brian wilson

At a time when most of their peers have retired, threatened to call it quits or died, the Beach Boys continue to perform 120 shows per year. Led by original singer Mike Love and longtime multi-instrumentalist Bruce Johnston, this version of the Beach Boys performs the sounds of Southern California to three generations of fans, something which isn’t lost on Love.

“The positivity that our music generates, and the good vibes and good feelings, is a wonderful thing to see,” Love says. “It’s an inspiration to me to see kids with their parents or their grandparents at our shows.”

This weekend, the Beach Boys return to Long Beach for the first time in nearly 15 years to the day, when they performed at Harry Bridges Memorial Park. As Love recalls, the band played one of its first shows in the city at the Long Beach Municipal Auditorium on New Year’s Eve 1961.

“That first concert we were paid for as the Beach Boys at the Long Beach Municipal Auditorium for the Ritchie Valens Memorial Dance,” he recalls. “We played three songs and got $300, but also on that show was Ike Turner and Kings of Rhythm. We got to hear Tina Turner sing this song called ‘I’m Blue.’ It was primordial and blew my mind.”

Thousands of shows later, the Beach Boys continue to have a receptive audience who will gladly see them perform the hits of yesteryear. Love has no issue leaning into the band’s 1960s heyday. In fact, he sees it as his duty to spread “peace and love” through the Beach Boys’ concerts.

Chatting hours before he departed his Lake Tahoe, Calif., home to fly to Southern California for the band’s latest string of shows, Love reflected on nearly 65 years of the Beach Boys, feeling like he finally got his due by being inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, why he’s looking forward to the decidedly un-Beach Boys crowd at Riot Fest, and honoring his late cousin Brian Wilson.

Mike Love

(Udo Spreitzenbarth)

How did it feel to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame?

Better late than never, but it was a great honor. It meant a lot because I wasn’t recognized for my contribution to so many of the Beach Boys’ hits over the years. So, the recognition is a good thing. There are various reasons I wasn’t recognized for it. My uncle [Beach Boys original manager] Murry [Wilson], didn’t put my contribution of the lyrics. “I Get Around,” “Help Me, Rhonda,” “Be True to Your School,” a lot of great songs that I wasn’t credited for. We fired my uncle as manager to get even for me, and he excluded me when he handled the publishing. We didn’t know what publishing was when we started in 1961. We were unsophisticated regarding the business end of it, and we just loved creating music. We loved harmonizing. That was a family tradition that morphed into a long-lasting profession because my cousin Brian and I got together and wrote some songs that people still love to this day.

What is it about the songs that continue to bring people together at a time when people can hardly agree on anything?

The harmonies and the positivity go a long way towards eliminating the negativity. In “Good Vibrations,” I wrote every word of it. I even came up with (sings) “I’m thinking of good vibrations / She gave me excitations” with the chorus melody as well as all the lyrics. But that was written in 1966. The Vietnam War was percolating, and there were student demonstrations. There were problems with integration, and stuff like that made the news. But I wanted to write “Good Vibrations.” I wanted to write this song. I wrote a poem about a girl who loved nature. She was only into the peace, love and flower power, which was also going on at that time. The juxtaposition of the negative and the positive is pretty amazing. It turns out there’s a psychologist in Sheffield, England, who wanted to find out which songs made people feel the best. And our song “Good Vibrations” came in at No. 1, which is unbelievable. In 1966, when it went to No. 1 in England, we were voted the No. 1 group in Great Britain, with No. 2 being the Beatles. Incredible. That was a pretty amazing achievement.

You’ve been joined on stage by the likes of Mark McGrath and Dexter Holland from the Offspring. What does that say to you about the longevity of what the songs have meant?

Dexter sounded amazing on it! He is a really good singer, obviously, but he wanted to do “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” and so we rehearsed backstage [at Oceans Calling Festival in Maryland last September], ran through it about once or twice, and came out on stage in front of 40,000 people, and it was pretty amazing! Mark McGrath is just the most positive and fun guy ever. We have the same birthday, so he’s a few years younger than I am (laughs).

