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.
