Brian Wilson

1942–2025

Breaking News: Brian Wilson Has Died at Age 82

Brian Wilson, who co-founded and initially led the Beach Boys, has died. A statement announcing the music legend’s death was shared on his website and social media accounts on June 11. It read in part: “We are heartbroken to announce that our beloved father Brian Wilson has passed away. We are at a loss for words right now.” Details, including his cause of death and when he died, haven’t yet been released.

Wilson, who was 82 years old, had experienced major health struggles in recent years. He was placed in a conservatorship in May 2024 following the death of his second wife, Melinda Ledbetter Wilson, earlier that year. A judge approved the arrangement due to a “major neurocognitive disorder” that left Wilson unable to make his own health care decisions or even remember the names of some of his seven children, five of which are adopted. He is survived by his daughters—Carnie, Wendy, Dakota, Daria, and Delanie—as well as two sons, Dylan and Dash.

The Grammy-winning musician was the primary songwriter for the Beach Boys and was largely responsible for their unique harmonic sound and initial success in the 1960s. He cowrote the group’s early hits “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” “California,” and “Fun, Fun, Fun,” as well as the Grammy-nominated “Good Vibrations.” Wilson also shepherded their acclaimed 1966 album Pet Sounds into being.

Amid his success, Wilson struggled with mental illness and substance abuse. In 1975, he sought the help of psychologist Eugene Landy, who almost destroyed his career with his harmful methods that included limiting Wilson’s access to food and monitoring him 24 hours a day.

Although Landy did help Wilson with his substance abuse, he exploited the singer’s dependency on him, convincing Wilson to credit him as a collaborator on his songs and even add him as the chief beneficiary of Wilson’s will. After his family intervened, Wilson eventually broke free of Landy and got his life back on track, making a musical comeback in the mid-1990s with his successful solo career. He went on to win two Grammy Awards for his solo song “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow” in 2005 and the Beach Boys compilation album The Smile Sessions in 2013.

Brian Wilson was the co-founder, leader, and primary songwriter of the Beach Boys. He formed the group with his brothers in 1961 and had a long string of hit singles and albums, helping to establish the “California sound” along the way. By the mid-’60s, however, Wilson looked to move beyond the cheery, simple, teen-based formula that characterized much of the Beach Boys’ early music. The result was 1966’s Pet Sounds, which is ranked by many as one of the greatest albums of all time. But at the peak of his creative powers, substance abuse and mental illness took their toll on Wilson, who for much of the next 25 years lived in seclusion. After breaking free from psychologist Eugene Landy, who exerted an excessive amount of control over Wilson’s life during the 1980s, Wilson revived his career released in the 1990s, and went on to release several solo albums. He died in June 2025.

FULL NAME: Brian Douglas Wilson
BORN: June 20, 1942
DIED: June 2025
BIRTHPLACE: Inglewood, California
SPOUSES: Marilyn Rovell (1964–1979) and Melinda Ledbetter Wilson (1995–2024)
CHILDREN: Carnie, Wendy, Dakota, Daria, Delanie, Dylan, and Dash
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Gemini

Brian Douglas Wilson was born in Inglewood, California, on June 20, 1942. He grew up in the neighboring town of Hawthorne, within the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

The Wilson family lived an outwardly normal, middle-class suburban life, but at home, Brian and his younger brothers, Dennis and Carl, endured a rough childhood. They were subjected to regular physical and mental abuse by their father, Murry, and their mother, Audree Wilson, was by all accounts an alcoholic.

Against this tumultuous backdrop, the Wilson home was a musical one. Murry was an aspiring—though only vaguely successful—songwriter, and both he and Audree played piano. Brian and his brothers would often sing along with them in the living room, developing an early ability to harmonize with one another, a feat made all the more impressive by the fact that Brian was mostly deaf in one ear.

Brian remembers his childhood with mixed feelings, once telling an interviewer, “I had a good childhood—except for my dad beating me up all the time.” But as Brian grew older, he increasingly turned to music as an escape from the pain of his home life.

Along with his two younger brothers and their cousin Mike Love, a teenaged Brian began performing at parties and small gatherings. In 1961, the four relatives joined with Brian’s Hawthorne High School friend Al Jardine to form a band called the Pendletones. They chose the name after the popular Pendleton flannel shirts that became the group’s uniform in the early days. The group featured Brian on bass, Carl and Al on guitar, and Dennis on drums. Although Mike and Brian took most of the lead on vocals, every member lent his voice to their layered harmonic sound.

