Rolling Stone

Cameron Crowe’s charming new memoir is an elegy for a lost time and place, when rock ‘n’ roll culture was still a secret handshake and the music press wasn’t just another publicity tentacle for giant corporations to shill their product (excepting the fine writers at the Los Angeles Times, of course). In fact, the “music press” as a concept is vestigial at best now, the internet having snuffed it out, but when Crowe was writing his features in the 1970s, primarily for Rolling Stone, only a handful of print publications allowed fans to glean any insight about the musicians they admired or to even see photos of them.

Crowe was one of those fans. He spent his adolescence in Palm Springs, a town with “a thousand swimming pools and the constant hum of air conditioners,” in a basement apartment near the freeway. A loner and a nerd raised by a former Army commanding officer and a strong-willed, whip-smart mother who had firm ideas about how young Cameron should conduct himself. Any humiliations Crowe might have suffered as an uncertain teen were for his mother merely speed bumps on the journey to self-actualization, ideally as a lawyer. She had a wealth of Dale Carnegie-esque aphorisms to pump up her young charge, such as “put on your magic shoes,” or “Mind is in every cell of the body. Thoughts are everything.”

“She hated rock and roll,” Crowe writes. “Rock was inelegant, and worse, obsessed with base issues like sex and drugs.”

(Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster)

As we have seen in the 2000 film “Almost Famous,” Crowe’s autobiographical account of his early years, young Cameron cared little about sex or drugs, music being his only lodestar. When his family relocated to San Diego, Crowe found himself in a conservative town with virtually no outlets for music except the local sports arena, where he witnessed his first big-time rock show accompanied by his mom: a post-comeback Elvis, knee deep in Vegas schmaltz, bounding onstage “in a glittering white jumpsuit …. striking karate poses.” A week later, mom and son witnessed Eric Clapton, full of fire with his band Derek and the Dominos. “I understand your music,” Alice Crowe finally conceded. “It’s better than ours.”

San Diego had little pockets of cultural insurrection that Crowe sought out like a moth to flame. When his sister Cindy nabbed a job with the local underground paper called the Door, Crowe wedged his way in, not because he had any interest in radical politics: his hero Lester Bangs, the iconoclastic rock critic whom he had read in Rolling Stone and Creem, had contributed work there.

As he does so often in this book, Crowe pulls the reader in with his keenly observant eye that would serve him so well in his second career as a filmmaker. The Door’s editor Bill Maguire “had a healthy girth, an open shirt with a silver pendant, and rippling brown hair. The kind of character Richard Harris used to play, most of the time with a goblet in his hand.” Maguire and his staff are hippie idealists, wary of sullying their political mission with trivialities like record reviews. But Crowe talks Maguire into letting him weigh in on a James Taylor record, and Crowe’s career is launched. He is 14.

Cameron Crowe, who started his music journalism career as a teen, pulls the reader in with his keenly observant eye that would serve him so well in his second career as a filmmaker.

(Neal Preston)

Crowe would encounter no such resistance as he worked his way into Rolling Stone, whose owner Jann Wenner gladly accepted record company advertising to keep his counterculture publication afloat. Crowe had found his professional home, filing long, admiring features with some of the era’s most important acts.

Crowe’s Dec. 6, 1973, cover story on the Allman Brothers was meant to atone for an earlier profile on the band written for the magazine by Grover Lewis, a brutally honest and often unsavory portrait. Crowe’s do-over feature, in contrast, is anodyne and respectful; the band is even given room to refute some of the facts Lewis included in his story.

Far more interesting is the stuff Crowe left out of that piece that he has now put into his memoir. To wit: Shortly after their perfectly lovely afternoon together, Gregg Allman, clearly in a drug-induced psychotic state, calls Crowe to his hotel room and demands that Crowe physically hand over the tapes of their interview, or else face legal consequences. “How do I know you aren’t with the FBI?” Allman asked Crowe. “You’ve been talking to everybody. Taking notes with your eyes.” It’s hard to imagine Crowe’s mentor Bangs not leading with that scene.

Crowe was covering rock music at a time when publicists had not become the human guardrails they are today, insulating their clients from anything that doesn’t celebrate them. There were no record company representatives present when Crowe sat in the lobby of an El Torito restaurant in Mission Hills with Kris Kristofferson, whose wife Rita Coolidge was waiting for the singer with her family in the bar (underage Crowe wasn’t allowed inside). Or when Crowe went long with David Bowie, interviewing him on and off for a year and a half while Bowie was making his 1976 album “Station to Station.”

Camped out with his wife Angie in a Beverly Hills mansion on North Doheny Drive, Bowie is affable and candid, despite subsisting on a diet of red peppers, milk and cocaine. “Over the months, I became acclimated to the normality within his insulated lifestyle,” Crowe writes. “Oh, sometimes there might be a hexagon drawn on the curtains in his bedroom or a bottle of urine on the windowsill.” While showing Crowe the indoor swimming pool, Bowie remarks that the only problem with the house “is that Satan lives in that swimming pool.”

