Brian Wilson
photo: Neal Preston

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A Hard Day's Surfin' Safari: When Brian Met Macca
Memoir by Derek Taylor, World Countdown News, 1967
When Beatles press officer Derek Taylor swapped Swinging Britain for LA's Sunset Strip in 1965, he played a pivotal part in bringing the worlds of London ...

The Beach Boys: I Wanna Be Where The Boys Are
Interview by Vivien Goldman, Sounds, August 1977
"SOME KAHLUA, we need a coupla pitchers of milk..." "Send up a bottle of milk. O.K., cartons. Four cartons. And some honey. And a coffee. No, ...

ARTICLES IN LIBRARY

Staying Home: Brian Wilson
Report and Interview by uncredited writer, Melody Maker, November 1970
"IT WAS A MISTAKE but I had to try it. After about half an hour I realised I couldn't go on. My ears hurt, I started ...

Brian Wilson/The Beach Boys - A Celebration Of Wild Honey: a discussion with David Anderle
Book Excerpt by Paul Williams, Outlaw Blues, 1971
WHEN DAVID ANDERLE AND I BEGAN our discussion of Brian Wilson, we had just finished listening to Wild Honey (the Beach Boys, Capitol Records, November 1967) ...

Brian Wilson: From Surf To Symphony
Profile by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, June 1974
BRIAN WILSON was 19 years old when, in 1961, the Beach Boys committed his first song, 'Surfin'', to ...

Brian Wilson: The Last Beach Movie part 1
Retrospective and Interview by Nick Kent, NME, June 1975
THE INCIDENT MUST HAVE occured a little over a year ago. Paul McCartney, complete with the inevitable Linda, had just flown into Los Angeles – for ...

Brian Wilson: The Last Beach Movie part 2
Retrospective and Interview by Nick Kent, NME, June 1975
PET SOUNDS was about to be released when Derek Taylor was taken on The Beach Boys' pay-roll. 750 dollars for dealing with the group's publicity. ...

Brian Wilson: The Last Beach Movie part 3
Retrospective and Interview by Nick Kent, NME, July 1975
EARLY MARCH 1975: The clapper-board reads "The Last Beach Movie – The Brian Wilson Story" Take 96, and our camera zooms in on the exterior of ...

Brian Wilson, part 1
Interview by Richard Cromelin, Sounds, July 1976
The Beach Boys' main man climbs out of the sandbox and explains how he got off the Endless Bummer. ...

Brian Wilson, part 2
Interview by Richard Cromelin, Sounds, August 1976
Pet Sounds & The California Consciousness ...

Brian Wilson: Surf's Up!
Interview by Richard Cromelin, Creem, October 1976
Brian Wilson Comes Back From Lunch ...

Brian Wilson: Strange Bedfellow
Interview by Andy Gill, NME, August 1986
The Beach Boys are 25 years old and, to mark the occasion, that great white whale BRIAN WILSON has finally got up, cleaned up and – ...

Brian Wilson: Good and Bad Vibrations
Interview by Jeremy Gluck, The Guardian, 1988
Beach Boy Brian Wilson owes his survival to his doctor and a regime of psychotherapy, diet and exercise, he told Jeremy ...

Brian Wilson: Wouldn't It Be Nice - My Own Story
Book Review by Tom Hibbert, Q, August 1992
IT IS HARD TO IMAGINE Brian Wilson, inspired composer of surfing symphonies and divine pop, writing anything as tabloidesque as: "I was a zonked-out zombie, a ...

Brian Wilson: Interview with Don Was
Interview by John Tobler, Record Hunter, August 1993
After 32 years together The Beach Boys are one of the longest-lived bands in rock. They've recently performed a string of stadium dates, and Capitol release ...

Lost In Music: Brian Wilson
Interview by Bill Holdship, Mojo, August 1995
Some call him a tortured genius. Others say he’s just insane. Some claim he’s suffering through an extended hiatus between transcendent works. Others reckon he’s lost ...

"Brian Wilson Is A Genius": The Birth Of A Cult
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, The Independent, September 1995
ONE OF THE key moments in I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times, record producer Don Was’s black-and-white film about Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, ...

Brian Wilson: The Story of Sweet Insanity
Retrospective by Bill Holdship, Mojo, September 1996
SOMEHOW – PRIMARILY BECAUSE I took the trouble to talk to Brian and his then ever-present psychotherapist-turned-manager and collaborator, Eugene Landy at a star-studded Hollywood party ...

Brian Wilson: Let's Go Trippin!
Memoir by David Dalton, Mojo, June 1998
IT WAS JULY 1967, the Summer of Love, on Zuma Beach, California that I first met Brian Wilson. It was one of those loony episodes that ...

Brain Wilson: Bummer
Profile and Interview by Paul Lester, Uncut, June 1998
"HI, I'M BRIAN WILSON." You do not expect this. You do not expect the head of America's most important ever rock band to have to tell ...

