Brian Wilson (album)
Brian Wilson is the debut solo studio album by the American musician Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, released July 12, 1988, by Sire and Reprise Records. Promoted as a spiritual successor to his band's 1966 release Pet Sounds, the album is characterized for its Phil Spector–influenced orchestrations, expansive vocal harmonies, and use of synthesizers. It was reported to cost over $1 million to record and was the first album produced by Wilson since The Beach Boys Love You. His former psychologist, Eugene Landy, was credited as "executive producer".
The album was recorded over the course of a year across 11 studios. It was written and produced mainly by Wilson, Landy, and Sire staff producers Andy Paley and Russ Titelman. Landy was a constant disruptive presence and creative differences occurred between him and the rest of the production team. The record includes the eight-minute closing track "Rio Grande", which saw Wilson revisiting a more experimental approach in the form of an Old West-themed suite. Among the album's guest contributors were Nick Laird-Clowes, Jeff Lynne, Elliot Easton, Philippe Saisse, Christopher Cross, and Terence Trent D'Arby. Two singles were issued: "Love and Mercy" and "Melt Away".
Brian Wilson was critically acclaimed but sold moderately, reaching number 54 in the U.S. and failing to chart in the UK. The LP's release was largely overshadowed by the controversy surrounding Landy's therapeutic practice and the success of the Beach Boys' "Kokomo", released the same month. In subsequent decades, the album has received some criticism for its reliance on synthesizers and drum machines, but has also been positively reappraised by fans and critics and has served as an influence for composers such as Hirokazu Tanaka and Keiichi Suzuki. A follow-up, Sweet Insanity, was co-produced with Landy but never officially released. Wilson continued recording with Paley after disassociating from Landy in 1991, but did not release another solo album consisting of new original material until Imagination.
Background
Wilson stated in a 1976 interview that he had considered the Beach Boys' albums Pet Sounds and Friends to be his first solo albums. Officially, he had one solo record to his name, the 1966 single "Caroline, No", which had sold poorly. In the mid-1970s, he had approached Warner Bros. Records about producing a solo album, but it never happened, ostensibly because he had rejected the company's proposed budget. His last released production effort was the 1977 album The Beach Boys Love You, which, despite being credited to the Beach Boys, was recorded and performed almost entirely by Wilson alone. During the recording of Love You, in December 1976, Wilson told a journalist that he had desired a solo career, but feared that "it would split the group up too much". He stated in a 1988 interview that he "should have" recorded a true solo album long ago, but had lacked "the confidence or the discipline".From 1977 to 1982, Wilson entered a period of regression marked by overeating, drug abuse, erratic behavior, and at least one extended stay at a psychiatric facility. The group's efforts to keep Wilson at the production helm were unsuccessful, and at the end of 1982, his family, bandmates, and management prevailed upon him to volunteer back into psychologist Eugene Landy's "24-hours-a-day" therapy program. In short time, Landy's role extended to being Wilson's creative and financial partner. As his recovery consolidated, Wilson actively participated in the recording of his band's self-titled 1985 album The Beach Boys, produced by Steve Levine. Following this, Wilson, under Landy's auspices, stopped working with his bandmates on a regular basis in order to focus on launching a solo career. According to Landy, this was because Wilson's bandmates "didn't appreciate his gift nor were they able to see that he was back and once again able to take over."
At the suggestion of biographer David Leaf, in May 1986, Landy agreed to let Wilson's early songwriting partner Gary Usher collaborate on Wilson's planned solo album. Wilson and Usher subsequently wrote and recorded demos at Usher's studio, producing a collection of recordings that came to be known as "the Wilson Project". They recorded about a dozen songs in varying stages of completion, most of which remain unreleased. Due to Landy's persistent interference, which often involved revising the lyrics of their songs, the project was abandoned after June 1987.
In January 1987, Sire Records president Seymour Stein invited Wilson to act as a presenter for Leiber and Stoller's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Impressed by Wilson's healthier demeanor and his onstage a cappella rendition of "On Broadway", Stein met with Wilson during the ceremonial dinner and offered him a two-album solo deal. Several weeks later, they reconvened at Wilson's Malibu home, where Stein was played "about sixty" of Wilson's new songs and decided on eighteen to record. One of Stein's stipulations was to assign his own choice of co-producer for Wilson, and in turn, Landy negotiated to be allowed an "executive producer" credit. Stein recruited staff producer Andy Paley, a Boston-based multi-instrumentalist and Beach Boys fanatic who had previously produced albums for Jonathan Richman. Paley and Wilson immediately went to work.
