Pop music has never been sweeter and the rock ‘n’ roll life has never been darker. Brian Wilson, the genius of The Beach Boys whose soaring falsetto gave the world Good Vibrations, endured a life of horrific mental torment.
From his brutal childhood – beaten so badly by his monstrous father that he was deaf in one ear – to his decades of paranoid, drug-addled seclusion, he fought a constant battle against the world.
Yet few songwriters have created a greater catalogue of timeless music. Paul McCartney, who with The Beatles were the only group that could ever match The Beach Boys for melodic perfection, regarded him as an inspiration.
It was Wilson’s creative high point, the album Pet Sounds, that galvanised Macca into writing much of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Unlike McCartney, Wilson – who died yesterday aged 82 – was unable to keep hold of his talent and his sanity in the maelstrom of 1960s pop excess. He spiralled into a vortex of drug-induced mental illness and alcoholism that left him a suicidal wreck, and saw his weight bloat to 24st.
His wealth was plundered by crooks, quacks and hangers-on, his band carried on without him, and he became a kind of living ghost. To the amazement of many fans, he rallied in middle age, returning to live performance and appearing at the Queen’s Golden Jubilee concert at Buckingham Palace in 2002.
He even reunited with the surviving Beach Boys for an album and a tour – though his bandmates and brothers Carl and Dennis did not live to see it.
Brian Wilson, the genius of The Beach Boys whose soaring falsetto gave the world Good Vibrations, endured a life of horrific mental torment. Pictured: American Rock and roll band The Beach Boys walk along a beach holding a surfboard during a photoshoot for their debut album, ‘Surfin’ Safari’, Los Angeles, California, August 1962. Left to right: Dennis Wilson, David Marks, Carl Wilson, Mike Love and Brian Wilson
Cultural icons Brian Wilson and Lindsay Buckingham pose for a portrait in Hollywood, California, 1986
Original members of The Beach Boys, from left, David Marks, Bruce Johnston and Brian Wilson appear onstage during ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’ summer concert series, June 15, 2012, in New York
Paul McCartney , who with The Beatles were the only group that could ever match The Beach Boys for melodic perfection, regarded him as an inspiration
Brian Wilson performs as part of Nissan Live Sets on Yahoo! Music in Los Angeles, Wednesday, July 30, 2008
It was Dennis who came home from school in Los Angeles aged 16 and asked his music-mad brother Brian: ‘Why don’t you write a song about surfing? All the guys are doing it nowadays.’
Brian obliged. He had no interest in surfing but, ‘I was kind of a nut about trying to write songs and get into the music business. I figured with all the kids so hip to the sport, we just wanted to be identified with their interests.’
If that seemed cynical, his approach to getting a record deal was wildly naive. With his younger brothers, friend David Marks – later replaced by Al Jardine – and surf-loving cousin Mike Love, they recorded a number simply called Surfin’ at their own expense.
Carl was the only one who could play an instrument, the guitar. The rest sang tight harmonies, modelling themselves on Brian’s heroes, a 1950s vocal jazz quartet called The Four Freshmen.
The Wilson boys’ father, Murry, took the single to Capitol Records in Hollywood, who signed them and demanded another song just like the first. Brian obliged again, with Surfin’ Safari: ‘Let’s go surfin’ now, Everybody’s learnin’ how, Come on and safari with me.’
Though not a hit in the UK, it made the Billboard Top 20 in the US and the album that followed was also a hit. A self-taught musician, Brian played most of the instruments and began writing songs for other artists, such as Jan & Dean. Surfin’ USA proved another smash, but Brian thought the fad for surfing wouldn’t last another summer. He cast around for other subjects, such as hot-rod racing cars, before realising that what everyone really wanted was songs full of joy about girls and boys. And Brian obliged again and again, with Barbara-Ann, Fun, Fun Fun, California Girls and Good Vibrations.
But the joy in the songs was not reflected in his life. Raised in Hawthorne, LA, Brian and Dennis suffered a truly miserable childhood – though Carl, the youngest of the three brothers, escaped the worst of their father’s rages.
Murry was a failed songwriter who bitterly resented his oldest son’s talent. After losing an eye at the tyre factory where he worked, he would get drunk and pull the glass eyeball out of its socket, forcing the children to look into the raw hole. ‘See what your old man is really made of,’ he taunted them.
He beat Brian viciously, once slapping his head so hard that the boy’s right eardrum burst. On other occasions, he battered him with a plank of wood, or with a leather belt, yelling, ‘I’m the boss!’ His wife, the boys’ mother Audree, could only stand and watch.
