In his honest yet hesitant voice, Brian Wilson takes you on a journey into the life of a creative genius, exploring his turbulent life and creative influences and how, regardless of his inner and outer demons, there is always hope ... isn’t the kind of book you can read in a day. Like a summer vacation, you want it to last forever. You don’t want to jump in the ocean and go straight home. You want to take your time and absorb every thought, every doubt, every feeling that crosses the mind of one of the world’s most influential composers. And that’s exactly what you get from this book.
I Am Brian Wilson tells his story in all its guts and glory in a voice intimate enough to suggest you might be reading his diary ... the erstwhile Beach Boy’s personality shines through with conversational ease ... A bit meandering and at times flat, his candor is nonetheless refreshing.
The troubled, brilliant, oft-mythologized Wilson makes for a particularly intriguing case study, and if his memoir doesn’t add up to a grand unified theory, it does offer some fascinating glimpses under the hood ... The recounting of the big Beach Boys moments in I Am Brian Wilson is mostly rote ... At its best, I Am Brian Wilson has an odd, unpredictable rhythm, looping back to a few touchstone events and jumping back and forth through time with thoughts that aren’t always linear. It’s in the throwaway moments that Wilson fleetingly snaps into focus.
...documents scattered memories and streamlines them into a series of impressions and anecdotes ... thoughtful about and critical of his father's mood swings and his mishandling of the Beach Boys' publishing ... offer[s] valuable if unsettling insights into the personal dynamics inside an American band with a split personality.
...as plain-spoken as its title. Here the band’s presiding genius wanders over the terrain of his life as a son, father, husband and supremely gifted musician, describing what he remembers in a childlike tone ... there is in Brian Wilson’s poker-faced acceptance a reminder to take life as it comes. Part of the charm of his account is the way he drops little moments into the story with no preamble and then moves on with no follow-through.
...Pieced together through a series of interviews he gave to New York journalist Ben Greenman, the autobiography is a choppy work weighed down by random thoughts, trivial memories and confusing time-shifts. But when Wilson opens up about creating the group's early pop masterpieces or the groundbreaking Pet Sounds, I Am Brian Wilson finally shines.
[Wilson] tells his story with incredible intensity, candidness, and humor ... Co-author Ben Greenman has done a superb job of capturing Wilson’s voice — the childlike wonder at the process of music-making that comes across so clearly in his interviews. It is as if we are having an extended and intimate conversation with Wilson ... There has been a veritable avalanche of autobiographies and memoirs from aging rockers in recent years as they begin to contemplate their place in rock history. I Am Brian Wilson takes its hard-earned place in the front of these books. It is not to be missed.
In terms of narrative structure, the book - like Wilson's mind - makes abrupt and sudden jumps forward and backward in time. Credit goes to Greenman for putting it all together. The typed prose that actually flew from his fingertips stays true to Wilson's speaking style of choppy, short, declarative sentences, its childlike tone and lack of depth always disarming ... For fans of the music, Wilson does dig deep into the inspirations and recording of albums both with the Beach Boys and solo, though, oddly, he dissects mostly lesser-known material. And there's almost as much space spent contemplating his recent albums.
