Brian Wilson ‎- Brian Wilson (1988) {Promo PROCD-3176}

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Brian Wilson ‎- Brian Wilson (1988) {Promo PROCD-3176}

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Brian Wilson is the eponymous debut studio album by Brian Wilson released in July 1988 on Sire Records. It was voted one of the best albums of 1988 by NME, and as part of its acclaim, garnered the nickname "Pet Sounds '88" among some critics. Brian Wilson has since been reissued on several formats with bonus tracks, and cited by some as a standout in Wilson's solo oeuvre.

Love And Mercy
Brian Wilson: “I was in my piano room, playing (Burt Bachrach and Hal David’s) “What The World Needs Now,” and I just went into my own song…worked very hard to get out what was in my heart on that one … it’s a personal message from me to people.”

With “Love And Mercy,” Brian explains that “we accomplished what we set out to do, which is to bring some spiritual love to people. We wanted people to be covered with love, because there’s no guarantee of somebody waking up in the morning with any love. It goes away, like a bad dream. It disappears. Mercy would be a deep word than love. I would think love is a gentle thing and mercy would be more desperate, ultimately more desperately needed, thing in life. Mercy – a little break here and there for somebody who’s having trouble.” On tour in 1999 Brian began ending his concerts with a very moving version of “Love And Mercy.” His tender introduction/benediction prior to the song and evocative, spiritual lead vocal made it a standout performance in each concert and consistently one of the emotional highlights of the night. In concert it’s sung with a healing tone: “The live version is very intimate,” Brian admits. “When I perform it now, it feels happy… ‘Love And Mercy’ is probably the most spiritual song I’ve ever written.”

Walkin’ The Line
Brian Wilson (in 1988): “I was remembering an old bass line I had written, a left hand. And I said to myself, ‘I want to record a song that has bass sounds like a ‘60s record but has an ‘80s feeling, an ‘80s vibration to it. I always felt good about that left hand, a good vibration about it. So I took that old bass line I had never finished and incorporated it into a new sound. It was all in remembering the feeling, the spirit, when I wrote the bass line a long time ago.”

Brian spent a great time of time in 1986 with his old friend and collaborator Gary Usher (“In My Room”), cutting new songs at Usher’s home studio. This was a period during which Brian had the extended opportunity to rediscover the joy of recording music. “Walkin’ The Line” was the only song from the Wilson/Usher tapes that made the album.

“Walkin’ The Line” is a good song about my life … how I live every day. Brian remembered recently. “At the time I wrote this I was on thin ice.” In fact, in ’88 he said, “I’m always walking over thin ice, could fall through at any minute. I tread lightly on everything I do, ‘Walk The Line’ so to speak. Not all the time, but it is one of my subtheme songs of my whole life, [but] it’s not a serious song.”

Melt Away
In 1988 Brian said this track and “Love And Mercy” were “the two philosophical songs on the album…my true feelings. [‘Melt Away’ is] about the identity crisis I have in my life – the way I see myself and the ‘me’ that everybody thinks I am.” Brian described “Melt Away” as “a spiritual sound. How many different ways can you say ‘Merry Christmas’? But if you try, you can find a new way to do it…a new way to say, ‘You make my blues fade away.’”

For me, “Melt Away” will always be “the one.” I can still remember where I was when I first heard it (in Andy Paley’s car behind Ground Control studio in Santa Monica), and literally, after Brian had sung one note, somehow feeling, knowing, saying, “This is an incredible song.” (It’s possible that the cut I heard that night is the bonus track on this collection, and like the “Walkin’ The Line” demo, the alternate take has slightly different lyrics than the released version.)

“Melt Away” was, in part, inspired by a conversation that took place in late 1986. I overheard an old friend urging Brian to pick up his Fender bass, to “do it the way you used to do.” Perhaps as a result of that conversation, Brian did just that, and he began writing very creative bass lines, which is one of the reasons why this song and the next one are so reminiscent of his arrangements from 1965 and 1966.

Perhaps the best composition on the record, this track, like Brian’s McCartney favorite, “Let It Be,” is built to go the distance. Brian agrees that it’s “Brian Wilson at his best.”

Baby Let Your Hair Grow Long
Brian Wilson: “At first, when I wrote the melody, I thought maybe it should be a love song…most of the lyrics were romantic, but then I put in a couple of sexual lines.” Brian also felt the tune was “a pep talk, but not to myself. ‘You’ve got to try a little more’ means you’ve got to get your head a little more into success.” In 1988 he acknowledged that this track “could have been on Pet Sounds, because it’s a classic piece of art that I worked on for many months, changing it and molding it, shaping it and reshaping it, and fine-tuning it to get the sound I like.”