And of course, John Stamos, who inducted you into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

He’s been with us since he was Blackie on “General Hospital.” At this point, he is pretty much an honorary Beach Boy and family.

In the days after Brian’s death, the clip of the band appearing on “Full House” made the rounds on Instagram. What’s it like to remember that when both Brian and Carl were there and you appeared on that show?

John Stamos likes to say that we need this music more than ever now because of so much negativity in the world, and I agree. When I was writing, I accentuated the positive with the harmonies, giving that warm feeling, and the subject matter being fun at times. We’d maybe been a little introspective on “God Only Knows,” maybe “In My Room,” and “The Warmth of the Sun.” The upbeat songs are all fun, positive, and make people feel good. We were just in Spain, and we had standing ovations every night. It was amazing.

What’s wild is seeing the Beach Boys appear on the historically punk festival Riot Fest. Are you familiar with it?

Yeah! We were invited to do it a year ago, but we are doing it this year. Our songs go over well with every demographic and all kinds of people. It doesn’t matter what the format of this is. We’ve done very well with some country festivals, enormously well. It doesn’t matter what the genre of the festival appeals to. We played Stagecoach last year, and there were 70 or 80,000 people at our set. Singing along and dancing around, so we had a great time at that one.

Who are you looking forward to seeing at Riot Fest?

Who is on it other than us?

On your day, it is Weezer performing the Blue Album, Jack White, a reconfigured version of the Sex Pistols, Dropkick Murphys, All Time Low, James …

Weezer! They did “California Girls” on a tribute show that aired on Easter Sunday a few years ago. There’s a lot more guitar in that particular version (laughs). Maybe one of those guys will come and sing with us. What happens at those things is that you’re with a lot of people you don’t ordinarily see, and people like to do unique things.

Do you think the Beach Boys would be considered a punk band, if that was a term, in 1961?

If you listen to some of our songs, like “Surfin’ Safari,” “Catch a Wave” and “Hawaii,” there’s a lot of tempo there. I think those songs appeal to all kinds of genres.

Does returning to Long Beach, near where you all grew up, carry more weight with the loss of Brian?

Well, we have a tribute song called “Brian’s Back” that I wrote many, many years ago. So, back when that was released (in 1976 as part of “15 Big Ones”), we did a video tribute to Brian that we play every night at our concerts, which people love and appreciate. He may have passed on, but he’s always with us every night in the music.

Elton John said that the “Pet Sounds” album would be the one album that would be played forever, which is an amazing accolade,” Love said. “So those songs are pretty much immortal to some degree. So if somebody is capable of replicating them as closely as possible for the record, then great.”

(Udo Spreitzenbarth)

Do you see the Beach Boys continuing to tour in name after you and Bruce are done?

I’m not sure. We haven’t given that a whole lot of thought because we’re very active these days with this configuration. Elton John said that the “Pet Sounds” album would be the one album that would be played forever, which is an amazing accolade. So those songs are pretty much immortal to some degree. So if somebody is capable of replicating them as closely as possible for the record, then great.

But the problem is that mortality is an issue, of course. So, at some point in time, nature will take over and say, “OK, you’re out of here, huh?” But in the meantime, I think we’ve got a good several years to go.

What do people misunderstand about your and Brian’s relationship?

Well, there’s a lot of misinformation given out over this early part of our careers that says I didn’t like the “Pet Sounds” album, which is bull—, because I actually named it and Brian brought it to Capitol Records, who didn’t know what to do with it. If you listen to the tracks of “Pet Sounds,” you say, “How the heck did he ever do that with the greatest musicians in L.A., the Wrecking Crew?” My cousin Brian did some amazing stuff that’ll stand the test of time, if Elton John is right, forever. It’s a true blessing to be able to do what started as a family hobby and became a long-lasting profession.

Is “That’s Why God Made the Radio” the last Beach Boys album, or do you all have one more left in you?

Anything’s possible. We don’t have immediate plans, but I do think of that kind of thing from time to time.

