Inside the Music of Brian Wilson: The Songs, Sounds and Influences of the Beach Boys' Founding Genius

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 404 pages
• Published by: Continuum International Publishing Group March 25, 2007
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0826418775
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0826418777
• Book Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Weighs: 1.2 pounds

Book Description
Tracing a line from Brian Wilson's very first musical loves (George Gershwin and the Four Freshmen) through to the Smile and Pet Sounds tours of recent years, Philip Lambert's astonishingly comprehensive book details over 50 years in the musical life of one of America's foremost pop composers. Lambert acknowledges the familiar biographical contexts behind many of Wilson's songs, but sheds new light on the birth and evolution of his musical ideas. A huge number of songs are discussed, including the famous ("Help Me Rhonda," "Good Vibrations," "God Only Knows") and the less well known ("Farmer's Daughter," "Boys Will Be Boys" and more). The end result is a remarkable story of musical growth and ambition, sure to appeal to devoted Beach Boys fans. The book also includes a unique Brian Wilson Song Chronology, listing every musical endeavour to which Brian is known to have made a musical contribution. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About The Author
PHILIP LAMBERT teaches courses in music theory, 20th century music, and music history at Baruch College and the CUNY Graduate Center. He has also taught at Yale University and the Eastman School of Music. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Reader Reviews
The idea of getting inside Brian Wilson's music was intriguing to me, so I bought this book and ultimately realized I'd already gotten there. I've long known the inner experience of Brian's magic, depth and spirit, but never did find it in Lambert's text. If you appreciate the brilliance of the Beach Boys, you already know it from your own experience of the songs. The musical analysis here is just too cerebral. And it isn't a question of not knowing the language or understanding the concepts. I do have a background in theory, so it wasn't a matter of being able to follow him, but rather the desire to. Throughout the book, structure is always the focal point when Lambert tries to "explain" Brian's songs. Color - i.e., the amazing world of Brian's brilliant and groundbreaking arrangements - is seldom if ever addressed, other than references to the structure of vocal arrangements. The author does a lot of comparing, song to song, pointing out, for example, how many tunes of a particular period have similarly descending bass-lines, and how melodic and chordal patterns show themselves consistently over Brian's career. All true, but somehow ultimately unimportant - to me, anyway. I got much more out of the passages that looked at the tie-in between Brian's emotional life and his music - his discussion of 'Til I Die, for example. Furthermore, I believe that Brian's patterns - chords, melodies and bass lines - share a commonality not because of the composer's desire to create thematic consistency, but simply because he liked those sounds and kept getting drawn back to them. You can hear that all through other composers' work - Mozart, for instance - in little melodic and chordal figures that express themselves repeatedly. After all, writers write to please themselves; they keep what sounds good to them and discard what doesn't. But ultimately, I never got much information that addresses why I love Brian Wilson's music. Most of the biographical material is insightful, well-written and very interesting, although a lot of it isn't appearing here for the first time, which the author acknowledges. But at the end of the day, I enjoyed Lambert much more as a biographer than as a musical analyst. Comment | | (Report this)