John Cusack pays tribute to Brian Wilson: “He really did give me access into his life”

John Cusack has paid tribute to Brian Wilson, following the “genius” artist’s death earlier this week.

Wilson’s passing was confirmed by his family on Wednesday (June 11). He was 82 years old. “We are at a loss for words right now,” the statement read.

Speaking to Rolling Stone, Cusack – who portrayed the Beach Boys icon in the 2014 biopic, Love & Mercy – reflected on gaining “extraordinary access into his life and past” in preparation for the role.

He remembered how the pair would go for dinner together and spend time in Wilson’s music room. Cusack and Wilson stayed in contact in the years that followed, and would send each other Christmas cards.

“He was just extraordinary, like otherworldly,” Cusack said.

“He really did give me access into his life, he and Melinda [Ledbetter, Wilson’s wife and manager], so I could kind of learn and find out what it was like for him and how he lived. They were very generous about it.”

The actor hailed Wilson as an “extraordinary guy” who was also “very complex”, adding: “He just came across as a very eccentric, big-hearted person.”

Cusack then spoke about the pop music pioneer’s lifelong battle with mental illness, saying Wilson “wanted the movie to get it right” and include the more “troubled” parts of his life in Love & Mercy.

“He wanted all the darkness exposed because he thought that would help take away the stigma of mental illness away from others, that it could help other people,” Cusack remembered.

“He was very, very open and honest about everything that he went through.”
Recalling a “breakdown scene” in the biopic, Cusack revealed that Wilson “just showed up” on set five minutes before filming started.

“Now, that day, I chose to wear [a Hawaiian shirt] because Brian, he wore these kind of Hawaiian shirt kind of things,” Cusack said. “There’s a picture of me: I’m wearing, like, kind of a red one; he comes with his hair slicked back, wearing a different color Hawaiian shirt.

“He waltzed in, just like sprinkled fucking magic dust on us and we rolled the camera.” GE added: “When we finished the film, he took a music pad, wrote up lyrics to [1988’s] ‘Love And Mercy’ and Melinda was like, ‘Well, he’d never done that before’.”

According to Cusack, Wilson and Ledbetter “really liked” how Love & Mercy turned out.

“It was their life and their experience and they were so generous with me,” he shared. “I wanted them to feel like we had done them right, you know, I’d done him right. It was important to me we feel that they knew that we gave it our all.

“I was just so inspired by his kind of genius, he’s just very inspiring. I felt there was an audience of two for me that I really cared about, and that was Brian and Melinda.”

He explained: “It’s such an honour to immerse yourself in his world, I guess, somehow, and try to do him right. It felt meaningful, because I knew it was a story that we had to get right for the for the legacy of the music and the impact it had on the culture.

“What he was able to give the world was seismic, he broke it all open for everybody else. It gives you chills when you think about what he did.”

Cusack and Wilson performed together at the Love & Mercy wrap party. In 2016, the actor joined the musician on stage at Pitchfork Festival to perform a joint rendition of ‘Sloop John B’.

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The surviving members of The Beach Boys paid their respects to Wilson in a joint message, saying that he “was the soul of our sound”. His cousin and former bandmate Mike Love said “the world lost a genius”, with Al Jardine writing: “I will always feel blessed that you were in our lives for as long as you were.”

Other tributes have come from the likes of Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr, Ronnie Wood, Nancy Sinatra, Sting, and many more from the music world and beyond.

In the wake of Wilson’s death, fans have been sharing footage of his final-ever live performance from 2022.

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