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Here’s What’s Fact and What’s Fiction in  Love & Mercy , the New Biopic About Brian Wilson

© 2015 - Roadside Attractions

In  Love & Mercy , the new biopic about the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, there’s a scene in which legendary studio musician and Wrecking Crew bass player Carol Kaye notices something unusual about the sheet music that Wilson has set in front of her: “Two different bass lines in two different keys?” she asks. “How does that work?” “It works in my head,” Wilson replies. In many ways, this also sums up the approach of the film, which could be said to work in two different keys at once: It cuts back and forth between two very specific periods of Wilson’s life, Wilson’s songwriting heyday of the mid-1960s and his time under the control of Dr. Eugene Landy in the mid-1980s.

But what’s fact and what’s artistic license in these two portrayals? I consulted several sources to find out, including Peter Ames Carlin’s acclaimed biography of Wilson,  Catch A Wave: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson , as well as “Beach Boys: A California Saga,” an  in-depth   two-part  article about the band published in  Rolling Stone  in 1971. While  Love & Mercy  makes some perhaps necessary adjustments to simplify the musician’s story, the film is generally quite meticulous in its presentation of the events of Wilson’s life—not least because because co-screenwriter Oren Moverman  consulted Wilson, now 72, and his wife, Melinda , while writing the screenplay.

Brian Wilson in the mid-1960s (Paul Dano)

Brian Wilson/Wikipedia. Still of Paul Dano courtesy of © 2015 Roadside Attraction

Paul Dano plays the young, baby-faced songwriter as a vulnerable, earnest musical prodigy and a perfectionist in the studio, just as he was in real life. The 1971 Rolling Stone profile describes Wilson’s recording process during this period: “At a session he would go around to each player, take the instrument from him, show him what he wanted, and hand it back. Once that was accomplished he could go into the booth and take over the board. Sometimes he would mix the track even as it was being recorded.”

Just as in the movie, Wilson has also been deaf in his right ear at least since childhood, but accounts differ on whether this was caused by a blow to the head from his abusive father Murry Wilson, as the movie suggests. Murry denied that he caused it, and Brian thinks it’s possible that he was deaf from birth. Wilson’s father also really did acquire authority over his son’s share of Sea of Tunes, the publishing company that owned the copyrights to most of the Beach Boys’ songs, before selling them to A&M records for $700,000. (Exactly how Murry managed this would later be the subject of lawsuits.) Exactly when Wilson began taking LSD is the subject of some debate, but in a 2006 interview Wilson said that he started hearing voices shortly thereafter .

Mike Love (Jake Abel) and the Beach Boys

Most of the other Beach Boys—Brian’s brothers Carl Wilson and Dennis Wilson, and childhood friend Al Jardine, are minor characters in the movie—with one exception: Brian’s cousin Mike Love, who is portrayed a foil to the songwriter.

Love & Mercy depicts Love as focused on the band’s profits and frustrated with Brian’s perfectionism, his mental illness, and his drug use. (Though the film doesn’t always specify the drugs Wilson used over the years—especially during his darker periods—they included cocaine, cannabis, and amphetamines, in addition to LSD.) This portrayal is more or less accurate, if understandably one-sided: The notoriously adversarial relationship between Brian and his cousin led to disputes over songwriting credits and ownership of the band’s name, and their disagreements have continued all the way up through the Beach Boys’ recent 50 th anniversary tour .

Brian Wilson in the 1970s and 1980s (John Cusack)

Brian Wilson in the 1980’s and John Cusack in Love & Mercy

Photo of Brian Wilson by Ebet Roberts/Redferns. Still of John Cusack courtesy of © 2015 Roadside Attraction

The darkest chapter of Brian’s life, the period during which he was rumored to be essentially catatonic in bed for two years during the mid-1970s, occurs mostly off-screen. Stories of this period are so central to the Brian Wilson mythos that they became the inspiration for the Barenaked Ladies song “ Brian Wilson ” (a song which the musician himself has since performed).

Love & Mercy openly addresses this rumor by having Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks) ask the musician outright if it’s true, to which Cusack’s character responds, “Actually, it was more like three [years]. At least, that’s what I tell people.” The response seems genuine: Though the real-life Brian spent a great deal of that time in bed, he was also taking drugs, drinking, overeating, and going to clubs, including the bar at the Chateau Marmont.

Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks)

Melinda Ledbetter in 2002 and still of Elizabeth Banks in Love & Mercy

Melinda Ledbetter by REUTERS/Jim Ruymen. Still of Elizabeth Banks courtesy of © 2015 Roadside Attraction

The film is most precise in its recreation of the details of Brian’s courtship of his future wife, perhaps due to the real-life Melinda Wilson’s involvement in the film’s production . Melinda Ledbetter did meet her husband while working at Martin Cadillac, and he did buy the first car she showed him, a brown Seville. Although moments like Brian telling his future wife about the death of his brother Dennis while at a Cadillac dealership might seem contrived to cram in some exposition, Brian really did tell her then about how two years prior Dennis drowned , according to Catch a Wave . Similarly, before their first date, Wilson really did stand in the courtyard outside Ledbetter’s apartment, shouting her name. One difference: Eugene Landy did not actually accompany them on that date. Instead, his assistants did, and he called to check in several times.

Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti)

Eugene Landy in the 1980s and Paul Giamatti in the movie Love & Mercy

Photo by Ebet Roberts/Redferns. Paul Giamatti courtesy of © 2015 Roadside Attraction

Ultimately, in a film full of minor villains like Murry and Love, it is Landy who becomes Love & Mercy’s main antagonist. A hairpiece-clad Giamatti plays the role with such a terrifying blend of smarm and rage that the real Brian Wilson, when interviewed about the film, called the performance so true to life that it frightened him . Landy’s actions may seem too extreme to be plausible, but the doctor did in fact exert around-the-clock control over Brian’s life, monitoring his diet and love life, influencing his music, and keeping him drugged on heavy medication for what he falsely claimed was a mix of paranoid schizophrenia and manic depression. (The diagnosis was later overturned, and Melinda now says he has “ schizoaffective disorder, which is a manic depressive with auditory hallucinations .”)

