On 23 December 1964, Brian Wilson had a breakdown on a flight from Los Angeles to Houston. The Beach Boys mastermind was with his bandmates on tour when the first obvious manifestation of his debilitating mental health struggles surfaced. The band – brothers Dennis and Carl, cousin Mike Love and childhood friend Al Jardine – hadn’t previously noticed much wrong.
“Not up until that point,” guitarist Jardine tells me over video call from the solarium at his home in Big Sur, California. “[We thought] he was just a very unusual person. He was very creative.” Wilson immediately quit touring. “It was obvious he was not happy being away from home that much,” singer and lyricist Love says separately on the phone from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. “So as sad as it was to see him leave us, we realised it was much better for him. And it turned out better for the group, too.”
It proved to be a seismic event for Wilson, The Beach Boys and the history of pop. At just 22, Wilson retreated into the studio and set about redrawing the boundaries of what was possible within popular music. His 1966 magnum opus Pet Sounds – which turns 60 on Saturday, and is enjoying an anniversary edition, The Pet Sounds Sessions Highlights – transformed The Beach Boys’ trademark sound of 50s rock ’n’ roll surf-rock hits that captured the carefree abandon of Californian youth (“I Get Around,” “Surfin’ USA,” “Fun, Fun, Fun”) into something lavishly symphonic and devastatingly beautiful.
