Brian Wilson, who revolutionized popular music from humble origins in Hawthorne, Ca., and led the Beach Boys to global superstardom, has died at the age of 82, per a statement from his family. The music legend had been in poor health for many years and was unable to care for himself after the death of his wife Melinda in January 2024.
“We are heartbroken to announce that our beloved father Brian Wilson has passed away,” they wrote. “We are at a loss for words right now. Please respect our privacy at this time as our family is grieving. We realize that we are sharing our grief with the world.”
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The Beach Boys’ story is one of contradictions: genius and triviality, harmony and disharmony, creativity and commodity, Dennis Wilson and Al Jardine, Brian Wilson and Mike Love. Endorsed by Ronald Reagan, they also had dealings with Charles Manson. Their’ pioneering influence over pop and rock can still be heard today, having devised new ways of utilizing the studio as an instrument and developing their own sonic vocabulary, but they also fell foul of mental illness, substance abuse and infamous squabbles over creative direction. Their history is epic in scale, like a Steinbeck saga played out over decades that explores themes of brotherhood, greed, God and California. You might not believe it if it weren’t true.
By age 22, Wilson had produced seven Top 10 hits, making the Beach Boys the most successful group in the world. The ambivalent reception (from his band and the public) to Pet Sounds in 1966 sent Wilson further afield with SMiLE, which remained unreleased for decades. But the former caused four Liverpudlians to up their game; Pet Sounds is generally regarded as second only to Sgt. Pepper’s as the best album in history.
Wilson descended into a decade-plus haze of drug abuse and mental illness, and then suffered for years under the controversial, abusive conservatorship of Dr. Eugene Landy. With the help of Melinda and members of his family, he began recording and performing more regularly in the late 1990s, leading to huge boon in discovery from younger audiences and even greater recognition as one of the world’s greatest living songwriters.
“Back then, mental illness wasn’t treated in a straightforward way,” Wilson wrote in his 2016 memoir, I Am Brian Wilson. “People wouldn’t even admit that it existed. There was shame in saying what it was and strange ideas about how to deal with it.” Only then, at age 74, and in a time when talking about mental health in the arts is no longer taboo, Wilson could write about his experience freely.
Asked years later about the creative process that fueled some of the most indelible moments in modern music, Wilson said, “there’s always some mystery when I try to remember how I wrote back then. My God, how the fuck could I have written all those songs?” Sure, he may have written “Good Vibrations,” but he also struggled with anxiety. He felt bad about his weight. He wanted to be a good father; he wanted to be loved.
“Anyone who really knows me knows how heart broken I am about Brian Wilson passing,” wrote John Lennon’s son Sean Ono Lennon on X. “Not many people influenced me as much as he did. I feel very lucky that I was able to meet him and spend some time with him. He was always very kind and generous. He was our American Mozart. A one of a kind genius from another world.”
Wilson’s most recent tour was in 2022, The year prior, he released an album of solo piano instrumental versions of his Beach Boys hits, At My Piano.
To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.
