The Two-Stroke Engine of Brian Wilson
So Brian Wilson has died. He of the Beach Boys. And thus we reflect. Partly we reflect — those of us of a certain age — on how figures that we have known all our lives survived until the last decade or so (Elizabeth II, almost the entire cast of the BBC in the 1980s, Jeff Beck, etc). I was a child in the 1980s, but the music was feeble, or at least not exciting (deadened by gated drums and drum machines): and so I enjoyed a renaissance of the 1960s by listening to my father’s small collection of reel-to-reel tapes, played on a mono player: Sgt. Pepper, A Hard Day’s Night, The Shadows Greatest Hits, something or other by the Hollies and something or other by the Beach Boys. Well, the Hollies were alright at times; the Shadows were my first musical awakening, and the Beatles my second musical awakening. But the Beach Boys?
Bab Bab Bab, Bab Babaran.
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Very harsh. ——-Wilson could only exist in the environment he was in. It required pop Music and he provided it. Otherwise he could have driven a truck for a living. But what he provided was classic pop and his ability to create harmony was second to none because of his hearing ability. You say that “God Only Knows” was his only great song and indeed Paul McCartney said it was the perfect pop song. But “Good Vibrations” was a masterpiece of originality in the midst of blandness and very ordinary pop records. The Beach Boys sound was unique and although many of the songs used the chord progressions that were popular at the time, there was no one else at that time being quite as clever with that format. Brian Wilson was a genius of the pop harmony genre and his personal life and problems were of no concern to me. Many geniuses were not perfect human beings.——Thankyou Brian Wilson.
You have to be a very unpleasant person to downtick that comment, which I agree with wholeheartedly.
Petty people walk among us.👀 I’m not pickin’ up good vibrations.🧘♀️
Thanks for your reply.
A very perspicacious comment; yes Mr Alexander’s was a harsh commentary on the BB’s but also reasonably accurate. For those of us who were non-Californians, at the time their music (with a few exceptions) was overwhelmingly banal and rather boring. The ‘British Invasion’ (so-called) was a catalysing event in the USA simply because the pop music environment there was so bland.
I have seen content in other ‘hagiographical’ articles marking Brian Wilson’s death comparing favourably the BB’s to the Beatles; but as one commenter said: “Not even close”. It is possible (even likely) that the Beatles will still be referenced and listened to in another 50 years or more; I don’t think anybody will recall the BB’s towards the end of this century.
If you ask musicians rather than punters you may get a different point of view. ——-I am specifically concerned with Brian Wilson and his incredible ability to create harmony, because he had fantastic hearing ability. Most “punters” won’t even know what that is, or how important it is as regards musicianship. Some of the songs may have been “bland” but I would say that applies to 90% of pop music. But even in those songs that were “bland” Wilsons incredible harmonies made musicians pay attention and appreciate the song mainly for that. ——-If you ever happen to bump into Paul McCartney you should ask him whether he thinks the Beach Boys and Wilson will be remembered. I think you might get a bit of a shock.
Well said, Varmint!
Kone Wone is a wally.
CODSWALLOP! The “Non-Californians” you claim to represent were the vast majority of the population, and they very obviously did NOT think the Beach Boys music was anything other than cheerful, fun, beautiful and uplifting, evoking images of happy summer holidays on the beach, wherever you happened to be on the planet.
THANK YOU, BRIAN WILSON & THE BEACH BOYS, for brightening up the world!
Thanks for your comments.—–Brian was a remarkable musician. It sometimes takes other musicians to fully appreciate what he was actually doing with his great harmonies that were quite unlike other popular music artists.
” The problem with the music of the United States in the 1960s is that it was segregated. ”
Why is this a “problem”? Problem for whom?
Oh God help us.
Sorry I don’t understand.
The author’s point was that there were white people making white music for white people and black people making music for black people and not much crossover. Why is this a “problem”. I mean I am rather fond of the results of mixing the two but that’s not really the point. If the two populations were happy with that state of affairs it’s not for the author to say it is a “problem”.
