This year The Beach Boys‘ iconic record Pet Sounds turns 50 and fittingly frontman Brian Wilson has announced that he will release a book recounting his career and life, much of which was changed thanks to that record.
I Am Brian Wilson: A Memoir will be released 11th October and while it’s his second autobiography, it’s set to be his most raw and honest.
Wilson released Wouldn’t It Be Nice: My Own Story in 1991, however, he’s since denounced that book as it was heavily influenced by his therapist Eugene Landy and is now out of print.
“My life has been written about over and over again, and that’s mostly okay with me. Other people can talk about my life,” Wilson wrote in an excerpt shared from his new book.
“Sometimes they’ll get it right and sometimes they’ll get it wrong. For me, when I think back across my own life, there are so many things that are painful. Sometimes I don’t like discussing them. Sometimes I don’t even like remembering them. But as I get older, the shape of that pain has changed.”
By the sounds of the excerpt it’s going to be an exceptionally honest recount with Wilson touching on his memories of an abusive father.
“Sometimes memories come back to me when I least expect them,” he writes.
“Maybe that’s the only way it works when you’ve lived the life I’ve lived: starting a band with my brothers that was managed by my father, watching my father become difficult and then impossible, watching myself become difficult and then impossible, watching women I loved come and go, watching children come into the world, watching my brothers get older, watching them pass out of the world.”
There’s also another Beach Boy sharing his life by way of a book this year. Mike Love is planning to release his book Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy this year, however, a specific date has not been set.
At 73, Wilson is still a touring musician. He visited Australia as part of Bluesfest last month, celebrating 50 years of Pet Sounds and continues to tour the record around the world.
Read the full excerpt below (via Pitchfork).
Watch: The Beach Boys – God Only Knows
https://youtu.be/AOMyS78o5YI
“My life has been written about over and over again, and that’s mostly okay with me. Other people can talk about my life. Sometimes they’ll get it right and sometimes they’ll get it wrong. For me, when I think back across my own life, there are so many things that are painful. Sometimes I don’t like discussing them. Sometimes I don’t even like remembering them. But as I get older, the shape of that pain has changed. Sometimes memories come back to me when I least expect them. Maybe that’s the only way it works when you’ve lived the life I’ve lived: starting a band with my brothers that was managed by my father, watching my father become difficult and then impossible, watching myself become difficult and then impossible, watching women I loved come and go, watching children come into the world, watching my brothers get older, watching them pass out of the world. Some of those things shaped me. Others scarred me. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference. When I watched my father fly into a rage and take swings at me and my brothers, was that shaping or scarring? When we watched him grow frustrated with his day job and take solace in music, was that shaping or scarring? Those are all memories but I can’t get to them all at once. I’ve had a whole lifetime to take them in. Now I have a whole book to put them out there.”
