Brian Wilson (82) – The Beach Boys – was born June 20, 1942 in Inglewood, California, the first child of pianist Audree Korthof and Murry Wilson, a machinist who later pursued songwriting part-time. Wilson, along with his siblings, suffered psychological and sporadic physical maltreatment from their father. His 2016 memoir characterizes his father as “violent” and “cruel”; however, it also suggests that certain narratives about the mistreatment had been overstated or unfounded.
From an early age, Wilson exhibited an aptitude for learning by ear. His father remembered how, after hearing only a few verses of “When the Caissons Go Rolling Along“, young Wilson was able to reproduce its melody. His father Murry was a driving force in cultivating his children’s musical talents. Wilson undertook six weeks of accordion lessons, and by ages seven and eight, he performed choir solos at church. His choir director declared him to have perfect pitch. One of Wilson’s first forays into songwriting, penned when he was nine, was a reinterpretation of the lyrics to Stephen Foster‘s “Oh! Susannah“.
At age 12, his family acquired an upright piano, and he began teaching himself to play piano by spending hours mastering his favorite songs. He learned how to write manuscript music through a friend of his father. Wilson sang with peers at school functions, as well as with family and friends at home, and guided his two brothers in learning harmony parts, which they would rehearse together. He also played piano obsessively after school, deconstructing the harmonies of the Four Freshmen by listening to short segments of their songs on a phonograph, then working to recreate the blended sounds note by note on the keyboard.
I got so into The Four Freshmen. I could identify with Bob Flanigan‘s high voice. He taught me how to sing high. I worked for a year on The Four Freshmen with my hi-fi set. I eventually learned every song they did.
In high school, Wilson played quarterback for Hawthorne High’s football team, played American Legion Baseball, and ran cross-country in his senior year. For his Senior Problems course in October 1959, Wilson submitted an essay, “My Philosophy”, in which he stated that his ambitions were to “make a name for myself in music”. One of Wilson’s earliest public performances was at a fall arts program at his high school. He enlisted his cousin and frequent singing partner Mike Love and, to entice brother Carl into the group, named the newly formed membership “Carl and the Passions”. They performed songs by Dion and the Belmonts and the Four Freshmen, impressing classmate and musician, Al Jardine. Disappointed by his college teachers’ disdain for pop music, he withdrew from college after about 18 months. By his account, he crafted his first entirely original melody, “Surfer Girl“, in 1961, inspired by a Dion and the Belmonts rendition of “When You Wish Upon a Star“.
The three Wilson brothers, Love, and Jardine debuted their first music group together, called “the Pendletones”, in the autumn of 1961. At Dennis’s suggestion, Brian and Love co-wrote the group’s first song, “Surfin’“. Dad Murry became their manager. Encouraged by the results – Surfin’ became a hit in Los Angeles and reached 75 on the national Billboard sales charts – the group’s name changed to the Beach Boys. Their major live debut was at the Ritchie Valens Memorial Dance on New Year’s Eve, 1961. Just days earlier, Wilson had received an electric bass from his father and quickly learned to play, prompting Jardine to switch to rhythm guitar.
As “Surfin'” faded from the charts, Wilson collaborated with local musician Gary Usher to produce demo recordings for new tracks, including “409” and “Surfin’ Safari“. Capitol Records were persuaded to release the demos as a single, achieving a double-sided national hit.
I wasn’t aware those early songs defined California so well until much later in my career. I certainly didn’t set out to do it. I wasn’t into surfing at all. My brother Dennis gave me all the jargon I needed to write the songs. He was the surfer and I was the songwriter.
Brian Wilson wrote the majority of the Beach Boys’ hits and was one of the first recording artists allowed to act as an entrepreneurial producer, a position he attained thanks to his immediate success with the band after their 7 year contract signing to Capitol Records in 1962.
The next 4 years marked the peak years of his career as a Beach Boy, who “always felt he was a behind-the-scenes man, rather than an entertainer.” Brian Wilson was the architect of the California sound that captured surfing and sun, beaches and girls. Yet for all the “Fun, Fun, Fun,” there was something much deeper and darker in Brian’s abilities as a composer.
