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We jointly mourn the loss of Brian Wilson. His links to our Cowsills are numerous, but here are a few.
1. Of course the Beach Boys influenced the harmonies of The Cowsills.
2. The Cowsills joined The Beach Boys on the bill at Soundblast '66.
3. Billy and Brian were friends (very close friends per John) and when Billy was asked to replace Brian in the BB's, it was Brian who told him not to do it. "It will drive you crazy," I believe is what he told Bill.
4. A Cowsill fan, Brian once attend a performance in LA and kept heckling them to play "Indian Lake" which was always a favorite of Brian's. John tell of it being in the standard rotation playlist on Brian's tour bus.
5. John was one of only two members of Mike's BB to join the full Beach Boys on their 50th Anniversary tour. As they started rehersals, John really thought that Brian thought he was Bill. As they rehearsed, Brian would yell "Hey drummer, play it like this." The others told him "That's John Cowsill" and John told them, "Leave him alone." It was more fun to be called "drummer." Another time when rehearsal were over, John was walking out and Brian says, "How much do you charge for that?" "What?" was John's reply. Brian says, "That show. How much do you charge for that?" Brian was complimenting John.
6. Bob, Paul and Susan opened from Brian Wilson in Miami, Florida on January 17, 2020.
John posted on Instragram: "I'm sure a lot of you have heard the news that Brian Wilson passed away. He will live on though because of that incredible catalog he created. Beautiful music. So his spirt lives on, for sure. I want to send my regards to his family, his kids. And a quick story that ... I'm so thankful that I got to work with Brian. And we were sitting in a dressing room, doing a TV show. Could have been Kimmel or Fallon. And he has his head against the wall and he picks his head up and he looks at me. He says, 'Do you ever miss your brothers?' I went, 'Wow.' I said, 'yeah I do.' He says, 'Me too.' So, he's with his brothers now, which is great. Love to your family, Brian. Love to you. Love to everybody who loved you. "
The Washington Post writes in part:
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Brian Wilson, the founder and principal creative force of the Beach Boys, whose catalogue of early hits embodied the fantasy of California as a paradise of beautiful youth, fast cars and endless surf and made them the most popular American rock group of the 1960s, has died at 82.
The family announced the death on his official webpage, but did not provide further information.
The Beach Boys were formed in 1961 in Hawthorne, California, near Los Angeles, by brothers Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love and their friend Al Jardine, and the regional success that year of their first single, "Surfin,' " thrust them to national attention when Capitol Records signed them almost immediately as the label's first rock act.
They would make the Billboard Top 40 list 36 times in as many years, a tally unequaled by an American band. While each member contributed to the Beach Boys' signature angelic vocal harmonics, Mr. Wilson was the widely acknowledged mastermind behind their music.
A spectacularly imaginative songwriter, he was responsible for initial successes including "Surfin' USA," "Surfer Girl," "I Get Around," "All Summer Long," "Don't Worry Baby," "The Warmth of the Sun" and "California Girls." Such numbers evoked the joys of hot-rodding under boundlessly blue skies and, above all, the bronzed, bikinied lifestyle of Southern California.
Yet Mr. Wilson also displayed an ambitious craftsmanship as a producer that culminated in the 1966 Beach Boys album "Pet Sounds," which many critics and music historians consider the first and greatest of all rock "concept" albums building songs around a theme.
. . .
Traumatic childhood
Brian Douglas Wilson was born in Inglewood, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, on June 20, 1942, and grew up in nearby Hawthorne, where his father owned a machinery company. His father, Murry, had musical ambitions that were never realized and was, by all accounts, a physically abusive tyrant and heavy drinker.
"When he didn't put his hands on us, he tried to scare us in other ways," Mr. Wilson later wrote in his memoir "I Am Brian Wilson." "He would take out his glass eye and make us look into the space where the eye used to be."
Murry Wilson derided his children, especially Brian, as talentless and undisciplined, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Brian had written his first song at 5 and learned to play piano by watching his father. Playing the piano would become a way to drown out family fights.
During high school, Mr. Wilson was a capable student who played baseball and football and ran cross-country. But his great interest was music and, when he received a Wollensak tape recorder for his 16th birthday, he enlisted his younger brothers, singing familiar songs and playing them back, all the while listening closely and critically.
"I heard the Del-Vikings, the Coasters and the Platters. They blew me away," Mr. Wilson told the Washington Times. "I learned how to make harmonies. And I learned how to sing with love in my voice from Rosemary Clooney."
In 1961, while a student at El Camino College, he wrote his first pop song. Based on the Disney standard "When You Wish Upon a Star," it was later known as "Surfer Girl."
His group, originally called the Pendletones, made its first appearance that same year. When the first single, "Surfin'," was released on a small Los Angeles label called Candix, Mr. Wilson and his band were surprised to learn that the record company had changed their name to the Beach Boys.
. . .
The Beach Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, and Mr. Wilson received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2007 for being "rock and roll's gentlest revolutionary" and for a body of work that was called "vulnerable and sincere, authentic and unmistakably American."
In 2010, he made a recording of his favorite Gershwin songs and, in 2021, he released "At My Piano," a selection of Mr. Wilson's songs played simply, lovingly and somewhat anxiously by their composer.
For all of the Beach Boys' musical infatuation with the carefree life in the surf, Mr. Wilson admitted to getting "conked on the head" the one time he tried to ride a wave. But in summing up the band's most enduring aesthetic, he told the Sunday Times of London in 2019 that Southern California was "more about the idea of going in the ocean than actually going in the ocean."
"I liked to look at the sea, though," he added. "It was like a piece of music: each wave was moving around by itself, but they were also moving together."
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