"Their leader Brian Wilson was apparently, miraculously, match fit after years of addiction and mental health struggles. BRIAN IS BACK! ran the advertising slogan for 15 Big Ones, the first Beach Boys album to bear his name as sole producer since Pet Sounds, and the first to be made at their newly founded Brother Studios. Buoyed by a media campaign that included an hour-long TV special, it duly became their most successful album of new material in 11 years."
"But, as ever with the Beach Boys, it was more complicated than it initially seemed. As a succession of features noted, Wilson didn't seem to be terribly well at all. A Rolling Stone writer dispatched to meet him was startled when Wilson asked him for drugs midway through the interview, and expressed grave doubts about Eugene Landy, the controversial psychologist supposedly responsible for Wilson's recuperation."
The 73-track box set captures the Beach Boys during a peculiar late-1970s moment of commercial revival. Timely compilations like Endless Summer and 20 Golden Greats reignited sales, and 15 Big Ones, promoted with the slogan 'BRIAN IS BACK!' and recorded at newly founded Brother Studios, became their most successful album of new material in over a decade. Reported appearances showed Brian Wilson seeming recovered, yet contemporaneous accounts documented troubling behavior, drug requests, and doubts about psychologist Eugene Landy. Live performances found Wilson distressed and musically absent. Sessions for 15 Big Ones were rushed, full of cover versions, internal disagreements, and public and band disenchantment.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]