Brian Wilson & Van Dyke Parks – Sail On Sailor

The beauty and impact of this superb and evocative song belies its tortuous antecedents. Brian Wilson had been musically inactive for nearly 5 years, a victim of a nervous breakdown brought about by a calamitous cocktail of anxiety and drug abuse. The Beach Boys continued to fill the gap, writing and producing as best they could, but none had the talent and vision of their stricken producer. The Beach Boys delivered an album to their new record label Warner Brothers in 1972, but the executives couldn’t see a hit single and this precipitated a crisis as to the release of the album. As fate would have it, Van Dyke Parks was working at Warner as an artist on the pittance of a $350 a week retainer and when he heard of the issue he mentioned a tune he and Brian had worked on during the Smile sessions called Sail On Sailor…….

You can read more about this song and 32 more! This is an excerpt from Michael J Roberts’ excellent eBook “33 Great Songs 33 Great Songwriters”

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