June 8, 2015 [Love & Mercy]

 

There are two Brian Wilsons. One is "Wouldn't It Be Nice"—and that one takes in the earlier ones who wanted just cars and boards and chicks—because for those suntanned kids it seemed too far away that they'd find themselves wanting only each other. Yeah, he's not there yet either—still on the beach, but he's sitting next to her on the sand and the other kids can't hear them and they share the sweet painful yearning for something they can't yet have. Just a few years earlier and there's no way he could tell his parents he wanted her to sleep with, wake up next to, and repeat on and on. So he told them he wanted a little deuce coupe to round round get around.

The other is "You Still Believe in Me." He's stunned that anyone, including himself, could stand him anymore—so he tears off into the woods beyond the beach and finds himself alone with his thoughts—and they beat at him mercilessly with demands—you see, they know what he has and they want to wring it out of him, no matter how alone he has to be, no matter how much LSD is necessary. But the drugs are only a part, a scary stretch-him-thin-thinner-thinnest slice of the other Brian. No, he is forced to be alone so that he can figure out what the voices want of him, so he immerses himself in sounds until they gather like a heavy tapestry that smothers him—but also sharpens his hearing until he realizes: those are pet sounds, only one step away from good vibrations.

Together, the two of them yearn and crash to the floor and smile and change themselves and the rest of that little corner of the world in which Brian Wilson wanted to rise and—despite his downward glance and stammer, despite his rages and rambles—to reign. He makes it, and can sing, like the Vietnam vet in Johnny cash's "Drive On," I got a little limp now when I walk / And I got a little tremolo when I talk / But I finally found out who I am." I should be so lucky, someday.