The story of The Beach Boys

Hawthorne beginnings

The story begins in a small house on West 119th Street in Hawthorne, a modest suburb south of Los Angeles. Brian Wilson was born on the twentieth of June 1942, followed by Dennis in 1944 and Carl in 1946. Their father Murry was a machinist and part time songwriter, and a hard man. The brothers later described years of verbal and physical abuse, with Dennis taking the worst of it. Brian found his escape in music. At eleven he was found to have badly reduced hearing in his right ear, yet he could pick out tunes by ear almost from infancy. He spent hours at the piano taking apart the close harmonies of the Four Freshmen, note by note, then teaching his brothers the parts in the bedroom they shared.[1] [2] [3]

For his sixteenth birthday in 1958, Brian was given a tape recorder, and he started layering his own voice with those of Carl and their mother Audree. Family gatherings brought in his cousin Mike Love, a year older, who loved doo wop and rhythm and blues. At Hawthorne High, Brian played quarterback on the football team, and a teammate named Al Jardine, a folk music fan, was impressed when Brian sang at a school show with Mike and Carl under the name Carl and the Passions. Across the street lived a younger boy, David Marks, who learned guitar alongside Carl. Dennis was the odd one out. He was the only real surfer among them, and it was Dennis who suggested they write songs about surfing and the beach life around them.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In 1961 the boys began rehearsing as a group. Mike named them the Pendletones, after the woolen Pendleton shirts local surfers wore. Brian wrote the music for a song called Surfin', with Mike adding the words, and through their father they met the publishers Hite and Dorinda Morgan, who agreed to record it. When the single came out on the small Candix label that November, the band discovered they had been renamed. A man at the label's distributor, Russ Regan, had pointed out that a group called the Surfers already existed and suggested the Beach Boys instead. Surfin' became a regional hit on the West Coast and reached number seventy five nationally. Murry became their manager, and on New Year's Eve 1961 they played their first paid show, in Long Beach, for three hundred dollars.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In the early days all five sang. Brian played bass, Dennis drums, Carl lead guitar and Al rhythm guitar, while Mike fronted the band and sometimes played saxophone. They wore heavy Pendleton shirts on stage before switching to their famous striped shirts and white trousers, a look borrowed from the Kingston Trio. The lineup did not hold for long. In February 1962 Al Jardine left. He did not believe the band would succeed, and he would rather have played folk music. Their young neighbor David Marks took over rhythm guitar. That same winter Brian led a short lived side project for the Morgans called Kenny and the Cadets, singing under the name Kenny, with Carl, Al and even his mother Audree on backing vocals.[1] [2] [3]

Surf, cars and Capitol

After being turned down by Dot and Liberty, the Beach Boys signed a seven year deal with Capitol Records in 1962. Their first Capitol single, Surfin' Safari backed with 409, came out on the fourth of June and reached number fourteen. The debut album followed in October, almost all original songs, written mainly by Brian with Mike and their friend Gary Usher. Brian had already persuaded Capitol to let the band record outside the label's own studios, and he quietly took charge of production, though the credit went to staff producer Nick Venet. The surf crowd was not impressed at first. Real surf music was mostly instrumental, and at some early local shows young audiences threw vegetables at the band, convinced they were fakes.[1] [2]

In early 1963 Brian took the melody of Chuck Berry's Sweet Little Sixteen and set new words to it, a roll call of surfing spots supplied by Jimmy Bowles, the brother of his girlfriend Judy. The result, Surfin' U.S.A., was the band's first top ten single, and Billboard later ranked it the number one record of 1963. On the first pressing only Brian was credited as writer. Under pressure from Berry's publisher, Murry handed over the copyright, and later pressings credited Chuck Berry. During those sessions Brian also began double tracking the group's vocals, which gave their harmonies a deeper, richer sound. The album of the same name reached number two and helped turn surf music into a national craze, sung the Beach Boys' way.[1] [2] [3]

That year Brian won something almost unheard of for a young pop act: full control of production. Surfer Girl, released in September 1963, was the first album to credit him as producer, and on two of its songs he brought in the top Hollywood session players later known as the Wrecking Crew. The title track was a dreamy ballad inspired by Judy Bowles. He was writing for others too. He cowrote Surf City with Jan Berry of Jan and Dean, and it reached number one in July 1963, before the Beach Boys had managed it themselves. Murry and Capitol disapproved. Car songs kept coming, often with the disc jockey Roger Christian, and the album Little Deuce Coupe arrived just three weeks after Surfer Girl.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Behind the hits, the family business was fraying. In October 1963 David Marks walked out after his parents and Murry clashed over money and management, and Al Jardine came back for good. Mike Love's private life was turbulent too. His first wife divorced him that year citing extreme cruelty, alleging he had struck her. Then, in February 1964, Beatlemania hit America. The two bands shared a record label in the United States, and Capitol's attention swung toward Liverpool. On a tour of Australia and New Zealand, Murry threatened the boys with thousand dollar fines for swearing, drinking or chasing girls. Soon afterwards they voted to remove their father as manager. Audree said the dismissal destroyed him, and he stayed in bed for weeks.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Brian answered the British Invasion in the studio. During a session for I Get Around in April 1964, Murry kept criticizing the song until, in Mike Love's telling, Brian shoved his father, the only time Mike ever saw him defy Murry physically. Released in May, I Get Around reached number one on the Fourth of July, the band's first American chart topper, and it began a friendly rivalry between Brian and the Beatles, above all Paul McCartney. Its B side, Don't Worry Baby, was Brian's reply to the Ronettes' Be My Baby, and he had first hoped Phil Spector would record it with them. The album All Summer Long that followed was a farewell to surf and cars. From here the music would head somewhere very different.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Brian leaves the road

