Brian Wilson, June 20, 1942 – June 11, 2025. RIP.

A FreeForAll special. If you’ve never experienced the Beach Boys, I urge you to ckemout. The Beach Boys Today! and Pet Sounds are worth your time. So is the epic greatest hits collection, Endless Summer. Love and mercy to you and your friends tonight.

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We feel the best songs before we hear them. Music has a sixth sense all its own, that uses all the other senses to create a kind of unstoppable magic that moves us, speaks to us and shows us the way to our deepest joys and our most impenetrable sadnesses.

We’ve heard lots of songs in our lives. How many have we felt?

I listen to Jim Croce, I see a man on a stool with a guitar and his words, earnest and sad. As if he knew he wouldn’t be around long enough to describe all the love and wisdom he wanted his life to witness.

Hey, tomorrow. Where are ya goin’? Do ya have some room for me?

I felt Van Morrison before I heard him. In the garden, wet with rain, seeking some impossibly fragile love, hoping it might last.

No guru, no method, no teacher
Just you and I and nature in the garden

And there was Brian Wilson. Music felt like Brian Wilson’s heart. He died Wednesday at 82. It seemed an impossible thing. Because what made the Beach Boy so alive also was destined to keep him that way. That was the hope, anyway. Brian would be eternal, wishing us all love and mercy and sittin’ on top of the world.

I hear Surfer Girl, but not before I see it. It looks like a girl I adored in 6th grade. She wore a soft sweater, her hair had been curled for the moment, she smelled like spring. Do you love me, surfer girl?

We danced our way across the basement of Mark Wooldridge’s house.

That was Brian Wilson.

If everybody had an ocean. . . wouldn’t it be nice?

He wrote an album so great, it inspired Paul McCartney to do one that was better. We could argue for days over which set was more brilliant. Sgt. Pepper was or was not better than Pet Sounds. We could never argue the genius of the two men mostly responsible for each.

(Sgt. Pepper is brilliant. Pet Sounds is timeless. I’ll take Pet Sounds.)

Brian was highly responsible for the mythology that was California. He grew up in post-World War II suburban Los Angeles, when America was a middle-class success, and sunny California its golden poster child. Fun, fun, fun.

We East Coasters shivered through February watching Frankie and Annette play Bingo on the beach. (Lookitup, kids). Brian, Carl, Dennis, Mike and Al provided the soundtrack to our imaginations. We wished all girls could be California girls. It didn’t matter that we couldn’t find California on a map.

Before Brian’s demons found him and held him hostage, before Dr. Eugene Landy messed with his mind — before Brian became part of the turned-on, tuned-out masses — he put a feeling to what every teenager in the history of teenagers would experience at one time or another.

Now it's dark and I'm alone
But I won't be afraid

In my room

Brian was alive in all ways. It makes his physical passing so hard to grasp.

I saw him perform a few years ago in Dayton, at the Rose Music Center. The band, fronted by Al Jardine, did some of the standards. As much as I love Brian, I could live without hearing Little Deuce Coupe again. I didn’t go to the concert for that. I went because the band was going to play Pet Sounds in its entirety. And Brian would be there for all of it, playing piano.

I have no idea what Brian was feeling as the Beach Boys broke into “Wouldn’t It Be Nice’’ the set’s opening tune. Or if it did his heart good to close the album with the wistful ‘‘Caroline, No.’’

Truthfully, Brian seemed only marginally with us, as if what he was feeling and what he was playing were disconnected. And then the band did Caroline, No. Brian seemed to summon something from within.

It's so sad to watch a sweet thing die
Oh, Caroline, why?

Brian hit the high notes like 1964. He thrust back his head. His eyes were closed. It was a moment I’d come to feel and see.

I hope he felt the same.

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Here’s Caroline, and the perfectly mournful train whistle that closes the album. Love and mercy, Brian Wilson.

Photos by Gary Landers/AP, Jamie Squire/Getty Images, David Eulitt/Getty Images, mfto/Getty Images

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Welcome once again to FreeForAll Wednesday, when Head Mobster and Chief Executive John Thinwallet Esq. gives you the world of sports and other stuff for exactly nothing. If you like it here in the TML Lounge, it’ll cost you a mere $8/month. If you can’t live without it (understandable) it’s $80 a year.

Regardless, enjoy and chime in. There are no wrong opinions here.

“Y'all just want to win an argument instead of winning more games." — Bengals rookie Shemar Stewart

You don’t have to live in a story your whole life to understand its plot. The legacy of Bengaldom is extensive and impressive, but mostly it’s durable. It’s very easy to recognize, yet still hard to fathom. Shemar Stewart shouldn’t be going public with his grievances. That doesn’t mean he’s wrong about the Bengals.

I wouldn’t describe them as cheap. The Family has laid king’s ransoms at the feet of Burrow, Chase and Higgins and others before them. So-called skill players get theirs in Bengaldom, if they’re stars. Strictly speaking, the Men might be frugal. They’re not cheap.

I wouldn’t say they aren’t committed to winning. Mike Brown wants a trophy. It’s a lukewarm, nine-toes-in want. It’s not a need. Everyone wants to retire to drinking parasol drinks on a beach in Tahiti. Not everyone will do what it takes to feel the sand between their toes.

The distance between Want and Need is a mile wide. The Family has never shown an inclination to complete that trip. It’s like the person who reads all the cruise-ship brochures but never writes the check.

