy of the interview before its publication. While physically, he looks older than his 50 years, he can suddenly become a 12-year-old child: talkative, bouncing, overly excited. Brian Wilson lives surrounded by the bare minimum: a kitchen corner where about twenty vitamin bottles are stacked on a countertop—he interrupted himself to take half a dozen at once—a small chain with about fifty compact discs, a few black and white framed photos, a museum poster, a chest, a sofa, that’s all. A narrow wooden terrace overlooks the sea. Below, on a small strip of lawn, there’s a hot tub. Down a few steps, you find yourself on a small beach. During the conversation, he keeps a bottle of mineral water in hand and drinks copiously, directly from the bottle.

I bought Pet Sounds when I was 17 and since then, rarely a few months have gone by without me listening to it.
Brian Wilson – Oh! thank you. It’s the best album we ever made. Flowers… There was a lot of love and tears in the voices. It’s nice to listen to soft music. Paul McCartney likes this record. He said that Pet Sounds inspired Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. And they did better, the Beatles surpassed us. We did our thing, and then they went higher. We never tried to go even higher (laughs)…

Your music has always seemed, within the Beach Boys, to go deeper, further. I’d like to talk about it as distinct from what we know of the Beach Boys.
That’s what we’ve been doing for about three, four years. It’s good to experiment and mature outside the group. It’s a bit scary but at the same time, there are so many songs in my head! I can’t get them out. I hear a siren bursting, my ears ring with the music I hear. I listen and listen, really integrating the records I’ve listened to. I replay it and replay it and replay it and replay it until I can fully enter into it. After that, I’m happy and I tell myself ‘Wow! I’ve really listened to all that music!’ It’s quite hard… quite hard…

You became famous in the 1960s by composing, arranging, producing, and singing…
(Sniggering) Hey… hey…

… songs for a vocal group. It was a unique position at the time: being both composer, producer, arranger, and singer. Even Phil Spector didn’t do all that.
He tried!

He tried to sing?
Have you not heard a record called This could be the night? Well, it sounded like it was him singing. It’s a group called The Modern Folk Quartet. There was a guy in the
Quartet who had a nasal sound. And Phil Spector made it an incredible sound. It was the first time I really heard him take care of a mundane singer. Instead of Bill Medley or the Ronettes, all those.
great singers, he tried an average singer, okay? And it works. I have a copy somewhere, I don’t know where.

But if we don’t consider Spector as a singer, whereas you are. You succeeded in all four parts of the business, you were at both ends of the chain. How do you explain having obtained this privilege of absolute control, unique at the time, for someone so young?
Well… (silence)… One more time, please.

Spector wasn’t part of the Ronettes, whereas you were in the Beach Boys.
But I probably don’t sing as well as people who really know how to sing. I can sing nicely… But I don’t know how to sing like the Ronettes or the Crystals sang, I don’t have that quality. So I had to make do… In the early days, in 1965-66, around then, when Pet Sounds came out… (Suddenly) California Girls came out in 1965. It’s our anthem, the anthem of the Beach Boys. But as for maturing on my own, I’ve just recorded my second solo album, with a song called Rainbow Eyes. It’s simply incredible. An incredible song! Its accompaniment is so lovely, such pretty music… It has about this tempo… (he sings) “Thumm… thummm… Rain-bow eyes….. Where are you-ou?”

You just mentioned your second solo album. When will it be released?
In September or October. We need to work on it a bit more. It was produced by Dr. Landy. Gene Landy and me. Then, with Don Was, we’re going to record some old Beach Boys tracks, redone by me. Only for the first half of the record. The other half will be totally creative, tick-a-tick-taa… a blank slate (in French). You know what a blank slate is? A blank slate for recording! That’s what we have.. I think to myself “Hey! My money’s running low, there. Waaah! I think I’ll make some more records!” That’s all you can do. When you’ve been stripped of everything, all you have left is your creativity. You go to the studio and you work, that’s all you can do.

