Carl Wilson, the youngest Beach Boy, quietly held the band together
In the mid-1960s concert promoters booking the Beach Boys had to sign contracts naming Carl Wilson plus four other musicians. The youngest Wilson brother sang God Only Knows, took over the studio when Brian withdrew, and led the band on stage for more than thirty years, yet he rarely got top billing in its story.
Carl grew up in Hawthorne, California, with his older brothers Brian and Dennis and a father who treated them harshly. Brian drilled the boys in vocal harmony in the family music room, and at twelve Carl took guitar lessons alongside the neighbour David Marks, learning from a teenager who later found fame in Britain as one of the Walker Brothers. His Chuck Berry-style riffs became part of the early Beach Boys sound; he was 17 when he recorded the surf lick on Fun, Fun, Fun.
When Brian began hiring session players for his increasingly complex arrangements, Carl was the band member most often in the room with them, recording his guitar leads straight into the mixing desk. After Brian quit touring in 1965 Carl ran the live show. His lead vocal on God Only Knows in 1966 changed his role, and he went on to sing Good Vibrations and Darlin'. From 1969 he effectively led the band in the studio, producing I Can Hear Music himself and steering most of their early-1970s albums. His first real song, by his own reckoning, was Long Promised Road on Surf's Up.
He also refused the draft as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. By 1981 the band had split into factions, and Carl walked out to make a solo record and tour, the first Beach Boy to break ranks, before rejoining in time for his second album in 1983. That December Dennis drowned, and Carl dedicated his solo song Heaven to him in concert. He was back on lead for part of Kokomo, the band's 1988 No. 1.
Outside the group he added backing harmonies to hits by Chicago and to a famous Elton John ballad. A lifelong smoker, he was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1997 yet completed that summer's tour. He died in February 1998, aged 51, two months after his mother.
Source: Carl Wilson
