Brian Wilson Reimagined: The Reparative Portrait in Love & Mercy

Abstract

AbstractThe 50-year anniversary of the Beach Boys’ seminal album Pet Sounds and Brian Wilson's corresponding world concert tour have once again brought attention to Wilson and his creative work with the Beach Boys. These events have brought about new recording releases and publications about the band and Wilson, including the first feature-length biopic on Wilson, Love & Mercy. The following essay investigates Atticus Ross's reimaginative approach to Brian Wilson's music for the soundtrack of this film, directed by Bill Pohlad and released in 2014. The film expands recent trends in music biopics of the last couple of decades regarding the mobilization and activation of music to afford new interpretations of their subjects and new ways to hear their work. Ross's approach is distinct for its extensive recomposition of Brian Wilson's music in the film's original score, which allows director Bill Pohlad to show Wilson in a new light.Ross incorporates Beach Boys recordings (studio sessions and released tracks) into new pieces that highlight processes of manipulation, layering, and repetition, which point to the studio as a major site of Wilson's creativity. These processes furthermore portray the psychic life of the film's characters. Ross's compositions dramatize the subjectivity of hearing and rogue behaviors of auditory recollection and hallucination that characterize both Wilson's creativity and mental illness. In the context of the story of Brian Wilson and Melinda Ledbetter, Ross's compositions take on palliative associations that have direct implications for the reception of the film's original soundtrack.