By the end of 1964 Brian was writing, arranging and producing the records while touring the world, and he was cracking under the strain. That December he married Marilyn Rovell, a sixteen year old singer in the Honeys, a girl group he produced. Soon after, on a flight from Los Angeles to Houston, he broke down, sobbing uncontrollably. Al Jardine said none of them had ever seen anything like it. Brian played that night's show, but the session guitarist Glen Campbell replaced him for the rest of the tour. In January 1965 Brian told the band he would stop touring and devote himself to writing and recording. Dennis was so upset he grabbed a heavy ashtray and threatened people with it. Carl, still a teenager, became the band's musical director on stage.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Glen Campbell's own career soon took off, and in April 1965 Bruce Johnston, a Columbia Records producer who had been asked to find a replacement, ended up taking the job himself. He first played with them in New Orleans, and his first recording session with the band was for California Girls that June. The music was changing fast. The Beach Boys Today!, released in March 1965, arranged its second side as a suite of reflective, personal songs, an early sign of the album as a work of art. Brian had moved into Hollywood's social circles, and early that year he took LSD for the first time. He said it tore his head off. Around then he began California Girls, opening it with an orchestral prelude inspired by the music of cowboy films.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The drug had a darker side. Brian later said the voices he heard for the rest of his life began in 1965, about a week after he first took psychedelics. Marilyn, unhappy with his new crowd, briefly separated from him before they made up. Musically, though, he was on a streak. Help Me, Rhonda, sung by Al Jardine, went to number one in the spring of 1965, knocking the Beatles' Ticket to Ride off the top. At the vocal session for that single, Murry turned up drunk and mocked the band take after take, until he and Brian fought over the mixing desk. The tape of that argument has circulated among fans for decades. Brian's reply came on the next album, a jokey song called I'm Bugged at My Ol' Man.[1] [2] [3]

Capitol wanted another album for Christmas 1965, so Brian made one fast. Beach Boys' Party! was recorded in the studio with party noises added, mostly acoustic covers of old rock and roll songs, three Beatles songs and Bob Dylan's The Times They Are a Changin'. One of the throwaways was the Regents' doo wop song Barbara Ann, sung by Brian with Dean Torrence of Jan and Dean, who went uncredited. You can hear Carl say thanks, Dean, at the end. Capitol put it out as a single without telling the band, and it shot to number two in America and number three in Britain. It was a smash, but Brian brushed it off as nothing like the music he was about to make.[1] [2] [3]

Pet Sounds and Good Vibrations

In December 1965 Brian heard the Beatles' Rubber Soul and told Marilyn he was going to make the greatest rock album ever. This time he did not turn to Mike Love for words. Instead he teamed up with Tony Asher, a young advertising jingle writer, and over a few weeks at Brian's home they wrote songs about love, doubt and growing up. Asher said the feelings were Brian's and the actual words were usually his. Brian and Carl even held prayer sessions, hoping for an album to rival Rubber Soul. Between January and April 1966 Brian recorded the backing tracks with the Wrecking Crew in several Hollywood studios, then coached his bandmates through the vocals between tours. The bill came to more than seventy thousand dollars, an unheard of sum at the time.[1] [2] [3]

The sessions were exacting. Mike nicknamed Brian dog ears for his sensitive hearing and his demands, and remembered singing one passage of Wouldn't It Be Nice close to thirty times. Brian filled the record with sounds rock bands did not use, from accordions and bass harmonica to an Electro Theremin, a first in popular music. The instrumental title track began life as a possible James Bond theme, with the drummer tapping empty Coca Cola cans, and the album ends with Brian's own dogs barking over the sound of a passing train. The cover was shot at the San Diego Zoo, with the band feeding goats. Carl sang lead on God Only Knows, and Brian's instructions were simple: sing it real straight, no effort, let it go easy.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Pet Sounds came out in May 1966. In America it reached number ten, a letdown after their string of hits, and within two months Capitol rushed out a greatest hits album that quickly went gold. Brian was mortified. Britain was different. The band's new publicist, Derek Taylor, who had worked for the Beatles, launched a campaign declaring that Brian Wilson is a genius. Bruce Johnston flew to London and played the album for John Lennon and Paul McCartney in his hotel suite. It reached number two in the UK and stayed in the top ten for six months. McCartney would later call God Only Knows the greatest song ever written, and George Martin said that without Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pepper would not have happened.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Brian's next obsession was a single. He built Good Vibrations from dozens of short musical pieces he called feels, recorded with his bandmates and more than thirty session musicians in four Hollywood studios between February and September 1966. More than ninety hours of tape were used, making it the costliest and longest to record pop single of its day. The idea came from his mother, who told him dogs could sense vibrations from people. Tony Asher wrote early words, but Mike Love wrote the final lyrics during a twenty minute drive to the studio, including the hook about picking up good vibrations. With juddering cellos and the eerie wail of an Electro Theremin, it sounded like nothing that had ever been on the radio.[1] [2]

