It has been announced that the Beach Boys co-founder and musical mastermind Brian Wilson has dementia, as his family move to appoint new conservators to help him following the death of his wife.
A statement on Wilson’s website reads: “Following the passing of Brian’s beloved wife Melinda, after careful consideration and consultation among Brian, his seven children, [housekeeper] Gloria Ramos and Brian’s doctors (and consistent with family processes put in place by Brian and Melinda), we are confirming that longtime Wilson family representatives LeeAnn Hard and Jean Sievers will serve as Brian’s co-conservators”.
According to court documents for the conservatorship filing, obtained by US site the Blast, Wilson “does not have the capacity to give informed consent to the administration of medications appropriate to the care and treatment of major neurocognitive disorders (including dementia)”.
He is described as someone “unable to properly provide for his or her personal needs for physical health, food, clothing, or shelter”. A doctor wrote in the documents that Wilson would not be able to attend a court hearing about the conservatorship, as he “often makes spontaneous irrelevant or incoherent utterances, has very short attention span and while unintentionally disruptive, is frequently unable to maintain decorum appropriate to the situation.”
A hearing is scheduled for 26 April to determine the new conservatorship arrangement.
Wilson had previously been cared for by his wife Melinda, who died on 30 January aged 77. “Melinda was more than my wife,” Wilson wrote following her death. “She was my saviour. 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.”
They had married in 1995 and adopted five children together, some of whom still live at home and under the terms of the proposal will remain there, cared for by Ramos and others.
The family described the proposed conservatorship as allowing Wilson to “enjoy all of his family and friends and continue to work on current projects as well as participate in any activities he chooses”.
Wilson had a number of nervous breakdowns in the mid-and late-196os. Heavy drug use, including of hallucinogens, exacerbated his mental state and he was later diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and mild manic depression.
Wilson also suffers from auditory hallucinations, or voices in his head. In 2006 he described them as being “all day every day, and I can’t get them out. Every few minutes the voices say something derogatory to me, which discourages me a little bit, but I have to be strong enough to say to them, ‘Hey, would you quit stalking me?’”
Wilson had been in a conservatorship arrangement with Melinda since their 1995 marriage. Prior to that he had a court-appointed conservator, Jerome Billet, since 1992, though that agreement ended acrimoniously when Wilson sued him for allegedly mishandling a lawsuit between Wilson and Beach Boys member Mike Love.
The 1992 conservatorship followed years of overbearing care from Eugene Landy, a psychologist Wilson first appointed in 1975 to help improve his mental health. In 1982, following a drug overdose, Wilson went into Landy’s – considerably expensive – care and became estranged from the rest of his family, as Landy began to exert a controlling influence over his life, even taking executive producer and co-writing credits on Wilson’s new solo recordings. In 1991, following legal action from the Wilson family, a restraining order was taken out against Landy.
Conservatorship arrangements came under greater public scrutiny in recent years thanks to Britney Spears, who extricated herself from a conservatorship run by her father and her attorney between 2008 and 2021. The outcry over the controlling arrangement led to calls for legislative reform at a state and federal level.
In 2021, in what was informally known as the #FreeBritney bill, California law was reformed to mean that conservators must disclose their fees online, and judges must document alternatives to a conservatorship agreement, among other changes. The same year, two cross-party US representatives introduced the Freedom and Right to Emancipate from Exploitation Act, intended to give more agency to conservatees, though the act has not become law.
In further Wilson news, earlier this week it was announced that Cows in the Pasture, a long-lost, half-finished country music album he made in 1970 with Beach Boys former manager Fred Vail on vocals, is being completed and prepared for release in 2025.
