Brian Wilson, Beach Boys Singer and Hot-Rod Icon, Has Died at 82

Car and Driver

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Brian Wilson, co-founder of the Beach Boys, has died at the age of 82.
In the early 1960s, Wilson's music brought SoCal hot-rodding culture to the world.
He wasn't a hot-rodder himself, but he did nurture a love for the Chevrolet Corvette.
As the co-founder of the Beach Boys, Brian Wilson brought an idealized view of early '60s SoCal living across the United States and around the world: sun, sand, surf, and a hot set of wheels. He died this week at age 82 and leaves behind a catalog of some of the most iconic entries in the American songbook and some of the best summer cruising music ever written.
Born in Hawthorne, California, in 1942, Wilson grew up surrounded by drag strips and racetracks, coming of age in the time fictionally portrayed in American Graffiti. Famously, most of the Beach Boys weren't actually surfers themselves, and likewise, Wilson wasn't much of a car guy. However, he grew up steeped in an environment of hot-rod culture, and it couldn't help but percolate into his music.
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1963's "Little Deuce Coupe" is probably the best-known car-themed Beach Boys tune. A deuce is, of course, a '32 Ford, the kind of plain-Jane car a youngster could pick up for newspaper-delivery money, then swap in V-8 power and hit the tarmac. That flathead mill was ported and relieved and stroked and bored, and it purred like a kitten until the lake pipes roared.
You can thank DJ and producer Roger Christian for most of the hot-rodding jargon on "Deuce Coupe," but it was Wilson who fishhooked catchiness that you just couldn't shake. Again and again, the Beach Boys hit the top of the charts with songs like "I Get Around," "Good Vibrations," and "Surfin' USA."
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Plenty of other Beach Boys songs reference cars and car culture, including "409," written about a big-block Chevy V-8, and "Fun Fun Fun," with its Ford Thunderbird. "Shut Down," released the same year as "Little Deuce Coupe," features a blow-by-blow street race between a Max Wedge Mopar and a Corvette Stingray.
Wilson himself seems to have enjoyed Corvettes, and he owned a few. In 1989, with the popularity of "Kokomo" proving the Beach Boys could still create hits, Wilson produced "In My Car," all about the feeling of cruising in a Vette. A few years later, Wilson ordered his own Corvette ZR-1, cherry red.
Considered hugely influential and one of the first music producers to harness studio production as part of the creative process, Wilson changed the landscape of pop music. You can pay him no better tribute than by queuing up some of the Beach Boys' greatest hits, rolling down the windows, and cruising off on a warm summer's eve, looking for a good vantage spot to watch the sunset.
Brendan McAleer
Contributing Editor
Brendan McAleer is a freelance writer and photographer based in North Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He grew up splitting his knuckles on British automobiles, came of age in the golden era of Japanese sport-compact performance, and began writing about cars and people in 2008. His particular interest is the intersection between humanity and machinery, whether it is the racing career of Walter Cronkite or Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki's half-century obsession with the Citroën 2CV. He has taught both of his young daughters how to shift a manual transmission and is grateful for the excuse they provide to be perpetually buying Hot Wheels. Read full bio