Where the film does take artistic liberties is in its depiction of how Brian came to be rescued from Landy’s care. In the film, it is Ledbetter, aided by Brian’s housekeeper, Gloria Ramos, who persuades Carl Wilson to intervene by presenting evidence of Landy’s undue influence—specifically a 1989 will leaving most of Brian’s assets to Landy. The will is real: Landy was named Wilson’s primary beneficiary, though he claimed no knowledge of this at the time. But Carlin instead credits therapist and longtime Beach Boys fan Peter Reum with bringing Brian’s condition to the attention of Carl Wilson and biographer David Leaf. Reum, according to Carlin, noticed at a 1990 fan convention the physical changes Brian had undergone. However, Gloria Ramos is thanked in the credits of several of Brian’s albums, along with Leaf.

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The Untold Truth Of Love & Mercy

Bill Pohlad's 2014 feature "Love & Mercy," about singer-songwriter and co-founder of the Beach Boys, Brian Wilson, is far from a conventional biopic. Instead of following a traditional structure to showcase Wilson's most significant life and career moments, the director opted for a different approach. The film shows two brief but defining periods of Wilson's life in the 1960s and the 1980s — casting two actors for the leading role who look nothing alike:  Paul Dano  plays the musical legend in his younger days when he is filled with passion and inspiration, while  John Cusack  portrays the older version of the icon as he experiences mental unwellness and other personal issues.

The dynamic between past and future creates a beautiful and unique symphony here. Much like the often chaotic yet fascinating creative process Wilson is shown going through while composing music and recording songs, his genius just comes through perfectly in this feature. Although making this movie wasn't a straightforward process, the result speaks for itself. The dedication from the creators, cast, and crew is apparent throughout, which makes this biopic an absolute triumph.

Here, we gathered some trivia and lesser-known facts about "Love & Mercy" that fans of the Beach Boys will surely appreciate greatly.

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Brian Wilson wasn't involved but had high praise

Interestingly, Brian Wilson was never directly involved in the movie's development and production. According to an interview he gave to the Boston Herald in 2015, the musician claimed that while he was not involved in making the movie, the feature was factual, which couldn't have been an easy task to get right for the screenwriters. 

In another interview with the LA Times , he explained that it was challenging to watch some of the scenes in the movie, saying, "[It was] quite an emotional experience because of all I went through, all those different kinds of trips I took." Despite reliving some of the worst periods of his life, he acknowledged the biopic and its accuracy, praising the actors who played him — Paul Dano in particular.

Wilson wasn't the only one to like the end results, though. The film's unusual style, tone, and structure paid off, and critics loved it . It was also a commercial success , making over $28 million on a $10 million budget.

Screenwriter Oren Moverman consulted with Melinda Ledbetter

Although Brian Wilson himself wasn't involved, his second wife Melinda Ledbetter (portrayed by Elizabeth Banks) certainly was. As Wilson told Boston Herald , "I had no control or involvement in the film, but my wife did. She made sure they cast the characters right, you know, so they could capture my personality and the records and stuff like that." 

While screenwriter Oren Moverman was in the middle of penning the script, he reached out to Ledbetter. In an interview with Collider , Moverman explained how they approached the story of the film in order to have the right amount of accuracy they aimed for from the beginning. According to him, everything we see in the final cut is based on extensive research and facts, although specific periods were shown more briefly than how long they actually went on in real life.

Due to the consultation with Ledbetter, a crucial part of the plot (which tells how Wilson and his second wife met and what kind of relationship they had) is based on experiences that truly happened. As Moverman said, "I talked to Melinda, and she told me all these stories and I just transformed them into scenes — meeting at the Cadillac Theater, jumping off that boat and swimming — all those things really happened, at least in the way she told them."

The recording process is painstakingly accurate

One of the most fascinating aspects of "Love & Mercy" is when we see the young Brian Wilson construct music during studio sessions. The film does a meticulous job of portraying the process and how Wilson came up with some of the most iconic tunes ("Good Vibrations, "God Only Knows," etc.) — which later became essential parts of pop culture. His deep knowledge of instruments and sounds combined with great talent is undeniable. Paul Dano gives a spectacular performance to bring this whole experience as close to the viewer as possible. We witness how Wilson played around with several instruments to concoct just the right combination of sounds in the way he heard them in his own head.

In his 1971 profile written for Rolling Stone,  journalist Tom Nolan described Wilson's music-making process in great detail. He wrote about how ecstatic Wilson could be during a recording session, going around and showing each player what he'd like them to play. It might've seemed chaotic from an outside perspective, but he was in complete control. He often took over the board in the booth to mix the tracks even in the middle of a recording. He was the quintessential musician — a true genius. This definitely resembles what we see in the film and why Wilson complemented its accuracy (not only the sensitive and emotional parts but also the ones that show him playing music and singing).

Initially, the script was 170 pages long and had 100 songs in it

The theatrical version of "Love & Mercy" closes in on two hours, but the first draft of the screenplay was a lot longer than that. According to Collider, when Oren Moverman finished the first draft, it was 170 pages long and featured 100 songs. But even with such an extreme length, he felt that he didn't do justice to Brian Wilson. He said, "Actually, the first draft that I wrote was almost 170 pages, and I felt it was too short. I remember sending an email to Bill [Pohlad] saying, 'Here's the first draft attached, I feel it's too short.' It had 100 songs and 170 pages and I just felt like I didn't do enough to tell the story."

However, Pohlad told Moverman that he overperformed and did a 150% job. So, after a long conversation between the two, Moverman managed to cut down the script for the right length — which included the most significant points to tell an accurate yet condensed story of Wilson and his most influential and important relationships. 

Most of the deleted scenes portrayed Wilson in the 1970s

A shorter script also meant that Oren Moverman had to get rid of some great material. Most of these outtakes took place in the '70s when Brian Wilson was going through the toughest period of his life. He was physically, mentally, and emotionally down, awfully depressed for years, not doing much of anything that would've moved his music career (or life) forward. The myth was that he spent four years in bed in his bathrobe.

