Brian Wilson Biography

Brian Douglas Wilson (born June 20, 1942, in Hawthorne, California) is an American pop musician, best known as the lead songwriter, bassist, and sometimes lead-singer of the former American rock band The Beach Boys (of which he is also a founding member and the main producer, composer, and arranger). Although changing trends in music sometimes rendered Wilson's earlier work unfashionable, he is now acknowledged as one of the most significant and innovative musicians and composers of 20th century popular music.

Wilson showed an early talent for music and quickly developed into a skilled singer, songwriter, arranger, and musician. He was driven into music at a young age by his sometimes-abusive father, Murry Wilson. He is 96% deaf in his right ear, and yet while Wilson now maintains it originated at birth (when he was a child he was told he leaned to the left to hear), it has been widely reported that it was Wilson's own father who was responsible, causing the deafness in an early beating of the younger Wilson.

Early influences included The Four Freshmen and Chuck Berry, among others. Wilson admired Phil Spector, considering Spector both a mentor and rival. (The two collaborated on one song, which was never completed; the backing track was later used for a public service announcement, featuring The Blossoms. Brian released it in 1964 as "Don't Hurt My Little Sister.")

Wilson was a perfectionist in the studio, and often upset the other members of the Beach Boys with this incessant drive for perfection. Though one of the first users of an eight-channel multitrack tape recorder, he shunned stereophonic sound, preferring (as Spector did) to work in monaural — not because of his partial deafness, but because he believed stereo gave an incomplete "sound picture" if the listener wasn't directly between the speakers.