There was a lot of music around in the 60s, it’s was so varied that for me it eclipses anything we have today. I’m the son of a Jazz musician and was subjected to the whole range of music, so I’m quite happy listening to anything from Gregorian chants to You want it darker by Leonard Cohen. So I now still listen to the full range, in fact there is so much older stuff out there that I still keep discovering more. Being in the Whisky a go go at 2 in the morning in the 60s was something on a different level, suddenly being blasted by The guns of Navarone by the Skatalites, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding and many others. They say if you can remember it you probably weren’t there, after reading this article perhaps I wasn’t. But the thing that I will always remember is waking up after being unconscious due to a serious illness after 5 days and putting my headphones on and listening to “Then he kissed me” by The Crystals for the first time does make me believe that I had indeed been kissed by fate. so for me I could not care less.… Read more »
We are indeed blessed.
The 60s and 70s are over-represented in my collection. Not sure why that is. I don’t know enough about the music made in more recent decades to say which is more to my taste on average. I think I am open to new things. I used to dislike dance music, now I listen to it all the time.
Is The Clash’s “The Guns of Brixton” a reference to “The Guns of Navarone”?
I grew up in the Brixton area, I don’t recognise it from what today’s experts tell me! I also had a number of black friends and they say the same. Unfortunately the narrative is dictated by chattering lefties who perhaps went there once and think they know everything, or maybe have an agenda.
Interesting. I don’t know much about the place. Used to pass through there now and again and just found it too noisy and crowded – but to others that means it is enjoyably lively. My white friend who lives there got accused on the bus once of being a rich white incomer – she enjoyed telling them she lives in the house she was born in, about 80 years ago!
The author is off by about 2 – 3 decades as so-called race records were a thing of the 1920s and 1930s. And for some strange reasons, he seems to have missed rock’n’roll entirely which was a fusion of ‘white’ and ‘black’ styles by both black and white artists. Eg, Chuck Berry’s Maybelline was considered revolutionary at that time because it was originally a Hillbillly song called Ida May rerecorded in a different style by a black guy.
The country blues revival of the 1960s, with lots of mostly fortgotten black musicians who had recorded blues records in the 1920s being rediscovered by a white audience of folkies was also originally happening in the USA.
All very good points. I suppose you could argue that the Rolling Stones for example were “blacker” in style than the Beach Boys but I really can’t see that any of this matters and still think his comment is pretty weird.
Perhaps he means that white artists were more popular with white people and black with black. If that’s true, which it probably was and to an extent still is, I can’t why that matters either.
It’s the use of the word “problem” that baffles me – as if there were a certain way that music ought to be, according to the author.
I am just grateful that there are people that make music I love and I am able to access it. Why anyone should care about what other people are listening to or what all the artists you don’t like are doing is beyond me.
Hear, hear!
The background of the author, puny as it is¹, is obviously the British blues boom and what came of it and since it ‘won’, cf the term British Invasion, it must have been superior because of Black Music™, or, put in more neutral term, because it ventured beyond harmless lullabies about girls on the beach which stuck to common practice era harmonics.
¹ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftO9ClIhFAo ?
Yes I think you have summed it up well
I think he has focused on mainstream white oriented pop and ignored as you point out rock and roll but also rockabilly, folk and country, and jazz
I don’t profess to know much about music but I do know what I like and I have always had a soft spot for The Beach Boys – I really like “Let’s go away for a while” and “I just wasn’t made for these times” from Pet Sounds. The latter is more relevant to me now than when I first discovered it.
I’d also recommend the film starring Paul Dano and John Cusack – Love and Mercy.
I heard “Let’s go away for a while” at a beach cafe down in Cornwall last year and thought it sounded incredibly cool and current. (I’ve not real idea of what is current though!)