When you listen to old Beach Boys songs, do you think ‘I could have done better’? Are you tempted to remake your songs?
Yes! Do them with a rhythm that’s not so hectic. To slow down the rhythm a bit to make them easier to digest, so people can hear them.

Do you ever listen to old Beach Boys records?
No. California Girls. I don’t listen to anything else. Good Vibrations… ffuittt… out the window. Too artificial for me, too much editing. It’s a bit too much for me. I try to reduce things to a simpler level, like Phil Spector! But of course, he was there at the beginning. He started with that particular sound of his own, his own artists. And he managed to make an impact, he communicated his thing to those girls, to Bill Medley too, with You’ve lost that lovin feeling my favorite record, next to Be By Baby. Be My Baby belongs to the past. You’ve lost that lovin’ feeling, it’s new, it’s current, it’s happening now.

To return to my initial question, how do you explain your privileged position? At the time, companies dictated everything to musicians.
I think if you have a monomaniacal obsession with music, as I did, you absorb music within you and continue until it never leaves you again. It’s easier said than done, but it’s doable. You can take it with you, walk around with it..

Was music an obsession for you?
Yes, it still is. It was an obsession, because Phil Spector’s output was so powerful in my mind that I had to do something to be worth… anything! I had to do my best.

You reached your artistic peak in the mid-1960s. What was so special for you during that period?
It was a golden age for the record industry, in terms of creating big, strong music. As I said, I constantly refer to Spector’s music to understand everything that was happening. My music… I don’t know… I never really realized what it was. I couldn’t tell if people liked it a lot. I know that the introduction to California Girls is a good sound, but I don’t know who liked it. Phil Spector makes such a record, and everyone loves it! In a way, we were his messengers. The accompaniments on Pet Sounds were broader, better than anything we had ever done and Spector may have had some influence there. We still managed to have our own sound, but never like Phil Spector’s.

Phil Spector invented the “wall of sound”. And you, what characterized the sound of your music?
The bass and drums are very important. It’s in mono, so it seems very dense, as if everything is concentrated in a small space, ready to explode. Phil Spector started the mono trip. Everyone was recording in mono, from a single sound source. Phil Spector wore these badges back to mono. One evening, I went to see him with Dr. Landy, he was wearing this badge. When we talked about it, he told me “Listen, it’s the only way to record records.” We did mono. Pet Sounds, was it in stereo? In mono? (surprised)… Pet Sounds was in mono? Oh, and did it sound good, at least?

Very well. It was a time when you made no compromises. You made the music as you heard it in your head.
That’s true. Before going into the studio, I had heard it all in my head. Sgt Pepper’s was in stereo?

Yes. But they recorded it on a 4-track.
A 4-track? That’s what Phil Spector was doing. He would take the backing and dub it onto one track. He put the voices on tracks 2 and 3… He did that at Gold Star studios years ago. Gold Star burned down. It kind of saddened me, because I really thought I could still do something there (he sighs)… I guess you have to accept the fact that sometimes people come along and make stronger music, the “wall of sound”, than what we could do. I appreciate it but, still, I don’t like someone telling me I can’t do it. There, I’m a bit vexed! Ha ha! “Hey, how come the Beach Boys aren’t as good as Phil Spector?” (He almost shouts) I don’t know, man! I live here, that’s all!

I’d like to address the most mysterious part of your work: songwriting.
Well… I wrote God only knows in half an hour. My collaborator and I wrote the lyrics in half an hour. It took an hour to do everything (he snaps his fingers)… Perfect!

How do you write? Do you start with a melody, then add the harmonies?
I play the piano. That’s how it’s been since I started writing songs, in 1961, with Surfer Girl in November ’61, and then we wrote Surfin’ at the beginning of 1962. But you’re asking me how I write a song. Well, first, you hang out. Sometimes, you’re sitting and it comes right at you. Other times, you play with the keys and… taaah! (he taps the table with his finger)… Hey, wait a moment.
(imitating a rhythm)… doo-be-doo be