Transcript
Terry Gross (0:00)
The House of Representatives has approved a White House request to claw back two.
Brian Wilson (0:04)
Years of previously approved funding for public media.
Terry Gross (0:07)
The rescissions package now moves on to the Senate. This move poses a serious threat to local stations and public media as we know it. Please take a stand for public media today@goacpr.org thank you.
David Biancooli (0:24)
This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Biancooli. Today we remember Brian Wilson, founder of the Beach Boys. His death was announced Wednesday by his family. He was 82 years old. Brian Wilson was the creative force behind the Beach Boys, the most popular singing group of the early 1960s until they were unseated by the Beatles. He was the lead singer of the Beach Boys and wrote, produced and arranged their songs, which included the early number one hits I Get around and Help Me Rhonda. Later, more intricate and ambitious compositions included another number one hit, good Vibrations, as well as God Only Knows, a song Paul McCartney praised as one of the greatest songs ever written.
Brian Wilson (1:25)
Always love you, but long as there are stars above you, you never need to doubt it. I'll make you so sure about it. God only knows what I'd be without you. If you should ever leave me, oh, life would still go on, believe me. The could show nothing to me, so what good would living to me? God only knows what I'd be without you.
David Biancooli (2:11)
God Only Knows was from the 1966 album Pet Sounds, which Rolling Stone has ranked as one of the greatest rock albums ever recorded. Other songs on that album, which Wilson crafted in the studio two years after stepping down from touring with the group, included Wouldn't It Be Nice, Sloop, John B. And a song which provided the title for a documentary made about him in 1995, I just wasn't Made for these times. Brian Wilson was born in inglewood, California, in 1942 and raised in suburban Los Angeles with his brothers Carl and Dennis, cousin Mike Love and others. They formed a musical group exploring harmonies, celebrating the Southern California surfing craze and relying on Brian Wilson's catchy melodies and musical arrangements. His father, Murray Wilson, became their manager, but also was controlling and abusive. Brian Wilson stopped touring with the group in 1964 after suffering his first nervous breakdown. He was hallucinating and paranoid and diagnosed with what is now called schizoaffective disorder. Eventually, he became reclusive and overweight, then resurfaced in the mid-70s after being treated by psychotherapist Eugene Landy. Landy, however, proved just as controlling as Brian Wilson's father. Once Brian resumed recording, Landy became not only his Manager, but his musical collaborator before they parted ways in 1991 after a family intervention later in life, Brian Wilson recovered sufficiently to record a few more albums and even to tour. In 2007, he was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors, but his mental illness lingered, and he struggled with dementia in the years before his death. We're going to listen back to two of Terry's interviews with Brian Wilson. The first was in 1988, when he was still under the care of Eugene Landy. Brian Wilson had just released his first solo album since leaving the Beach Boys, a project for which he not only wrote and arranged the songs, but played most of the instruments and sang both lead and backup vocals. Terry started by playing the album's opening track, love and Mercy.