On their 1992 debut album Gordon, the easygoing and likable Canadian band Barenaked Ladies made the fourth track a catchy little ditty called “Brian Wilson.” It’s a song about aimlessness and inactivity and the pointless cycle of routine that the musically inclined sometimes find themselves in. The central character of the song wonders if he’s in a “creative drought” as he listens to the Beach Boys’ Smiley Smile and visits his favorite record store. The song includes a reference to Brian Wilson’s notorious therapist Eugene Landy, who for several years more or less took over Wilson’s life.
The song is obviously a heartfelt homage, but it’s also a public act of empathy directed at a man whose fans the world over knew was living in a haunted world of pain and confusion.
Here are a few representative lines from the song:
I had a dream
That I was three hundred pounds
And though I was very heavy
I floated ‘til I couldn’t see the ground
I floated ‘til I couldn’t see the ground
Somebody help me,
I couldn’t see the ground
Somebody help me because I’mLying in bed
Just like Brian Wilson did
Well I am
Lying in bed
Just like Brian Wilson did
On 2000’s Live at the Roxy Theatre, Wilson graciously acknowledged the gesture by playing a brief chunk of the song, specifically the fourth verse and the chorus—the chorus was performed by the backup singers. Wilson replaces the word guitar with piano in the line “Playing my guitar and building castles in the sun and singing ‘Fun, Fun, Fun.’” Here, have a listen:
Intriguingly, the very next song in the Roxy set is “Til I Die,” the final track off of Wilson’s 1995 album I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times. One wonders if Wilson wasn’t pointedly stringing those two song titles together…..
As yet, I have not uncovered any recordings of Yoko Ono covering “Be My Yoko Ono,” which is the fifth track off of Gordon.
For comparison’s sake, here’s the video for the Barenaked Ladies version of “Brian Wilson”:
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Brian Wilson’s Lost Masterpiece Smile: A “New” Old Version
Legendary footage of Brian Wilson performing ‘Surf’s Up,’ 1966