In a recently posted interview with Huffpost‘s Ricky Camilleri, the great Brian Wilson was asked what the boiled-down message of Love & Mercy might be. The 72 year-old genius could have said this or that, but he settled upon “don’t take drugs…drugs aren’t good for you.” Which is generally true, but not, I would argue, in the context of the convulsive social changes of the ’60s. In 1976 a 34 year-old Wilson (who, it has to be said, was a little more mentally spry back then) was asked about psychedelic drugs during an interview with Mike Douglas, and he said that “a lot of hippies said the great messiah was supposed to return in the ’60s, but it came in the form of drugs…I agree there’s a certain amount to be said for that.”
Today’s Wilson seems to be a more or less happy man, seemingly settled and clear of mind, and I’m not saying that his answer to the “message” question was wrong. I myself wouldn’t touch any drug with a ten-foot pole these days. But his Mike Douglas Show viewpoint was a little closer to the truth.
Hallucinogens — Wilson wasn’t talking about anything but LSD, mescaline, peyote, mushrooms — changed everything in this country, specifically during a six- or seven-year period from the mid ’60s to early ’70s. Hallucinogens suddenly made traditional Christian beliefs seem primitive and old-hat, ignited interest in Eastern mysticism and transcendental meditation, and brought about “The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening,” as Tom Wolfe famously called it.