The Genius of Brian Wilson (RIP) and How He Turned “Good Vibrations” Into the Beach Boys’ Pocket Symphony

This week, Bri­an Wil­son became the last of the Wil­son broth­ers to shuf­fle off this mor­tal coil. Den­nis, the first of the Wilsons to go, died young in 1983 — but not before offer­ing this mem­o­rable assess­ment of the fam­i­ly musi­cal project: “Bri­an Wil­son is the Beach Boys. He is the band. We’re his mes­sen­gers. He is all of it. Peri­od. We’re noth­ing.” That was a bit harsh: Den­nis may not have been a vir­tu­oso drum­mer, but Beach Boys enthu­si­asts all cred­it his faint­ly despair­ing songs with enrich­ing the band’s sig­na­ture emo­tion­al land­scape. Bri­an may have writ­ten “God Only Knows,” but he did so with his broth­er Car­l’s voice in mind. And could even Bri­an’s oth­er mas­ter­piece “Good Vibra­tions” have made the same impact with­out the par­tic­i­pa­tion of his much-resent­ed cousin Mike Love?

Still, with­out Bri­an’s orches­tra­tion, the oth­er Beach Boys’ voic­es would nev­er have come togeth­er in the pow­er­ful way they did, to say noth­ing of the con­tri­bu­tions of the count­less stu­dio musi­cians who played on their record­ings. Before “Good Vibra­tions,” nev­er had a pop song owed so much to so many musi­cians — and, at the same time, even more to the fer­tile and uncon­ven­tion­al son­ic imag­i­na­tion of just one man.

Labo­ri­ous­ly craft­ed over sev­en months in four dif­fer­ent stu­dios, it came out in Octo­ber of 1966 as the most expen­sive sin­gle ever pro­duced. Its then-epic length of 3:35 filled Capi­tol Records with doubts about its radio via­bil­i­ty, but that turned out to be an aston­ish­ing­ly brief run­ning time to con­tain the sheer com­po­si­tion­al inten­si­ty that soon got the song labeled a “pock­et sym­pho­ny.”

“Good Vibra­tions” and its myr­i­ad intri­ca­cies are scru­ti­nized to this day, most recent­ly in video essays like the ones you see here. On his Youtube chan­nel Poly­phon­ic, Noah Lefevre calls it “dense enough that you could teach an entire music course on it.” David Hart­ley grants it the sta­tus of “prob­a­bly the most com­plex song ever record­ed,” and even “the first song ever cre­at­ed using copy and paste.” Long before the era of dig­i­tal audio work­sta­tions, Bri­an Wil­son used whol­ly ana­log stu­dio tech­nol­o­gy to string togeth­er “feels,” his name for the dis­parate frag­ments of music in his mind. His method con­tributed to the sym­phon­ic con­struc­tion of “Good Vibra­tions,” and his will­ing­ness to fol­low the mood wher­ev­er it led result­ed in the song’s dis­tinc­tive use of an Elec­tro-Theremin. Despite all this, some lis­ten­ers still ques­tion his cen­tral­i­ty to the Beach Boys’ music; for them, there will always be “Koko­mo.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Lost Stu­dio Footage of Bri­an Wil­son Con­duct­ing “Good Vibra­tions,” The Beach Boys’ Bril­liant “Pock­et Sym­pho­ny”

How the Beach Boys Cre­at­ed Their Pop Mas­ter­pieces: “Good Vibra­tions,” Pet Sounds, and More

The Beach Boys’ Bri­an Wil­son & Bea­t­les Pro­duc­er George Mar­tin Break Down “God Only Knows,” the “Great­est Song Ever Writ­ten”

Hear the Beach Boys’ Angel­ic Vocal Har­monies in Four Iso­lat­ed Tracks from Pet Sounds: “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” “God Only Knows,” “Sloop John B” & “Good Vibra­tions”

Enter Bri­an Wilson’s Cre­ative Process While Mak­ing The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds 50 Years Ago: A Fly-on-the Wall View

Paul McCart­ney vs. Bri­an Wil­son: A Rival­ry That Inspired Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pep­per, and Oth­er Clas­sic Albums

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.