That is the sort of image their music always evoked with me too. Sunny, happy, carefree beach vibes. I only know their hits, and I prefer the upbeat ones, but I think, though before my time, they’re one of those bands that never did a duff song. Consistently catchy, instantly likeable.
Sometimes you like a burger, sometimes a roast dinner.
or sometimes steak au poivre. Its all good.
Thanks to James Alexander’s article, I now realise that I only imagined all the pleasure and enjoyment I experienced listening to Help Me Rhonda, I Get Around, California Girls, You’re So Good To Me, Sloop John B, Good Vibrations, God Only Knows, Heroes And Villains, growing up in the 1960s.
Love all those songs and I grew up in late 70s.
Of the early ones, Little Deuce Coup is my favourite. The lyrics are cleverly done.
Er, Good Vibrations was recorded after pet Sounds, a decidedly ‘up’ song.
The early music was produced under his father’s tyrannical reign as manager – a bully obsessed with ‘hits’. Once shot of him Brian was able to create freely, and produced Pet Sounds, the most influential pop album in history, to that point.
‘I don’t mean to do this man down on the occasion of his death.’ You’ve done it. Jesus, could you not at least wait a week or two before making such a pointless attack? And what has this got to do with ‘The Daily Sceptic’? Absolutely nothing.
Reading bullshit like this makes me want to unsubscribe. Pathetic. Toby – no more of this kind of stuff – please!
😆 I thought it a bit random as well, mind.
Nice to get off the minority topics though, until of course it was introduced. Yawn.
What do we get now?
Four chord songs written by eight people with terrible lyrics and forgettable melodies.
What was the fourth chord – I must have missed it.
Any more than two is just showing off!
As far as I can recall it was A,D & E then some posh so and so introduced scale of G which as I recall had an f#.
Compared to the mainstream charts today, the Beach Boys are up there with Bach and the other greats…
There was so much to choose from. It seemed like a new sound was being invented almost daily. Ranging from BBs to Georgie Fame, Procol Harum, Del Shannon, Everly Brothers then all the fantastic girl groups as well as the well known ones of course. Followed by The Doobie brothers, America,
it was non stop. The range of talent was off the scale. One of my favourites was The Seeds which I discover when a Hari Krishna flogged me Future in Kings Road Chelsea. I feel sorry for those who didn’t experience it.
Pushin too hard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IReb27tFqMg&list=RDIReb27tFqMg&start_radio=1
“Well the Hollies were aright at times.” Moronic comment! With 30+ UK Top Ten singles and over 20 in the US, they were rightly hugely successful. Graham Nash, besides fronting the Hollies until ’68 with tracks like ‘King Midas in Reverse’ went on to great things with Crosby, Still and Nash, writing songs such as ‘Marrakesh Express,’ ‘Teach Your Children’ and ‘Our House’ Meanwhile, Alan Clarke took over as lead vocalist with his unmistakeable sound….Listen to ‘Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress’ and tell me it doesn’t stir something in the soul. The opening guitar riff alone is worth the price of admission.
I just liked their music! Why go so deep?
To lend a bit of weight to my argument. That’s why.
I think Dinger meant the author of the article.
James Alexander spewing bile at the music millions of people loved… but why is he doing that, I wonder?
It seems to me that he is just bolstering the successful efforts of Communists to completely turn the British People against their American cousins and wartime allies, in order to shackle and bind the British People ever more tightly to the Communist European Union.
They want to make sure that nobody ever comes to the rescue of the Brits again.