In October 1961, the Pendletones recorded demos of two surfing-themed songs, “Surfin’” and “Surfin’ Safari.” Although Dennis was the only member of the group who actually surfed, the band sought to tap into the rising popularity of the sport and, more importantly, its accompanying lifestyle. The small label that released the single liked the idea so much that it even went as far as to rename the group the Beach Boys, much to its members’ surprise. Released that December, “Surfin’” cracked the Billboard Hot 100, eventually peaking at No. 75 while remaining on the chart for six weeks. They followed a few months later with “Surfin’ Safari,” which reached the Top 20 and earned the Beach Boys a contract with Capitol Records. The label released the band’s first album, Surfin’ Safari, later in 1962. It reached No. 32 on the album charts, launching the group on its first wave of success.

With Brian as the primary creative force, the Beach Boys released a slew of hit singles and top-charting albums during the early 1960s, featuring bright and cheery music that came to represent the California youth culture of the period. They released three albums in 1963 alone—Surfin’ U.S.A., Surfer Girl, and Little Deuce Coupe—all of which cracked the Top 10. They followed that breakout year with hit releases like All Summer Long (1964) and Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!) (1965). Among the band’s many iconic hit songs from this era are “Surfin’ U.S.A.” (No. 3), “Fun, Fun, Fun” (No. 5), “I Get Around” (No. 1), “Help Me Rhonda” (No. 1), and “California Girls” (No. 3), to name a mere few.

But by the mid-’60s, Brian had begun to experiment musically, conceptually, and chemically, and he sought to push the group’s sound beyond the light and accessible sun-and-fun formula that characterized its early music. By late 1964, he had quit touring with the Beach Boys, due in part to a nervous breakdown he had suffered on the road, and he used his time at home to begin work on the band’s next album. Initially inspired by the Beatles’ Rubber Soul (1965), Brian’s goal was to create an album where “every song mattered” and that would “make people feel loved.”

Pet Sounds: From Relative Flop to Acclaimed Album

After collaborating with his friend Tony Asher on the lyrics, and writing and arranging the music almost entirely on his own, Wilson then employed the famous session group known as the Wrecking Crew to commit his vision to tape. Released in 1966, the resulting Beach Boys album, Pet Sounds, featured such memorable songs as “God Only Knows,” “I Just Wasn’t Made for these Times,” “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” and “Caroline, No.” With its complex arrangements, innovative recording techniques, and mind-bogglingly dense vocal harmonies, it’s ranked by many critics among the greatest records ever recorded. Rolling Stone magazine, for example, placed Pet Sounds at No. 2 on their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and Paul McCartney named it his favorite album, also citing it as a primary influence for the Beatles seminal 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and calling “God Only Knows” one of the most beautiful songs ever written.

Ironically, considering its later success, Capitol Records and the other members of the Beach Boys initially resisted the musical direction Wilson took on the album, preferring to stick with the safer, proven sound that had brought them so much success. The name Pet Sounds was born when band member Mike Love quipped, “Who’s gonna hear this sh––? The ears of a dog?” Arguably far ahead of its time, it received mixed reviews and didn’t sell as well as many of the band’s previous albums, further adding to the strain between Wilson and the other members, particularly Love.

Grammy Nominations for “Good Vibrations”

For his part, Wilson was undeterred and immediately followed with what is considered to be one of the greatest rock songs of all time, the 1967 single “Good Vibrations.” He had begun working on the song during the Pet Sounds sessions. The track hit No. 1 on the charts and later earned three Grammy nominations for Best Performance by a Vocal Group, Best Contemporary (R&R) Group Performance, and Best Contemporary (R&R) Recording.

This encouraged Wilson to employ many of the same recording techniques he had used on a new project that he hoped would reach even greater musical heights. Collaborating with songwriter Van Dyke Parks on the lyrics and enlisting many of the musicians who had appeared on Pet Sounds, the album was initially titled Dumb Angel and later renamed SMiLE. Conceived by Wilson as a “teenage symphony to God,” it wasn’t released until more than 37 years later. One of the most famous unfinished albums of all time, SMiLE was shelved when Wilson’s personal life took a sharp turn for the worse—though reworked versions of a few of the songs did appear on 1967’s Smiley Smile and 1971’s Surf’s Up.

Plagued by his heavy abuse of alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, and LSD, Wilson suffered numerous nervous breakdowns and grew obese. He famously began wailing in the aisle of an airplane, played his grand piano in a sandbox he had built in his home, and said he heard voices in his head. Attempting to deal with his addiction and mental illness, Wilson spent much of the next two decades in seclusion. While he struggled with his personal problems, the Beach Boys continued to tour without him (with only a few exceptions), relying more and more heavily on a nostalgia for their early work to carry their live shows. They continued to record as well, though with diminished involvement from Wilson, and with consequently underwhelming results.

