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Edmonton Journal
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Edmonton Journal
Brian Wilson, singer-songwriter who created the Beach Boys, dies at 82
Article content They would make the Billboard Top 40 list 36 times in as many years, a tally unequaled by an American band. While each member contributed to the Beach Boys' signature angelic vocal harmonics, Mr. Wilson was the widely acknowledged mastermind behind their music. A spectacularly imaginative songwriter, he was responsible for initial successes including Surfin' USA, Surfer Girl, I Get Around, All Summer Long, Don't Worry Baby, The Warmth of the Sun and California Girls. Such numbers evoked the joys of hot-rodding under boundlessly blue skies and, above all, the bronzed, bikinied lifestyle of Southern California.
Hindustan Times
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Donald Trump mourns Brian Wilson's death, says Beach Boys co-founder was ‘true musical genius'
Donald Trump has paid tribute to The Beach Boys founder and songwriter Brian Wilson. The music icon and the creative force behind hits like Surf's Up and California Girls died on June 11 at the age of 82. His family announced the news on social media but did not offer any reason for the cause of death. Wilson's death has been mourned by music industry veterans, including Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr and more. In a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump called Brian Wilson a 'true musical genius' and expressed condolences for his demise. 'Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys was a true Musical genius, right up there with the greatest, ever. While Brian is no longer with us, his music will live on forever. Warmest condolences to his family, friends and, so importantly, his fantastic legion of FANS!!!' Trump wrote. In 2020, the rock band performed at a fundraiser for Trump in Newport Beach. Band members Brian Wilson and Al Jardine had distanced themselves from the event. The performance was led by Mike Love. In a statement to Variety via a spokesperson, Wilson and Jardine had said that they were unaware about the band's presence at the fundraiser and got to know about it from the media. 'We have absolutely nothing to do with the Trump benefit today in Newport Beach. Zero,' their statement affirmed. Brian co-founded The Beach Boys in 1961 with his friend Al Jardine, cousin Mike Love and brothers Dennis and Carl Wilson. The group achieved significant fame for their albums like Pet Sounds. The Beach Boys sold over 100 million records worldwide and appeared 36 times on the Billboard Top 40, a feat unrivalled by any American band. Brian Wilson was diagnosed with a neurocognitive disorder similar to dementia last year. He had long been suffering from health issues like schizoaffective disorder, whose symptoms included incessant auditory hallucinations and paranoia. Since early 2024, Wilson had been under a court conservatorship, and his medical and personal affairs were being overseen by longtime representatives. The statement by the family did not reveal any details about the cause of death. Yes, a mutual admiration existed between him and the British band. The Beatles member called Wilson 'a musical genius' in a moving tribute after his death.
Vancouver Sun
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Vancouver Sun
Brian Wilson, singer-songwriter who created the Beach Boys, dies at 82
Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page. Brian Wilson, the founder and principal creative force of the Beach Boys, whose catalogue of early hits embodied the fantasy of California as a paradise of beautiful youth, fast cars and endless surf and made them the most popular American rock group of the 1960s, has died at 82. The family announced the death on his official webpage, but did not provide further information. Get top headlines and gossip from the world of celebrity and entertainment. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of Sun Spots will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. The Beach Boys were formed in 1961 in Hawthorne, Calif., near Los Angeles, by brothers Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love and their friend Al Jardine, and the regional success that year of their first single, Surfin,' thrust them to national attention when Capitol Records signed them almost immediately as the label's first rock act. They would make the Billboard Top 40 list 36 times in as many years, a tally unequaled by an American band. While each member contributed to the Beach Boys' signature angelic vocal harmonics, Mr. Wilson was the widely acknowledged mastermind behind their music. A spectacularly imaginative songwriter, he was responsible for initial successes including Surfin' USA, Surfer Girl, I Get Around, All Summer Long, Don't Worry Baby, The Warmth of the Sun and California Girls. Such numbers evoked the joys of hot-rodding under boundlessly blue skies and, above all, the bronzed, bikinied lifestyle of Southern California. Yet Wilson also displayed an ambitious craftsmanship as a producer that culminated in the 1966 Beach Boys album 'Pet Sounds,' which many critics and music historians consider the first and greatest of all rock 'concept' albums building songs around a theme. Alternately celebratory and despairing, making effective musical use of such traditionally extramusical sounds as bicycle bells, car horns, trains and barking dogs, 'Pet Sounds' was not simply a collection of songs but a unified work of art, tracing a love affair from beginning to end, while melding an all-but-unprecedented intimacy of expression in rock with near-symphonic scope. The album and Wilson had a profound impact on musicians of the era and beyond. The Beatles acknowledged that the unity and complexity of 'Pet Sounds' helped inspire the similarly ambitious Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). The mystical singer-songwriter Judee Sill, later heralded by many critics as an overlooked genius, based her first finished piece, Lady-O (1971), directly on