Everyday People Brian Wilson and Sly Stone were musical innovators.That's where their stories diverged.

THE VAST MAJoRITY of humans alive now aren't old enough to feel the shell shock from the musical paradigm shifts of the 1960s.

- Craig Jenkins

We were born in a world that always had the music of the Beatles and Nina Simone and Jimi Hendrix. Yet the deaths of Sly Stone and Brian Wilson at 82 feel espe-cially cataclysmic. The parallels between the two artists are in some ways uncanny; hailed as songwriting giants well before they turned 30, Stone and Wilson broke musical boundaries with Stand!, There's a Riot Goin’On, Pet Sounds, and Smile and faced initial critical resistance when they released their most innovative work. They both struggled to balance their aspirations and fans’ expectations, falling out of favor the further inward their critical lenses peered. But it’s in the disparate fortunes in the latter part of their careers—after breakdowns and reclusive periods—where the stories part in ways that illuminate the different stakes for Black and white geniuses of the time. Wilson got a grace period and was making great music well into the 2010s; Stone tried but never entirely rebounded.

The Beach Boys and the Family Stone represent divergent visions of America that came into acrid conflict over the course of the ’60s. Both bands presented as kin. The suburban SoCal Wilsons—brothers Brian, Dennis, and Carl—were encouraged to write and sing by their father, Murry, who sidelined his own musical ambitions when the children arrived but nudged them into the industry instead. Their early songs spoke to and of the America of Beach Blanket Bingo and neighborhood singing groups; Hendrix famously quipped that they sounded like a “psychedelic barbershop quartet.”