Brian Wilson, the musical savant who scripted a defining Southern California soundtrack with the Beach Boys before being pulled down by despair and depression in full public view, has died. He was 82.

Wilson’s family announced his death Wednesday morning on Facebook. “We are at a loss for words right now,” the post said.

“Please respect our privacy at this time as our family is grieving. We realize we are sharing our grief with the world,” said the statement, which was also shared on Instagram and the musician’s website.

The statement didn’t reveal a cause of death. Wilson died more than a year after it was revealed he was diagnosed with dementia and placed under a conservatorship in May 2024. For decades, Wilson battled mental health issues and drug addiction.

“The world mourns a genius today, and we grieve for the loss of our cousin, our friend, and our partner in a great musical adventure,” the Beach Boys said in a statement on Wednesday. “Brian Wilson wasn’t just the heart of The Beach Boys — he was the soul of our sound. The melodies he dreamed up and the emotions he poured into every note changed the course of music forever. “

The group added: “Together, we gave the world the American dream of optimism, joy, and a sense of freedom — music that made people feel good, made them believe in summer and endless possibilities. We are heartbroken by his passing.”

Elton John, the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, Mick Fleetwood and Nancy Sinatra were among the artists who remembered Wilson on social media. Universal Music Group chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge and California Gov. Gavin Newsom also paid tribute to Wilson and his contributions to music.

“Wilson fundamentally changed modern music, helping make the Beach Boys not only the defining American band of their era, but also the California band to this day,” Newsom said in a statement. “He captured the mystique and magic of California, carrying it around the world and across generations.”

Roundly regarded as a genius in the music studio, Wilson wrote more than three dozen Top 40 hits, bright summertime singalongs that were radio candy in the early 1960s, anthems to the surf, sun and souped-up cars.

In an era when rock groups were typically force-fed material written by established musicians and seasoned songwriters, Wilson broke the mold by writing, arranging and producing a stream of hits that seemed to flow effortlessly from the studio.

Riding the crest of peppy, radio-friendly songs like “Surfer Girl,” “California Girls” and “Don’t Worry Baby,” Capital Records gave Wilson almost unchecked control over the group’s output. The label came to hold Wilson in such high regard that it even allowed him to record where he wished rather than use the cavernous Capitol studios in Hollywood that the Beach Boy leader felt were suitable only for orchestras.

“There are points where he did 37 takes of the same song,” said William McKeen, who taught a rock ‘n’ roll history course at the University of Florida. “One track will be someone singing ‘doo, doo, doo’ and the next will be ‘da, da, da.’ Then you hear them all together and, my God, it’s a complex piece of music.

“And he heard it all along.”

In many ways, the studio became Wilson’s primary instrument, just as it had been Phil Spector’s. As his confidence grew, Wilson’s compositions became more majestic and complex as he pieced together a far-reaching catalog of music while his bandmates toured the world without him — just as he preferred.

When the group returned from a tour in Asia in 1966, they discovered that Wilson had created an entire album during their absence. He had written the songs — many with guest lyricist Tony Asher, used the highly regarded Wrecking Crew session musicians to record with him and regarded the product as essentially a solo album. All his bandmates needed to do, he explained, was add their voices.

Brian Wilson, second to right, performs with the Beach Boys in California circa 1964.

(Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images)

The songs on “Pet Sounds” were achingly beautiful and introspective. Some were melancholy, wistful, and brimming with nostalgia. Gone were the waves, the sunshine and the blond-haired girls that populated his earlier work. They were replaced with interlocking songs that seemed to form a single piece of music.

His bandmates were dumbstruck. Mike Love, his cousin and lead singer of the group, told him the album would have been better had he had a bigger hand in its creation. “Stop f— with the formula,” he reportedly snapped. Other band members agreed that the songs seemed foreign compared with surefire crowd pleasers like “Surfin’ U.S.A” and “Dance, Dance, Dance.” But they relented, and the album was released.