In a sense, this song provides a sequel to Tony Asher’s “Caroline, No” lyric (“Where did your long hair go?”). As Brian maintained, “Long hair exemplifies beauty in a girl.” So the song is saying, “Make yourself beautiful again.” In fact, his favorite part of the song is when he sings the title hook, “Baby let your hair grow long.”

Little Children
Brian Wilson: “I wanted people to realize that little kids are really cool .. there’s no responsibility when you’re a kid, and I admire the freedom from responsibility that kids have. I’m jealous of it … That track was done as an attempt to make people feel younger.”

One For The Boys
Brian had originally titled this (much more subtly) as “There We Were.” “It was meant for The Beach Boys,” he explains. The title, but not a note, was changed in what became his emotional a cappella tribute to his old band.

It’s possible that Brian’s greatest love might be to write, arrange, and sing background vocals, and this track is an example of the relative east with which he can create multipart harmonies.

There’s So Many
Brian Wilson: “A real love song. [It] has more love appeal than anything else on the album. It’s like a dive into a voice sound, into an arrangement. The line ‘The planets are spinning around’ just came into my head. It’s a subtle inference that astrology affects our lives.

“There’s gotta be 15 or 16 voices on there, I really thickened it up, made it real thick and fat … probably the most spiritual part of the whole album. Just had a vibration to it. It was like, ‘Whew,’ I didn’t know where it was coming from. I listened to it, and I felt what!?”

In 1983 Brian cut a demo of this song (along with “Little Children” “The First Time” [aka “You”], and “Black Widow”) at the Lucky Dog studio in Venice. The alternate version on this CD has essentially the same lyric and ending as that ’83 demo. What makes this one of the best-realized recordings on the album is that the final production retains the song’s original spirit, with the key addition of the multipart harmony tag (“The planets are spinning around”). Twice repeated (with a pleasing harmonic change) in a period of 15 seconds, it takes the listener from one end of the solar system to the other, instantly establishing this strong ballad as one of the highlights of the album.

Night Time
Brian Wilson: “One of my favorites on the record … I like the part that drones … I’m a nocturnal person; it’s more peaceful … The process of twilight, dusk turning into total darkness, has always fascinated me. All of my life, I’ve always been a night person, never did like the daytime, which signifies work time.”

Let It Shine
Brian remembers that Jeff Lynne had most of the song written before they met, and that Brian’s main compositional composition was writing the “Let It Shine” vocal round that opens the track. For the a cappella opening section (repeated near the end of the song), Brian stacked excellent harmonies. The cut also features what is perhaps his sweetest lead vocal on the album.

Brian was concerned that the track was too sterile at first, but as he and Lynne worked in the studio, he began to like the song more. Recently Brian noted, “Jeff brought out the goodness in me. And vice versa.” Indeed. A flawless performance.

Meet Me In My Dreams Tonight
“Andy Paley and I wrote that one,” Brian recalls, “It’s a very special tune. It’s about a dream lover, a similar idea to the Bobby Darin song. It’s about a guy and a girl who love each other on a certain level that’s higher than real life. A fantasy song … We wanted to get the sound like ‘Sweet Talkin’ Guy,” that kind of ‘60s feeling in a record in the ‘80s.”

Rio Grande
Then-Warner Bros. Records president Lenny Waronker believed a key to the artistic success of this album would be for Brian to show he could still produce work similar to that of his “Good Vibrations”/Smile era, when he was at an innovative peak, inventing a kind of modular recording. At one point in 1987, a suite linking the as-yet-unreleased “Saturday Morning In The City” and “Saturday Evening In The City” was talked about but “Rio Grande” became Brian’s remarkable musical response to Lenny’s challenge.

Brian Wilson (in 1988): “A labor of love, probably the best thing on the whole album … it’s a song that expresses the need to be … Lenny wanted me to get a little bit into that kind of Smile bag, and I did. It wasn’t directly influenced by Smile, just the vibes, the basic feeling of it … At first, it was uncomfortable for me – real hard to do at first – but Lenny figured there was one left in me, that there was a suite, a rock opera that I could do. It looks like Lenny was right.”

Back in ’88 Brian admitted that his favorite part of the track was the “take me home” section. In explaining the feeling that inspired that piece, Brian offered that the character in the song “has so many obstacles that he just wants to go home. He wants to run away from all that stuff and go back to his home, wherever that might be, [like] in the sky. That’s symbolism, right? God cannot be conceived of, so therefore we give him a literal meaning that he’s in the sky, so that people can understand what is being said.”

(Note: To get a sense of how modular recording works, listen to the bonus tracks of the early “Rio Grande” and “Night Bloomin’ Jasmine.” You’ll hear how Brian resurrected the hook [he never wastes a good one] and made it work in “Rio Grande.”)