Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road

The Beach Boys are my favourite band. I own every Beach Boys' album, compilation, solo record etc. I have all the DVDs and documentaries too, of course, so I had to buy this. It's..... good. I mean, I can watch anything Brian/BB's related. I just feel there wasn't much new here. All the usual talking heads saying Brian is a genius. Most of the new stuff involving Brian is him being driven around L. A. listening to Beach Boy's songs (and sometimes the same song more than twice). It's quite sad, frankly speaking, seeing Brian so aged and out-of-shape, but- hey- it happens to all of us eventually. The most touching bits were when Brian found out that Jack Reilly had died years earlier, and the part where Brian listens to Dennis Wilson's album (it blows my mind that Brian had never heard it before!). Some of the best stuff was in the deleted scenes... Brian going back to his high school, talking about his mother. I don't think Mike Love got one mention throughout the entire documentary haha.

I consider The Beach Boys to be one of my top-three musical groups of all-time. Their compositions and overall energy stand the test of time decade after decade. Brian Wilson is a big part of that, though a journey not without both triumphs and tragedies.

For a very basic overview, Long Promised Road sees Jason Fine--a Rolling Stone writer who happened to strike up a relationship with Wilson that slowly evolved into a friendship--conducting a series of interviews with the songwriter/producer, covering all stages of his life/career. This mostly happens while driving around Los Angeles, showing Wilson some of his old haunts.

The A-1 reason I can give Long Promised Road the full 10 star-treatment is because it doesn't flinch when confronted with the elephant in the room: Brian Wilson isn't 100% cognitively "normal", if you will. It is clear from the way he walks, speaks, and emotes that something is just a bit off. However, instead of turning Wilson into some sort of tragic figure, Fine (and director Brent Wilson) rationally explore his past (taking the good with the bad) while also showing viewers that Wilson is by no means an invalid and still has a lot to give the music community.

Some of the topics covered here include:

-Psychological abuse from Brian's hard-driving father.

-Brian's supreme musical talent (he's a true savant in that area) that also makes it hard for him to relate to the rest of the world.

-His drug & alcohol addictions and how he was taken advantage of for many years by a quack physician.

-His relationship with the fellow Beach Boys bandmates, specifically brothers Carl & Dennis, and how special it was for them to make music together.

-His solo career that continues to this day!

While the history lessons are all well and good--providing crucial context--the real meat of this doc comes from seeing Wilson process everything that Fine talks with him about. Sometimes inspiring, sometimes heartbreaking, but always fascinating to see him recollect the key moments of his life (that are now iconic to millions of Beach Boys fans).

So, while the flashback clips and solid music catalogue selections were probably going to always endear Long Promised Road to me, it is the emotionally relevant interviews/conversations between singer and writer that truly moved me enough to give it 10 stars. After the credits rolled, I now feel like I have a far better understanding of Brian Wilson the human being--not the myth or legend.

On the eve of his 80th birthday, I watched this celebratory 2021 overview of Brian Wilson's life and career. His musical legacy is well covered here through interviews with fellow luminaries like Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, and Don Was. His countless personal tragedies are also recounted in detail (including the deaths of brothers Dennis and Carl), but the personal impact on Wilson felt somewhat elliptical due to his ongoing mental struggles. Rolling Stone editor Jason Reis does a good job eliciting some insight by gaining Wilson's trust in what comes across as private conversations. What remains clearest is Wilson's desire to keep making music, a lot of which still sounds great.

One of the rare sincere, truthful, non-pathetic documentaries. Brian seems to be very nice person. He got over all that problems and yet adopted children. Some other famous junkies even abandon their own.

There's something sad about how some of the interviewees here talk about Brian Wilson in the past tense, because the man is still around, and he's still creative and engaged in music. Maybe they're subconsciously saying they think Brian Wilson today is divorced from the Brian Wilson of the 60s, but if so, that's a little unfair. It's not a slight against the documentary - more against the interviewees, even if they didn't realise they were doing it.

One thing that did bug me was how they didn't subtitle one of the interviewees who spoke in Spanish. Might just be a problem with the version available to be rented off YouTube, but the captions only offer a very unhelpful "speaking foreign language", which is pretty disrespectful to the guy (Gustavo Dudamel) and comes across lazy to the viewer.

Otherwise it's a nice music documentary. Not much info Beach Boy fans won't already know, but lots of good archive footage and new footage with Brian Wilson himself, who's an interesting and sympathetic subject for a documentary.

It's nice to see him continue to battle his personal demons and continue to live his life now almost at the age of 80. And I liked the bond he has with music journalist Jason Fine, with their conversations being necessary in this documentary, as it's acknowledged that Wilson struggles with traditional interviews.

So overall it's a nice but not completely remarkable music documentary. I'd still get it to a 7/10, because I do really love the music of Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys, and being a big Bruce Springsteen fan, I liked seeing him fanboy out over The Beach Boys in his interviews here.