Released in October 1966, Good Vibrations went to number one in America and gave the Beach Boys their first British number one. It was also their first single certified gold. That autumn they were the best selling album act in the UK, and in December readers of the NME voted them the top group in the world, ahead of the Beatles. For a moment, the band from Hawthorne stood at the very top of pop music. But the pressure on Brian was enormous. The genius label he had asked for soon felt like a burden, and his bandmates grew tired of coverage that treated them as extras in Brian's show. Van Dyke Parks, who was about to work with him, said he knew that word would come back to haunt Brian.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Smile, and the collapse

Brian's next album was meant to be bigger still. In the summer of 1966 he began writing with Van Dyke Parks, a young session musician and lyricist he had been introduced to by David Crosby. Parks recalled that Brian, having barely met him, sent him a cheque for five thousand dollars to buy a Volvo. Their first song together was Heroes and Villains, a tale of the old American West. The project, first called Dumb Angel and then Smile, was what Brian called a teenage symphony to God. Parks wrote playful lyrics full of American history and wordplay, and Brian built the music in fragments, as he had for Good Vibrations, reshuffling pieces day by day. Capitol confidently printed hundreds of thousands of album covers.[1] [2] [3]

Brian's home became part of the legend. He set his grand piano in a sandbox in his den, which Parks saw as a pop art joke rather than madness, and built a tent in the former dining room for smoking hashish. He was using marijuana, hashish and amphetamines heavily. In the studio, musicians recording a piece called Fire wore toy fire helmets while wood burned for atmosphere. Within days a building across the street burned down, and Brian grew afraid his music had caused it through witchcraft. He shelved the track. Al Jardine, who did not take drugs, said the sessions felt like being trapped in an asylum, recalling the night Brian had the band crawl around the studio making pig noises.[1] [2] [3]

Tensions grew. Murry called Good Vibrations a horrible mistake that would alienate the fans. Mike Love questioned Parks's lyrics. Parks said the whole house of cards began tumbling when Brian called him to the studio to defend a line from Cabin Essence, about a crow crying over a cornfield. Carl said Mike found the words too abstract, while Parks said the real objection was to the music. Business troubles piled up too. In February 1967 the band sued Capitol over unpaid royalties. And Carl, who refused to be drafted into the army during the Vietnam War, was indicted, beginning a years long fight as a conscientious objector. Parks drifted away, and by April 1967 many of Brian's new circle had gone.[1] [2] [3]

Smile was quietly abandoned. Paul McCartney visited a session in April 1967 and reportedly crunched celery for a track called Vegetables, but that recording was never used. Brian later admitted they were simply too high to finish it. When Heroes and Villains finally came out in July, Brian and his bandmates delivered it by limousine to a Los Angeles radio station, but it stalled at number twelve. In Smile's place came Smiley Smile, a sparse, odd album recorded at Brian's new home studio and credited to the whole group. It reached only number forty one, their worst showing yet, and the rock press all but shunned them. Smile itself became the most legendary unreleased album in pop history.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Meditation, madness and Manson

The late sixties were the Beach Boys' commercial low point. Wild Honey, a raw turn toward soul music, came out in December 1967. Around then the band heard the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi speak in Paris, and in early 1968 Mike Love joined the Beatles at his retreat in Rishikesh, India. Mike later claimed he helped Paul McCartney with the words of Back in the U.S.S.R. Back home, Mike arranged for the Beach Boys to tour America with the Maharishi. It was a flop. Crowds were thin, the Maharishi pulled out to fulfil film contracts, and the tour ended after five shows, with cancellations costing about a quarter of a million dollars. The gentle album Friends, which Brian later called his favorite, stalled at number one hundred and twenty six.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Brian was falling apart. In 1968 he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, his stay kept private while the band carried on recording without him. His songwriting slowed, and he added cocaine to the amphetamines and marijuana. More and more he stayed upstairs in his bedroom while the others recorded below, coming down now and then to suggest a change or play a new song. Carl stepped up as the studio leader. Then, in August 1969, came a bitter blow. Murry sold the band's song catalogue, Sea of Tunes, for seven hundred thousand dollars, over the band's objections. Marilyn said Brian did not speak for days. The songs went on to earn more than one hundred million dollars in royalties, none of which went to Murry or the band.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Dennis, meanwhile, had let a nightmare into his life. In April 1968 he picked up two young women hitchhiking in Malibu and took them to his house on Sunset Boulevard. When he came home that night, their guru, Charles Manson, was waiting in the driveway, and about a dozen of his followers had moved in. At first Dennis was fascinated and called Manson the Wizard. For months the group lived off him, costing him around one hundred thousand dollars in cars, clothes, food and medical bills, and they wrecked his cars. Dennis introduced Manson to music business friends, including the producer Terry Melcher, and the Beach Boys released a reworked Manson song, Never Learn Not to Love, as a B side credited only to Dennis.[1] [2] [3]

