"I'm afraid of losing the sweetness of my soul": when Brian Wilson confided in "Le Nouvel Obs"

"I'm afraid of losing the sweetness of my soul," he says. Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys' hero, the lead singer of "Barbara Ann," the composer of "Surfin' USA," the musician who invented "art rock," is a lost child. He got lost in drugs, crumbled under electric shock, hid for three years in his bed, emerged to appear on stage in a bathrobe, and his odyssey as a tortured genius is brought to the screen in "Love & Mercy," a biopic by Bill Pohlad. Brian Wilson, 72, looked at himself: "The movie is terrific. The actors are terrific. Yes. Yes." His voice is unsteady, his tone hesitant, the urge to run away palpable. Wilson, clearly, is a man in pain. He hears voices, he is persecuted by his long-dead father, he is hounded by inner demons. The gentleness of his soul is threatened by dark forces.

In the early 1960s, he became the Mozart of pop. The era was rock 'n' roll, the music of thugs and niggers: Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Sam Cooke, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard unleashed the basest instincts, and defenders of morality were alarmed by the ravages of binary rhythm. Luckily, there were the Beach Boys. With their sensible haircuts, their striped shirts, their choirboy smiles...

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