It was more than disposable music for teenagers. He had an unparalleled melodic sense, hearing sounds in his mind that others couldn’t. He could worm his way into your head and then break your heart with songs like “In My Room” and “God Only Knows.” The tour de force “Good Vibrations” —- had anyone ever heard of the theremin before he employed its unearthly wail? — is a symphony both complex and easily accessible.
Between January and March 1963, Wilson produced the Beach Boys’ second album, Surfin’ U.S.A., limiting his public appearances with the group to television gigs and local shows to prioritize studio work. David Marks substituted for him on vocals during other live performances. Surfin’ U.S.A.” produced the Beach Boys’ first top-ten single and the accompanying album peaked at number two on the Billboard charts by July, cementing the Beach Boys as a major commercial act. Against Capitol’s wishes, Wilson collaborated with artists outside Capitol, including the Liberty Records duo Jan and Dean. Wilson co-wrote “Surf City” with Jan Berry, which topped U.S. charts in July 1963, his first composition to do so.
For the better part of 1963 and 1964, Wilson lived in the house of his future first wife Marilyn Rovell, who was part of the girl vocal surf group the Honeys, which Wilson served as record producer and chief songwriter. Surfer Girl was the third studio album released in September 1963. Largely a collection of surf songs, the album reached number 7 in the U.S. and number 13 in the UK with lead single “Surfer Girl” a top 10 hit. It was also Brian Wilson’s confirmation as producer and exemplified his attempts to become an entrepreneurial producer like Spector. Still resistant to touring, Jardine was Brian’s live performance substitute. By late 1963 however, Marks’ departure necessitated Wilson’s return to the touring lineup. By the end of the year, Wilson had written, arranged, or produced 42 songs for other acts. He also founded Brian Wilson Productions, a record production company with offices on Sunset Boulevard, and Ocean Music, a publishing entity for his work with artists outside the Beach Boys.
Throughout 1964, Wilson toured internationally with the Beach Boys while writing and producing their albums Shut Down Volume 2 (March), All Summer Long (June), and The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album (November). In February, Beatlemania swept the U.S., a development that deeply concerned Wilson, who felt the Beach Boys’ pop music direction had been threatened by the British Invasion. “The Beatles invasion shook me up a lot. So we stepped on the gas a little bit.” Their May 1964 answer “I Get Around“, their first U.S. number-one hit, is identified by scholar James Perone as representing both a successful response to the British Invasion and the beginning of an unofficial rivalry between Wilson and the Beatles, principally Paul McCartney‘s songwriting.
“Round, round, get around
I get around, yeah
Get around, round, round, round, I get around”Talk about hooking you from the very first note…
And then there were the harmonies, the multipart vocals and that dancing lead guitar and…“I’m getting bugged driving up and down this same old strip
I gotta find a new place where the kids are hip”This definitely wasn’t Liverpool. It’s like the Beatles hadn’t even happened. This band was cruising the boulevards in California and…
But by late 1964, Wilson faced mounting psychological strain from career pressures. Exhausted by his self-described “Mr Everything” role, he later expressed feeling mentally drained and unable to rest. The mounting pressures exploded in late December 1964, when Brian Wilson suffered one of three mental breakdowns, and Glen Campbell, then a member of the Wrecking Crew, temporarily replaced him on tour until February 1965, when Bruce Johnstone permanently replaced Brian Wilson, so he could focus solely on songwriting and production. he began cultivating a new social circle through music industry connections. Biographer Steven Gaines writes that this period marked Wilson’s first independence from familial oversight, allowing friendships without “parental interference”.
And then, in the heat of the summer of 1965, in July, just after school let out, came “California Girls.” 
Later it turned out that Brian Wilson had been under the influence of LSD when he started writing this epic song of joy and hope. He later described the session for the song’s backing track, held on April 6, as his “favorite”, and the opening orchestral section as “the greatest piece of music that I’ve ever written”. However, he attributed persistent paranoia later that year to his LSD use. Without judgement, “California Girls” was unlike anything we’d heard previously. The Beatles weren’t employing an intro like that. And the lyrics might sound simplistic, but the best things usually are.
“California Girls” didn’t jump out of the radio. It quieted everything down, relaxed you, and after hearing it once you listened in rapt attention waiting for the explosion of the lyrical part of the song. In my opinion better than “Good Vibrations”.