Well, well, well— It turns out that Assistant Professor James Alexander wrote his PhD thesis on the political thought of George Bernard Shaw, whom he evidently admires. Here is an interesting article about Shaw, by Tyler Curtis: George Bernard Shaw Was so Enamored with Socialism He Advocated Genocide to Advance It “In Shaw’s eyes, the pinnacle of civilization had been reached by the Soviet Union. During his 1931 “pilgrimage” to Stalin’s wonderland, Shaw was given a glimpse of what he referred to as a “land of hope.” He denied that the regime had imprisoned significant numbers of political dissidents, describing the gulags as popular vacation destinations. “From what I gather, they can stay there as long they like,” he said.” “That’s not to say he was willfully ignorant of Stalin’s atrocities. Rather, he defended them. Blindly accepting Communist propaganda, Shaw argued that the dictator was forced to organize mass executions to keep the country safe from “exploiters and speculators.” Mass murders were also necessary to maintain a competent workforce. As Shaw wrote in 1933, the “unfortunate Commissar” must shoot his own workers “so that he might the more impressively ask the rest of the staff whether they yet grasped the fact… Read more »
“The problem with the music of the United States in the 1960s is that it was segregated. There was black music. There was white music. Black music was the blues, later Motown and so on. White music was ankle-socks and pizzicato strings.”
Therefore Black music good, White music bad? That sounds like segregation, with a bit more racism.
Yeah I thought that was an absurd statement
No other band can match the misty vocal harmonies of the Beach Boys.
It was a great time for popular music in those days, wasn’t it?
I also liked Crosby, Stills & Nash (Steven Stills “Black Queen” is still amazing), Neil Young, Doobie Brothers, The Eagles, The James Gang (superb early Joe Walsh), so many others, and all the British bands like Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Led Zeppelin and countless others, including Sweden’s Abba. Tuning in to the pirate radio stations with transistor radios when you were supposed to be sleeping.
What a contrast to all the obscene lyrics, dreary beats and moronic chanting about rape, murder & drugs of modern Ethnic African “rap” music. And now so many female singers dress and dance like porn stars.
Funk #49 – how good is that!!!!!
Life’s been good – bloody genius
Wow— someone actually remembers The James Gang— good on yer, Transmission! We’re definitely showing our age here.
What a guitarist he was, Joe Walsh, and a great voice, too. I was so glad when he really made it big after The Eagles snapped him up. The James Gang was a revelation to me, after years of listening to Motown, with bands like Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels (“Devil with a Blue Dress On”), or sweet, innocent songs like The Hollies “Bus Stop” on the radio— remember that? And “The Who”, whose Roger Daltry has just been knighted! And of course the cheerful, sunny Beach Boys who made everybody feel happy just listening to them.
We don’t get older…we get better! And so do they. 🙂
I came to The James Gang very late in life – not sure how I managed to miss them.
This is a great version of Life’s Been Good recorded at Daryl Hall’s house: Daryl Hall and Joe Walsh – Life’s Been Good
And this is Funk #49 from the same session: Daryl Hall and Joe Walsh – Funk 49/50
Oh thanks for that! The James Gang started out as an obscure local band in Kent, Ohio, where Joe Walsh was studying English literature at Kent State University, at the time when the four students were shot by the National Guard during anti-war protests. Neil Young wrote “Ohio” to commemorate that.
You did inspire me to look them up on Youtube, and there was also a treasure trove of oldies but goodies that came up in the right-hand column, like Deep Purple’s “Child in Time”, and all sorts, including this Boots advert that really made me laugh, an absolute classic depiction of Brits on Holiday:
Summer 2024 TV Advert | Boots Saves Summer | Boots UK – YouTube
Love Neil Young even though he’s a bit of a lefty.
That ad is a good find – all white people and the man is not gay!
Would like to have seen Deep Purple live in their prime but I am a few years too young for that.
Yes, but in that ad, notice the “diversity” mob managed to insert an Ethnic African man into the background right at the beginning, behind the woman, getting out of his car to pretend to go hiking up that mountain.
I’d love to have an honest conversation with one of these advertising people to help me understand if it’s them or the people that commission them that are responsible for the disgusting propaganda campaign that modern advertising has become
And here’s the original album version of Steven Stills “Black Queen”, where he says at the beginning “This is a song about a card game.” Amazing acoustic guitar-playing, and voice.