By the mid-1970s, Wilson’s substance abuse and deteriorating mental state led his family to enlist the help of psychologist Eugene Landy, from whom he received treatment on and off for the next decade and a half. Landy did help Wilson reign in his drug addiction and take charge of his mental and physical health, but the doctor also exploited Wilson’s dependency on him, even going as far as to convince the musician to list him as a collaborator on several songs and on his first solo album, as well as a beneficiary in his will. In 1991, Wilson’s family sued Landy, resulting in a restraining order and the loss of Landy’s license to practice psychology in California.

Wilson’s debut, self-titled solo album came out in 1988, but it took him more than a decade to release a follow-up record. He credited the mid-’90s renaissance of his personal and professional life to one thing: his wife Melinda Ledbetter, whom he married in 1995. Since that time, Wilson released numerous solo albums, including Orange Art Crate (1995) and Imagination (1998). He was also the subject of the 1995 documentary I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times.

In 2004, 37 years after its initial recording, Wilson finally released a complete version of SMILE—Brian Wilson Presents Smile to wide acclaim, later earning two Grammy nominations for Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Long Form Music Video. After reviving his career, he overcame his legendary stage fright to perform on his own and occasionally with the Beach Boys in concerts throughout the United States and Europe.

Grammy Win for “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow”

For his immeasurable contributions to music, Wilson has won numerous honors and awards. In 1988, he and the Beach Boys were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and in 2000, Wilson was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He won the 2005 Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental for the song “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow,” and in 2007 he received the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime contribution to the performing arts.

After decades of seclusion, a happy and productive Wilson received a warm welcome back into the music industry. His good friend Elton John said of Wilson at the time, “He’s got a great family life now, he goes to basketball games, he seems happy. He’s leading as normal a life as Brian Wilson can.” In fact, Wilson might have been happier in his later years than he was even during the heyday of the Beach Boys. “I’m having much more fun than I did as a Beach Boy,” he told The Guardian in 2002. “Because I’m no longer a Beach Boy. I’m Brian Wilson.”

Nearly a decade later, Wilson accepted his second Grammy in 2013 for the Beach Boys compilation album The Smile Sessions (2011), which won Best Historical Album. In 2014, he released a new solo album, No Pier Pressure, which reached No. 23 on the album charts.

In 2014, the Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival before appearing on U.S. screens the following year. Paul Dano earned a Golden Globe nomination for his portrayal of a young Wilson, while the legendary musician also scored a nomination for contributing the song “One Kind of Love,” co-written with Scott Bennett. Actor John Cusack was cast as the older Wilson and Paul Giamatti appeared as psychologist Eugene Landy for Love & Mercy.

In October 2016, the musician published his memoir, I Am Brian Wilson, that he wrote with Ben Greenman . In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine to promote the book, the 74-year-old Wilson announced that he would begin work on a new album, Sensitive Music for Sensitive People, later that year.

Wilson was married twice. In 1964, he wed his first wife, singer Marilyn Rovell, who he had met at a Beach Boys concert two years prior. The couple had two children together: a daughter named Carnie in 1968 and a second daughter named Wendy in 1969. A decade later, Wilson and Rovell divorced in 1979.

Wilson was remarried in 1995 to talent manager Melinda Ledbetter. The couple subsequently adopted five children together: three daughters Dakota, Daria, and Delanie and two sons, Dylan and Dash. Wilson and Melinda were married for 28 years until her death in January 2024.

Following his wife’s death, it was revealed that Wilson had been diagnosed with an undisclosed neurocognitive disorder and was suffering from dementia. He was subsequently placed under a conservatorship in May 2024, which was run by his publicist and his manager. His eldest daughters, Carnie and Wendy, were given consultation rights over his medical care.

Wilson died in June 2025 at the age of 82. When, where, and how he died haven’t yet been released.

• I had a good childhood—except for my dad beating me up all the time.
• “Caroline, No” makes people cry. “God Only Knows” makes people cry. A lot of love went into [Pet Sounds].
• At times I thought I’d never be happy ever again, and then at times, I did.
• My father hit me, but he didn’t hit my ear. I’ve never heard stereophonic sound ever in my life.
• I’m having much more fun than I did as a Beach Boy. Because I’m no longer a Beach Boy. I’m Brian Wilson.

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