the album's emotional climax, I Just Wasn't Made for These Times. And Bob Dylan admired the immaculately polished sound in the Beach Boys recordings, telling Newsweek, That ear — I mean, Jesus, he's got to will that to the Smithsonian! From the beginning, the Beach Boys were wildly successful. Their work combined traditional American songwriting in the manner of Stephen Foster and George Gershwin, close 'barbershop' harmonies appropriated from groups such as the Four Freshmen, the lushly ornate 'Wall of Sound' production values of Phil Spector and the exuberant rock-and-roll of Chuck Berry. Wilson increasingly moved away from songwriting formulas and turned instead to a deeply personal 'outsider' mode of creation that tested the boundaries of sounds, harmonies and song structures. A 2007 article in the New Yorker by music critic Sasha Frere-Jones went so far as to call Wilson 'indie rock's muse,' and it is hard to imagine the works of such latter-day bands as the High Llamas, Yo La Tengo and Belle & Sebastian without his influence. Although the Beach Boys occasionally recorded songs by other musicians, including members of the band, Wilson's brother Dennis summed up the group as Brian's 'messengers.' 'Brian Wilson is the Beach Boys,' he said in 1971. 'He is all of it. Period. We're nothing. He's everything.' Yet there was an abiding pathos in Wilson's best records. It consisted not merely of the idealized scenes the songs depicted, but the fact that they were created by a depressed, socially awkward, partially deaf young man who never surfed or much liked the beach and spent a great deal of his time alone in his room. Indeed, Mr. Wilson led what was often an unhappy and unsettled life, and suffered a breakdown in the late 1960s that drastically curtailed his life and later work. After Wilson mostly withdrew from the Beach Boys, he stayed in bed much of the time, put on weight and became addicted to alcohol, marijuana and cocaine. In 1976, his first wife, Marilyn Rovell, sought help and found an unconventional Hollywood therapist named Eugene Landy to take over the care of her rapidly deteriorating husband. Landy assembled a team that included himself, another doctor, a nutritionist and a group of handlers to watch him 24 hours a day. He charged a monthly fee that was said to exceed $20,000, and later estimated that Wilson had paid him more than $3 million between 1983 and 1991. For a while, he also lived in Wilson's mansion. In 1989, Landy's license to practice psychology was stripped by the State of California. But he continued to work with Mr. Wilson and claimed a third of the $250,000 advance for a spurious 1991 autobiography, 'Wouldn't It Be Nice.' Eventually, Wilson — with the strong support of his family and the rest of the Beach Boys — took out a restraining order to break his last ties with Landy. Wilson's brother Dennis drowned in 1983, and his brother Carl died of cancer in 1998. Wilson's relationship with the rest of the Beach Boys devolved into a squalid series of suits and countersuits that lasted until the three surviving members of the band — Wilson, Love and Jardine — joined forces with David Marks and Bruce Johnston, both of whom had been 'Beach Boys' at one point or another, to play together again in 2012. An album, That's Why God Made the Radio, was issued that summer and the group embarked on a 50th anniversary tour. But the last official Beach Boys hit had been Kokomo in 1988, with which Wilson had nothing to do and initially sold more copies than any of their earlier songs, largely due to its inclusion in the Tom Cruise movie Cocktail. That same year, Wilson released his first solo album, titled Brian Wilson, to encouraging reviews. It was his first collection of new songs in more than a decade. The opening piece, Love and Mercy, became Wilson's signature piece. (That also became of the title of a 2014 film biopic featuring two actors, Paul Dano and John Cusack, playing the younger Wilson.) Further solo discs appeared and, in 2002, Wilson recorded a live version of Pet Sounds as part of a world tour. By then, he had recovered much of his original vocal luster, but the new rendition seemed alarmingly robotic, as though it had been learned rather than felt. Indeed, in later years, he grew increasingly adept at 'playing' Brian Wilson onstage but he never appeared fully comfortable doing much more. 'It's a hard truth for those of us who love and admire him to admit, but it can be painful to see Wilson in concert,' Will Hodgkinson, chief rock and pop critic for the Times of London, wrote in 2018. The Wilson talent lived on into another generation as Mr. Wilson's daughters Carnie and Wendy Wilson, by Rovell, made names for themselves as two-thirds of the band Wilson Phillips. His marriage to Rovell, which had long been complicated by affairs and his precarious mental state, collapsed in the late 1970s. In 1995, he married Ledbetter, a model and car saleswoman who became his manager and with whom he had five children. She died in 2024, at age 77. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available. After Ledbetter's death, Mr. Wilson's family sought to place him under a conservatorship, saying that he was taking medication for dementia and 'unable to properly provide for his own personal needs for physical health.' For all of the Beach Boys's musical infatuation with the carefree life in the surf, Mr. Wilson admitted to getting 'conked on the head' the one time he tried to ride a wave. But in summing up the band's most enduring aesthetic, he told the Sunday Times of London in 2019 that Southern California was 'more about the idea of going in the ocean than actually going in the ocean.' 'I liked to look at the sea, though,' he added. 'It was like a piece of music: each wave was moving around by itself, but they were also moving together.' Love concerts, but can't make it to the venue? Stream live shows and events from your couch with VEEPS, a music-first streaming service now operating in Canada. Click here for an introductory offer of 30% off. Explore upcoming concerts and the extensive archive of past performances.
