20/20 VISIONARIES

In the space of two days in June, we lost two giants of popular music, aged 82: Brian Wilson and Sly Stone. Both were leaders of family bands, both deeply troubled, yet both created radically beautiful/brilliant music in the studio. Here, Bob Stanley pays tribute to the adored Beach Boy while on page 84, Kris Needs salutes the genius formally known as Sylvester Stewart.

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Like Sly Stone and George Michael after him, Brian Wilson kicked off his career writing party songs. Unadulterated fun. In Brian’s case it was by transcribing his brother Dennis’ love of going to the beach with a surfboard — if they’d grown up elsewhere the songs could have been about speedway, or fishing. There was no guarantee that this super-localised Californian sound would translate across America, let alone to Britain and Europe.

And at first, it didn’t. Even though it was a No 6 hit in the US, Be True To Your School was so unrelatable to anyone in the UK (what kind of square loved school that much?) that EMI didn’t even bother releasing it. But a year later, I Get Around and its unique production — so full of odd changes, handclaps out of nowhere, and an irresistible joie de vivre — was in the UK Top 10. This single was the first suggestion that writer/producer Brian Wilson might have something going on that was some way beyond surf and car obsessions, and it made sense internationally; on the flipside, to cement this thought, was Don’t Worry Baby, a sensuous and fragile ballad which still managed to include a verse about racing cars.

As an agent of change, Brian Wilson’s singularity came from combining unlikely source material: Four Freshmen harmonies; lyrics that evoked an endless summer; Phil Spector's dense, orchestrated wall of sound; and George Gershwin’s uptown jazz arrangements. He could come up with heart-melting chord changes as easily as most people type, according to Tony Asher, his sometime co-writer.