Dennis Wilson
Dennis Carl Wilson was an American musician, singer, and songwriter who co-founded the Beach Boys. He was their drummer and the middle brother of bandmates Brian and Carl Wilson as well as a first cousin of other bandmate Mike Love. Dennis was the only true surfer in the Beach Boys, and his personal life exemplified the "California myth" that the band's early songs often celebrated. He was also known for his association with the Manson Family and for co-starring in the 1971 film Two-Lane Blacktop.
Dennis served mainly on drums and backing vocals for the Beach Boys. His playing can be heard on many of the group's hits, belying the popular misconception that he was always replaced on record by studio musicians. He originally had few lead vocals on the band's songs due to his limited baritone range, but his prominence as a singer-songwriter increased following their 1968 album Friends. His music is characterized for reflecting his "edginess" and "little of his happy charm." His original songs for the group included "Little Bird", "Forever" and "Cuddle Up". Friends and biographers have asserted that he was an uncredited writer on "You Are So Beautiful", a 1974 hit for Joe Cocker frequently performed by Wilson in concert.
During his final years, Wilson struggled with substance abuse, exacerbating longstanding tensions with some of his bandmates. His only solo album issued in his lifetime, Pacific Ocean Blue, was released to warm reviews and moderate sales comparable to those of contemporaneous Beach Boys albums, and has retrospectively become highly acclaimed. Sessions for a follow-up, Bambu, disintegrated before his death from drowning in 1983 at age 39. In 1988, he was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Beach Boys.
Childhood
Dennis Carl Wilson was born on December 4, 1944, the second child of Audree Neva and Murry Gage Wilson. He spent his formative years with his brothers Brian and Carl and their parents in Hawthorne, California. Dennis's role in the family dynamic, which he himself acknowledged, was that of the black sheep. According to neighborhood friend David Marks, Dennis's "raucous behavior" inspired other kids to nickname him "Dennis the Menace". Out of the three Wilson brothers, Dennis was the most likely to get beaten by their father and suffer the worst treatment. In 1976, he acknowledged, "We had a shitty childhood... my dad was a tyrant. He used to wale on us, physically beat the crap out of us. I don't know kids who got it like we did."Possessed with an abundance of physical energy and a combative nature, Dennis often refused to participate in family singalongs, and likewise avoided vocalizing on the early recordings that Brian made on a portable tape recorder. Dennis later described Brian as a "freak" who would "stay in his room all day listening to records rather than playing baseball. If you could get me to sing a song, yeah, I'd get into it. But I'd much rather play doctor with the girl next door or muck around with cars." However, Dennis would sing with his brothers late at night in their shared bedroom, a song Brian later recalled as "our special one we'd sing", titled "Come Down, Come Down from the Ivory Tower". Brian said of the late night brotherly three-part harmonies, "We developed a little blend which aided us when we started to get into the Beach Boys stuff."
Dennis noted of himself, "If my dad hadn't given me a BB gun when I was nine years old, my life would have been completely different. With that gun I had something I could take my anger out on. Hunting, fishing, racing have been my preoccupations ever since." Brian told Melody Maker in 1966, "Dennis had to keep moving all the time. If you wanted him to sit still for one second, he's yelling and screaming and ranting and raving. He's the most messed-up person I know." Around the time he was 14, Dennis began playing piano and learned to play boogie-woogie styles. He remembered attending church gatherings with the rest of his family "because there was this outasight chick there... I used to try and play boogie woogie on the church piano on Friday nights when all the kids went there to play volleyball."
Early career
Formation of the Beach Boys
The Wilsons' mother, Audree, forced Brian to include Dennis in the original lineup of the Beach Boys. In 1960, Dennis began taking drum lessons at Hawthorne High School. Teacher Fred Morgan later said that Dennis had been "a beater, not a drummer" and "a fast learner when he wanted to learn." According to Brian, "We kind of developed into a group sort of through the wishes of Dennis. He said that... the kids at school knew I was musical because I had done some singing for assemblies and so on." Recalling their first group rehearsals, Dennis said that he was initially "going to play bass, and then I decided to play drums.... Drums seemed to be more exciting. I could always play bass if I wanted to." Brian would ultimately play bass. Dennis played the drums on their first studio album "Surfin' Safari" and sang vocals.The Beach Boys officially formed in late 1961, with Murry taking over as manager, and had a local hit with their debut record "Surfin'", a song that Brian wrote at Dennis's urging. Dennis recalled, "We got so excited... I ran down the street screaming, 'Listen, we're on the radio!' It was really funky. That started it, the minute you're on the radio." Though the Beach Boys developed their image based on the California surfing culture, Dennis was the only actual surfer in the band. Carl supported, "Dennis was the only one who could really surf. We all tried, even Brian, but we were terrible. We just wanted to have a good time and play music."
