Mikal Gilmore on Dennis Wilson

[Ed Roach]

I'd recently posted an article on the Cabin Essence site about Mikal Gilmore, titled "HELL NO, THE SIXTIES WON'T GO!"  http://www.lacitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/hell_no_the_sixties_won_t_go/7994/
I've been a fan of his writings forever, but somehow had missed his book NIGHT BEAT  A Shadow History of Rock & Roll.  Just picked it up, and immediately saw an entry titled DENNIS WILSON: The Lone Surfer.  This was originally printed in the long gone LA Herald Examiner on January 2, 1984; here's how he ends it:

"When Dennis Wilson drowned on the evening of December 28, 1983 - the victim of a diving accident - there was much talk about his ill-famed indulgences over the years.  There was also much made of how the family and group - rarely inseparable but also rarely unified - had fallen into bitter bickering (the band, in fact, came close to disintegrating several times, and Dennis and Mike Love had such an abrasive relationship that they had obtained restraining orders against one another).  In the group's last tour, Dennis Wilson didn't even appear for several dates, purportedly for reasons of family friction and drinking problems.
There wasn't, however, much said about just how well this group had lived up to its artistry during their long period of public neglect (they were an inestimably better, more resourceful band than, say, the Doors), nor did many reports point out how the Beach Boys had managed to take all the disenchantment of their best late-1960's work and continuously parlayed it into creative resolve.  Dennis Wilson was perhaps the most volatile member of the band, but he was also its most archetypal: He embodied the public's ideal of the band's myth, and he understood how the flipside of that myth was probably an inevitable turn of events.  In the years since the late-1960's, Dennis - like the rest of the band - had come to live out his celebrityhood as a novelty star: as a reminder of a past long used and reclaimed merely to satisfy an audience's whims.  If he drank or sulked a bit more as a result of swallowing that knowledge, I wouldn't want to begrudge him.  Perhaps even more than his brother Brian, Dennis Wilson exemplified the band's real ethos, and when he fell into that deep, irretrievable chill last Wednesday, so did a part of the band's best history."

Just thought that with all of the current threads on DW here, some of you would like to read this, too.

[Steve Mayo]

thanks

[Dove Nested Towers]

Thanks for sharing that, Ed.

That was a very well-written, insightful summary of Dennis' life, role in the band,
(and the band's larger identity), and his creative transformation, up to a point,
of personal and interpersonal turmoil and disappointment into lovely, bittersweet
music rather than succumbing meekly to bitterness, disillusionment and despair.

[Ed Roach]

Thanks; as I said, I've loved this guys writing for ages now.  You know, it's funny, I don't remember seeing this when it first appeared.  I've got to go into my archives today, and I'm tempted to look through my newspaper collection from 12/83 - 1/84.  (Haven't looked at them since Boyd used them for Endless Harmony, & Stebbins for The Real Beach Boy...) 
What's funny about it is that the same newspaper that this is from did an article on their Page 2, on either 12/29 or 12/30, about several of us being gathered in Chez Jay's, celebrating both Shawn's birthday & Dennis' life & death.  At the time I wasn't crazy about how the story made our grief sound, so I might not have caught this on the 2nd. of January.

Getting back to Gilmore, I had first taken notice of his writing in the LA Weekly, then he was with Rolling Stone.  Somewhere along the way, I discovered he was Gary Gilmore's brother.  I hadn't paid much attention to the controversy surrounding Gary until SNL did a song skit called "Let's Kill Gary Gilmore for Christmas".  After that, I became obsessed with the story, and instantly read a book by another favorite author of mine, Norman Mailer's "The Executioner's Song".  They filmed that book for TV, which was itself controversial; it gained a lot of press for having a more 'adult', European version.  And, having starred Rosanna Arquette, I simply had to see that version!
A few years later, Mikal released his own book about the murders, and his relationship with Gary during the appeals and eventual execution, called "A Shot in the Heart".  This one was made into an HBO movie, and Mikal was played by Giovanni Ribisi.  I'm rambling here, just meaning to say that this guy is worth reading.  He has an interesting perspective on Dennis & the Boys, that I wish he explored in more depth.  The full article isn't much longer than this, maybe a page & a half in the book, and doesn't really shed any new light.  Not that what I reprinted here does, either, but I do love the appreciation that he seems to have for Dennis. Glad some of you are enjoying it, too.

[CarCrazyCutie]

Nice article, thanks for sharing it