Production
Collaborators
Paley, as he himself described, was assigned to the project "to kick in the ass and get him going", as well as to evaluate material for Stein and Lenny Waronker, the latter of whom being the president of Sire's distributor, Warner Bros. Records. As was typical for Wilson's previous collaborators – namely, Tony Asher and Van Dyke Parks – Paley usually met Wilson at his home and spent time together chatting or doing some other activity for inspiration before working on songs. They were not composing together until, Paley said, "Brian realized I could play a number of instruments, we started jamming and then writing music together to flesh out the songs."Wilson recalled that, between 1982 and 1986, he had been unusually prolific as a songwriter and composed at his piano at least once a day. "We had 130 songs, then weeded it down to 20. We recorded 18 of those and chose 11 out of the 18". He and Paley trawled through three briefcases filled with tapes containing nearly 170 mostly unrecorded songs he had written. By Paley's account, there was "great stuff", but also many songs that he termed "hamburger songs" in reference to stories about Dennis Wilson, in the early 1980s, enticing Brian to write songs with McDonald's hamburgers. Paley said, "I could tell Brian if he was repeating himself in any of his stuff by incorporating some tiny thing from an obscure old tune. I kept him honest with himself as well as looking forward." In turn, Wilson said of Paley, "He's a real swift guy. Real fast. A very brainy guy. He puts a lot behind it, let's put it that way. He's a scary guy when you get right down to it."
Other producers, including Waronker and Russ Titelman, were soon involved. Both of them had worked with Wilson in the past; in Titelman's case, he and Wilson had written the songs "Sherry She Needs Me" and "Guess I'm Dumb" in the mid-1960s before becoming a staff producer at Warner Bros. According to Titelman, he got involved with the project after several months had passed and Wilson and Paley had produced only six "sloppy sketches" of incomplete songs. He said that Wilson "used to be a benevolent dictator in the studio; now, his ideas are great, but he needs someone to help organize those ideas." Waronker stated, "Each song had moments, but they needed help. But Brian had all the inspiration. All Russ did was make it stand up, make it be a record."
Waronker had been the Beach Boys' A&R representative at Warner–Reprise. In the words of biographer Mark Dillon, the project was "so important to Sire" that Waronker got "hands-on". He implored Wilson to produce something akin to the extended, modular recording style that he had adopted with Smile in the late 1960s. Waronker recalled, "I told Seymour that to not have Brian do one of the more experimental things he used to do before he went into hibernation would be, well, ridiculous." However, Wilson had formed an aversion to this approach due to the fact that his personal decline in the late 1960s and early 1970s had coincided with the "diminishing commercial reception" to his more experimental recording output. Waronker had initially envisioned the album as "a new age record a bunch of things like 'Cool, Cool Water". Instead of forming the entire album around such a concept, they compromised with just one song of an extended length, "Rio Grande", the only track on the album whose recording Waronker personally attended.
The album featured a host of guest appearances from acts including the Cars' guitarist Elliot Easton, jazz keyboardist Philippe Saisse, singers Christopher Cross and Terence Trent D'Arby, among others. Following the release, some writers and fan publications implied that Wilson's songs were ghostwritten by the other producers and musicians, or that he was forced into writing the songs. In response to such accusations, Paley stated that the listed credits were indeed inaccurate, and that "there were a lot of people helping on that record", but that his and Wilson's writing was in no way contrived. Paley added, "the guy is always writing songs anyway, it's not like someone has to tell him to do it."
Session difficulties and credits discrepancies
Landy and his aides were a constant disruptive presence, and creative differences between him and the rest of the production team occurred throughout the album's making. His assistant, Kevin Leslie, watched over Wilson at all times in the studio, while Landy himself regularly phoned to check on what track they were recording and to instruct Wilson to work on something else. Landy would also frequently confiscate the master tapes once a day's work had been finished. Stein, who characterized the album's recording as "hell on earth", said that Landy would then send back the wrong master tapes, "just to drive Russ crazy".Titelman said of Landy, "He kept Brian off guard all the time interrupting the creative flow and it was unbelievably frustrating. I started to go out of my mind. It was so chaotic and unpleasant that it became rather untenable." Landy acknowledged, "Titelman and I were always nose to nose, pushing, pushing, pushing. Russ Titelman is not my favorite person. But I must give him his honest due. Russ has to be congratulated for having the balls to stand up to Brian and Dr. Landy."
Biographer Peter Ames Carlin reported that Landy's meetings with Stein, Waronker, and Titelman had often "devolved into screaming matches". During the vocal sessions to one song, one of Landy's aides bribed Wilson with a milkshake in exchange for him to sing alternate lyrics written by Landy and his girlfriend, Alexandra Morgan. The team stopped communicating through the studio intercom system after it was discovered that Landy's aides were using it to eavesdrop on sessions from another room. Paley remarked, "Anything good we got out of those sessions was done totally on stolen time."
Paley indicated that the official writing and production credits for Brian Wilson are inaccurate. Near the album's release, Landy had fought to be awarded songwriting credits on certain tracks while removing songwriting and production credits from others. According to Paley, the musician, writing, and production credits became "all inaccurate", and he himself remains uncredited for several of the album's tracks.