In early 1963, Dennis teamed with Brian's collaborator Gary Usher. Calling themselves the Four Speeds, they released the single "RPM" backed with "My Stingray". In March 1964, Dennis moved out of the Wilson family home and took residence at an address in Hollywood. In the sleeve notes of the band's July 1964 album All Summer Long, Dennis wrote, "They say I live a fast life. Maybe I just like a fast life. I wouldn't give it up for anything in the world. It won't last forever, either. But the memories will." In December, Murry told a reporter that Dennis had been "a little too generous" with money and "cried when he learned about how much he had wasted.... Where the other boys invested or saved their money, Dennis spent $94,000. He spent $25,000 on a home but the rest just went. Dennis like that: he picks up the tab wherever he goes."
In January 1965, Brian declared to his bandmates that he would no longer tour with the group for the foreseeable future. He later said that Dennis was so devastated by the news that his immediate reaction was to pick up "a big ashtray and told some people to get out of there or he'd hit them on the head with it. He kind of blew it." Photographer Ed Roach, a close friend of Dennis, stated that Brian was deterred from the stage due to jealousy over the adulation Dennis received from the audience. Brian remembered that the attention Dennis received was "hard to handle". The girls would be going 'Dennis, Dennis' and run right past us to get to him." Dennis later said of his brother, "Brian Wilson is the Beach Boys. He is the band. We're his fucking messengers. He is all of it. Period. We're nothing. He's everything."
Increased record presence
Brian wrote that he had felt that Dennis "never really had a chance to sing very much", and so he gave him more leads on their March 1965 album The Beach Boys Today!. Dennis sang "Do You Wanna Dance?" and "In the Back of My Mind". The former became the first song with a Dennis lead that was issued as an A-sided single, peaking at No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. Journalist Peter Doggett later said that Dennis' performance on the latter song "showed for the first time an awareness that his voice could be a blunt emotional instrument.... his erratic croon cut straight to the heart, with an urgency that his more precise brothers could never have matched." Released in July, Summer Days contained Dennis's favorite song by Brian, "Let Him Run Wild".By 1966, Dennis had begun using LSD. His drumming contributions on Pet Sounds were limited to the track "That's Not Me". Carl said, "Brian liked to use Hal Blaine|Hal because he was so much more reliable than Dennis, but whenever Dennis got the chance to play he always did a great job. He played drums on more of our records than most people realize. I think because he didn't play on Pet Sounds everybody assumes he never played at all, and that's just not the case."
During the Smile sessions, Dennis played on "Vega-Tables", "Holidays", and "Good Vibrations". It is rumored that the album's working title, Dumb Angel, referred to Dennis himself. Van Dyke Parks, the project's lyricist, credited Wilson with inspiring the name of the would-be album track "Surf's Up". Dennis said that the group ultimately scrapped Smile because they became "very paranoid about the possibility of losing our public.... Drugs played a great role in our evolution but as a result we were frightened that people would no longer understand us, musically."
In the latter part of the 1960s, Dennis started writing songs for the Beach Boys. Dennis's collaborator Gregg Jakobson commented, "He started taking his piano playing more seriously. He'd ask Brian to show him stuff until he got a pretty good grasp of chords." In January 1967, Dennis recorded the original composition "I Don't Know", but it was left unreleased. Music historian Keith Badman states that whether the piece was intended for Smile is not definitively known. In December, Wilson recorded a piece called "Tune #1" that was intended for a solo project to be released on Brother Records, but it was also shelved.
Wilson's first major released composition was "Little Bird", issued in April 1968 as the B-side of the "Friends" single. "Little Bird" and another song, "Be Still", were co-written with poet Stephen Kalinich and featured on the album Friends. The group's next album, 20/20, marked the emergence of Dennis as a producer, including his original songs "Be with Me" and "All I Want to Do". Dennis's "Celebrate the News" was released as the B-side to the standalone single "Break Away".
By this time, the Beach Boys' popularity had faltered considerably. Dennis believed, "Because of the attitude of a few mental dinosaurs intent on exploiting our initial success, Brian's huge talent has never been fully appreciated in America and the potential of the group has been stifled. If the Beatles had suffered this kind of misrepresentation, they would have never got past singing 'Please, Please Me' and 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand' and leaping around in Beatle suits."
In 2018, many of Wilson's unreleased tracks from this period were released for the compilations Wake the World: The Friends Sessions and I Can Hear Music: The 20/20 Sessions.