The book has three layers: the 1978 original, a brief 1985 update, and a more substantial 2022 one. The accretion does something historiographical. Each pass lets Leaf revisit his earlier claims, correct what time has disproved, adjust what had previously been legally neutered, and register how public perception of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys has shifted across four decades. You can watch the consensus reorganise itself around the man, edition by edition. For a fully paid-up Brian Wilson acolyte like me, it’s about as comprehensive as the literature gets. Forty-four years is a long time to keep returning to one man. Leaf makes a good case for why it was worth it.
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Pocket Symphonies↗
www.the-hinternet.com
Sam Jennings on Pet Sounds at 60. It starts as criticism—Spector’s “little symphonies for the kids”, Wilson’s panic the first time he heard the Beatles, the instrument list that runs from French horns to Coke cans—and then fades into a memoir, “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” reprising itself across different years, different places, different girls.