Black Queen (LP) (Version) – YouTube
Yeah that’s stunning – I’m not familiar with his work – will add it to the list. Too much great music and not enough time! I’ve got more stuff than I can listen to already so I try to limit myself a bit.
Is pop ever far from porn?
Eh?
Yes, often
I found this song “Collage” on Youtube from the very first album The James Gang ever made in 1969, the first song I ever heard wearing stereo headphones, so it made quite an impression on me at the time. “Wrapcity in English” is also beautiful.
Collage
Wrapcity In English
Nice. Think my first stereo headphone experience might have been Led Zep’s Presence on Sennheisers plugged into a B&O stereo – my mate had young parents who were into rock and had a great record collection. My folks were ancient and just had a “gramophone”!
I’ve got a nice pair of over-the-ear Beats headphones that my daughter gave me that I wear to skate – keep your ears warm in winter.
Thanks for those nostalgic snippets. My dad was in a little country music band as a teenager. Everyone has their own “Glory Days”, as Bruce Springsteen said, and it’s fun to have a trip down Memory Lane once in a while. Good on your daughter for helping you find a new practical use for headphones in winter! 🙂
Good on your dad. Mine just played the piano at home, not very well but he enjoyed it.
Love country music too. Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch.
Can you tell me what is pornographic about these songs from the very first album of The James Gang?
Collage
Wrapcity In English
The thing with the Beach Boys, Brian really did not have a writer he worked with. There was no Lennon McCartney songwriting type team. It was just Brian and the Wrecking Crew for at least the first 5 albums. Nobody was checking his writing, his song fragmentations. His albums were hemispherical. Listen to the B sides. Listen to “Smile”. The only song on the album is if course “Good Vibrations”., everything else is filler. “Holland” is another attempt at a comeback by injecting some rock and roll(mostly by Mike Love). I have all their albums, both mono and stereo mixes. They are nostalgic to listen to and marvel at their production. And Brian was enthralled to Phil Spector’s sweeping sound stages which pushed him to Mozart level attempts to satisfy his perfectionist level eccentricities.
Well anyone who can recall singing along to the endless stream of Beach Boys summer and surfing pol delights (often on the beach) ain’t going to give a monkeys what an academic thinks, are they?
Hear, hear! 🙂
The Beatles were no better and in some cases much worse than other bands of their time. They got to be world players through the efforts of Brian Epstein and George Martin.
they got lucky which is great for them, but does not mean they were exceptional.
The problem with the music of the United States in the 1960s is that it was segregated. There was black music. There was white music. Black music was the blues, later Motown and so on. White music was ankle-socks and pizzicato strings.
Oh, was it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF6fCzEZ3Hs
[That’s Mike Bloomfield on lead guitar, BTW]
So there is an order of precedence between a louse and a flea after all?
You seem to be a genetically-modified form of both.
A kind of Louse Flea Chimera.
A bit too soon after his death to be this critically analytic. I was happier reading Nick Dixon’s piece on Substack. https://open.substack.com/pub/nickdixon/p/the-pure-genius-of-brian-wilson?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=8t5f7
Thanks for recommending that article by Nick Dixon— a refreshing contrast to this sneering, dismal one, as grey and bleak as the endless ranks of Soviet apartment blocks in the Russia that James Alexander evidently admires.
I learned a new word from Dixon’s article: “ONEIRIC”, and learned how to pronounce it the good old-fashioned way, in which you didn’t have to first learn a complicated “Phonetics” alphabet full of strange symbols:
“oh-NYE-rik”
I recall on a visit to rural America listening to a country and western radio station that was playing the top 10 country “songs that were about a job”. Weird, but they’ve got to fill the time with something. Incredibly, Wichita Lineman was not their 1st choice. It was 4th! I mean it’s one the best songs ever, but in the niche category of country-and-western-songs-that-feature-jobs, it couldn’t even get a podium finish. I am still offended to this day,