Moverman wanted to set the record straight that Wilson might've not done anything exciting or significant musically, but he still did things besides curling up in his room. He said, "He spent four years in bed, not a lot was going on, but it was also demystifying that because he wasn't really in bed all the time. He was eating, and he was doing drugs and drinking and staying in bed and being depressed all the time, but he would walk out of the house in his bathrobe. He would go to clubs, he would listen to music, he would interact with some people." 

We don't see much of that in detail in the movie; however, the way Wilson is portrayed in the '60s and '80s implies effectively what went wrong in the '70s — and why Dr. Eugene Landy came into the picture.

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Paul Giamatti's portrayal of Dr. Landy frightened Brian Wilson

Paul Giamatti 's skill to scare us to our core maybe wasn't as well-known back in 2014 as it is today, but he did maximize that ability in "Love & Mercy." He played the infamous psychotherapist, Dr. Eugene Landy, who treated the Beach Boy for many years. It's really tough to watch some of his scenes as he controls and intimidates the singer with a very strict hand. 

In an interview with FOX 7 Austin , after seeing the film for the first time, Wilson explained that some of it was a little rougher to watch since certain characters were truly realistic to their real-life equivalents. He said, "The guy who played Dr. Landy was so right on ... so true to life, that he absolutely scared me. I was absolutely in fear for about 10 minutes." 

The real-life Dr. Landy was suspended from medical practice by court

Despite how abusive and domineering Dr. Landy seems toward Brian Wilson in the film, he'd been even worse in real life. In an interview  Melinda Ledbetter gave to the New York Post , she said, "After I first saw the film, I had to just drive around for a couple of hours to clear my head. Then I remembered that what Landy did to Brian was even worse. You don't get a sense of it in the movie, but it happened on a daily basis for years."

Landy had a doctorate in psychology and treated celebrities like singer Alice Cooper and actor Rod Steiger. In 1975, he was hired by Wilson's first wife to help him battle his drug addiction, physical unfitness, and abnormal behavior. He (mis)diagnosed him as a paranoid schizophrenic and began to heavily medicate him. By 1989, he became the Beach Boy's legal guardian and manipulated Brian to an extreme level. According to the Boston Herald , in 1992, a court ruled that Dr. Landy could no longer practice in California, and he was also banned from contacting Wilson due to a lawsuit filed against him by Wilson's family .

Surprisingly, though, Wilson doesn't hold any bad feelings towards his ex-doctor, despite Landy's abuses. Wilson said, "He wouldn't let me do anything except exercise and eat healthy foods... He was a great doctor. He died about eight years ago, and that came as a shock to me. He meant well. He just yelled a lot, you know."

Paul Dano didn't know as much about Brian Wilson as he thought

In "Love & Mercy," we get to see insightful bits of Brian Wilson's dysfunctional relationship with his father, Murry Wilson (played by Bill Camp), and other personal differences that often led to conflicts between him and his cousin, Mike Love (Jake Abel). In an interview with Variety,  actor Paul Dano admitted that although he was a fan of the band, he didn't have as much knowledge of the singer-songwriter as he thought. 

Dano explained that it was a pleasant and wonderful surprise to read the script and get to know Wilson, "I felt like I knew the music, you would think you would know the story behind the man who made it. And I think that was the first truly exciting thing, not just even as an actor, but about the film. Like, wow, this guy has been through it and got a story. A story that would move and surprise people." He also said that when he read the script the second time, he did it with the band's famous album, "Pet Sounds," playing in the background, which was the moment he really started to prepare for the role. 

The film doesn't always specify what Wilson used over the years

We don't see much of the other Wilsons — Carl and Dennis, who were also part of the band — in the film, however, Brian Wilson's relationship with his cousin Mike Love is an essential element of the script. As the plot moves forward, Love becomes more and more frustrated with Wilson's strange behavior and obsession with perfectionism. He just simply can't deal with his cousin's issues and the excessive drug use.

According to Slate , although "Love & Mercy" doesn't always detail the kind of drugs Brian had taken over the years, it includes various substances in addition to LSD. In a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone , Wilson opened up and talked candidly about his drug use and what it did to his mind. "I want people to realize that drugs can be very detrimental and dangerous. I've told a lot of people don't take psychedelic drugs. It's mentally dangerous to take. I regret having taken LSD. It's a bad drug." He also added that he believes that his "struggle for mental health is the result of bad drugs."

Dr. Landy was a cartoon and fraud in real life

There's a lot to the abusive and exploitative relationship that went on for years between Dr. Landy and Wilson. According to Far Out Magazine , by 1983, Landy wasn't simply Wilson's therapist but also became the Beach Boys' business manager, co-songwriter, and executive producer, too. He had total control over Brian Wilson's mind and body, keeping him in constant fear. Landy was also a master manipulator who once dreamed of his own musical stardom but had neither the talent nor the work ethic to follow through. He was greedy and compulsive, hungry for fame and success that he didn't deserve.

Screenwriter Oren Moverman told Collider why Landy's part was the hardest to write and capture in "Love & Mercy": "Even though many things that he says in the movie I actually have a recording of, in real life, he was a cartoon, and he was so over the top," he said. "You kind of wonder, "Did everybody miss it?" I think it's so clear the guy is a fraud, a manipulator, out of his mind, probably drugged even more than Brian, and where is everyone? Where is everyone to kind of call him out and say, "Wait a minute, he's ruining Brian's life, and he's cutting him away from his family?" Indeed, the result was a character that affected even the real-life subject of the story, so he must've gotten it just right.

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Love & Mercy

Where to watch.

Watch Love & Mercy with a subscription on Prime Video, rent on Fandango at Home, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Apple TV.

