![]() ![]() But Brian’s obsessive tendencies dovetailed with his worsening mental health (spurred by the lingering trauma of an abusive upbringing), resulting in the abandonment of Pet Sounds’ would-be grandiose follow-up, Smile (which was strip-mined for 1967’s loopy psych-pop pastiche Smiley Smile). Brian’s auterist vision-and his increasingly poignant songcraft-achieved peak clarity with 1966’s chamber-pop masterpiece Pet Sounds, the album that inspired The Beatles to venture into Pepperland and heralded rock’s elevation into high art. ![]() suburb of Hawthorne in 1961, brothers Brian, Carl, and Dennis Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and high-school pal Al Jardine defined the sunny California fantasy forevermore with wave-riding soundtracks like “Surfin’ U.S.A.” As the surf fad dried up, Brian expanded his primary-songwriter role to become the band’s all-knowing creative director and, on mid-’60s delights like “California Girls,” he refashioned The Beach Boys into the male equivalent of the girl groups ensconced within Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound. But over the next half-century, they’d come to symbolize its divided soul, and the psychic tug-of-war between flag-waving optimism and darker truths. ![]() In their early-’60s inception, The Beach Boys were nothing less than the sound of America. ![]()
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