Brian Wilson
Brian Wilson
Brian Wilson, best known for his work with the Beach Boys, is one of popular music's most revered figures. The main creative force behind some of the most cherished recordings in rock history and one of the most influential composers of the last century, Wilson became a Kennedy Center Honoree in 2007. A father of seven, he lives with his wife in Beverly Hills, California.
From The Bookseller
Coronet, an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton, is delighted to announce the acquisition of a major new project – the autobiography of music legend Brian Wilson.
Coronet’s Publisher Mark Booth acquired UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) from Jonathan Conway, on behalf of The Agency Group, after a major pre-emptive offer.
Mark Booth says: ‘This is a landmark book. Brian Wilson is a genius, who gave popular music a whole new language, and his life is one of the great stories of To Hell and Back. He came back and changed everything.’
As the chief songwriter and producer of The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson has been making music for over fifty years and during that time he has recorded some of the most iconic songs in American rock. Inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and the recipient of the Kennedy Center Honor in 2007, Wilson most recently recorded the critically acclaimed That’s Why God Made the Radio with The Beach Boys and joined the group for their worldwide 50th anniversary tour in 2012. Pet Sounds, Wilson’s masterwork from 1966, was named the #2 best album in rock history by Rolling Stone and this year he received his second Grammy Award for Best Historical Album for The SMiLE Sessions.
In his memoir, Wilson, who will be working with Rolling Stone and Men’s Journal editor Jason Fine, will describe for the first time the epic highs and lows of his life – from his tumultuous relationship with his father, the loss of his mother and brothers, his fears about live performance, the struggles he faced to lead The Beach Boys away from surf music into groundbreaking, experimental terrain, to his remarkable personal and professional comeback from drug addiction and mental illness with the support of his second wife Melinda. In this memoir Wilson will share a new level of emotional honesty never before expressed in earlier books about him.
Books
I Am Brian Wilson: The Genius Behind the Beach Boys
Rights
Synopsis
They say there are no second acts in American lives, and third acts are almost unheard of. That's part of what makes Brian Wilson's story so astonishing.
As co-founder member of the Beach Boys in the 1960s, Wilson created some of the most groundbreaking and timeless popular music ever recorded. With intricate harmonies, symphonic structures, and wide-eyed lyrics that explored life's most transcendent joys and deepest sorrows, songs like 'In My Room', 'God Only Knows' and'Good Vibrations' forever expanded the possibilities of pop songwriting. Derailed in the 1970s by mental illness, drug use, and the shifting fortunes of the band, Wilson came back again and again over the next few decades, surviving and - finally - thriving. Now, for the first time, he weighs in on the sources of his creative inspiration and on his struggles, the exhilarating highs and the debilitating lows.
I Am Brian Wilson reveals as never before the man who fought his way back to stability and creative relevance, who became a mesmerizing live artist, who forced himself to reckon with his own complex legacy and completedSmile, the legendary unfinished Beach Boys record that had become synonymous with both his genius and its destabilization. Today Brian Wilson is older, calmer, filled with perspective and forgiveness. Whether he's talking about his childhood, his bandmates, or his own inner demons, Wilson's story, told in his own voice and in his own way, unforgettably illuminates the man behind the music, working through the turbulence and discord to achieve, at last, a new harmony.