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Author Topic: Why Do We Treat Brian Wilson Like a Child?  (Read 4475 times)
MugginsXOXOXO
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« on: April 22, 2018, 08:00:58 AM »

Hello friends, I am a long time Beach Boys and Brian Wilson fan. I have been obsessed with their music for over twenty years now, and I have gone through all of my periods of loving hidden gems and underrated albums. I have seen Brian Wilson live in concert three times over the years, including in 2004 for his SMiLE live performance in Glasgow. I have been long curious as to why it is that many Brian Wilson/Beach Boys fans tend to think of Brian as a person who can't make decisions for himself. I don't just mean *now* either, I mean in retrospect looking back to the 60s when Brian was experimenting with drugs and many creative avenues. Nobody speaks of John Lennon or Paul McCartney or Bob Dylan like they needed to be protected from the harsh realities of the world, yet this is something that is brought up frequently with Brian. People even go so far to place the blame on the friends that forced him to take drugs, that he was incapable of making decisions for himself. This doesn't just condescend to Brian in terms of his life decisions, but also frequently carries over into the artistic choices he made. I am thinking especially of Smiley Smile, and the refusal to acknowledge it as a genuine artistic choice, rather than the product of a mental breakdown. Very few pine over what could have been with Sgt Pepper. They accept it as the end result of an artistic process. I still believe that SMiLE was more a work created by fans after the fact, than it was a genuine lost album. Things progress and change through the process and I am more than happy to take Smiley Smile as the end result of that process.

So I am curious, why do you think people have become so attached to the idea that Brian isn't all there and should have his decisions made for him by those more capable? Why are his artistic choices even now second-guessed and assumed to be the product of some other guiding hand? Or more than that, why we assume that he needs/needed that parental guidance?
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Chocolate Shake Man
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« Reply #1 on: April 22, 2018, 08:17:49 AM »

Forgive my ignorance but hasn't Brian actually been under a conservatorship? Is he still?
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Zesterz
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« Reply #2 on: April 22, 2018, 08:47:43 AM »

Yes he was and no he isn't
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Til...I...@died
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« Reply #3 on: April 22, 2018, 10:25:15 AM »

Well for one, it is widely understood that Brian was THE creative force behind The Beach Boys, as opposed to the mop tops having Lennon, McCartney, and Martin as drivers. His story is widely known, but I don’t think of him as a child or victim, I think of him as the toughest guy to roam this earth.
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« Reply #4 on: April 22, 2018, 12:18:46 PM »

Do any of these answer your questions or pique any interest?  I had a few different thoughts about it.

First answer- he has shown a great ability to make decisions for himself sometimes, in some avenues, however in many avenues of his personal life he hasn't (publicly***) shown much of an interest in making decisions for himself, for a very long time.  People know that and react to that.

Second answer- being "not there" was a mythos that was fed by him, his band, and everyone around him for a really long time.  Why wouldn't the public treat him like that, after it has been grown and nourished ever since the late 1960s?  After trying to exploit it with "Brian's back".  Back?  From?  Back from not being all there.  And it just kept growing.

Third answer- one reason his choices are second-guessed is because consensus is that there was a horribly inefficient and untrustworthy democracy behind all BB decisions.  He had marginal-to-strong power to override those decisions at various times but often was disinterested or unsuccessful in doing so.  Therefore many people question the "guiding hand".

Fourth answer- his chilled out (passive, put less nicely) personality leads many people to instinctively "fill in the blanks" in ways that they wouldn't ever consider doing with people like Paul McCartney.  Including illogical and inaccurate drug inferences and armchair analysis.  All of which is certainly unfair to the man and tells you more about the "many people" than it does Brian.

Fifth answer- the Biopic is pretty much the Bible now, when it comes to public perception of him.  Based on that, to many people he "isn't all there" and needs guidance.