What to Know

As unconventional and unwieldy as the life and legacy it honors, Love & Mercy should prove moving for Brian Wilson fans while still satisfying neophytes.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Bill Pohlad

John Cusack

Older Brian Wilson

Young Brian Wilson

Elizabeth Banks

Melinda Ledbetter

Paul Giamatti

Dr. Eugene Landy

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In ‘Love & Mercy,’ Brian Wilson Is Portrayed by John Cusack and Paul Dano

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By Alan Light

• May 29, 2015

In 1973, following a creative breakdown, a long descent into drug use and the death of his father, Brian Wilson — the primary force in the Beach Boys, among the most significant American rock ’n’ roll bands of all time — became a recluse. For the next two years, he spent most of his days in bed, occasionally showing up in public without changing out of his bathrobe.

When he resurfaced in 1975, he was in the care of a controversial therapist named Eugene Landy , who (incorrectly) diagnosed Mr. Wilson’s condition as paranoid schizophrenia and oversaw his every move for the next decade, until the Wilson family — and Brian’s new girlfriend, Melinda Ledbetter, whom he would later marry — won a court order freeing Brian from Mr. Landy’s grip.

One might say that Brian Wilson, who was later found to have bipolar schizoaffective disorder, was two different people before and after his years in seclusion. Indeed, this very idea is the premise behind the construction of “ Love & Mercy ” (opening on Friday) in which two actors portray Mr. Wilson: The film cuts back and forth between Paul Dano, who is 30, playing Mr. Wilson at his creative peak and subsequent implosion in the mid-1960s, and John Cusack, 48, depicting his mid-80s struggle to re-emerge.

It’s an uncommon approach for a biopic, one conceived by the film’s director, Bill Pohlad. The usual challenge of the format — whether an actor can be credible through the stages of a subject’s life — is inverted: Will the two actors read to the audience as the same person? How similar do they need to be to keep consistency, and how different should their interpretations be to enhance the story?

Anatomy of a Scene | ‘Love & Mercy’

Bill pohlad narrates a sequence from his film about brian wilson, featuring paul dano..

Mr. Cusack and Mr. Dano sat down over coffee in the lounge of the Crosby Street Hotel in SoHo to discuss in depth, for the first time together, the dual Brian Wilsons of “Love & Mercy” (which takes its title from a 1988 Wilson song ). Though their shooting schedules overlapped for a few days during the production, they never swapped ideas or hashed out tactics.

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Movie Reviews

A simplified brian wilson in 'love and mercy'.

Mark Jenkins

Paul Dano plays a young Brian Wilson in Love and Mercy . Francois Duhamel/Roadside Attractions hide caption

Paul Dano plays a young Brian Wilson in Love and Mercy .

Wouldn't it be nice if Beach Boy Brian Wilson's troubled life were as easily understood as Love & Mercy makes it appear? Where the Pet Sounds auteur is known for multi-part harmonies, director Bill Pohlad's biopic is a series of simple duets.

Scripter Oren Moverman, who shares credit with Michael Alan Lerner but is reportedly the principal writer, summoned seven Dylans for I'm Not There . Here he presents just two Brians: one from 1963-67, and another from roughly two decades later. The first is artistically agile, but beginning to lose his psychological balance; the second is essentially imprisoned, and ready to break free.

Crucially, the movie also juggles two acting styles. Paul Dano takes a cinematic approach to the younger Brian, even packing on some baby-genius fat to more closely resemble the Beach Boy who preferred junk food and cigarettes to surfing (or touring with the band). John Cusack's version of the older man is more distanced and theatrical, without attempts at either physical or psychological impersonation. The performance is amiable but not very convincing, and doesn't mesh with the literal-minded rest of the movie.

Music Interviews

Telling brian wilson's fractured life story on film.

The two chapters are interwoven, with equal emphasis on both. That makes some sense, since the making of Pet Sounds is virtually guaranteed to elicit smiley smiles, even from fans who know the history well enough to see how it's been condensed and elided.

Yet the later story has more dramatic potential. After years of little musical output, Wilson is under the 24-hour-a-day authority of psychologist Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti), who controls the onetime pop prodigy with drugs the therapist is not legally allowed to prescribe. The becalmed Beach Boy is rescued by Cadillac saleswoman Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks), who sues Landy and eventually marries Brian.

Giamatti and Banks both give enthusiastic but predictable performances in shallowly written roles. Cusack portrays the Landy-dominated Brian as child-like and sometimes fearful, but capable of sly self-awareness. This seems unlikely, given his '80s diet of sedatives and anti-psychotics.

Aside from the heroic Ledbetter, Wilson's relationships are mostly with villains: Landy, of course, but also his father Murry (Bill Camp) and cousin and bandmate Mike Love (Jake Abel). Those two want hits, and don't appreciate Brian's attempts to expand the group's style and lace the fun-fun-fun with wistfulness and rue.

To acknowledge Wilson's many collaborators, the movie fleetingly introduces two of them, Tony Asher and Van Dyke Parks. But it doesn't explain what either of them did. (Asher wrote most of Pet Sounds ' lyrics, and Parks served repeatedly as Wilson's lyrical and musical foil.) It's easier to dramatize a lone prodigy, so the movie makes all the good musical ideas appear to be Brian's. In reality, even Mike Love had his moments.

Love & Mercy is named, curiously, for a 1988 song that Wilson supposedly co-wrote with Landy. (The extent of the therapist's contribution has been questioned.) But the movie wisely concentrates on the mid-'60s music, making expert use of the vocal-free backing tracks released on the Pet Sounds box set. Even Atticus Ross' shattered-pop score, used to evoke Wilson's alienation and auditory hallucinations, is cut and pasted mostly from Beach Boys ditties.

Those tunes wouldn't be remembered so fondly, however, if they were all sadness, self-doubt, and the disconnection Pohlad visualizes by showing Wilson behind windows or reflected in mirrors. So the final song, which ends a flawed movie with an immaculate burst of joy? Let's just say it's not "Hang on to Your Ego."

