Volume ! La revue des musiques populaires 10 : 2 | 2014 Composer avec le monde Kirk CURNUTT, Brian Wilson Daniel Harrison Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/volume/4094 DOI: 10.4000/volume.4094 ISSN: 1950-568X Printed version Date of publication: 10 June 2014 Number of pages: 228-233 ISBN: 978-2-913169-35-7 ISSN: 1634-5495 Electronic reference Daniel Harrison, « Kirk CURNUTT, Brian Wilson », Volume ! [Online], 10 : 2 | 2014, Online since 30 June 2014, connection on 10 December 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/volume/4094 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/volume.4094 L'auteur & les Éd. Mélanie Seteun 228 Notes de lecture Kirk Curnutt, Brian Wilson, Icons of Pop Music, Halstead & Lang, Equinox Publishing, 2012. Finally, the Professors Brian’s work, often using terms, snatches of of English have gotten lyric, song titles, and other saved bits of text to Brian Wilson! This is produced by Brian and the Beach Boys, as well great news, since we as their spokesmen, chroniclers, and critics. don’t need any more (Thanks to previous authors and collectors, chronologies, antho- the documentary record of Brian’s professional logies, mythologies, career, at least, is extremely rich.) From his own psychologies, or hagio- training, Curnutt makes us aware of aspects graphies. The main of Brian’s work that invite questions about facts of his biography race, gender, and social positioning. What’s a to date are settled, and white “glee club” doing with Chuck Berry licks? those few in dispute What’s up with Brian’s falsetto? What’s so great are both long-standing and familiar to fans. about California? Further, even more interes- Those interested in Wilson’s music are in need ting questions have emerged in the last twenty of critical, broadly humanistic, and cross-cutting years, as Brian has returned to active status as perspectives that illuminate the “backstage” of a performer (albeit reading lyrics from a screen his biography—his cultural situation, his public and pantomiming at an unplugged keyboard in image, the legends & myths concerning his life concert). Why is there such affection for him? and works. These can only enlighten the analy- Why do we care so much? sis and appreciation of his artistic productions. A good teacher of the Higher Literature can Is it because Brian is a genius? Curnutt provide this milieu, and we are fortunate that addresses this well-known matter straightaway Kirk Curnutt has taken on the job. in the Introduction and unpacks it neatly, pro- viding a long-needed genealogy of this meme. He writes a telling and touching preface of how Derek Taylor, a British publicist who arranged he came to his subject. Having often been quiz- a release party for Pet Sounds attended by zed myself about my interest in the Beach Boys, Lennon and McCartney, among others, is the I register and note all the signs, references, source for the version that has held sway since and indicia of long-term exposure to the music 1966—that is, Brian Wilson has unfathomable catalog, as well as how the developing scholar depths of musical imagination, which elevates handled these. It’s as good an emotional appeal his music into the realms of Art. It is music to ! n° 10-2 to a knowledgeable fan as Aristotle could have be listened to for meaning and nuance. Now it’s desired. true that if Pet Sounds were another Summer Throughout this fascinating book, Curnutt Days (and Summer Nights!!), the claim would be Volume makes important thematic observations about laughable. But Pet Sounds is indeed a musical 229 Brian Wilson, Icons of Pop Music text of unanticipated complexity: Tony Asher’s To be sure, luck and market (cultural) conditions lyrics are subtle and literate; Brian’s music has play their part in pop-music success, but Brian a consistent richness of invention, arrangement, once again timed things perfectly, since Pet and production; and the order of the album’s Sounds was released at a moment when adults songs suggest the long arc of a song cycle, not realized that the teenagers were coming into merely a thematic collection. Though one can majority and bringing their music with them. hear beginnings of this sensibility on the B-side The condescension that marked establishment of The Beach Boys Today! (which allows for a discussion of “teenage” music in the early progressive, evolutionary reading of Brian’s 1960s (most famously, as Curnutt reminds us, in compositional career rather than a sudden Tom Wolfe’s portrait of Phil Spector, “The First breakthrough), not all the elements are in place, Tycoon of Teen”) disappeared so quickly that especially the keystone to high art: organic unity. Pet Sounds is really quite an extraordinary Leonard Bernstein—a leading cultural-capita- achievement, and if Derek Taylor needed to find list—was praising “Surf’s