***=I bet he makes and made a lot more decisions for himself than we (rubes, ham and eggers, bogans, joe punchclocks) think.
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Debbie KL
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« Reply #5 on: April 22, 2018, 12:44:34 PM »

Hello friends, I am a long time Beach Boys and Brian Wilson fan. I have been obsessed with their music for over twenty years now, and I have gone through all of my periods of loving hidden gems and underrated albums. I have seen Brian Wilson live in concert three times over the years, including in 2004 for his SMiLE live performance in Glasgow. I have been long curious as to why it is that many Brian Wilson/Beach Boys fans tend to think of Brian as a person who can't make decisions for himself. I don't just mean *now* either, I mean in retrospect looking back to the 60s when Brian was experimenting with drugs and many creative avenues. Nobody speaks of John Lennon or Paul McCartney or Bob Dylan like they needed to be protected from the harsh realities of the world, yet this is something that is brought up frequently with Brian. People even go so far to place the blame on the friends that forced him to take drugs, that he was incapable of making decisions for himself. This doesn't just condescend to Brian in terms of his life decisions, but also frequently carries over into the artistic choices he made. I am thinking especially of Smiley Smile, and the refusal to acknowledge it as a genuine artistic choice, rather than the product of a mental breakdown. Very few pine over what could have been with Sgt Pepper. They accept it as the end result of an artistic process. I still believe that SMiLE was more a work created by fans after the fact, than it was a genuine lost album. Things progress and change through the process and I am more than happy to take Smiley Smile as the end result of that process.

So I am curious, why do you think people have become so attached to the idea that Brian isn't all there and should have his decisions made for him by those more capable? Why are his artistic choices even now second-guessed and assumed to be the product of some other guiding hand? Or more than that, why we assume that he needs/needed that parental guidance?

Great question...and one of the first things Melinda did after marrying Brian (it took a bit of effort) was get rid of the conservatorship.

I fear that this image is a sad, and typical "sound bite" vision of anyone who is in the public eye. Brian is a highly complex person - very gifted and very vulnerable - but as Melinda said (and I agree) he is the strongest person she's ever met (me, too).  

I think that what Brian learned from his difficult childhood was that going along with what others said was easier than dealing with trying to explain to people who he was in words.  His ideas and feelings happened to be far too complex to explain in any way other than his amazing, healing music. I hope that people will eventually understand that.

Brian, I think, quit caring what was said about him and realized focusing on the joy his music offered was what mattered. What other options did he have?  We could all do well by learning that approach to our lives.

We all have our personal doubts, including Brian.  But at his heart, he knows who he is, and he keeps telling us through his music.  He's a good man who cared to keep working to make us happy after all these years.  I find that impressive.  Brian knows that the drama of dealing with his mental issues fascinates the press, so he just goes along with it and keeps performing.  I guess that's what we call "wisdom" that comes from experience.  I guess people also like to talk about his struggles to deal with their own issues...

...the man gets it about healing through music and his personal public story, even when it's misrepresented by the limitations we find in words.
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« Reply #6 on: April 22, 2018, 01:12:33 PM »

Nice.  Thanks. Debbie. Cool Guy
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« Reply #7 on: April 22, 2018, 01:45:34 PM »

Nice.  Thanks. Debbie. Cool Guy

Same to you, Lee.
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« Reply #8 on: April 22, 2018, 05:02:47 PM »

Because he is an angel.
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« Reply #9 on: April 23, 2018, 06:21:15 AM »

Well for one, it is widely understood that Brian was THE creative force behind The Beach Boys, as opposed to the mop tops having Lennon, McCartney, and Martin as drivers. His story is widely known, but I don’t think of him as a child or victim, I think of him as the toughest guy to roam this earth.

More a sidebar that should probably be expanded in some other thread, but I'd like to the point out that the, for some reason oft-cited theory that Brian had nobody and the Beatles had Lennon and McCartney and Martin both sells short Brian's partners/collaborators, and arguably (depending on which era we're talking about) overstates Martin's role with the Beatles.
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« Reply #10 on: April 23, 2018, 06:28:09 AM »

Well for one, it is widely understood that Brian was THE creative force behind The Beach Boys, as opposed to the mop tops having Lennon, McCartney, and Martin as drivers. His story is widely known, but I don’t think of him as a child or victim, I think of him as the toughest guy to roam this earth.

