Brian Wilson: Beach-Boys legend is dead

Brian Wilson (1942-2025) is dead. The American musician was 82 years old. “We are inconsolable to have to tell that our beloved father Brian Wilson died,” says his official account. It is also explained in the family’s statement: “We are missing the words at the moment. Please respect our privacy during this time as our family mourns. We are aware that we share our grief with the world.”

Brian Wilson founded the band The Beach Boys together with his brothers Dennis (1944-1983) and Carl Wilson (1946-1998), her cousin Mike Love (84) and school friend Alan Jardine (82) in the Californian Hawthorne. The band celebrated great successes with the album “Pet Sounds”, which is considered their central work and shaped pop music, as well as their hits “Surfin ‘USA”, “wouldn’t be nice”, “Good Vibrations” or “California Dreamin'”. The group with their surf rock sound is one of the most successful pop and rock bands of the 1960s and early 1970s.

Brian Wilson served as a songwriter and co-lead singer and played bass guitar and keyboard. At the beginning of the 1970s, he withdrew due to psychological problems. In the 1990s he devoted himself to a solo career and in 2012 followed a comeback with the remaining beach boy members David Marks (76), Bruce Johnston (82), Love and Jardine. They released the album “That’s why God Made the Radio” and went on a sold out world tour. Then their paths separated again.

Brian Wilson was married twice, from 1964 to 1979 with Marilyn Rovell and from 1995 until her death in January 2024 with Melinda Kae Ledbetter. Two children come from his first, five adoptive children from his second marriage.

After the loss of his wife, Wilson’s health problems became public in February 2024. His family applied for a guardianship from a court in Los Angeles and stated that he suffered from a “severe neurocognitive disorder (such as dementia)”. They also found that Wilson was unable to provide his personal needs.

The plans for a guardianship were confirmed on social media and the musician’s website. There it was said that the decision was “after careful consideration and advice between Brian, his seven children, housekeeper Gloria Ramos and Brian’s doctors (and in harmony with the family processes introduced by Brian and Melinda)”.