Inside Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson’s reclusive life before his death at 82

God only knows. 

Legendary Beach Boy founder Brian Wilson has died at 82.

“We are heartbroken to announce that our beloved father Brian Wilson has passed away,” his family announced on Instagram and on his website Wednesday.

“We are at a loss for words right now. Please respect our privacy at this time as our family is grieving. We realize that we are sharing our grief with the world.”

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Wilson famously churned out era-defining summertime hits, all while battling mental illness and personal demons.

Born in California, the “Good Vibrations” crooner co-founded the Beach Boys in 1961. Between 1962 and 1965, the Beach Boys, led by Wilson, put out 16 Top 40 hits, including “Surfin’ USA.”

While still in his 20s, he was swiftly labeled as a musical genius, as the band’s primary songwriter and co-lead vocalist. 

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“That ear,” Bob Dylan once reportedly said. “I mean, Jesus, he’s got to will that to the Smithsonian.”

Ironically, Wilson was deaf in his right ear — at various times, he cited the reason as a blow from his father, or from a local boy in his neighborhood. 

“My dad was violent,” Wilson wrote in a 2016 memoir, “I Am Brian Wilson,” written with Ben Greenman. “He was cruel.”

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The band’s original line up included Brian, his brothers Dennis and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and friend Al Jardine. 

Wilson peaked with the 1966 album “Pet Sounds.”

“I figure no one is educated musically ’til they’ve heard that album,” Paul McCartney once said. 

McCartney cited it as a major influence in The Beatles’ iconic 1967 album, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

Wilson had a panic attack in 1964 on a flight to  Houston, which caused him to stop touring with the Beach Boys to focus on songwriting. 

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During his follow-up to Pet Sounds, his behavior became increasingly erratic. While recording a song called “Fire,” he had the studio musicians wear firefighter helmets. After learning that a building nearby had burned down while they were recording, he became convinced the song was “cursed” and somehow caused the fire.

He also installed a sand box in his home and put his piano in it.

“The whole living room was full of sand,” Michelle Williams of the Mamas & the Papas recalled.

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Wilson became increasingly reclusive through the years, sometimes spending days on end alone in his bedroom in his Malibu mansion, per the LA Times. He also took drugs — including pot, LSD,  amphetamines, cocaine and sometimes heroin — and had auditory hallucinations.  

This got worse after his father’s death in 1973. 

In 1983, People magazine reported that Wilson “put his piano inside a huge indoor sandbox and for one two-year period never ventured out of the house.”

“I had a helluva time getting through some of the frustrations that go along with being a successful record artist,” Wilson told the New York Times Magazine in 1988. 

“When I got out there with the Beach Boys, at first I was OK, because I was riding a wave, riding a crest. But then, later on, 10 years later, I got scared, and I got lost, and I was eating caramel sundaes for breakfast. I was all out of whack!”

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He was legally bound to keep working with the Beach Boys, and he occasionally contributed to recordings, but he rarely surfaced. 

“Back then, mental illness wasn’t treated in a straightforward way,” Wilson said in his 2016 memoir.

“People wouldn’t even admit that it existed,” he added. “There was shame in saying what it was and strange ideas about how to deal with it.”

During a 2004 Larry King interview, Wilson and his second wife, Melinda Ledbetter — who he was married to from 1995 until her death in 2024 — revealed that he had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, a combination of psychosis and abnormal mood. 

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“For the past 40 years I’ve had auditory hallucinations in my head, all day every day, and I can’t get them out,” Wilson told Ability magazine in 2006. 

“Every few minutes the voices say something derogatory to me, which discourages me a little bit, but I have to be strong enough to say to them, ‘Hey, would you quit stalking me? F— off! Don’t talk to me — leave me alone!’ I have to say these types of things all day long. It’s like a fight.”

The music legend said that his depression went “pretty low, pretty deep.”

“I get depressed to the point where I can’t do anything — I can’t even write songs, which is my passion,” he explained.

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He separated from his first wife, Marilyn Rovell, in 1978 and they divorced in 1979. 

“I lost interest in writing songs,” he told the Times in a 1988 interview, reflecting on that time in his life. “I lost the inspiration. I was too concerned with getting drugs to write songs.”

In a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone, the singer said his struggle with mental health was “the result of bad drugs.”

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“I’ve told a lot of people don’t take psychedelic drugs. It’s mentally dangerous to take,” he said. “I regret having taken LSD. It’s a bad drug.”

In 1976, “Saturday Night Live” addressed his reclusiveness in a sketch with John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. In the skit, the comedy duo play California Highway Patrol officers who burst into Wilson’s bedroom.

“Brian,” says Aykroyd, “we have a citation here for you sir under Section 936A of the California Catch a Wave Statute. Brian, you’re in violation of Paragraph 12: failing to surf, neglecting to use a state beach for surfing purposes, and otherwise avoiding surfboards, surfing and surf.”

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They then force Wilson into the ocean. 

In his memoir, Wilson recalled an episode from his reclusive period in the ‘70s. When a stranger came to his house, “The guy had kind of a surprised expression on his face,” Wilson recalled. “Maybe I didn’t look the way he expected.”

Wilson then played “about a dozen songs” for the man before taking him to a liquor store and making him pay for a bottle of chocolate liqueur that Wilson began drinking at the store, before Wilson then took him to a party in Laurel Canyon. 

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The “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” singer recalled that he went to the stereo and played the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” more than a dozen times — all while his fellow partygoers begged him to stop. 

Overseen by psychologist Eugene Landy, Wilson made a comeback in 1976 by helping produce the album “The Beach Boys Love You.” 

That same year, he began performing with the Beach Boys again for the first time since 1964.

But, it wasn’t a smooth comeback, as Wilson began using drugs again, and his weight increased to over 300 pounds. 

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After the band performed in London in 1977, music outlet Melody Maker reported that Mr. Wilson “looked totally zomboid and completely unaware of what was happening around him.” 

Landy went into business with Wilson, sharing copyrights and taking writing credits on some songs. Landy also drove a Maserati with  the license plate “HEADOC.”

“Through history there are stories about tyrants who control entire countries,” Wilson wrote in his memoir. “Dr. Landy was a tyrant who controlled one person, and that person was me.”

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A 1976 People article describes that after “harrowing years” away from the Beach Boys, Wilson returned “sensitive and withdrawn,” followed by a “personal shrink or an aide” through “every waking hour.” 

During a 1975 summer tour, per the outlet, he “shambled” onstage, picked up a mic, but “couldn’t bring himself to sing.” 

His family also got worried about Landy’s influence and what drugs he was prescribing him — his license was revoked in 1989, due to alleged ethical violations. Wilson eventually severed ties with Landy. 

After getting kicked out of the band in 1982, Wilson’s self-titled debut album in 1988 ignited his solo career, which spawned 11 albums in total, with his final album being 2021’s “At My Piano.”

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He was an on-and-off member of the Beach Boys through the ’90s on the side of his solo work. 

In early 2024, after his second wife Melinda Wilson died, Wilson’s family filed to place the musician under a conservatorship. A Los Angeles judge determined that it was necessary due to “major neurocognitive disorder.” 

In May 2024, longtime representative Jean Sievers and manager LeeAnn Hard were appointed as his conservators.

In his memoir, Wilson said, “There’s always some mystery when I try to remember how I wrote back then. My God, how the f–k could I have written all those songs?”