Brian Wilson Found A Sound Only He Could Hear

The Beach Boys’ bandleader suffered for his art and left an incomparable musical legacy. Brian Wilson heard voices. For some 60 years, he had auditory hallucinations. Sometimes he couldn’t make out what they said. Sometimes he could, which was worse. He was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and bipolar disorder, and spent years passing in and out of seclusion and lucidity, occasionally cut off from his muse, not to mention his family, his band, and his fans.

Wilson also heard sounds. At times, his efforts to translate and preserve those sounds—pet sounds—tormented him (and his Beach Boys bandmates) too. “They say dogs can hear sounds that humans cannot,” his cousin, collaborator, and nemesis Mike Love once said, “and I swear Brian must have been part canine because he was reaching for something intangible, imperceptible to most, and all but impossible to execute.” When he grasped that thing and pulled off the impossible task of capturing the ineffable on vinyl, the results were exquisite. Wilson wasn’t on the Beach Boys’ buoyant 1969 cover of the Ronettes’ “I Can Hear Music”—he’d been admitted to a psychiatric hospital in 1968 and was largely absent for the recording of the album it appeared on, the decade-closing 20/20. But like that song’s speaker, Wilson heard “sweet, sweet music”—and thanks to his work, so did we… read more >