Brian Wilson, the co-founder and primary songwriter of the Beach Boys, has died, his family announced. While an official cause of death was not disclosed, the beloved musical auteur, who helped pioneer the studio-as-instrument, influencing generations of musicians in pop and beyond, was revealed, in early 2024, to be living with a neurocognitive disorder akin to dementia. Wilson’s family also did not disclose the musician’s date or location of death. Wilson was 82 years old.
“We are heartbroken to announce that our beloved father Brian Wilson has passed away,” his family wrote in its statement. “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. Love & Mercy.”
Born in Inglewood, California, Brian Douglas Wilson formed the band—then called the Pendletones—as a teenager with his brothers, Dennis and Carl, their cousin Mike Love, and high school friend Al Jardine. Their first song, “Surfin’,” was released by Candix Records, who changed the band’s name to the Beach Boys without the members’ permission. A year later, the band signed with Capitol to release its debut, Surfin’ Safari; the following year, “Surfin’ U.S.A.” became the Beach Boys’ first U.S. Top 10 single. In 1963, the band released three albums: Surfin’ U.S.A., Surfer Girl, and Little Deuce Coupe. By then, Wilson had started his career as a producer for other musicians. He worked with Jan and Dean, the Castellas, Donna Loren, Sharon Marie, and others.
In 1964, Brian Wilson decided to stop touring with the Beach Boys after experiencing a panic attack due to the band’s heavy schedule. He focused on his production, and, in 1965, started work on the landmark experimental pop album Pet Sounds. Wilson was the mastermind behind the Pet Sounds sessions, working alongside famed studio musicians the Wrecking Crew. At the time of its release, Pet Sounds was considered a relative commercial flop and critical failure. In 2004, it was inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry due to its cultural, historical, and aesthetic significance.
“I wanted to grow musically, so I experimented,” Wilson told the Harvard Business Review in 2016. “I wasn’t the type to sit around and be satisfied with an accomplishment, especially not in the studio. And I had ideas coming into my head all the time. Many had to do with using instruments as voices and voices as instruments. I would put sounds together to create something new. Some ideas didn’t work, because they were too difficult to achieve at the time. But most did. And then I immediately moved to the next thing.”
Wilson planned a follow-up album called Smile, which he described as a “teenage symphony to God,” but it was scrapped after continual delays. After the album’s cancellation, in 1967, Wilson’s role in the band receded. In 1968, he entered a psychiatric hospital for treatment. In the years after the release of Pet Sounds, Wilson briefly owned and operated a health food store called the Radiant Radish. He continued to work with the band while struggling with drug and alcohol addiction in the 1970s.
After a family intervention into Wilson’s deteriorating mental and physical health, he became embroiled with the controversial psychologist Eugene Landy. Their decades-long treatment later became the subject of a biographical film called Love & Mercy. The Beach Boys enjoyed a brief resurgence after their 1977 album, The Beach Boys Love You, but Wilson’s health issues persisted. In 1982, Landy removed him from the band for intensive treatment and exercised increasing control over Wilson’s financial and creative endeavors, prompting Wilson to release his debut solo album in 1988. In 1992, following legal action from Carl Wilson and other members of the Wilson family, Landy’s psychology license was revoked and he received a restraining order from Wilson.
Wilson eventually revisited Smile, reworking the archived studio sessions with Darian Sahanaja to bring the once-scrapped project to a live concert. He released Brian Wilson: Presents Smile in 2004 to critical acclaim. He continued to release solo work in the 2000s. His last solo album of original material was 2015’s No Pier Pressure, which featured contributions from Kacey Musgraves and Zooey Deschanel, while his final solo album of covers was 2021’s At My Piano, in which he played a variety of the Beach Boys’ songs on the instrument. He released a memoir in 2016, and, the following year, shared “Some Sweet Day,” a previously unreleased song recorded in the 1990s, as well as a new single called “Run James Run.”
The Beach Boys officially released 29 studio albums, 11 live albums, and 75 singles. Wilson and the band were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. As a solo artist, Wilson won two Grammy Awards (out of nine nominations), and the Beach Boys were honored in 2001 with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2000, Wilson was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, by Paul McCartney, who hailed him as “one of the great American geniuses.” Come 2007, Wilson was recognized at the Kennedy Center Honors for a lifetime of contributions to American culture through the performing arts in music.
During his lifetime, Wilson authorized three different documentary films about his life. The first, 1995’s Brian Wilson: I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times, was directed by Don Was and took a broad look at Wilson’s life and influence, interviewing both him and other artists he inspired, like Tom Petty, David Crosby, and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore. Directed by David Leaf, Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson and the Story of Smile premiered in 2004 and tracked the story of Smile being shelved and the making of Brian Wilson: Presents Smile; it includes interviews with Wilson, Van Dyke Parks, the Who’s Roger Daltrey, Elvis Costello, and others. The most recent documentary was 2021’s Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road, directed by Brent Wilson, in which Rolling Stone editor Jason Fine drives around Los Angeles with Wilson to visit locations from his past; My Morning Jacket’s Jim James co-wrote the song “Right Where I Belong” with Wilson for the film, and over a dozen artists added commentary, including Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, and Linda Perry.
When asked by Charlie Rose in a 2005 PBS interview if he’s the musical genius others regularly label him as, Wilson replied, “I say, ‘Am I genius?!’ Maybe so,” and laughed. Rose pressed on how Wilson sees music differently from others, and the musician replied, “I saw the future, a vision of music, in a dream I had one night and I foresaw the future. It was way, way, way farther than now even. I heard all kinds of celestial, heavenly sounds. It just blew my mind. I think eventually we’re headed to that heaven.”