Growing frightened, Dennis moved out and left Manson's followers in the house until they were evicted. Manson later left a bullet at the house with a threatening message. In his memoir, Mike Love wrote that Dennis told him he had seen Manson shoot a man. In August 1969 members of the Manson Family carried out the Tate and LaBianca murders in Los Angeles. When Manson was arrested that November, his link to the Beach Boys made headlines, and for a time the band were treated as outcasts. Dennis refused to testify, saying he was too scared, and told the prosecutor he had destroyed the tapes of Manson's songs. Some believe guilt and fear fed his later spiral into drugs and drink.[1] [2]

Reprise and a surprise revival

In 1970 the Beach Boys moved to Reprise Records, in a deal brokered by Van Dyke Parks, who was by then working at Warner Bros. Their first album for the new label, Sunflower, featured songs from all six members and won strong reviews, but it sold poorly, stalling at number one hundred and fifty one. Dennis shone with the ballad Forever. The band then hired a radio presenter, Jack Rieley, as manager. He pushed them toward socially conscious songs, arranged a guest spot with the Grateful Dead at the Fillmore East, and made Carl the official leader. The 1971 album Surf's Up took its title from a Smile song that Carl and Rieley finally completed, and it climbed into the American top thirty.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The lineup kept shifting. In 1971 Dennis badly injured his hand and could not drum for a long stretch, so two South African musicians from a band called the Flames, which Carl had produced, joined in 1972. They were the drummer Ricky Fataar and the guitarist Blondie Chaplin. Bruce Johnston left the same year. That summer the band, their families and their crew moved to the Netherlands, shipping their studio in crates and rebuilding it in a barn near Amsterdam, at a cost of about a quarter of a million dollars. When Reprise said the resulting album lacked a strong single, Van Dyke Parks stepped in, and Holland gained Sail On, Sailor, sung by Blondie Chaplin and written largely by Brian and Parks.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

On the fourth of June 1973 Murry Wilson died of a heart attack at fifty five. Brian and Dennis did not attend the funeral. Brian took the loss hard and retreated into the chauffeur's quarters of his home, where he spent much of the next few years sleeping, overeating, drinking and taking drugs, rarely going out in anything but pajamas. His family had to take over his finances. At night he would turn up at the Laurel Canyon home of his friend Danny Hutton of Three Dog Night, where visitors included John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Harry Nilsson and Keith Moon. Once he jumped on stage at the Troubadour in the middle of a jazz set, in slippers and a bathrobe, to sing Be Bop a Lula.[1] [2]

Then, unexpectedly, the past came to the rescue. After two of their early songs featured in the film American Graffiti, Capitol released a collection of early hits called Endless Summer in June 1974. It reached number one that October and stayed on the chart for about three years, selling more than three million copies. Almost overnight the Beach Boys went from opening for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young to headlining arenas, and Rolling Stone named them band of the year for their live shows. In 1975 they toured with Chicago in a hugely successful double bill fans nicknamed Beachago. The revival came at a price. Audiences wanted the old hits, and the Beach Boys became, in effect, an oldies act.[1] [2]

Brian's back, and the band splits

In October 1975 Marilyn persuaded Brian to enter the care of Eugene Landy, a Beverly Hills psychologist whose program meant round the clock supervision. Landy said he had to be crazier than Brian, and once threw water on him to get him out of bed. Brian became healthier and more productive, and the band launched a campaign with the slogan Brian's back. He produced 15 Big Ones in 1976, a mix of covers and originals that reached number eight, their first top ten album of new material since Pet Sounds, though Carl and Dennis criticized it in the press. On Saturday Night Live that November, Brian played Good Vibrations alone at a piano set in a giant sandbox, with Landy off camera holding up cards that read smile.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In 1977 Brian made The Beach Boys Love You almost single handed, writing most of it and playing nearly every instrument. Critics praised its odd, childlike honesty, but it sold poorly, and a follow up called Adult Child was shelved. Landy had already been dismissed at the end of 1976 after raising his fee to twenty thousand dollars a month. That August, Dennis released his own album, Pacific Ocean Blue. Its raw, soulful songs won warm reviews, it outsold the next two Beach Boys albums, and it has since become a cult classic. Nearly fifty years later, in February 2026, the shelved Adult Child sessions were finally released as part of a box set called We Gotta Groove.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Money brought its own trouble. In 1977 the band signed an eight million dollar deal with CBS Records that required Brian to write much of every album. The group split into camps, with Carl and Dennis on one side and Mike and Al on the other. After a confrontation on an airport tarmac, Dennis told Rolling Stone in September 1977 that he had left the band. He was back within weeks, but the settlement handed Mike control of Brian's vote, letting Mike and Al outvote the other Wilsons. Brian slid backwards. In 1978, after an overdose, he wandered off, ending up in Mexico and then San Diego, where police found him in a park with no shoes, money or wallet, and he was treated for alcohol poisoning.[1] [2] [3]

Dennis was spiraling too. In 1978 he was arrested after a concert in Arizona for sharing drugs and alcohol with a sixteen year old girl in his hotel room. He called it a setup. He married the actress Karen Lamm twice, and then had a stormy romance with Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac, who said half of him was like a little boy and the other half was insane. He was drinking heavily and using cocaine and heroin. In 1981 Brian's bodyguard Rocky Pamplin and cousin Stan Love, Mike's brother, beat Dennis up at his home after learning he had been supplying Brian with drugs. They were fined, and Dennis got a restraining order. Carl, fed up with the oldies routine, left for over a year to go solo.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

