God Only Knows What We'd Have Done Without Brian

The arts correspondent of the UK state's bastion of elite privilege, David Sillito was summoned to the airwaves yesterday to express our collective sense of grief. Surely, at such a time of profound musical loss, we could rely on Britain's greatest cultural export to organise our emotions? This, after all, is the same organisation that refers to itself, cloyingly, as 'our BBC' whilst fittingly celebrating mediocrity and cultural inanity. The state's upholder of secular religion refuses external advertising to fund its air-headed presenters' six-figure obscenities, but batters us monotonously across all platforms with a nauseating advertorial diet of smug self-promotion. All of course funded by a regressive tax (AKA the TV License) that hits the honest low-waged the hardest. 

On the news that one of the most original, innovative and influential talents in 20th century music - period - had died, Mr Sillito combined throw away references to Brian Wilson's celebrated early '60s songs about surf, sun, sand and girls, with much comment about his later mental breakdown. And that was it. 

So goodbye Brian. 

The next morning however the BBC briefly returned to the topic of Brian.... with a mention of a tweet attributed to Bob Dylan about marveling at his 'genius'. It's true that the strains of one of the greatest songs - ever - 'God Only Knows' from the Beach Boys' classic album 'Pet Sounds', did accompany the BBC's earlier 'tribute'. However not a word was said  about the song that in 1966 Paul McCartney as good as admitted he could never get close to, and that David Bowie, more humbly, later did a passable but highly respectful interpretation of. 

That mental breakdown was, Brian is audio-edited as in effect saying, triggered by LSD. But I'd guess it had as much to do with Brian's physical and psychological abuse by his father Murray Wilson. The BBC's website tribute actually says his breakdown was triggered by him realising he was not able to compete with The Beatles' 'Revolver' album. Yet the Beach Boys' answer, 'Smile', was very much the product of Brian's 'mad genius' and was arguably, when we finally got to hear it in its entirety 35 plus years later, every bit as good as Pet Sounds, Revolver or Sgt Pepper. The original unreleased album 'Smile' was as good as disowned by the other Beach Boys, even though some of its best tracks appeared on subsequent albums. In fact what the BBC had all but dismissed as an apparently quintessential '60s band also graced the '70s with some fine songs, including versions of some 'Smile' originals, Surf's Up and Heroes and Villains.

Surf's Up - the album

The song 'Surf's Up' is a mesmerising pop symphony that plainly heavily influenced Macca and serves as a wilful antidote (the clue's in the ironic title) to the boys' trademark surf 'n sun schtick. The wonderful 1971 album of the same name also contained another of Brian's greatest, 'Til I Die. In its original Beach Boys form it is sublime; peerless in fact. In its mid '90s reinterpretation on Brian's album 'I Just Wasn't Made for These Times', itself a wholly revealing and achingly emotional reworking of some of Brian's best songs, 'Til I Die becomes a white/RnB crossover hymn of overwhelming beauty. 

Play it and weep. 

We love you Brian.