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by Tim Page, Special to The Washington Post
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. The Beach Boys were formed in 1961 in Hawthorne, California, 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 Mr. 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 Mr. 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. Mr. 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 Mr. 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, Mr. 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 Mr. 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. As he expressed in one of his most personal songs, “Til I Die,” released on the 1971 album “Surf’s Up”: I’m a cork on the ocean, Floating over the raging sea, How deep is the ocean? I lost my way – – – Pressure and ‘Pet Sounds’ At the height of their career, The Beach Boys were under pressure to turn out song after song, album after album, while making live concert appearances throughout the United States and abroad. The albums “Shut Down, Volume 2,” “All Summer Long,” “The Beach Boys Today!” and “Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!)” were all released between March 1964 and July 1965 – each one representing an exponential leap for Mr. Wilson as composer, arranger and producer. During the same period, a succession of British groups, led by the Beatles, came to the United States and knocked the Beach Boys from their perch near the top of the charts. By 1965, Mr. Wilson, increasingly troubled and anxious, had stopped touring with his band, with the expressed intent of devoting himself exclusively to production and songwriting. “Pet Sounds,” released in May 1966, dazzled everyone from Paul McCartney (who once called its “God Only Knows” the greatest pop song ever written) to the conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein, who concluded his warmly appreciative, nationally telecast exploration of rock with Mr. Wilson at home, playing alone at the piano. But “Pet Sounds” sold relatively poorly when it came out, and an internecine struggle had begun within the Beach Boys, one that would prove disastrous for all concerned. Some members of the band, particularly Love, the front man during live performances, were vehemently opposed to any deviation from what had become an exceedingly lucrative formula, while Mr. Wilson – overstressed, overindulged, despondent, drugged and dissipated – was increasingly out of sight and out of touch. At home in Los Angeles, Mr. Wilson worked on what he hoped would be his magnum opus, a vast, abstracted suite called “Smile.” He had a custom-made sand pit built in the house, to summon the aura of the beach. Never before had so much time and money been spent on a single recording; there were eventually 72 studio sessions. A bejeweled single, “Good Vibrations,” featuring an electro-theremin, went immediately to No. 1, and anticipation for the album was intense. The complete “Smile” was announced for release in early 1967, then postponed indefinitely, at Mr. Wilson’s insistence. He had begun to suffer from what would later be diagnosed as schizoaffective disorder, with incessant auditory hallucinations and paranoia. He reached a nadir when he became convinced that a two-minute cut called “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow” – the “fire” part of a so-called Elements section on “Smile” that also contained musical evocations of earth, air and water – was somehow, by its very existence, igniting blazes all over Los Angeles County. Mr. Wilson then attempted unsuccessfully to destroy the tapes before entering a long despondency. For most of the following decade, Mr. Wilson was a near-complete recluse. He contributed one or two songs to Beach Boys recordings, which still came out on occasion but sold miserably. The group was often dismissed as hopelessly old-fashioned during the “psychedelic” late 1960s and early 1970s. Jann Wenner, the co-founder and first editor of Rolling Stone magazine, went so far as to dismiss claims of Mr. Wilson’s genius as “essentially a promotional shuck.” A quickly made substitute for “Smile,” entitled “Smiley Smile,” was finally issued in late 1967, to dismal reviews and poor sales, and the Beach Boys never recovered their creative momentum. Tracks from the original “Smile” project leaked out on the albums “20/20” (1969), “Sunflower” (1970) and “Surf’s Up” (1971). In 2004, a supposed “completed” version was issued by Mr. Wilson, in tandem with his lyricist and collaborator Van Dyke Parks and a Los Angeles band called the Wondermints. It took until 2011 for Mr. Wilson’s original “Smile” recordings to be released in their entirety, and the music was just as gorgeous, giddy, ambitious and strange as had been expected. In these discs, Mr. Wilson is better understood as a composer of electro-acoustical soundscapes than as a traditional songwriter. The disc was made up of fractured, elaborately ornamented musical tableaux, distinguished by their brevity, concentration and sheer sonic splendor that flowered in the ear. – – – Roads to recovery and relapses In 1974, the Beach Boys (without Mr. Wilson) had been discovered as a live “oldies” act and began to make an enormous amount of money again in concert and with their back catalogue. The group began a strenuous campaign to convince the world “Brian Is Back!” Mr. Wilson appeared on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” in 1976, participated in an hour-long television celebration of the band, and began to make occasional appearances with the group, during most of which he looked terrified and unhappy. But he managed to write every song on the 1977 album “Love You,” a poignant, charming and strangely childlike disc that captivates despite Mr. Wilson’s startlingly ragged