After this Brian set out to distance himself from “surf music”. Throughout 1965, Wilson’s musical ambitions progressed significantly with the albums The Beach Boys Today! (March) and Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) (June) and, in late 1965, moved into a newly purchased home in Beverly Hills, to establish more independence and distance. “Pet Sounds” was his next project. He produced most of the album between January and April 1966 across multiple Hollywood studios, mainly employing his bandmates for singing vocal parts and session musicians for the backing tracks. The album’s lead single, “Caroline, No”, released in March 1966, became Wilson’s first solo credit, but peaked only at nr. 32 on Billboard, while the album didn’t get higher than Nr.10. Wilson was “mortified” that his artistic growth had failed to translate into a number-one album. Marilyn stated, “When it wasn’t received by the public the way he thought it would be received, it made him hold back. … but he didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop. He needed to create more.”
Soon after Wilson met Derek Taylor, the Beatles’ part time former press officer, who became the Beach Boys’ publicist in 1966. At Wilson’s request, Taylor launched a media campaign to elevate his public image, promoting him as a “genius”.
“Brian Wilson is a genius” is a line that became part of a media campaign spearheaded in 1966 by the Beatles‘ former press officer Derek Taylor, who was then employed as the Beach Boys’ publicist. Although there are earlier documented expressions of the statement, Taylor frequently called Brian Wilson a “genius” as part of an effort to rebrand the Beach Boys and legitimize Wilson as a serious artist on a par with the Beatles and Bob Dylan.
With the aid of numerous associates in the music industry, Taylor’s promotional efforts were integral to the success of the band’s 1966 album Pet Sounds in England. As for “Pet Sounds” in the States? A legend now, a blip on the radar screen back in ’66. “Sloop John B” was a monster, but they didn’t write it, which hearkened back to the bad feeling of “Party!” “God Only Knows” got only scattered airplay and it wasn’t until “Shampoo” that most people even HEARD “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” By the end of the year, an NME reader’s poll placed Brian Wilson as the fourth-ranked “World Music Personality”—about 1,000 votes ahead of Bob Dylan and 500 behind John Lennon in the UK. However, the hype generated for the group’s intended follow-up album, Smile, bore a number of unintended consequences for the Beach Boys’ reputation and internal dynamic. Wilson ultimately scrapped Smile and reduced his involvement with the group.
Wilson later said that the “genius” branding intensified the pressures of his career and led him to become “a victim of the recording industry”. As he shied away from the industry in the years afterward, his ensuing legend originated the trope of the “reclusive genius” among studio-oriented musical artists and later inspired comparisons to other musicians such as Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett and Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac. In order to deliver on the promise of genius, Brian Wilson sought mind expansion in drugs, a common denominator in those days.
Through late 1966, Wilson worked extensively on the Beach Boys’ single “Good Vibrations“, which topped the U.S. charts in December, and began collaborating with session musician Van Dyke Parks on Smile, the planned follow-up to Pet Sounds. Smile was never finished until 40 years later, due in large part to Wilson’s worsening mental condition and exhaustion and an ever growing entourage of irresponsible people standing in the way of brilliance with their self serving interests.
For the remainder of 1968, Wilson’s songwriting output declined substantially, as did his emotional state, leading him to self-medicate with overconsumption of food, alcohol, and drugs. And over the next decades the Beach Boys narrative changed, to become Brian Wilson and then the rest of the group to the point where he was once asked if he still was a Beach Boy. His answer was “No, Maybe a little bit.”
He was a mad genius. Eccentric. Was he damaged by drugs? Was he damaged by ambition? Was he damaged by family expectations? Sure, we knew that he’d had an episode and had refused to go on the road, but with the success of 1974’s “Endless Summer,” the only way forward was to bring Brian back into the band. And they tried and tried, but it never really worked.
There had been isolated moments in the seventies, like “Marcella” and “Sail on Sailor.” And then came 1977’s “Love You.” Brian was handed the reins, he was in complete control and the result may not have been execrable, but it was confounding. Brian seemed to be living in an alternative universe. He made the record he wanted to hear, but it seemed simplistic and childish and was not so listenable.
