Brian Wilson details good and bad vibrations in documentary premiering at Tribeca

Cranking up the Beach Boys has been a perfect way to add some fun, fun, fun to car rides for 60 years now.

It turns out it’s also a great way to make Brian Wilson open up.

The genius behind America’s Band is the subject of a new documentary, “Long Promised Road,” which debuts Tuesday at the Tribeca Festival.

Wilson, who turns 79 on June 20, has a treasure trove of classic songs and a lifetime of experiences that are equal parts dream and nightmare, but at times he can clam up during interviews.

So director Brent Wilson — no relation to Brian — shot most of his footage in car rides with Rolling Stone writer Jason Fine, a friend of Brian Wilson who has written about him since the late ‘90s, chatting with the music icon as his tunes played.

“Honestly, aside from a whole bunch of cameras in the car it was really natural because Brian and I have spent a lot of times over the years driving around L.A. and listening to music and going to eat and driving to Malibu,” Fine said in a Zoom call to promote the film.

“You know that feeling when you’re driving, there’s less pressure. Conversations can start and stop and you can listen to music. Things happen sort of naturally and you’re in that rhythm of the road.”

The film is in stark contrast to the Zoom call, which Brian Wilson was on with Fine and Brent Wilson. In the call, Brian spoke little, leaving the director and journalist to do the heavy lifting.

But in the documentary — riding in a Porsche SUV and not a Little Deuce Coupe — with his songs playing, Wilson spilled some of the details of his remarkable life. It could be painful, such as detailing how his former therapist, Eugene Landy, made him eat spaghetti off the floor, as he controlled every aspect of Wilson’s life throughout much of the ‘80s and into the ‘90s.

“I served time for nine years,” Wilson says in the film, likening Landy’s tenure to a prison sentence.

He also talks about missing his younger brothers, Dennis, who died in 1983, and Carl, who died in 1998 and whose 1971 composition serves as the documentary’s title.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Wilson can also display humor and casually mix in stories, such as the time Sly Stone dropped by his house and passed out on the couch from doing too much cocaine.

That story came out as Fine drove Wilson by the home where he lived in the ‘70s during Sly’s stop-in. Viewers also see the two visit the site of Wilson’s childhood home in Hawthorne, Calif., which since has been torn down — with a Beach Boys monument marking the site — and other places Wilson lived, worked and played.

“One of these thoughts I had for a long time is Brian has memories throughout the city, both in his songs and lyrics that he’s written, but also just in his own life and his memories,” Fine said. “So driving around L.A. with Brian, you’re aware you’re with someone who is often viewed as a kind of reclusive guy. But really, this is his town.”

Wilson has long been loved by other music-makers for his innovation. Brent Wilson used interviews with luminaries such as Elton John, Don Was, Jakob Dylan and Laura Perry of Four Non Blondes all gushing at the genius of the maestro.

“I didn’t want a lot of people,” the director said. “I wanted just a few people, a very select group of people, and I wanted a diverse group of people. The idea being that if you’re watching the film ... and you see [Venezuelan conductor and violinist] Gustavo Dudamel talk, and you see Nick Jonas talk and then you see Bruce Springsteen talk, and you go, ‘What in the world do these people have in common?’ And the only thing they could ever have in common is their love for Brian Wilson.”

They love the man and they love the music, songs that have gotten a lot of people through tough times, including their composer.

As Wilson opens up on the ride, sometimes he hits a painful topic, and the bad vibrations get to him. So twice in the film, he asks Fine to play a fairly obscure Beach Boys song from 1976, which “calms me down,” Wilson said on the Zoom call.

The title? “It’s OK.”