As Brian Wilson stated in his 1991 autobiography, Wouldn't It Be Nice, had he started his musical career in a later decade, chances are very good he'd have been Brian Wilson--solo artist and musical auteur--producing his own albums and providing all the parts (with a session musician here and there), much like Prince in the '80s. After all, Wilson primarily used session musicians in the studio to produce most of the music credited to the Beach Boys. As it was, however, Wilson was the architect behind the Beach Boys, one of America's greatest musical contributions to the world of pop and, prior to the Beatles, the most popular rock band in the world. In fact, the Beach Boys were probably the world's first real rock band; prior to their formation, most of rock's major artists were solo performers (even if they had their own bands, it was always Buddy Holly & the Crickets, Gene Vincent & the Bluecaps, Bill Haley & His Comets, etc., etc.).

Wilson was the first major rock artist to be granted full studio control--and the fact that this happened when he was still in his late teens makes the fact all that more awesome. Thanks to Mike Love's latter-day influence over the band, the Beach Boys (an oxymoron if there ever was one in the late '90s) are primarily viewed as a nostalgia act, still singing the praises of rock's greatest themes--cars, girls and surf. In that manner, it could be argued that the group invented the mythology that's come to be known as the California Dream. However, there was a time when Brian Wilson was the most creative and experimental voice in all of modern pop--an intuitive musical genius in a league with such earlier American musical legends as George Gershwin, Stephen Foster and Rodgers And Hammerstein.