Did Brian Really Fall Into a Piano? An Incisive and Iniquitous Investigation Into How Big This Guy Really Was

by Luke Dylan Ramsey'

What is hell if not an existence without Brian Wilson?

What is horror if not a planet now devoid of its musical messiah?

What is science fiction if not a world that has lost its core?

The child is the father of the man, man.

And if Mike “Love Is A Woman” then should they not be called The Beach People?

For fuck’s sake, let’s just go ahead and assume Brian was at some point or another miniscule enough to fall into a piano, particularly in between the C and C sharp, as depicted on “Psycodelic Sounds: Brian Falls Into a Piano” off The Beach Boys’ compilation album The Smile Sessions. Yes, let’s abandon the outright fallacy that is reality and ignore that at times Brian dearest rivaled Elvis and Jim Morrison in the excessive nature of his righteous though unhealthy corpulence.

(I may not be as fat as Ignacious J. Reilly, myself, but I ain’t no skinny fella neither.)'

What is a dystopia that has lost its greatest songwriter? We are sheep with no shepherd, a herd already wandering for forty years and more (we’ll get there, you’ll see)… long live Al Jardine, I am saying… (NO MORE BULLSHIT! NO MORE BULLSHIT!)

In the spirit of that parenthetical digression, let’s get down to brass tacks and return to Brian’s supposed ability to shrink himself down to a size small enough that he would be able to get stuck inside a presumably normal sized piano. Did the man possess Antman-like powers? Was he perhaps not in full control of his powers during the recording of The Smile Sessions?

Ahem. Now, I know just what you are thinking: which Smile album are we really talking about here? Huh? Where is this guy getting all this crazy talk? What the fuck?

And I am saying here that I mean this one:

Not:

And not:

Whew! Now that all that is clear to both you and me, let’s address what you are really thinking: Brian Wilson not at the height or in control of his powers? During the recording of the greatest and most infamous lost album in Western music history? What drugs are you on, man?

And I am here to tell you that what I meant was that Brian was clearly able to shrink himself down into insectoid sizes while recording what we now know as The Smile Sessions, though it remains unclear if Brian was in control of this power or not, before, during, or after the recording sessions compiled on The Beach Boys’ Halloween, 2011 release (though the entirety was originally recorded around 1966-1967).

(Do I really wanna live in a world without the Big BW? (BBW for short… and how short was that guy, truly? A quick Google search reveals that BBW was 6’2, but I bet he was more like 6’5 or 6’6… you know he met Thomas Pynchon, right? A standoffish pairing it apparently was… or possibly not, too…))

BBW was a big ol’ boy, now, sometimes even just a fucking fat kinda guy, you see, and it does appear that his powers to shrink himself down fled once The Beach Boys abandoned the Smile project, although we will get to one possible explanation for that here in a second, right after I make fun of my fave BBW for a li’l-long while.

Yes, let’s go on and stretch our imagination even further, now, as only the finest music can force you to do: a Brian so very small that he could fit inside a microphone. Let’s contrast that hellacious if still tantalizing vision, depicted on the song “Psycodelic Sounds: Brian Falls Into a Microphone”, with images such as this:

See above for a homeless Brian prowling an LA area grocery store, both looking for and existing as snack.

Then, of course, there is this image:

(What bear.)(Whither apple of mine eye?)(How largely manly.)(What chest hair!)(When this is all over with, him and I should get a cabin somewhere mountainous together…)

Fuck yeah, now that there is a big ol’ fella, hell yeah brother, a man who does not eat nearly enough vegetables and instead subsides on steak and cocaine, finding the most succor in perhaps dreamless naps… does he have worms? Did he love you and I? Who knows, really?

Anyway, on “Psycodelic Sounds: Brian Falls Into a Microphone”, the rest of The Beach Boys figure out that Brian is inside a microphone and, despite BBW’s swift and timely exhortations, decide to break the microphone, thus, presumably, killing our small li’l BBW, and perhaps even creating a Paul McCartney conspiracy-type situation (?????) (!!!!!!) wherein Brian was thereafter replaced by a clone or a lookalike, which would explain some things, but not others.

(I mean the evidence is all there on the record, and we all fucking know they did not like how BBW was fucking with the formula.) (No, I still do not like worms, though dim chandeliers do awaken me.)

But, on the track, those heartless freaks proceed to make puns out of poor BBW’s name as he presumably experiences his final breaths, lost somewhere deep inside the mechanical maze comprising one of the band’s microphones. A wretched, twisted scene, to be sure, horrible in most every imaginable manner.

Yes, it was indeed all fun and games when Brian got stuck in a piano. Life back then was kicks and giggles, chicanery and tomfoolery and hullabaloo, Mountain Dew and Peach Crush, Candyland and El Dorado. Mmhmm. Admittedly, I did not foresee the tragic end that BBW’s fell yet perhaps uncontrollable powers would lead to, and neither, apparently, did anyone else. Let’s meditate on Brian’s final words, and perhaps thereby grow wise:

“It’s not a buzz I’m tellin’ ya it’s me and I’m in it!”

Yes. It was him. And he was truly in it, if by it we assume that he meant a real flow state, in the zone, for The Smile Sessions almost redeem the terrible fact of Mike Love’s continued existence (even if it was created despite of rather than because of him), the compilation is more addictive than any drug, the album is both motherfucker and redeemer, for it creates and thrives on its own logic, its own cloud of unknowing.

Those are my wind chimes, man, not yours.

And let’s further meditate upon the fact that the song following the final and utter demise of our favorite BBW is called “Psycodelic Sounds: Moaning Laughing”, from which we can derive the plain fact that (though they assure us that they love vegetables most of all) the rest of The Beach Boys not only found Brian Wilson’s death inside an electric labyrinth funny, they also experienced sexual pleasure from his untimely and world shattering demise.

If you ever find yourself out there in LA, check a dumpster. Scavenge the local dump. Find yourself a microphone with a Brian stuck inside it, like Hitler holed up in his Berlin bunker, and give it a shake, make his bones dance out a groovy higgley-jiggley for one last time…

Life is suffering. I bite my thumb at life. Life is a joke, and the joke is on you, not me.

Your honor, I rest my case, so that I may as yet remain free.