Brian Wilson | Musical savant who helped define Southern California
- Share via
“Brian Wilson wasn’t just the heart of The Beach Boys — he was the soul of our sound. The melodies he dreamed up and the emotions he poured into every note changed the course of music forever.” -- The Beach Boys
In an era when rock groups were typically force-fed material written by established musicians and seasoned songwriters, Wilson broke the mold by writing more than three dozen Top 40 hits, bright summertime singalongs, while also arranging and producing a stream of music that seemed to flow effortlessly from the studio.
Here are a few of the stories the L.A. Times has written about Wilson, who died at 82, over the years.
Brian Wilson, the musical savant who scripted a defining Southern California soundtrack with a run of hit songs with the Beach Boys, has died. He was 82.
Wilson, who died Wednesday at 82, was one of music’s true visionaries, if that’s the right word for a guy who dealt in the endless possibility of sound.
Wilson leaves a singularly inventive, exultant body of work that scripted California to the world.
Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys was put under a conservatorship Thursday in Los Angeles following the January death of his caregiver wife, Melinda Wilson.
Melinda Wilson, who helped resurrect the career of her husband and Beach Boys musician Brian Wilson, died at home in Beverly Hills on Tuesday at age 77.
Premiering Friday on Disney+, ‘The Beach Boys’ is a compact telling of the band’s history with a wealth of archival photographs and home movies, many new.
A sunny if slightly wistful new documentary about the Beach Boys charts the band’s six decades of complicated harmony.
The new documentary ‘Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road’ tells the story of the former Beach Boy’s life and career.
Mike Love is acutely aware that he is perceived as a villain.
Mike Love sets the record straight on Brian Wilson’s ‘firing’
Brian Wilson waxes rhapsodic on Gershwin
Who would ever have dreamed, even six months ago, that one of the most stirring solo albums of 1988 would have been by a Beach Boy?
In 1983, the Beach Boys were dropped from a D.C. July 4 concert — but the move may have only boosted the warm summer crowds that welcomed them in San Diego.
In this 1983 interview, Brian Wilson opens up while under the care of controversial therapist Dr. Eugene Landy, who was later barred from contacting him.
Brian Wilson was an off-stage presence for this 1971 Beach Boys concert, in which L.A. Times Robert Hilburn described the band as having “an identity crisis” in Wilson’s absence.
In this 1965 interview — his first with the Los Angeles Times — Brian Wilson already showed a remarkably prescient grasp of the lifelong hold his music would have on fans.
