A Beach Boy’s Quest for Love Beyond the Spotlight
“I’d give everything I’ve ever done to know that my dad loved me.”
The man who said those words to me had just won a Grammy award.
For several decades of his life, musicians who enjoyed worshipful status in both pop and classical worlds would gush at the mention of this man’s name, groping for words to adequately express how much they “got it”: Brian Wilson was a musical genius.
It was almost as if the final summit atop the pop music celebrity mountain was for a journalist to ask a rock star, “Tell me your thoughts about Brian Wilson…” The soundbite clips of rock royalty from every decade waxing eloquent/nostalgic/awestruck over the Wilson canon are legion.
And yet, amidst one of the better seasons of his storied career, Brian quietly said to me, “I’d give everything I’ve ever done to know that my dad loved me.” It was my honor to talk with him about the love of our Heavenly Father.
In what became equal parts “genuflecting fans” and “pastoral visits,” my wife and I had the privilege of visiting with Brian Wilson on numerous occasions. The door into Brian’s presence had been opened for us by one of the closest friends I ever had, the late Jeffrey Foskett.
For Beach Boy aficionados, Foskett was a well-known name. Foskett’s soaring falsetto had become the vocal “heir apparent” to Brian’s signature sound, onstage and in the studio. Foskett and I shared more than a consuming love of music; We were both Christian believers in Jesus, and as such, we would often pray for Brian. We prayed throughout the early 90s for Brian to return to performing and recording, and for God to minister healing in his life through this. These prayers were answered.
Brian respected Jeffrey as a musician and friend, and Foskett was a trusted figure by the various factions within the Beach Boys’ camps. And from the mid-1980s until succumbing to cancer in 2023, friendship with Jeff afforded me numerous interactions with the Beach Boys and their extended family.
“Don’t Worry Baby” was the first Beach Boys song I ever heard. The song was considered the “B” side of the single, “I Get Around.” The driving beat of “I Get Around” provided a two-minute glimpse of teen life, circa 1964. Close your eyes while “I Get Around” plays, and you’re at Foster’s Freeze (hamburger stand) on Hawthorne Boulevard: You can almost smell the aromas of cheeseburgers melting on the grille, while “burnouts” melt clutch plates in the parking lot.
Separated by one-sixteenth of an inch of black vinyl, “Don’t Worry Baby” and “I Get Around” are, poetically, a universe apart. It is a marvel that both songs could have come from the same composer (Brian Wilson), all within the space of a week. One year after these recordings, Brian would be composing “Pet Sounds,”one of the most celebrated albums ever.
Thanks to Jeff Foskett, I met Brian enough times that my star-struckness diminished sufficiently for actual conversation to almost take place. “Tell me again how you met Jeff,” Brian would ask. I explained that I had tried for years to meet the Beach Boys. “When you guys would come to North Carolina,” I offered, “I would try to get backstage by telling the security guards I was a relative, and that you all were expecting me.”
“That didn’t work, did it?” Brian laughed. But he nodded, knowingly, when I told him that I prayed and asked God to help me meet the Beach Boys. I shared my discovery of Psalm 37:4, which says, “Commit your way to the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”
Brian said, “Tell me which verse that is, again?” I explained that the “desire of my heart” was to talk with him about Jesus, and I had asked God to open a door for this to happen.
From 2001 until 2012, I was able to talk with Brian many times about the Gospel and pray with him. In 2005, Brian was being lauded around the world for triumphantly completing an album which had lain unfinished for 37 years. When Brian’s Smiletour came to Colorado (where my wife and I were living), Jeffrey arranged for me to interview Brian for a Christian magazine I wrote for at that time.
Like his brother, Carl (with whom I prayed, four months before his death from cancer in 1998), Brian reaffirmed the faith of his upbringing. The love of Jesus Christ spoke to him in ways that the world’s accolades could never do — like all of us, Brian Wilson craved the unconditional love that comes only from God.
It has been said that all great art — beauty that lifts the human soul — brings glory to God. I have this image in my mind of some angels and saints in heaven, yesterday, hearing, “The new choir director is here.”
Brian’s “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” contains the words, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could wake up in the kind of world where we belong?” Stunningly beautiful, this two and a half minute master-class in music theory speaks to the longings young lovers have felt since time immemorial.
But to paraphrase that lyric from “Pet Sounds’”opening track, I believe June 11, 2025, was the day Brian did “wake up, in the kind of world where he belonged”: Heaven.
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Dr. Alex McFarland is a youth, religion and culture expert, a national talk show host and speaker, educator, and author of 20 books. McFarland directs Biblical Worldview and apologetics for Charis Bible College in Woodland Park, CO. Via the American Family Radio Network, Alex is heard live on Exploring the Word, airing daily on nearly 200 radio stations across the U.S. “The Alex McFarland Show” airs weekly on NRBTV, providing Biblically faithful TV and discussion on current events affecting our nation.
