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Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys:
Brian learned to sing the really high registers that the four Freshman used in their vocal arrangements. Carl, the youngest of the three sons, played guitar well and also had a fantastic voice. Dennis, the middle son, also had a great voice. Dennis learned to play the drums. Then older cousin Mike Love, who used to sing with the Wilsons, became the lead singer with his “everyman” voice. Al Jardine, a neighbor who also had a good voice and played guitar at a young age, also joined the group.
So generally all songs would be based on the vocal harmonies and could stand alone as A Capella arrangements. The instrumental music garnished the vocals. Dennis Wilson was the only Beach Boy who actually surfed. He raced cars and boated. Writing songs about the beach life, surfing, racing cars, hanging out around town, and chasing beach girls became the theme of most Beach Boys songs.
Mixing vocals comparable to an angelic choir with cutting edge R&B instrumentals and vary earthy lyrics were the combined force of the Beach Boys. This was the winning combination that brought them to almost instant stardom and would carry them on a wave of fame lasting the rest of their lives. It didn’t hurt to have a Dad in the record business. This probably sped things up, but they would have gotten there anyways, based on all their talent.
Listen to this incredible harmonizing. Puts the Four Freshman to shame, in my opinion.
When they first started playing, Brian Wilson was 19, Dennis Wilson was 16, Carl Wilson was 13 and still in High School, Al Jardine was 19 and Mike Love was 20. Brian, Mike and Al had played together in High School and had been in some talent shows. Surfing and Surfing Safari were their first 2 hits. I Get Around was the first of 4 number one hits. So there were three brothers, a cousin, and a guy down the street, who were mostly harmonizing, with very little instrumentation, singing songs about surfing racing and girls. Now, look at what Wikipedia says about the Beach Boys:
“The Beach Boys are regarded as the most iconic American band and one of the most critically acclaimed, commercially successful, and widely influential bands of all time, while All Music stated that their “unerring ability… made them America’s first, best rock band.”
“The group had over eighty songs chart worldwide, thirty-six of them US Top 40 hits (the most by an American rock band), four reaching number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.”
“The Beach Boys have sold in excess of 100 million records worldwide, making them one of the world’s best-selling bands of all time and are listed at number 12 on Rolling Stone magazine’s 2004 list of the “100 Greatest Artists of All Time.”” – Wikipedia
It is believed they actually sold
more than 300 million records.
How is this possible? Some say it is from everyday Zen.
Yet at the age of 24, studio musicians who had worked on the best pieces and for the best producers for decades were amazed at Brian’s musical and composing talents.
After Brian Wilson completed the Pet Sounds Album, he was severely disappointed that it didn’t sell as well as he hoped it would. Brian went into a deep depression and was very upset.
After Pet Sounds, the Beach Boys were #1 in the UK, even beating out the Beatles on their own home turf.
What Brian didn’t know was that the greatest composers, musicians and producers in the music business and in the world, including Paul McCartney, were listening to this album and saying it was the best thing they had ever heard. Paul McCartney even said that “God Only Knows” was the most beautiful love song ever. Good Vibrations was thought to be one of the best songs ever written and produced. Beach Boy Al Jardine said that Good Vibrations was before its time then and might even be before its time today. Pet Sounds today is considered to be one of the greatest albums of all time.
The iconic rendition of Good Vibrations
This kind of communion with the eternal cannot be assisted by drugs without some very adverse effects that go along with it. But if you have faith that this connection is there inside you, and has always been, you can find it if you still the mind and create room for it to materialize, to surface and grow, you can find the eternal in ordinary life. “Ordinary life fits the absolute like a box and its lid” – they say in the Zen world. They also say – “Cultivate the Empty Field”.
A more recent Beach Boys performance
This kind of magic and power really is inside all of us, we just need to know how to access it. Zen Meditation is a way to access it. Cousin Mike Love of the Beach Boys and also, Al Jardine are long time students of TM (Transcendental Meditation). Like the Beatles, who went to India to learn from the Maharishi, the Beach Boys also made that journey. But you don’t have to go to India to find peace of mind and a stillness that allows creativity to happen, you can find it right where you sit.
You don’t reach creative powers by trying to reach creative powers, however. You reach it by reaching that stillness, That stillness that creativity grows from and passes through – and it all starts by quietly sitting and breathing in and out,
in and out.
This video of Brian Wilson doing Good Vibrations is really worth listening to
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