More a sidebar that should probably be expanded in some other thread, but I'd like to the point out that the, for some reason oft-cited theory that Brian had nobody and the Beatles had Lennon and McCartney and Martin both sells short Brian's partners/collaborators, and arguably (depending on which era we're talking about) overstates Martin's role with the Beatles.

I'd agree that you can't dismiss the role his collaborators had, but Brian also had 100x the pressure when it came to delivering the goods. As far as Capitol Records and the general public was concerned, it was him that had to keep the gravy train rolling. As great as the likes of Tony Asher, Van Dyke and Gary Usher were, at least they had to luxury of being able to walk away without that level of pressure.
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Juice Brohnston
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« Reply #11 on: April 23, 2018, 10:02:02 AM »

Hello friends, I am a long time Beach Boys and Brian Wilson fan. I have been obsessed with their music for over twenty years now, and I have gone through all of my periods of loving hidden gems and underrated albums. I have seen Brian Wilson live in concert three times over the years, including in 2004 for his SMiLE live performance in Glasgow. I have been long curious as to why it is that many Brian Wilson/Beach Boys fans tend to think of Brian as a person who can't make decisions for himself. I don't just mean *now* either, I mean in retrospect looking back to the 60s when Brian was experimenting with drugs and many creative avenues. Nobody speaks of John Lennon or Paul McCartney or Bob Dylan like they needed to be protected from the harsh realities of the world, yet this is something that is brought up frequently with Brian. People even go so far to place the blame on the friends that forced him to take drugs, that he was incapable of making decisions for himself. This doesn't just condescend to Brian in terms of his life decisions, but also frequently carries over into the artistic choices he made. I am thinking especially of Smiley Smile, and the refusal to acknowledge it as a genuine artistic choice, rather than the product of a mental breakdown. Very few pine over what could have been with Sgt Pepper. They accept it as the end result of an artistic process. I still believe that SMiLE was more a work created by fans after the fact, than it was a genuine lost album. Things progress and change through the process and I am more than happy to take Smiley Smile as the end result of that process.

So I am curious, why do you think people have become so attached to the idea that Brian isn't all there and should have his decisions made for him by those more capable? Why are his artistic choices even now second-guessed and assumed to be the product of some other guiding hand? Or more than that, why we assume that he needs/needed that parental guidance?

Well to answer your basic question, interviews like this recent one don't help if you are asking perhaps why he is more perceived as being needed to be treated like a child. (Whether anyone is actually treating him like a child and what that means exactly, I don't know)

https://www.fortlauderdaledaily.com/upfront/noteworthy/5-minutes-brian-wilson-co-founder-beach-boys

But this interview is awful..as most of Brian's are. And the answers are indeed 'childlike' in some ways. Yes the questions are horrendous as well, but better questions would still get the same short, brutal and frankly, inconsistent answers. Why? Why is he subjected to these interviews. They are an embarrassment if we're honest about it. Hats off to the reporter for not slamming him and being respectful in her text. But c'mon. Either Brian is not mentally capable of giving a legitimate interview (which would be concerning) or he cares so little that he is willing to disrespect the professional relationship between artist and media, and as an extension, the public. It's ridiculous. Either don't do these interviews or figure out a way to approach them with some professionalism, even if the questions suck.
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the captain
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« Reply #12 on: April 23, 2018, 10:55:52 AM »

This question touches on something I’ve flirted with really thinking through for years, but so far have just let swim around my head as a formless concept. So forgive the half-baked nature of the post.
 
