By Brian Wilson claimed he wasn’t made for these times, but we all know the reality: He was just built different. Brian Wilson was a demigod. Brian was Icarus; although instead of staring too long at the sun, he was forced to behold the scarred socket of his father Murry’s missing eye. I suppose, in some roundabout and mythical way, this also makes him Thor. Brian pierced the veil of the American psyche and was left forever changed.
I live and work around the same several blocks in Hollywood that Brian recorded most of his indelible and well-renowned hits, singles, and albums: the current and former locations of Western, Gold Star, United, Capitol, Columbia, and other studios where Brian turned the sounds in his head into the gorgeous and legendary records we all know and love. I feel deeply rooted and connected to the vibes of the area—I’m constantly pickin’ up the good vibrations, if you will—so I feel particularly tapped into whatever wavelength Brian was on. I walk past Gower Gulch and I can’t help but think of the Western kitsch comedy magnum-opus-that-wasn’t that is “Heroes and Villains.”
The original single version of “Heroes and Villains”—released in July 1967 after Brian consulted his astrologer to ensure the timing was perfect for public consumption—is about as far removed from the spitshined Chuck Berry riffs the Beach Boys initially traded in, expanding on PET SOUNDS’ baroque arrangements with even more jarring tonal and movement shifts inspired by classical music. Ultimately, this more *cough* sophisticated pop arrangement is offset by an extremely muddy mix, which ultimately makes the track feel stitched together or even undercooked, reverting hi-fi aspirations to lo-fi precedent. It stiffed at the time; Jimi Hendrix mocked the Boys, calling them a “psychedelic barbershop quartet” (no shit, Sherlock.)
Bolstered by the success of “Good Vibrations” in October of 1966, Brian envisioned “Heroes and Villains” as the true successor to PET SOUNDS. It was a song, then a single, that morphed into a full album project, SMILE, that had a stop-start gestation period brought on by a seeming combination of ambition, insecurity, megalomania, panic, and pure, unbridled creativity. I don’t think Brian ever really finished “Heroes and Villains.” A year after PET SOUNDS’ teenage symphonies to God had poisoned the well of contemporary pop music, Brian was left struggling to not only surpass himself—attempting a record more expansive, greater, and bolder than everything he had already accomplished—but to make a record about everything. We have entire albums worth of session recordings from the tumultuous, months-long recording process for “Heroes and Villains,” but no matter the permutations or fan remixes there remains something off: Brian’s frequencies were tuned maybe just a little too high to be fully realized. Obviously, Mike Love fucking hated it. Brian was not ahead of his time with this record, nor was he necessarily behind it—and he is almost certainly not a futurist. Brian shared Disneyland’s wide-eyed vision of a sunny, turn-of-the-century Americana in his envisioning of the founding of California, but crucially, Brian and his co-lyricist and songwriter Van Dyke Parks were attempting to assuage their white guilt and center part of the song’s narrative on the plight of the indigenous and Spanish population of California. And after PET SOUNDS, Brian learned he could use the studio like an instrument and essentially become an auteur artist/producer: the first of his kind. Brian Wilson was an Alpha.
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I woke up on June 11th overwhelmed from a week of my city being invaded by imperialist jackboot thugs, still having a nagging feeling that something else was just a little bit off. When I discovered that Brian Wilson had passed shortly before 10 AM, I was almost relieved. A second sun had entered the sky. We might as well live on Tatooine now.
In their psychedelic enlightenment, Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks—two brilliant but broken kids at heart—attempted to pose a very adult question: looking inward, asking, “Are we the baddies?,” trying to identify who the real heroes and villains are. The band was never the same again. Brian transcended the metaphysical spacetime continuum and summoned the SINNERS magic to have created a masterpiece more resonant and perhaps more relevant in 2025 than it was when it was first created and released in 1967.
I discovered “Heroes and Villains” when I was 14—as the centerpiece of BRIAN WILSON’S SMILE—the 2004 re-recording-cum-re-imagining of the fabled album. At that point, Brian Wilson was basically an older Sufjan Stevens to me. “Heroes and Villains” makes so much more sense with decades of hindsight—its “Great boom boom” backbeat setting a template and essential marching orders for several burgeoning outsider, bohemian, or baroque pop artists who followed Brian—everyone from John Cale’s solo work to Judee Sill to Danny Elfman to Daniel Johnston to Jon Brion to Fiona Apple to, fuck it, I’ll say it Kanye too. “Heroes and Villains” makes perfect sense in the context of Wes Anderson’s FANTASTIC MR. FOX—the oscillating melodies and chaotic carnival arrangement perfectly suited for soundtracking a claymation caper.
I got to see Brian and every surviving member of the Beach Boys perform “Heroes and Villains” on their 50th anniversary tour at Bonnaroo. I got high for the first time that day, so maybe that set an extremely bad precedent considering how much of a stoner I am now. Despite Mike Love being one of the absolute most loathsome people in all of existence—a literal American litch if I have ever seen one—it was an incredible, special set. I was definitely peaking, but Brian seemed absolutely terrified to be onstage with Mike Love every waking moment. Thankfully, there’s a nice “only in LA” post-script. A little over a decade ago, when LOVE & MERCY came out, I chanced upon a random public screening at the Cinerama Dome with a post-movie Q&A with Brian and Paul Dano. I jumped at the opportunity to watch my hero’s biopic with him in the same room, and delightfully, Brian was in an animated mood and buzzing with excitement over Dano’s warm and loving portrayal.
Brian Wilson, and in tandem, the story of the Beach Boys themselves, is much like the Pacific Ocean he loved and sang about throughout his catalogue, perfect for surf and sun in the beginning, but also more aimless, treacherous, murky, and filled with a dark and gloom the further you wade out or deep. Thankfully, Brian seemed to have been pulled back to shore for his twilight years: satiated in his legacy, even creating some occasionally brilliant material again, and ultimately having served his purpose. His favorite songs were “Be My Baby” and “Shortenin’ Bread.” He will be missed.
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