Love, in a lengthy 2012 L.A. Times op-ed about his brittle relationship with Wilson, told the story far differently, however. He said he was an early champion of the album, wrote some of the songs, came up with the title and helped convince Capitol to get behind the record when the label dragged its feet.

Though “Pet Sounds” was the first Beach Boys recording not to go gold — at least not immediately — it was a virtual narcotic to critics and admirers. Paul McCartney said it was “the classic of the century” and, as the story goes, rallied the rest of the Beatles to record “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” in response. Classical composer Leonard Bernstein declared Wilson a genius and one of America’s “most important musicians.”

As the years passed, the album became a treasured gem, saluted as one of the finest of the rock era and preserved in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress. Fifty years after it was released, it was still ranked as the second-best album of all time by both Rolling Stone and Pitchfork, topped only by “Sgt. Pepper’s.”

“Part of Brian Wilson’s genius was his ability to express great complexity within the frame of great simplicity,” wrote Anthony DeCurtis, an author and former Rolling Stone editor.

Then things fell apart.

For months, Wilson tinkered in the studio on an album with the working title “Smile” as anticipation built for what it might be and in what direction it might take rock, already shifting quickly in the dawn of the psychedelic era — music, drugs, lifestyle and all. Wilson said the album would be a “teenage symphony to God,” a piece of music so audacious it would unlock the straitjacket he felt was keeping pop music bland and predictable.

The first window into the album was “Good Vibrations,” a 3-minute, 35-second song that featured dramatic shifts in tone and mood with Wilson’s distinctive falsetto soaring above it all. It was an immediate commercial and critical success.

But it was also a disturbing sign of the madcap world Wilson now inhabited. Recordings for “Good Vibrations” stretched over seven months, the sonic blips and beeps he was trying to stitch together consumed 90 hours of tape and costs soared to nearly $75,000 — roughly $740,000 in 2025 valuation. All the while, musicians — some bandmates, others hired guns — filed in and out of four different studios as he searched for perfection.

Not everyone thought it was worth the effort for a single song.

“You had to play it about 90 bloody times to even hear what they were singing about,” complained Pete Townshend, the guitarist and songwriter for the Who. Spector — Wilson’s idol — said it felt “overproduced.” McCartney said it lacked the magic of “Pet Sounds.”

Wilson felt otherwise. When he finished the final mix on “Good Vibrations,” he said it left him with a feeling he’d never experienced.

“It was a feeling of exaltation. Artistic beauty. It was everything.”

The band toured again as Wilson continued work on “Smile,” an increasingly troubled project. He ordered members of a studio orchestra to wear fire gear and reportedly built a fire in the studio during a recording of “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow,” which was to be the album’s opening number. He turned to veteran recording artist Van Dyke Parks for help with the lyrics rather than wait for his bandmates to return.

When Love listened to the still-under-construction album, he dismissed it as “a whole album of Brian’s madness,” according to the Guardian. Parks, an admired lyricist with his own career to worry about, eventually walked away from the project, spooked by Wilson’s erratic behavior and what he saw as Love’s uncomfortable tendency to bully his cousin.

David Marks, from left, Al Jardine, Brian Wilson, Blondie Chaplin, Mike Love and Bruce Johnston at the 2024 world premiere of the Disney+ documentary “The Beach Boys” in Hollywood.

(Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images)

Whether it was the hostile reaction from his bandmates or the hopelessness of navigating the maze of half-finished songs and sonic fragments he’d created, Wilson put the whole thing aside. It would be decades before he revisited it.

“When we didn’t finish the album, a part of me was unfinished also, you know?” Wilson wrote in his 2016 memoir “I am Brian Wilson.” “Can you imagine leaving your masterpiece locked up in a drawer for almost 40 years?”

Love, who sued Wilson repeatedly through the years to get songwriting credit for dozens of songs he claimed he helped write, bristled at the suggestion that he had upended his cousin’s masterwork.

“What did I do? Why am I the villain?” Love wondered aloud in a lengthy 2016 profile in Rolling Stone. “How did it get to this?