vocals. Giving the album an “A” in the “Consumer Guide” column he wrote for the Village Voice, critic Robert Christgau summed it up: “Painfully crackpot and painfully sung, but also inspired, not least because it calls forth forbidden emotions. For a surrogate teenager to bare his growing pains so guilelessly was exciting, or at least charming; for an avowed adult to expose an almost childish naivete is embarrassing, but also cathartic.” Still, the argument about whether Mr. Wilson was, in fact, “back” persisted for the rest of his life. He spent much of his life struggling with cocaine and other drugs, drastic weight fluctuations, depression and mental illness, and his recoveries seemed both tentative and temporary. For a long period, he was under almost total control by a psychologist who was later stripped of his license. In later life, Mr. Wilson seemed to stabilize somewhat with improved psychiatric medications and his marriage to Melinda Ledbetter-Wilson, who took charge of his career as well as his person. He toured with an entourage that guarded him fiercely and gently. His auditory hallucinations never abated. “I dread the derogatory voices I hear during the afternoon,” he reflected during an interview with Ability magazine in 2006. “They say things like, ‘You are going to die soon,’ and I have to deal with those negative thoughts. But it’s not as bad as it used to be. When I’m on stage, I try to combat the voices by singing really loud. When I’m not on stage, I play my instruments all day, making music for people. Also, I kiss my wife and kiss my kids. I try to use love as much as possible.” – – – Traumatic childhood Brian Douglas Wilson was born in Inglewood, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, on June 20, 1942, and grew up in nearby Hawthorne, where his father owned a machinery company. His father, Murry, had musical ambitions that were never realized and was, by all accounts, a physically abusive tyrant and heavy drinker. “When he didn’t put his hands on us, he tried to scare us in other ways,” Mr. Wilson later wrote in his memoir “I Am Brian Wilson.” “He would take out his glass eye and make us look into the space where the eye used to be.” Murry Wilson derided his children, especially Brian, as talentless and undisciplined, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Brian had written his first song at 5 and learned to play piano by watching his father. Playing the piano would become a way to drown out family fights. During high school, Mr. Wilson was a capable student who played baseball and football and ran cross-country. But his great interest was music and, when he received a Wollensak tape recorder for his 16th birthday, he enlisted his younger brothers, singing familiar songs and playing them back, all the while listening closely and critically. “I heard the Del-Vikings, the Coasters and the Platters. They blew me away,” Mr. Wilson told the Washington Times. “I learned how to make harmonies. And I learned how to sing with love in my voice from Rosemary Clooney.” In 1961, while a student at El Camino College, he wrote his first pop song. Based on the Disney standard “When You Wish Upon a Star,” it was later known as “Surfer Girl.” His group, originally called the Pendletones, made its first appearance that same year. When the first single, “Surfin’,” was released on a small Los Angeles label called Candix, Mr. Wilson and his band were surprised to learn that the record company had changed their name to the Beach Boys. Dennis Wilson once described the first time the Beach Boys heard “Surfin’ ” on the radio. They were driving through Los Angeles during a winter rainstorm and the song came on unexpectedly. “Nothing will ever top the expression on Brian’s face, ever,” he recalled. “That was the all-time moment.” Their first national hit was “Surfin’ USA,” an homage to Berry that was based on his “Sweet Little Sixteen.” The borrowings were obvious – Berry had offered a vision of people “rockin’ ” all over the country, and Mr. Wilson changed that to “surfin’ ” and added a backing chorus. Berry’s lawyers threatened a lawsuit and won a songwriter’s credit for his inspiration. – – – Therapy gone awry After Mr. 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 Mr. Wilson had paid him more than $3 million between 1983 and 1991. For a while, he also lived in Mr. 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, Mr. 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. Mr. Wilson’s brother Dennis drowned in 1983, and his brother Carl died of cancer in 1998. Mr. 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 – Mr. 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 Mr. 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, Mr. 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 Mr. 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 Mr. Wilson.) Further solo discs appeared and, in 2002, Mr. 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. “Melinda was more than my wife,” Mr. Wilson wrote on Instagram after her death. “She was my savior. She gave me the emotional security I needed to have a career. She encouraged me to make the music that was closest to my heart. She was my anchor.” 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.” The Beach Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, and Mr. Wilson received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2007 for being “rock and roll’s gentlest revolutionary” and for a body of work that was called “vulnerable and sincere, authentic and unmistakably American.” In 2010, he made a recording of his favorite Gershwin songs and, in 2021, he released “At my Piano,” a selection of Mr. Wilson’s songs played simply, lovingly and somewhat anxiously by their composer. 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.”
