![\"Brian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Brian-Wilson-Musician-The-Beatch-Boys-1977-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Caribou Records \/ Public Domain)<\/p>\n
Thu 20 November 2025 20:00, UK <\/p>\n
When Brian Wilson<\/a>\u2019s death was announced earlier this year, a staggering number of retrospectives on the man\u2019s life and career made no bones about throwing around the \u201cg\u201d word. Nearly 60 years since Pet Sounds\u2019 release, it\u2019s easy to forget that there was a time when calling Brian Wilson a genius would have sounded ridiculous. The \u2018Surfin\u2019 USA\u2019 guy?<\/p>\n Wilson, of course, was a far more talented songwriter than anyone realised or could have surmised from the Beach Boys\u2019 earliest hits, but it took a lot more than hearing \u2018God Only Knows\u2019 to fully convert the general populace over to the idea that he was on the level of, say, Bob Dylan.<\/p>\n \u201cA publicist came along by the name of Derek Taylor,\u201d Wilson\u2019s former lyricist and collaborator Van Dyke Parks recalled to Pitchfork<\/a> in 2011. \u201cHe was the Beatles\u2019 publicist and I introduced him to Brian.\u201d<\/p>\n It was Derek Taylor who hatched the idea of launching a marketing campaign, leading up to Pet Sounds\u2018 release in 1966, that would widely promote Brian Wilson as an under-appreciated pop genius; something Parks later saw as a \u201cmistake\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIf nothing else, [the campaign] forced Brian Wilson to have to continuously prove that he\u2019s a genius,\u201d Parks said, \u201cAnd not just a lucky guy with a tremendous amount of talent and a lot of people collaborating beautifully around him.\u201d<\/p>\n And so we had the classic double-edged sword. Taylor\u2019s marketing strategy had gradually planted seeds in listeners\u2019 minds, and Pet Sounds and \u2018Good Vibrations\u2019<\/a> delivered some supporting evidence. Unfortunately, the newfound respect that followed also contributed to Brian Wilson\u2019s subsequent struggles with substance abuse, as he felt the pressure (as Parks saw it) to keep raising the bar and re-proving his own greatness.<\/p>\n By the early 1980s, the genius narrative was still intact, but it had now morphed into something more akin to the Howard Hughes model \u2013 the tortured mind overburdened by its own complexities, turning its owner into a tragic recluse.<\/p>\n Wilson was unfit to tour or properly work in the studio during this period, as his struggles with drugs, overeating, and depression made it impossible. Even so, rumours would occasionally circle about new material and secret recording sessions; one of which was pretty well substantiated in the form of a bootleg tape dating from 1981, known to Beach Boys collectors as \u2018The Cocaine Sessions\u2019.<\/p>\n According to band lore \u2013 and to a handful of insiders who\u2019ve spoken about it over the years \u2013 \u2018The Cocaine Sessions\u2019 took place in the early winter of \u201881 at a Venice, California beach house owned by a music professor named Garby Leon. The story goes that Dennis Wilson, also in rough shape by this period and battling his own addictions, coaxed Brian into working on some new demos by supposedly bribing him with hamburgers and cocaine. Mr Leon would later refute the latter claim, saying the recordings were far more burger-fueled than coke-fueled.\u00a0<\/p>\n In any case, no label executives were notified, no other Beach Boys were invited, and no producer was present to keep things coherent. It was just the two brothers and Leon, a couple of reels of tape, a piano and a Hammond organ, and an atmosphere that veered between euphoric inspiration and barely controlled chaos.<\/p>\n The resulting recordings are a strange, fascinating, and sometimes heartbreaking listen. Among the poorly recorded, ghostly song sketches are early takes on \u2018City Blues\u2019, \u2018I Feel Fine\u2019, and \u2018Oh Lord\u2019, the latter of which certainly doesn\u2019t seem like a haphazard, uninspired effort to get an extra burger. Brian actually sounds remarkably desperate and vulnerable on the haunting song, stretching his vocal chords to the limit and clearly trying to release something that had been pent up for a while. Hearing the man behind those insanely pristine 1960s Beach Boys hits sounding this lonely and lost through a sea of tape hiss<\/a> is quite disturbing, but, because it\u2019s Brian, still oddly beautiful.<\/p>\n Beyond the bootleg that\u2019s been floating around for years, collectors believe that more songs were recorded during the \u201cHamburger Sessions\u201d, to use a friendlier title, but they\u2019ve never seen the light of day. <\/p>\n![\"Brian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Brian-Wilson-The-Beach-Boys-Far-Out-Magazine-F-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/a>The Beach Boys genius Brian Wilson. (Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n