Troubled genius who wrote most of The Beach Boys' hits

Brian Wilson's work with The Beach Boys made him one of pop music's true geniuses. His songs, including Surfin' USA, California Girls, I Get Around, Good Vibrations and God Only Knows, have become classics. His vision, incorporating complex melodies, intricate harmonies and avant-garde themes, was a watershed in popular music, moving it away from the boy-meets-girl narrative that had dominated the genre. But the pressure of fame combined with increasing dependence on drugs created a prison from which Wilson found it increasingly difficult to escape. Against all the odds, he re-emerged in the new millennium to delight his old fans and capture a new generation of music lovers. Brian Douglas Wilson was born on 20 June 1942 in the city of Inglewood, California. His domineering and abusive father encouraged his son to practise on toy musical instruments; by the age of eight, he was a consummate piano player and a regular in a local church choir. Wilson often encouraged his younger brothers Carl and Dennis to sing along with him in the complex harmonies he was already devising. While at school he excelled in sport, both on the athletics track and as a useful football quarterback. But it was as a 19-year-old that Wilson - who was deaf in his right ear - finally discovered the musical talent that would define his life. He had been given a tape recorder and he soon learned the art of overdubbing, a vital part of what would become the trademark Beach Boys' sound. Staying at home with his brothers Dennis and Carl, while their parents holidayed in Mexico, Brian invited his cousin Mike Love and close friend Al Jardine to rehearse a song that he and Mike had written. The $250 left by Mr and Mrs Wilson for the boys to buy food was used to hire musical equipment. Thus, with the song Surfin', were The Beach Boys born. The following year, with Surfin' having proved a popular debut, the group were signed by Capitol Records. Riding on the "surf boom" then enthralling the United States, The Beach Boys were soon enjoying spectacular chart success. Songs such as Surfin' Safari, Surfin' USA, Fun, Fun, Fun, I Get Around, and Help Me Rhonda celebrated the teenage dreams of surfing, hot rod racing and first romance. While the band traded heavily on the California surfing scene, posing with boards on the beach, it was only Dennis Wilson who was actually keen on the sport. Many of these early hits were written and arranged by Brian Wilson, who also showed a more mature and introspective side on tracks such as In My Room. As the only US band to rival The Beatles, The Beach Boys endured a breathless schedule of recording, touring and promotional work, something that Wilson soon came to both despise and fear. "I have stage fright every single concert I've ever done," he later recalled. "I have at least four or five minutes of it. It's absolute living hell." The first intimation of his fragile state came in 1964 when he had a mental breakdown during an airline flight. Aged just 22, he decided to stop touring with the band in order to concentrate on writing and producing. Having listened entranced to The Beatles' Rubber Soul album, Wilson responded with his own masterpiece, Pet Sounds. The album, which featured the sublime God Only Knows, Wouldn't It Be Nice and Sloop John B, was a huge critical success. But the artistic change of direction that it represented, and the angst-ridden nature of some of its tracks, mystified many listeners. When The Beatles replied with Revolver in 1966, Brian Wilson embarked on writing what he called his "teenage symphony to God". But the resulting album, Smile, which would take 37 years to complete, led to Wilson's total mental breakdown and effectively ended his association with The Beach Boys. Written in collaboration with lyricist Van Dyke Parks, and recorded with a vast coterie of session musicians, the original Smile album, featured groundbreaking songs such as Good Vibrations, Heroes and Villains, and Surf's Up, Wilson, by now increasingly paranoid, installed a large sandpit in his living room, and worked on the album with the aid of a piano in the sand. The chaotic recording sessions featured a bucket of fire and musicians chomping vegetables. The work was dismissed by the other Beach Boys as being too experimental. Most cutting of all, Mike Love - Wilson's co-writer on many of The Beach Boys' biggest hits - damned Smile as "a whole album of Brian's madness". Discouraged by the reception given to Smile, and beset by mental illness, Brian Wilson pulled the plug on this work-in-progress in 1967. Despite some limited involvement with The Beach Boys, including working on their 1968 hit single Do It Again, Wilson became a recluse, remaining at home in bed with his thoughts and his cocaine. In 1976, increasingly worried about their brother, Carl and Dennis hired Dr Eugene Landy, a controversial psychiatric therapist. Moving into Wilson's house, Landy instituted a 24-hour drug watch, overseen by a group of burly minders. Initially, the results were encouraging, with Wilson losing much of his excess weight and making a partial recovery from his drug dependence. But, after setting himself up as Wilson's business partner and acting as executive producer on his albums, Landy was found guilty of breaching the doctor-patient relationship and promptly left the scene. However, during the 1990s, things started to look up. Wilson married for a second time - his first wife, Marilyn, had left in 1978 - returned to the studio with, initially, little success and was reconciled with his daughters Carnie and Wendy. But it was his discovery of a young Californian band, The Wondermints, that would finally bring Wilson new recognition, after they inspired him to revisit both Pet Sounds and Smile. After fighting his personal demons for 30 years, he made a spectacular comeback with re-workings of his own Beach Boys classics and the revival of the legendary, long-lost, Smile album. Wilson gave the first live performance of the substantially reworked Smile at the Royal Festival Hall in London in 2004 and went on to delight audiences around the world. What struck critics and fans was the obvious joy on Wilson's face as he performed. The man who had stopped touring at 22 because of his inability to cope with live performances had finally conquered his fears. It marked a return to creative form as, in the ensuing years, he embarked on a series of recordings, including an interpretation of Gershwin classics that made number one on the Billboard jazz chart. Wilson said: "Gershwin inspired me very much. The concept of That Lucky Old Sun was inspired by Rhapsody in Blue - not influenced, but inspired." In 2012, Wilson officially reunited with the surviving members of the Beach Boys, both for a tour and an album, That's Why God Made The Radio, that represented his first original recordings with the band in more than 15 years. The reunion was also accompanied by the release of The Smile Sessions - a five-CD box set that featured a comprehensive collection of recordings and outtakes from the fabled "lost" album, finally giving fans the chance to imagine the record as it could have been. The compilation was a critical hit - earning a place on Rolling Stone's 2012 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and winning best historical album at the 2013 Grammy Awards. However, the reunion was short-lived, and by 2014 Wilson was recording the songs he'd written for the next Beach Boys record as a solo artist, with the help of guest stars including actress Zooey Deschanel and country star Kacey Musgraves. A biopic of his life and career, Love & Mercy, starring John Cusack and Paul Dano playing Wilson at different stages, was released to critical acclaim in the same year. He continued to tour into his late 70s, but suffered a blow in 2024 when his wife, Melinda, died at the age of 77. Soon after, the musician was placed under a conservatorship, with his family saying he was "unable to properly provide for his own personal needs for physical health, food, clothing, or shelter". The development reinforced the musician's image as a fragile, almost childlike figure, who nonetheless inspired thousands of musicians to follow in his steps. The combination of his creativity as a writer and his technical skills in the studio made him one of the great figures of 20th Century popular music.