When I was in 4th grade I had this imaginary band called EFK. The name came from the last initials of its members: Ryan Echter, Beau Korselman, and me, Patrick Fleming. We didn’t have instruments or songs, but what we did have was Beau’s attic and a stack of his days of 45 rpm records... mostly Beach Boys records.
We’d sit up there for hours, pretending we were the ones who wrote "Surfer Girl." Just kids in Iowa dreaming we were songwriters. And even then, I knew there was something different about Brian Wilson. Something impossible. Something sacred. He had a magic to him that felt like it belonged to another world.. melody, harmony, heartbreak, and hope all tied together in songs that somehow made you feel like the sun was setting just for you.
I think the first CD my family ever owned was a Beach Boys greatest hits. Like with the Beatles, kids start with the early stuff, the catchy ones, the ones you can sing along to right away. And that’s where I started. But as I got older, as I started to write songs of my own and chase the dream of making music, Brian Wilson’s music started to mean even more. I got lost in Pet Sounds, obsessed over the lost SMiLE sessions. I read every book, tracked down every bootleg, watched every film. I didn’t just listen. I studied. Because somewhere deep down I believed that if I could just understand how he did it, maybe I could hold onto some tiny spark of that same magic.
One of the greatest nights of my life was seeing him perform SMiLE at the Chicago Theatre. I was given a front row ticket as a gift, and I’ll never forget it. When he came on stage, older, frail, gentle, I was overwhelmed. My body was shaking. I was in the presence of probably the greatest living composer of our lifetime. Someone whose songs had shaped the way I saw the world. I’ve never felt so close to someone who felt so far above us all. Like a Quarterback with an injury he needed help to his piano. But it was him.
In 2010, deep in the middle of The Poison Control Center’s 284-date tour, we had a break around the holidays. I was trying to write a couple more songs to submit for what would become Stranger Ballet, but I hit a wall. I couldn’t come up with anything. So I went back to a time when I knew nothing about writing a song. Back to that attic. Back to being that 4th grader who just wanted to write "Surfer Girl" with his friends. I threw away everything I thought I knew about songwriting. I borrowed the chords and melody. No one’s going to accuse me of stealing a song with this voice. And five minutes later I had "One Thousand Colors"—a song about a beautiful creative spirit, built on the foundation of the song I’d always wished I had written.
Brian Wilson was always that dream to me. The untouchable one. The one that made you believe music could do more than just sound good. It could heal. It could lift. It could devastate you in the most beautiful way.
And today that dream is gone.
Thank you, Brian, for everything. For the attic memories. For the harmonies. For the wonder. For being the unreachable star that still somehow made all of us feel like maybe, just maybe, we could touch it too.
By Patrick Tape Fleming