Brian Wilson’s enduring legacy

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday June 13th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Remembering Brian Wilson, the founding genius of the Beach Boys who died this week at age 82.

Wilson defined the California sound—sunlit harmonies layered over deep, emotional currents. He reshaped pop, fell into a personal darkness, and against the odds made a remarkable return.

WORLD music reviewer Arsenio Orteza now on Wilson’s brokenness, beauty, and enduring brilliance.

ARSENIO ORTEZA: Brian Douglas Wilson was the oldest of three musically talented sons born to Murry and Audree Wilson in Hawthorne, California. Wilson distinguished himself at an early age with the ability to memorize and recreate the sophisticated jazzy harmonies of his favorite vocal groups. It was Brian who insisted that his younger brothers Carl and Dennis and his cousin Mike Love learn to sing the rudiments of what would become Wilson’s trademark vocal arrangements. The family members would later join Brian in the Beach Boys, along with their friend David Marks and later Al Jardine.

MUSIC: [Excerpt from “Their Hearts Were Full of Spring” by the Beach Boys]

Wilson’s outwardly gregarious nature masked inner turmoil, particularly a tumultuous relationship with his abusive father. Wilson would later describe his prolific Beach Boys activity as a struggle both to assert his independence and to earn his father’s approval.

From 1963 to 1965, the Beach Boys placed nine songs and eight albums in the top 10. Wilson was a millionaire by 22. But with that wealth came the pressure of maintaining and constantly improving the nation’s top hit machine. He began to show symptoms of what would eventually be diagnosed as organic personality disorder. Still, he managed to oversee the elaborate recording of the group’s seminal Pet Sounds album as well as the song that would go on to become what many consider the greatest pop single of all time.

MUSIC: [Excerpt from “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys]

At about this time, Wilson quit touring with the group and began seeking solace in marijuana and LSD. He found himself unable to complete the ambitious Pet Sounds follow-up Smile and withdrew from public life. Wilson became as famous for his drug and paranoia-fueled eccentricities as he had been for his prodigious and inventive music. He was still nominally a Beach Boy, but his contributions to the group’s music dwindled.

He spent 1975 to 1985 as an often incoherent caricature of his former self. He experienced a partial recovery at the hands of the controversial therapist Eugene Landy. But that was scuttled in 1989 when a medical board ordered Landy to surrender his license, largely because of the questionable nature of his treatment of Wilson.

But in the mid-1990s, Wilson experienced a renaissance. He married his second wife, Melinda Ledbetter. And he found musicians with whom he could resume touring and recording in the band the Wondermints and the musical director-guitarist Jeffrey Foskett. This ensemble plus the lyricist Van Dyke Parks helped Wilson finally release a complete version of Smile in 2004.

MUSIC: [Excerpt from “Heroes and Villains” by Brian Wilson]

Brian Wilson Presents Smile was released to strong sales and rapturous critical acclaim.

In the years that followed, Wilson released several more solo albums. He also reunited with the Beach Boys in 2012 for the group’s 50th-anniversary tour and for what turned out to be the last Beach Boys album of new material, That’s Why God Made the Radio. A 2014 Bill Pohlad biopic about Wilson’s life, Love and Mercy, was also well received. Wilson toured for the last time in 2022 and was diagnosed with dementia in 2024.

The Beach Boys’ success was the result of many factors: Wilson’s brother Dennis gave him the idea to write about surfing. The other Beach Boys helped bring his compositions to life. But it was Wilson’s inventiveness in the Beach Boys’ first five years that made his songs an indelible fixture in American pop culture. The California of Wilson’s imagination was less a tourist attraction than a state of mind. It represented the transient innocence of youth and the tragedy awaiting those who cling to it. Ironically, Wilson found himself adrift for much of his adult life by clinging to youth himself. His inability to match his early output left him depressed. And his self-destructive attempts at coping with this failure depleted him. His continued composing nevertheless testifies to the durability of his talent. And his survival to enjoy a second act after nearly everyone had given up on him testifies to the durability of his will and the inspirational power of his music.

MUSIC: [Unused vocal tag from “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys]

I’m Arsenio Orteza.

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