As chief songwriter and studio mastermind, Brian Wilson has always been rightly seen as the group’s genius (as I myself acknowledged in a prior post on the making of the band's masterpiece, Pet Sounds).
But Carl made his
own distinct creative contributions from the beginning—and, when Brian stopped touring
in the mid-Sixties because of a nervous breakdown, and Dennis Wilson grew ever
more wild and dangerous in pursuing women, alcohol and drugs, Carl took on a
larger role in the studio and on the road, functioning as the group’s de facto
leader.
None of this could have been easy. But Carl also had
to maintain the Beach Boys’ sense of experimentation while
keeping in the fold lead singer and cousin Mike Love, whose unwillingness to
stray far from the band’s original surf sound and subject matter increasingly
threatened to turn the group into a nostalgia act.
From the start, Brian knew that Carl, four and a half
years younger, was open to new sounds, learning how to play guitar from imitating
Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley chords and, in the mid-Sixties, learning the
12-string Rickenbacker as well.
As Brian’s mastery in the studio increased, his
confidence in his kid brother’s harmonies grew, and he featured Carl more and
more on lead vocals, including two of the Beach Boys’ seminal songs in their most
musically innovative period, “God Only Knows” and “Good Vibrations.”
Still only 14 years old when the band’s first hit, “Surfin’,”
climbed the charts in 1961, Carl would be all of 21 when Brian’s collapse
during the Smiley Smile sessions thrust him into the role of studio
leader, too.
The Beach Boys’ turmoil in this period was a microcosm
of what the nation was also experiencing at this time: generational conflict (the
Wilsons’ abusive father Murry sold publishing rights to their songs for what
turned out to be a comparative pittance); flirtation with Eastern religions (Love
visited the Indian ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi); drugs; violence (Dennis
even briefly shared his home with Charles Manson); and Vietnam (Carl filed for
conscientious objector status).
Yet the group was being written off as hopelessly
square, as musical tastes turned sharply towards harder rock.
Carl was not without his own problems, particularly as
he hit his 30s, including drugs, alcohol and a painful divorce. But he displayed
a resilience that his older brothers lacked.
In the process, he not only overcome his own issues,
but spent much time trying to release Brian from the clutches of his
psychiatrist-Svengali, Dr. Eugene Landy, and served as an emotional anchor for
his nieces and nephews when their fathers fell deeper into personal difficulties.
(Dennis would die in a drowning accident in 1983.)
Brian’s waning presence in the band was much discussed—overwhelmingly
to its detriment—in the post-Smiley Smile period. But in many ways that
criticism was unfair. Much of the Beach Boys’ most interesting work—including mainstays
of their live shows for nearly the next half-century—was recorded in this time,
including “Darlin,’” “Sail on Sailor,” "Friends," and two particular
favorites of mine featuring Carl on lead vocals, “Wild Honey” and “Long Promised
Road.”
It might have been, though, that Carl’s most significant
contribution during these years of critical and popular neglect was just to keep
the band together as a touring unit. Though the band would never again have the
sustained chart success it had experienced in the early to mid Sixties,
audiences and critics would come around again to see them as seminal influences
in popular music.
There were times, particularly in the early Eighties, when the internal strains of leading so many dysfunctional band members wore on Carl.
In 1980, annoyed at the group’s lack of rehearsal time and its choice of
material, he quit and released two solo albums. Their commercial failure, and the
other band members’ vow to change, led him to rejoin two years later—though,
for the next decade and a half, he increasingly yielded to Love on the Beach
Boys’ musical direction.
The Beach Boys have continued to perform up to the
present, but they have become increasingly riven into Love and anti-Love factions.
Something irreplaceable died with Carl 25 years ago—an amazingly sweet, pure
voice that reflected the singer’s gentle spirit and soul.
As friend and songwriting collaborator Robert White Johnson
said after in an interview for The Vinyl Dialogues blog:
“I don’t think Carl ever got the accolades that he
deserved for his musical contributions, instincts and abilities. If it hadn’t
been for him, the Beach Boys would have died a long time ago. He kept it
together, he kept it going. He was the heartbeat, he kept it real, vocally and
artistically. He was a true inspiration to me, even with his regard to his
humanity. It doesn’t take me much to get teary-eyed thinking about him. I was
honored to be his friend.”
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