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ARN News Center
32 minutes ago
- Entertainment
- ARN News Center
Brian Wilson, co-creator of the Beach Boys, dies aged 82
Brian Wilson, the singer-songwriter who co-created the Beach Boys rock band, has died, his family said in a statement on Wednesday. He was 82. "We are at a loss for words right now," the statement on the singer's website said. "We realize that we are sharing our grief with the world." The statement did not disclose a cause of death. Wilson had suffered from dementia and was unable to care for himself after his wife Melinda died in early 2024, prompting his family to put him under conservatorship. Wilson created some of rock's most enduring songs such as Good Vibrations and God Only Knows in a career that was marked by a decades-long battle between his musical genius, drug abuse and mental health issues.
Yahoo
33 minutes ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Beach Boys Co-Founder Brian Wilson Dead at 82
Beach Boys Co-Founder Brian Wilson Dead at 82 originally appeared on Parade. Brian Wilson, the iconic singer, songwriter, and record producer who co-founded The Beach Boys, has passed away at the age of 82. The musician's children shared the news on Instagram saying, "We are heartbroken to announce that our beloved father Brian Wilson has passed away." The iconic singer/songwriter was responsible for many of the Beach Boys' most recognizable hits, including "God Only Knows," "Good Vibrations," and "California Girls." Wilson, who was just shy of his 83rd birthday on June 20, had long suffered with mental and physical health issues and was diagnosed with various ailments over the years from severe anxiety disorder and auditory hallucinations to multiple back surgeries and deafness in his right ear. In February of 2024, it was announced that Wilson had dementia. Through it all, Wilson continued to perform whenever he was able. Cows in the Pasture, an unfinished country music album Wilson had produced with Beach Boys producer Fred Vail in 1970, is to be released this year, accompanied by a docuseries about Vail and the album's making. Beach Boys Co-Founder Brian Wilson Dead at 82 first appeared on Parade on Jun 11, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jun 11, 2025, where it first appeared.
Sydney Morning Herald
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Beach Boys legend Brian Wilson's 10 most iconic songs
Headphones on, stereo up. The Beach Boys' California Girls sounds massive. It is no doubt the result of Wilson's love and admiration for Phil Spector's 'Wall of Sound', which lead to the song's use of guitar, horns, percussion and organ as its overture. The song is a sunshine-y good time – and would later inspire Katy Perry's California Gurls, among countless others. But most importantly, the song establishes the band – and Wilson's own – larger-than-life aspirations, where pop music could be both avant-garde and built of earworms. 1966: Wouldn't It Be Nice, The Beach Boys Wilson's voice is the first one heard on the Beach Boys' unimpeachable Pet Sounds. 'Wouldn't it be nice if we were older? / Then we wouldn't have to wait so long,' he sings sweetly on the album's opener. 'And wouldn't it be nice to live together / In the kind of world where we belong?' Optimism and innocence are the name of the game, and the listener is the winner. 1966: God Only Knows, The Beach Boys If Wilson must be known for one thing, let it be his inimitable sense of harmony, perfected across his craft and completely unignorable on God Only Knows, a masterclass in vocals, love, emotional depth, harpsichord and the intersection of all such forces. God Only Knows is also one of Paul McCartney's favourite songs of all time, one known to bring him to tears. 1967: Good Vibrations, The Beach Boys What kind of vibrations? Good, good, GOOD vibrations. And at a cost. As the story goes, one of the Beach Boys' best-known hits – and, arguably, one of the most immediately recognisable songs in rock'n'roll history – was recorded over seven months, in four different studios, reportedly costing up to $75,000. And it is an absolute masterpiece of theremin, cello, harmonica and so much more. Pop music has never been so ambitious – and successful. 1967: Heroes and Villains, The Beach Boys Heroes and Villains might be one of the most complex songs in the Beach Boys' discography, and with good reason. It is the opener of Smile, what Wilson called a 'teenage symphony to God', a whimsical cycle of songs on nature and American folklore written with lyricist Van Dyke Parks. It was delayed, then cancelled, then rerecorded and issued in September 1967 on Smiley Smile, dismissed by Carl Wilson as a 'bunt instead of a grand slam'. In moments, Heroes and Villains is psychedelic; at other times, it embodies an otherworldly barbershop quartet. It is off-kilter and clever, as Wilson's band so often proved to be. 1967: Darlin ', The Beach Boys The late '60s are an under-celebrated time in Wilson's creative oeuvre – no doubt an effect of his declining mental health – but there are many rich songs to dig into. Particularly the soulful, R&B, Motown-esque harmonies of Darlin '. 2004: Don't Let Her Know She's an Angel, Brian Wilson As the story goes, Don't Let Her Know She's an Angel was originally recorded for his 1991 unreleased album Sweet Insanity but did not officially appear until it was rerecorded for his 2004 album Gettin' in Over My Head. The song features a bunch of programming, synths and percussion, which might strike Beach Boys fans as odd. But trust us, it works here.
