No self-respecting Brian Wilson 2009 tour blog would be complete without at least a brief bio. Mine started brief, but quickly took on a life of its own, such is my love of this era and especially Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. Wilson is smiling again this year, as the world waits to be delighted with his sound. It’s hard to believe that he’s bounced back from the various afflictions – both real and imaginary – that held him back for so long, but he has. The Brian Wilson Greatest Hits Live tour is going to happen. No-one who loves the sound of the surf should miss this one, because you never know when it will be the last.

Psychedelic pop, surf rock, California rock, call it what you want. It’s the music that shaped a decade – nay, two decades, nay three, nay four! – and Brian Wilson wasn’t just one of its stars, he was one of its innovators. The Brian Wilson story, like many important evolutions, composes a series of bifurcations, forks in the road people took which led to one place or another. Wilson always took the road less traveled and his legacy is his music – and the Brian Wilson tickets you will buy to see him perform live. Wilson brings us the sounds of the deep. He sings to us of a fabulous place that existed beyond his mind and his body; that was place was real. It was called Southern California. Back in the 60s California meant more than Hollywood and endless tracts of suburban homes. It meant enlightenment. It meant revolution and exploration.

Mind-expanding music and surfing seemed made for each other, somehow; the one being the soundtrack, the other its physical manifestation. The two were separated by an organic mirror, which was the psychedelic experience itself. Northern and Southern California represented a two-pronged option for hip young kids back in the 60s. Where hippies preferred to laze in the gingerbread hillocks of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, surfers headed out to the ragged palms and balmy winds of Pacific beaches and rocky promontories.  Wild places, where a bonfire and a crowd of scantily-clad youngsters could return to a primeval state. There, they enacted an athletic play in which they threw themselves upon nature, to challenge it and sometimes to ask for its mercy. Above all they wanted to ride it, like young fish possessed of the euphoria that only youth and freedom and psychedelia can produce. But Psychedelia didn’t solely belong to California.

Psychedelia might never have happened without the Texan psych sound that began pulsing from cities like Austin in the early to mid-60s, but it wasn’t until those pulsations hit the west coast that full-scale media involvement and hippies in mass migration occurred. Texas bands like the 13th Floor Elevators, the Golden Dawn and The Moving Sidewalks were among those to explode into America’s consciousness with electrifying performances of tunes like the Elevators’  “You’re Gonna Miss Me” (below).

Brian Wilson, meanwhile, was blissing out in a world of his own. Instead of the baking Texan mars-scapes where those pioneers crafted some of the earliest psychedelia, Wilson was submerged in a “blue world” – the world of surf, fast cars, and girls: Los Angeles. LA’s surf beaches and turquoise waves have become synonymous with everything about the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson. This was around 1961, years before the Texans found their nirvana. Wilson formed a band called The Pendletones and wrote “Surfer Girl”. The song was to hit the top ten 2 years later. The Brian Wilson tickets rush experienced its first nudge towards actualization. None of Wilson’s talent sprung up overnight; like all great things, it had been a lifetime in the making. There had been some volcanic, primeval years, beginning around 1944 (when Wilson was just two!) during which Wilson’s parents had been astonished to witness their son perform incredible feats of creative/musical memory and mimicry. His father and future manager Murry remarked, “He was very clever and quick. I just fell in love with him.” Small wonder then, that by the dawn of the psychedelic era, Wilson was already streets ahead of the rest.

Just as they would one day pioneer a skateboard craze, Angelenos went silly over surfing, and they needed a musical voice to speak for them. The marine sport was gaining huge popularity, thanks to the west coast’s wonderful waves. While hippies flocked to San Francisco a few years later, surfers migrated to beaches in places like Santa Cruz, San Diego and Los Angeles, eager to ride their boards, meet girls and race along the Pacific Coast Highway in convertible automobiles. It was an idyllic time, and Wilson was smack in the heart of it. This combination of talent and timeliness sent Wilson into the spotlight, and his band – now called the Beach Boys at the insistence of their record label – became the musical figurehead for one of America’s coolest youth movements.

Studio experimentation soon overtook old-fashioned flat recording, and Wilson grasped the concept avidly. When he began producing intoxicating surf singles like “Little Deuce Coupe”, “Fun, Fun, Fun” and “I Get Around”, it was suddenly obvious that not only was a new talent on the loose, but a whole new genre. The concept of young girls who raced along LA’s boulevards and winding coastal roads until their daddies took their T-Birds away appealed immensely to boys and girls alike. Wilson’s ability to uplift and enlighten America via what was going down out west was symptomatic of an exceptional talent. Unfortunately, Wilson’s sensitivity led to a nervous breakdown in early 1965. This was a portent of the tumult and brilliance that often afflicts the truly gifted. Wilson recovered, but rejected touring in favor of pushing the envelope in the recording studio. His masterpiece, “Good Vibrations” justified this. The song gleams and splashes like a majestic whitecap over an undulating mass of adoring recipients.

There’s a lot more to Brian Wilson than “Good Vibrations” though. His competitive relationship with the Beatles led to a tit-for-tat artistic war that resulted in him producing some of the best rock music ever. His “Pet Sounds” and the later “Smiley Smile” contained tracks that still sound fresh and futuristic, as if recorded by the most forward-thinking of today’s young musicians.