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9 min readDec 18, 2022

God Only Knows

The Spiritual Nature of Brian Wilson’s Life and Music

by David Leaf

My new book, just published by Omnibus Press, is titled God Only Knows: The Story of Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys and the California Myth.

The title for the book wasn’t chosen by accident.

Besides being what many, including Sir Paul McCartney, regard as Brian’s most beautiful song, God Only Knows is a true description of Brian Wilson’s life story.

Regardless of how much time I’ve spent with Brian during the past forty-five years, regardless of how many hours I’ve spent speaking with those closest to him, there remains an inexplicable…dare I say unknowable…aspect to his life as these eighty years have unfolded.

Can one fully explain the impact of the music that Brian Wilson created? How did he become a composer, arranger and producer who is regarded by many as the greatest of his time, based on music he recorded in a few short years before he turned 25? How did this young man make music that changed the world?

The first edition of my book, titled The Beach Boys & The California Myth, was published in 1978; I think of it as my “Old Testament” about Brian.

I barely knew him when I wrote that book, so I relied on the testimony of those who knew him best — who had born witness to his life and what he had done. I describe that edition, like the Bible, as being filled with various books: “The Book of Audree Wilson,” his mother. “The Book of Rich Sloan,” one of his best high school friends. There’s “The Book of Bruce Johnston,” a long-time member of the Beach Boys. There are many “books” within the book, featuring the stories of his creative collaborators, his friends. And there is “The Book of David Anderle,” the man who worked hardest to help Brian bring to life a piece of music Brian referred to in 1966 as “a teenage symphony to God.” It was called SMiLE.

There were many witnesses who I relied upon to tell his story. In trying to make sense of it all, to comprehend the often incomprehensible “Life of Brian,” the well-known facts weren’t in dispute then. Nor nowadays, when one can go to Wikipedia and read all about the statistics of his and the Beach Boys’ successes, the trials and tribulations he’s survived.

In my listening, in my research, in my writing, I was trying to understand who he was. What had transpired in his youth that inspired this young man to write the song God Only Knows when he was only 23 years old… to compose, arrange and produce Pet Sounds, his now-legendary emotional autobiography, considered by many to be the greatest album of the rock era?

The Wilson family wasn’t especially observant or churchgoing, but Brian and his brothers did go to Sunday school. His beautiful boy soprano voice stood out, and he not only sang in the church choir but was the soloist on “We Three Kings Of Orient Are” at the Inglewood Covenant Church Christmas service. You can hear him soar on that timeless classic on The Beach Boys Christmas Album (and on the playlist below).

Music was omnipresent in the Wilson home. There were regular singalongs with his parents, which baby brother Carl participated in, reluctantly at first. Brian loved listening to records, especially to the Four Freshmen and Rosemary Clooney and to R&B radio with cousin Mike Love and Carl too.

At Christmas time, they went caroling (perhaps singing such spiritual standards as “O Holy Night” which is on Brian’s 2005 Christmas album), and as his mother Audree laughingly recalled, “Brian always had his solos.” At nine years old, Brian performed a song written by cousin Mike that his father rewrote and named By His Side: When Jesus Calls His Soldiers. So in his family, there was a bedrock of faith.

Beyond that, there was a melancholy, a sorrow, a genuine sadness that Brian has carried with him for all his eighty years. When asked, Brian recalls the first music he heard was George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. At two years old. He has frequently said that piece became a life theme for him.

What did he hear in that music? Why did he connect with it? Perhaps it was because in a home where his father was abusive, music became his escape. His comfort. His solace. The place where he sought and found refuge.

And in return, he wrote music to honor the source of the music. As he once said about “God Only Knows,” “It’s a love song, but not a love song to a person.”

Many of his greatest songs are about searching, wondering. There is a holy quality to the music. Ignore the lyrics. Brian’s ballads are musical prayers.

Besides the obvious hits, there is the Beach Boys version of “The Lord’s Prayer,” Brian’s own composition “Our Prayer” and others. There are so many songs filled with longing for peace, for the surcease of pain.

Those of us who connected with it on a level beyond popular music did so because of the depth of feeling expressed in the melodies, the harmonies, the singing. That emotion and sensitivity comes through on so many compositions, in so many of his vocals. On “You Still Believe In Me,” when he sings, “I wanna cry” and takes the word “cry” through a cascading kaleidoscope of notes you experience the divine beauty of his anguish.

In his compositions, Brian found relief. Release. In his lyrics, as in ’Til I Die, he sings, “These things I’ll be until I die.” He accepts his fate as preordained. His burden. His destiny.

During the recording of the most acclaimed Beach Boys album, his beloved Pet Sounds, Brian and his brothers conducted prayer sessions. Since 1999, on tour, before every concert, Brian and his band gathered in a prayer circle.

Spoiler alert…the last line of my book is ”Brian believes that ‘Music is God’s voice.’ And that may be all we need to know.”

What made him believe he was a channel? His late brothers, Dennis and Carl, had to believe it too because they were there as the music poured out of him. When Brian would play them his new compositions, they listened almost in disbelief, they heard the holy chords that came through his fingers onto the piano. Brian has spoken about his hands moving as if they were being guided from above.