By 1983 Dennis had nearly lost his voice, and the band told him to get sober or stop performing with them. He was homeless, drifting between friends and hospitals. He was separated from his last wife, Shawn, who said she was Mike Love's daughter, a claim Mike has denied, and they had a young son, Gage. On Christmas night 1983 Dennis was beaten in a fight at a Santa Monica hotel. Three days later, on the twenty eighth of December, after drinking all day, he dived into the water at Marina del Rey to bring up belongings he had thrown overboard from his boat years earlier in a rage. He drowned at the age of thirty nine. In early January 1984 he was laid to rest at sea.[1] [2] [3]

Landy, lawsuits and Kokomo

Brian's health had collapsed as well. In November 1982, after he overdosed on alcohol, cocaine and other drugs, his family and the band staged a ruse, telling him he was broke and no longer a Beach Boy unless he went back to Eugene Landy. Landy took total control. He flew Brian to Hawaii, cut him off from friends and family, put him on a strict diet and taught him basic social skills again. Brian lost a great deal of weight and began making music. But Landy charged around four hundred and thirty thousand dollars a year and became his cowriter, business partner and executive producer. Brian later claimed that in 1985 he tried to end his life by swimming far out to sea, until one of Landy's aides brought him back.[1] [2] [3]

In 1988 the Beach Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Mike Love gave one of the most notorious speeches in its history, challenging Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel and mocking the Beatles. According to bandleader Paul Shaffer, Carl handed him his award afterwards and said their career was over. Mike later explained that he simply had not meditated that morning. That same year Brian released his first solo album, Brian Wilson, made under Landy's close watch. And then came Kokomo. Written by Mike with John Phillips, Scott McKenzie and Terry Melcher for the Tom Cruise film Cocktail, it went to number one, the band's first chart topper in twenty two years and the first made without Brian.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Critics mostly hated Kokomo, and it still turns up on lists of the worst songs by great artists. But it was a genuine smash, and the band played it on the sitcom Full House, whose star John Stamos had played steel drums in the video. Brian was not on the record, and he was by then almost entirely estranged from his bandmates. Landy's grip was loosening. In 1989 he lost his California license to practice amid accusations of ethical violations and misconduct. In 1991 Brian's family went to court seeking a conservatorship, and by the end of that year the partnership between Brian and Landy had been dissolved, followed by a restraining order that kept Landy away from him.[1] [2] [3]

The nineties became a decade of lawsuits. Brian's 1991 memoir, Wouldn't It Be Nice, written with heavy involvement from Landy, drew defamation suits from Mike, Al, Carl and even their mother Audree. Brian himself sued to recover the song catalogue his father had sold, and in 1992 won a ten million dollar settlement. Then Mike sued Brian, arguing that Murry had left his name off dozens of songs he helped write, including California Girls and I Get Around. In December 1994 a jury sided with Mike. He received five million dollars and a share of future royalties, and thirty five songs were amended to credit him. Mike later called it almost certainly the largest case of fraud in music history.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Brian found stability in a second marriage. He had met Melinda Ledbetter, a Cadillac saleswoman and former model, at a car dealership in 1986, and after Landy's exit they reunited and married in 1995. She became his manager, and he credited her with giving him the security to work again. Then, early in 1997, Carl was diagnosed with lung and brain cancer after years of heavy smoking. He kept touring that summer while having chemotherapy, sitting on a stool and needing oxygen after each song. The Wilsons' mother Audree died in December 1997, and on the sixth of February 1998 Carl died in Los Angeles at fifty one. His cousin Stan Love called him the glue that held the band together.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The name, the reunions and the farewell

After Carl's death the question became who could use the name. The band's company, Brother Records, licensed Mike Love to tour as the Beach Boys, with Bruce Johnston and, for a while, David Marks. Al Jardine left and toured as Beach Boys Family and Friends, which brought lawsuits. The courts barred Al from using the name, although an appeals court later found that Mike had acted wrongfully in freezing him out, and the case was settled privately. Brian, meanwhile, rediscovered the stage. From 1999 he toured with a young band built around the Wondermints, and in 2004 he did what once seemed impossible. He finished Smile, rebuilt with Van Dyke Parks and keyboardist Darian Sahanaja, and premiered it in London to rapturous acclaim.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

Brian Wilson Presents Smile became his highest charting album in decades and won Brian his first Grammy, for the instrumental Mrs. O'Leary's Cow, the very Fire piece that had frightened him in 1966. Mike Love sued over a free CD of rerecorded Beach Boys songs given away with a British newspaper to promote it, but the case was thrown out in 2007. In 2011 Capitol finally released The Smile Sessions, the original recordings assembled into an approximation of the finished album, and it won the Grammy for Best Historical Album. Then, for the band's fiftieth anniversary, Brian, Mike, Al, Bruce and David Marks reunited for a new album and a world tour, performing together at the Grammys in February 2012.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

