Customer Reviews

Inside the Music of Brian Wilson: The Songs, Sounds and Influences of the Beach Boys' Founding Genius

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The idea of getting inside Brian Wilson's music was intriguing to me, so I bought this book and ultimately realized I'd already gotten there. I've long known the inner experience of Brian's magic, depth and spirit, but never did find it in Lambert's text. If you appreciate the brilliance of the Beach Boys, you already know it from your own experience of the songs. The musical analysis here is just too cerebral. And it isn't a question of not knowing the language or understanding the concepts. I do have a background in theory, so it wasn't a matter of being able to follow him, but rather the desire to. Throughout the book, structure is always the focal point when Lambert tries to "explain" Brian's songs. Color - i.e., the amazing world of Brian's brilliant and groundbreaking arrangements - is seldom if ever addressed, other than references to the structure of vocal arrangements. The author does a lot of comparing, song to song, pointing out, for example, how many tunes of a particular period have similarly descending bass-lines, and how melodic and chordal patterns show themselves consistently over Brian's career. All true, but somehow ultimately unimportant - to me, anyway. I got much more out of the passages that looked at the tie-in between Brian's emotional life and his music - his discussion of 'Til I Die, for example. Furthermore, I believe that Brian's patterns - chords, melodies and bass lines - share a commonality not because of the composer's desire to create thematic consistency, but simply because he liked those sounds and kept getting drawn back to them. You can hear that all through other composers' work - Mozart, for instance - in little melodic and chordal figures that express themselves repeatedly. After all, writers write to please themselves; they keep what sounds good to them and discard what doesn't. But ultimately, I never got much information that addresses why I love Brian Wilson's music. Most of the biographical material is insightful, well-written and very interesting, although a lot of it isn't appearing here for the first time, which the author acknowledges. But at the end of the day, I enjoyed Lambert much more as a biographer than as a musical analyst.

I am not completely ignorant when it comes to music theory, but I found this book to be too technical for me, overall. It is very thorough...if you are a musician with knowledge of music theory, I can't imagine that a more complete treatment Brian's music will be written. But for the average person with only a little knowledge of music theory I think this book would be too much.

Also, this book relies on giving examples from other songs of the late 50's and early sixties, and if you don't know those songs inside and out you won't know what Mr. Lambert is talking about when he writes, for instance, (comparing "Don't Worry Baby" to "Be My Baby"), "Both are verse-chorus forms in E major with an instrumental break after the second chorus, and both feature four exchanges of half-dialogue between lead and backing vocals in their choruses. Even some of the chorus melodic figures are the same: the scalewise movement on 'be my little baby' sung by the Ronettes, for example, uses exactly the same scale tones and in the same order (but in a different rhythm) as Brian's notes on the initial statement of the phrase 'don't worry, baby'." (pg 135)

OK, now, if that rocks your world, if that is what you are looking for, then buy this book. Also, he extensively uses as examples many other, lesser -known Beach Boy's songs and if you don't know them by heart or have the recording you will be lost. As in: "Recalling tonal relations in 'Finder's Keepers' and 'Drag City' with less direct echoes of 'The Rocking Surfer' and 'Boogie Woodie' plus the just-recorded 'Pom-Pom Play Girl', the verse and chorus of "Don't Worry Baby" move back and forth between E and F-sharp throughout the song"

It's like that. So this book would be perfect for music majors, who also have a complete, thorough knowledge of the structure of Four Freshman songs, Doo-Wop songs,late-50's early 60's Rock-n-Roll and just about the entire catalog of Beach Boys songs.

If that's you, then you'd enjoy this book greatly, and would probably rate it as a 4 or 5 star.

I had a harder time with it technically, so for me, it gave me 3 stars- worth of enjoyment.

INSIDE THE MUSIC OF BRIAN WILSON: THE SONGS, SOUNDS, AND INFLUENCES OF THE BEACH BOYS' FOUNDING GENIUS is a pick any Beach Boys fan needs: while Brian Wilson's life has received extensive documentation in other biographies, here the focus is solely on his music, not his life - and what a welcome change that is, for fans of his sound. New stories cover the birth and evolution of Wilson's musical ideas using the history of his songwriting and production to explore his evolution. Rock music collections will find it an invaluable exploration.

