Finding genius in the process: remembering Brian Wilson
The passing of Brian Wilson, the visionary force behind The Beach Boys marks the end of an era for music. Wilson was not only a member of one of the most legendary rock & roll bands. He wasn't just a genius musician, songwriter, and performer. He was an architect of sound, a pioneer in the recording studio, and an artist whose relentless pursuit of the music he heard in his head fundamentally reshaped the way we think about creativity.
As someone who constantly tries (and often fails) to turn the ideas I have in my head into reality, I find Wilson to be a true inspiration. For as many triumphs (Pet Sounds) as Brian Wilson achieved in his career, he also had failures. Yet even the failures had hints and shimmers of true genius (Smile).
AI-generated image
As I reflect on Wilson's death, part of me wonders if the era of AI that we're entering into now signals the end of that form of creativity. If everyone soon has the ability to create anything that's inside their head, how will we know what's truly unique, special, and groundbreaking? Does it even matter?
Yes, and here's why: as we explore what really made Wilson so special, we see that it was his process, and his willingness to experiment, try new techniques, and make use of the unexpected that truly made him one of the greats.
The studio was his laboratory
Brian Wilson in the studio (photo in public domain)
Wilson's genius wasn't just in having good ideas. It was in his radical approach to making them real. By the mid-1960s, he began to view the recording studio not as a place to simply document performances, but as an instrument itself.
Think about that for a minute. While his contemporaries were still focused on capturing their "live sound," Wilson was asking a fundamentally different question: What if we could build something that could never exist on stage?
He became a pioneer of what would later be called "modular recording" -- creating musical fragments that could be edited, duplicated, and reassembled in various configurations. "Good Vibrations" became the proof of concept, famously pieced together from dozens of hours of tape recorded across multiple studios over several months. This wasn't just technical innovation; it was a completely new way of thinking about musical construction.
Creative constraints and happy accidents
Wilson's process turned limitations into creative fuel. His partial deafness in his right ear - allegedly from childhood abuse - might seem like a handicap for a musician. Instead, it led him to prefer monophonic mixing, ensuring his carefully crafted soundscapes would be heard exactly as he intended, with complete artistic control over the listener's experience.
His instrumentation choices revealed the same principle. Wilson didn't use bicycle bells and Coca-Cola cans as gimmicks - he chose them for their specific timbral qualities. A detuned piano on "Wild Honey" created exactly the mellow texture he was hearing in his head. Accordions replaced rhythm guitars on "Wouldn't It Be Nice" because that's what the song needed, not because it was conventional.
The electro-theremin on "Good Vibrations" perfectly captures this approach. This wasn't a traditional theremin - it was a custom instrument that was easier to play with precision. Wilson didn't just grab whatever was available; he actively sought out tools that could realize his specific vision, even if they didn't exist yet.
Learning from "failure": The Smile Sessions
The collapse of the original Smile project in 1967 might seem like Wilson's greatest failure, but it shows us the most important part of his creative process: his willingness to push beyond what was commercially or practically viable to serve his artistic vision.
Collaborating with lyricist Van Dyke Parks, Wilson conceived Smile as a whimsical, sprawling song cycle that aimed to be a journey through America's history and psyche. The ambition was staggering, the methods unprecedented. The recording process was becoming increasingly experimental and abstract - Wilson famously had a sandbox installed in his home studio and wore a fire helmet while recording fire-themed sections to evoke the right mood.
Mike Love found Parks' lyrics weird and worried about commercial appeal. The band was struggling to perform these complex arrangements live. Wilson's mental health was deteriorating under the pressure of his own ambitions.
It never really panned out - yet. Smile's influence became immense, in time. Its fragmented release through bootlegs and later Beach Boys albums allowed its radical concepts to be absorbed gradually by other musicians. The album's status as "the great lost masterpiece" amplified rather than diminished its impact.
This teaches us something vital about creative process - sometimes the attempt is more important than the completion. Wilson's willingness to push beyond what was commercially or practically viable in service of his artistic vision created a "permission structure" for future artists, showing them what was possible even when it wasn't immediately achievable.
