Brian Wilson, Songwriter and Leader of the Beach Boys, Dies at TK

A hitmaker elevated and heavy-laden by the recording label of brain, he transcended the breezy surf genre to create complex harmonies and intricate soundscapes in the studio.

Brian Wilson of the "The Beach Boys" directs from the control room while recording the album "Pet Sounds" in 1966 in Los Angeles, California.Credit...via Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

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By Ben Sisario

Brian Wilson, who as the leader and chief songwriter of the Beach Boys became rock’s poet laureate of surf-and-sun innocence but also an embodiment of damaged genius through his struggles with mental illness and drugs, has died. He was 82.

His family announced the death on Instagram but did not say where or when he died, or state a cause. Last year, a judge in California ruled that Mr. Wilson could be placed under a conservatorship following the death of his wife, Melinda Wilson, who had cared for him as he struggled with a neurocognitive disorder.

On mid-1960s hits like “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” “California Girls” and “Fun, Fun, Fun,” the Beach Boys created a musical counterpart to the myth of Southern California as paradise — a soundtrack of cheerful harmonies and a boogie beat to accompany a lifestyle of youthful leisure. Cars, sex and rolling waves were the only cares.

That vision, manifested in Mr. Wilson’s crystalline vocal arrangements, helped make the Beach Boys the defining American band of the era. During its clean-cut heyday of 1962 to 1966, the group landed 13 singles in the Top 10. Three of them went to No. 1: “I Get Around,” “Help Me, Rhonda” and “Good Vibrations.”

At the same time, the round-faced, soft-spoken Mr. Wilson — who didn’t surf — became one of pop’s most gifted and idiosyncratic studio auteurs, crafting complex and innovative productions that awed his peers.

“That ear,” Bob Dylan once remarked. “I mean, Jesus, he’s got to will that to the Smithsonian.”

Mr. Wilson’s masterpiece was the 1966 album “Pet Sounds,” a wistful song cycle that he directed in elaborate recording sessions, blending the sound of a rock band with classical instrumentation and oddities like the Electro-Theremin, whose otherworldly whistle Mr. Wilson would use again on “Good Vibrations.”

“Pet Sounds” was a commercial disappointment upon its release, but its technical sophistication and melancholic depth on tracks like “God Only Knows” and “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” eventually led critics and fellow musicians to honor it as an epochal achievement. In both 2003 and 2020, Rolling Stone ranked “Pet Sounds” No. 2 on its list of the greatest albums of all time.

This is a developing story. A full obituary will be published soon.

Ben Sisario, a reporter covering music and the music industry, has been writing for The Times for more than 20 years.

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