Wilson’s psyche had been fragile for years. He was reclusive at times, spending days alone in a bedroom at his Malibu mansion, where he had a baby grand piano installed in a sandbox and a teepee erected in the living room. He admitted that he suffered from auditory hallucinations, which caused him to hear voices.

And he took drugs by the bucketful.

He was public about his demons. He was mentally ill, he said, consumed with such depression that he couldn’t get out of bed for days at a time. He smoked pot, experimented with LSD and got through the day with a steady lineup of amphetamines, cocaine and sometimes heroin. A tall man, Wilson’s weight ballooned to more than 300 pounds, and when he did surface in public, he seemed withdrawn and distracted.

“I lost interest in writing songs,” he told The Times in a 1988 interview. “I lost the inspiration. I was too concerned with getting drugs to write songs.”

It all started in Hawthorne, where Wilson was born on June 20, 1942. The eldest of three boys, he grew up in suburban comfort not far from the beaches that would inspire so many of his early songs.

His father, Murry, was a musician and a machinist; his mother, Audree, a homemaker. Wilson went to Hawthorne High, where he played football and baseball. He earned an F for a composition he submitted in his music class, though decades later the school changed his grade to an A when administrators discovered the composition had become the Beach Boys’ first hit song, “Surfing.” School officials invited him to campus to accept their apology.

At home, he played the piano obsessively. He recalled hearing George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” when he was 4, lying on the floor of his grandmother’s house, mesmerized that the composer had captured both a city and an entire era in a single piece of music. He took accordion lessons but set the instrument aside after six weeks. His father, though, noticed his son had the ability to quickly repeat melodies on the piano.

“He was very clever and quick. I just fell in love with him,” Murry Wilson says in Peter Carlin’s “Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson.”

In 1961, with his parents on vacation, Wilson, his brothers, Love and their friend Al Jardine rented guitars, a bass, drums and an amplifier with the food money their parents had left behind and staged a concert for their friends. When Murry Wilson returned home, he was more pleased than angered and encouraged the fledgling musicians to continue. Armed with a handful of songs, the Pendletones — named for the then-popular flannel shirts — began to play at school dances and parties. When they went into the studio to record, a producer changed the group’s name to the Beach Boys and never bothered to tell them.

If it all sounded sunny and carefree, Wilson didn’t remember it that way. He said his father was abusive and seemed to delight in humiliating him, typically in public. It was possible, he said, that his hearing problems stemmed from one of the times his father smacked him in the head.

“I was constantly afraid,” he told The Times in 2002. “That’s what I remember most: being nervous and afraid.”

When the Beach Boys became successful, Murry took over as their manager and increasingly took charge of their business affairs. When money was needed, he overrode his sons’ objections and sold off the band’s publishing company, believing the group had peaked. When the group went on the road, he went with them and fined his sons if they broke his rules — no booze, no profanity, no fraternizing with women. Finally, in 1964, Wilson and his brothers essentially fired their father. Never fully reconciled with his sons, Murry died of a heart attack in 1973.

To some observers, the riddle of Brian Wilson could not be fully explained by the drugs he took, the voices he heard or the depression that smothered him like a blanket. It was more than that.

“My own theory is that he was never able, never quite allowed, to become an adult — and that this, more than anything else, has been the story of his life, and of his band,” wrote Andrew Romano in a lengthy 2012 Newsweek article.

An abusive father, a cousin he regarded as a bully and ultimately a psychologist who sought to control his every move, his every thought — all appeared to have a hand in making Wilson who he was.

And then there was Eugene Landy, a colorful character by any measurement. He wore orange sunglasses, drove a Maserati with a license plate reading “HEADDOC,” sported a Rod Stewart-style haircut and practiced a brand of pop psychology that was regarded by some as revolutionary. Others, though, saw Landy as a Svengali-like figure, a man who could make Wilson appear to be on the road to recovery while bleeding him of every resource he had.

Hired by Wilson’s first wife, Marilyn, in 1976, Landy had his first meeting with his new client in Wilson’s bedroom closet, the only place where the musician said he felt safe. Landy gradually won Wilson’s trust and, believing in 24-hour therapy, moved in with the musician.

