Brian Wilson, Beach Boys co-founder, has passed aged 82

Brian Wilson, the founder and principal creative force of the Beach Boys, whose catalogue of early hits embodied the fantasy of California as a paradise of beautiful youth, fast cars and endless surf and made them the most popular American rock group of the 1960s, has died at 82.

The family announced the death on his official webpage, but did not provide further information.

The Beach Boys were formed in 1961 in Hawthorne, California, near Los Angeles, by brothers Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love and their friend Al Jardine, and the regional success that year of their first single, Surfin’, thrust them to national attention when Capitol Records signed them almost immediately as the label’s first rock act.

They would make the Billboard Top 40 list 36 times in as many years, a tally unequalled by an American band. While each member contributed to the Beach Boys’ signature angelic vocal harmonics, Brian Wilson was the widely acknowledged mastermind behind their music.

A spectacularly imaginative songwriter, he was responsible for initial successes including Surfin’ USA, Surfer Girl, I Get Around, All Summer Long, Don’t Worry Baby, The Warmth of the Sun and California Girls. Such numbers evoked the joys of hot-rodding under boundlessly blue skies and, above all, the bronzed, bikinied lifestyle of Southern California.

From the beginning, the Beach Boys were wildly successful. Their work combined traditional American songwriting in the manner of Stephen Foster and George Gershwin, close “barbershop” harmonies appropriated from groups such as the Four Freshmen, the lushly ornate “Wall of Sound” production values of Phil Spector and the exuberant rock-and-roll of Chuck Berry.

Brian Wilson increasingly moved away from songwriting formulas and turned instead to a deeply personal “outsider” mode of creation that tested the boundaries of sounds, harmonies and song structures. A 2007 article in the New Yorker by music critic Sasha Frere-Jones went so far as to call Wilson “indie rock’s muse” and it is hard to imagine the works of such latter-day bands as the High Llamas, Yo La Tengo and Belle & Sebastian without his influence.

Although the Beach Boys occasionally recorded songs by other musicians, including members of the band, Brian Wilson’s brother Dennis summed up the group as Brian’s “messengers”.