The Beach Boys singer Brian Wilson dead at 82
Brian Wilson, the legendary frontman of The Beach Boys, has died aged 82.
In a statement posted on social media, his family wrote: “We are heartbroken to announced 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 grieving. We realize that we are sharing our grief with the world. Love & Mercy.”
His family have refrained from revealing Wilson’s cause of death. However, last year, it was revealed Wilson was suffering from dementia after a conservatorship was filed following the death of his wife, Melinda.
Court documents from the conservatorship filing stated that Wilson “does not have the capacity to give informed consent to the administration of medications appropriate to the care and treatment of major neurocognitive disorders (including dementia).”
Following the filing, Superior Court Judge Gus T May approved the petition filed by Wilson’s family, appointed Wilson’s long-serving publicist, Jean Sievers and manager, LeeAnn Hard, as his conservators.
Wilson was married to Melinda from 1995 until her death in 2024. Following her passing, The Beach Boys singer said, “Melinda was more than my wife. She was my saviour. 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.”
Last May, The Beach Boys’ Mike Love and Bruce Johnston shared their hopes to one day work with Wilson again in a musical capacity. Love shared of Wilson’s condition while speaking on Today on BBC Radio 4: “We got together at Paradise Cove (in Los Angeles) at the end of the documentary. He was remembering things I’d forgotten about our high school days. His long-term memory is right there.”
Despite Wilson’s battle with dementia, Love said he was still a gifted musician who remained incredibly talented until the end: “His musical abilities, as long as he’s alive he’ll have those, but he does need medical supervision and care. His wife did take care of that.”
Wilson was a founding member and the leading creative force of The Beach Boys, who single-handedly redefined pop music during the 1960s with their seminal album, Pet Sounds. The surf-rock group had already enjoyed a series of hits prior to releasing their magnum opus in 1966, but the LP changed the game for the musical landscape as a whole.
Paul McCartney once said of the album in 1990: “The early surf records…I was aware of them as a musical act, and I used to like all that, but I didn’t get deeply interested in it—it was just a real nice sound. We used to admire the singing, the high falsetto really and the very sort of ‘California’ lyrics. It was later… it was Pet Sounds that blew me out of the water. First of all, it was Brian’s writing.”
He continued to heap praise, adding, “I love the album so much. I’ve just bought my kids each a copy of it for their education in life—I figure no one is educated musically ’til they’ve heard that album. I was into the writing and the songs.”
Throughout Wilson’s life, since early adulthood, he suffered from mental health problems and was initially misdiagnosed with a form of schizophrenia before it later was diagnosed as a form of bipolar disorder.
His health struggles began in 1964 when he suffered a panic attack on the way to play a show with The Beach Boys in Houston, which led to him quitting performing and focusing on studio work. Although Wilson eventually began touring again in 1999, and most recently took to the stage for a US tour in 2022.
As his mental state worsened following Pet Sounds, Wilson’s role in the band deteriorated as his bandmates were forced to take the songwriting reins. The follow-up album, Smile, was eventually abandoned, although Wilson would finally finish the project as a solo album in 2004.
Wilson believed that his heavy usage of psychedelic drugs played a major role in his mental decline. Speaking to The Guardian in 2011, Wilson opened up about the positives and negatives of LSD. At first, my creativity increased more than I could believe. On the downside, it fucked with my brain.”
As a result of his mental health issues, psychologist Eugene Landy was appointed to oversee Wilson by his first wife, Marilyn. However, Landy was extremely coercive with Wilson and effectively controlled his life for more than a decade during two spells. Thankfully, after meeting his second wife, Melinda, Wilson was able to be freed from the abusive conservatorship and was successfully granted a restraining order against Landy.
Wilson later reunited with The Beach Boys in 2012 for a 50-year anniversary tour celebrating their career and contributed to the band’s final album, That’s Why God Made the Radio.
Wilson is survived by his two children, Carnie and Wendy, who he shared with his first wife, Marilyn Rovell. He also adopted five children with his late second wife, Melinda Ledbetter, who he married in 1995.
Additionally, Wilson’s life was brought to the big screen when John Cusack and Paul Dano portrayed him in the 2014 biopic, Love and Mercy, which explored his mental health issues as well as Landy’s treatment of him.
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