Brian Wilson's L.A. Love Letter

A few days after his 66th birthday, Brian Wilson cruises along Mulholland Drive in his black Mercedes coupe, listening to an oldies station and thinking about global warming. There's a heat wave in L.A., with temperatures in the high 90s and wildfires burning up the coast. "It's not supposed to be this hot in June," Wilson mutters. Hot wind blows through the car's open windows, and torn-up receipts fly around the floor. "What if it gets to be 130 degrees in July? Would you consider that to be a disaster? I'd say that's a disaster." He sighs deeply. "It could be the end of L.A. — the end of life. This could be it! Oh, my God, it's terrible."

If Wilson is worried about climate change, you wouldn't know it from listening to his new album, That Lucky Old Sun, a musical love letter to his native Los Angeles. The place he describes is not the smog-and-traffic-choked Southern California of 2008, but a paradise of sun goddesses, open highways and coyotes howling in the hills. "I wanted to capture the mood of L.A., the way I like to think of it," he says. Songs like "Forever She'll Be My Surfer Girl," backed by lush vocal harmonies and orchestral pop arrangements, revisit his own Sixties hits with the Beach Boys. Others, such as the hymnlike "Southern California," imagine what life might be like if things had turned out differently — if his brothers, fellow Beach Boys Dennis and Carl, were still alive and if his own life hadn't collapsed into decades of illness and isolation.

Two of the best songs, "Can't Wait Too Long" and "Oxygen to the Brain," offer clues about Wilson's improved state of mind today: "Let yourself float/Don't carry that weight," he sings in "Oxygen," in a voice that's stronger than it has sounded in 30 years. "Never destroy when you can create." Because for all the album's nostalgia, That Lucky Old Sun is also about Wilson coming to terms with his own life now — and trying to rediscover his muse before it's too late. "It seems like 'God, I gotta get going before I die,' " Wilson says over breakfast at his favorite deli. "Thinking about not being around much longer makes me depressed."

Wilson is dressed in black Puma jogging pants and a crisp Hawaiian shirt, with a Cartier bracelet gleaming on his wrist. His face is tan, and he says he's in great shape. "I walk five miles a day," he says. "I weigh in at about 218, and I just had my 66th birthday. I don't look it, but I had it."

Wilson has made great personal strides from a decade ago, when performing terrified him and he was ambivalent about making new music. People close to Wilson say the biggest change came in 2004, after he completed his masterwork, Smile — the legendary album he abandoned in 1967. "It was like removing a cancerous growth from his soul," says Scott Bennett, who's played with Wilson since 1998 and co-wrote much of That Lucky Old Sun.

"He's much more confident," adds Jeffrey Foskett, the leader of Wilson's band and a friend since the mid-1970s. "I think what really changed it is the standing ovation he got after performing Smile at Royal Festival Hall [in London in 2004]. That's where he said, 'Wow, they really do like it.' I think he finally realized people really love him."