Brian Wilson

The Beach Boys

Brian Douglas Wilson was born on 20 June 1942 in Inglewood, California, the first child of Audree and Murry Wilson, with brothers Dennis and Carl following in 1944 and 1946. In autumn 1961 the three brothers, their cousin Mike Love and Al Jardine debuted as the Pendletones. Wilson and Love wrote the first song, "Surfin'", and Candix Records renamed the group the Beach Boys. A seven-year contract with Capitol followed in 1962, and Wilson was first officially credited as producer on Surfer Girl, recorded in June and July 1963. By the mid-1960s he had written or co-written more than two dozen US Top 40 hits, among them the number ones "Surf City", "I Get Around", "Help Me, Rhonda" and "Good Vibrations".

In January 1965 he said he would stop touring with the band, and Bruce Johnston was hired as his replacement on the road. He worked with the jingle writer Tony Asher on Pet Sounds, produced mostly between January and April 1966 and released that May. "Caroline, No", issued in March 1966, was his first solo credit.

Smile

Wilson spent February to September 1966 on Good Vibrations, which topped the US chart in December. In mid-July 1966 he had reconnected with the songwriter Van Dyke Parks, who became lyricist on Smile, the planned follow-up to Pet Sounds. Wilson described it as a "teenage symphony to God". It was conceived as a twelve-track album assembled from modular fragments, the editing method behind "Good Vibrations".

Heroes and Villains, the first song he and Parks wrote together, came out as a Beach Boys single in July 1967 and peaked at 12 in the US. Surf's Up was the second. The album was never finished. The band released a smaller record, Smiley Smile, in September 1967, and the Beach Boys completed "Surf's Up" for their 1971 album of that name.

Solo records

15 Big Ones in 1976 was the first album since Pet Sounds to list Wilson as sole producer, and The Beach Boys Love You followed in April 1977, recorded largely by Wilson alone. His first solo album, Brian Wilson, came out on Sire in July 1988 and opened with Love and Mercy. It ends with "Rio Grande", an eight-minute Old West suite. The Beach Boys' "Kokomo" was released the same month and took most of the attention.

In 1995 he and Parks made Orange Crate Art, credited to the pair. Imagination followed in June 1998. From March to July 1999 he played his first solo tour with a band that included Darian Sahanaja and others from the Wondermints, and from 2000 to 2002 he performed Pet Sounds in full with an orchestra.

Finishing Smile

In late 2003 Sahanaja, acting as Wilson's musical secretary, loaded recordings from the Beach Boys tape vaults onto a laptop and worked through them with him. When they could not read a word on a lyric sheet, Wilson phoned Parks, who had not spoken to him in years, and Parks agreed to join the project. Brian Wilson Presents Smile premiered at the Royal Festival Hall in London on 20 February 2004 and was repeated until 27 February.

Wilson recorded a studio version from 13 April 2004 with his touring band and a string section. Smile came out on Nonesuch on 28 September 2004, reached number 13 in the US and number 7 in the UK, and won Wilson his first Grammy, for the instrumental Mrs. O'Leary's Cow. Metacritic averages its reviews at 97. In October 2011 The Smile Sessions followed, built on the sequence of the 2004 album.

different, much different. Much more progressive, much happier, much more uplifting.

Brian Wilson, on the 2004 version of Smile

Later years

That Lucky Old Sun, a song cycle about Los Angeles, was released in September 2008. Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin appeared in August 2010 and reached 26 on the Billboard 200. A biopic, Love & Mercy, premiered in 2014, and his song "One Kind of Love" from it received a Golden Globe nomination. No Pier Pressure followed in April 2015 and the piano album At My Piano in November 2021. His last concert was on 26 July 2022 at Pine Knob Music Theatre in Michigan. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2000, and he died on 11 June 2025.