That's Why God Made the Radio came out in June 2012 and debuted at number three, stretching the band's span of top ten albums across forty nine years, longer than the Beatles. The tour was a triumph, but it ended in acrimony. As it wound down, Mike and Bruce announced they would go back to touring as the Beach Boys without Brian, Al and David, and headlines claimed Mike had fired his cousin, which Mike denied. Brian and Al went on touring together, often joined by Blondie Chaplin, while Mike's version of the band kept the name on the road. The five surviving members did gather now and then, for a question and answer session in 2018 and as guests at a televised Grammy tribute in 2023.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The later years brought more friction and some peace. In 2020 Brian and Al publicly objected when Mike's Beach Boys played a hunting convention and a fundraiser for Donald Trump. In 2021 the members and Carl's estate sold a controlling stake in the band's name, recordings and brand to Irving Azoff's company. Brian gave his final concert in July 2022. His wife Melinda died in January 2024, and soon afterwards it was announced that he had dementia and would be placed under a conservatorship. That May the surviving members gathered for the premiere of a Disney documentary about the band. On the eleventh of June 2025 Brian Wilson died at his home in Beverly Hills, aged eighty two. His death was attributed to respiratory arrest.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

Tributes poured in. Paul McCartney spoke of Brian's mysterious sense of musical genius, and Bob Dylan and Elton John called him a genius too. Mike Love said the world had lost a genius and he had lost a cousin and partner in music. Brian was laid to rest beside his brother Carl at Westwood Memorial Park. Al Jardine carried on with Brian's old touring musicians as the Pet Sounds Band. In March 2026 Bruce Johnston stepped away from the touring band after roughly six decades, leaving Mike Love as the last classic era member on stage. That summer, with Mike's health a concern, the band postponed or cancelled nearly thirty shows to recharge, promising to return to the road afterwards.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

The people around The Beach Boys

Brian Wilson and Mike Love. Cousins who grew up singing at family gatherings, Brian wrote the music and Mike much of the words on hits from Surfin' to Good Vibrations, his swagger balancing Brian's sensitivity. The partnership soured over Smile, Brian's memoir, the songwriting credits Mike won in court in 1994, and the end of the 2012 reunion. Yet Brian called Do It Again their best collaboration, and when Brian died, Mike said he had lost a cousin by blood and his partner in music.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Brian Wilson and Murry Wilson. Murry pushed his sons into music, managed the band and fought hard for them at Capitol. By his sons' accounts he was also violent and cruel, and they fired him as manager in 1964. He kept interfering, then sold their song catalogue in 1969 for a fraction of its worth. Brian skipped his funeral in 1973, but later said his father gave them ambition, and that he loved him despite the spankings.[1] [2]

Brian Wilson and Marilyn Wilson-Rutherford. Brian met Marilyn Rovell at a Beach Boys concert in 1962 and produced her group, the Honeys. They married at the end of 1964, when she was sixteen. Songs on Pet Sounds reflected their early strains, and Brian later admitted being a neglectful husband who also had an affair with her sister Diane. They had two daughters, Carnie and Wendy, later of Wilson Phillips, and divorced in 1979.[1] [2] [3]

Brian Wilson and Melinda Ledbetter. Brian met Melinda Ledbetter, a Cadillac saleswoman and former model, in 1986. She reported Eugene Landy to the authorities, and Landy later ordered Brian to end the relationship. They reunited after Landy's exit, married in 1995 and adopted five children, and she managed his solo career. Some fans questioned how much he really wanted to tour, but Brian called her his savior. She died in January 2024.[1] [2]

Brian Wilson and Eugene Landy. The psychologist Eugene Landy treated Brian twice, in 1975 and 1976 and again from 1982. His round the clock program restored Brian's physical health, and Brian later said Landy saved him. But Landy also controlled his life, isolated him from family, took cowriting credits and huge fees, and his medication regime left Brian with facial tics. He lost his license in 1989 and the partnership was ended in 1991. Paul Giamatti played him in Love and Mercy.[1] [2] [3]

Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks. Brian and Van Dyke Parks wrote Heroes and Villains, Surf's Up and much of Smile in 1966, before Parks walked away as the project collapsed. He stayed close, brokering the band's Reprise deal, writing Sail On, Sailor with Brian, making the album Orange Crate Art with him in 1995 and helping finish Smile in 2004. After Brian's death, Parks said the word genius truly applied to him.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Dennis Wilson and Charles Manson. Dennis met Charles Manson in 1968 after picking up two of his followers hitchhiking. For months the Family lived at Dennis's home and spent his money, and Dennis championed Manson's songs, reworking one for the Beach Boys. He fled as things turned sinister, and after the 1969 murders he refused to testify out of fear. When Dennis died, Manson claimed Dennis had been killed by his shadow for changing his song.[1]

Dennis Wilson and Christine McVie. Dennis Wilson and Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac were together at the end of the seventies and into the early eighties, introduced by Mick Fleetwood. It was romantic and chaotic. Dennis planted a heart shaped garden at her home and hired an orchestra to serenade her on her birthday, but his drinking and drug use wore her down. She said half of him was a little boy and half was insane, and she wrote Fleetwood Mac songs about him.[1] [2]