Calgary Herald
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Calgary Herald
Brian Wilson, singer-songwriter who created the Beach Boys, dies at 82
Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page. Article content Brian Wilson, the founder and principal creative force of the Beach Boys, whose catalogue of early hits embodied the fantasy of California as a paradise of beautiful youth, fast cars and endless surf and made them the most popular American rock group of the 1960s, has died at 82. Article content Article content Article content The family announced the death on his official webpage, but did not provide further information. Article content Article content The Beach Boys were formed in 1961 in Hawthorne, Calif., near Los Angeles, by brothers Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love and their friend Al Jardine, and the regional success that year of their first single, Surfin,' thrust them to national attention when Capitol Records signed them almost immediately as the label's first rock act. Article content They would make the Billboard Top 40 list 36 times in as many years, a tally unequaled by an American band. While each member contributed to the Beach Boys' signature angelic vocal harmonics, Mr. Wilson was the widely acknowledged mastermind behind their music. Article content A spectacularly imaginative songwriter, he was responsible for initial successes including Surfin' USA, Surfer Girl, I Get Around, All Summer Long, Don't Worry Baby, The Warmth of the Sun and California Girls. Such numbers evoked the joys of hot-rodding under boundlessly blue skies and, above all, the bronzed, bikinied lifestyle of Southern California. Article content Article content Yet Wilson also displayed an ambitious craftsmanship as a producer that culminated in the 1966 Beach Boys album 'Pet Sounds,' which many critics and music historians consider the first and greatest of all rock 'concept' albums building songs around a theme. Article content Alternately celebratory and despairing, making effective musical use of such traditionally extramusical sounds as bicycle bells, car horns, trains and barking dogs, 'Pet Sounds' was not simply a collection of songs but a unified work of art, tracing a love affair from beginning to end, while melding an all-but-unprecedented intimacy of expression in rock with near-symphonic scope. Article content The album and Wilson had a profound impact on musicians of the era and beyond. The Beatles acknowledged that the unity and complexity of 'Pet Sounds' helped inspire the similarly ambitious Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967).
Hindustan Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Brian Wilson dies at 82: All about the co-founder of iconic rock band The Beach Boys
Brian Wilson, songwriter and co-founder of iconic band The Beach Boys, has died at the age of 82. In a post on Instagram, Brian Wilson's family confirmed his demise. No information was given about the cause of death. The singer had been diagnosed with a neurocognitive disorder similar to dementia in 2024. 'We are heartbroken to announce that our beloved father Brian Wilson has passed away. 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,' the post read. Brian Wilson was the main creative force behind The Beach Boys. He formed the band in 1961 with his brothers Dennis and Carl, their cousin Mike Love and Al Jardine, a friend. The first single, Surfin, brought them to national attention and Capital Records signed the group soon after their first rock act. The band made the Billboard Top 40 rankings 36 times in as many years, a feat unequalled by any American group. Their 1966 album Pet Sound was an influence on The Beatles as well. He planned a follow-up album, Smile, in 1967, but it was cancelled. The Beach Boys were known for their hits like Surfer Girl and I Get Around. In 1964, Brian Wilson decided to stop touring with The Beach Boys after he suffered a panic attack due to the band's jam-packed schedule. Wilson's participation in the Beach Boys became intermittent after the cancellation of Smile. In 1988, Wilson and the Beach Boys were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Wilson won two Grammy awards during his career. The Beach Boys were given a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001. The singer was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder in the late 1960s and suffered incessant auditory hallucinations and paranoia. He began seeking treatment from controversial Hollywood therapist Eugene Landy. His health issues led to Landy removing him from The Beach Boys for intensive treatment in 1982. The psychologist's increasing control over Wilson's financial and creative endeavors prompted the singer to release his first solo album in 1988. In 1992, following legal action from his brother Carl and other members of the Wilson family, Landy's psychology license was revoked. Wilson continued to have a solo career with his last album being the 2015 release, No Pier Pressure. The next year, he released a memoir. The Beach Boys co-founder is survived by daughters Carnie and Wendy from his first wife, Marilyn Lovell, and two adopted daughters, Daria and Delanie, from his second marriage. He was reported to be living with a neurocognitive disorder similar to dementia in early 2024. Brian Wilson lost hearing in his right ear during childhood, possibly due to a blow to the head. The Beach Boys' co-founder was 82 years old at the time of his passing. At the time of his death, his estimated net worth stood around $100 million.