Why the process matters more
We're entering an era where the technical barriers to creation are disappearing rapidly. Soon, anyone might be able to generate professional-quality music, images, or writing from a simple prompt. That's staggering and amazing, but also terrifying.
Looking at it through the lens of Brian Wilson's legacy suggests that this misses the point.
Wilson's genius wasn't in his access to great tools - case in point: The Wrecking Crew - an elite collection of Los Angeles-based session musicians (I highly recommend the 2008 documentary of the same name). They were highly sought after and available to many other music producers. And yet Wilson used them to achieve more. The electro-theremin existed and was available to others. And yet Wilson used it to take "Good Vibrations" to another place. Four-track recording equipment wasn't unique to him - we could go on and on.
What made Wilson special was his process. That process included his willingness to experiment relentlessly, his ability to hear potential in unexpected combinations, his courage to abandon commercial formulas in pursuit of artistic vision, and perhaps most importantly, his persistence in the face of both internal and external resistance.
When Wilson decided to layer bicycle bells with French horns and bass harmonicas, he wasn't just combining available sounds - he was following an internal logic that prioritized his emotional truth over conventional wisdom. When he spent months building "Good Vibrations" from modular fragments, he wasn't only showing off technical prowess (though it was there). He was refusing to settle for anything less than the exact sound he heard in his head.
The human element
Creativity isn't just about having tools to realize your vision - it's about developing the vision itself through a deeply human process of struggle, experimentation, and growth.
Wilson's partial deafness, his troubled relationship with his father, his escalating mental health struggles _(which have been discussed in great detail elsewhere so I won't dive too deeply into it here)_, his competition with The Beatles - these weren't obstacles to overcome. They were integral parts of what shaped his unique artistic perspective. His willingness to risk commercial failure for artistic growth, his ability to find collaborators who could challenge and expand his ideas, his courage to be vulnerable in his songwriting - these qualities emerged from lived human experience.
Pet Sounds moved beyond The Beach Boys' surf imagery to explore themes of self-awareness, social alienation, and emotional vulnerability because Wilson was grappling with these issues personally. The album's sophisticated harmonic structures and unconventional chords were Wilson's attempt to capture complex emotional states that simpler chord progressions couldn't express.
Brian, 1990, photographed by Ithaka Darin Pappas (used under Creative Commons license)
Taking creative risks and "failing forward"
As AI gets to where it can generate convincing imitations of almost any creative style, Brian Wilson becomes more relevant, not less.
The psychological dimension of creativity remains entirely outside AI's capability. Current AI systems can analyze patterns in millions of songs and generate convincing imitations of various styles. But they cannot experience depression, longing, or the desperate need to be understood that drove Wilson to create "Pet Sounds." They cannot feel the weight of artistic ambition or the fear of commercial failure that shaped the Smile sessions.
The question isn't whether we'll be able to create what we imagine. The question is whether we'll have the courage to imagine something truly new that uses the tools we have at our disposal.
Wilson's legacy isn't just in the specific sounds he created, but in the permission structure he established for future artists. He proved that popular music could be both commercially viable and artistically ambitious, and that audiences would accept radical experimentation when it served the song and the storytelling.
Optimism for the future of creativity
Going forward, I think that the creators who matter — whether they're musicians, or visual artists, or writers, or digital creators — won't be those with the best prompts or the most sophisticated tools. They'll be the ones with Wilson's willingness to push beyond the safe and conventional — to risk failure in pursuit of something authentic, and to trust their inner vision even when the world doesn't immediately understand it. Some of them — many of them — will use AI to get there — not as a creative replacement, but as a creative enablement.
Brian Wilson didn't just make great music. He showed us what it looks like to refuse to settle for anything less than the sound in your head, no matter how impossible it might seem. In an age of infinite creative possibilities, that lesson has never been more important.
Talent is one thing. Brian Wilson had so much of that. But I think the genius was always in the process — the courage to experiment, the persistence to iterate, and the wisdom to know when you've captured something true. Those qualities remain uniquely, irreplaceably human.