Brian Wilson, the creative leader of the Beach Boys and one of the most significant figures in 20th century pop music, has died at the age of 82, his family announced on his Facebook page.
“We are heartbroken to announce that our beloved father Brian Wilson has passed away,” the statement reads. “We are at a loss for words right now.
“Please respect our privacy at this time as our family is grieving. We realize that we are sharing our grief with the world. Love & Mercy.”
Posted by officialbrianwilson on
As the Beach Boys' creative mastermind, Brian Wilson played an incalculable role in the development of popular music as we know it today.
In just a few short years, starting in the early 1960s, Wilson took the quintet that he founded with two of his brothers, Dennis and Carl, Mike Love, and Al Jardine from peppy surf-rock smashes – the most famous being the still-ubiquitous Surfin' USA – to still-catchy songs of stunning complexity.
Wilson and the Beach Boys' trajectory eerily mirrored the simultaneous one of the Beatles across the pond.
Like their British contemporaries, the Beach Boys began with a streak unprecedented commercial success, via Wilson's bulls-eye blending of the ascendant surf aesthetic and sound of early '60s California with the rockabilly riffs and spirit of years' past – all with jaw-dropping harmonies and world-conquering hooks.
Before the Fab Four did the same, Wilson grew tired of the toll of touring by the mid-'60s, and retreated to the studio, where he aimed to expand the Beach Boys' sound.
Influenced by the grandiose pop works of producer Phil Spector, the multi-instrumentalist Wilson began looking to create cohesive albums – rather than mere, individual singles – thematically tied and buoyed by dense, but lush vocal and musical arrangements.
This would culminate in 1966's Pet Sounds, an album that shattered all previous conceptions of how a pop record should be made and presented. With timeless highlights like Wouldn't It Be Nice, God Only Knows, and I Just Wasn't Made for These Times, the album's impact is difficult to overstate.
Regarded as one of the greatest musical statements of the 20th century, it laid the foundation for rock's subsequent psychedelic and experimental left turn, and practically invented the term “concept album.”
As if this wasn't enough, Wilson – recognizing that the Beach Boys still needed hit singles – put together that same year Good Vibrations, as densely woven together as anything on Pet Sounds, but as accessible and infectious as the surf smashes of their early days. An enormous hit, it cemented Brian Wilson as an equal to Bob Dylan and Lennon/McCartney – a superstar hit-maker hell-bent, and enormously successful, in executing his own vision.
From this incredible peak, though, came a sharp decline. Burdened by the expectations of a follow-up to the earth-shattering Pet Sounds, Wilson's mental health struggles worsened. Its follow-up, the legendary, never-properly-realized Smile, itself became a new rock archetype – the monumentally ambitious work that consumes its creator.
Over the next two decades, Wilson continued to battle ever-worsening drug and mental health issues, while still consistently working with the band in the studio. Indeed, he would officially remain a member of the Beach Boys for the rest of his life, but his stage and studio contributions – other than the 2012 reunion album, That's Why God Made the Radio, and its accompanying reunion tour – grew more limited over time.
Beginning in the early 2000s, a rejuvenated Wilson began touring again, and in 2004, he finished one of his masterpieces in the form of Brian Wilson Presents Smile. His most recent solo album, At My Piano, was released in 2021.
“He was our American Mozart,” Sean Ono Lennon wrote of Wilson on Twitter. “A one of a kind genius from another world.”
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