The results were immediate. Wilson shed weight, quit taking street drugs and rejoined the Beach Boys on stage for the group’s 15th anniversary. For a man who was so paranoid that he reportedly refused to brush his teeth or shower for fear that blood would gush from the faucet, it was a night-and-day change.

But it was short-lived, and Landy was fired when the Beach Boys’ management balked at his fees, which hovered around $35,000 a month — around $345,000 in 2025 valuation.

Without Landy, Wilson quickly regressed — back on drugs, overeating, retreating to his bedroom. He separated from his wife and grew apart from his daughters, Carnie and Wendy. Then with a flourish, Landy returned and — armed with a full team of nutritionists, assistants and caregivers — doubled down on his around-the-clock therapy.

Landy concluded Wilson suffered from a schizoid personality with manic depressive features — introverted, painfully shy, unable to show emotion. Left untreated, Landy said, Wilson would inevitably swing freely between delusional highs and nearly suicidal lows. He loaded Wilson up on medications — lithium, Xanax, Halcion, among others.

So involved was Landy in Wilson’s every move that in 1988 when the musician released “Brian Wilson” — his first solo album and his best effort in years — Landy was listed as the executive producer and given co-writing credit on five of the 11 songs. Landy’s girlfriend was given co-writing credit on three other songs. Landy became Wilson’s manager, formed a business interest with the musician to share in any profits from recordings, films and books and tried to become executor of Wilson’s estate.

Landy was ousted for good when the state attorney general’s office opened an investigation into his relationship with Wilson, probing accusations that he had prescribed drugs without a medical license and had financially exploited his famous client.

Gary Usher, a songwriter who worked with Landy, told state investigators that Wilson was a virtual captive, manipulated by a man who frightened and intimidated him.

In 1989, Landy pleaded guilty to a single charge of unlawfully prescribing drugs, surrendered his license and moved to Hawaii, where he died of lung cancer in 2006.

Wilson, who rarely said anything negative about anyone, could find little kind to say about Landy in a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone. “I thought he was my friend, but he was a very f— up man.”

Despite the tumult, Wilson kept recording and performing, sometimes showing glimpses of his former self, yet always doomed to comparisons with his earlier work.

In 2017, Times rock critic Randy Lewis observed that Wilson seemed chipper and content during a leg of the “Pet Sounds Live” tour at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. His voice, once shriveled by years of smoking and other abuses, was “assertive and confident,” Lewis wrote.

Two years later, though, Wilson postponed a leg of his “Greatest Hits” tour to focus on his mental health.

“It is no secret that I have been living with mental illness for many decades,” he wrote in a tender apology to ticketholders. “I’ve been struggling with stuff in my head and saying things I don’t mean, and I don’t know why.”

Through it all, the unfinished concept album he had put aside hung like a cloud.

A few snippets of the album had been used on “Smiley Smile,” a hurry-up recording in 1967 that the Beach Boys recorded to meet contractual demands, and “Surf’s Up,” a 1971 album built around a song of the same name that Wilson wrote for “Smile.”

Nearly 30 years later, an L.A. musician named Darian Sahanaja asked Wilson whether he’d be interested in revisiting “Smile.” The two had come to know each other on the road when Wilson sat in with Sahanaja’s group, the Wondermints.

The master tapes were unlocked, and Sahanaja said he downloaded the tracks and unconnected song fragments, aware that he was handling the very material that had nearly driven its author mad.

As the two worked on a laptop, the harmonies and unwritten connective tissue seemed to return to Wilson, Sahanaja said. They smoothed out transitions, changed tempos to help connect songs and phoned Parks when they were unable to make out lyrics. If he couldn’t remember a passage, Parks came up with substitute language.

In February 2004, Wilson’s version of “Smile” finally premiered at London’s Royal Festival Hall. With Wilson on stage, seated at a piano, and Parks in the audience, the crowd roared thunderously as a song cycle that had become nearly mythical in its absence was finally unveiled.

