This is a condensed chapter from my book "Sore Souls". Note: Pacific Ocean Blue is being re-issued on CD May 13 with a bonus disc of his unfinished final LP Bambu. You should probably pick it up, if the LP version stays true to the original cover, I will buy that too.

Writers note: I have been half-writing/constantly thinking about California my entire life. It’s a real paradox of a place, It’s the most beautiful place in the world (I won’t hear arguments to the contrary) yet its where so many come to, "head west" but not many can actually handle the lifestyle, which is so laid-back it’s intense. When Mark asked me to write something for EDY (my previous contribution was a photo of an ice cream store in SF called “Everyday Ice Cream”, which has been his default myspace pic for years now) we brainstormed "1983 deaths" because he was on a reincarnation trip. I had been analyzing the below record for the reasons stated already, so it was a perfect match. Thanks to Mark and I hope I can find enough time in my week to write more for EDY in the future.

During my open-ended quest to unlock what the true meaning is in being a Californian, I have undergone several journeys, this particular one acquaints me with Dennis Wilson, fallen Beach Boy, and his at-times stunning solo album Pacific Ocean Blue.

The Beach Boys have been in my life since I was 5 years old. Even at the age of 3, my mom gave me a cassette player with a ton of tapes and she would also buy me new ones as I was very into music at a young age. For reasons I cannot understand, my parents would always put me to sleep extremely early, so logically I would always awake long before Sesame Street would be on. In these early hours I’d turn on the TV with my parents sleeping peacefully and watch this new thing called MTV, music videos 24-7. At that time in my life my watch list consisted of only MTV and Sesame Street. My mom also enjoyed MTV, but even at a young age I began forming my own music opinions, favoring such artists as Talking Heads, The Ramones and ZZ Top (also Hall & Oates and some forgettables I'm probably forgetting). Anyway I used to rock the hell out of that Beach Boys greatest hits tape, it really shaped my view of who I was becoming (A true Californian) and shaped my obsessive nature about what it truly means to be a Californian.

Later on (MUCH later) I started thinking about the Wilson brothers, Carl was like “eh” but I became very intrigued by Dennis Wilson, the sketchy Beach Boy who died after falling off his boat while drunk and drowned to death, possibly on purpose. He was involved with Charlie Manson, pre-Tate murders, and seemed to have a very dark background/world view. With the finishing of brother Brian's Smile a lot of people stood up and took notice of the Beach Boys again, including a few of my friends. A one Owen B. Black Esq. Famously said "Its the Mozart of pop music" which I thought to be very profound, despite the aforementioned's knack of making somewhat ludicrous statements regarding music (Making an argument that True Blue had better riffs than the Cro-Mags and sticking to it, such bravado however he’s respectably sticking to his guns). Smile is a true work of genius but I always said "Yo, what about DENNIS?"

There are a lot of trendy young deaths in the music world from this period and nearly all of them are from the UK. Dennis's death has oddly not put his name next to Curtis, Drake and Buckley's when it comes to talking apropos about those who died young thanks to their own infected minds; this has always bothered me, as Dennis's story is as interesting and his solo music holds its own and is really under-rated.

Dennis Carl Wilson was seemingly an underdog from the outset: their mother had begged Brian to include Dennis in the band. Brian had always been the obvious one with musical leanings in the family, but getting Dennis in the band meant an actual, real surfer would be in the band, a band with such a one dimensional point of view regarding song-writing topics, it would illegitimatize them not having at least one guy who surfed in the band. In 1976 he was quoted “I don’t know why everybody doesn’t live at the beach, on the ocean. It makes no sense to me, hanging around the dirty city. That’s why I always loved and was proud to be a Beach Boy; I always loved the image. On the beach you can live in bliss.” This quote is echoed constantly throughout Pacific Ocean Blue.

The first thing you notice about PAB is how striking Dennis’s vocals are. A short lifetime of drug and alcohol abuse had surprisingly made Dennis a better vocalist, not a worse one. His once short vocal range had been replaced by a soulful, desperate sounding croon.

In his songs, you get a truly depressed man trying his damnedest to tell you how he feels for those who have taken city life and forgotten about more natural environments such as the beach. He was a true child of the beach, a near prototypical Californian surfer-type, he loved the beach so much it pained him. Musically it jumps all over the place, it sounds very late 70's but there’s some bar rock, some depressing piano-led jams, and an impressive opener that sounds like he took a pinch (just a pinch) of black sabbath and threw it into the mix, an interesting combination indeed as the resulting opening track is just plain badass at times and might even get you banging your head (a little). Another thing you will notice is how surprisingly complex the songs are, and how strong the playing is, he became very good at piano and PAB doesn’t stray away from showing off his skills.

Here forth, I will mention (much to the chagrin of Bri-Wi fans) the startling polar opposites in style from Dennis to brother Brian. Brian's main problem, not dissimilar to current pop culture icon Lil Wayne (but not Bradford Cox) is that he indeed wrote too many songs, and only a select few were great (and they were truly great, perhaps the greatest, no argument from me), I was listening to a conversation between David Cross and Bob Odenkirk where they were mentioning a CD that was floating around in the mid-90s of all these Brian songs that had the most vapid, idiotic lyrics you could think of, like Beach Boys songs that were just directions to some guys house, like a step further over the line that “Vega-Tables” toed. Brian even did a rap song. Dennis on the other hand, was completely devoid of corny-ness that Brian has been accused of at times. He seems to have an actual world view rather than living in his own mind like Brian did. He was truly a depressed man late in life, and it bled through constantly in his music. There is an upmost sincerity in his lyrics, when he tells you he "wants to" cry you also get the feeling he can’t. He is very quick to say "I love you" which is again, a sign of chronically depressed, suicidal person. You also get the feeling that he isn’t even talking about girls, even though he was the OG heartthrob of the band, but rather the ocean. You want ominous? The album ends with the songs Farewell My Friend - Rainbows - End Of The Road. If that’s not a telltale sign of knowing your time is soon to be up I don’t know what is. The fact that the police never could figure out whether his death via drowning was an accident or on purpose, is a moot point when you consider that a simple listen to this record would point towards it being his choice. This man loved being in the water so it’s actually a rather fitting way for him to go.

If anything, California is a seductive Medusa: it can take a man just looking for a simple life and spin a web of destruction through him until a mere shell is left. Those who end up here often just end up victims because it’s almost too easy a lifestyle, there’s not enough struggling and it’s too laid back an attitude. It’s too easy to just "mellow out, man" and "party dude", those two things are nice to do on vacation but being on vacation one's entire life? Only a select few are cut out for that and can handle it. All Dennis Wilson wanted to do was surf and have a good time, the politics and success of his band were what did him in the end. Dennis Wilson died on December 28 of 1983. On the day of his death, he was quoted as saying "I'm lonesome. I'm lonesome all the time." Possibly quoting Roy Orbison’s “Blue Bayou,” but maybe not.

Pete Lynch makes movies, blogs, and ebays.