Brian Wilson: The Last Brother
Interview by Erik Himmelsbach, Los Angeles Times, July 1998
ALL OF ST. CHARLES is racing to eat before the sunsets and the kids melt down. At 5:30 p.m. on a Saturday, a time when may ...

Brian Wilson: Imagination (Giant)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Spin, August 1998
It is hard not to harbour mixed feelings about Brian Wilson in the late '90s. While it’s great that he’s up and about (and not being ...

Brian Wilson: And Your Dream Comes True
Live Review by Gary Pig Gold, inmusicwetrust.com, July 1999
Brian Wilson Live at the Beacon Theater, New York City, June 18, 1999 ...

Brian Wilson: "Help Me, Rhonda," Indeed!
Essay by David Dalton, Gadfly, 2000
HEY, ALL you surfin’ dudes and hardbody wahinis, check out this thing on TNT. It’s a tribute to the surf god, Brian Wilson! An ...

Brian Wilson: Sounds Unsilenced
Retrospective and Interview by Erik Himmelsbach, Revolver, Fall 2000
BRIAN WILSON made Paul McCartney cry. The cute Beatle readily admits that the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds has, on occasion, made him positively weepy. Sir Paul ...

Brian Wilson: Reassessed
Essay by Ira Robbins, salon.com, April 2001
AT THE BRIAN WILSON tribute concert in New York in March, a short film explained that Wilson had lived his whole life in fear and casually ...

“Brian Wilson Is A Genius”: The Birth Of A Cult
Essay by Ed Doheny, Rock's Backpages, January 2002
The notion of Brian Wilson as Genius, magicked up by the late Derek Taylor, has had repercussions not just for the man himself but for pop ...

The Legend of Smile
Retrospective and Interview by Rob Chapman, Mojo, February 2002
"Smile is the name of the new Beach Boys album which will be released in January 1967, and with a happy album cover, the really happy ...

Brian Wilson: Royal Festival Hall, London
Live Review by Tim Clifford, Rock's Backpages, February 2002
NOT ONLY did my spine tingle during the third night of Brian Wilson's sell-out four-night stand in London, but I also cried with joy. The fact ...

Epiphany At Zuma Beach Or Brian Wilson Hallucinates Me
Memoir by David Dalton, Gadfly, May 2002
AFTER PET SOUNDS Brian Wilson became the mad genius of the Beach Boys, a prodigy who had miraculously emerged out of the surf and car culture ...

Brian Wilson Smiles Again: Live at the Royal Festival Hall, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, March 2004
WE STILL HAVE so much invested in the idea of Brian Wilson’s genius. Three decades since he last wrote a genuinely great song, we continue to ...

Brian Wilson's Smile
Live Review by Jim Irvin, Mojo, April 2004
THE UBERFANS WITH medicated stares, the reverent fans who applaud Van Dyke Parks to his seat, the Smile scholars who have flown in from another side ...

Brian Wilson: Gettin' in Over My Head
Report by Gene Sculatti, ICE, June 2004
WITH A RESILIENCE REMINISCENT of that battery-powered bunny or California's governor in his biggest pre-politics role, Brian Wilson is back – again. Fresh on the heels ...

Brian Wilson: Smile
Review by Sean O'Hagan, The Observer, September 2004
The piano in the sand pit, the orchestra decked out in fireman's helmets, the kilos of grade A hashish, the master tapes that were destroyed, or ...

Smile When Your Heart Is Breaking: Brian Wilson
Interview by Roy Trakin, Hits, October 2004
ALMOST DECADES after it was originally slated as the follow-up to Pet Sounds, Brian Wilson’s legendary SMiLE, finally complete and released by Nonesuch, is still causing ...

Brian Wilson - Beach Boy, Pop Visionary, Wounded Soul
Profile and Interview by Mick Brown, GQ, November 2004
IN THE LATE SIXTIES, Brian Wilson used to practice Transcendental Meditation. There, in the purple and gold silk Arabian tent that he had installed in his ...

An Interview With Dominic Priore part II: Good Things Come To Those Who SmiLE
Interview by Gary Pig Gold, fufkin.com, September 2005
Gary Pig Gold climbs into the Virtual Sandbox ...

Perfect Harmony: Pet Sounds 40th Anniversary Show Celebrates Brian Wilson's Pop Legacy
Live Review by Kirk Silsbee, LA CityBeat, November 2006
OUT OF CURIOSITY and love of a good story, I've had a longstanding parlor question for jazz-minded friends on the far side of 60. What were ...

The Beach Boys: The Making of Pet Sounds
Retrospective and Interview by Bill Holdship, Mojo, January 2007
BACKSTAGE AT UCLA's Royce Hall a joyous sound suddenly erupts from behind a closed door, which one assumes leads to Brian Wilson's dressing room judging by ...

see also Beach Boys, The

see also Van Dyke Parks