Music: New Vibrations

Brian's back," the publicists say every time the famously elusive Brian Wilson surfaces with a new project. Has the phrase become the pop-cultural version of an idle threat? Of course, it's hard for anyone to live up to his own legend, and Brian Wilson is in the unusual position of having to cope with two. As the composer and producer for the Beach Boys, he is responsible for some of the most ethereal and sophisticated pop of the classic-rock era, as well as some of its most purely joyful and (we must be honest) embarrassingly goofy. A recent four-CD boxed set annotated his masterpiece, the Beach Boys' 1966 album Pet Sounds, with countless versions of the original 13 tracks as well as just-let-the-tape-roll session outtakes: a monument both to the richness of Wilson's music and, by virtue of the fact that someone thought this was a commercial project, to the hard devotion that music still inspires.

Unfortunately, Wilson's parallel legacy is as one of the most troubled and eccentric rock stars of his era--which, given the profession and the era, is saying something. It was only a few years ago that he seemed to have finally emerged from nearly a quarter-century's worth of debilitating mental illness. (He refused to get out of bed for long stretches of the late '60s and '70s, and in the '80s and early '90s he put his emotional and professional life in the 24-hour-a-day care of a man who was not, perhaps, the most scrupulous psychiatrist in the world.) Now 56, Wilson has married (his second time around) and adopted two daughters (he also has two daughters from his first marriage, Wendy and Carnie, who were once part of the group Wilson Phillips). He appears to have achieved the kind of stable, supportive, involved family life that long eluded him.

Live performance is another hurdle, a challenge broached by his first-ever solo-concert tour, now under way. Ever since 1965--when Wilson, then an exhausted 22-year-old, gave up touring with the Beach Boys to devote himself to writing and producing the group's albums--he has been known to suffer crippling bouts of stage fright. Just last summer, at a guest appearance with Jimmy Buffet, he had to be coaxed into not bolting from the stage. "When [the idea of a tour] was first suggested to me," says a member of his current backup band, "I wondered if Brian could even get through a 20-minute set, let alone a 40-minute set, let alone two 40-minute sets." Nevertheless, in the days leading up to the tour, the mood among Wilson's colleagues, handlers and friends seems to be one of nervous optimism, a collective Here goes nothing.