Brian Wilson

• Born June 20 , 1942 · Inglewood, California, USA
• Birth name Brian Douglas Wilson
• Height 6′ 1¼″ (1.86 m)
• Brian Douglas Wilson was born on June 20th 1942 and has gone on to become one of, if not the greatest, musical geniuses in the world. It was while growing up, while being physically and psychologically abused by his father, that he discovered music as a way of shutting out all hurt and pain that he was feeling at home. As he listened to Four Freshmen records and records of that day, he noticed that he had a flair for writing and arranging music in his own particular style: using his two younger brothers, Dennis Wilson and Carl Wilson along with first cousin Mike Love , Brian recreated songs for them to sing along to. Eventually after they had started singing for many years at family parties and in their room, Mike told Brian that they needed to form a group. Along with college friend Al Jardine , they formed The Beach Boys , releasing their first song "Surfin'" to popular reviews. When Brian's father Murry decided that he should be their manager, he set up The Beach Boys with a contract at Capitol Records and helped them embark on a seven year contract with the company. Within the first two years, Brian made himself the leader of the group and was, uniquely, writer/producer/arranger/musician and lead vocalist of the band. It was clear from the very early years that Brian was the one destined to take The Beach Boys into the spotlight. Along the way, mainly with Mike Love , he wrote a handful of top forty singles, including "California Girls", "Surfin' USA", "Surfer Girl", "Little Deuce Coupe", "Don't Worry Baby", "Wouldn't It Be Nice", "God Only Knows" and the three number one hits in America, "I Get Around", "Help Me, Rhonda" and "Good Vibrations", which was also a hit in Britain, and a second UK #1 single, "Do It Again". In two years of recording at Capitol, Brian fell prone to a nervous breakdown which came from the stress of all his duties. He decided at the end of 1964 that he would exclude himself from touring and would stay at home and write, produce and arrange the songs so the group could go out on the road and return to some wonderful material. Brian was satisfied for the moment, but with the increase of his use of marijuana and LSD, became prone to spend his time with his drug-filled friends and his sanity was now becoming a problem as he was starting to hear voices. However, that did not stop him creating two of his greatest albums in 1965, "Beach Boys Today!" and "Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!). It was in 1966 that he finally showed the world that he was the leader of the pack. After being inspired by The Beatles ' "Rubber Soul", Brian went on to create one of the greatest albums of all time, "Pet Sounds." This album became a milestone in music and went on to influence many of the greatest artists of the next four decades. Brian's next ambition was to top "Pet Sounds". The album was to be called "Dumb Angel", but he later changed it to "Smile", an album made with the same amount of genius and ambition as that of The Beach Boys ' greatest single, "Good Vibrations". "Smile" was never completed and it has since been called the greatest album never released. Wilson's work as a composer in creating albums -- Side B of the Beach Boys' "Today" album, the "Pet Sounds" and "SMiLE" albums being highlights -- was considered all but lost until his most recent work. In 2008 he released the spectacular song cycle/concept album "That Lucky Old Sun", a love letter to his native southern California; in 2010 he released the remarkable "Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin", in which he puts the classic Brian Wilson touch to the only other American rival composer from the 20th century covering many classic George Gershwin pop hits; in 2012 he wrote, produced, and sang lead on much of the Beach Boys' reunion album "That's Why God Made The Radio", featuring another remarkable Side B of beautiful melodies and harmonies. These three recent albums have all been critically acclaimed and have sold well, confirming once and for all the mid-70s cliché that Brian Is Back. Brian Wilson's pop songwriting has, quite arguably, been featured in more movies than any other 20th century songwriter, from the mid-60s beach movies (if he didn't write the music himself, at least he influenced his disciples Roger Christian & Gary Usher) to recent baby boomer flicks (i.e., Forrest Gump (1994) , Love Actually (2003) ) and Gen Y comedies (i.e., 50 First Dates, Orange County, Happy Feet). - IMDb Mini Biography By: Simon Edwards
• Spouses Melinda Ledbetter (February 6, 1995 - January 30, 2024) (her death, 5 children) Marilyn Wilson (December 7, 1964 - June 6, 1981) (divorced, 2 children)
• Children Daria Rose Wilson Dakota Rose Wilson Delanie Rae Wilson Dash Tristan Wilson Dylan Wilson Carnie Wilson Wendy Wilson
• Parents Murry Wilson Audree Wilson
• Relatives Mike Love (Cousin) Carl Wilson (Sibling) Dennis Wilson (Sibling) Justyn Wilson (Niece or Nephew) Carl Wilson (Niece or Nephew) Michael Wilson (Niece or Nephew) Lola Bonfiglio (Grandchild)
• The "Wall of Sound", popularized by Phil Spector .
• Turned in a composition called "Surfin'" to his high school music theory teacher, which got an F, but eventually became a million dollar hit.
• Names "California Girls" his favorite song out of all the songs he has written.
• In December 2000 at a Christmas party of a friends, when told he could "tickle the ivories" unexpectedly began to play "Heroes and Villians", which he refused to play since 1967. For over 20 years, whenever anybody asked him about the song, he would refuse to talk about it saying "It's not appropriate" or "No comment." After he played the song, someone said "You should do that at the tribute show", a tribute to Wilson was being planned for the spring of 2001. He agreed and for the first time since he wrote it, performed the song at An All-Star Tribute To Brian Wilson (2001). He said that the reaction to his performance led him to decide to finish and perform SMiLE, which had been sitting on the shelf for well over 30 years.
• With the death of brother Carl Wilson in 1998, he became the last surviving original member of the Wilson family.
• Almost completely deaf in his right ear, from an early accident. While he has never heard stereo music, his ear for balance between sounds is unusually strong; he preferred to mix in mono because he noticed stereo was off-balance unless one was directly between the speakers. (Later productions of his are in stereo, or binaural sound.)
• I'm not a genius. I'm just a hard working guy.
• I'd earned over a million dollars by the time I was old enough to vote.
• "My new band is better then The Beach Boys ".
• "The Four Freshmen influenced me the most, with their great harmonies. Whew! The greatest".
• For me, making music has always been a very spiritual thing, and I think anybody who produces records has to feel that, at least a little bit. Producing a record, the idea of taking a song, envisioning the overall sound in my head and then bringing the arrangement to life in the studio, well that gives me satisfaction like nothing else.

