The founder of the death of Beach Boys, Brian Wilson, is an immeasurable loss for music and for California, both the place and the dream that Wilson conjured with his real and tender compositions.
Wilson was the visionary of the American Rock Band, one that competed with the Beatles to move pop music to new kingdoms of sophistication and invention, while writing songs capturing the desire for an ascending youth culture.
His death leaves only two surviving members of the original alignment: Mike Love and the Jardine, the friend of the Wilson High School who sang leadership in early successes such as “Help me rhonda” and wrote songs for the beloved albums of periods later as “Surf's Up” and “Sunflower”.
The day the world learned of Wilson's death, Jardine spoke briefly with the Times to remember his lifelong friend and bandmate. The guitarist, vocalist and composer, now on the tour with his band of pet sounds playing Beach Boys' successes with an approach in his production of the 70s, looked back in six decades of writing and acting with one of the best minds of popular music.
Jardine's conversation was edited by length and clarity.
I just lost my best friend and mentor. It is not a good feeling, but I will continue and continue playing our music and acting with the pet sound band.
Brian was a great friend. We grew together, we went to the Together High School. We were both abandoned, which is not a bad thing whenever you have a vision of the future. His and mine was to make music.
We were very good friends and very successful in part due to his great talent. I had an incredible ability to compose, very simple things and very complex things, all at the same time. He was a visionary.
We all grew up together, but he grew exponentially. He became a leader and formed new forms of chord construction, things that no one had heard before, and we faced the challenge with him.
It has been said that Brian invented the state of California, the mental state. That is a pretty way of saying it, but really invented a new form of music in the 60s and 70s. It was very sophisticated, but it went far beyond that. He was a humble giant, a great American composer.
I don't think anyone else can walk in their place, given everything that happened. I wrote some songs that he liked, and helped him overcome the betrayal times. It must be so scary to be left in the desert alone and not know how to get home. He said that a song that I wrote helped him overcome that, which is a great fulfillment of the great Brian Wilson, who had his own demons with which to deal.
Brian Wilson's band was a awakening of his professional life. He never enjoyed tours, so this band was a completely new life for him, experiencing his own music and a flattery that he had never had before.
The Beach Boys – Dennis Wilson, Left, Al Jardine, Carl Wilson, Brian Wilson, Mike Love, act around 1964 in California.
(Michael Ochs / Getty Images files)
His legacy is, of course, in music, and any interpreter of that legacy has to be acute and dedicated to it. We have the most devout people who could be there to do that, so many original members of their band. My son Matthew, is Brian's voice, and DNA is there. With his arranger, Dary, organizing all the voices, we have all the muscle and genius to achieve it.
When Carl Wilson and I were singing those parts at that time, we would abbreviate things: you can't do everything you did in the study with only five of us. Now we have 10 people on stage and yesterday I heard some background pieces that sounded as we used to do it: you can listen to Carl and Dennis there.
When we get the band, I have a small white piano on stage, like the one that played in the past. It is a symbolic moment, the empty piano.
While the Beach Boys tour was a successful acting action, with this iteration, we are more introspective and deeper, performing much of the catalog of the 1970s. There are enough numbers that the public has not heard, exploring the heart and soul of those albums. I hoped Brian could have joined us.
But it is wonderful, we hope this music will last forever and sit at the deep levels that Brian experienced it.
Surely it is a great responsibility to play it, but it seems natural to me. I've been doing it for so long, he doesn't feel heavy. I am sure, especially with this band so remarkable. I'm still learning from Brian after all these years.
