Brian Wilson, Heart and Soul of The Beach Boys, Dies at 82

Wilson, who started the band in Hawthorne, California, with brothers Carl and Dennis, cousin Mike Love and schoolmate Al Jardine, wrote such timeless classics as “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” “In My Room,” “God Only Knows,” “Caroline, No,” “California Girls,” “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” and “Good Vibrations. “He was the mastermind behind Pet Sounds, regarded as one of the greatest albums of the ‘60s rock era, and an acknowledged influence by Paul McCartney himself on The Beatles magnum opus, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Wilson demonstrated an uncanny gift for harmonic invention and complex vocal and instrumental arrangements.  “A lot of love went into our singing, our harmonies, the making of those records,” he said in 2003.

Born on June 20, 1942, at Centinela Hospital in Inglewood, Brian Douglas Wilson was the eldest of three boys of Audree Neva and frustrated songwriter Murry Wilson. The family moved to nearby Hawthorne when he was two.

Wilson was a child prodigy, who had an epiphany hearing George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” as a toddler.  Just a few years later, it was discovered he had a hearing loss in his right ear, a condition that has often been ascribed to Murry dealing him a blow to the head, though this was never confirmed. When he was just nine, Brian sang a song, “The Old Soldier,” written by his cousin Mike Love, then 10, at a family gathering.

A natural athlete who played football, baseball and ran track and field in high school, he would teach Carl and Dennis harmony parts and played piano, analyzing the harmonies of his favorite singing group. The Four Freshmen, painstakingly recreating them note for note on his keyboard.  Enlisting his cousin Mike Love and Carl, he launched the group Carl and the Passions, performing a set at a high school arts program which included covers of songs by Dion and the Belmonts, impressing a young classmate in the audience named Al Jardine.

The three Wilson brothers, Love and Jardine first appeared as a music group in the summer of ’61, calling themselves The Pendletones, using the emergency money they’d been given when their parents went on a weekend vacation to rent musical instruments, working up an arrangement for their first song, “Surfin’,” the subject suggested by Dennis, the only member who actually did surf.

Murry, who fancied himself a songwriter, encouraged and prodded his sons, who cut a few tunes at Keen Recording Studios at the behest of his music publisher, Hite Morgan. They changed their name to The Beach Boys, suggested by Russ Regan, according to Brian.

Released on the local X and Candix labels, “Surfin’” became a regional hit, and led to the band signing with Capitol Records by Nik Venet, a young exec, who oversaw the success of “Surfin’ Safari,” their first single for the label, which peaked at No. 14, followed by “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” their Chuck Berry homage, and “Surfer Girl,” all released in 1962 and 1963. The group also celebrated California’s obsession with cars in “Shut Down,” “409,” “Little Deuce Coupe” and the pursuit of happiness in the sun (“Be True To Your School,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “I Get Around”), many of them recorded at Hollywood’s United Western Recorders, where Brian made the decision to doubletrack the group’s vocals.

Brian was officially credited as producer on the band’s Surfer Girl album, their third, before tackling hot rods on Little Deuce Coupe, their fourth, when, with the departure of guitarist David Marks, meant Brian had to abandon his production work to tour.  His song “Surf City,” co-written with Jan Berry of fellow surf group Jan and Dean, was his first #1 single, which angered Murry.

Ran down mentally and physically, Brian stopped performing live with the group to concentrate on writing and production, with Glen Campbell, then Bruce Johnson, called to replace him.  After being introduced to the joys of marijuana, Brian finished the Today! and Summer Days albums, while his first acid trip resulted in “California Girls,” which would climb to No. 3 on the Pop charts.

In late 1965, Brian began working on Pet Sounds, with lyricist Tony Asher, recording the instrumentation with the famed Wrecking Crew, captured in the 2015 motion picture biopic, Love And Mercy.  The rest of the group, particularly Mike Love, expressed their dissatisfaction with the new direction, which sent Brian into a psychological tailspin, which culminated in the aborted sessions for his masterwork, Smile, and the legendary fire he set in the studio. Songs like “Caroline, No” and “Good Vibrations” have become classics, the latter giving the band their third No. 1 single after “I Get Around” and “Help Me, Rhonda,” selling over a million copies.

