'He elevated his lonely boy songs into high art': my encounters with the genius Brian Wilson

Nick Kent, rock writer and one-time member of the Sex Pistols, interviewed the Beach Boy twice. Here, he makes sense of the troubled songwriter who died last week

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The last image I saw of Brian Wilson alive was of him being led into a cinema to watch a screening of yet another documentary about the Beach Boys, the group he created and took to worldwide mega-success. I was watching it on YouTube, and the event was one of those plush Hollywood affairs. Wilson arrived in a wheelchair, pushed by minders. His face was entirely without expression. He probably didn’t know where he was or who all these people were. He was off in his own private Joe Biden zone. I sensed he wouldn't be long for this world. He was 82 and he'd accomplished enough and suffered enough. Let him rest.

So I was saddened but not surprised when the news came through of his death on Wednesday. The obituaries that have flooded forth have been mostly heartfelt, respectful and packed with relevant career and personal details: his birth in June 1942, his modest beginnings, growing up in Hawthorne, California, and the group he formed with his younger brothers Carl and Dennis, their cousin Mike Love and a friend when all were still teenagers. Brian was their composer and arranger, merging the close harmony style of 1950s vocal quartet the Four Freshmen with a gut-bucket rock rhythm a la Chuck Berry. Extraordinary success followed.

Wilson's early back-story is full of remarkable achievements. He and his group first spearheaded the surf craze of the early 60s then briefly switched to car racing before blossoming into America’s most successful pop/rock act of the mid-60s. Only the Beatles rivalled them. It was a heady time.