And then followed the Eugene Landy years of Svengali like control; and the endless solo albums that were billed as comebacks but really never were; and the lawsuits back and forth. We got the legend, we got lawsuits, and at the center was this lost man who you could only feel sorry for, who oftentimes just made you wince. And then it was over. Brian was pushed into the background, and Carl Wilson and Mike Love took back control of the band. According to his second wife Melinda, when they married in 1995, Wilson was entangled in nine separate lawsuits, many unresolved until the early 2000s.
But there was one last hurrah, “Good Timin’,” the opening track on “L.A. (Light Album),” but this sixties magic had no place on the radio in the AOR heyday, never mind all the press being about the disco version of “Here Comes the Night.” The Beach Boys were in the rearview mirror except for the non-Brian “Kokomo” and the story became about Brian himself, constantly facing controversy, lawsuits and declining mental health.
He did some sporadic touring and studio work in the first 15 years of this century and even a Beach Boys reunion type of concert tour, but nothing mindblowing except for finishing the unfinished album “Smiles” thirty years after starting it. Brian Wilson Presents Smile (BWPS) premiered at the Royal Festival Hall in London in February 2004] and its positive reception led to a subsequent studio album adaptation. Released in September, BWPS debuted at number 13 on the Billboard 200, the highest chart position for any album by the Beach Boys or Wilson since 1976’s 15 Big Ones and the highest ever debut for a Beach Boys-related album. It was later certified platinum. In support of BWPS, Wilson embarked on a tour covering the U.S., Europe, and Japan. Australian Musician quoted one of the touring musicians, “In six years of touring this is the happiest we’ve ever seen Brian”
He continued touring for the next 15 years (In a 2016 Rolling Stone interview, he responded to a retirement question by stating he would rather continue touring than sit idle) and in 2021 sold his publishing rights to Universal Music Publishing Group for $50 million. Promptly after this he got sued by his ex-wife Marilyn for $6.7 million as a claim on half of his songwriting royalties.
On July 26, 2022, Wilson played his final concert as part of a joint tour with Chicago at the Pine Knob Music Theatre in Clarkston, Michigan, where he was reported to have “sat rigid and expressionless” throughout the performance. Days later, he cancelled his remaining tour dates for that year, with his management citing “unforeseen health reasons”. During a January 2023 appearance on a Beach Boys fan podcast, Wilson’s daughter Carnie reported that her father was “probably not going to tour anymore, which is heartbreaking”.
Brian Wilson died on June 11, 2025, nine days before his 83rd birthday, ending the life of a musical genius whose ambition and gift turned his life into a drama filled tragedy. Al Jardine later reported that Wilson had been struggling with long-term effects of COVID-19 since his last tour: “That was the end of it. He never came back after that.”
But all this focus on the Brian saga was evidence of what he once did. On some level Brian Wilson was already dead for a number of years. You can’t go on the road if no one will buy a ticket. Yes, this was the guy, but he was a shell of himself.
So, the internet is full of obituaries. Telling the story. Of Brian’s genius. But Mike Love has been unjustly overlooked for his lyrics. Van Dyke Parks gets all this credit, but really it’s Mike’s words that embodied the California dream. But Mike is not a tragic figure. And however talented Mike is and Carl was, it’s clear that Brian was on a whole ‘nother level. Do we call it genius? What exactly does “genius” mean? You can employ the label, but you can’t truly quantify it.
But Brian Wilson came up with these songs out of thin air. They were in his head and he had to convey what he thought to those in the studio to concoct these dreams that infected listeners all over the world. Beach Boys music is forever, younger generations are exposed to it via Disney. And if you want pure Americana…
In the aftermath of his life, we know entirely too much about this man’s life. But does that change the magic of the records?
If you want to honor Brian’s memory, listen to the records. And the funny thing is as soon as you press play you will be involved, they are not at a distance, like so many legendary tracks.
California Dreaming. Brian Wilson is the one who hipped us to it.
We cannot thank him enough.
It’s not only a physical place, it’s also a state of mind, and it’s baked into these legendary records. Every emotion was covered, but underneath it all was an optimism. Brian Wilson was a product of the sixties, he digested the culture and fed us back to us, one step ahead, he gave us hope.
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