(Credits: Far Out / Brian Wilson)
Tue 10 March 2026 23:00, UK
Brian Wilson, for all he was a bona fide musical icon, was also always somewhat of an enigmatic presence.
There was no denying that this was largely down to the fact that he spent many years, if not decades, away from the spotlight. The harsh glare of being lauded as a genius had proved all too much for someone so young back in the 1960s, so between the breakout of surf pop and the godliness of Pet Sounds, he ultimately retreated.
As the years wore on and the musical trends of the world naturally progressed, a combination of these factors meant that as the 1970s and ‘80s drew in, The Beach Boys and Wilson were classed as has-beens. You had a landscape full of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and every other heavy metal band under the sun. Was anybody even interested in shiny harmonies any more?
As it turns out, the answer to that question was yes: you just had to look a little deeper to find them. Naturally, the major hub of interest surrounding Wilson and his somewhat reclusive tendencies centred in his native California, but it took an unlikely power pop group from Los Angeles to really take the plunge and find out the truth.
The Wondermints may not be a name known outside many of LA’s closest-knit musical circles, but their impact in unearthing a Wilson gem, and subsequently shaping the course of the rest of his life, was seismic. But the formation of the band themselves would come much later. It was in 1984 that music historian Domenic Priore met Darian Sahanaja and Nick Walusko, and together they set out on a quest.
Being some of the unsung Beach Boys fanatics of the era, the trio were aware of Wilson’s plights in his attempts to make his magnum opus record, Smile. However, no one was interested in bootlegging the work of the musician at the time, and so they took it upon themselves to piece together the jigsaw of the album through tapes and fanzines.Â
Through their detective work, Priore, Sahanaja, and Walusko managed to figure out a running order for the album that would eventually mirror what Wilson himself performed at the debut Brian Wilson Presents Smile at London’s Royal Festival Hall in 2004. But as a byproduct of that, Sahanaja and Walusko also realised that they could work together pretty well as musicians.
In effect, this was what kick-started The Wondermints as a band and caught the attention of the main man himself. To this end, they ended up actually becoming part of Wilson’s backing band from 1999 all the way up to his retirement in 2022. It wasn’t a bad effort for a pair who started out as nothing more than devoted fans.Â
As such, despite everything that Wilson endured over the years, the one thing that his enigmatic approach to the spotlight did produce was a roving fanbase – and, later down the line, even his band. It’s testament to the intelligent people of the world that they managed to crack the code of Smile, something that had remained a mystery for so long, and seemingly also to the man who created it.