BRIAN WILSON

June 20, 1942 – June 11, 2025As the visionary heart and soul of the Beach Boys, he created a mythic California soundtrack of sun-drenched, youthful innocence, and some timeless classics, all while battling personal demons, addiction and mental illness.

- Words: Bill DeMain

'And when I go anywhere I see love, I see love, I see love'

In a 1964 episode of American Bandstand, as Dick Clark is interviewing the Beach Boys, all fresh-faced and matching Pendleton stripes, he asks: “You have hit after hit. Who determines what will be done next?” Twenty-one-year-old Brian Wilson grins shyly at his bandmates and says: “Well, I guess I do, I don’t know.” Then in the next second he adds: “I write the songs and produce them, so I have a lot to say about it.”

That moment offers a glimpse of the two sides of Brian Wilson, the legendary leader of the Beach Boys, who died on June 11, 2025, a week shy of his 83rd birthday. He was one of the most creative, ambitious songwriters and producers of the rock era, responsible for an iconic West Coast sound that crested high with 36 Top 40 singles within 10 years, including Surfin' USA, Surfer Girl, I Get Around, Wouldn't It Be Nice, California Girls, Good Vibrations and God Only Knows. Yet despite the once-in-a-generation talent and confidence it took to achieve that, he had a humility that often toppled into self-doubt – along with a then-undiagnosed mental illness that eventually silenced him for years.

As someone who once acknowledged: “I’d earned over a million dollars by the time I was old enough to vote,” Brian was well aware of his talent and accomplishments. But when I first interviewed him, in 1996, he was visibly uncomfortable with all the mythology around him. It probably didn’t help that I was awestruck to be sitting across from the man who wrote Surf’s Up. But he brushed off any mention of genius, likely haunted by the heightened expectations that come with it. “No, I’m just a hardworking guy,” he told me. “And I always get a little bit paranoid when I get a lot of attention.”