Brian Wilson, Beach Boys leader and summer’s poet laureate, dies at 82

NEW YORK (AP) — Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys’ visionary and fragile leader who helped compose and arrange “Good Vibrations,” “California Girls” and dozens of other summertime anthems and became one of the world’s most influential and admired musicians, has died at 82.

Wilson’s family posted news of his death to his website Wednesday. Further details weren’t immediately available. Since May 2024, Wilson had been under a court conservatorship to oversee his personal and medical affairs, with Wilson’s longtime representatives in charge.

The eldest and last surviving of three musical brothers — Brian played bass, Carl lead guitar and Dennis drums — he and his fellow Beach Boys rose from local act to national hitmakers to international ambassadors of the American dream. Wilson himself was celebrated for his beautiful music and pitied for his demons. He was one of rock’s great Romantics, a tortured soul who in his peak years embarked on an ever-steeper quest for aural perfection.

The Beach Boys rank among the most popular acts of the rock era, with more than 30 singles in the Top 40 and worldwide sales of more than 100 million. 1966’s “Pet Sounds” was voted No. 2 in a 2003 Rolling Stone list of the best 500 albums, losing out, as Wilson did from the start, to the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” The Beach Boys, who also featured Wilson cousin Mike Love and family friend Al Jardine, were voted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.

Fans ranged from Elton John and Bruce Springsteen to Katy Perry and Bob Dylan. The Who’s drummer, Keith Moon, fantasized about joining the Beach Boys. Paul McCartney cited “Pet Sounds” as a direct inspiration on the Beatles and said the ballad “God Only Knows” often moved him to tears.

Their music was like an ongoing party, with Wilson as mastermind and wallflower. He was a tall, shy man, partially deaf (allegedly because of beatings by his father, Murry Wilson), with a sweet, crooked grin, and he rarely touched a surfboard unless for publicity. But out of the lifestyle that he observed and such musical influences as Chuck Berry and the Four Freshmen, he devised a magical and durable soundscape — easy melodies, bright harmonies, vignettes of beaches, cars and girls that resonated worldwide.