Angels/Excerpt: Brian Wilson's Teenage Symphony to God

"A teenage symphony to God."

The enigmatic words mumble down from his perch atop a rattan barstool and crash land below. He's at his regular place, in his regular pose. Slouched over a half-empty glass at the bar in the beach-front Sunset Grill, situated beside the Paradise Hotel just outside of Long Beach, California. In daylight hours, the bar overlooks a magnificent stretch of the Pacific Ocean; at night, the view is lost in an infinite sea of India ink. 

"Sorry, Rocky, you talking to me? Couldn't hear, I'm cleaning up. Almost closing time, my man..."

Rocky. It's what B.J., the young, affable and gregarious bartender (part-time student, skateboarder, philosopher, upright-bass player for the band Reach 4 The Ska) has taken to calling him, in the absence of him ever anteing up his real name. He needed to be christened something as he evolved from being a stranger into a Sunset Grill regular.

B.J will never forget when Rocky first darkened the bar’s doorway. A stray that one night came in out of the darkness looking like something that the tide had unceremoniously deposited on the shore. Unkempt in a faded Hawaiian shirt and wrinkled Bermuda shorts and sandals, ashen-faced, haunted, eyes sunken and anchored by thick dark lines that gave rise to the nickname, Rocky, after Rocky Raccoon. With a hint of drama that was not unbecoming, Rocky called himself an exile. Said he was living in a rented beach house just beyond the nearby Santa Clara pier. Beyond that, even after he became a regular, he remained reticent, rarely saying much of anything to anybody. Apparently absorbed in his own thoughts, existing in his own world.

In time, when questioned, B.J. will remember that Rocky always ordered the same drink: ice and white rum, "gently bathed in Coke." That's what he always said, "gently bathed in Coke." Always sat in the same place. Always requested that the seat beside him remain empty. Apparently one of many quirks.

Now he glances up from his drink, appearing surprised to discover someone else in the room. He points above B.J.'s head to the speakers over the bar. Because it's late and close to closing time, the annoying thump-thump dance music that each night brings patrons together in a lusty froth, has been mercifully forsaken in favor of a classic pop station out of Los Angeles.

"Beach Boy Brian Wilson," he says. The bartender marvels at how his words remain crisp and precise, despite all he has consumed. But that's Rocky's style. From an extended, prodigious period of stone-cold sober to... blotto, every night, and seemingly in the wink of an eye.

"Genius. Between 1962 and 1968, he wrote and produced fourteen albums, more than one-hundred-and-twenty songs. And this, this perfect pearl, is God Only Knows. Paul McCartney, a guy who knows a thing or two about music, called it the greatest pop song ever written. Was on the seminal Pet Sounds album. 1966." He sighs, shakes his head. "I was just a kid. Before the band recorded Pet Sounds, Wilson said that it was his desire to create a teenage symphony to God. Isn't that beautiful?"

"Beautiful, Rocky, but a little before my time..."

"Shit, man," he retorts. "It's a little ahead of everybody's time. Besides, beauty like this isn't tied to time. There was a period in my jaded, narrow-minded youth when I couldn't stomach Brian Wilson, when I thought the Beach Boys were mindless west-coast crap. One day I had an epiphany. I was up to my armpits in the bathtub, with a woman, for the sake of the story, and she helped me tune into, and clue into the brilliance of Brian. The haunting, ethereal nature of the man's music.

"Flash forward a few years and I actually met the man. In a recording studio. I was coming, he was going. Got up the nerve to speak to him. Told him I loved him like a brother. Told him that he helped me through some dark times and that I could feel the spiritual soul inherent in his songs, and the deep and underlying melancholy that lurks everywhere in his music, even behind those godless 'Fun, Fun, Funs.' Know what he told me?" Rocky doesn't wait for an answer. "Think he dished out sage advice? Fuck no. He took my shoulders in his hands and told me to... watch what I eat. Said, food can be a real killer. Then he left the studio and disappeared into the night..."

B.J.'s taken aback by the outburst, by the both the passion with which it is delivered and by the sheer number of words strung together. Rocky takes a long tug, emptying the glass. Forlornly rattles the ice around in his glass. Runs his fingers through his hair. Dirty-blonde, overgrown and flirting with his shoulders.

"Nightcap?"

"Double, times two... And remember, B.J., gently bathed....

“Watch what I eat. Fuck…"

Once the drinks are delivered and tabbed, B.J. returns to his cleanup. Rocky back to his rum. And to the incessant sounds in his head.

Inside Rocky's head there has always been music. Since he was a child. At night, during sleep, in his dreams, in all his waking hours. Music that not even his father, a pugnacious bureaucrat with an alcoholic gene and a short fuse, could beat out of his stubborn skull. Rhythms, faint strains of melody swimming within the walls of his skull, waiting to be hooked and extracted from the muddy waters of his mind. He still hears the music, but for some time now he's been inexplicably unable to reel it in.

Brian Wilson likewise heard music in his head. He called it his gift. Then, one day he suddenly found that he could no longer write. Said there was too much pain and sadness inside him. So, he withdrew from life. Turned his den into a sandbox. Rarely left the house and then only if it was sunny -- what he called "a blue sky that offered hope.” Quit changing his clothes. Gave up on personal hygiene. Ate until his weight ballooned to three-hundred-and-fifty pounds. Smoked five or six packs of Marlboros a day and drugged himself into dense fog of paranoia.

Rocky now wonders what Brian Wilson lost. Pain and sadness. Don't even get Rocky started on pain and sadness.

"He was a genius... A fucked-up, ballooned-up, drugged-up, fucking genius."

"You still on that Beach Boy?" B.J. asks. "Listen, Brian Wilson's got nothing on you, man.”

"You've never heard my music."

"Who's talking about music?" He laughs. "Hey, Rock, I'm kidding. It's a joke. Shit, you okay?"

Because Rocky has turned to face the ocean. He's staring with glassy eyes out into that endless India ink. His face is flushed, and he is sweating heavily. Sweating rum. Sweating sadness and loss. He cranes his neck, straining to hear the mournful voice of the Pacific. He craves the soothing rhythm of the waves lapping up onto the shore. Waves he’d like to run out and embrace.

He whispers -- and now the words are slurred, the voice unsteady and full of longing, need: "She would have loved it here."

"She who?"

He shrugs, waves him off.  Answers, with impatience, annoyance.

"She...."