Such weird scenes inside this once-mysterious world have been totally effaced, now that every musician can curate his own image on social media. Reading “The Uncool,” which touches on Crowe’s Hollywood career without delving too deep into it, reminds us of what has been lost, the myths and mystique that fueled our rock star fantasies and gave the music an aura of magic.

Weingarten is the author of “Thirsty: William Mulholland, California Water, and the Real Chinatown.”

Ace Frehley, who played lead guitar as a founding member of the face-painted, blood-spitting, fire-breathing hard-rock band Kiss, died Thursday in Morristown, N.J. He was 74.

His death was announced by his family, which said he’d recently suffered a fall. “In his last moments, we were fortunate enough to have been able to surround him with loving, caring, peaceful words, thoughts, prayers and intentions as he left this earth,” the family said in a statement.

In his alter ego as the Spaceman, Frehley played with the original incarnation of Kiss for less than a decade, from 1973 — when he formed the group in New York with Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons and Peter Criss — until 1982, when he quit not long after Criss left. Yet he was instrumental to the creation of the band’s stomping and glittery sound as heard in songs like “Detroit Rock City,” “Rock and Roll All Nite,” “Strutter” and “I Was Made for Lovin’ You.” In the late ’70s, those hits — along with Kiss’ over-the-top live show — made the group an inescapable pop-cultural presence seen in comic books and on lunch boxes; today the group is widely viewed as an early pioneer of rock ’n’ roll merchandising.

A member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Frehley rejoined Kiss in 1996 for a highly successful reunion, then left again in 2002 to return to the solo career he’d started in the early ’80s. In 2023, Kiss completed what Simmons and Stanley called a farewell tour with a hometown show at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

This obituary will be updated.

Grammy winner Lil Nas X is seeking treatment out of state after his naked run-in with law enforcement last month, according to multiple reports.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Shellie Samuels said during a hearing on Monday that the 26-year-old “Dreamboy” and “Industry Baby” artist “is allowed to remain out of state as long as he remains in treatment,” Rolling Stone reported. The outlet said Samuels modified the terms of the singer’s release to account for the ongoing treatment.

A legal representative for Lil Nas X (born Montero Lamar Hill) did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for confirmation on Monday.

The judge also did not disclose additional details about the singer’s treatment, adding that “it’s private, nobody needs to know where he is, but he is in treatment,” Billboard reported.

Hill, who broke out with his hit “Old Town Road,” was arrested last month in Studio City on suspicion of charging at a police officer. He was also hospitalized for a possible overdose. At the time, officers responded to reports of a “nude man walking in the street.”

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office charged Lil Nas X with four felony counts stemming from the incident: three counts of battery with injury on a police officer and one count of resisting an executive officer. Hill allegedly assaulted officers who were trying to take him into custody. At least three were injured, the L.A. County district attorney’s office said.

The musician pleaded not guilty on all counts and was released from a Van Nuys jail after posting $75,000 bail. He faces up to five years in state prison if convicted on all charges.

Shortly after his arraignment, Lil Nas X reassured fans that he’s “gonna be all right” and said the ordeal with law enforcement made for a “terrifying four days.”

Hill’s attorney Drew Findling spoke to Rolling Stone after Monday’s hearing about the judge’s mention of “treatment.” “We’re doing what is best for Montero in a personal standpoint and a professional standpoint, but most importantly for his well-being,” Findling says in video shared on X by reporter Nancy Dillon.

“He is surrounded by an amazing family and amazing team of people that care about him and love him and we’re just addressing those issues,” Findling added. “It’s really as simple as that. He’s had a great life, he’ll continue to have a great life and this is a bump he’s gonna get over.”

Sabrina Carpenter divided fans earlier this month with her choice of cover art for her forthcoming album, “Man’s Best Friend.” Playing on the title, she poses on all fours like a dog while a faceless man pulls her hair.

While some interpreted the cover as cheeky and ironic — especially given the themes of the album’s first single, “Manchild” — others accused the former Disney Channel star of promoting sexist stereotypes and setting women‘s rights back decades.

Carpenter has addressed criticism by releasing an alternative cover “approved by God,” the singer revealed Wednesday on Instagram.

The black-and-white image seemingly channels Marilyn Monroe as the singer, dressed in an elegant beaded gown, leans against a man in a suit. Carpenter is front and center while the man‘s face is partially hidden.

This isn’t the first time Carpenter has ruffled some feathers.

In 2023, she received backlash from the Catholic Church after she filmed parts of her “Feather” music video at the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church. The Diocese of Brooklyn said it was “appalled” by the nature of the video and the priest who allowed her to film there was removed from his administrative duties.

