When Dennis Wilson drowned on 28 December, 1983. He was broke, addicted to heroin, cocaine and alcohol, had been kicked out of the band he co-founded and inspired and was ostracised from his beloved family who had taken the world by storm with their image of Californian sun, surf and fun. The man who, for months, had been having alcohol-induced blackouts, was pulled from the bottom of Marina Del Ray in Southern California by the coast guard forty-five minutes after he disappeared beneath the murky harbour waters. It was a sad and somewhat fitting end for a man who loved the sea.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Dennis' death and the death of the original Beach Boys. While the remaining members bicker about royalties, song-writing credits and form new touring outfits, older brother and chief BB songwriter Brian never fails to mention his younger brothers, Dennis and Carl, in concerts to rapt applause the world over. Dennis Wilson, in particular, has inspired, influenced and entranced fans "since bursting on album covers and television screens in the early 1960"s.
For over twenty years Dennis had been the engine running the Beach Boys. While older brother Brian crafted the songs which conjured up an innocent, fun-loving California, it was Dennis who supplied the stories, the inspiration and the attitude. Something brother Brian, with his sensitivity and awkwardness, could never do.
For Dennis, life was something to be attacked. He burst on to television screens like a flaming Adonis, with his long, blonde hair flopping side to side in time with the beat he provided. Dennis' athleticism was evident, even on the black and white transmissions beamed in to living rooms the world over. You knew whenever the camera was on Dennis from the screaming hordes of girls. He, like John Lennon, like Mick Jagger and Brian Jones, had animal magnetism.
Dennis indeed appeared to have it all by the mid-1960's. Fame, money, girls - especially girls, and a successful band singing about one of his favourite pastimes, surfing. He travelled the world with a view to sleeping with as many girls as he could (in competition with cousin and fellow Beach Boy, Mike Love). There was, however, an underlying unhappiness to this life. It is obvious from the path older brother Brian took in the late 1960's, and Dennis' own demise, that all that glitters is not, in fact, gold.
The Wilson family grew up in Hawthorne, California. Their backyard was the beach and Dennis soon found an outlet for all of his pent-up energy and frustrations through surfing, swimming and chasing girls. It also provided him with an escape route should Murray Wilson, father, mentor and later BB manager, decide to take his frustrations out on his three boys, particularly Dennis.
Unlike Brian and younger brother Carl, Dennis was a fighter. His self-confidence masked massive insecurities and hurt from years of physical and mental abuse. As the middle child it was natural that Dennis would attempt to strike out, forcing people to take notice of him, if only for some prank he'd pulled.
As the years went by and the Beach Boys went from being the number one surf group in the world to the number two purveyors of experimental music behind The Beatles, Dennis remained the same. A lost and hurt child searching for his own place and some attention from people who thought brother Brian was a messiah.
Indeed, Dennis played the idiot, the wild child, the irresponsible one. What people often failed to see was that there was not one genius in the BB's, but two.
Dennis had begun writing his own songs in the late sixties. Songs which were a little raunchier, a little wilder than brother Brian's. A few made appearances on Beach Boy albums like Friends and 20/20, two of the worst selling, but most impressive Beach Boy albums.
He even collaborated on one song with Charlie Manson, with whom he lived for a while before the Manson Family began killing celebrities in L.A. That song, “Never Learn Not To Love” is, despite the evil connotations, one of Dennis' best songs. Other important songs from his late sixties/early seventies period include “Forever”, “The Sound of Free” and “Barbara”.
The shock of what his former friend Manson did to his victims aged and saddened Dennis. Although he laughed off suggestions that he was scared of reprisals from Manson followers on the outside, it certainly freaked him out and would colour the rest of his days. The innocence and hedonism he had known was gone forever.
By 1976, the Beach Boys were making a comeback after years in limbo. A strange and scared-looking Brian Wilson was making a comeback of his own, appearing live on stage after spending four years in bed. Dennis was looking healthy, tanned and bearded and was living with his fourth wife in twelve years, model and actress Karen Lamm. Life was beginning to look good again. The band were earning big bucks and touring constantly. Dennis was sailing his beloved yacht, The Harmony, up and down the Californian coast and to Hawaii, living on the beach and, generally, living the life we would expect of a Beach Boy.
Women were an omnipresent aspect of Dennis' life and one which he could never turn down. The trouble caused by his extramarital affairs didn't diminish his song writing, however.
In 1977 Dennis released PACIFIC OCEAN BLUE, the first solo album by any Beach Boy. It received critical acclaim and sold a respectable 100,000 copies. The Beach Boys, meanwhile, were content to release sub-standard albums and rehashing the girl-meets-boy formula. Dennis' album scared the other members of the BB's. How, they asked, could the "dumb" one, the drummer who rarely played on BB albums, write, produce and play on his own album? It stunned them all.
It's at this point, I believe, that Dennis could have gone one of two ways. Either go solo or stay with a band he had grown apart from and which was no more than a touring oldies band.
For some reason, it could be loyalty, it could be his incredible lack of self-esteem, Dennis chose the latter.
What remained of Dennis' life over the next six years was a series of violent incidents, drug and alcohol abuse and broken relationships.
He was kicked out of the BB's and reinstalled several times. He lived with, and off, Christine McVie from Fleetwood Mac until she was forced to break it off in 1981. His once amazing, healthy looks had deteriorated to a grey and bloated facsimile of his former self.
When Dennis dove in to the cold waters of Marina Del Ray that morning, did he think of what could have been? Did he acknowledge that it was the abuse he suffered as a child which led him down the path of destruction like so many others in the music industry?
In truth, like so many other things associated with Dennis Carl Wilson, we will never know. His work will have to stand for itself. Searching the web, there are several websites, discussion groups and videos about Dennis. He left his mark on all who viewed him, either live or on album covers. The irony of the Wilson family saga is that Dennis - who once hated drugs, died as a result of them; Carl died of lung cancer; and brother Brian, possibly the most drug-addled song writer apart from Lennon, is alive and touring.
Dennis is survived by five children.
