On This Day, June 20, 1942 …
Brian Wilson was born in Inglewood, California.
In 1961, he co-founded The Beach Boys and changed the face of popular music with his gift for musical harmonies and vocal arrangements. The band had a string of top-40 hits, including “I Get Around,” “Help Me Rhonda” and “Good Vibrations,” which all went to number one.
After a nervous breakdown in 1964, Wilson stopped touring with the band, but did go on to record what he considered “probably the best album I ever did”: 1966’s Pet Sounds.
Wilson is a two-time Grammy winner and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a member of The Beach Boys in 1988. In 2000 he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
In 2024, Wilson was placed under a conservatorship after a doctor diagnosed him with a “major neurocognitive disorder.”
The life and career of The Beach Boys was recently the subject of a new documentary, The Beach Boys, now streaming on Disney+.
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