Brian Wilson and Carl Wilson. Carl was the youngest Wilson and the one Brian called the most truly religious person he knew. Brian had him sing God Only Knows, and when Brian withdrew, Carl became the band's leader in the studio and on stage. In 1982 Brian signed a trust giving Carl control of his finances and his vote in the band's company. After Brian died in 2025, he was buried beside Carl.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Mike Love and Al Jardine. Al was Brian's school friend and Mike's bandmate for nearly four decades. After Carl died in 1998, Mike took the touring license and Al was left out. When Al toured as Beach Boys Family and Friends, Mike and the band's company sued. Al lost the right to use the name, but an appeals court found Mike had acted wrongfully in freezing him out, and the case was settled. They reunited on stage in 2012.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The Beach Boys and The Beatles. The two bands shared an American record label and a fierce but friendly rivalry. I Get Around answered the British Invasion, Rubber Soul inspired Pet Sounds, and according to George Martin, Pet Sounds in turn led to Sgt. Pepper. Mike Love meditated beside the Beatles in India in 1968. Paul McCartney called God Only Knows the greatest song ever written and, when Brian died, said he had loved him.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Brian Wilson and Phil Spector. Brian called Phil Spector the single most influential producer. He pulled his car over the first time he heard the Ronettes' Be My Baby, sat in on Spector's sessions at Gold Star Studios, and wrote Don't Worry Baby hoping the Ronettes would record it. Spector, who preferred songs he had written, passed. Brian also recorded many unreleased versions of You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin', which he called the greatest record ever.[1] [2]

