Brian Wilson: What He and His Music Mean to Me

I grew up listening to rock 'n' roll, which was half doo-wop, and half Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and Elvis.  As the 1960s began to emerge, the Four Seasons in 1962 and the Beach Boys in 1963 carried on with a modernized, popified doo-wop sound.  The Beatles were closer than just around the next corner.  And that was the milieu in which I formed my first group, The Transits, slightly more old-fashioned than the Four Seasons and the Beach Boys, but covering their best songs.

The Transits sang at the YMHA on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, a stone's throw from Yankee Stadium in early 1964.   "Dawn" and "Rag Doll" by the Four Seasons and "Surfer Girl" by the Beach Boys were at the top of the list of the songs we covered.  As I walked a girl home whom I'd met at the concert, I told her I was tired of being in a group that sang those kinds of songs -- I wanted to be in a group that sounded more like The Beatles.

The Four Seasons would never progress very far beyond their pop doo-wop origins.  But the Beach Boys under Brian Wilson's leadership sure did.  As is well known, The Beatles' Rubber Soul in 1965 inspired the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds in 1966 which in turn inspired The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967.  While The Beatles were recording and releasing Sgt. Pepper, the Beach Boys were doing the same with their Smiley Smile album featuring "Heroes and Villains" (also released as a single).  So the two groups were not only inspiring one another, they in effect were co-creating across the continents, a musical incarnation of Marshall McLuhan's global village, which he prophetically wrote about in The Gutenberg Galaxy back in 1962.

For a variety of reasons, however, "Heroes and Villains" didn't get the immediate acclaim it so eminently deserved.  It has been one of my all-time favorite recordings since the moment I first heard it, though I can't quite recall where that was.  The harmony in that recording -- like the harmony in the Beach Boys' "Sloop John B" adaptation on Pet Sounds -- is in the stratosphere, the ultimate evolution, at least as of now, of multi-dimensional doo-wop.

Brian Wilson did not get the adulation at first hearing that "Heroes and Villains" amply merited.  But I touted it everywhere I could.  My wife Tina and I were thrilled to hear Brian sing it in the Beach Boys reunion tour, at their performance in 2012 in White Plains, NY.  It was a sad night, not only because of course Dennis and Carl Wilson weren't there, but because WFUV disc jockey Pete Fornatale, who had been one of the champions of everything Beach Boys and Beatles on his Mixed Bag shows, had recently unexpectedly passed away.  (Come to think of it, I may have first heard "Heroes and Villains" on Pete's original "Mixed Bag" show on  WFUV back in the 1960s.   Pete, by the way, is the hero of my 2024 novel, It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles.)  But it was wonderful indeed to see and hear Brian in person.

I still think The Beatles are the best rock group to ever have written and recorded myriad forms of rock music.  Over the years, I've switched back and forth between the Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones as to which is the second greatest rock group in history.  But I think I'm content now to leave it with both of them tied for second place, and every other great group vast caverns below them.

Thank you Brian Wilson, rest in peace.  Your "Heroes and Villains" will always be playing somewhere, and you are its hero.

Jersey Boys: Transcending Musical

My wife and I finally got to see Jersey Boys at the August Wilson Theater on Broadway last night, thanks to the tickets daughter Molly gave us as my birthday present.  I say "finally" because The Four Seasons were among my all-time favorite groups.   And a wonderful, one-of-a-kind birthday present it was.

The Four Seasons were a pivotal group in my life - my own group, The Transits, regularly sung "Dawn" and "Rag Doll" in our performances at various spots in the Bronx in the early 1960s, including Poe Park and the corner of Allerton Avenue and White Plains Road under the el.  Their harmony and Franki Valli's falsetto were second to none, and I modeled my own falsetto after his. For a few years, The Four Seasons were right up there with the Beachboys, matching them hit for hit.  But the two groups were soon surpassed by the Beatles, which had easy superiority in lyrics, inventive chord progressions, and even harmony.   And while the Beachboys managed to make their own signal contributions to the psychedelic era, thanks to Brian Wilson, and "Good Vibrations" and "Heroes and Villains," The Four Seasons and Franki Valli veered off into a kind of pop with songs like "Can't Take My Eyes Off You," which sounded more like Andy Williams than the Four Seasons I loved, which is to say, hopelessly old-fashioned to me.   But "Candy Girl," "Dawn," "Rag Doll" (breathtakingly glorious harmonies), "Big Man in Town," "Marlena," "Silence is Golden," and "Tell it to the Rain," and their transcendence of the doo wop genre have never been far from my ears in my brain since then.

Jersey Boys was fabulous, not only because it provided superb renditions of many of these songs, but because it told a story - researched and written by Marshall Brickman - which I hadn't known before.  Frank Valli and two of the other Seasons (Tommy DeVito and Nick Massi) had served a little time in prison - they came from a much grittier culture than their polished harmony suggested.   Each member of the group had a strong personality and set of opinions, which often conflicted.   I'd known that Bob Gaudio was the creative writing genius of the group - and had loved his "Short Shorts" with the Royal Teens when I was kid - but I hadn't known he had to fight so hard at first to get into The Four Seasons.  I would have liked to have seen a little more in Jersey Boys about Bob Crewe's creative input as producer of The Four Seasons - I met Crewe one or two times in the 1960s - but overall the play gave due shrift to all the important players in their success.

And the performances were wonderful - especially of the players of each of The Four Seasons, who spoke and sang powerfully.   Especially noteworthy last night was Russell Fischer, understudy for the Franki Vallie role, who rose to the occasion with a stunning portrayal and a full-voiced and falsetto'd splendid rendition of the songs - it's hard to image that anyone could do better in the singing, dancing, and acting.   Andy Karl as Tommy DeVito, bass-man Matt Bogart (who appears as JFK on "Smash" on NBC) as Nick Massi, and especially Drew Gehling as Bob Gaudi were also superb.

The combination of songs and story - highs and lows, personal and professional - make Jersey Boys a musical masterpiece for the ages.