When asked about the incident in an interview with Variety, Carpenter responded, “Jesus was a carpenter.” She doubled down during her Coachella debut in 2024, wearing a shirt with the same phrase.

The singer has also raised eyebrows on her Short n’ Sweet Tour, which returns to North America this fall. During her sultry performance of “Juno,” she acts out a different sex position every night.

Carpenter addressed the criticism that she’s shaped her entire brand around sex in her June cover story with Rolling Stone.

“It’s always funny to me when people complain,” she said. “They’re like, ‘All she does is sing about this.’ But those are the songs that you’ve made popular. Clearly you love sex. You’re obsessed with it. It’s in my show. There’s so many more moments than the ‘Juno’ positions, but those are the ones you post every night and comment on. I can’t control that.”

In a since-deleted post, an X user shared the first “Man’s Best Friend” cover and asked, “Does she have a personality outside of sex?” Carpenter responded, “Girl yes and it is goooooood.”

Among those who came to Carpenter’s defense of the original album art was “You’re So Vain” singer Carly Simon, who received backlash for the cover of her 1975 album, “Playing Possum.”

“She’s not doing anything outrageous,” Simon told Rolling Stone. “It seems tame. There have been far flashier covers than hers. One of the most startling covers I’ve ever seen was [the Rolling Stones’] ‘Sticky Fingers.’ That was out there in terms of sexual attitude. So I don’t know why she’s getting such flak.”

“Man’s Best Friend” will be released Aug. 29, a little over a year after Carpenter’s last project, “Short n’ Sweet.” Signed editions and copies with the alternative cover are available for preorder on her website.

The movie widely regarded as one of the best sci-fi films ever made and is an absolute must-watch for any fans of the dystopian genre

This year has seen a significant rise in dystopian thrillers, with series like The Last of Us gripping telly viewers and films such as 28 Years Later set to grace the big screen this June. With an abundance of options, it’s easy to feel swamped, but if you’re on the hunt for a true classic of the dystopian genre, I wholeheartedly suggest Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men.

I only recently had the pleasure of viewing Children of Men and was riveted from the opening scene. It swiftly climbed the ranks to become one of my all-time favourite films, and I was particularly taken by its peculiar optimism amidst the bleak post-apocalyptic setting.

What Children of Men is about

The world has descended into utter chaos as humanity grapples with impending extinction. The United Kingdom stands as one of the few remaining countries still operational, albeit under an authoritarian regime.

Theo Faron (Clive Owen), a disenchanted former activist, has ceased his resistance and now meanders through life as a civil servant. He’s so disconnected from the world that he barely registers the bombings, caged refugees, and public executions he encounters on his commute.

One day, Theo is abducted by his ex-wife Julian, who heads a rebel faction known as The Fishes, battling against the government for refugee rights. Julian implores Theo to safeguard Kee, a young African refugee, and assist her in escaping the country safely.

However, Theo soon discovers that Kee is astonishingly pregnant, carrying the world’s sole known unborn child. Driven by the need to protect this miracle, he risks everything to keep Kee’s condition under wraps and get her safely to the enigmatic Human Project, scientists seeking a cure for the global fertility crisis.

So why should you watch Children of Men?

Despite its stark backdrop, the film’s protagonist embodies hopefulness in his unwavering dedication to the prospect of a rejuvenated world.

The outpouring of support for Kee amidst such turmoil underscores a compelling truth: even in the bleakest circumstances, human kindness endures, proving that we have not strayed from our compassionate nature.

One of the captivating aspects of Children of Men is how palpably real and weathered its universe feels, peppered with background information gleaned from transient news reports, advertisements, and leaflets—a testament to the environment’s rich storytelling texture.

Packed with nuances, Children of Men invites viewers to engage deeply, promising new discoveries upon every viewing.

What critics are saying about Children of Men

Boasting an impressive 92% Rotten Tomatoes rating from over 250 critic reviews, Children of Men was also in the Oscar race for three categories (Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Editing) back in 2007.

Brian Tallerico of UGO hailed it as “feels more relevant than almost every film set in the present day and is better than almost every other film made this year.”

Kathi Maio from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction remarked: “This is one movie that will have a lasting impact even if you are forced to watch it on a ten-inch black and white Zenith.”

Peter Travers, writing for Rolling Stone at the time, placed it as the runner-up in his best films of the 2000s list, commenting: “No movie this decade was more redolent of sorrowful beauty and exhilarating action. You don’t just watch the car ambush scene (pure camera wizardry)-you live inside it. That’s Cuarón’s magic: He makes you believe.”

Where to watch Children of Men

The film can be streamed on Apple TV’s £8.99 monthly subscription or via Now TV’s £9.99 a month Cinema membership. You can also purchase Children of Men on Amazon Prime for £5.99.

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.