Page 29 - the NOISE December 2012

“a hero is a goddam stupid thing to have in the first place and a general block to anything you
might wanta accomplish on your own.” — lester Bangs
ened engineer scooted his chair away from him. Murry’s face grew red as a stop sign. He was barely able to say a thing and when he did, flecks of spittle punctuated his words.
“F ... FFF ... FFF*CK ME? F*CK ME? YOU DARE SPEAK TO YOUR FATHER THAT WAY? WHY, YOU UNGRATEFUL LITLE SH*T! I MADE YOU, BOY! WITHOUT ME YOU ARE NOTHING! AND YOU SAY F*CK ME? F*CK ME? OH NO, BRIAN! F*CK YOU! FU ...”
The word was choked off. Murry sat frozen and openmouthed, his face now ghostly white. Beads of sweat formed on his brow. His right arm began twitching. A high whistling sound escaped his throat. The engineer leaned to- ward him.
“Mr. Wilson?”
Murry’s body shuddered and pitched for-
ward onto the console and down to the floor. Brian tore off his headphones and ran into the booth, the correct amount of concern in his voice.
“DAD!”
Brian fell on the ground and cradled Murry’s
head in his arms. He looked up at the engineer. “IT’S HIS HEART! CALL AN AMBULANCE!”
The engineer ran out of the room. Brian sat and watched the last glimmer of light go out in his father’s eyes. With his palm, Brian closed the eyelids. His mind and conscience assured him that sooner or later Murry would have done himself in this way. Now it was all over and Brian felt no remorse.
“Goodbye, Murry.”
THE FUTUrE
Murry was buried a few days later, next to his parents. The sight of the five handsome strong young Beach Boys at the funeral, Brian with his arm around his mother, struck a deep sympathetic chord in the hearts of all. It sig- nified a rite of passage, the interment of one who gave you life. The Beach Boys were men.
Brian, now the patriarch of the Wilson family, held a band meeting the next day.
“We’re going to finish Smile. For Murry.” None of them argued.
Smile came out in May 1967, on the cusp
of the Summer Of Love. It was a huge success. To say it revolutionized popular music was an understatement. In comparison, the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (released the following month) seemed quaint, old-
fashioned. The Fab Four knew they had been bested, and it inspired them to even greater heights. The friendly competition between the two groups went on for years until Paul Mc- Cartney’s private plane disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean in 1981. The Beatles carried on without him until they were old, old men.
The Beach Boys became the most popular band in the world, a shining example of what the youth of America could achieve. Brian was widely hailed as a genius, the modern day George Gershwin. Everybody loved Smile: men and women, young and old, black and white, straight and freak. It united Americans like nothing else before.
The Beach Boys toured the globe, augment- ed by members of the Wrecking Crew (to bet- ter recreate Smile’s multi-layered sound). They were the first band to play rock and roll in am- phitheatres usually reserved for classical and opera. Brian still disliked the road, but he did make sporadic appearances with the band live. As the years went by, these became more and more frequent. Mike Love left the Beach Boys in 1972 over “creative differences,” though he remained close to his cousins on a personal level. Out of respect, the group phased out most of the older songs that featured his vo- cals.
Woodstock happened, Altamont didn’t.
In 1968, Dennis Wilson befriended an odd little man with a wild look in his eyes and a strange bunch of followers. Dennis helped him get a record contract, and Charles Man- son And Family put out several albums of their twisted folk music. “Garbage Dump” was a sur- prise hit single in early 1969. With the royalties, the Manson Family bought an isolated piece of property in Northern California where they lived quietly for many years, shunning public- ity.
Robert Kennedy was elected president of the United States in November 1968 by a land- slide. The Beach Boys played his inaugural ball. Richard Nixon retired from politics to write spy novels. In his first term, Kennedy ended the Vietnam War and brought every troop home by Christmas 1970. After his reelection in 1972, Kennedy shocked the world by exposing the conspiracy that murdered his brother John in
1963. He named names and heads rolled in Washington,Dallas,andelsewhere.LeeHarvey Oswald was revealed to be a patsy of the C.I.A. and his name was cleared. “It’s time America
the beach boys 50, Official Tour Program
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