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‘Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road’ Review: A Documentary Love Letter to a Pop Genius

The saga of the former Beach Boy has been told many times, but Brent Wilson and Jason Fine's film — part musical exploration, part "Carpool Karaoke" — makes the old stories new again.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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Even if you think that Brian Wilson is God — and yes, I do — you could easily say that we don’t need another documentary about him. There have been some good, rich, and deep ones, like “Brian Wilson: I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times,” the 1995 musicological meditation directed by record producer Don Was, or “Brian Wilson and the Story of ‘SMiLE’,” which chronicled the history of that most fabled of all unfinished albums as well as the remarkable story of how, in 2004, Wilson and Darian Sahanaja put its majesty back together again. “Love & Mercy” (2014) wasn’t a documentary, but it had the true-life power of one; it’s one of the great music biopics, with an insight into the perfect storm of forces that made Brian Wilson tick. Beyond that, so many of the tales of Wilson’s life and art — his creation of, and withdrawal from, the Beach Boys ; the mythology of “Pet Sounds”; the inextricable vines of his genius and mental illness; the lost years he spent in recovery with the charlatan shrink Eugene Landy — have been repeated so often that they’re now part of our cultural lore.

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“ Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road ,” directed by Brent Wilson (no relation), takes the form of yet another classically structured overview of Brian Wilson’s career. Only this one cuts back and forth between the saga of Wilson and the Beach Boys and a “Carpool Karaoke”-style conversation between Brian, still hale and hanging in there with his tentative, blunted, anxiety-ridden, doggedly sincere approach to everyday experience, and Jason Fine, an editor at Rolling Stone magazine, who met Wilson during the course of doing a feature on him in the mid-’90s. The two began to hang out and became friends, and in “Long Promised Road” they cruise around L.A., talking and listening to Brian’s music and stopping at key locales: Paradise Cove, the home of “Surfin’ Safari”; the site of Wilson’s now-demolished childhood home in Hawthorne; the houses he lived in during the ’60s and ’70s; the home of his late brother Carl; and the Beverly Glen Deli, where the two chat over Cobb salads and ice-cream sundaes.

Popular on Variety

Brian Wilson did more than write great pop music. He turned pop songs into hymns, soaring chorales, sublimely delicate and jaunty effusions of sweet-souled sound laced with an underlying sadness so divine that, as Bruce Springsteen says in the movie of “Pet Sounds,” “The beauty of it carries a sense of joyfulness even in the pain of living. The joyfulness of an emotional life.” So yes, maybe we don’t need another documentary about Brian Wilson, but even if you think you know it all, “Long Promised Road” is an affectionate and satisfying movie, sentimental at times but often stirringly insightful, a collection of pinpoint testimonials to Wilson’s artistry by such authoritative fans as Springsteen and Elton John, and a movie that lets the enchanting qualities of Wilson’s music cascade over you.

As for Brian himself, he seems in pretty good shape for a man pushing 80 who still hears voices, but the truth is that he doesn’t say all that much about anything. Jason Fine asks him if it was weird writing all those songs about surfing even though he didn’t surf himself — a fabled fact about Brian. His response? “Yeah, Dennis surfed. I never learned how to surf.” Okay, thanks for sharing! When Fine asks him what he now thinks about the mid-’60s implosion of “SMiLE” and why he felt like he had to shelve it, Brian says, “We thought it was a little ahead of its time. We waited for, like, 30 years. And we finally finished it.” And so it goes. Brian Wilson, apart from his thin-shell-encasing-a-damaged-mollusk quality of blitzed hypersensitivity, doesn’t appear to have the impulse toward introspection.

Yet as the film goes on, you feel like you kind of get to know him. Jason Fine is the easygoing friend who inquires about stuff, fields Brian’s one-sentence answers, never pushes too hard, absorbs Brian’s thoughts and feelings with sympathetic understanding, and talks music with him. He brings Brian out — at least as much as one can. And the thing about Brian is that even when he doesn’t reveal much, there’s something disarmingly honest and tender about him. He says just enough to get you in tune with his heart.

In the clips we see of the Beach Boys, and there some great ones, when we watch Brian singing, trying to play the part of a happy pop star along with his two brothers and Al Jardine and Mike Love, the truth is that there’s something off about him, and always was. He’s frozen, not fully there. Though it took decades for him to be diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, he heard voices in his head (and still does), aggressive and judgmental voices, and in the old footage he looks like someone who heard voices.

Yet part of what’s haunting about his story is that the Brian Wilson who heard voices in his head is also the Brian Wilson who heard the most gorgeous four-minute pop symphonies in his head; and those two things cannot be separated. He was touched by a higher spirit, and sometimes he was just…touched.

At one point, Don Was sits in the studio, separating out the tracks of “God Only Knows” the way they used to do on episodes of VH1’s “Classic Albums.” He gets to the part at the end where Brian layers Carl Wilson singing “God only knows what I’d be without you” into a kind of contrapuntal acid-head loop, and it’s even more amazing to hear with the instruments stripped away. “God Only Knows” might, along with “Penny Lane,” be the greatest pop song ever written, but talk about the sound of voices in your head! And the film’s analysis of the song is itself a thing of beauty. Elton John talks about how Wilson used the fifth of a chord as a bass note (the way Elton would later do in “Someone Saved My Life Tonight”), and Don Was picks out the instruments, almost shaking his head in disbelief as he identifies…a banjo! Which along with a piano and a harmonica fused into one sound. “Brian had to sit at home and dream up these textures that no one had ever, ever used.”

But there was another side to Brian. Linda Perry, the producer and songwriter, say that she hears Brian’s competitive nature in the DNA of those songs. He was trying to be better than the Beatles. And that pushed him to come up with an airy density of form that transcended what he’d heard on “Rubber Soul” (the album that inspired him to make “Pet Sounds”). People in the film also testify to what a leader he was. When you hear stories about him in the ’60s, especially when he was cracking up during the “SMiLE” sessions, you get a sense of someone who was fragile, vulnerable, a genius on the verge of a nervous breakdown. But if you listen to the hours of outtakes that were part of the box-set reissue of “SMiLE” released in 2011, you hear Wilson rehearsing the other Beach Boys with a martinet discipline that makes him sound like a fusion of Phil Spector, Stanley Kubrick, and Johann Sebastian Bach.

“Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road” is finally a love letter to Brian Wilson — to all the beauty he has given the world, but also to the fact that he made it through his crack-ups and came out the other side. He’s now a confident live performer, filling a place like the Hollywood Bowl as he and his band perform “Pet Sounds” or “SMiLE.” He also continues to record simply because the songs won’t stop coming to him. His voice is a frail shadow of what it once was, but he’s there, he’s relaxed, he’s delivering his music to an audience enraptured to be in his presence, and he’s sharing their energy. When you listen to him perform “Caroline No,” his singing back on the album sounds more than ever like a dream, but his singing here tells a different story: that he still feels this song, and can still channel it, the way he channeled the cosmic winds that allowed him to write it. The movie shows you that Brian Wilson’s genius is not something that should ever be taken for granted. God only knows what we’d be without him.

Reviewed online, June 15, 2021. MPAA Rating: Not rated. Running time: 92 MIN.

• Production: (Documentary) A Ley Line Entertainment production, in association with BriMel. Producers: Tim Headington, Theresa Steele Page, Brent Wilson. Executive producers: Brian Wilson, Melinda Wilson, Jason Fine.
• Crew: Director: Brent Wilson. Screenplay: Jason Fine, Brent Wilson. Camera: Maximilian Schmige, George Dougherty, David West. Editors: Hector Lopez, Kevin Klauber. Music: Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys.
• With: Brian Wilson, Jason Fine, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Don Was, Linda Perry, Jim James, Melinda Wilson, Al Jardine.

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Brian Wilson

Who Is Brian Wilson?

Brian Wilson formed the Beach Boys in 1961 and had a long string of hit singles and albums, helping to establish the “California sound” along the way. By the mid-60s, however, Wilson looked to move beyond the cheery, simple, teen-based formula that characterized much of the Beach Boys’ early music. The result was 1966’s Pet Sounds , which is ranked by many as one of the greatest albums of all time. But at the peak of his creative powers, substance abuse and mental illness took their toll on Wilson, who for much of the next 25 years lived in seclusion. After breaking free from psychologist Eugene Landy, who exerted an excessive amount of control over Wilson’s life during the 1980s, Wilson revived his career and released several solo albums in the 1990s.

He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, remarried in 1995 and was honored by the Kennedy Center in 2007 for lifetime contribution to the performing arts. Since that time he has continued to tour and record albums and was also the subject of the 2014 biopic Love & Mercy .

Early Life and Childhood

Brian Douglas Wilson was born in Inglewood, California, on June 20, 1942. But while the Wilson family lived an outwardly normal, middle-class suburban life, at home Wilson and his younger brothers—Dennis and Carl—endured a rough childhood. They were subjected to regular physical and mental abuse by their father, Murry, and their mother, Audree Wilson, was by all accounts an alcoholic. Despite this background of turmoil, the Wilson home was a musical one. Murry was an aspiring—though only vaguely successful—songwriter, and both he and Audree played piano. Wilson and his brothers would often sing along with them in the living room, developing an early ability to harmonize with one another, a feat made all the more impressive by the fact that Wilson was mostly deaf in one ear.

Wilson remembers his childhood with mixed feelings, once telling an interviewer, “I had a good childhood—except for my dad beating me up all the time.” But as Wilson grew older, he increasingly turned to music as an escape from the pain of his home life. Along with his two younger brothers and their cousin, Mike Love, Wilson began performing at parties and small gatherings. In the late 1950s the four relatives joined with Hawthorne High School friend Al Jardine to form a band called the Pendletones, a name chosen because of the popular Pendleton flannel shirts that became the group’s uniform in the early days. The group featured Brian on bass, Carl and Al on guitar and Dennis on drums. Though Mike and Brian would take most of the lead on vocals, every member lent his voice to their layered harmonic sound.

'Surfin' Safari'

In October 1961, the Pendletones recorded demos of two surfing-themed songs, “Surfin’” and “Surfin’ Safari.” Although Dennis was the only member of the group who actually surfed, the band sought to tap into the rising popularity of the sport and, more importantly, its accompanying lifestyle. The small label that released the single liked the idea so much that it even went as far as to rename the group the Beach Boys, much to its members’ surprise. Released that December, “Surfin’” cracked Billboard's Hot 100, eventually peaking at No. 75 while remaining on the chart for six weeks. They followed a few months later with “Surfin’ Safari,” which reached the Top 20 and earned the Beach Boys a contract with Capitol Records, who released their first full album, Surfin’ Safari , later that year. It reached No. 32 on the album charts, launching the group on its first wave of success.

With Wilson as the primary creative force, the Beach Boys released a slew of hit singles and top-charting albums during the early 1960s, featuring a bright and cheery music that would come to represent the California youth culture of the period. They released three albums in 1963 alone— Surfin' U.S.A. , Surfer Girl and Little Deuce Coupe —all of which cracked the Top 10. They followed that breakout year with hit releases like All Summer Long (1964) and Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!) (1965). Among the band’s many iconic hit songs from this era are “Surfin’ U.S.A.” (No. 3), “Fun, Fun, Fun” (No. 5), “I Get Around” (No. 1), “Help Me Rhonda” (No. 1) and “California Girls” (No. 3), to name a mere few.

'Pet Sounds'

But by the mid-60s, Wilson had begun to experiment musically, conceptually and chemically, and he sought to push the group’s sound beyond the light and accessible sun-and-fun formula that characterized its early music. By late 1964, he had quit touring with the Beach Boys, due in part to a nervous breakdown he had suffered on the road, and he used his time at home to begin work on the band’s next album. Initially inspired by the Beatles’ Rubber Soul (1965), Wilson’s goal was to create an album where “every song mattered” and that would “make people feel loved.” After collaborating with his friend Tony Asher on the lyrics, and writing and arranging the music almost entirely on his own, Wilson then employed the famous session group known as the Wrecking Crew to commit his vision to tape.

