ADVERTISEMENTBrian Wilson, the Beach Boys’ visionary leader whose genius for melody and arrangements inspired hits like “Good Vibrations” and “California Girls” has died at the age of 82.
Wilson’s family posted news of his death to his website and social media accounts on Wednesday but gave no further details.
The Beach Boys rank among the most popular groups of the rock era, with more than 30 singles in the Top 40 and worldwide sales of more than 100 million.
The 1966 album “Pet Sounds” was voted number two in a 2003 Rolling Stone list of the best 500 albums.
The Beach Boys, who also featured Wilson cousin Mike Love and childhood friend Al Jardine, were voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.
Wilson feuded with Love over songwriting credits, but peers otherwise adored him, from Elton John and Bruce Springsteen to Smokey Robinson and Carole King.
Paul McCartney cited “Pet Sounds” as a direct inspiration on the Beatles and the ballad “God Only Knows” as among his favourite songs.
In his later years, Wilson and a devoted entourage of younger musicians performed “Pet Sounds” and his restored opus, “Smile,” before worshipful crowds in concert halls.
Meanwhile, The Go-Go’s, Lindsey Buckingham, Animal Collective and Janelle Monáe were among a wide range of artists who emulated him, whether as a master of crafting pop music or as a pioneer of pulling it apart.
From the suburbs to the stage
Brian Wilson was born 20 June 1942.
His musical gifts were soon obvious and as a boy he was playing piano and teaching his brothers to sing harmony.
The Beach Boys started as a neighbourhood act, rehearsing in Brian’s bedroom and in the garage of their house in suburban Hawthorne, California.
Surf music, mostly instrumental in its early years, was catching on locally. Dennis Wilson, the group’s only real surfer, suggested they cash in.
Brian and Love hastily wrote up their first single, “Surfin’,” a minor hit released in 1961.
They wanted to call themselves the Pendletones, in honour of a popular flannel shirt they wore in early publicity photos. But when they first saw the pressings for “Surfin’,” they discovered the record label had tagged them The Beach Boys.
By mid-decade, Brian, who had been running the band’s recording sessions almost from the start, was in charge, making the Beach Boys the rare group of the time to work without an outside producer.
Their breakthrough came in early 1963 with “Surfin’ USA” and from then until 1966 they were rarely off the charts, hitting Number 1 in the United States with “I Get Around” and “Help Me, Rhonda” and narrowly missing with “California Girls” and “Fun, Fun, Fun.”
For television appearances, they wore candy-striped shirts and grinned as they mimed their latest hit, with a hot rod or surfboard nearby.
Their music echoed private differences. Wilson often contrasted his own bright falsetto with Love’s nasal, deadpan tenor.
The extroverted Love was out front on the fast songs, but when it was time for a slow one, Brian took over.
Stress and exhaustion led to a breakdown in 1964 and his retirement from touring, his place soon filled by Bruce Johnston, who remained with the group for decades.
Wilson was an admirer of Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound productions and emulated him on Beach Boys tracks, adding sleigh bells to “Dance, Dance, Dance” or arranging a mini-theme park of guitar, horns, percussion and organ as the overture to “California Girls.”
By the mid-1960s, the Beach Boys were being held up as the country’s answer to the Beatles, a friendly game embraced by each group, transporting pop music to the level of art.
But the album “Pet Sounds” didn’t chart as highly as previous releases and was treated indifferently by the US record label, Capitol.
The Beach Boys soon descended into an oldies act, out of touch with the radical ’60s, and Wilson withdrew into seclusion.
Years of struggle and late validation
Addicted to drugs and psychologically helpless, sometimes idling in a sandbox he had built in his living room, Wilson didn’t fully produce another Beach Boys record for years.
Their biggest hit of the 1970s was a greatest hits album, “Endless Summer,” that also helped re-establish them as popular concert performers.
Although well enough in the 21st century to miraculously finish “Smile” and tour and record again, Wilson had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and baffled interviewers with brief and disjointed answers.
His first marriage, to singer Marilyn Rovell, ended in divorce and he became estranged from daughters Carnie and Wendy, who would help form the pop trio Wilson Phillips. His life stabilized in 1995 with his marriage to Melinda Ledbetter, who gave birth to two more daughters, Daria and Delanie.
He also reconciled with Carnie and Wendy and they sang together on the 1997 album “The Wilsons.”
1992, Brian Wilson eventually won a $10 million (€8 million) out-of-court settlement for lost songwriting royalties. But that victory and his 1991 autobiography, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice: My Own Story,” set off other lawsuits that tore apart the musical family.
The Beach Boys still released an occasional hit single: “Kokomo,” made without Wilson, hit Number 1 in 1988.
Wilson, meanwhile, released such solo albums as “Brian Wilson” and “Gettin’ In Over My Head,” with cameos by McCartney and Clapton among others. He also completed a pair of albums for the Walt Disney label, a collection of Gershwin songs and music from Disney movies.
In 2012, surviving members of the Beach Boys reunited for a 50th anniversary album, which quickly hit the Top 10 before the group again bickered and separated.
Wilson won two just competitive Grammys, for the solo instrumental “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow” and for “The Smile Sessions” box set.
Otherwise, his honours ranged from a Grammy lifetime achievement prize to a tribute at the Kennedy Centre to induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
In 2018, he returned to his old high school in Hawthorne and witnessed the literal rewriting of his past: The principal erased an F he had been given in music and awarded him an A.
Since May 2024, Wilson had been under a court conservatorship to oversee his personal and medical affairs, with Wilson’s long-time representatives, publicist Jean Sievers and manager LeeAnn Hard, in charge.
