Original title: God only knows
Translation: Ainhoa Segura Alcalde
Year of publication: 1978 (with updates in 1985 and 2022)
Valuation: recommendable
Spain is bullfighting, paella, flamenco and sun and The Beach Boys are surfing, joy and “Surfin’USA”. Absurd reductionisms that offer an idealized vision but leave aside any type of analysis, any glimpse of the complexity that characterizes any human group, no matter how small.
Here we are, however, to offer you some light! But we will not deal today with sociological disquisitions; We will go more on the hedonistic side and we will talk about the most important band of the 60s (yes, Beatlemaniacs, yes) and about its musical brain, the great Brian Wilson. And we will do it through this biography written by David Leaf, originally published in 1978 and updated in 1985 and 2022. Note that this separation of dates is not at all gratuitous since the assessment of each of them will differ significantly. To the mess.
The 1978 version of the text is by far the most interesting and the most appropriately treated. David Leaf, from the distance afforded by his status as a fan and journalist, takes a chronological tour of the life and work of Brian and the Beach Boys, starting from that unexpected and overwhelming initial success that conditioned the expectations that the industry and the family put on Brian and that caused a series of situations that decisively affected the character’s health. Thus, economic interests, pressures from the industry and family (the very conflictive and contradictory relationship between the Wilson brothers and their father, the differences between Brian and his cousin Mike Love…) paint a picture that is not strange in the world of music and will cause the rise and fall of Brian and the band.
Three aspects stand out in this first part:
- the journey that makes Wilson an increasingly troubled and paranoid man, capable of composing and producing gems like Pet Sounds and being, after a few years, emptied and manipulated without mercy.
- the construction of myth in popular culture.
- the sociopolitical context that surrounds the band and that, in a certain way, also determines its greater or lesser popularity.
The 1985 update covers the personal and professional ups and downs in the period 1978-1985, a period in which a relative resurgence of Brian and the Beach Boys was accompanied by economic crises and personal crises (drugs, alcohol, failed marriages, etc.) that led to Brian fell again into the hands of psychologist Eugene Landy, who would control his life and work from 1982 to 1992. (In this regard, I dare to recommend the movie Love & Mercy). This update focuses more on facts than on, let’s say, the character’s personal feelings and leaves a bittersweet taste due to the lack of depth in those early years of the Landy – Wilson relationship.
Finally, the 2022 update, which covers from those tumultuous years with Landy to the late rebirth based on tours, tributes, THE DEFINITIVE PUBLICATION OF SMiLE, and albums of notable quality, is the weakest. The problem is not so much that the author has gone from being that young fan from 1978 to one of the current members of Brian’s entourage, which undoubtedly causes him to lose “distance” with the biographer, but that he often seems more like his own. autobiography of David Leaf (what he did, what he didn’t do, if I filmed that, I wrote the script for that…). Wow, she’s showing too much of a feather in her cap in this regard (and in her bad vibes with Mike Love, but that’s another topic). I think that those years of Wilson’s life, with a different focus, give much more.
In short, somewhat irregular and biased but interesting and complete biography of one of the greatest geniuses in the history of pop (if not the greatest), who with his harmonies, his arrangements and his compositions is part of the sentimental memory of every music lover. music. And if not, listen Pet Sounds o SMiLE and you tell me
Source: https://unlibroaldia.blogspot.com/2023/12/david-leaf-god-only-knows-la-historia.html
