While the Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy didn't earn stellar reviews from critics, a look at the Beach Boy's life in his own words will arrive in the form of a memoir this fall.
The long-teased I Am Brian Wilson: A Memoir will hit shelves on October 11 through Da Capo Press. In writing the 320-page hardcover book, Wilson teamed up with Ben Greenman, who has worked with George Clinton of Parliament/Funkadelic and Roots drummer Questlove in authoring their own books.
Well in advance of the book's arrival, you can read an excerpt from the forthcoming memoir below courtesy of Pitchfork.
My life has been written about over and over again, and that's mostly okay with me. Other people can talk about my life. Sometimes they'll get it right and sometimes they'll get it wrong. For me, when I think back across my own life, there are so many things that are painful. Sometimes I don't like discussing them. Sometimes I don't even like remembering them. But as I get older, the shape of that pain has changed. Sometimes memories come back to me when I least expect them. Maybe that's the only way it works when you've lived the life I've lived: starting a band with my brothers that was managed by my father, watching my father become difficult and then impossible, watching myself become difficult and then impossible, watching women I loved come and go, watching children come into the world, watching my brothers get older, watching them pass out of the world. Some of those things shaped me. Others scarred me. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference. When I watched my father fly into a rage and take swings at me and my brothers, was that shaping or scarring? When we watched him grow frustrated with his day job and take solace in music, was that shaping or scarring? Those are all memories but I can't get to them all at once. I've had a whole lifetime to take them in. Now I have a whole book to put them out there.
The long-teased I Am Brian Wilson: A Memoir will hit shelves on October 11 through Da Capo Press. In writing the 320-page hardcover book, Wilson teamed up with Ben Greenman, who has worked with George Clinton of Parliament/Funkadelic and Roots drummer Questlove in authoring their own books.
Well in advance of the book's arrival, you can read an excerpt from the forthcoming memoir below courtesy of Pitchfork.
My life has been written about over and over again, and that's mostly okay with me. Other people can talk about my life. Sometimes they'll get it right and sometimes they'll get it wrong. For me, when I think back across my own life, there are so many things that are painful. Sometimes I don't like discussing them. Sometimes I don't even like remembering them. But as I get older, the shape of that pain has changed. Sometimes memories come back to me when I least expect them. Maybe that's the only way it works when you've lived the life I've lived: starting a band with my brothers that was managed by my father, watching my father become difficult and then impossible, watching myself become difficult and then impossible, watching women I loved come and go, watching children come into the world, watching my brothers get older, watching them pass out of the world. Some of those things shaped me. Others scarred me. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference. When I watched my father fly into a rage and take swings at me and my brothers, was that shaping or scarring? When we watched him grow frustrated with his day job and take solace in music, was that shaping or scarring? Those are all memories but I can't get to them all at once. I've had a whole lifetime to take them in. Now I have a whole book to put them out there.