I think people have for centuries tried to ascribe something like this condescension to certain kinds of artistic people—especially child prodigies, the mentally ill, even the very eccentric. They are looked at with some combination of related archetypes: holy fool, mad genius, (forgive the rude term) idiot savant. W.A. Mozart, Thelonious Monk, Michael Jackson, Daniel Johnston, Jeff Mangum, Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart), and yes, Brian Wilson, are a few example musicians in different times and genres who seem to roughly fit to some extent. The same concept applies to artists of other media.
 
(Brian Wilson happens to fit to some extent into two, if not all three, categories. While not exactly a child prodigy, he was producing high-level work by the time he was a young adult, and his mental illness has been discussed and documented to the point that I don’t need to mention it further here. And at least those mid-late 60s demonstrate an eccentric personality, although it’s hard to say how much of that was due to mental illness, drug abuse, an abundance of money and free time [with the band touring without him], etc.)
 
Often this musician is seen, as the thread topic suggests, as a child. The supremely gifted artist is a “delicate genius” (to quote an angry George Costanza), a child whose talents must be supernatural, or whose gifts must be equaled out by some other human failings. The artist is innocent—almost no matter what he does, he is forgiven. His great work is properly lauded as great, but his lesser work is still championed because of the artist’s personality: it reflects his childlike nature, or his out-there vision, or his ability to overcome circumstances … but it’s rarely just bad. If it seems bad to us, it’s because we’re failing it, not the other way around. We don’t understand it.
 
So I think people treat Brian Wilson as a child partly because he somewhat easily fits into a pre-existing archetype of one type of artist, some tragic-romantic figure we already know about. The story reinforces and adds to our myths. It’s not entirely without merit—Brian did need a lot of help at different points in his life—but the public and media find the points of reality to be easy handles by which to grab him and pull him into the myth, and from then on its easiest to view him always through that lens.
 
Hope that made sense.
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« Reply #13 on: April 23, 2018, 11:03:45 AM »

Hello friends, I am a long time Beach Boys and Brian Wilson fan. I have been obsessed with their music for over twenty years now, and I have gone through all of my periods of loving hidden gems and underrated albums. I have seen Brian Wilson live in concert three times over the years, including in 2004 for his SMiLE live performance in Glasgow. I have been long curious as to why it is that many Brian Wilson/Beach Boys fans tend to think of Brian as a person who can't make decisions for himself. I don't just mean *now* either, I mean in retrospect looking back to the 60s when Brian was experimenting with drugs and many creative avenues. Nobody speaks of John Lennon or Paul McCartney or Bob Dylan like they needed to be protected from the harsh realities of the world, yet this is something that is brought up frequently with Brian. People even go so far to place the blame on the friends that forced him to take drugs, that he was incapable of making decisions for himself. This doesn't just condescend to Brian in terms of his life decisions, but also frequently carries over into the artistic choices he made. I am thinking especially of Smiley Smile, and the refusal to acknowledge it as a genuine artistic choice, rather than the product of a mental breakdown. Very few pine over what could have been with Sgt Pepper. They accept it as the end result of an artistic process. I still believe that SMiLE was more a work created by fans after the fact, than it was a genuine lost album. Things progress and change through the process and I am more than happy to take Smiley Smile as the end result of that process.

So I am curious, why do you think people have become so attached to the idea that Brian isn't all there and should have his decisions made for him by those more capable? Why are his artistic choices even now second-guessed and assumed to be the product of some other guiding hand? Or more than that, why we assume that he needs/needed that parental guidance?

Well to answer your basic question, interviews like this recent one don't help if you are asking perhaps why he is more perceived as being needed to be treated like a child. (Whether anyone is actually treating him like a child and what that means exactly, I don't know)

https://www.fortlauderdaledaily.com/upfront/noteworthy/5-minutes-brian-wilson-co-founder-beach-boys

But this interview is awful..as most of Brian's are. And the answers are indeed 'childlike' in some ways. Yes the questions are horrendous as well, but better questions would still get the same short, brutal and frankly, inconsistent answers. Why? Why is he subjected to these interviews. They are an embarrassment if we're honest about it. Hats off to the reporter for not slamming him and being respectful in her text. But c'mon. Either Brian is not mentally capable of giving a legitimate interview (which would be concerning) or he cares so little that he is willing to disrespect the professional relationship between artist and media, and as an extension, the public. It's ridiculous. Either don't do these interviews or figure out a way to approach them with some professionalism, even if the questions suck.

