2023-07-22 18:30:11
Brian Wilson, of the Beach Boys, during the recording of the album “Pet Sounds” in 1966, in Los Angeles (United States). MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES
ARTE.TV – ON DEMAND – DOCUMENTARY
Initially a symbol of recklessness, the Californian pop of the Beach Boys was enriched, over the 1960s, by a creativity and a spleen nourished by the prodigious talent as much as by the shadowy part of their leader, Brian Wilson.
Directed by Christophe Conte, journalist at Release and former pillar of Unbreakable which, after documentaries devoted to the Who (2022), the Kinks (2020) or David Bowie (2015), continues its fine deciphering of the history of rock, Brian Wilson. The Beach Boys’ impeded genius sets out to describe the rise and fall of this Icarus of seaside melodies, burned by his obsessions and the musical intensity of the sixties.
As part of a summer theme of Arte, “Summer of Brothers & Sisters”, this fifty-five minutes recalls to what extent the music of the “beach boys” was first that of siblings. Both the result of a vocal complicity worked since childhood and an alchemy adding up the tastes of the eldest Wilson, Brian (born in 1942), for Gershwin and vocal jazz, those of the youngest, Carl (1946-1998), for the rock’n’roll of Chuck Berry and the handsome Dennis (1944-1983) for surfing. Supplemented by the contribution of a cousin, Mike Love, and a neighbor, Al Jardine, this harmonic know-how and these ingredients will quickly triumph at the top of the charts american by revealing the leadership of the oldest of the brothers.
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Single universe
True sound architect of the group, Brian Wilson gets caught up in the game of pop competition, to the point of giving up touring to devote himself only to production. Journalists, musicians of yesterday and today decipher a unique universe, radiating illuminations like childhood wounds. Testimonials and archives – including recent interviews with Brian Wilson – thus bring to life the inventive frenzy of the recording of the album Pet Soundsluxuriant masterpiece of 1966. Then the experimental apotheosis of the tube Good Vibrations.
Before seeing the genius tip over into the psychedelic abyss of a project, Smile, undermined by LSD, obsessive dizziness and the anxiety of not being up to the Beatles, great rivals of the time. As much as psychotropic drugs, renunciation and depression will leave indelible scars in the psyche of a musician whose former wife, Marilyn Wilson-Rutherford, recounts here the ordeal with great sensitivity.
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We witness the disintegration of the group, the last bursts of inspiration (Surf’s Up et ’To You Die, in 1971), before a spatiotemporal leap (a little brutal) recalling that the years 1990 and 2000 were the scene of a rebirth of the battered maestro. In particular through concerts accompanied by a virtuoso group, the Wondermints. Because if Brian Wilson wrote his greatest songs by fleeing the stage for the benefit of the recording studio, it is paradoxically by playing live his creations of reclusive genius that the former Beach Boy revived his career.
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