God Only Knows:
The Story Of Brian Wilson, The Beach Boys And The California Myth
You can’t fault author David Leaf for fan-boy tenacity. God Only Knows is his third attempt to nail this subject matter, and it’s hard to argue with his talent for assembling information since he began his odyssey in the mid-70s. You may know that Leaf is the driving force behind various Beach Boys box sets, notably the magnificent Pet Sounds one, and the inspiration that drove Brian Wilson to address his problematic project, the so-called Smile album. If not, Leaf will tell you anyway. On first meeting Dennis Wilson, drummer and poster boy for the golden surfing generation, Leaf explains his desire to write a book about Brian. “Good luck” is the response.
But write he did, and generations of rock stars have thanked him. Tom Petty compared Brian to Beethoven (Burt Bacharach and Johann Sebastian Bach, maybe), and blessed Leaf at a music business do: “Having just helped George Harrison rewrite his acceptance speech (Billboard Music Awards, 1992), I was backstage next to him and Tom Petty, when much to my surprise, Tom leaned over to me and whispered, ‘Great book, man.’” Sir Paul McCartney, an octogenarian two days older than Brian, offers ‘An Overture’ and the first use of the word ‘genius’ (Brian gets 50, whereas Al Jardine gets 27 mentions).
Leaf is no revisionist, nor a dirt digger like the entertaining Steven Gaines is in the page-turner Heroes And Villains. He’s best when providing the reader with an emotional crutch to better understand Brian’s dysfunctional life: the fatherly clout round the ear administered by ghastly Murry Wilson that rendered his son deaf on his right side, which meant he heard everything in mono; the piano in the sandbox; the over-usage of LSD that Jimmy Webb cites as the musician’s ‘heaven and hell’. Brian’s resilience is a motif. He survived when his brothers Dennis and
Carl didn’t: his 1988 comeback album for Sire Records is brought back to life.
Brian’s musical magnificence is a given. He didn’t write many lyrics. That was left to such as jingle man Tony Asher, Jack Rieley, Tandyn Almer, Van Dyke Parks, Murry himself (Break Away) and the elephant in the room, Mike Love, but his teenage pop symphonies (to God) are matchless. Even if all he had composed was The Warmth Of The Sun (originally a flipping B-side) or ’Til I Die, we’d be vibed. Okay, he is a genius.