Brian Wilson, Love, and My Need for Mercy
Long ago, my first love, Pammy, entered into that room inside me that the music of Brian Wilson had opened.
By Scott Samuelson
One of my big regrets in life, the kind that tortures me at three in the morning, may not seem like a big deal when you first hear about it: I once said that I hated the Beach Boys.
In the wake of Brian Wilson’s death, I want to apologize for that vicious lie—though I’m afraid that my apology comes decades too late to the one person I really wish I could give it to.
The Beach Boys made the music that I first fell in love with. When I was a kid in the early 1980s, my family had only a handful of records and tapes. We rarely listened to music unless it happened to come from the TV. I wanted to try out a new pair of headphones and plugged them into the boombox that my mom and sisters used for their Jane Fonda workout. Because the Beach Boys compilation Endless Summer was lying around, it was what I stuck into the tape deck.
A few drumbeats—suddenly the glorious ahh-ahh-ahh-ahhs of “Don’t Worry Baby”! Enchanted voices and swirling instruments appeared out of nowhere. It was the first time in my life that my mind was blown by music. Brian Wilson had unlocked the door where my soul was. Was I supposed to worry or not? I had no idea, but I was thrilled whenever the chorus cycled around. Immersed in the headphones, I rewound the tune and listened to it over and over.
“Little Deuce Coupe,” “Help Me, Rhonda,” “California Girls”—I came to adore every song on the album. “In My Room” was about just what I was feeling when I was listening to “In My Room.”
At the same time that I was falling in love with the Beach Boys, I started hanging out with a fourth-grade classmate of mine named Pammy. We’d spend all recess talking atop the monkey bars. The other kids began to taunt us about K-I-S-S-I-N-G. We were just nine years old. I had no idea what a romantic relationship would involve beyond chatting all recess. But our classmates weren’t wrong. She entered into that room inside me that the music of Brian Wilson had opened.
One day I peered into her eyes and said, “Have you ever heard any songs by the Beach Boys?” Little dimples formed in her cheeks, “I love the Beach Boys! My favorite album is Endless Summer!” She told me I should also check out the song “Good Vibrations,” which to me was an insider tip about a deep cut. I was in heaven.
That winter, Pammy and I were playing King of the Mountain on a big snow pile that had been ploughed up out of the Ainsworth Elementary parking lot. The temporary king hurled her like a ragdoll into my arms: her puffy pink snowsuit with blue chevrons smooshed deep into my LA Rams coat. Everything freeze-framed. Here was the whole puzzle! After our crash-landing, she paused a moment in my embrace and then popped up and scurried off after the king.
Fast forward eight years. Pammy was a popular girl, dating our school’s star athlete. I’d become so countercultural that I looked down on practically everyone, even the countercultural punks from the nearby city. Sitting on the school bus seat in front of me, Pammy spotted me and lit up, “Hey, do you still listen to the Beach Boys? They’re so great.” I snarled, “I hate the Beach Boys.”
To my confected 17-year-old self, the Beach Boys stood for saccharine capitalist pop music. I was all about John Coltrane and Igor Stravinsky, in a whole other universe from that mindless way-down-in-Kokomo fluff.
But the fact was that I adored the Beach Boys as much as ever. If I caught a song of theirs on the oldies station, I’d blast it and bask in their melodies and harmonies. I just didn’t want to admit how much I loved that music to myself, much less to the popular girl.
Pammy crumpled down in her seat in stung sadness.
I’d turned my back on my first musical love. I’d turned my back on my first romantic love. The music of Brian Wilson and company is far from saccharine or mindless. It’s genius and true to the tones the heart gives off. I’d become the very thing I was trying to run away from, the very thing we should all be running away from: a stupid hollow identity built on animosity and lies rather than on affection and truth. I’d betrayed not only my soul but the soul itself.
But I didn’t begin to process my betrayal for almost a decade.
In my mid-twenties at this point, I was coming back to my grubby apartment from a grad school seminar, and there was a letter from my mom. I opened it to find a clipping of Pammy’s obituary. She was driving, hit a patch of ice, and slid into an oncoming truck. It dawned on me that my cruel remark about the Beach Boys was the last thing I ever said to her.
I began having a recurring dream about her, which I still occasionally have all these years later, where she and I are happily married. Whatever age I am, she is in the dream. It’s as if an alternate reality forked at that fateful moment on the school bus: I took the occasion of her comment about the Beach Boys not to self-aggrandize but to reconnect, and now we’ve realized the promise of what I experienced the one time that she was in my arms. A warm breeze blows through the curtains that her sister sewed for us.
Then I wake up. The first thing that hits me is that we’re not together. The next thing is that she’s dead. Despite having woken from the dream a hundred times before, I’m devastated by this one-two punch. My friend, who suffers from a similar dream about his first love, calls it “Beatrice Syndrome.”
Maybe I’m just trying to catch her that one last time in winter.
Pammy, I’m so sorry. I love the Beach Boys. I’ve always loved the Beach Boys. Sometimes, in a February dream, you and I dig out the boombox and do silly-sweet dances to Endless Summer.
Pammy, I’m afraid. I’m afraid you can’t pick up these vibrations. I’m afraid if you can, you’ll reply, “Who are the Beach Boys?”
Scott Samuelson holds a joint appointment at Iowa State University in Philosophy & Religious Studies and Extension & Outreach. He’s the author of three books: Rome as a Guide to the Good Life, Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering, and The Deepest Human Life—all published by the University of Chicago Press.
TFP IS A PROUD MEMBER OF THE IOWA WRITERS COLLABORATIVE
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Touching. Heart-breaking. Wow. I still love the Beach Boys. Brian Wilson was a gift from God. Maybe more than a little crazy, but he wrote music for our hearts and souls.
Devastating! I was with you from start to finish. Oh, Pammy. Oh, Brian Wilson. RIP. Thank you for sharing this story (and thank you to Michael for the guest post).