(Credits: Far Out / Brian Wilson)
Mon 16 March 2026 20:30, UK
There isn’t a single song in The Beach Boys’ catalogue that has become a classic without Brian Wilson.
Although there are more than a few years where Wilson wasn’t as active with the band as everyone would have liked, there’s always been an understanding that it’s a much different band whenever Mike Love is at the helm of the group. Wilson was the rock that gave them all of those soaring melodies, but even with those symphonies running through his head, he could admit that a few of his bandmates could throw in the odd masterpiece every now and again whenever they performed.
But, realistically, was there anyone who was going to get in the way of Wilson becoming one of the legends of rock and roll? Well, technically, that answer is yes since Love was the one always claiming ownership of different pieces of the songs that Wilson built from the ground up, but is anyone really claiming that the genius at play on ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ is Love’s handiwork? Absolutely not. That was a classic even without lyrics on it, but the rest of Wilson’s brothers were no slouches on their respective songs, either.
In fact, the real glue that held the band together for so long was Carl Wilson. He could write the odd tune here and there, but the true beauty of their sound was his voice. No one else could have turned ‘God Only Knows’ into one of the greatest love songs of all time, and even though Brian could build a wall of sound on their comeback album in 2012, there was no way of replacing Carl’s voice properly.
And let’s not forget Dennis Wilson, either. His voice was definitely not as good as the rest of his brothers were doing, but the song ‘Forever’ is still one of the prettiest tunes that they have ever made. It takes a special kind of song to transcend time, but even if you were exposed to it for the first time on Full House, it’s very hard for John Stamos to screw up a song that was already this gorgeous.
When Wilson was picking out some of the finest songs that the band ever made, though, he always came back to one of the songs that Al Jardine was singing, called ‘California Saga/California’. This was already beginning the wilderness period, where Brian was starting to lose his way, but even when talking about the song years later, he ranked Jardine’s work among the finest pieces that the band ever made.
It was a long way from ‘Help Me Rhonda’, but that wasn’t a bad thing at all as far as Brian could tell, saying, “That right there I think is a great achievement in music. I think if you’re scared and you don’t know what to anticipate, play a record like that. He asked me for an intro and I wrote ‘On my way to sunny California’.” But the fact that Brian did that so off the cuff is really his genius at work.
Jardine should get all the credit for making the tune what it was, but Brian’s natural intuition on that intro is the reason why he should be so respected. After all, this is the same person who could have a conversation with you and work out one of the greatest string arrangements you’ve ever heard in your life at the exact same time, so it’s no surprise that even a few seconds of him in the studio could turn a song like that into magic.
And when listening to the song in isolation, you can really hear what Wilson is getting at. Not many people have the luxury of experiencing the life that The Beach Boys had in sunny California, but for those few minutes, the whole track feels like a cool breeze hitting your face as you’re screaming down the Pacific Coast Highway.