One thing that almost all Beach Boys fans can agree on is that Murry Wilson (the dad) was kind of a jackass. His jealousy of his sons' (probably mostly Brian's) talent was always kind of apparent and he was a real tough and cranky old dude. It is even said that he hit Brian when he was young and that helped lead to him being deaf in one ear. And then he kinda took and pulled, OK, stole, the lucrative Sea of Tunes publishing rights out from under The Boys and sold it off, losing everyone involved tons and tons of eventual profits. But he sure must have done something right somewhere, for he raised three incredibly talented and sensitive sons. The youngest of them was little Carl.
Carl Dean Wilson was born on December 21, 1946 in Hawthorne, California. Ahh, to be a kid in California in the 1950's... it must have been nice. When the Wilson boys started getting their little band together, Carl was the guitarist, and, somehow, he seemed to pick it up quite easily. I read somewhere that he was the youngest guitar hero of the 1960's. Keep in mind that when they recorded "Surfin", Carl was only 14. When The Beach Boys were at the height of their early popularity in 1963-64 or so, Carl was about 16 or 17. To put that into perspective, when I was 16 I was working at KFC and making $4.35 an hour, and the closest thing I had to worldwide exposure and Number One records was, umm, nothing. Scary... Carl picked up on Chuck Berry-style guitar phrasings made them a signature sound of several of the early surf singles. If you want a good demonstration of what kind of a guitarist he was at this time, listen to the live recordings (tracks 20 & 22, especially) on the Sessions disc on the box set and pay attention to when he rips it on the solos.
It took them until Shut Down, Vol. 2 to give Carl his first lead vocal on "Pom Pom Play Girl". Why it took so long (stage fright? puberty?) is beyond me, because Carl was blessed with a tremendous voice, one of the finest this reviewer has heard. At times it has a certain purity and grace to it, almost like a choir boy. At other times, he could be gruff and full of soul, as in "You Need A Mess of Help to Stand Alone". And how he could reach those really high notes for "Columnated ruins domino..." on "Surf's Up" is really beyond me. Pretty tremendous. Naturally, his voice became more and more prominent as years went by.
In the early 70's he started to stretch his wings and compose a few numbers as well, and among these are some true gems, such as "Long Promised Road", "Feel Flows", and his masterpiece, "The Trader". He also took over much of the production duties and, in my opinion, did an awesome job on several albums, namely Holland. Somehow, he still had enough creative energy to release two solo albums, 1981's Carl Wilson and 1983's Youngblood.
On February 6, 1998, Carl lost his battle with cancer and we lost an awesome talent and, as those who knew him say, an awesome person. Even though I never got close to meeting him, it makes me really sad to know that he passed on at such an early age. There should have been many more years of happiness and beautiful music. All I have to do is listen to one of his songs or look at an image of him smiling and playing his guitar to see what joyful person he must have been. I am actually kind of sad now just writing this.