In some of the more negative reviews for this book there are comments about how this book is difficult to understand if you aren't studied in music theory....Yet Philip Lambert does an excellent job of describing, in layman's terms, the music. He does talk a lot about chord structure, key changes, etc...some of it I don't understand, but the majority of it is just common sense. So I find the negative comments to be unwarranted for this book.

Also, Lambert doesn't just focus on the instrumental genius of Brian's work, but he also dissects the lyrics and the history behind most of his songs. Yes, there are a few paragraphs in each chapter that are difficult to decipher, but the majority of the book is full of great information about Brian's work. The passages on SMiLE and Pet Sounds are a great yarn - Lambert tells us the story behind each album, as well as the musical genius behind each song.

Lambert obviously knows what he is writing about and he does so in a way that both 'Music Student' and 'Average Joe' can acquire a deeper appreciation for the music of Brian Wilson.

5/5

PS: Philip Lambert was also in the documentary Brian Wilson: Songwriter 1962-1969 where he gave in-depth talks about many Brian Wilson songs. He even played out parts of songs on the piano to help the viewer easily understand the chord structure and key changes in the music. I highly recommend this documentary.

In the early 70s, English music historian Wilfred Mellers wrote an important book on the Beatles' music, Twilight of the Gods, which explained in music theory terms what set their music apart. While the Beatles were unaware of the lofty nomenclature, their instincts led them to create sophisticated music that would even impress music theorists.
For decades, I wished he had written a similar book on Brian Wilson's music, but no one ever suggested it, or he never thought of doing that before his passing a couple of years ago. And perhaps he wasn't interested in their American rival.
This book is as close to filling that gap as we're likely to see. An informed, insightful analysis of Wilson's work, it goes far beyond the reverent fan writings and shows how innovative a writer he was, in the context of his contemporaries, while still grounded in the styles of his time.
For the author to have included every aspect of Brian Wilson's arrangements, production, and other alleged missing ingredients, would have resulted in a book a thousand pages long. Certainly, the spiritual aspect of his music would be either difficult or impossible to describe in such mechanical terms, and that is perhaps something best left to the listener to discover.
It is indeed not light, easy reading; had I personally chosen to become a composer, I would study this book with the accompanying recordings, piece by piece, to fully grasp what is being described, and perhaps a multimedia version of this book would be ground-breaking and revolutionary. It's not for everyone, but the increased understanding of a Brian Wilson song is what learning should be, fun and inspirational.
Despite whatever alleged shortcomings, this is an important work, and I for one am thankful for its existence.

Lambert's book is a treasure trove of inside-musician details for those who like me have stood in awe at Brian Wilson's massive talent and asked, "How'd he do that?"

There are nuggets here for the casual Beach Boy fan or even the rabid BW enthusiast but the real value of "Inside the Music of BW" is Lambert's symphonic treatment of BW's art and achievments.

Those readers concerned with the egghead musician interests in chord progressions, keys, modulations, stylistic borrowings, links to previous and contemporary works, BW's influences, etc... will find much here to engage.

What Lambert doesn't develop as fully as Charles Granata's "Wouldn't it Be Nice" is the trademark BW harmony arranging, the true holy grail of BW discipleship. Brian's marvelous mastery of open harmony and jazz/choral arranging influences are not treated in the kind of full detail one would expect from such an ambitious analysis of BW's works. Perhaps its because those achievments in vocal arranging are heaven-sent and undecodable to mere technical experts.

I encourage anyone interested in the richness and complexity of Beach Boys and BW music to buy this book. Its a great read and and an even better reference book for arrangers and writers. I recommend Granata's book more, but that treats mainly the making of Pet Sounds while Lambert's book is much more comprehensive in its scope.

This book is best suited for those with some background in music theory.