(Credits: Alamy)
Sun 2 November 2025 20:00, UK
Even though The Beach Boys are collectively regarded as one of the finest pop groups to have emerged in the 1960s, with each of their members having played their part in delivering sumptuous vocal harmonies, a lot of the plaudits end up being placed on their leader, Brian Wilson.
As the brains behind the operation, Wilson was responsible for taking the band from their relatively humble beginnings as a surf rock outfit and transforming them into a more artistically adventurous and psychedelic tour de force, releasing a string of albums that were filled with lavish instrumental arrangements and melodies that were beyond what most of his peers were able to conjure up.
Having written all of the material and passed it on to the rest of the group, he was very much in control of the direction they took, no matter what other members may have thought.
However, that doesn’t mean that the other members of the band were incapable of presenting their own ideas, and it certainly didn’t mean that they were lacking in talent either. The band had to be able to carry off Wilson’s high-concept ideas and present them in a way that was still approachable, and if the other Beach Boys weren’t up to the task, it’s likely that they would never have had the levels of success that they had.
Despite Brian being the most prominent member, he was also flanked by two of his brothers in the lineup, Carl and Dennis Wilson. While Carl was known for having perhaps the strongest voice of the trio, also adding guitars in live performances and contributing a handful of his own songs, Dennis was a drummer and vocalist for the band, and seemingly wasn’t adding much else to the creative process.
That being said, it would have been unusual for there to be three brothers in the band, and for the talents to have been so unevenly swayed in favour of two of them, and not the third, and so for Dennis to eventually emerge with a handful of his own songs should not have been as much of a surprise to the rest of the group as it was. However, the other members, including his own brothers, hadn’t seen this development coming.
In an interview with Uncut, Bruce Johnston, another member of the band during their fruitful mid-1960s period, said that it stunned him to realise that after sitting down with Dennis to teach him a few things on the piano, he’d gone away and figured out some of his own songs. “None of us [expected it], including Dennis,” he claimed.
Adding, “In January 1966, we were in Japan and had a lot of time on our hands. We played about 14 shows, so I started showing Dennis how to play the piano and how to chord. I kind of unlocked what was already in there and he started putting it all together.”
While his solo material was never considered to be as incredible as what The Beach Boys produced, there are flashes of brilliance in his one-and-only studio album, 1977’s Pacific Ocean Blue. He was never going to be able to fully wrangle the reins from his brothers in the band, but for him to have finally got the opportunity to showcase his hidden talent was something that proved all of his doubters wrong, especially those in the band with him.
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