Brian Wilson’s Last Wave

Dylan's dark prophecies, Wilson's luminous hope

Brian Wilson of Beach Boys fame died today. Wilson was a man whose musical alchemy spun sand, surf, and suburban scenes into sonic cathedrals, giving America a vision of harmony in a cacophonous age. I’m drawn to Wilson’s legacy—not just for his staggering artistry but for the wholesome, sunlit hope he sang into being. His songs, usually radiant with optimism, offered a counterpoint to the era’s turmoil, a vision that, in its nostalgic glow, subtly echoed the idyllic aspirations of white post-war America. Let’s crack open Wilson’s oeuvre, hold it up against Bob Dylan’s apocalyptic warnings, and see what it tells us about the America we’ve lost—and might still reclaim.

Born in 1942 in Inglewood, California, Brian Wilson came of age in a nation buzzing with post-war promise, where the Pacific shore shimmered with possibility. Early Beach Boys hits like “Surfin’ USA” and “I Get Around” bottled the fizzy exuberance of youth.

But it was Pet Sounds (1966) that marked Wilson as a musical revolutionary. Pet Sounds proved he wasn’t just a pop tunesmith; he was a visionary who bent sound like a sculptor molds clay. That album, a kaleidoscope of lush harmonies and daring instrumentation—think theremins, banjos, and barking dogs—was no less than a redefinition of pop. Wilson layered vocals like a baroque painter, crafting songs that didn’t just entertain but moved the soul. His aborted Smile project, a mythic “teenage symphony to God,” only deepened the legend, even if its collapse under his own perfectionism broke him for a time.

What strikes me about Wilson isn’t just his brilliance in the studio—though, let’s be clear, the guy could make a harpsichord weep. It’s the vision he unfurled: an America of decency, community, and enduring love. Perhaps it was even homogeneous.

Take “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” the opening salvo of Pet Sounds. Co-written with Tony Asher, its lyrics are a heart-tug for a simpler, saner world:

Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older
Then we wouldn’t have to wait so long
And wouldn’t it be nice to live together
In the kind of world where we belong

This isn’t just puppy love set to a melody. It’s a plea for the kind of life that, if realized, would make the world worth living in. The song’s shimmering chords and cascading harmonies wrap you in their warm embrace, whispering that such a world isn’t a pipe dream. Wilson’s America is a place where lovers make families and have faith in the future—a stark contrast to the cultural rot we’re wading through today.

Now, pivot to Bob Dylan, whose songs dripped with dread and disdain. The Dylan of the 60s saw America as a house of cards, ready to collapse under its own hypocrisy. Look at “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” (1963):

I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’

Dylan’s words are a catalog of surrealistic dystopian lamentations. His America is a bizarre wasteland of incongruity and horror, where innocence is devoured, and the future bleeds out. He wasn’t wrong. But where Dylan points to the abyss, Wilson builds a bridge. Dylan’s “Desolation Row” (1965) sneers at a carnival of lost souls—“The agents and the superhuman crew / Come out and round up everyone / Who knows more than they do”—while Wilson’s “God Only Knows” offers salvation through love:

I may not always love you
But long as there are stars above you
You never need to doubt it
I’ll make you so sure about it

That’s Wilson at his peak: a secular hymn that turns love into a cosmic anchor. The song’s orchestration—strings sighing, vocals floating like angels—lifts you out of the muck and mire. Dylan described the miasmic bog; Wilson saw it and sang of something better.

Don’t get me wrong—Dylan’s poetic genius is undeniable. With unmatched lyrical invention, he lashed out at the lies of the establishment. Wilson, for all his personal demons—his father’s abuse, his psychiatrist’s abuse, his drug abuse—nevertheless kept searching for redemption.

Even in the haunting “Surf’s Up,” a Smile-era gem finished years later, Wilson wrestles with disillusionment but surmounts it:

A diamond necklace played the pawn
Hand in hand some drummed along, oh
To a handsome mannered baton
A blind class aristocracy …

Surf's up, mm-mm, mm-mm, mm-mm
Aboard a tidal wave
Come about hard and join
The young and often spring you gave
I heard the word
Wonderful thing
A children's song

The lyrics, penned with Van Dyke Parks, hint at a ruling class lost without vision, but the melody, soaring and elegiac, points to transcendence. Wilson doesn’t just lament; he dreams of renewal, a trait that sets him apart from Dylan’s relentless fatalism. Brian Wilson’s songs celebrate the sublimity of simple joys—walking on the beach, holding hands under the stars. His nostalgia reminds us of recuperable possibilities.

I can’t help but see Wilson’s death as a mirror to our own moment. Dylan’s warnings have come home to roost; his “hard rain” pelts us without remission. But Wilson’s songs? They’re a lifeline. They remind me of an America that could be—where we recognize our neighbors, where love outlasts the headlines, where we still believe in the possibility of a healthy society. His music isn’t nostalgia for a past that never was; it’s a vague blueprint for a future that still can be.

I met Dylan once, back in my days in Boulder, Colorado, when I was a 20-year-old apprentice to the poet Allen Ginsberg. Dylan’s presence was like staring into a storm cloud—electric, unsettling, unpredictable. I never met Brian Wilson, but his music feels like a friend who always picks up the phone. On the day of his death, I’m not so much grieving the man as I am the idea he stood for: that beauty, love, and harmony can still win out. Dylan gave us the truth of our shadows; Wilson gave us the light to find our way out. Let’s honor him by playing his songs, sharing his vision, and building that world where we belong. Wouldn’t it be nice?