Beach Boys co-founder Brian Wilson has passed away aged 82. Wilson was responsible for the band’s iconic sound, which he described as a “teenage symphony to God.” Ann Powers and Chloe Veltman report for NPR:
Brian Wilson, who co-founded the iconic California band The Beach Boys and turned teen pop into a poetic, modernist musical form, has died at age 82.
“We realize that we are sharing our grief with the world,” Wilson’s family wrote in a statement on his website Wednesday.
The most frequently invoked description of Wilson’s music came from the artist himself when, playing on a phrase coined by Phil Spector, he declared that his goal was to write a “teenage symphony to God.” Grounded in dreams of an idealized youth, his songs reflected vast ambition enmeshed in the belief that pop could be a conduit to the sublime.
Beyond the recording studio where his mastery shone, Wilson struggled: He was abused by his father as a child, and mental health struggles, including audio hallucinations (later diagnosed as schizoaffective disorder), led him into isolation at the height of The Beach Boys’ success. His greatest musical works made room for the deep melancholy he experienced while evoking an almost otherworldly beauty, the sunset smear of a soul longing for peace.
This elevated quality infuses even the playfully slight songs of the early Beach Boys. As one of the first major rock bands of the 1960s, The Beach Boys made hit fodder of subjects like drag racing, high school rivalries and, of course, surfing to express the empowerment, freedom and fun many white middle-class kids felt as the post-war boom empowered their generation. Southern California became the mythologized center of the new American dream, and Brian Wilson’s music was its soundtrack.
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