In a cruel coincidence, this week has brought the deaths of two pop world builders at 82: Sly Stone and Brian Wilson. Both were exemplars of 1960s California, with Sly & the Family Stone representing psychedelic San Francisco as a diverse, utopian commune and Wilson’s Beach Boys (with members of his own family) bringing the world a Southern California teen mythos of sun, surf, girls, cars, dancing and romance.
As producers and songwriters, both were architects of joy. They devised irresistible pop hits that were ingenious, eclectic and full of vital details. Those studio masterpieces were beautiful, indelible artifacts. But the humans behind them led troubled lives.
Wilson had barely reached his 20s when he emerged as the Beach Boys’ songwriter and producer, commandeering not only his band members but seasoned studio musicians to execute his pop innovations; the pros took him seriously. At first Wilson latched onto a sport he didn’t participate in — surfing — as a peg for his increasingly sophisticated musical constructions. But he quickly outgrew the connection — and bade it a cosmic farewell in “Surf’s Up,” with lyrics by Van Dyke Parks, in 1966.
Wilson’s early songs lifted guitar licks from Chuck Berry, but they also reveled in vocal harmonies derived from both doo-wop, with its basic chords and its rhythmic nonsense syllables, and from the Four Freshmen, who sang intricate arrangements with chromatic jazz chords. With “I Get Around,” in 1964, Wilson cut loose with multiple key changes, a cappella sections, sudden instrumental interjections and exultant falsetto wails; it was a No. 1 hit. His innovative side had paid off.
In 1965, Wilson decided to stop touring with the Beach Boys in order to concentrate on songwriting and studio recording — an unconventional but brilliant choice, one he had foreshadowed with a song from 1963, “In My Room.” It’s an introvert’s confession, closely harmonized by Wilson with the Beach Boys, savoring the sanctuary where he can “lock out all my worries and my fears.”
In the studio, with session musicians on call, Wilson tested and honed instrumental tones, arrangement possibilities and song structures. “California Girls,” constructed through dozens of takes, opens with an incongruously slow, unexpectedly descending intro before its cocksure verses. The chorus breezes through tricky chromatic chords, and multitracked ooh-wah vocals keep expanding. It’s a painstaking tour de force that still sounds playful.
Wilson’s ambitions kept growing. His album masterpiece, the 1966 “Pet Sounds,” merged rock instruments with chamber-orchestra arrangements, for songs that echoed and deepened the sense of isolation, fragility and longing he had revealed with “In My Room.” Songs like “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times,” “You Still Believe in Me” and “Caroline, No” were far more complex, musically and emotionally, than the surf tunes from only a few years before. A sense of artistic rivalry with the Beatles, who were evolving just as fast, spurred both bands; when they were making “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the Beatles were determined to outdo “Pet Sounds.”
Wilson labored mightily in the studio to piece together multiple sessions for the 1966 “Good Vibrations,” with its floating, organ-chorded verses, its rising chorus with that Electro-theremin hook, its churchy bridge and its nonsense-syllable outro, all in synergy for a pinnacle of psychedelia.
Sadly, irretrievably, he couldn’t follow it. Drug use, mental illness — he would be diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder — and his own overwhelming expectations led to the collapse of sessions for what was to be his next album, “Smile.” Wilson would eventually emerge from reclusion, make albums with and without the Beach Boys and even tour, revisiting his catalog. He released his own finished reconstruction of “Smile” in 2004 — Brian’s version? — and it was a reminder of lost potential. Old age would eventually silence him. But those brief, incandescent years of pop genius deserve to be legacy enough.
By the time Sylvester Stewart formed Sly & the Family Stone in 1966, he had already been a church singer, an R&B musician, a songwriter, a producer and a disc jockey. He was an expert in how songs work, and he knew rock, pop, soul, psychedelia, funk, gospel and jazz. With the band, he would use them all, often simultaneously.
Sly had top billing in Sly & the Family Stone, and he was the songwriter and producer. But, pointedly, he was not the band’s only lead singer. From the beginning, he chose to share the mic. On the band’s six essential albums, from “A Whole New Thing” in 1967 to “Fresh” in 1973, its members all toss around lead vocals like a beanbag.
Their songs were multilayered marvels, built with a funky counterpoint that demonstrated their communal ideals with every beat, riff and overlapping vocal. Sly constructed songs as ever-evolving conversations, with ideas arriving from all directions; they’re a constant stereo delight.
He composed not only with gospel’s call-and-response, but also with teases, admonitions, interjections, rebuttals, one-liners, back-talk and flirtations. And what always sounded casual — the moans and yowls of the vocals, the slinky wah-wah guitars, the sputters and thumps of the drumming — was complex and disciplined. The music was a project of cooperative coalition-building delivered with a dance-floor kick.
The band’s lineup was its own statement: Black, white, male, female. All everyday people (though with far flashier stage clothes). Everybody was a star.
In their late-1960s glory years, Sly & the Family Stone made sure no one missed their message of diversity as community and community as solidarity. Led by a Black songwriter with Pentecostal church roots, the band preached in songs like “You Can Make It if You Try,” “Everyday People” and “Stand!”
With the realities of race in 1960s America, Sly & the Family Stone called for dignity, enterprise, self-respect and tolerance. “Everyday People” listed skin colors and body types and cheerfully concluded, “Different strokes for different folks.” But the songs also insisted on pleasure, both carnal and spiritual, as liberation. Both are in “I Want to Take You Higher,” the song at the peak of the band’s showstopping set at the 1969 Woodstock festival.
The heights didn’t last. On Sly’s last great album, “There’s a Riot Goin’ On,” the funk turned bleak. The mood reflected bitter disillusionment with the aftermath of civil-rights promises — note the title. But the band’s morale was also sinking, as Sly’s drug and mental problems made him more erratic. The joyful community was fracturing.
Brian Wilson and Sly Stone were both geniuses in their time — there’s absolutely no doubt. The recordings outlive them, ready to challenge and teach later generations. Their personal stories are sadder. The flesh is weak. But art lives on.
Jon Pareles has been The Times’s chief pop music critic since 1988. He studied music, played in rock, jazz and classical groups and was a college-radio disc jockey. He was previously an editor at Rolling Stone and The Village Voice.
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