Music Instrument News is sad to report the death of iconic musician Brian Wilson.
The term ‘tortured genius’ could have been created for Brian Wilson, founder of The Beach Boys, because he was the absolute definition of both. After receiving a tape recorder for his sixteenth birthday, Brian, an already prodigiously talented pianist, taught himself the art of tape overdubbing, a studio technique he was to utilise in the creation of some of the greatest pop songs ever written.
Wilson grew up under the abusive control of his father Murry, who regularly beat and mentally abused Brian, and his younger brothers Dennis and Carl. It is possible that a blow to the head from Murry caused the permanent loss of hearing in one of Brian’s ears. But in later life, Brian credited Murry with driving him and his brothers in their creation of a pop group The Pendletones, who changed their name to The Beach Boys to cash in on the burgeoning passion for surf music in early 1960’s California.
With his brothers, Carl on guitar, and Dennis on drums, the band was completed by the family’s cousin Mike Love, and classmate Al Jardine. It was then that Wilson embarked on a series of genre-creating massive hit singles based around the notion of affluent white high school kids with endless choices in girlfriends, and hot-rod cars to drive them around to beach parties and endless summer days of surfing and fun. Ironically, given Brian Wilson’s unique ability to tap into the current Californian teenage culture of surfing, it was only brother Dennis who really had any talent and love for the sport, ironically dying in a drowning accident in 1983.
Brian Wilson was plagued throughout his life with a delicate and easily damaged psyche, which first manifested itself when he suffered the first of three complete mental breakdowns, on a plane journey as the band travelled on tour. Wilson took the decision to withdraw from the stress of touring, and withdrew to the studio to write and arrange the future music of The Beach Boys.
Finally left to himself in the peace and quiet of the recording studio, the genuine genius of Brian Wilson began to expand and develop. Having already composed a string of massively popular hit singles for The Beach Boys and other artists; Wilson addressed his perceived artistic rivalry with the only other band who came anywhere close to the level of success he had generated for The Beach Boys. Wilson became utterly obsessed with the work of The Beatles in general, and Paul McCartney in particular. His reaction to the release of The Beatles’ Rubber Soul album was to compose and produce the album Pet Sounds, an album whose reputation as one of the finest and most groundbreaking pop music albums ever made, has only increased with the passing of time. It contains the single God Only Knows, which Paul McCarney has described as the greatest pop song ever written. The album is a masterpiece of orchestral arrangements, complex vocal harmonies, the initial use of unique instrumentation, and a calculated leap into uncharted musical territory which elevated the pop album into a genuinely respected art form.
Such an artistic achievement would have been more than enough for any composer in any musical genre to simply sit back and enjoy the adulation of an enraptured world, but Brian Wilson continual obsession with his own misguided notion of superiority was piqued again by the release of The Beatles’ Rubber Soul album. Reacting to the increasingly sophisticated and adult approach to pop music over in the UK, Brian Wilson responded in the only way he knew how. He wrote the Smile collection. Even though the album was shelved due to a hostile reception from many, including the rest of The Beach Boys, the highlight song, Good Vibrations showcased Wilson’s talent at its absolute peak. But the strain of working for over a year on the album, and his obsessive perfectionism and paranoia about his reputation as a composer, caused Wilson’s increasingly fragile mental state to fracture still further, and he underwent decades of isolation and drug-induced torpor, which in turn led to increasingly bizarre behaviour and massive weight gain, resulting in various medical and legal interventions designed to prevent the complete destruction of one of the most creative minds in history.
In 2004, Brian Wilson finally emerged from his exile, and performed a reworked Smile album at the Royal Festival Hall, accompanied by a huge array of masterful musicians bringing his awesome aural visions to life for a grateful and delighted audience.
In 2012, Wilson reunited with The Beach Boys for an album, That’s Why God Made The Radio, and an accompanying tour. Even though they watched Brian Wilson seated behind a keyboard which he appeared not to actually play, and with a somewhat detached, beatific smile on his face, audiences never lost sight of the fact that the majestic sounds they were hearing came entirely from his own mercurial and unique talent as a writer and arranger. A five-CD set of recordings and outtakes from the original Smile sessions allowed fans an even more tantalising look into the world of Brian Wilson’s genius.
Brian Wilson continued to tour sporadically, but the death of his beloved second wife saw a resurgence of his ever-present mental fragility. He died nine days before his eighty-third birthday, the cause of death has not been announced at the time of writing.
Among the vast outpouring of tributes across the entire spectrum of popular music, acknowledging the impact of his work in sending pop music into entirely new and un-dreamed-of directions, perhaps the most poignant and heartfelt came from Wilson’s personally perceived nemesis, Paul McCartney, who said in his own personal tribute, “How we will continue without Brian Wilson? God Only Knows”.
BRIAN WILSON – 20 JUNE 1942 – 11 JUNE 2025.