Beach Boys: Band co-founder Brian Wilson died

The Beach Boys once wrote music history with sunny surf songs and delighted a whole generation for the California attitude to life. Co -founder Brian Wilson was celebrated as a visionary of pop, many songs became classics: “Fun Fun Fun”, “Good Vibrations”, “Little Deice Coupe”, “Help Me Rhonda” or “Surfin ‘USA”.

Now Wilson has died at the age of 82, as his management of the German Press Agency confirmed.

“With broken hearts we share that our beloved father Brian Wilson died,” wrote the musician’s family on his website and Instagram. “We are currently missing the words.”

Wilson had a kind of dementia and was under guardianship. Last year, his long -time wife died at the age of 77. Together the couple had adopted five children, and Wilson also had two children from a previous marriage.

Wilson had written almost all beach boys hits and produced the band’s albums. With “Pet Sounds”, in 1966, he succeeded in the “best pop album of the 20th century” in 1966.

Even Paul McCartney once said that “Pet Sounds” was inspired by the Beatles masterpiece “SGT. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”.

“We were young and happy and felt good,” he said outside of his music extremely taciturn Wilson. Half a century later, the musician toured the world with his songs, including solo. Later his health let him down again and again, he had to cancel and move concerts.

Wilson not only has good memories of the Beach Boys time, as he wrote in his autobiography “I am Brian Wilson”. The book, which was created together with a journalist, took a whole year, Wilson once said. “” Pet Sounds “took three months.” It was particularly difficult to write down the times “when I took drugs”.

Because the success of the beach Boys and the self -imposed competitive pressure to the Beatles made Wilson. The musician had nervous breakdowns, was addicted to tablets, took hashish, LSD, at some point cocaine to increase his creativity.

At the same time, the fears started: he was afraid of the sea, shy away from the beach and the sun. So he had a mass of sand loaded into his living room and dipped his feet while he was sitting at the piano and wrote new songs over the surf and wrote the “California Girls”. After all, he also quarreled with his bandmates, Mike Love and David Marks.

But the three reconciled, in 2012 brought out the comeback album “That’s why God Made the Radio” and went on a sold out world tour. Wilson’s brothers Dennis and Carl, band members from the very beginning, died in 1983 or 1998.

Wilson also liked to work with young artists. For him, this was like “breathing in a deep train pure oxygen,” he told the dpa news agency a long time ago.

In addition to the concerts, he also tried to spend a lot of time with his second wife Melinda and his seven children, who died in 2024. “You never have enough time for the people you love.”

Transparency note: This article has been updated.