Beach Boys

Rolling Stone interview series Unknown Legends features long-form conversations between senior writer Andy Greene and veteran musicians who have toured and recorded alongside icons for years, if not decades. All are renowned in the business, but some are less well known to the general public. Here, these artists tell their complete stories, giving an up-close look at life on music’s A list. This edition features multi-instrumentalist Probyn Gregory. Three and a half decades ago, when the Beach Boys were America’s…

Brian Wilson‘s business manager LeeAnn Hard and his longtime publicist and manager Jean Sievers have filed a petition to become the Beach Boys frontman’s conservators, overseeing his personal and medical decisions, according to the Associated Press.  According to documents filed with the Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday, including a doctor’s declaration, Wilson has a “major neurocognitive disorder” and is taking medication for dementia, the Associated Press reports. In the petition,…

Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson, the wildly talented but troubled genius who co-founded the legendary group and composed most of its landmark Pet Sounds album, is suffering from dementia at the age of 81, court filings obtained by Rolling Stone confirm. In a petition for a conservatorship filed Wednesday in Los Angeles, representatives for the singer-songwriter publicly revealed the magnitude of his cognitive decline for the first time, saying Wilson is “unable to properly provide for his own personal needs for…

In early 1970, Brian Wilson called Beach Boys manager Fred Vail to a Los Angeles hotel room to propose an idea that was outlandish even by his wild standards: a country music album with Vail on lead vocals that he’d produce. The fact that Vail was a businessman without any formal singing experience didn’t strike Wilson as any sort of obstacle. “I said to him, ‘Have you written any country songs?'” Vail recalls to Rolling Stone. “And he said, ‘Well, no.’ I said, ‘Do you have any idea who you’d like to use as…

Melinda Wilson, wife of Beach Boys‘ Brian Wilson, mother of his five youngest children, and the key architect of his comeback, died Tuesday of unknown causes. She was 77. “My heart is broken,” Brian Wilson wrote in a statement. “Our five children and I are just in tears. We are lost. Melinda was more than my wife. She was my savior. She gave me the emotional security I needed to have a career. She encouraged me to make the music that was closest to my heart. She was my anchor. She was everything for us. Please say…

It’s almost impossible for John Stamos to imagine what would have happened to his life had he not met Beach Boys singer-guitarist Jeffrey Foskett 40 years ago. Foskett, who died Monday at 67, introduced Stamos to the Beach Boys in 1983, and helped him land a gig as a percussionist that continues to this day. When Stamos, who wrote about Foskett in his new memoir If You Would Have Told Me, hopped on Zoom with Rolling Stone on Monday evening, tears flowed throughout the entire conversation as he looked back on Foskett’s…

Jeffrey Foskett, a singer-guitarist that spent decades in the Beach Boys and played a pivotal role in Brian Wilson‘s late Nineties comeback thanks to his soaring falsetto and effortless ability to harmonize, died after a long battle with anaplastic thyroid cancer. He was 67. “Jeff was always there for me when we toured and we couldn’t have done it without him,” Brian Wilson said in a statement. “Jeff was one of the most talented guys I ever knew. He was a great musical leader and guitarist and he could sing like…