Brian Wilson, the legendary songwriter, producer, and co-founder of The Beach Boys, has died. His family shared the news on Wilson’s website, but didn’t provide further details as they wrote that they are at a “loss for words right now.” Wilson was 82.
Wilson founded The Beach Boys—then known as the Pendletones—with his brothers Dennis and Carl, their cousin Mike Love, and friend Al Jardine in Hawthorne, California in 1961. Their first single, “Surfin'” was released by Candix Records, which changed the group’s name to The Beach Boys without its members’ permission. It worked out, though; the next year, the band was signed as Capitol Records’ first-ever rock act. Capitol would go on to release their debut album, Surfin’ Safari, in 1962.
The Beach Boys were prolific in the following years. They released three albums—Surfin’ U.S.A., Surfer Girl, and Little Deuce Coupe—in 1963, the same year they landed their first top 10 single with “Surfin’ U.S.A.” (Wilson never learned to surf, by the way. In 2006, he told Ability Magazine that the band only chose surfing as a theme because his brother Dennis said it was “was the new thing, the new fad.”)
The Beach Boys rose to become one of the defining American acts of the ’60s through a slew of chart-topping early hits like “California Girls,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” and “Don’t Worry Baby.” At the same time, Wilson was building a reputation for himself as a preternaturally gifted and eccentric producer, catching the eye of many of his peers. “That ear,” Bob Dylan once said of Wilson’s craft, per The New York Times. “I mean, Jesus, he’s got to will that to the Smithsonian.”
It was that same ear that created 1966’s Pet Sounds, which Wilson deemed his “greatest accomplishment” in a 2016 interview with the Harvard Business Review. “It’s timeless. Fifty years later, I’m doing a world tour, playing it live, and seeing and hearing the audience respond. That makes me very proud,” he said. “That record brought and continues to bring love to the world, which was my intent when I wrote the music.” Pet Sounds, with all its idiosyncratic arrangements, baffled critics upon its release and was considered a commercial flop. It’s undergone a massive reevaluation in the years since, however, and is now considered one of the greatest albums of all time. The band released “Good Vibrations,” which Wilson also told the HBR he considers his “single-song production masterpiece” the same year.
At this point, problems had started to arise. Wilson had planned to release an album called Smile following Pet Sounds, which he described at the time as “a teenage symphony to God,” per NYT. That album was eventually abandoned due to continual delays. Wilson began to retreat from the band around this time, and eventually entered a psychiatric hospital for treatment in 1968. He continued to tour with the band throughout the ’70s, but struggled with worsening drug and alcohol addiction.
In 1975, he also became embroiled with a controversial psychotherapist, Eugene Landy, who gained an increasing amount of control over his financial and creative affairs. Wilson was officially kicked out of the band in 1982, causing him to become even more enmeshed in Landy’s unorthodox methods, which included dousing Wilson in cold water every morning and limiting his contact with others. It was during this period that he released his first solo album, Brian Wilson, in 1988, on which Landy was credited as a producer.
Their relationship began to sour in the following years. Landy’s license was revoked in 1989 and Wilson was granted a restraining order against him in 1992. “Through history there are stories about tyrants who control entire countries,” Wilson wrote in his memoir, I Am Brian Wilson (2016), per NYT. “Dr. Landy was a tyrant who controlled one person, and that person was me.” This complicated relationship was captured in the 2014 film, Love & Mercy.
Wilson remained active throughout the following decades. He became embroiled in a series of lawsuits over rights to The Beach Boys’ catalog, but also continued to write and record his own music. He released Brian Wilson Presents Smile, a reconfigured version of his earlier scrapped record, in 2004, and continued to release solo work through the 2000s, culminating in his last records, No Pier Pressure in 2015 and At My Piano in 2021.
Wilson won two Grammy Awards (out of nine nominations) throughout his career, which changed the face of popular music forever. The Beach Boys were also inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and were honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001. “Being called a musical genius was a cross to bear,” the artist once told Rolling Stone (per NYT). “Genius is a big word. But if you have to live up to something, you might as well live up to that.”
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