{"id":2614,"date":"2025-06-11T17:26:03","date_gmt":"2025-06-11T17:26:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/brian-wilson-obit\/"},"modified":"2025-06-11T17:26:03","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T17:26:03","slug":"brian-wilson-obit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/brian-wilson-obit\/","title":{"rendered":"Beach Boys Mastermind Brian Wilson Dies At 82"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2020\/05\/Brian-Wilson-2017-1590337048.jpg\" width=\"1024\" height=\"734\" alt=\"Brian Wilson Presents Pet Sounds\"><\/figure>\n<p>Brian Wilson, who revolutionized popular music from humble origins in Hawthorne, Ca., and led the Beach Boys to global superstardom, has died at the age of 82, per a statement from his family. The music legend had been in poor health for many years and was unable to care for himself after the death of his wife Melinda in January 2024.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are heartbroken to announce that our beloved father Brian Wilson has passed away,\u201d they wrote. \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>More from Spin:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/06\/turnstile-taking-never-enough-on-tour\/\">Turnstile Taking \u2018Never Enough\u2019 On Tour<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/06\/pulp-more-album-review\/\">On Their First Album In 24 Years, We Need Pulp \u2018More\u2019 Than Ever<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/06\/rem-fables-of-the-reconstruction-re-review\/\">40 Years Ago, R.E.M.\u2019s \u2018Fables of the Reconstruction\u2019 Marked a Darker Tone for the Band<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Beach Boys\u2019 story is one of contradictions: genius and triviality, harmony and disharmony, creativity and commodity, Dennis Wilson and Al Jardine, Brian Wilson and Mike Love. Endorsed by Ronald Reagan, they also had dealings with Charles Manson. Their\u2019 pioneering influence over pop and rock can still be heard today, having devised new ways of utilizing the studio as an instrument and developing their own sonic vocabulary, but they also fell foul of mental illness, substance abuse and infamous squabbles over creative direction. Their history is epic in scale, like a Steinbeck saga played out over decades that explores themes of brotherhood, greed, God and California. You might not believe it if it weren\u2019t true. <\/p>\n<p>By age 22, Wilson had produced seven Top 10 hits, making\u00a0the Beach Boys the most successful group in the world.\u00a0The ambivalent reception (from his band and the public) to\u00a0<em>Pet Sounds<\/em>\u00a0in 1966 sent Wilson further afield with\u00a0<em>SMiLE<\/em>, which remained unreleased for decades. But the former caused four Liverpudlians to up their game;\u00a0<em>Pet Sounds<\/em>\u00a0is generally regarded as second only to\u00a0<em>Sgt. Pepper\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0as the best album in history.<\/p>\n<p>Wilson descended into a decade-plus haze of drug abuse and mental illness, and then suffered for years under the controversial, abusive conservatorship of Dr. Eugene Landy. With the help of Melinda and members of his family, he began recording and performing more regularly in the late 1990s, leading to huge boon in discovery from younger audiences and even greater recognition as one of the world\u2019s greatest living songwriters.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBack then, mental illness wasn\u2019t treated in a straightforward way,\u201d Wilson wrote in his 2016 memoir,\u00a0<em>I Am Brian Wilson.\u00a0<\/em>\u201cPeople wouldn\u2019t even admit that it existed. There was shame in saying what it was and strange ideas about how to deal with it.\u201d Only then, at age 74, and in a time when talking about mental health in the arts is no longer taboo, Wilson could write about his experience freely.<\/p>\n<p>Asked years later about the creative process that fueled some of the most indelible moments in modern music, Wilson said, \u201cthere\u2019s always some mystery when I try to remember how I wrote back then. My God, how the fuck could I have written all those songs?\u201d Sure, he\u00a0may have written \u201cGood Vibrations,\u201d but he also struggled with anxiety. He felt bad about his weight. He wanted to be a good father; he wanted to be loved.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnyone who really knows me knows how heart broken I am about Brian Wilson passing,\u201d wrote John Lennon\u2019s son Sean Ono Lennon on X. \u201cNot many people influenced me as much as he did. I feel very lucky that I was able to meet him and spend some time with him. He was always very kind and generous. He was our American Mozart. A one of a kind genius from another world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wilson\u2019s most recent tour was in 2022, The year prior, he released an album of solo piano instrumental versions of his Beach Boys hits,\u00a0<em>At My Piano<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2021\/07\/the-greatest-rock-stars-of-all-time\/?utm_source=yahoo&amp;utm_medium=bottomlink&amp;utm_campaign=yahoolink\">click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brian Wilson, who revolutionized popular music from humble origins in Hawthorne, Ca., and led the Beach Boys to global superstardom, has died at the age of 82, per a statement&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1545,6,24,1546],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brian-wilson","category-news","category-pushly","category-the-beach-boys"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}