Musician Brian Wilson (L) and Melinda Wilson arrive at the 2012 MusiCares Person of the Year Tribute to Paul McCartney held at the Los Angeles Convention Center on February 10, 2012 in Los Angeles, California
Pop Stars On Stage Performing At ‘party At The Palace’, A Unique Pop Concert Held In The Grounds Of Buckingham Palace For 12,500 Guests. Left To Right: Rod Stewart, Paul Mccartney, Joe Cocker, Brian Wilson, Brian May And Behind On Guitar Eric Clapton
Flowers lie on the Beach Boys’ Hollywood Walk of Fame star in Los Angeles, California, USA, 11 June 2025
Clockwise from left, the Beach Boys are Al Jardine, Mike Love, Brian Wilson, Dennis Wilson, and Carl Wilson
‘I would be screaming and crying,’ Brian recalled, ‘and then Dennis would get it even worse than me. But by the time it came to Carl, he would just get a tap on the legs as a result, Dennis and I grew up all screwed up mentally, while Carl became a nice, well-adjusted guy.
‘Yet I loved my father. I think it was the rivalry between him and me that inspired me. I often wonder if I would have succeeded if it hadn’t been for my dad. Every day I would remember my father and try to do my best. But it sure as hell affected my head.’ So did the drugs that, as The Beach Boys became international stars, Brian consumed in staggering quantities – marijuana, then cocaine, then LSD. As paranoia took hold, he became convinced his conversations were being bugged and insisted on holding business meetings in his pool, to ensure that no one was concealing a tape recorder.
He refused to perform live, partly to avoid contact with his father, who still tried to act as the band’s manager.
Murry would turn up at the studio and attempt to take control of the sessions. He controlled the rights to all the Beach Boys’ hits, and eventually sold them for $700,000, which was a fraction of their true value.
After Pet Sounds, with its sublime single God Only Knows, recorded when he was just 23, Brian suffered an abject mental breakdown during sessions for the follow-up. Its working title was Smile, and to write the songs Brian placed his piano in a sandpit that filled his living room.
Though he enlisted top session musicians, the recording was done in fragments, creating a mosaic of short, complicated sounds that Brian imagined could somehow be compiled into songs: tools being hammered against wood, horses’ hooves clip-clopping, train whistles and even the sound of vegetables being chewed.
Paul and Linda McCartney visited him one night, and stared aghast as Brian crammed a goldfish bowl over his head, then smashed it by butting a wall. Sobbing, Brian fled to his bedroom and locked himself in.
By now, he was married to his teenage sweetheart, Marilyn, and a father himself to two girls, Carnie and Wendy. But the ordeals of his childhood made him terrified of parenthood, and he stayed away from home for days on end to avoid being with the girls.
Brian Wilson’s Fender Precision Bass used by Wilson throughout his very successful 2004 ‘SMILE’ world tour and then donated to Heather Mills McCartney’s charity ‘Adopt A Minefield’ is featured on a magzine cover and seen ahead of todays Pop Memorabilia auction held at Christie’s South Kensington on May 5, 2005 in London
Singer Brian Wilson of the rock and roll band ‘The Beach Boys’ poses for a portrait with his wife Marilyn Wilson aka Marilyn Rovell singer in ‘The Honeys’ in circa 1965 in Los Angeles, California
(L-R) Al Jardine, David Marks, Frank Marshall, Brian Wilson, Blondie Chaplin, Mike Love and Bruce Johnston attend the world premiere of Disney+ documentary ‘The Beach Boys’ at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California on May 21, 2024
Once, trying to give Carnie a drunken hug, he burned her bare arm with his cigarette. Stricken with self-loathing, he shaved his head as a mark of shame. When Marilyn left him in the mid-70s, taking the children, his weight ballooned. He sometimes ate a dozen eggs and a loaf of bread at a sitting, washed down with vodka.
For days on end he refused to get out of bed or wash. The band sacked him and his family, in an effort to get him sober, put him in the hands of maverick psychotherapist Dr Eugene Landy.
Landy effectively held him hostage, taking control of his finances and milking him for millions. He controlled Brian with drugs, giving him sedatives to keep him docile, and uppers when he needed to give an interview or record a song.
By now, the music had drained out of him. The low point came in 1982, when he agreed to record with Dennis for cocaine and hamburgers. Dennis, also an alcoholic, was in bad shape too, and drowned a year later, aged 39. Straight out of rehab, he boarded his yacht, the Emerald, and announced his intention of finding lost treasure before jumping into the harbour. Brian was too drugged to take it in. Brother Carl, a heavy smoker, died 15 years later from lung cancer at 51.
But his life was beginning to turn around. In 1986, Landy allowed Brian to go on a date with a woman named Melinda Ledbitter after she answered an advert to buy his car. Seeing how much Brian was Landy’s prisoner, she began trying to prise him free.
Five years later, after Landy was served with a restraining order, she married him. ‘Brian didn’t need psychologists and psychiatrists,’ she said. ‘I knew from the moment I met him that he wasn’t crazy. I have never met anyone so honest or willing to share their feelings. He just needed someone to love and be loved by.’
In Melinda’s care, Brian Wilson made the most unexpected of recoveries, even completing his lost masterpiece, Smile. For the first time, he was living the words of his own music: ‘I don’t know where but she sends me there, Oh, my my, what a sensation, Oh, my my, what elation… Gotta keep those lovin’ good vibrations!’