So. If The Fam isn’t cheap and truly wants to win, what’s the problem?

It’s the way they define winning. And it is exactly the way Stewart defined it.

Lawyering carries the day. Leverage wins the war. The cost of this sort of winning is secondary to the winning itself. Off-field Ws hold more weight. That is the Bengaldom legacy. That is the Bengaldom Way.

What is it in the Family DNA that makes this behavior habitual? Why is winning the negotiation always more important than winning the championship?

I once wrote that the team logo should not be tiger stripes, but rather an upraised palm. Now I’m thinking it oughta be the scales of justice, superimposed with a dollar sign.

I don’t like what Stewart said. So far, his words as a Bengal suggest he’s more interested in talking a good game than in playing one. And there is the matter of 4.5 sacks over a college career. Stewart has some proving to do.

He’s not wrong about this one, though.

"I've been doing this for most of my whole life, then all of a sudden it's gone over something very simple to fix. I'm 100% right, so it should be a no-brainer,’’ he said Monday.

The hang-up, evidently, is about voiding guarantees should Stewart suffer significant injury. The Bengals want to protect themselves. That’s understandable. What’s not understandable is why they chose this stance at this time.

Stewart’s point is that the team didn’t include that language in the rookie contracts of Amarius Mims and Myles Murphy, the team’s most recent #1 picks. Why they decided it was vital to Stewart’s contract is a mystery best left to accountants and shrinks.

As stated previously in This Space, all this jewelry-rattling gives me a four-Advil pain in the head. But it also speaks directly to what the Cincinnati Bengals have always been about. From tiny locker-room towels to the stadium shakedown to Carson Palmer to Shemar Stewart.

From Paul Brown, the Great Man himself, taking issue with the 20-inch TV bolted to the wall of the medieval locker room at spartan Spinney Field. “TV never helped anyone win a football game,’’ PB said to me, during our initial meeting in the spring of 1988.

Correct. But if it’s trivial, why make it significant?

This is a team that has a quarterback who gives it the chance to do everything. Only a handful of teams can say that. Fewer still live up to the promise. The Bengals could be among them. Why do they mess with that for the sake of winning more negotiations?

If you’re going to start the job, finish the job. Why sign Higgins and Chase (and Gesicki) if you’re not going to extend Trey Hendrickson?

It’s just weird.

Now, then. . .

WHEN YOUR PAYROLL and roster mean your margin of error is slight, you have to play Right Way baseball if you expect to be more than a Deadline seller. Maybe no team in the National League is better evidence of that than the Reds.

They won in Cleveland last night because Andrew Abbott was scarily brilliant, but more, they won because their three outfielders flashed big gloves. Without the larceny of Fraley, Friedl and Benson, the Club doesn’t win, 1-0.

TJ Friedl is routinely excellent in CF. Jake Fraley has his moments. Will Benson ain’t Will Mays. But each kept doubles from happening, and that was the difference.

HOMETOWNS. . . If you’re not native to where you live, can it still be considered your hometown?

Loveland

I’ve lived in the Republic for 37 years. Loveland specifically for 34 of them. I lived in Bethesda, MD, for four years. I still see B-town as my hometown. Should I?

Regardless, Loveland is a fine alternative. Its downtown is a local gem, worthy of mention among some of Ohio’s best small towns. If I lived elsewhere in the Tristate, Loveland would be a destination day trip.

On Monday night, I met my old friend Stacy Mitchhart at Bishop’s Quarter, a funky restaurant bar with three levels, right in the heart of Loveland. We sat in plush couches on a patio out back. We couldn’t have done better, ambience-wise, if Stacy and I had been sitting on the back porch of my house.

On Tuesday morning, my wife and I had breakfast outside at Paxton’s Grill, then walked a couple miles north on the bike trail. Soon enough, I’ll visit Plaid Room Records for a vinyl fix or Ramsey’s for a beer on the 2nd-floor deck.

If I want a local craft beer, Narrow Path Brewing is right there on the trail. And so on. What Loveland has done with its downtown in the past decade or so in nothing short of fantastic. It could be a model for other little towns to emulate.

Narrow Path

So. . .

Any of youse live in small places that fit that description? Milford is right there with Loveland. I like Terrace Park some, and Mariemont more, but they don’t have as much going on. Oakley is great, but a little too urban for me.

Pleasant Ridge? Wyoming, Glendale?

My list is East Side-centric. Extend my world, Mobsters. College Hill has Brink Brewing, fantastic. NKY? Indiana? Lemme know. If I were to make a day-trip within a 50-mile radius of downtown, where might I go?

Don’t include Yellow Springs, Augusta, Lawrenceburg or Dayton. Been there, done that.

I’D INCLUDE A STICK TO SPORTS topic, but I’ve run out of ways to describe the daily dangerous nonsense Trump is inflicting on our country. Marines on the streets of LA? A birthday parade for him in DC, costing taxpayers upwards of $100 mil, complete with. . .tanks?

How did I miss the day our country became China?

Making America great again Tuesday in Los Angeles (Getty)

Will we wake up one morning and discover that all we loved and believed made us unique has vanished? What on earth is happening to us, and why aren’t we doing anything to stop it?

By now it’s not even debatable, the damage Trump is doing to our institutions and our way of life. And here we sit.

TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . I could listen to Al Green all day. But if I only have 3 minutes, I’ll listen to this one. Makes me happy, sha-la-la.

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