Los Angeles Times
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Brian Wilson was more than a genius. His sound epitomized the lore of SoCal
Brian Wilson didn't create the sun or the ocean or the sea-sprayed landmass we call Southern California. He didn't invent the car or the surfboard. He wasn't the first person to experience the cold pang of isolation or to fall in love with somebody so deeply that the only thing to do is regret it. Listen to a song by the Beach Boys, though — to one of the tortured and euphoric classics that made them the most important American pop group of the 1960s — and I bet you'd be willing to believe otherwise. I bet you'd insist on it. Wilson, who died Wednesday at 82, was one of music's true visionaries, if that's the right word for a guy who dealt in the endless possibility of sound. As a composer of melodies, a constructor of textures, an arranger of vocal harmonies — as someone who knew how to pull complicated elements together into songs that somehow felt inevitable — he was up there with Phil Spector, George Martin and the Motown team of Holland-Dozier-Holland. The Beach Boys' hits are so embedded into American culture at this point that you don't really need me to provide examples. But let's do that for second — let's savor the beginning of 'Wouldn't It Be Nice,' where an eerily out-of-tune electric guitar conjures a dreamlike atmosphere until the hard thwack of a snare drum breaks the spell. Let's think about the terrifying theremin line that snakes through 'Good Vibrations' like it's tugging a flying saucer down onto Dockweiler Beach. What we should really do is go over to YouTube and pull up the isolated vocals from 'God Only Knows,' which allow you to luxuriate in Wilson's obsession with the human voice. The song is a cathedral of sound that you could walk into 500 times without fully grasping how he built it. For all his architectural craft, Wilson's essential genius was his control of emotion — his ability to articulate the feeling of being overwhelmed by affection or fear or disappointment. 'Pet Sounds,' the Beach Boys' 1966 masterpiece, represents the apotheosis of Wilson's expressive powers: the trembling anticipation he layers into 'Wouldn't It Be Nice,' the sting of betrayal in his singing in 'Caroline, No,' the certainty beneath those celestial harmonies in 'God Only Knows' that anything precious is destined to die. To my ears, even the group's earlier stuff about surfing and cars is laced with the melancholy of an outsider looking in. I tried out that idea last year on Wilson's cousin and bandmate Mike Love, who wasn't buying it: 'If you're talking about 'Fun, Fun, Fun' or 'I Get Around' or 'Surfin' U.S.A.,'' he told me in an interview, 'there ain't no melancholy in them.' That Love identified no sadness in the songs only makes it easier to understand why Wilson the lonely young pop star was writing tunes as openly forlorn as 'In My Room.' Wilson formed the Beach Boys in Hawthorne in 1961 with Love, his brothers Dennis and Carl and the Wilsons' neighbor Al Jardine; the band rode quickly to success as avatars of a kind of postwar suburban prosperity. In 1964, after suffering a panic attack on an airplane, Wilson decided to quit touring and focus his efforts in the recording studio, where he made so many advances that soon he was holding his own in a creative rivalry with the Beatles. (As the story goes, the Beatles' 'Rubber Soul' inspired Wilson to make 'Pet Sounds,' which in turn drove the Beatles toward 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.') Yet Wilson's panic attack can also be seen as the start of a lifelong struggle with mental illness that threatened to derail his career in the wake of 'Pet Sounds.' Indeed, not unlike that of Sly Stone, who also died this week, the Beach Boys' peak hit-making era looks relatively brief in retrospect: After 'Good Vibrations' in 1966, the band didn't score another No. 1 single until 1988 with 'Kokomo,' which Wilson wasn't involved in. Even so, the late '60s and the 1970s remained a fertile period for Wilson — not just with 'Smile,' the infamously ambitious LP he'd finally complete and release in 2004, but with quirky and soulful albums like 'Friends' and 'Sunflower'; 'Surf's Up,' from 1971, features one of Wilson's most stirring songs in the wistful title track, whose extravagantly wordy lyric by Wilson's pal Van Dyke Parks is almost impossible to parse in anything