The death of Brian Wilson has come at an uncanny moment. Aligning with a time in California’s history that is inarguably among its most fraught. And there’s no denying a certain eerie poeticism to the idea that the death of Wilson has coincided with the continued death of the California myth. The idea of California as an oasis, a Promised Land, a place where nothing bad could possibly ever happen. And, more importantly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to an ever-increasing capitalistic society, a place where you could “get rich quick.” This stemming from the modern lore created after the Gold Rush. A phenomenon that effectively put California on the map figuratively instead of just literally for the rest of the United States (in fact, the Gold Rush is what prompted California to gain its statehood). Something that cemented the idea that America itself has been coasting on for centuries to lure in immigrants (the very ones they’re now working so diligently to eject) and “outsiders”: that anyone, no matter their background or where they came from, could strike it rich…or at least settle for being middle class. The potential for “upward mobility,” as it is called, was never more solidified than it was by California and this indelible period in its history. A history that would shape it in its modern form for the next century.
Indeed, apart from the Gold Rush and the creation of Hollywood as the hub of the movie industry as the most significant historical instances that contributed to the California myth, it can be argued that Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys were the next big thing to immortalize California’s status as a place of dreams. More than that, a place where dreams could actually come true. Even if it was the modest dream of, as Lana Del Rey would say, getting high by the beach. And it all kicked off in 1962, with the release of the Beach Boys’ first album, Surfin’ Safari. But, of course, it wasn’t until the following year, with their second album, Surfin’ U.S.A., that the Beach Boys truly crystallized this new era of an idyllic, Promised Land California in the hearts and minds of listeners across the nation…and the world. The title track would of course become one of their signature hits, locking them into (much to Brian’s eventual dismay) the “surfer music” genre they (or at least Brian) struggled to break free from for the rest of their career.
But, as the Brian of Love & Mercy told his bandmates while recording Pet Sounds, “The old stuff is old! I can’t go back in time! We’re not surfers, we never have been and real surfers don’t dig our music anyway. I can’t write about the summer and fun and summer and fun and cars! I got different stuff inside me.” Stuff that he famously let out on 1966’s Pet Sounds, marking their eleventh—that’s right, eleventh—album to come out in a period of four years. Thus, to say that Wilson’s artistic progress was growing at an exponential rate while the other Beach Boys remained (and wanted to remain) stagnant would be a vast understatement.
His desire to change, to alter their sound and lyrical content into something “realer” and more mature arrived during a part of the decade when everyone had leaned into less froth and more seriousness. More rebellion and, most importantly, a reexamination of all the old values that had supposedly been holding everything in place—at least as far as the conservative, suit-wearing types were concerned. But, as Joan Didion repurposing W. B. Yeats declared, “The center will not hold.” And was not holding (still isn’t holding). Of all the Beach Boys, Brian seemed the most willing to process that. To understand how incongruous continuing down the path of their “tried-and-true” formula would be in a climate where a song like Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” was topping the charts (not to mention The Beatles shifting to their psychedelic sound).
Fittingly for the goings-on in L.A. right now, “For What It’s Worth” was inspired by the Sunset Strip curfew riots, a conflict between so-called hippies and law enforcement in 1966. It was an early harbinger of the rising tensions that would reach a crescendo by the end of the decade. A decade that marked, incidentally, the last time that a U.S. president did not bother getting approval from a state governor to send in the National Guard. Except that, in Lyndon Johnson’s case, the bypassing maneuver was done from a place of actually defending the marginalized rather than attempting to further oust them from U.S. society (he summoned “the troops” to help protect Black Americans trying to vote, in addition to exercising their right to protest). In the present scenario, Donald Trump is the George Wallace (the governor of Alabama in 1965, when this event occurred). That is, in terms of political views. For, despite being part of the Democratic Party, Wallace’s staunch populist and segregationist policies make him fully in line with Trump’s politics. Which, one supposes, makes California governor Gavin Newsom the LBJ. Someone who can see when human rights are being violated for the sake of furthering a political agenda.
And Trump’s agenda, at present, is to destabilize California at one of its epicenters: Los Angeles. Trying to paint those protesting the sweeping ICE raids throughout the city as a “danger,” “threat,” “menace to society,” etc., L.A. is being used as a pawn in Trump’s game of further damaging California. Not just in reality, but also in terms of what it has represented for so long (because if you damage the symbol, you can damage the tangible place). A representation that Wilson assisted in nurturing and fortifying with lyrics like, “The West Coast has the sunshine/And the girls all get so tanned” and “I’ve been all around this great big world/And I seen all kind of girls/Yeah, but I couldn’t wait to get back in the States/Back to the cutest girls in the world/I wish they all could be California girls.”
A sentiment that the current führer does not share, for it has long been well-known that he has a personal vendetta against both Newsom and California, constantly trying to make an example out of the latter. Citing it as a failed state because of its “too liberal” policies. Though, unfortunately, the Golden State (its nickname, too, being part of its mythos) is veering ever closer to outright conservatism, with multiple counties that were formerly blue turning red in the last election. And if it should turn more red than blue in the coming years thanks to the propagandism currently being spun with this calling in of the National Guard and the Marines, the U.S. truly will hang itself and its precious American Dream. For how can it continue to be sold with a straight face once California falls to authoritarian rule? California, the erstwhile epitome of freedom and liberalism?
As a talisman for that “everything’s groovy” aura, Wilson dying about a week shy of his eighty-third birthday while protests and government vs. the people conflicts escalate in a way not seen since the 1960s heyday of the Beach Boys is nothing if not unsettlingly on the nose. A cruel irony signifying that the California that it was once so easy for the Beach Boys to talk up as a paradise filled with sun, surfing, cool, clear water and palm trees cannot be resurrected. Instead, like Wilson himself in the 70s and 80s, needing to be in a proverbial straightjacket, its affairs managed by someone else who “knows better” and can “get it back into shape.” But anyone who really knows California is aware that trying to tame, unify or otherwise muzzle it in any way rarely works with any amount of success or longevity.
As for Los Angeles, the place that’s currently at the epicenter of the culture war in America, it has already suffered greatly this year, which is barely halfway in. Kicking off with devastating fires that felled Pacific Palisades and Altadena, the city continues to be relentlessly shit on by outsider perspectives that seem determined to depict it as a land in ruins. As though willing this reality into existence like a goddamn “manifesting” mantra. Complete with an article like, “Hollywood Has Left L.A.” (from New York Magazine, of course) feeding the narrative that the town is a “lost cause” and should essentially be razed so Trump and co. can remake it into whatever they want to (conveniently in time for the 2028 Olympics). Maybe even into Los Angeles Island à la Escape From L.A., where anyone who engages in behavior the president doesn’t like is sent. But no matter how dystopian it could get, there’s no doubt that the Beach Boys will still be played over the loudspeaker of the prison (a.k.a. internment camp). A touch of ironic flair to remind people that the state did once embody a dream…before it was politicized into a nightmare.
