By the late ’60s, Dennis Wilson started contributing more to the Beach Boys‘ catalog with his first batch of songs featured on the band’s 1968 album Friends. Wilson’s contributions continued on through 20/20 (1969); Sunflower (1970); Carl and the Passions – “So Tough” (1972); Holland (1973); and L.A. (Light Album) from 1979.
Before his death in 1983 at age 39, Wilson amassed a collection of songs forever set in the Beach Boys archive, along with a brief solo career spanning his 1977 debut album Pacific Ocean Blue—his only solo release within his lifetime—and another line of his songs, released on his posthumous unfinished album Bambu in 2017.
While Wilson often co-wrote songs with the band, Steve Kalinich, Gregg Jakobson, and others during this period, there were songs he also wrote on his own. Here’s a look at four songs solely credited to Dennis Wilson.
[RELATED: The Beach Boys Album Dennis Wilson Called Wished Would “Self-Destruct”]
1. “Never Learn Not to Love” (1969)
Written by Dennis Wilson; original lyrics by Charles Manson
In 1968, Dennis Wilson first met Charles Manson and became intertwined with the cult leader, who was responsible for the death of seven people in 1969 including the actress Sharon Tate. Manson even wrote a song for the Beach Boys. Originally titled “Cease to Exist,” Manson’s lyrics centered on tensions he noticed between Dennis and his brothers Brian and Carl.
Dennis later reworked the lyrics and retitled the song “Never Learn Not to Love.” He also changed the opening cease to exist to cease to resist, which infuriated Manson, who threatened to murder the Beach Boy, according to the 2002 Ed Sanders book The Family, documenting the Manson Family, even though he had already given away his writing credit for the song in exchange for a BSA motorcycle and money. Shortly after the incident, Wilson distanced himself from Manson.
Cease to resist, come on say you love me
Give up your world, come on and be with me
I’m your kind, I’m your kind, and I see
Come on come on, ooo I love you pretty girl
My life is yours, and you can have my world
I’m your kind, I’m your kind, and I see
Never had a lesson I ever learned
I know I could never learn not to love you
Come in now closer
Come in closer closer closer
Submission is a gift given to another
Love and understanding is for one another
I’m your kind, I’m your kind, and I see
“Never Learn Not to Love” was released on the Beach Boys’ fifteenth album 20/20 in 1969. In April of 1969, the Beach Boys performed the song on The Mike Douglas Show.
On 20/20, Dennis also wrote and produced another track on his own called “Be With Me.”
2. “Carry Me Home” (1972)
Written by Dennis Wilson
In 2022, the Beach Boys released an expanded reissue of their 1972 album Carl and the Passions – “So Tough” and Holland from 1973. On Sailor – 1972 merged the two albums, along with additional live and unreleased tracks pulled from the band’s sessions, from 1971 through 1993. The deluxe box set edition features 80 previously unreleased songs, including a track Dennis originally wrote and recorded during the Holland sessions, “Carry Me Home.”
On the solemn song, Wilson shares vocals with Blondie Chaplin, backed by vivid piano, pedal steel, and the Beach Boys’ soothing harmonies. Wilson’s story follows a man pleading to go back home and not die. Wilson specifically wrote the song about a soldier dying in the Vietnam War, which is delivered in his moving lyrics—I don’t wanna die / Carry me home.
Carry me home
To my love
Carry me home
To my home
The rain’s fallin’ down on me
The wind is blowin’ cold
My eyes gettin’ tired
I guess I won’t grow old
I don’t wanna die
Carry me home
Sweet, sweet home
Don’t wanna die this way
In this cold
Carry me home
Sweet, sweet home
The track was bootlegged for many years and became a fan favorite before its release in 2022. “It’s eerie listening back to this song after all these years,” said Chaplin of Wilson’s song in a 2022 interview. “It’s how Dennis felt at the time. I see him struggling with his own worries. The voice is really sensitive, and you can feel the emotional pain.” He continues, “War on the battlefield and inside, it’s always very combustible inside. He was the real surfer, rowdy and sweet.”
3. “Farewell My Friend” (1977)
Written by Dennis Wilson
In 1977 Wilson released his only album, Pacific Ocean Blue, featuring songs he co-wrote with a group of writers, including close friend and Beach Boys’ songwriting partner Gregg Jakobson, along with Mike Love and brother Carl Wilson. The album features the singles “You and I,” about Wilson’s ex-wife Karen Lamm-Wilson (also listed as a co-writer), and “River Song,” which was co-written with Carl.
Wilson wrote another song solo, “Farewell My Friend,” which he penned for brother Carl’s father-in-law, who became a dear friend.
“My best friend died in my arms, and I came to the studio,” said Dennis of the song in a 1977 interview with Beach Boys historian David Leaf. “I knew that he loved the Hawaiian Islands; the song just happened, sort of a happy farewell. It’s written for Otto Hinsche, Carl’s father-in-law. I carry a picture of him everywhere. When my father died, Pops [Mr. Hinsche] saved my life in a way.”
Farewell my friend
My beautiful friend
Farewell
You take the high road
And I’ll take the low road
And we’ll meet again
Farewell my friend
I love you
In a funny way
You take the high road
I’ll take the low road
And we will meet again
Farewell my friend
[RELATED: 3 Eternal Songs by The Beach Boys that Have Stood the Test of Time]
“After Dennis died, people used to ask me all the time what I thought about his solo record, ‘Pacific Ocean Blue,'” wrote Brian Wilson in his 2016 memoir I Am Brian Wilson. “I have said that I never heard it, that I won’t listen to it, that it’s too many sad memories and too much for me. That’s sort of true, but not really. I know the music on it. I was around for much of the time in the mid-’70s when Dennis was cutting the record.”
Brian continued, “I loved what he was doing. My favorite song that he ever made was ‘You and I’ – I love that cut. But I haven’t ever put the record on and listened through it the way I have with other records or the way that other people have with that record.”
4. “Album Tag Song” (Recorded 1977-1979; Released in 2017)
Written by Dennis Wilson
In 2017, Bambu, the second album Dennis never completed, was released. The collection of previously unreleased songs was mostly co-written with Gregg Jakobson and Carli Muñoz and also features three songs that Dennis wrote solo, including “Common,” and the closing “Piano Variations on Thoughts of You,” two piano-led instrumentals, along with “Album Tag Song,” which featured a few of Wilson’s unfinished lyrics.
I feel in love with you
I feel in love with you
Hard time, in your arms, they’re gone
In the past
Good times ahead in life
Photo: Dezo Hoffman/Shutterstock
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