Up” on a CBS News some angle and catchphrase to publicize this, special in 1967. (“The [best rock music] is so “genius”—despite all the contestation about exciting and vital, not to say significant, that it the term—is not inapt. claims the attention of every thinking person.”) In these new circumstances, what may have But what about the surf and car songs of the been a publicist’s puffery became a serious cri- preceding years? Curnutt deftly reminds us of tical point. another type of genius that Brian seemed to have until Pet Sounds: the ability to make hit Curnutt follows the “genius” thread through the records. This is the genius of commercial suc- next phases of Brian’s biography, where it acqui- cess, the ability to turn experimental mashups red some telling adjectives. The Smile debacle of Chuck Berry licks, “secret” and localized sub- showed Brian to be a “troubled” genius, while cultural references, and state-of-the-art vocal the sad state of Brian’s life in the mid-1970s sug- arrangement into an ongoing project that esca- gested that he was a “mad” genius. At the cur- ped faddism and trendiness. Further, and most rent point in Brian’s career, his genius is cliché significantly, it was inimitable and therefore and part of his history rather than the present, practically trademarked. Jan and Dean came despite continuing to underwrite the devotion close (with Brian’s help!) to turning the Beach many fans continue to give his releases. But Boys’ “sound” into a general style (e.g., “Little Volume Old Lady from Pasadena”), but their hits only it’s a powerful history, and in the end, Cur- highlighted the fact that the Beach Boys were nutt offers both a penetrating critique and an the leaders and the rest were followers. It’s appreciation of the myth. If his Preface—writ- this sense of genius, the mysterious ability to ten by the longtime, adoring fan—threatened ! n° 10-2 make hit after hit, that allowed Taylor’s version to turn off readers with less investment in Brian to resonate: the story had to be that Brian was Wilson than Curnutt has, his Introduction shows going to take this ability and put it in service of how much that investment can return when the higher art. experienced literary scholar gets to work. 230 Notes de lecture The main body of the book contains three or “Friends,” which reminiscences of favors chapters: on lyrics and related texts; on musi- done and received. (Tellingly, Curnutt points cal expression and materials; and on Brian’s out that Brian himself believes he himself is “peculiar appeal” as a pop icon. Curnutt exa- “gifted,” and that much of his music is meant mines song lyrics as an English professor does, as a thank offering to whatever spiritual force is which is to say that his close readings often responsible.) In sum, this general broadening freshen up overfamiliar lyrics and invite a new of critical attention to Brian’s lyrics is an outs- (re)hearing of songs. Further, he performs tanding contribution of Curnutt’s book, one extremely useful meta-critique of the standard which I began to realize clearly in his brilliant line about Beach Boys’ lyrics. For example, discussion juxtaposing “masterpiece” Smile Pet Sounds and Smile aside (that is, leaving and “embarrassing” The Beach Boys Love You out the lyrical contributions of Tony Asher and together under the rubric of “Adult Child.” Van Dyke Parks), the catalog has been charac- Equally insightful and ear-opening is the final terized as having a few serious, “melancholy” chapter, which explores critical and historical songs dispersed in an emulsion of silly ado- contexts of Brian’s reputation and public image. lescent ephemera—and some of the latter Here, Curnutt picks up themes from the first seem decidedly pre-adolescent, working the part of the book—genius, melancholy, inno- margins of childlike/childish. In this situation, cence, among others—and works out a recep- critics tend to over-focus on the melancholic tion history of them among critics and fans. mode to justify their work, skirting and skim- For a fan as involved as Curnutt obviously has ming over the rest as unserious and not worth been, he achieves remarkable scholarly objec- the effort. A nexus between the melancholic tivity about the issues in play. It’s refreshing, for songs and biography is also commonly under- example, to have the agon between Brian and stood, so that, for example, “In My Room,” Till cousin Mike Love—a foundational myth for the I Die,” and “Caroline No,” describe, respec- failure to complete Smile and for Brian’s with- tively, Brian’s escape from his domineering drawal from the Beach Boys—described with father, Murry, his episodes of depression in the sympathy for Love’s contributions and achie- early 1970s, and disenchantment (according to vements (e.g., being the energetic front man her) with his first wife, Marilyn.