Brian Wilson, who as the leader and chief songwriter of the Beach Boys became rock’s poet laureate of surf-and-sun innocence, but also an embodiment of damaged genius through his struggles with mental illness and drugs, has died. He was 82.
His family announced the death but did not say where or when he died, or state a cause. In 2024, business representatives for Brian Wilson were granted a conservatorship by a California state judge, after they asserted that he had been diagnosed with dementia.
