With that, life itself becomes the all-purpose excuse for lapses in artistry. Like the media-ready high school students who fill our screens with pithy sound bites every time TV cameras arrive at the scene of a shooting, the glossed-over simplification of "Behind the Music" is now a blueprint for popular redemption. Brian Wilson's story is custom-made for cable catharsis -- the bloated, bedridden burnout who sacrificed his soul to create his teenage symphonies to God and became a serial victim of drug-fueled psychosis, charlatans and thieves, all of it traceable to the spiteful dad-manager who deafened his ear, undercut his confidence and then sold off his songs. But a sad story with a happy ending hardly mirrors the arc of Wilson's work.

Like many of his surviving contemporaries, Wilson's 40-year career yielded timeless work only in its first decade. Even at top form, crafting the songs that made the Beach Boys "America's Band," he wasn't infallible. And then came the maudlin, weird and frequently embarrassing results of mental, physical and emotional stress. (It should be acknowledged, however, that there actually are people who play "The Beach Boys Love You," the 1977 album that contains Wilson's ridiculous ode to Johnny Carson, for enjoyment.) His sporadic releases over the past 20 years were only imitations of what we knew he could do, and the tribute concert reflected that, proffering only two songs written since the early '70: the sincere but ungainly memorial "Lay Down Burden" and the concert's coda, a solo rendition of 1988's almost-great "Love and Mercy."

Not to drown in semantics, but genius can't be such a fleeting gift. Do we now need to edit and excuse to safely recognize the demeaned idols of our time? J.D. Salinger, Joseph Mitchell and Ralph Ellison also peaked early, but they just stopped cold and so fixed their legends in ice. People never do that in the eternal world of pop music, not unless they lose their minds or their lives. With its hacks, has-beens and one-hit wonders, rock 'n' roll happily consigns the no longer creative to recycle past glories on the oldies circuit, and can only forgive the self-deluded efforts of the once great so long as they don't stop playing their hits. Pete Townshend of the currently reunited Who -- which recorded its superfluous final album in 1982 and has been making rumblings about doing another -- wrote earlier this year, "I have not discovered a single 'perfect' Who song in any of my trawlings through my old stuff or recent stuff." Thank goodness for "My Generation."

In fact, it's probably better for most of the old-timers if they keep their creativity under a basket. (Not Bob Dylan and Neil Young, however -- they can keep going forever as far as I'm concerned.) Increasingly distant achievements can't keep a reputation aloft in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary. The eminence of "God Only Knows," "In My Room" and "Caroline, No" buys a lot of goodwill, but turning a blind eye to subsequent entries in the failure column only diminishes popular music's claims to enduring significance. Right now, up in Palminteri's Bronx, Chuck Knoblauch -- the Yankees' millionaire infielder who lost the ability to hit the side of a barn last year -- is being cheered every time he doesn't boot a routine play in his safer reposting to left field. The diminished expectations that now coddle Wilson have led to an equally condescending miscalculation of his past.

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Palminteri mentioned that it wasn't cool to like the Beach Boys back in the day, but he didn't explain why. Before Wilson turned inward, their wimpy idealism overshadowed the joy of their sound. Rock was the voice of anger, angst and rebellion while surf music was the quintessence of good times. (Even Wilson's adaptation of the full-throated Phil Spector production style took it from tense drama to ebullient release.) Wilson's artistic stature improved as his life fell apart; he was a surviving victim of rock 'n' roll whose body somehow outlasted his mind. In a twisted way, Brian's troubles -- which also led to darker, more revealing songs -- made his achievements more profound and went a long way to counter the awfulness of what his "Kokomo"-singing Disneyized bandmates got up to in his absence. In hindsight, it was easier to appreciate the group's records if they could be viewed as the work of a solitary demented genius battling untold forces arrayed against him. In the process, Wilson came to singly embody all that was good about the Beach Boys, from start to finish. Their work became his work, which reduced the others to tag-alongs or, worse, hindrances out to stymie his muse. Wilson indisputably had the vision, conviction and sonic imagination. He was primarily, by a large margin, responsible for both the group's existence and its importance. But he clearly didn't do it alone.

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