Brian Wilson, Beach Boys visionary leader and summer’s poet laureate, dies at 82
Jun 11, 2025, 9:57 AM | Updated: 5:18 pm
FILE - Musician Brian Wilson poses for a portrait in Los Angeles on June 2, 2015. (Photo by Casey Curry/Invision/AP, File)
Credit: Casey Curry/Invision/AP
(Photo by Casey Curry/Invision/AP, File)
Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys’ visionary and fragile leader whose genius for melody, arrangements and wide-eyed self-expression inspired “Good Vibrations,” “California Girls” and other summertime anthems and made him one of the world’s most influential recording artists, has died at 82.
Wilson’s family posted news of his death to his website and social media accounts Wednesday. Further details weren’t immediately available.
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 in the 1960s from local California band to national hitmakers to international ambassadors of surf and sun. Wilson himself was celebrated for his gifts and pitied for his demons. He was one of rock’s great romantics, a tormented man who in his peak years embarked on an ever-steeper path to aural perfection, the one true sound.
