Song of the Day 6/12: Brian Wilson, “Melt Away”

I won’t rhapsodize about Brian Wilson’s talent – he always maintained it wasn’t genius, it was hard work – because the entire music world has already done that. Even his cousin, collaborator and frequent nemesis Mike Love, chimed in, with a tribute more eloquent than any of his lyrics. He called Brian’s oeuvre “a hundred pieces of his soul wrapped in music … what vulnerability and brilliance sound like in harmony.”

Most people associate the Beach Boys with the early ’60s surf tunes that did so much to form the eternal-summer myth of southern California. Brian Wilson had barely turned 20 when he wrote them with Love. As he matured, so did his songwriting, but more sophistication didn’t translate into more sales. “Pet Sounds” was a landmark album and every musician knew it at the time, but its best songs, “God Only Knows” and “Caroline, No,” barely made the Top 40.

By the end of 1964 Wilson, who grew up under a domineering, abusive father, was a psychologically fragile person responsible for the artistic output and financial health of what had become a large business operation. That December, on a flight to Texas to kick off a short concert tour, he had the first of a series of mental breakdowns. Drugs soon exacerbated the problem, and by the early ’70s Wilson was an addicted recluse, his musical engagement near zero.

His brothers and bandmates staged an intervention in 1982 and put him under the care of psychologist Eugene Landy. Landy took over Wilson’s life, replacing the illegal drugs with a cocktail of anti-psychotics and a health-food regimen that slimmed him down from 350 pounds. The rest of the Beach Boys credit Landy with keeping Wilson from destroying himself, but the psychologist also inserted himself into every facet of his patient’s life, including his creative process. It took a decade and a restraining order for Wilson’s family to extricate the musician from Landy, who eventually lost his license over his conduct.

When Wilson released his eponymous comeback album in 1988, Landy received co-writing credit (later stripped away) but the music professionals who shepherded the LP to completion by keeping Wilson on task did so over Landy’s constant interference. The album was well-received by critics, but its lead single, “Love and Mercy,” didn’t chart. Wilson’s production, heavy on synthesized orchestration, bears the unfortunate hallmarks of that era, but the tunes showed his muse hadn’t disappeared.

“Melt Away” features Wilson’s trademark mix of euphoria and melancholy. He said it was about “the identity crisis I have in my life – the way I see myself and the ‘me’ that everybody thinks I am.” By the turn of the century Wilson was performing again, though he often seemed uncomfortable and distracted on stage. If he was but a shell of his former self, the wonder of his concerts, to quote Dr. Johnson, was not that they were done well, but that they were done at all.