On “Add Some Music To Your Day,” a classic 1970 Beach Boys recording, listen as Brian sings, “Music is in my soul.”

There is a truly spiritual, otherworldly sensibility to the best Beach Boys music. Again, put the lyrics aside for a minute.

From the very beginning, there was a feeling in the melodies and harmonies that always have had a church-like quality. The joy and longing of Surfer Girl, the loneliness of In My Room, the ineffable sadness of The Warmth of The Sun written in the wake of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

It’s all there in the music. The melodies he composed. The harmonies he arranged for the group to sing. His falsetto soaring above it all.

Why did I connect with it? It touched something deep inside me. Something I felt and needed. It still does. And that was long before I knew anything about his influences and inspirations. I was stunned when Brian revealed that the creator he feels most like isn’t one of his contemporaries. Rather, Brian feels his music is divine and relates most to Bach, who wrote sacred music. Imagine one day if you walked into church and one of Brian’s compositions was played, at the church organ, without the lyrics. You might think those melodies were indeed composed by Bach.

I can go on and on. Brian once wanted to name an album Brian Loves You. As he said at the time to the reporter, “You know, like Jesus loves you.” The first song on that album is a rocking prayer with the chorus lyric, “God, please, Let Us Go On This Way.”

Brian talks about “covering the listener with love under the guise of a record.” The same way prayer can offer comfort.

For decades, Brian’s concerts ended with a song of his called Love and Mercy. As the lyric says, “Love and Mercy is what you need tonight.” And the last line, “Love and Mercy tonight.” He sings to us. He sings to himself. He sings to the heavens.

I don’t say this to be blasphemous, but music is my religion. The place where my faith has been most rewarded.

My new book is my tithing, my labor of love. The place where I return my love to and for Brian.

In 2022, I hope it is felt throughout God Only Knows: The Story of Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys & the California Myth, my “New Testament” of Brian, the story of my journey with him.

I’ve now been friends with Brian for nearly a half century. I have been blessed to devote myself to spreading “The Gospel of Brian,” to help him heal, just as his music helped me and so many others to heal.

There is now an almost inexplicable aspect to my story too. How did I become his friend, trusted to be the primary chronicler of this great artist? Well, looking back at the way events unfolded, one could say it was something of a miracle. Or that I was just following a divinely inspired path.

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Listen to lesser known songs like This Whole World or Let It Shine. On There’s So Many, how does one describe the short section where a dozen Brian Wilsons sing, “The planets are spinning around.” Only word I can think of is angelic.

Brian once told me, “Maybe love and spirituality are about the same. How can you really differentiate love and spirituality?” For Brian, there isn’t a difference.

At a benefit concert in 2005, Brian performed a new song, “Walking Down The Path of Life.”

Walking Down The Path of Life

I feel his presence day and night.

Touch Me. Heal Me.

Wash my sins away.

Every night, I will pray.

I’ll be good, every day.

Give me hope.

Hope and pray.

Walking Down The Path of Life

I feel his presence day and night.

In Don Was’ important Brian Wilson documentary, I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times, Brian is asked about a song. He said, “Every once in a while, your soul comes out to play.”

It sure does.

In 2012, the Beach Boys 50th anniversary album featured the title song “That’s Why God Made The Radio.” Brian’s idea.

When I wrote the liner notes for the first CD issue of Pet Sounds, I put this quote from Brian before my essay. “During the production of Pet Sounds, I dreamt I had a halo over my head. This might have meant that the angels were watching over Pet Sounds.” They sure were. In 1997’s The Pet Sounds Sessions box set, he elaborated. “Now that I think of it, a halo is what I have over my head. God was with us the whole time we were doing this record. God was right there with me. I could see it — I could feel that feeling in my head. In my brain.”

My faith in Brian Wilson, first ignited in 1971, remains as strong as ever, the special place where I can show pure devotion because what he has given me…and millions of my fellow devotees…is a musical world where we can worship whenever we need to. In harmony. That is quite a gift.

In 1966, Brian Wilson said, “One day, I will write songs that people will pray to.” And so he did.

(David Leaf is a Peabody Award winning writer and filmmaker who is the author of God Only Knows: The Story of Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys & the California Myth. His website is www.leafprod.com You can order the book https://amzn.to/3zNkbbp)

1. The Lord’s Prayer The Lord’s Prayer (Mono)

2. Our Prayer Our Prayer (Remastered 2001)

3. God Only Knows God Only Knows (Mono / 1997 Remastered)

4. We Three Kings We Three Kings Of Orient Are (Mono Version)

5. O Holy Night O Holy Night

6. You Still Believe In Me The Beach Boys [Pet Sounds] -You Still Believe In Me (Stereo Remaster)

7. Add Some Music To Your Day Add Some Music To Your Day (Remastered 2009)

8. Surfer Girl Surfer Girl (Mono)

9. In My Room In My Room (Stereo)

10. The Warmth of the Sun The Warmth Of The Sun (Remastered)

11. Let Us Go On This Way Let Us Go On This Way (Remastered 2000)

12. This Whole World The Beach Boys — This Whole World