I’m just a sound

Ian Penman: Back to the Beach Boys, 23 April 2026

Surf’s Up: Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys 
by Peter Doggett.
New Modern, 420 pp., £25, November 2025, 978 1 917923 34 7
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... words to express it, Wilson often needed collaborators to articulate his feelings in song, notably Tony Asher and Van Dyke Parks. The alchemy is mysterious: while these may not have been precisely his ‘own’ words, they somehow feel as if they are written in Wilson’s voice. Talking to himself, talking to his wife, talking to God. The more unvarnished the ...