I Am Brian Wilson: The genius behind the Beach Boys - Softcover

Wilson, Brian

3.77

2,765 ratings by Goodreads

9781444781328: I Am Brian Wilson: The genius behind the Beach Boys

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1444781324 ISBN 13: 9781444781328

Publisher: Coronet, 2016

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'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.' Excerpt from I Am Brian Wilson

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About the Author:

Brian Wilson, best known for his work with the Beach Boys, is one of popular music's most revered figures. The main creative force behind some of the most cherished recordings in rock history and one of the most influential composers of the last century, Wilson became a Kennedy Center Honoree in 2007. A father of seven, he lives with his wife in Beverly Hills, California.

Review:

An unflinchingly honest account * Choice Magazine * I Am Brian Wilson is a strange kind of surfing through the Beach Boy's interior life. Wilson dwells on the damage his violent dad did to his childhood without revealing the psychological consequence, except in the voice of a book that, though ghosted, sounds like his own. His genius, like all genius, he suggests is accidental. He was hit around the head by a lead pipe as a kid in a playground fight, and lost his hearing in one ear. After that, he always felt he had to tune in to experience as if trying to find a radio frequency. The Beach Boys' otherworldly sound, and the faltering attempts to locate its source in the deceptively simple sentences of this memoir, appear to be results of that distancing. * The Observer * An accurate insight into the way his mind works * London Evening Standard * Beach Boy Brian Wilson's unflinching new autobiography ... it's quite a ride. * Daily Record * Wilson and The Beach Boys' story has been told many times before and is one we may think we know, but it has never before been voiced with the clarity, honesty and insight on offer here. Surf's up. * Loud and Quiet Magazine * Surprisingly revealing and insightful memoir from the Beach Boys mastermind...Nearly every page opens up new windows into the mind of Brian Wilson. 4* * Mojo * All of it in Wilson's idiosyncratic voice...what a story! * Esquire *

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