If you don't ask probing questions, you don't get deep answers. I work in journalism, and these are weak questions. It appears she had a list and didn't deviate to ask follow-up questions. That may be because, as she states, she had five minutes with Brian Wilson. That's not enough time to get much more than these terse answers. I don't blame him in this case.
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Amy B.
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« Reply #14 on: April 23, 2018, 02:04:01 PM »

Hello friends, I am a long time Beach Boys and Brian Wilson fan. I have been obsessed with their music for over twenty years now, and I have gone through all of my periods of loving hidden gems and underrated albums. I have seen Brian Wilson live in concert three times over the years, including in 2004 for his SMiLE live performance in Glasgow. I have been long curious as to why it is that many Brian Wilson/Beach Boys fans tend to think of Brian as a person who can't make decisions for himself. I don't just mean *now* either, I mean in retrospect looking back to the 60s when Brian was experimenting with drugs and many creative avenues. Nobody speaks of John Lennon or Paul McCartney or Bob Dylan like they needed to be protected from the harsh realities of the world, yet this is something that is brought up frequently with Brian. People even go so far to place the blame on the friends that forced him to take drugs, that he was incapable of making decisions for himself. This doesn't just condescend to Brian in terms of his life decisions, but also frequently carries over into the artistic choices he made. I am thinking especially of Smiley Smile, and the refusal to acknowledge it as a genuine artistic choice, rather than the product of a mental breakdown. Very few pine over what could have been with Sgt Pepper. They accept it as the end result of an artistic process. I still believe that SMiLE was more a work created by fans after the fact, than it was a genuine lost album. Things progress and change through the process and I am more than happy to take Smiley Smile as the end result of that process.

So I am curious, why do you think people have become so attached to the idea that Brian isn't all there and should have his decisions made for him by those more capable? Why are his artistic choices even now second-guessed and assumed to be the product of some other guiding hand? Or more than that, why we assume that he needs/needed that parental guidance?

Well to answer your basic question, interviews like this recent one don't help if you are asking perhaps why he is more perceived as being needed to be treated like a child. (Whether anyone is actually treating him like a child and what that means exactly, I don't know)

https://www.fortlauderdaledaily.com/upfront/noteworthy/5-minutes-brian-wilson-co-founder-beach-boys

But this interview is awful..as most of Brian's are. And the answers are indeed 'childlike' in some ways. Yes the questions are horrendous as well, but better questions would still get the same short, brutal and frankly, inconsistent answers. Why? Why is he subjected to these interviews. They are an embarrassment if we're honest about it. Hats off to the reporter for not slamming him and being respectful in her text. But c'mon. Either Brian is not mentally capable of giving a legitimate interview (which would be concerning) or he cares so little that he is willing to disrespect the professional relationship between artist and media, and as an extension, the public. It's ridiculous. Either don't do these interviews or figure out a way to approach them with some professionalism, even if the questions suck.

If you don't ask probing questions, you don't get deep answers. I work in journalism, and these are weak questions. It appears she had a list and didn't deviate to ask follow-up questions. That may be because, as she states, she had five minutes with Brian Wilson. That's not enough time to get much more than these terse answers. I don't blame him in this case.

How many of these have we read, where the reporter is compelled to open the piece with "Brian Wilson is a man of few words," or some such thing? They probably panic after the interview, wondering how they'll fill the page, so they make that the angle. "He's eccentric, so get ready." I just don't know why they used a transcript format here. Why not make it an article and put Brian's quote in, where appropriate? And yes, why no follow-up questions? If I'm totally unfamiliar with the Beach Boys, then what does "When Mike did Surfin' USA" mean? Who's Mike? He's not mentioned anywhere else.
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