With the dissolution of Smile, Brian and the band relocated to the living room of his Bel Air mansion for the reworked Smiley Smile, the soul-flavored Wild Honey and the muted Friends, as The Beach Boys commercial success began to wane.  He became addicted to cocaine, entered a psychiatric hospital and contributed sporadically as a songwriter, including “Do It Again,” which reached No. 1 in the U.K.  Brian picked up the pace on Sunflower, before the band signed with Reprise Records, which resulted in his first “comeback” album, Surf’s Up in 1971, which climbed to No. 29 in the U.S., the band’s best chart showing in four years.  The following year, he reluctantly agreed to travel with the band to The Netherlands, where they recorded Holland, which produced the song, “Sail On, Sailor,” a collaboration with Smile cohort Van Dyke Parks, which became a minor hit.

Following Murry’s death in 1973, Brian went into seclusion, existing on drugs and overeating, building a sandbox in his home for his piano, lying in bed all day, sometimes emerging in only a bathrobe. In 1975, he came under treatment by the radical therapist Eugene Landy, contributing to a new Beach Boys album 15 Big Ones, that prompted the latest in a series of “Brian’s Back” ad campaigns. He made a solo appearance on Saturday Night Live in November, 1976, then followed up with the all-original Brian album, Love You, which came out under The Beach Boys moniker, with its playful lyrics citing Johnny Carson and Phil Spector.  By late ’76, Landy was dismissed over a dispute on his reported $20k monthly fee, and Brian’s mental condition wavered, prompting the doctor’s return with a more stringent, radical program in 1982, at the behest of brother Carl, Mike Love and Al Jardine.

Signing a deal with Sire Records’ Seymour Stein, Brian released his self-titled solo debut, which included “Love & Mercy,” and was generally well-received by critics and fans despite the omnipresence of Landy, who kept feeding him pharmaceuticals during the recording.  He wrote his “faux” memoir, Would It Be Nice: My Own Story, in 1991, in which he spoke of his troubled childhood with Murry and his lost years suffering from mental illness. A 1995, Don Was-directed documentary, I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times, resulted in a soundtrack, while Orange Crate Art represented a collaboration with old pal Van Dyke Parks. Brian teamed with Chicago-based producer Joe Thomas for Imagination in 1998, and began to perform live for the first time in decades.

In 2004, he set out to finish the long-aborted Smile with keyboardist Darian Sahanaja and Parks, playing the finished version in concert on Feb. 20, 2004 at the Royal Festival Hall in LONDON.  Brian Wilson Presents Smile hit No. 13 on the BILLBOARD 200, with Wilson winning his first-ever Grammy for “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow” as Best Rock Instrumental.  He undertook a brief tour in 2006 to mark the 40th anniversary of Pet Sounds with Al Jardine.

Brian released That Lucky Old Sun in 2008, followed by a series of U.S. and U.K. concerts, followed by Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin, in 2010 and In The Key Of Disney, in 2011, results of a deal with Disney’s Hollywood Records. To mark the band’s 50th anniversary, they reunited in 2012 for U.S. and overseas dates, then released a new album, That’s Why God Made The Radio, which debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard charts, their highest ever. That reunion dissolved when Brian and Mike Love once more squabbled, with the latter taking his own version of The Beach Boys – mainly him and Bruce Johnson – back on the road.  In 2013, he won his second Grammy for the 2011 release of The Smile Sessions, for Best Historical Album.

Love & Mercy premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in Sept. 2014, with Paul Dano and John Cusack portraying Brian during his Pet Sounds era and then again, in the throes of his treatment with Landy, to positive reviews. Brian then marked his return to Capitol Records by releasing his 11th solo album, No Pier Pressure, in April 2015, featuring cameos by Al Jardine, Blondie Chaplin, FUN’s Nate Reuss, Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward and Kacey Musgraves.

Brian was inducted with The Beach Boys into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2000, was named a BMI Icon in 2004 and was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2007.  He was also nominated for a Golden Globe in 2015 for Best Original Song for “One Kind Of Love,” from Love & Mercy.

Wilson is survived by his wife Melinda Kae Ledbetter, whom he married in 1995, and their five adopted children, including three daughters, Daria Rose, Delanie Rae and Dakota Rose, and two sons, Dylan and Dash Tristan.  He also has two daughters – singers Carnie and Wendy Wilson, of Wilson Phillips —  from a previous marriage to Marilyn Rovell.