God Only Knows What We'd Be Without His Music, RIP Brian Wilson

‘The joy shot out of his voice’: Ray Davies, Graham Nash and others on Brian Wilson’s songwriting genius

With the innocence of a child and the vision of a god, his craft was astonishing. From Jessica Pratt to Jim James and ​Biffy Clyro’s Simon Neil, top musicians explain why he was like no other

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David Gray, singer-songwriter
For all the sophistication that everyone talks about, Brian never loses the thread of the song: the emotion. They have this childlike quality. These days we’d probably say he’s on the spectrum – there’s a sort of Asperger’s type innocence. He makes the lyrics and the melody speak. It’s so welcoming and without edge; it’s not part of a cynical adult world.

I knew some of the big songs – Good Vibrations and so on – but it wasn’t until a mate put me on to Pet Sounds that the penny really dropped. What he was doing in the studio is mind-boggling given the limited technology that he had at his disposal. His ear was just stellar, so he was basically remixing the songs while he was making them. He gives you so many different textures and could shape chord structures in very sophisticated, scholarly, almost classical ways, yet you never lose the feeling. The effortless way that something like God Only Knows unfolds is remarkable to me: it’s just straight from the heart and still sounds so fresh and joyful.

I can’t think of another band that created a place as vividly as the Beach Boys. It’s like they asked for our idea of California – sunshine, convertibles, milkshakes, movies – and brought it to us. But Brian didn’t surf; he wasn’t photogenic. He didn’t have the vibe, the looks … he was very awkward and looked like someone living in another world. And so how he articulated the world around him sounded otherworldly.

When I saw him at the Royal Festival Hall with the Wondermints as his band, doing Pet Sounds for the first time, he was a presence on stage, like Jesus with his disciples. They sounded so beautiful, like Gershwin or something. It was so unusual to hear oboes and clarinets in pop, but it wasn’t a novelty. They never felt stuck on; they were essential.

He would compose whole songs in his head and when he heard something, he didn’t miss. One of my particular favourites from Pet Sounds is Caroline, No, which starts with a bit of percussion that’s not even a wood block: he’d imagine these weird sounds and try everything possible to bring them to reality. And then all the noises at the end: the train, the barking dogs. My dog barks back at it when it plays.

You can hear him in everything from Pink Floyd to Radiohead to something like The Look of Love by ABC, which is definitely derived from Brian’s amazing mind. He was famously deaf in one ear, and Bob Dylan said they should put the other ear in the Smithsonian.