Released in 1966, the resulting album, Pet Sounds features such memorable songs as “God Only Knows,” “I Just Wasn't Made for these Times,” “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and "Caroline, No.” With its complex arrangements, innovative recording techniques and mind-bogglingly dense vocal harmonies, it is ranked by many critics among the greatest records ever recorded. Rolling Stone magazine, for example, placed Pet Sounds at No. 2 on their list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time,” and Paul McCartney named it his favorite album, also citing it as a primary influence for the Beatles seminal 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and calling “God Only Knows” one of the most beautiful songs ever written.

Ironically, considering its later success, Capitol Records and the other members of the Beach Boys initially resisted the musical direction Wilson took on the album, preferring to stick with the safer, proven sound that had brought them so much success. The name Pet Sounds was born when band member Mike Love quipped, “Who’s gonna hear this sh**? The ears of a dog?” Arguably far ahead of its time, it received mixed reviews and did not sell as well as many of the band’s previous albums, further adding to the strain between Wilson and the other members, particularly Love.

Heroes and Villains

But Wilson was undeterred and immediately followed with what is considered to be one of the greatest rock songs of all time, the 1967 single “Good Vibrations,” which he had begun work on during the Pet Sounds sessions. The track hit No. 1 on the charts and encouraged Wilson to employ many of the same recording techniques he had used on a new project that he hoped would reach even greater musical heights. Collaborating with songwriter Van Dyke Parks on the lyrics and enlisting many of the musicians who had appeared on Pet Sounds , the album was initially titled Dumb Angel and later renamed SMiLE . Conceived by Wilson as a “teenage symphony to God,” it would not be released until more than 37 years later. One of the most famous unfinished albums of all time, SMiLE was shelved when Wilson’s personal life took a sharp turn for the worse—though reworked versions of a few of the songs would appear on 1967’s Smiley Smile and 1971’s Surf’s Up.

Plagued by his heavy abuse of alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and LSD, Wilson suffered numerous nervous breakdowns and grew obese. He famously began wailing in the aisle of an airplane, played his grand piano in a sandbox he had built in his home and claimed to hear voices in his head. Attempting to deal with his addiction and mental illnesses, Wilson spent much of the next two decades in seclusion. While he struggled with his personal problems, the Beach Boys continued to tour without him (with only a few exceptions), relying more and more heavily on a nostalgia for their early work to carry their live shows. They continued to record as well, though with diminished involvement from Wilson, and with consequently underwhelming results.

By the mid-1970’s Wilson’s substance abuse and deteriorating mental state led his family to enlist the help of psychologist Eugene Landy, from whom he received treatment on and off for the next decade and a half. But while Landy would help Wilson reign in his drug addiction and take charge of his mental and physical health, he also exploited Wilson’s dependency on him, even going as far as to convince Wilson to list him as a collaborator on several songs on his 1988 debut, self-titled solo album, as well as a beneficiary in his will. In 1991, Wilson’s family sued Landy, resulting in a restraining order and the loss of Landy's license to practice psychology in California.

Later Career

Wilson has credited the mid-90s renaissance of his personal and professional life to one thing—his wife, Melinda Ledbetter, whom he married in 1995. (Wilson had previously married Marilyn Rovell in 1964, and the couple had two children before divorcing in 1979). Since that time, Wilson has released numerous solo albums, including Orange Art Crate (1995) and Imagination (1998). He was also the subject of the 1995 documentary I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times . In 2004, 37 years after its initial recording, Wilson finally released a complete version of SMiLE to wide acclaim, and since reviving his career has even overcome his legendary stage fright, performing on his own and occasionally with the Beach Boys in concerts throughout the United States and Europe.

For his immeasurable contributions to music, Wilson has won numerous honors and awards. In 1988 he and the Beach Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and in 2000 Wilson was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He won the 2005 Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental for the song “Mrs. O'Leary's Cow,” and in 2007 he received the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime contribution to the performing arts.

After decades of seclusion, a happy and productive Wilson received a warm welcome back into the music industry. His good friend Sir Elton John said of Wilson, “He’s got a great family life now, he goes to basketball games, he seems happy. He's leading as normal a life as Brian Wilson can.” In fact, Wilson might be happier now than he was even during the heyday of the Beach Boys. “I’m having much more fun than I did as a Beach Boy,” he said in The Guardian . “Because I’m no longer a Beach Boy. I’m Brian Wilson.”

Endless Summer

In 2014 the Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival before appearing on U.S. screens the following year. Paul Dano earned a Golden Globe nomination for his portrayal of a young Wilson (actor John Cusack was cast as the older Wilson, Paul Giamatti appearing as Eugene Landy), and the legendary musician also scored a nomination for contributing the song “One Kind of Love,” co-written with Scott Bennett. That same year, Wilson released a new solo album, No Pier Pressure , which reached No. 23 on the album charts.

In October 2016, the memoir I Am Brian Wilson was published. In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine to promote the book, the 74-year-old legend announced that he would begin work on a new album, Sensitive Music for Sensitive People , later that year.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Brian Wilson
• Birth Year: 1942
• Birth date: June 20, 1942
• Birth State: California
• Birth City: Inglewood
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Brian Wilson is one of the most influential songwriters in rock 'n' roll history, best known as the frontman for the Beach Boys.
• Astrological Sign: Gemini
• Interesting Facts
• The Beach Boys released a song written by Charles Manson, "Cease To Exist" (renamed "Never Learn Not To Love"), as a single B-side on their 1969 album, 20/20 .

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Brian Wilson Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/musicians/brian-wilson
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: April 19, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
• I had a good childhood—except for my dad beating me up all the time.
• 'Caroline, No' makes people cry. 'God Only Knows' makes people cry. A lot of love went into ['Pet Sounds'].
• At times I thought I'd never be happy ever again, and then at times I did.
• My father hit me, but he didn't hit my ear. I've never heard stereophonic sound ever in my life.
• I'm having much more fun than I did as a Beach Boy. Because I'm no longer a Beach Boy. I'm Brian Wilson."[From 'The Guardian' interview, published May 31, 2002.]

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