but a pure-emotion sense. The '80s were darker — you can watch the 2014 movie 'Love & Mercy' for a look at Wilson's experiences with the therapist Eugene Landy, whom the record exec Seymour Stein once described to me as 'the most evil person that I ever met' — and yet no Wilson fan ever wanted to stop believing that Brian would come back, a hope he kept alive through decades of intermittently brilliant work on his own, with Parks and even sometimes with the Beach Boys. (Dig out Wilson and Parks' 1995 'Orange Crate Art,' if you haven't in a while, for a powerful dose of bittersweet California whimsy.) I interviewed Wilson once, at his home in Beverly Hills in 2010. He was preparing to release a gorgeous album of Gershwin interpretations that was twice as good as it needed to be — and probably three times better than most anybody expected. Years of life and everything else had taken much of his conversational ease from him, at least when he was talking to journalists. But I can still see him lighting up as he explained how he learned to play 'Rhapsody in Blue,' which he said he'd loved since his mother played it for him when he was 2. 'It took us about two weeks,' he said of himself and a friend who helped him learn the song. 'I'd play a little bit from the Leonard Bernstein recording, then I'd go to my piano, then back to Bernstein, then back to my piano, until I got the whole thing down.' A technical wizard with his arms open wide to a cruel and beautiful world, Brian Wilson always got the whole thing down.
The Sun
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Beach Boys cofounder Brian Wilson dies at 82
LOS ANGELES: Beach Boys cofounder Brian Wilson, who created some of rock's most enduring songs such as "Good Vibrations" and "God Only Knows" in a career that was marked by a decades-long battle between his musical genius, drug abuse and mental health issues, has died at the age of 82. Wilson's family announced his death in a statement on the singer's website. "We are at a loss for words right now," the statement said. "We realize that we are sharing our grief with the world." The statement did not disclose a cause of death. Wilson had suffered from dementia and was unable to care for himself after his wife Melinda Wilson died in early 2024, prompting his family to put him under conservatorship. Starting in 1961, the Beach Boys put out a string of sunny hits celebrating the touchstones of California youth culture - surfing, cars and romance. But what made the songs special was the ethereal harmonies that Wilson arranged and that would become the band's lasting trademark. Wilson formed the band with younger brothers Carl and Dennis, cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine in their hometown, the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne. They went on to have 36 Top 40 hits, with Wilson writing and composing most of the early works. Songs such as "Little Deuce Coupe," "Surfin' U.S.A.," "California Girls," "Fun, Fun, Fun" and "Help Me, Rhonda" remain instantly recognizable and eminently danceable. But there were plenty of bad vibrations in Wilson's life: an abusive father, a cornucopia of drugs, a series of mental breakdowns, long periods of seclusion and depression and voices in his head that, even when he was on stage, told him he was no good. "I've lived a very, very difficult, haunted life," Wilson told the Washington Post in 2007. In May 2024, a judge ruled the 81-year-old Wilson should be put under a conservatorship after two longtime associates had petitioned the court at his family's request, saying he could not care for himself following the death of his wife, Melinda. By 1966 touring had already become an ordeal for Wilson, who suffered what would be his first mental breakdown. He remained the Beach Boys' mastermind but retreated to the studio to work, usually without his bandmates, on "Pet Sounds," a symphonic reflection on the loss of innocence. The landmark "Good Vibrations" was recorded during those sessions, though it did not make it on to the album. Though "Pet Sounds" included hits such as "Wouldn't It Be Nice," "Sloop John B" and "God Only Knows", it was not an immediate commercial success in the United States. There also was resistance to the album within the band, especially from singer Love, who wanted to stick with the proven money-making sound. 