I Am Brian Wilson

THE EXTRAORDINARY, HEARTFELT MEMOIR OF THE LATE MUSICAL GENIUS

My life has been written about over and over again, and thats mostly okay with me. Other people can talk about my life. Sometimes theyll get it right and sometimes theyll get it wrong. For me, when I think back across my own life, there are so many things that are painful. Sometimes I dont like discussing them. Sometimes I dont even like remembering them. But as I get older, the shape of that pain has changed. Sometimes memories come back to me when I least expect them. Maybe thats the only way it works when youve lived the life Ive lived: starting a band with my brothers that was managed by my father, watching my father become difficult and then impossible, watching myself become difficult and then impossible, watching women I loved come and go, watching children come into the world, watching my brothers get older, watching them pass out of the world.

Some of those things shaped me. Others scarred me.... Ive had a whole lifetime to take them in. Now I have a whole book to put them out there.

Excerpt from I Am Brian Wilson