Brian Wilson, 1942-2025

teenage symphonies to God

Jesus, that ear. He should donate it to the Smithsonian.

Bob Dylan

There is a new song, too complex to get all of first time around. It could come only out of the ferment that characterizes today's pop music scene. Brian Wilson, leader of the famous Beach Boys, and one of today's most important musicians, sings his own 'Surf's Up.'

Poetic, beautiful even in its obscurity, “Surf's Up” is one aspect of new things happening in pop music today.

Leonard Bernstein

A lyric as straightforward as “sometimes I feel very sad” becomes a universe when set to music as inventive and emotive as Brian’s. I think a lot of young musicians gravitate to the art form because, for them, music is a better means of communicating emotional realities than language alone can be, closer to the ineffable, unnameable truth of things. And no one has ever gotten closer to that truth than Brian.

Robin Pecknold

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There is too much to say about Brian Wilson: about his groundbreaking, auteur approach to pop music; about his traumatic childhood decades-long struggles with mental illness; about the death, legend and rebirth of SMiLE; about Pet Sounds; about California; about the whole Beach Boys saga. About Mike Love, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Murry Wilson, Al Jardine, Dr. Eugene Landy, Marilyn Rovell, Melinda Ledbetter, Van Dyke Parks, Hal Blaine & Carol Kaye, Bruce Johnston, Ricky Fataar & Blondie Chaplin and The Wondermints. About LSD and The Sixties. About postwar America. About his profound influence on generations of musicians. About The Beach Boys being to Southern California what James Joyce is to Dublin, or Paul Cézanne is to Provence. About what his music and his story has meant to me since I was a teenager.

But I think the best thing to do today would be to listen to the music itself.