Rare facts about The Beach Boys

• Al Jardine, not Brian, played bass on the Beach Boys' very first recording, Surfin'. Al played upright bass on the Surfin' session in late 1961. David Marks, who was already rehearsing with the Wilsons, missed the recording because he was in school that day.[1] [2] [3]
• In early 1962 Brian recorded under the name Kenny, fronting a short lived group called Kenny and the Cadets. Their publisher Hite Morgan asked some of the band to sing over instrumental tracks. The group included Carl, Al Jardine and the Wilsons' mother, Audree.[1]
• At some of their earliest local shows, young surf fans threw vegetables at the Beach Boys. Surf music was mostly instrumental, full of spring reverb. To some purists a vocal group singing about surfing looked like poseurs, and they let the band know it.[1]
• The band's famous striped shirts and white trousers were a look taken straight from the Kingston Trio. Before that they wore the heavy Pendleton shirts local surfers favored, the same shirts that gave them their first name, the Pendletones.[1]
• Murry Wilson lost his left eye in an industrial accident at the Goodyear tire factory. He later said losing the eye made him drive himself harder and do the work of two men. He went on to start his own machinery business before managing his sons.[1]
• When Murry Wilson's family reached Los Angeles in 1921, they lived in a tent on the beach for two months. They had come from Kansas and were desperately poor at first. Murry grew up with a violent, alcoholic father of his own.[1]
• Before his music took off, Brian Wilson's only paid job was sweeping up at a jewelry store at fifteen. He also cleaned at his father's machining company on weekends. At Hawthorne High he played quarterback, and Al Jardine was on the same team.[1] [2]
• Surfin' U.S.A. is officially credited to Chuck Berry because Murry handed the copyright to Berry's publisher. The song set Brian's surfing lyrics to Berry's Sweet Little Sixteen. The first pressing named only Brian, but Arc Music has owned the copyright since 1963.[1]
• Billboard named Surfin' U.S.A. the top record of 1963, even though it peaked at number three. Counting chart points for the double sided single with Shut Down, it came out on top for the year in Billboard's tally.[1]
• Fun, Fun, Fun was reportedly inspired by a Salt Lake City radio owner's daughter who borrowed her dad's Thunderbird. Shirley Johnson said she told her father she was going to the library but went to a burger drive in instead. According to a local DJ, Brian and Mike started the song on the way to the airport.[1]
• Dean Torrence of Jan and Dean sings lead on Barbara Ann with Brian, without a credit. You can hear Carl say thanks, Dean, at the end. Capitol released it without telling the band and it reached number two in America.[1]
• In 1987 the Beach Boys turned Barbara Ann into Here Come the Cubs, a theme for Chicago's baseball team. With new words about the Cubs, it became the team's official song that year, replacing Go, Cubs, Go.[1]
• The Pet Sounds title instrumental was first written as a possible James Bond theme. Brian called it Run James Run and hoped to pitch it to the Bond producers. On the recording, the drummer played two empty Coca Cola cans.[1]
• After the Pet Sounds cover shoot, the San Diego Zoo banned the Beach Boys for a while. The photo shows them feeding goats. The zoo accused them of mishandling the animals, though the ban was later lifted. Bruce Johnston missed the shoot for contractual reasons.[1]
• For Sloop John B, Brian got a music store opened on a Sunday so a guitarist could have a twelve string. Session player Billy Strange did not own one, so Brian called Capitol's head, Glenn Wallichs, who owned a music shop. Strange played the solo in one take and Brian paid him two thousand dollars.[1]
• Al Jardine brought Sloop John B to the band, then lost the lead vocal to Brian and Mike. Al reworked the old Bahamian folk song's chords to win Brian over. Brian had everyone audition for the lead, and Al said it felt like interviewing for a job.[1]
• Brian gave Van Dyke Parks five thousand dollars to buy a Volvo when they had barely met. Parks had been stopped by a police officer while riding a motorcycle to Brian's Beverly Hills home. Brian asked what would draw less attention, and the next day a cheque arrived with no conditions.[1]
• Capitol printed 466,000 Smile album covers that sat in a Pennsylvania warehouse until the 1990s. The label also printed more than four hundred thousand booklets of drawings by the artist Frank Holmes, for an album that was never released.[1]
• Musicians recording Smile's Fire section wore toy fire helmets while wood burned in the studio. When a building across the street burned days later, Brian feared his music was to blame and shelved it. Rerecorded as Mrs. O'Leary's Cow in 2004, it won him a Grammy.[1] [2]
• Paul McCartney reportedly crunched celery at a 1967 Beach Boys session, but the recording went unused. McCartney visited a session for Vegetables in April 1967 while staying with Derek Taylor. He also played Brian his new Beatles song, She's Leaving Home.[1] [2]
• The band hand delivered Heroes and Villains to a Los Angeles radio station by limousine, without telling Capitol. Brian, his bandmates and producer Terry Melcher took the record to KHJ. It reached only number twelve, a disappointment that hit Brian hard.[1] [2]
• To record Holland, the Beach Boys shipped a studio to the Netherlands in crates and rebuilt it in a barn. They spent the summer of 1972 near Amsterdam at a cost of about a quarter of a million dollars, yet only the basic tracks were recorded there.[1]
• A tape of Sail On, Sailor being written opens with Brian asking Van Dyke Parks to hypnotize him into believing he was not insane. Parks told him to cut it out and play the tune. He later said the hopeful song came out of a very difficult time for both of them.[1]
• Dennis Wilson's only acting role was in the 1971 cult road movie Two Lane Blacktop, opposite James Taylor. Dennis played The Mechanic and Taylor The Driver, drifting across America in a 1955 Chevy and living off street races. Reviews were mixed, but it became a cult classic.[1]
• Carl Wilson's Samoyed dog, Shannon, inspired Henry Gross's 1976 hit song Shannon. The dog's death moved Gross to write the song. Carl also sang backing vocals on hits by Chicago and on Elton John's Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me.[1]
• Concert contracts once required promoters to book Carl Wilson plus four other musicians. After Brian quit touring in 1965, Carl became the band's musical director on stage, a role he held until his death in 1998.[1]
• Bruce Johnston wrote I Write the Songs, a number one hit for Barry Manilow. It won the Grammy for Song of the Year. Bruce wondered aloud how he could win for a song he wrote in his car when Brian Wilson and Mike Love never had.[1]
• Bruce Johnston sang on Pink Floyd's The Wall, including The Show Must Go On. Roger Waters wrote that song with Beach Boys style harmonies in mind. Bruce also sang on Elton John's Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me.[1]
• Bruce Johnston was born Benjamin Baldwin and adopted as a baby. Born in Peoria, Illinois, in 1942, he was raised by the Johnston family in the wealthy Los Angeles neighborhoods of Brentwood and Bel Air.[1]
• Bruce Johnston helped write and produce a track on The Weeknd's 2022 album Dawn FM. The song, Here We Go Again, features the rapper Tyler, the Creator. Bruce was nearly eighty when the album came out.[1]
• David Marks turned down Paul Revere and the Raiders because he did not want to wear their costume. The band performed in American Revolutionary War outfits. Marks was also briefly lead guitarist for Delaney and Bonnie before Eric Clapton replaced him.[1]
• David Marks stayed a legal member of the Beach Boys until 1967 without knowing it. He walked out in 1963 after clashing with Murry, but his membership was not formally ended until the twenty seventh of September 1967.[1]
• Former Beach Boy Ricky Fataar played Stig O'Hara, the George Harrison figure, in the Beatles spoof The Rutles. He joined South Africa's Flames at nine and was a Beach Boy from 1972 to 1974. He has since spent decades as Bonnie Raitt's drummer.[1]
• Blondie Chaplin, who sang Sail On, Sailor, spent about fifteen years singing and playing with the Rolling Stones. He worked with the Stones in the studio and on tour starting with Bridges to Babylon in 1997, and later toured with Brian Wilson.[1]
• The Wilson family home in Hawthorne was demolished in 1986 to make way for a freeway. The house on West 119th Street was cleared for Interstate 105. A California historical landmark, dedicated in 2005, now marks the spot where the band began.[1]
• A 1977 Beach Boys show drew 40,000 people, still the biggest concert crowd in Rhode Island history. They played Narragansett Park in Pawtucket on the second of September 1977. In 2017 the street where the stage stood was renamed Beach Boys Way.[1]
• Tony Asher, cowriter of God Only Knows, also wrote the Mattel toy slogan you can tell it's Mattel, it's swell. Asher was an advertising copywriter when Brian recruited him for Pet Sounds. He later wrote songs for The Partridge Family.[1]
• Murry Wilson recorded a jingle he hoped to sell to Kentucky Fried Chicken. In 1972 he cut a demo called The Colonel's Song. It finally came out in 1996 on a compilation by the Sunrays, a group he managed after his sons fired him.[1]
• David Marks says a cracked rib led to his hepatitis C diagnosis. A doctor checking the pain took blood and found raised liver enzymes. Marks left the Beach Boys in 1999 because of the illness and was clear of the virus by 2004.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.