'IT'S LIKE FALLING IN LOVE' "Pet Sounds", which was released in 1966, later would come to be recognized as Wilson's magnum opus. Paul McCartney said it was an influence on the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." "No one's musical education is complete until they've heard 'Pet Sounds'," McCartney said. In 2012 Rolling Stone magazine ranked it second only to "Sgt. Pepper" on its list of the 500 greatest rock albums. "Hearing 'Pet Sounds' gave me the kind of feeling that raises the hairs on the back of your neck and you say, 'What is that? It's fantastic,'" George Martin, the Beatles' legendary producer, said in the liner notes of a reissued version of the album. "It's like falling in love." Released as a single that same year, "Good Vibrations" drew similar plaudits. On hearing the song, which would become the Beach Boys' greatest hit, Art Garfunkel called his musical partner Paul Simon to say: "I think I just heard the greatest, most creative record of them all." Stars of the music world paid tribute to Wilson on Wednesday. "Anyone with a musical bone in their body must be grateful for Brian Wilson's genius magical touch!!," Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood said on social media. Nancy Sinatra, who recorded a cover of "California Girls" with Wilson in 2002, wrote on Instagram that Wilson's "cherished music will live forever." Sean Ono Lennon, a musician and son of John Lennon, called Wilson "our American Mozart" and "a one of a kind genius from another world." The Beach Boys sold more than 100 million records. Wilson's career would be derailed, though, as his use of LSD, cocaine and alcohol became untenable and his mental state, which would eventually be diagnosed as schizoaffective disorder with auditory hallucinations, grew shakier. He became a recluse, lying in bed for days, abandoning hygiene, growing obese and sometimes venturing out in a bathrobe and slippers. He had a sandbox installed in his dining room and put his piano there. He also heard voices and was afraid that the lyrics of one of his songs were responsible for a series of fires in Los Angeles. UNORTHODOX THERAPY Born in June 1942, Brian Wilson, whose life was the subject of the 2014 movie "Love & Mercy," had two controlling men in his life. The first was his father, Murry Wilson, a part-time songwriter who recognized his son's musical talent early. He became the Beach Boys' manager and producer in their early years but also was physically and verbally abusive toward them. The band fired him in 1964. About a decade later, as Wilson floundered, his then-wife, Marilyn, hired psychotherapist Eugene Landy to help him. Landy spent 14 months with Wilson, using unusual methods such as promising him a cheeseburger if he wrote a song, before being dismissed. Landy was rehired in 1983 after Wilson went through another period of disturbing behavior that included overdosing, living in a city park and running up substantial debt. Landy used a 24-hour-a-day technique, which involved prescribing psychotropic drugs and padlocking the refrigerator, and eventually held sway over all aspects of Wilson's life, including serving as producer and co-writer of his music when he made a comeback with a 1988 solo album. Wilson's family went to court to end his relationship with Landy in 1992. Wilson said Landy had saved his life but also would later call him manipulative. California medical regulators accused Landy, who died in 2006, of improper involvement with a patient's affairs. He gave up his psychology license after admitting to unlawfully prescribing drugs. Wilson's return to music was spotty. He appeared frail, tentative and shaky and none of the post-comeback work brought anything close to the acclaim of his earlier catalog. One of the best-received albums of his second act was the 2004 "Brian Wilson Presents Smile," a revisiting of the work that had been intended as the follow-up to "Pet Sounds" but which was scrapped because of opposition from bandmates. Wilson's brothers had both died by the time of the Beach Boys' 50th reunion tour in 2012 but he joined Love, who became the band's controlling force, for several shows. At the end, Wilson said he felt as if he had been fired but Love denied it. Wilson last performed live in 2022. Wilson and his first wife, Marilyn, had two daughters, Carnie and Wendy, who had hits in the 1990s as part of the group Wilson Phillips. He and second wife Melinda, whom he met when she sold him a car, had five children.
