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He seems detached from the world around him. Voices from the crowd call his name, but Brian doesn't look up. He is a large man with broad shoulders, a prominent belly, and a weathered face that is neither friendly nor hostile, but almost entirely impassive. Brian Wilson has appeared, steered gently by his wife and a few friends to his seat near the front of the stage. Then, from off in the corner closest to the VIP section, the crowd starts to cheer. Perhaps this is why the atmosphere is so hushed, the mood such a strange mix of ebullience and melancholy. Their presence here today pays tribute both to the younger musicians pictured on their chests and the younger fans they were when they plunked down the five or ten or fifteen bucks at the merch stand and pulled the shirts over their heads. Many wear souvenir T-shirts from long-ago concerts and albums, the faces on them young and sweet, redolent of another time. Fans, mostly, some from as far away as Australia. A row of journalists - cameras, microphones, notebooks, dangling credentials - comes next, and behind them stands a thick crowd of onlookers. Several rows of chairs line the front of the stage, many of them filled with the wives, ex-wives, widows, children, friends, and compatriots of the Wilsons and their bandmates. That's Al Jolson singing, his voice echoing from the speakers on the stage that has been set up near the hidden monument.

Read the excerpt from Peter Ames Carlin's book below then, watch Anthony Mason's interview with Brian Wilson on CBS' "Sunday Morning" July 19. In Peter Ames Carlin's 2006 biography, "Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson" (Rodale), the singer-songwriter who wrote "Surfin' Safari," "Surfin' U.S.A.," "Catch a Wave," "Fun, Fun, Fun," and "I Get Around" (all before he'd turned 22) was both a brilliant star of American music and a mystery of pop culture, whose strange story began long before Hawthorne, Calif., was put on the map as the birthplace of the Beach Boys sound. Yet the Wilson family history of abuse, jealousy and mental illness was the polar opposite of the sunny idylls about which they sang. Brothers Brian, Carl and Dennis Wilson, joined by their cousin, Mike Love, and friend Al Jardine, burst from their Los Angeles suburb with songs of surf, sun and girls that became milestones of rock 'n' roll. The music of The Beach Boys captured America in the '60s like no other band.