“I’m at peace with it,” Wilson said later, smiling.

Wilson is survived by six children, including daughters Carnie and Wendy, who made up two-thirds of the Grammy-nominated pop vocal group Wilson Philips. He is preceded in death by his wife, Melinda, who died in January 2024. His brother Dennis drowned in 1983 while diving in Marina Del Rey, and Carl, his other brother, died of lung cancer in 1998.

Times staff writer Alexandra Del Rosario contributed to this report.

The death of Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson is an immeasurable loss for music and for California, both the place and the dream of it that Wilson conjured with his regal and tender compositions.

Wilson was the visionary of the defining American rock band, one who competed with the Beatles to move pop music into new realms of sophistication and invention, while writing songs capturing the longing of an ascendant youth culture.

His death leaves only two surviving members of the original lineup — Mike Love and Al Jardine, Wilson’s high school friend who sang lead on early hits like “Help Me Rhonda” and wrote songs for beloved later-period albums like “Surf’s Up” and “Sunflower.”

On the day the world learned of Wilson’s death, Jardine briefly spoke to The Times to remember his lifelong friend and bandmate. The guitarist, vocalist and songwriter — now on tour with his Pet Sounds Band playing Beach Boys hits with a focus on their 1970s output — looked back on six decades of writing and performing with one of the greatest minds of popular music.

Jardine’s conversation was edited for length and clarity.

I just lost my best friend and mentor. It’s not a good feeling, but I’m going to carry on and continue to play our music and perform with the Pet Sounds Band.

Brian was a great friend. We grew up together, we went to high school together. We were both dropouts, which is not a bad thing as long as you have a vision of the future. His and mine was to make music.

We were very good friends and very successful in part because of his great talent. He had an amazing ability to compose, very simple things and very complex things, all at the same time. He was a visionary.

We all grew up together musically, but he grew exponentially. He became a leader, and formed new ways of chord construction, things no one had heard before, and we rose to the challenge with him.

It’s been said that Brian invented the state of California, the state of mind. That’s a cute way of saying it, but he really invented a new form of music in the ’60s and ’70s. It was very sophisticated, but went way beyond that. He was a humble giant, a great American composer.

I don’t think anyone else could walk in his shoes, given all that he went through. I did write some songs he liked, and did help him get through treacherous times. It must be so frightening to be left in the wilderness by yourself and not know how to get home. He said one song I wrote helped him get through that, which is quite a compliment from the great Brian Wilson, who had his own demons to deal with.

Brian Wilson’s band was a reawakening of his professional life. He never enjoyed touring, so this band was a whole new life for him, to experience his own music and an adulation that he never had before.

The Beach Boys — Dennis Wilson, left, Al Jardine, Carl Wilson, Brian Wilson, Mike Love — perform circa 1964 in California.

(Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images)

His legacy is of course in the music, and any interpreter of that legacy has to be sharp and devoted to it. We have the most devoted people that could be there to do that, so many original members of his band. My son Matthew, he’s Brian’s voice, and the DNA is there. With his arranger, Darian, arranging all vocals, we have all the muscle and genius to pull it off.

When Carl Wilson and I were singing those parts back then, we’d abbreviate things — you can’t do everything you did in the studio with only five of us. Now we’ve got 10 people onstage and I just heard some background parts yesterday that sounded just like we used to — you can hear Carl and Dennis in there.

When we take the band out, I have a little white piano onstage, like the one he played in the past. It’s a symbolic moment, the empty piano.

While the Beach Boys tour was a hit-based performance, with this iteration, we’re more introspective, deeper cuts, performing much of the 1970s catalog. There’s quite a few numbers the public hasn’t heard, exploring the heart and soul of those albums. I was hoping Brian would have been able to join us.

But it’s wonderful, we’re hoping this music should last forever, and be felt at the deep levels that Brian experienced it.

It sure is a great responsibility to play it, but it just feels natural to me. I’ve been doing it for so long, It doesn’t feel weighty. I’m confident, especially with this band being so remarkable. I’m still learning from Brian after all these years.