Sometimes there are strange symmetries in death, as in life. The twin passings of Sly Stone and Brian Wilson this week brought that into sharp relief.
Both were musical geniuses who paid a high price for their gifts. They burned bright, with art they created at their peaks that became more moving and meaningful with time, only to see their creative lights extinguished suddenly through mental health and addiction issues. Both were 82 when they died — Stone on Monday and Wilson on Wednesday.
“It’s such an unsettling coincidence,” said Anthony DeCurtis, contributing editor at Rolling Stone. “These two figures, they were very different and massively influential, and each ran into a wall of their own problems in many ways. As much as they achieved, it’s hard not to think that they could have done more.”
With his late brothers Carl and Dennis, Beach Boys co-founder Wilson was the architect of the California sound that captured surfing and sun, beaches and girls. Yet for all the “Fun, Fun, Fun,” there was something much deeper and darker in Brian’s abilities as a composer.
It was more than disposable music for teen-agers. He had an unparalleled melodic sense, hearing sounds in his mind that others couldn’t. He could worm his way into your head and then break your heart with songs like “In My Room” and “God Only Knows.” The tour de force “Good Vibrations” —- had anyone ever heard of the theremin before he employed its unearthly wail? — is a symphony both complex and easily accessible.
“He was our American Mozart,” musician Sean Ono Lennon wrote on social media.
The 1966 album “Pet Sounds” was a peak. Wilson felt a keen sense of competition with the Beatles. But they had three writers, including Sean’s dad, John Lennon. Wilson was largely alone, and he heard impatience and doubt from other Beach Boys, whose music he provided.
He felt the pressure in trying to follow up “Pet Sounds,” and “Smile” became music’s most famous unfinished album. Wilson, a damaged soul to begin with because of an abusive father, never reached the heights again. He descended into a well-chronicled period of darkness.
Stone’s skills came in creating a musical world that others only dreamed of at the time. The Family Stone was an integrated world — Black and white, men and women — and the music they created was a potent mixture of rock, soul and funk. It made you move, it made you think.
For a period of time from 1967 to 1973, their music was inescapable — “Dance to the Music,” “Everybody is a Star,” “Higher,” “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” “Sing a s Simple Song,” “Family Affair,” “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).” Their performance at Woodstock was a milestone.
“His songs weren’t just about fighting injustice, they were about transforming the self to transform the world,” musician and documentarian Questlove, who lovingly tended to Stone’s legacy, wrote this week. “He dared to be simple in the most complex ways — using childlike joy, wordless cries and nursery rhyme cadences to express adult truths. His work looked straight at the brightest and darkest parts of life and demanded we do the same.”
From his peak, the fall was hard. Years of drug abuse took its toll. Periodic comeback attempts deepened a sense of bewilderment and pity.
Music is littered with stories of sudden, untimely and early deaths. Yet until this week, both men lived on, somewhat improbably passing average life expectancies.
Wilson, by many measures, achieved some level of peace late in life. He had a happy marriage. He was able to see how his music was revered and appreciated and spent several years performing it again with a younger band that clearly worshiped him. It was a postscript not many knew, said journalist Jason Fine, who befriended Wilson and made the 2021 documentary, “Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road.”
“That sort of simple message he really wanted to give people through his music going back to the ‘60s — a sense of warmth, a sense that it’s going to be OK in the same way that music lifted him up from his darkness, he’d try to do for other people,” Fine told The Associated Press in an interview then. “I think now, more than earlier in his career, he accepts that he does that and that’s a great comfort to him.”
Stone emerged to write an autobiography in 2023. But less is known about his later years, whether he found peace or died without the full knowledge of what his music meant to others.
“Yes, Sly battled addiction,” Questlove wrote. “Yes, he disappeared from the spotlight. But he lived long enough to outlast many of his disciples, to feel the ripples of his genius return through hip-hop samples, documentaries and his memoir. Still, none of that replaces the raw beauty of his original work.”
Did Sly Stone and Brian Wilson live lives of tragedy or triumph? It’s hard to say now. One suspects it will become easier with the passage of time, when only the work remains. That sometimes brings clarity.
“Millions of people had their lives changed by their music,” DeCurtis said. “Not just enjoyed it, but had their lives transformed. That’s quite an accomplishment.”
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David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.
